A Deadly Grind

by Victoria Hamilton

  But what did she want? She had spent a lot of time pondering that topic in the last few months. Maybe being dumped by the man she had thought was the love of her life had a salutary effect. It had made her wonder what she was going to do with the next sixty-or-so years. The answer was something that both connected her to her home and her family, something that she felt passionately about: a cookbook using the wisdom of the past to enrich the present. The past was not meant to be a mystery to those alive now, it was meant to be a school, a lesson book where one sought answers. That’s exactly what the cookbooks she wanted to write and publish would do, refresh collective memory about the wisdom of the past.

  Losing Joel had made her focus on things other than her love life; digging out her family cookbook and rewriting it for the modern cook had been a lifesaver. But still, she was vaguely unsatisfied. Others did so much, and she seemed to do so little. She relished the peace and quiet, the sedate pace, the time she had to help others and to create this oasis of calm. It wasn’t “normal,” but then she never had fit in with the stream of life as her friends—most of whom had moved away from Queensville and their roots—lived it. Had her ease been purchased by the hard work of previous generations, though, and did that mean she owed it to them to work harder at life?

  She hugged herself, feeling teary and depressed. It was all catching up with her, she feared, the death, the blood, Grandma Leighton’s injury and now this. When the man was an unknown victim, it had been easier, but the buddy of a friend . . . She shook her head and swiped away the welling tears. It was moments like this that she missed having someone around all the time, someone to talk to and lean on. The year she had spent with Joel had been lovely at times, difficult at others.

  The phone interrupted her contemplation. It was Daniel, and his voice was downhearted: “Hi, Jaymie.”

  She cleared her tear-clogged throat, and said, “It’s your friend, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s Trev all right.”

  “Daniel, I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s okay. He looked kinda . . . peaceful. I couldn’t see . . . that is . . . the wound.” He paused, then said, “He was hit on the head with something, but it was the back of his head, and I couldn’t see that. But the room . . . it was so cold, and I hated . . . hated leaving Trev there.”

  “Oh, Daniel, I’m so, so sorry!” she repeated, not enlightening him as to the weapon. He sounded odd, but it must have been an awful shock. “Daniel, why was he staying at the Inn as Lachlan McIntosh?” There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally she said, “Daniel?”

  “Yeah, I was thinking. I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Just wondering. And the text messages . . . did you tell the police?”

  “Yeah. They figure someone must have his cell phone. They may be able to triangulate its location from his calls, but what good that will do, I don’t know.”

  It would tell them if the calls had been made locally, and if his killer was still around, or had been when the last call was made. But who would use the dead man’s cell phone to send that particular message, the one she had heard Daniel relay to Zell? It was so particular, and seemed to come from someone who knew Trevor. What was he involved in, and with whom, and what was he after on her summer porch? Now was not the time to plague Daniel about it. “Can I do anything? For you, or . . . or anything?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve talked to his mom in Indiana, and she was upset, but Trev’s brother was there, so she’s in good hands. Zell and I are going down to the Thirsty Fox to get wasted, in Trevor’s memory. We’ll cry in our beer, then we plan on staggering back here and passing out.”

  “Sounds like a fitting tribute for a frat brother,” Jaymie gently said. “You know where I am if you need anything. And I mean that; it’s not just a platitude. If you need a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to, I’m here.” As she hung up, she murmured a prayer for Trevor Standish. She wasn’t sure where she stood on the whole “God” issue, but a prayer for his soul’s peace, and that of those who loved him, couldn’t hurt.

  Dee called to offer her a bed, but with a cop in the back alley, Jaymie figured she’d be all right. Even as tired as she was, though, sleep was elusive. She got up several times to look out over the dark back alley and Trip Findley’s shadowed yard. The puzzle of Trevor Standish and his death on her summer porch seemed more tangled than ever, but the next morning she awoke with a new determination to get to the bottom of it all. This was her home, and it had been violated by a murderer. She was not going to be the passive victim.

