Leave It to Cleaver (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery Book 6)

by Victoria Hamilton

  Brock, dark-haired and lanky, not cute but not really ugly, either, was jammed right up against Delores, his hand on her leg slightly under the edge of her denim skirt. Delores was red-faced, the gleam in her eye almost manic. Becca was uneasy, but when she had tried to get Delores away from Brock both had shooed her away. The two disappeared outside for a while and Delores came back hand in hand with him, radiant, joy illuminating her plain face.

  The party was over pretty early. It would probably go down as one of the most boring parties in Queensville history. Dee and Johnny had already strolled away hand in hand to walk back to her place. They were happy to go, Becca could tell, but they probably wouldn’t get home for hours. The rest of them were all milling around outside, saying their goodbyes, and Becca’s dad was lining up who he had to drive home.

  Becca grabbed Delores, but the girl pulled away. “Brock’s gonna drive me home,” she whispered, cupping her hand around Becca’s ear.

  There was booze on her breath; that meant Brock had a bottle hidden somewhere, the creep. Becca searched Delores’s face by the dim light that spilled out through the open door from the front hall. “Maybe that’s not a good idea,” she whispered back.

  Brock was standing a ways away tossing keys up in the air and whistling.

  “Why not?” Delores had that look, her brows drawn down with two vertical lines between them; she was waiting for a reason to be mad.

  “You don’t like him like him, do you?”

  Delores stared at her. “What’s it to you? I thought he was, like, your second best friend’s brother. You jealous?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Becca muttered, beginning to get angry herself. She watched as her dad politely guided two other girls into his sedan, then looked back toward Delores uncertainly. This was not how the evening was supposed to go. This was the most un-fun birthday party ever in the history of birthday parties. Wasn’t your sixteenth supposed to be special? “I don’t even like him. It’s just . . . he’s older than you, you know.”

  “Only a year and a half,” Delores said with a defiant sniff. “Gawd, Becca, don’t be such a prude.”

  Brock strode over, grabbed Delores’s arm and tugged her to his car. She climbed in and he got in the driver’s side, gunned the aging sedan, and they sped off in the increasing chill of a late September night, blasting Air Supply’s “The One That You Love.”

  Four

  Late April—The Present

  THE SISTERS COULDN’T FINISH emptying and cleaning the Paget house because, despite the chief’s gloomy expectation that they wouldn’t find anything, they were still searching the house and examining the floor and walls for thirty-year-old blood spatter. Becca returned to London, Ontario, to work on her own business, a china matching service, and Jaymie returned to her multiplicity of jobs, as well as her volunteer work at the Queensville Historic Manor for the Victoria Day weekend event they held, popular with both Americans and Canadians, Tea with the Queen.

  It was one of two major fund-raising events each year and accounted for a good amount of their operating budget. Mrs. Trelawney Bellwood was their local Queen Victoria impersonator and presided over the tea table on the lawn of Stowe House with imperial decorum. This year, for the first time ever, she was sharing the duties over the two-day event with her onetime-friend-turned-enemy-turned-friend-again Mrs. Imogene Frump.

  Daniel Collins, briefly Jaymie’s boyfriend and multimillionaire owner of Stowe House, was going to be in town since he was planning to sell the manor now that his interest in Queensville—Jaymie herself—was over. Late last fall Daniel had swiftly broken up with Jaymie and married his ex-girlfriend Trish, and they were now expecting a child. Jaymie had been relieved by the breakup, not hurt. It had cleared the way for her strong interest in Jakob Müller, and look how that had turned out!

  But despite being busy she was not able to get the death of Delores Paget off her mind. How awful that because of Brock telling everyone she was running away no one reported her missing. Not even her aunt and uncle! How was it possible that Delores was dead in their basement the whole time? They must have either been responsible or at least have known.

  It gave her shivers whenever she thought of it. Late at night it took two chapters of a romance novel and a phone call from Jakob to get it off her mind.

  • • •

  A COUPLE OF DAYS after finding the body, it was her Saturday to work in the Queensville Emporium, the hundred-plus-year-old general store that had been in the Klausner family for much of that time. The two very elderly Klausners who currently owned it were training their granddaughter, Gracey, to run it, and eventually she would take over, but today she was driving them on errands and family visiting. Jaymie ran one of her own businesses, Vintage Picnic Rentals, out of the store, so she walked over with two tote bags full of supplies.

  It was a lovely late April morning, with robins in full throaty song and red-winged blackbirds chirring loudly, advertising their eligibility as good mates. The air was fresh, but as the sun climbed it warmed up and the various smells of morning floated to Jaymie: good coffee, bacon, freshly mowed grass, and blooming hyacinths, their dense purple blooms bunched in many gardens she passed.

