A Deadly Grind

by Victoria Hamilton

“Mmmm, isn’t he something? He questioned me, and I felt like purring and crawling onto his lap.”

  Jaymie hooted with laughter at the incongruity of the pinch-faced Valetta Nibley purring, and from there the conversation became mildly salacious, involving many of the local men, until both retired, Valetta to the guest room/office. Sleep was easier to find, and Jaymie drifted off quickly.

  The next morning, over coffee, she remembered something she wanted to ask Valetta about. She fetched the pavé pin—Becca had seen it, but hadn’t recognized it—and set it down in front of her friend. She explained where she found it and when.

  Valetta picked it up and turned it over. “I think those are real diamonds, and the gold is genuine. It’s a tack pin of some sort. Kinda small, though. Strange.”

  “Do you think it could be a man’s tiepin?” she asked, thinking of the black-and-white checked tie Zell McIntosh had worn at the tea.

  Valetta considered. “Maybe.” She examined it closely. “I swear I’ve seen this before.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s just the thing; I can’t remember.” She shook her head, doubt filling her eyes. “It was just a glance, if I did see it.”

  “If you think of where, call me. It just seems so strange that it was in the garden like that.”

  Valetta left for work, and Jaymie filled the sink and did the breakfast dishes. What was her next course of action? She wanted to find out what Brett Delgado had been doing since he’d gotten into Queensville. She knew how he was involved, in the sense that he wanted the Button letter to forge, but who else, other than Ted Abernathy, was involved with him? Just as she was finishing the dishes, the phone rang; Anna called her with the news that Tabitha was not well, and she was taking her little girl to the doctor. The guests had already had breakfast, but could Jaymie come over to answer the phone and keep an eye on things?

  Jaymie said she’d do more than that, she’d also clean the rooms. As well as helping Anna, it gave Jaymie the access she needed to Brett Delgado’s room, if he hadn’t cleared out everything. But Anna would have told her if that was the case.

  A few minutes later, she ushered her worried friend outside to her car with Tabitha in her arms, watched while the toddler was strapped into her car seat and waved good-bye to the mother and daughter. As concerned as she too was about the child, she had work to do. The Carters, Anna’s only current guests, were already gone for the day over to Canada. Another couple had left the evening before, and their room still wasn’t clean, but Jaymie decided to start in Brett Delgado’s room. She was curious—very, very curious—about the fellow, his possible involvement in Trevor Standish’s death and his knowledge about Abernathy’s whereabouts over the last few days. If he had been gone from the B&B since the previous day, chances were he wasn’t coming back. Was he the thief who had stolen the Hoosier book the night before last?

  Cautiously, she opened the door to Brett Delgado’s room to find that he was tidy. She hurriedly cleaned, vacuuming the carpet and wiping the surfaces, and then steeled herself to snoop. He had lied about who he was and his relationship with Abernathy, and he was involved waist-deep in the mystery surrounding the Button letter. That much she knew. But could he be the murderer? Ted Abernathy had said he didn’t think so, but he was running scared from something.

  She kept her eyes peeled and was rewarded by a cryptic note on the phone pad: Call Queen, with a phone number scrawled after it. She dusted around it. Queen? What the heck did that mean? Did she dare take it, or would she remember it? The area code was not local, so it was not the Queensville Inn—or anything in Queensville, for that matter—but maybe it was a cell phone. She stared at the number, then closed her eyes and repeated it to herself.

  She had it memorized. The door tone from below told her she was not alone in the house anymore, so she scooted out of the room, duster in one hand and pushing the vacuum ahead of her to the next room. The Carters, who had left to catch the ferry to Canada before she’d arrived, were just coming in. They had missed the ferry, and so had come back for a brief rest before taking the next. Jaymie told them they were welcome to stay in their room; she would come back later in the day to clean it.

  She went directly on to the vacant room and for the next hour vacuumed, dusted, scrubbed and replaced, making the room perfect for the next visitors, due to arrive that afternoon. She replenished the hospitality tray from the store of prepackaged goodies in Anna’s larder, and closed the door on a perfect haven of peace and tranquility.