  The morning started with a good phone call from Becca. Grandma Leighton had indeed broken her kneecap, but it was stable and would not require surgery to correct. She’d be in the hospital a few days, and would be released wearing a knee brace, back to her comfortable retirement home, where, with some physical therapy, she would heal. Becca asked her to pass the news on to their parents. Jaymie did so, talking to her mother for just a few minutes.

  Jaymie helped Anna out, then came home and washed all the Pyrex and other items she’d bought and carefully put them away. She stood staring at the old wood kitchen cupboards for a long moment; they were getting overfull, as Becca had pointed out. The tops of the cupboards were crowded too, and sooner or later she would have to thin out the herd of bowls, tins, utensils and bric-a-brac.

  The extra storage in the Hoosier cabinet sure would be welcome. She could display some of her vintage kitchenware on it, but it was meant to be a useful piece, too. Cookbook number two, More Recipes from the Vintage Kitchen, would be another collection of forgotten vintage recipes, like the Queen Elizabeth cake, reimagined for the modern kitchen. People longed for the past and were nostalgic for simpler times, but it didn’t mean they wanted to use all the old methods. There was nothing wrong with modern when it meant better or faster or more efficient. Or tastier!

  It might be a while before she heard back about her first cookbook, she had learned from her online perusal of publishing websites, and until then, she had to keep busy.

  Every year the Heritage Committee sent the extra goodies from the Tea with the Queen fundraiser to a different retirement home, and this year the selected home was Maple Hills, near Wolverhampton. When the ladies were looking for someone to deliver the tubs of frozen treats, Jaymie had volunteered. She had remembered something she had overheard from one of the auctioneer’s grandsons. He’d said that Mr. Bourne, the owner of the Bourne estate, was now living at Maple Hills. Maybe the elderly Mr. Bourne would be able to tell her if there was anything especially valuable about her Hoosier that would inspire someone to break into her home the very night she bought it.

  She fired up her rattletrap van and headed over to the Queensville Emporium. They had commercial grade freezers, and so had volunteered to freeze and store the treats until they were delivered to the home. Valetta, who virtually ran the store for the elderly owners, met her at the back-alley entrance and helped her load the goods.

  “How are you? I heard about your grandma; how is she doing?” Valetta asked once they were done loading the big plastic tubs of treats in the back. She searched Jaymie’s eyes.

  “I’m fine,” Jaymie said, slamming the back door of the van. “Things are a little better. Grandma Leighton is going to be okay, the murdered guy has been identified—”

  “Yeah, how weird is that?” Valetta said. She had heard all about it, of course, via the Queensville telegraph, also known as the Emporium front cashier, more efficient still than texting or Facebooking. “He’s been in Queensville this whole time, and under an assumed name. I wonder why? I heard he’s a friend of Daniel’s. You don’t suppose . . .” She eyed Jaymie. “Daniel Collins couldn’t be involved, could he?”

  Jaymie thought back to her conversations with him. The text message he brought up with Zell McIntosh still nagged at her. “I don’t think so. Daniel’s too good a guy, and this was an a
wful shock to him. Whatever Trevor Standish was doing in Queensville might be the reason he was killed, and I sure would like to know who did it.” She shuddered. “I get the creeps every time I think about it. Someone killed, on my doorstep, and now knowing it’s a friend of Daniel’s . . . it’s just awful.” She paused. “I’m hoping the murderer is long gone by now. Why would he hang around, with all the fuss? He’d be taking an awful risk.”

  Valetta nodded as she opened the door to the Emporium stockroom, ready to go back to her post. “He’s probably in Canada by now.” She waved and went back in to her pharmacy/catalogue counter.

  Jaymie left Queensville and followed the highway south along the river, turning inland near where she and Becca had gone to the Bourne estate auction and then turning again down a road to Wolverhampton, a larger town a few miles from Queensville. She passed a Walgreens and a Kroger while she thought about Trevor Standish and why he might have been in Queensville and who may have wanted him dead.