  Main Street was still quiet. She climbed the steps in a warm beam of spring sunshine and waited on the wooden porch for Valetta, who was arriving with the keys. Valetta, originally Becca’s childhood friend, was now more Jaymie’s best pal; she ran the pharmacy counter out of the Emporium from a walled and carefully locked section at the back, dispensing medication to Queensville residents through a sliding glass partition.

  Valetta, garbed in her usual colorful sweater and with her enormous purse over her shoulder, was unexpectedly silent and didn’t chitchat as she usually did. She went straight to the back, unlocked her domain, and set up for her day. Troubled by her friend’s unaccustomed lack of warmth, Jaymie did her job, tidied up her picnic basket rental counter, rang up sales and anxiously waited until their usual midmorning break for tea. They met each other on the porch and sat on the top step with their tea and some cookies Jaymie had made that morning.

  The day was brilliant, the sun beaming through the spring green foliage so the leaves almost glowed. But until she knew what was wrong with Valetta, Jaymie couldn’t enjoy the day. “So, what’s up?” she asked, cradling her hands around her mug of tea and staring over at her friend. “Why are you so quiet this morning?”

  Valetta shrugged and stared off across the street to the antique shop Becca and Kevin were opening in a couple of weeks, in time for tourist season. “Brock came over last night.”

  “Ah.”

  “He feels like because you don’t like him, you threw him under the bus to the police with the missing Delores Paget thing.”

  Jaymie watched her friend, who still stared straight ahead. “Seriously?”

  Valetta shrugged and grimaced. “That’s what he said. I don’t want to get in the middle of this. It’s none of my business.”

  “I didn’t throw him under the bus, Val. I reported what he told Becca when Delores disappeared. Becca said it too. Why is Brock so upset about that?”

  “He’s not upset,” Valetta said, casting a glance swiftly at Jaymie then looking away again. Jaymie knew that her friend often felt caught halfway between her brother, who was not a pleasant man, and the world. “Not exactly. He feels like as a real estate agent his reputation is the most important thing about him. And the police spent a long time interviewing him. He’s sensitive.”

  Sensitive like a buffalo, Jaymie thought, but did not say. Brock was not one of her favorite people, it was true. He was a bigot and thought a lot of himself. He was condescending to her, shouting her down any time she said something about the poor in their country, or people of different races or sexual orientation. He called her naïve and a “bleeding heart.” She avoided him when possible but she was reluctant to criticize him too severely to Valetta; he was her brother, after all, and even though Val usually acknowledged her broth
er’s faults, if push came to shove he was family.

  Odd that he was upset though. “Didn’t he want to help the officers out?”

  “Of course he did!” Valetta cast her a sharp look, brows drawn down, glasses glinting in the sun. “What are you saying, Jaymie?”

  “Nothing, Val, really. But it’s important to establish where and when Delores was last seen and what she said. The police will be interviewing everyone, even you and Dee, probably.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she said. There was silence between them for a while, but Valetta finally sighed and sipped her tea. “Okay, I may as well say it,” she said, again wrapping her hands around her mug. “I have a feeling Brock fibbed a bit about what Delores said.”

  Aha, so that was it! Brock had lied either about seeing Delores at all or what she said about leaving town. Maybe he even started saying that after the fact when she disappeared. Over the years those subtleties could get lost. That was unfortunate, but it wasn’t her fault he’d fibbed. “He’ll have to tell Chief Ledbetter the truth, then.”

  “I think he’s afraid it’s going to make him look guilty.”

  Jaymie eyed her older friend. There was something more going on. “Val, they dated, right? Brock and Delores?”

  “They went out a few times.”

  “How many is a few?”

  But Valetta just shook her head.

  “That’s why your mother knitted Delores a sweater.”

  Valetta nodded, but would not be drawn out further. “It’s Brock’s story, not mine. I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Jaymie frowned down at her tea. Surely Brock wouldn’t completely lie about Delores telling him she was taking off. She must have said something to him and he passed it along. Otherwise the aunt and uncle would have reported her missing, unless one of them or the cousin killed Delores. She kept coming back to that; it was the most likely answer, given that she was in a trunk in their basement.

  At that very moment Valetta’s brother pulled up in his ’99 Cadillac and parked across three spaces that were supposed to be for customers. He got out, frostily nodded to Jaymie, and said, “Val, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  She got up and dusted off the seat of her pants with her free hand, clutching her empty mug in her other. “Sure.”