  Anna returned soon after and put Tabitha in bed. The doctor had assured her it was just a juvenile fever accompanying a minor cold, but Anna was clearly still worried. Jaymie hugged her and told her she’d be back later in the day to clean the Carters’ room, but Anna told her she’d do it herself. It would be therapy for her worries to do something energetic.

  Jaymie returned home and stood by her phone, debating calling the number on Brett’s pad. The problem with doing that was, she had no clue whom she was calling. If the person had caller ID, they would know exactly who she was, while she still wouldn’t know a thing about them. What would she learn from the call if she didn’t know what to ask? Nothing.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, to the excitement of Hoppy, who bounded after her, she sat down at her computer and looked up the area code. It was a Chicago area number, but when she did a search on a 411 site, it turned out to be a cell phone, and she could not access the owner’s name. It could mean something, or nothing at all.

  She needed to think things through, and that required fresh air and physical activity. “C’mon, Hoppy. Let’s go for a walk along the river.” The little dog was ecstatic. The yard was fine, but a walk meant new, though familiar, places, new scents and the chance to catch up on his pee-mail. She pulled on a hoodie—the day had turned a little chilly—and they set off.

  What did she know so far about the murder in her home, and what could she surmise?

  Trevor Standish had successfully tracked down the Button Gwinnett letter to Queensville, but had only figured out it was in the Hoosier cabinet in time to bid on it at the auction. Someone else—probably either Ted Abernathy or Brett Delgado—figured out the Button’s location from Trevor’s bidding and joined in, to try to get the Hoosier first. A fight ensued, and Jaymie got the Hoosier.

  But there was another possibility she hadn’t considered. Say someone who knew her, or knew of her, saw her bidding on the Hoosier. He may then have interfered in Trevor’s bidding, knowing that he would have access to her home if she got the Hoosier. She was thinking of Daniel Collins; he knew where she lived and could get to the Hoosier cabinet if it ended up at her house. His recent warmth toward her could all be camouflage. He had expressed an interest in the Hoosier right from the first time he’d seen it, and he had shown up at an awfully convenient time, just as she was taking it apart and found the letter.

  She still didn’t believe he would have killed his friend. His anguish was real; she’d bet her life on that. But maybe he’d learned about the letter from Trevor, and had intended to cut his buddy out of the Button chase. One of the other conspirators—Brett or Ted—may have been more vicious in their determination to get to the letter first. Or they may have been watching Trevor, following him, even.

  All of the facts about Daniel also went for his friend Zell, whom she already knew had been at the auction, though he had never mentioned it. Who knew what Zell was capable of, where a million-dollar letter was involved? He seemed to be willing to use others for money, as evidenced by his willingness to languish in Queensville on his “rich buddy’s dime,” as he himself had said. In fact, the three men could have started out on the Button quest together, but the partnership could have fractured at some point, leading to the competing bids, and even to the murder.

  She shook her head and inhaled the cool air deeply, glancing around. Mrs. Bellwood was sitting on the porch of h
er stately home—she was on high ground near the river and overlooked it and Heartbreak Island—and waved to Jaymie. She waved back, but Hoppy tugged on the leash, pulling her along. Jaymie never could teach him to walk properly on a leash, but he jerked up quickly at a light post and sniffed, nose to the ground.

  Her mind returned to the puzzle as her little dog sniffed his pee-mail. So, in the middle of the night Trevor had sneaked up to the summer porch to find and steal the Button letter. He may have followed her home, and could even have been watching from somewhere. He had used a crowbar or pry bar of some sort to pull the door off its hinges, and he then started to unload the Hoosier, looking for the letter—and then what?

  Why did the murderer, if he or she had been looking for the Button letter, not wait to attack until Standish had it in hand? She paused as an idea came to her. Could Standish have had something else in his hand that was mistaken for the letter? That was an intriguing line of thought, and something she would have to offer the police.

  Hoppy was done, and they moved on.