  From reading murder mysteries and watching TV, she knew that the identity of the murderer was most easily found if you knew what the victim was up to, and who was in his life. She had a few questions already that she wanted to know the answers to. Was he driving a rental car? And the name Lachlan McIntosh; had he just subconsciously—or consciously—taken the last name of his friend, Zell McIntosh? What was he doing in the time he was in Queensville? Had anyone noticed him in all those weeks?

  She saw the sign and stone pillars that indicated the lane to Maple Hills, pulled into the lane and drove around back to the service entrance and unloaded the plastic tubs, hoping the treats, mostly cookies and squares, were still frozen. Once she had signed in and delivered them to a fellow in kitchen whites, she asked directions from him and made her way to the lounge area of the retirement home. Her original hypothesis about the victim’s death had been that it had something to do with the stuff she bought at the auction. Maybe Mr. Bourne himself could shed a light on what made something—either the Hoosier or something else—in all that stuff she’d bought at his family’s estate auction special.

  Maple Hills was not posh, but was above standard. The guest lounge was comfortable, albeit worn, with faded blue carpeting and an electric fireplace, framed paintings and a courtesy table loaded with a coffee urn, tea carafe and foam cups. Jaymie glanced around and found herself being regarded with some curiosity by a young African-American woman in a cheerful outfit of scrubs with playful kittens cavorting across it as a pattern. “Do you know Mr. Bourne? He just moved here a few months ago.”

  The nurse nodded. “He’s in 22C North, here on the main floor. You going to visit him? He loves having visitors.”

  “I bought some things from his estate auction last week, and I’d love to know more about the stuff.”

  “Oh, he’ll tell you. He’ll tell you all about it. Be prepared,” the young woman said with a laugh, pushing her medication cart toward the elevator.

  Mr. Bourne was not in his room, but Jaymie was guided to where he sat in a motorized wheelchair at a sunny window in the library/lounge, literally twiddling his thumbs and looking out over the green lawns. Jaymie introduced herself and asked if she could sit down in the patterned wing chair opposite him.

  “Mr. Bourne, I went to your estate auction last week and bought the old Hoosier kitchen cabinet. Do you remember it?”

  “’Course I do. ’Member every detail o’ that cabinet. I’m old, but I’m not senile.”

  Jaymie bit her lip to keep from smiling. It seemed to be her week for cranky oldsters. She could imagine being touchy about one’s mental faculties, though, because far too many people assumed anyone over seventy was lacking. She had the example of her grandmother to guide her and would never make that mistake. “Of course not, sir. I was interested in finding out more about the cabinet, when it was bought, if it was bought new, that kind of thing.”

  “I remember the day the damn thing was delivered, clear as a bell, as if it was yesterday. That’s the day my father said Momma was trying to kill him.”

  Thirteen

  “TRYING TO KILL him? What do you mean?” Jaymie asked.

  The old man chuckled, which led to a coughing fit; he dragged a tissue out of his cardigan pocket and held it over his mouth. A nurse came over, gave Jaymie a sour look and got some apple juice for Mr. Bourne. Through all the nurse’s ministrations, the old man had a sly smile on his face, as if he was enjoying making Jaymie wait for the story. When he was better and the nurse had left, with an admonition not to “get him worked up,” he winked at her.

  “Nurses. Not a sense o’ humor among ’em.”

  “Mr. Bourne, what did you mean, your mom was trying to kill your dad?”

  “Now, I didn’t say that. I said that’s what Daddy said. I’ll tell you the story of the day the Hoosier arrived, but you gotta promise not to interrupt me.”

  Jaymie recognized defeat; there was no quick way out of this story. He had a visitor and a story to tell, and he was in no hurry to be done with either. Even though she also wanted to ask him about some other things, she nodded, recognizing a strong-willed personality when she met one. She’d have to let him do this his way.

  “Okeydokey. It was 1927. Depression time.” He swiveled his gaze and glared at Jaymie. “You know about the Great Depression?”

  She nodded. Grandma Leighton was a Depression baby, born when times were at their toughest.

