“But it hurts.”
“I know it does, sweetie, I know. What did he say when you confronted him?”
“Said it wasn’t true. That the woman was trying to make trouble for him. That she had come on to him in a bar and was now stalking him.”
Well, that could happen, Jaymie thought, then shook her head. That was also what a cheating louse would say; blame the other woman.
The waitress came to their table and they ordered one of the soups of the day, vegetable chowder—Heidi had become vegan over the summer—after making sure it was cooked with vegetable broth. They also ordered cheese muffins made with vegan cheese, and hot tea.
As they ate they talked about Jaymie’s life. She shared her and Jakob’s idea for the Müller Christmas store. Talk finally turned to her reason for being in Wolverhampton, to visit Miss Perry.
“That poor old lady!” Heidi exclaimed, her eyes tearing up. “I saw it on the news, but they didn’t say anything about it being a murder attempt.”
Experiencing a moment of panic, Jaymie said, “Good grief, I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe they’re trying to keep that under wraps.” The police did do that sometimes, withhold details from the public in an effort to entrap the culprit. “Don’t say anything to anyone.”
“I won’t. Bernie lets stuff slip sometimes. I know how to keep a secret. Maybe not as good as Joel, but . . .” She sniffed back the tears, dabbing at the wetness gathering under her eyes with a tissue, careful not to smudge her mascara.
“I only know because I was there when Morgan found the wire. Poor Miss Perry doesn’t remember anything.” Until recently Jaymie would have been able to talk to Chief Ledbetter and hound him for details. He’d used her as a source in the past, and she had even helped him on occasion. But he had retired over the summer; his assistant chief, Deborah Connolly, had been appointed chief of police, the first woman in that position. She was good, but would not tolerate outsiders interfering, she had said in a news conference announcing her appointment.
Jaymie took that personally.
They talked more about Bernie, Heidi’s closest friend. The two besties were taking a trip together to New York sometime in the near future to cheer Heidi up. Other than that it was harmless gossip about friends, news about Bernie’s brother Beau, who was coming to stay for a while as he convalesced from an on-the-job accident, and Jaymie shared her trials and tribulations with Georgina. Just catching up.
They finished their soup and decided against dessert. Jaymie pulled from her purse the box from the hospital gift shop and pushed it across the table. “A little something to cheer you up,” she said. “Open it!”
Heidi gave her that you shouldn’t have look, but opened it happily and pulled out the butterfly suncatcher. She held it up to the window and the sun streaming in caught the prism crystal, sending rainbow rays around the dim café.
“Because you’re a butterfly, sweetie,” Jaymie said gently, watching her lovely friend tear up. “Joel was never good enough for you. You deserve someone who will see you for who you are and not try to dull your lovely wings.”
Heidi jumped up, raced around the table and hugged Jaymie, who could feel the tears from them both wetting her cheeks.
• • •
JAYMIE STOCKED UP AT KROGER, stopped at a farmers’ market for late season veggies, then returned to the cabin to put the food away. Because she enjoyed cooking so much she had taken over much of it, but tonight was Jakob’s turn. He was going to pick Jocie up from school and then come home and cook dinner with her. Hoppy was begging for a walk, so Jaymie took him out; when she returned she gave both pets treats. Jocie’s cat had outgrown much of her kittenish madness and was turning into a pretty, sweet-natured tiger-striped tabby, who fortunately did not seem to care about going outside. There were coyotes around their home, so it was not safe for a small animal to roam. Jakob was going to build a dog and cat run on the porch so both animals could spend a little time outside unescorted.
What next? She looked around the cabin; it was a homey space with exposed log walls, a big stone fireplace in the living area, a lower ceiling in the kitchen, and a big window over the sink overlooking the covered porch. It had become a second home to her, but someday it would be her only home. Becca and Kevin planned to move to Queensville permanently at some point, and Jaymie couldn’t see her and Jakob and Jocie sharing the Queensville home with her sister and brother-in-law for any amount of time.