  So, if Standish had something else in his hand that was mistaken for the Button letter, what could it have been? She recalled the corner of a piece of paper that she had swept up from the summer porch in the aftermath of the murder and had looked at a couple of nights before. Possibly that corner was what had been left in his grasp when whatever had been mistaken for the letter was torn out of his fingers as he lay dying. It looked old, and she had already conjectured that it was a receipt of some sort. Could that have been why the table of weights and measures on the inside of the upper cabinet door was loose? Had Standish found this item behind it, and opened it out, trying to find out what it was, just as he was attacked? She would turn that torn corner over to Detective Christian, just in case. If they found the matching piece, as far-fetched and unlikely as that seemed, then it would certainly mean the owner had some explaining to do. It was a stretch, because even if she was right, the person had probably balled up the stolen paper and tossed it in the garbage.

  Hoppy tugged excitedly on the leash and yapped his disappointment at Jaymie’s sedate pace as they neared the river. Queensville had a long path that edged the St. Clair; it was called the Boardwalk, though it was concrete, because it once had been a true boardwalk. The chamber of commerce had led a fund drive to install park benches and new lighting, making the area a magnet for tourists and locals alike, and named the attached small green space Boardwalk Park. Hoppy loved the smells and watching the boats, and, she suspected, chasing the odd water rat as it slipped along the shore, long tail waving through the water.

  Hoppy led her toward the Boardwalk, and from there down toward the docks and the marina, but she was still puzzling out the sequence of events leading to the murder and the aftermath. What exactly was Brett Delgado’s part in all of this? He had brought Ted Abernathy into the arrangement with the idea that the forger would make a copy, or copies, of the letter, so he thought he would have it at some point. But could that mean he had planned from the beginning to kill Trevor Standish? She could imagine him sneaking up behind Standish and grabbing the paper out of his hands, but could she imagine him brutally whacking the fellow and leaving him for dead? It was too awful, and he appeared to be so civilized.

  And if he had done that, how did she reconcile what Ted Abernathy had said, that Brett had sent him over to steal the letter from the Hoosier?

  Brett was certainly one possible suspect, but wasn’t Ted more likely? When she thought about it, she only had Ted Abernathy’s word for it that he had just come to her garden shed the morning he’d grabbed her. He could have been there the night before, when Heidi got whacked and Jaymie’s house was broken into, and if that was true . . . she stopped in her tracks and thought, swiping her bangs out of her eyes and looking off toward the river without really seeing anything.

  She remembered, the afternoon before, turning from regarding her cookbook shelf to look out the window at her backyard. What would the reverse view be? Anyone, Ted included, could have seen through her back window as she put the letter in the Hoosier book. She had thought Daniel was the only one who knew, but if someone else knew what was in the Hoosier, her actions that night, even observed from a distance, may have been as clear as if he were standing beside her.

  If that was the case, and Abernathy was the one who had stolen the recipe from the book, then he could have lingered to remedy his mistake, intending to break into her home once he knew she was gone, and search her place for the real letter. Except he hadn’t even done it when he’d had the opportunity. She had been gone for an hour to the plant nursery, and presumably he had been in her shed the whole time.

  Hoppy pulled at the leash and yipped. They walked down the steeply sloped path from the Boardwalk toward the marina, where a crowd was gathered waiting for the ferry to Heartbreak Island and Johnsonville, Ontario. If Abernathy was telling the truth, she mused, was it someone else, then, who’d bopped Heidi on the head and was looking in Jaymie’s back window while she put the letter in the Hoosier book? If so, who could it be?

  As she descended toward the marina, she heard the wail of a siren, and a police car screamed to a stop at the top of the hill. Officer Jenkins threw herself out of the cruiser and scaled down the slope, not bothering with the path. Jaymie, alerted to something unusual going on, trotted the last few feet to where the officer had bolted, at the heart of the crowd that had gathered. What was going on?

  She pushed through the crowd, but the officer, with a grim expression, said, “Back up, ma’am.”

  “But what’s going on?” Jaymie said, picking Hoppy up as he squirmed with excitement.