  “Momma was a nurse in the great war . . . the first one, you mind. That’s where she met Daddy; he got hisself gassed in France, and she nursed him back to health at a convalescent hospital in D.C. He was a fair bit older than her, but they got married and he brought her back here.” He paused, his eyes misty with remembrance. “She was from Indiana originally, you know.”

  “A Hoosier,” Jaymie said. Lately, she had been inundated by Hoosiers, it seemed.

  “Yup. She missed home, I think.” He gazed off out the window at a sparrow hopping from branch to branch on a flowering crab.

  Jaymie glanced at her watch; it was getting on. She still had a lot to do. “Mr. Bourne—”

  “She’d get this look in her eyes,” he continued. “And then she’d say something like, ‘They’d be doing this, that or the other thing in Indiana right then’.”

  “What about the Hoosier cabinet and your mom trying to kill your dad?” Jaymie put in, trying to get to the meat of the story.

  “Slow down, or go away,” he said grumpily, slewing his gaze over to her, his rheumy eyes watering.

  She took a deep breath and sat back. He’d warned her. “Of course, sir. I’m sorry.”

  While he spoke about his family, she forced herself to relax and listen and wait, thinking about her grandma, sending her healing thoughts and wishing she was with her right then. Maybe she should have gone with Becca, but at the moment, it had seemed best to send her sister on alone, since she could speed there while Jaymie took care of things in Queensville. As soon as she was free, Jaymie would go and visit, check in on the sweetest lady in the world.

  She brought her mind back to Mr. Bourne and his tale of the good old, bad old days. He was an interesting-looking fellow, almost bald, with wisps of gray hair sticking out from his liver-spotted dome, deep pouches bagging under his eyes, making him look like a hound dog. He had gone back further, now, back to his father’s family, the Bournes. He told her about how they had originally emigrated from England to America after the Revolution, and how they had kin in Georgia somewhere. “Came over with a bundle o’ letters talkin’ ’bout how pretty Georgia was. Coulda gone to live there, but my daddy’s folks didn’t like slavery. Immoral, they said. Said it would cause trouble later, you see, and weren’t they right?”

  Jaymie nodded, and said, “The Civil War.” She was anxious to get back to the story of his mother wanting to kill his father, but now knew better than to rush him.

 
“Anyways, 1927,” he finally said. “I was six. My momma’s only surviving child. Momma worked like a dog: kept chickens, sold butter from the Jerseys, did anything and everything to keep us goin’, while Daddy sat in the corner by the fire and carved pipes out of meerschaum. You know what that is, meerschaum?”

  She didn’t, but she nodded, not willing to ask. The last thing he needed was an excuse to go off on a tangent.

  “You’re lying, but I don’t care,” he said with a wink. “Meerschaum is some kinda seafoamy stuff found floating on lakes in Germany. I guess it’s some kinda mineral. Anyways, don’t know how much you know ’bout the old days, but in those days houses didn’t have kitchen cupboards.”

  “I live in a family home, Mr. Bourne, in Queensville. My great-grandmother was one of the few who had cupboards installed when they remodeled the kitchen in the twenties, but I’ve always been fascinated by Hoosier and other brand cupboards. That’s why I bought yours.”

  “Well, then you know money was scarce. Work was hard. Any bread we ’et, Momma made. Jam, the same. Butter, too. She had an acre garden and canned the vegetables. Kept chickens. She did everything she could to keep us afloat while my daddy sat in the corner and carved his pipes outta that stuff he ordered from Germany. Strange, him ordering that crap from Germany, when it was the Krauts that gassed him, but he was hard to figger out. Secretive bugger. Anyways, he said when the economy was back on its feet, those pipes would sell for a fortune.”

  Jaymie was lost for a moment, imagining the loneliness and hardship his mother had suffered. Unlike the Leighton home, Bourne House was in the middle of nowhere even now, and in the twenties they probably didn’t have phone lines out that far, and likely didn’t even have a car. Vintage cookbook two tugged at her mind. “Did you keep her recipes? I’d be interested in seeing them.”