Today her mind was churning, and she had the familiar feeling of her brain working on a problem in the background, making her fidgety and anxious. She should do a couple of loads of laundry. She could clean out the fridge. Or work on her next “Vintage Eats” column, or the cookbook. Or prepare for the radio show with Sid, whom she had emailed back and forth with already. She restlessly roamed the cabin; without Jocie and Jakob it felt kind of lonely.
But in truth she couldn’t stop thinking about Miss Perry. What kind of monster would try to kill an elderly woman? And once the lady was released from the hospital and home, how long would it take before the attacker struck again? She couldn’t let it be; it was impossible. There were avenues to explore, questions to ask, and problems to solve.
Mind made up, she grabbed her keys, called Hoppy to accompany her, and drove to Queensville, stopping at their house first, where Kevin was helping their neighbor, Pam Driscoll, put up storm windows. Pam was still looking after the Shady Rest Bed and Breakfast next door until Anna and Clive returned for good next spring with their two kids.
Unlike many Englishmen, Kevin preferred coffee to tea. She waved to him, then went in and made a pot of coffee for them both. Hoppy raced around the home, wobbly as always, sniffing his favorite corners and reclaiming his bed by the stove, empty now that Denver had moved permanently to Valetta’s.
When Kevin came in, she greeted him warmly and poured him a cup of coffee.
“I hope Pam’s not being too much of a pain,” Jaymie said, looking over her shoulder as she fixed the brew the way he liked. Pam had a bit of a needy, clingy personality, but she had done better on her own than Jaymie had expected after their first meeting.
“Not at all,” Kevin said, his English accent charming as always. “She was struggling along on her own—her useless son was supposed to help but took off on his bike instead—and I offered. She said no at first; Pam is doing her best to learn how to do things. But I prevailed, masculine pride at handiwork surging to the fore, you know. Must step in to aid the damsel in distress.” He chuckled, wiping beads of sweat from his high domed forehead.
She set the cup in front of him. “It was kindly done,” she said.
“Yes, well, needless to say, it was more work than I anticipated.” He was mildly pudgy, an antiques dealer specializing in old radios and Bakelite articles, as well as antique furniture, which was how he met Becca, at an auction. He wore silver-framed glasses and had a salt-and-pepper beard the same color as his thinning hair. Today he wore a professorial outfit: chinos and a suede-elbowed cardigan sweater with a shawl collar over a gray oxford shirt.
“You aren’t dressed for it,” Jaymie said with a smile. “When I was growing up the bed-and-breakfast was run by an older couple, and he always wore these green work pants and shirt; it was like a uniform for him. But the work pants were like dress slacks, you know, with perfect creases, buttoned pockets and a leather belt.”
“Ah, yes, the sartorial elegance of the working man of yesteryear.” He took a long drink and set down the cup with a sigh of satisfaction. “I shouldn’t say it aloud,” he said, leaning forward in conspiratorial fashion, “but you make much better coffee than your sister.”
“She forgets the eggshell.”
“Eggshell?”
“Eggshell is an alkaline and coffee is acidic; it mellows the coffee to put a little crushed eggshell in with the coffee grounds.”
“I will gently remind her.”
“Or you could make the coffee yourself; I’ll show you.” She paused and
frowned down at her cup. “Kevin, I have a question, but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”
“Yes, Georgina has always been prickly and difficult, apparently from the moment she was born, my dear mother once said. She’s a hedgehog and can be a pain in the buttocks. She swears she means no harm, and indeed she is rude to everyone, playing no favorites. For some reason Americans love that about her.”
Jaymie laughed out loud. Hoppy came over begging for attention, and she lifted him to her lap, cuddling him to her. He licked her chin then settled down. “That’s funny, but it’s not what I was about to ask. Actually, it’s about the antique business.” The more she had thought about it the more absurd it seemed to her that Bev Hastings’s aunt would have a complete set of valuable sterling flatware in the exact same pattern as Miss Perry. Such an extravagance couldn’t be that common. “You deal in a lot of valuable stuff, and you buy things that folks bring into the store. What happens if you accidentally buy stolen goods?”