  “It’s a body!” someone next to her said.

  She turned to find Valetta Nibley standing at her side, her eyes snapping with interest behind thick glasses. “A body?”

  Valetta nodded and bent to whisper, “Someone came in to the Emporium and said something about a floater, so I took a break and came right down. It’s another dead person . . . two murders in a week!”

  “Valetta, we’ve had tragic deaths before,” Jaymie reminded her. “Especially in summer. Doesn’t mean it’s murder. People are always falling out of boats after drinking too much, or in bad weather, or without life vests on. We get at least one or two every summer.” It was a sad fact of life. People didn’t take their “fun” seriously enough, and too often paid the ultimate price for not being water-safe while swimming, wave running, boating and rafting.

  “True. But it’s more exciting if it’s a murder.”

  Jaymie shivered. “It’s all fine if it’s in a book, but real life . . . not so much.”

  “I’m here with you, Jaymie,” Valetta said with sympathy. “I’ll stay at your place again tonight, and every night until they catch the jerk.”

  She squeezed her friend’s arm in silent thanks. A breeze came up from the river, whipping the poplars along the Boardwalk, the rustling sound of their silvery leaves carried on the wind. They stood side by side. Jaymie put Hoppy back down and he trotted to the end of his leash to sniff butts with Junk Junior, who was being walked by his daddy, Jewel’s current live-in boyfriend, Arnaldo. “Can you see anything?” Jaymie asked the taller Valetta.

  “Not really. Not yet.”

  A gasp rippled through the crowd as the EMTs valiantly lifted the dripping body from the river’s edge and hoisted it onto a backboard. As they made their way up the path, they came directly past Jaymie and she looked into the dead, dripping, lakeweed-festooned but too-familiar face.

  Nineteen

  IT WAS HER erstwhile captor, Ted Abernathy! Jaymie began to shake, and pulled Hoppy’s leash, rewinding it in its retractable holder.

  Valetta put her hand on Jaymie’s arm. “What’s wrong with you? You’re quivering like a Chihuahua in a draft.”

  “I know who that is!” She raced off with Hoppy in tow and stumbled up the incline.
She reached the EMT and tugged on his sleeve. “I know who that is!” she said gasping and panting.

  The police officer had followed, and said, “Are you saying you can identify this homicide victim?”

  “Homicide? Didn’t he just drown?” Jaymie, against her better judgment, focused on Ted Abernathy’s body. His neck had a gaping, flapping, bloodless wound that could only have been inflicted by something lethally sharp. She swallowed hard, and said numbly, “His name is . . . was . . . Ted Abernathy, and he was wanted for questioning in the murder of Trevor Standish.”

  This time she did not need to be told that she had to go to the police station, she just took Hoppy home and went, driving as if on autopilot and parking in the visitor’s lot. She was put in a comfortable room alone, and a man in a suit came in and sat down across the table from her.

  “I’m Detective Tewksbury, Ms. Leighton. Detective Christian is unavailable at the moment. Why don’t you tell me what you told the patrol officer?”

  She spilled it all, though it was surprisingly little. The dead man was Ted Abernathy, who had snatched her the previous day and held her captive for a few minutes in her shed. Ted Abernathy, as she had told them the previous day, had been in Queensville at Brett Delgado’s behest, by his own admission, to forge a copy of the Button letter, which she had turned over to the police.

  Even as she spoke, trying to tell them everything she knew or even surmised, she conned it over in her mind. This most recent event left her puzzled. She had been thinking that Abernathy was perhaps guilty of the murder of Trevor Standish, but now she wasn’t sure. Having been murdered himself didn’t absolve him, she supposed, but was it possible that there were two killers? It just didn’t seem likely.

  One more time she toted up her cast of suspects in her head: Brett Delgado, Ted Abernathy, Daniel Collins, Zell McIntosh, and perhaps Nathan and Lynn Foster. The couple didn’t seem to have a lot to do with anything, but they kept popping up. In the words of Alice, curiouser and curiouser.