His expression became serious. “We do our best to be sure we know the provenance of articles, but Georgina and I have been burned before. If we do buy something and then find out it is stolen, we make every effort to give restitution, when possible by returning the exact item to the theft victim.” He squinted and examined her expression. “Is this about the Buccellati silver set?”
“Georgina mentioned it?”
He nodded, his glasses glinting in the light. “I didn’t think anything of it when the police checked it out, but since then I’ve become worried. That Savoy by Buccellati set is extremely valuable, and if someone stole it from Miss Perry, I’d like to check into it further, but I’m not sure how to go about it without offending Georgina, Mrs. Hastings, or tipping our hand.”
“You still have the silver, right? No one has bought it?”
“It was never going to be a quick sale. High-end silver and antiques require the right buyer. We knew it wasn’t going to sell in Queensville, though we do have one place setting and a couple of serving pieces out in the display case. The remaining pieces are locked in the vault.” When they renovated the antique store in the spring, Kevin and Becca had installed two vaults, a smaller one under the sales desk for cash, and a larger one in the bookkeeping office for jewelry and valuable pieces. “We expect that it will sell online at some point, for a price somewhat less than we have it listed.” He frowned and sighed. “I’ve been in a quandary as to how to handle it.”
“I’ll do what I can to help you figure it out.”
He nodded. “Until then, I believe I’ll have Georgina remove the set from the online catalogue and the showcase. It will ease my apprehension.”
“Will she be okay with that?”
He smiled. “She’s my employee; she may be older than I, but she has to do what I say this time. It won’t be pleasant, but I will do what I think right.”
Jaymie departed, after ascertaining their schedule for the next couple of weeks. She was ready to spend another weekend at the house in town, but she didn’t want Becca to feel compelled to leave. However, Becca and Kevin would soon be returning to London, Ontario, where their grandmother lived, to take her to some appointments and check in on Becca’s assistant in the china replacement business she ran out of her Old South home. As long as their Grandma Leighton was alive, Becca had once said, her time would always be split between Queensville and London.
On her way through town Jaymie checked her watch; Valetta would be taking her afternoon break about now. It was still plenty warm enough for a cup of tea on the Emporium porch, in the Adirondack chairs kept there for that reason. She was just in time. Valetta saw Jaymie and brought out two mugs of tea, handing one to her friend. They sat on the store porch, watched through the glass by Mrs. Klausner, the nonagenarian store co-owner.
“She doesn’t approve of me taking breaks,” Valetta said, waving over her shoulder at the woman in the store window. Her mug of the day said Be Nice to Me – I Know How to Kill You!
“Is it wise to use that mug at work?” Jaymie asked, keeping Hoppy on her lap as the little dog quivered with excitement, his little nose in the air, catching every scent. “Customers might get the wrong idea.”
“Brock had it made for me. You’d be surprised how polite people are once they read it.”
“I didn’t think your brother had a sense of humor.”
“He’s trying.” She chuckled and followed that with, “Sometimes he’s very trying.”
Mrs. Bellwood, one of the senior Queensville citizens and the lady who played Queen Victoria every May in the heritage society’s Tea With the Queen event, briskly walked up the slight rise toward them, huffing and puffing almost as much as Roary, her pug, who was firmly held on his leash, though he strained at it and wuffled a snorty puggish challenge at Hoppy. She was dressed senior-stylish in a violet velour bedazzled tracksuit and had violet streaks in her gray hair. “Good day, girls! Roary and I love this more fallish nip in the air. Makes us think of winter. Jaymie, will we see you at the heritage meeting tonight?”
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Bellwood,” Jaymie said.
“Hmph. Ever since you married you’ve shirked your responsibilities.”
Jaymie didn’t say what she thought, which was that Jakob and Jocie were her responsibilities now. To distract her, she asked, “Have you and Imogene Frump found the Sultan’s Eye yet?” The Sultan’s Eye was a mythic Dumpe family heirloom supposedly hidden somewhere in the heritage house. It was reported to be a brooch in the style of two centuries before, a painting on ivory of a human eye.
Mrs. Bellwood paused and let Roary sniff a clump of bushes by the Emporium porch, then he barked animatedly at Hoppy, who started struggling in Jaymie’s arms to get down. “About that, Jaymie, we urgently need Haskell’s vote to let us pull up some of the floorboards. Imogene and I are virtually certain there is a spot under the floor where artifacts are hidden, but he won’t let us pry up just a few boards. Bill Waterman has already said he could repair any damage we did.”
“You’ll have to fight him on that yourself. I’m already leaning on him to approve funding for a project I have in mind. You know how hard it is to get society money out of him.”
Mrs. Bellwood sniffed, said goodbye and hauled her pug away to continue their walk. She paused to watch and speak to Brock, who had parked his Caddy on the street and was hammering a For Sale sign into the lawn of the historic house by the green area beyond the Emporium, a yellow brick Queen Anne similar to the Leighton home.
“I hope whoever buys that house wants to live in it,” Jaymie said. “I’d hate to see it go to someone who wants to turn it into apartments, or medical offices.”
“Brock says he already has someone interested, even before he got the sign up. It’s a newcomer, a husband and wife retiring to Queensville from Port Huron.”
“If they buy it we’ll have to invite them to join the heritage society. I’ll get Haskell on it.” Jaymie glanced over at the Queensville Fine Antiques store. Georgina was out on the porch washing the big front picture window—probably to avoid having to deal with Becca; the sisters-in-law butted heads often—and it reminded Jaymie about the silver flatware set. “Val, what do you know about Jon and Bev Hastings?”
She glanced at her friend. “That I can talk about?” As a pharmacist she knew intimate details of people’s lives and was very careful never to cross a line.
“Well, sure, of course. I mean, I’ve known them to nod to for years, but I don’t even know where they live.”
“Well, let’s see: Jon was born here, but moved away. He met Bev at some anglers’ convention and they married, and moved back here about fifteen years ago, to a house he inherited from an uncle. It’s one of those run-down houses near Johnny Stanko’s, but he and Bev have fixed it up some, and her nephew lives there with them. He’s a skinny goofy kid with nothing on his mind but video games and pot smoking, as far as I’ve ever seen. About the same time as they moved back, Jon took over the bait shop from the old fel
low who used to own it. The previous bait shop owner has since passed away.”
Jaymie suppressed a grin at the straightforward recitation. Valetta had an encyclopedic knowledge of Queensville from the last forty years or so. “I meant on a more personal level. Have either of them ever been in trouble with the law, say?”
Val cast her a sharp and quizzical look. “What are you getting at?”
Jaymie shook her head, unsure how to proceed. She didn’t want to implicate Bev Hastings in the theft of silver from Lois Perry’s home, not without a whole lot more evidence, and not even to Valetta, though she knew her friend wouldn’t pass on her suspicions. “I’m not sure what I’m asking. I have a reason, but it’s not one I want to share right now.”
“You mean you want to hear gossip?”
Jaymie nodded and let Hoppy off her lap to sniff along the porch. “Do they get along? Do they have any friends? Any problems or . . . criminal doings?”
“Good heavens!” Valetta stared at her. “What, like selling drugs out of the bait shop?”
Jaymie chuckled. “Well, you said yourself the nephew was a pot smoker, right?”
Valetta rolled her eyes. “You will tell me what this is about, right?”
“Not right now, but soon.”
“Okay.” Valetta, brows raised high, took in a deep breath. “Well, there is not a thing even faintly shady, that I know of. Jon Hastings has always been a stand-up guy. He’s the kind of fellow who will espouse two different sides to an argument just to be agreeable and keep the peace.”
Jaymie nodded. That’s what he had done at the dock. Even though Baird buying the shops would put him out of business, Hastings had still supported the man’s plans for the town, all while being kind to Miss Perry. “How do they make a living from a bait shop, though? There are summer tourists of course, and ice fishing in the coldest part of winter, but that’s not much.”
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