  They disappeared inside.

  Jaymie sipped the rest of her tea, her stomach feeling queasy. Something was wrong, she knew it. But what?

  Five

  SHE DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE to speak with Valetta again that day. About five in the afternoon Jaymie’s replacement arrived to look after the Emporium and Valetta closed her pharmacy counter. Her friend seemed preoccupied as they said their goodbyes on the sidewalk outside the store. Jaymie watched her walk away, hefted her bag on her shoulder and headed in the opposite direction, trudging home. As always, her home lifted in her spirits. It was a lovely old Queen Anne yellow brick, close to the narrow street. She had planted pansies in the black wrought-iron planters on either side of the door but they were fading. Soon it would be time to trade out the pansies for summer annuals, some trailing petunias and ivy, maybe some lobelia.

  She unlocked the front door and entered the welcome quiet of the front hall to the sound of the phone ringing. She threw her bag down and trotted to the kitchen. As she grabbed the cordless phone, Denver twined around her feet and Hoppy yapped, begging to be let out. She said hello as she let the animals out the back door.

  It was Heidi. “Don’t you ever look at your text messages, Jaymie?” she asked, her usually placid tone fretful. She didn’t even use her customary pet name, Jaymsie. “Or check your messages or email? I’ve been trying to get you all day!”

  She had a million questions, she said, about the wedding. She asked them rapid-fire, and Jaymie answered as best she could. Heidi then had some random complaints about dealing with Becca, as well as a grievance about how cavalier Jakob was being about the wedding. He didn’t even seem to care whether his groomsmen wore rose boutonnieres or carnations! And that made all the difference in the world!

  Jaymie let the dog back in, fed the cat, fed the dog and rustled around in her fridge, receiver to her ear, waiting until her friend was silent. “Heidi, neither do I care,” she finally said. “I’d be just as happy if Jakob was in a plaid shirt with no jacket and no boutonniere at all. He can wear a housecoat as far as I care.” There was silence at the other end. Had she offended her friend? “Heidi?”

  “I’m here. I’m wondering if plaid would work.”

  Jaymie laughed, answered more of her friend’s questions to the best of her ability, then, with Heidi calmer, they chatted.

  “I heard about you finding that body,” Heidi said. “So awful! Yuck. I’d be so scared. You do have a talent for finding bodies.”

  “Don’t blame me, this one is on Becca. She’s the one who made us look in the basement.”

  “So, do you think it is that girl, the one they’re talking about?”

  Jaymie was cautious. “What are people saying?” She wedged the receiver against her shoulder while she fished around in the fridge for salad fixings.

  “I heard that it’s some girl called Delores Paget who disappeared back in the eighties, and that Becca identified her from her sweater.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s pretty definite. That was her home, after all.” The fridge needed a good cleaning out, but it would have to wait. There was lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, green onions and some leftover roast chicken, enough for a good dinner salad.

  “I was in Wolverhampton to see Tami and everyone was in a dither about it,” Heidi said. “I said something to Tami and you know how she gets . . . she’s a nervous wreck half the time anyway, and it’s worse right now because she’s trying to quit smoking. She was so upset about the body and all. I guess she knew the girl.”

  “A lot of people in their age group must have. They all went to the same high school.” That meant that not only Becca and Brock, but Valetta, Dee, her husband Johnny, Gus, Tami, and who knew how many others would remember her. She wondered if the police would interview them all. Eventually, perhaps, but this investigation could take a while, given how long ago the murder happened.

  “So who killed her?” Heidi asked.

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “Well, it must have been her parents, right?”

  “Her aunt and uncle, you mean?” Jaymie chopped cucumber, then tore lettuce into a big bowl.

  “Whatever . . . them. Whoever she lived with. Since she was in the basement all along it had to be, right?”

  It was the logical answer, but that, thank goodness, was up to the police to figure out. She asked Heidi something random about the wedding to change the subject and her friend went happily off on a tangent about colors and flowers and wedding favors. By the time they hung up she had likely forgotten all about the murder.

  But it would not leave Jaymie’s mind so easily. She wondered if Becca had any idea how bad things were in Delores’s home. They must have been awful for her to end up dead. No one got a cleaver in the head by accident, though she almost did. Jaymie shuddered. Maybe it happened in the middle of an argument. Teenagers could be prickly, but to pick up a cleaver and give a well-aimed blow to the skull . . . ?

  Jaymie enjoyed her salad as the sky outside turned a deep shade of mauve, then indigo. She curled up on her bed to read for a while, kept company by Denver and Hoppy. It was funny, she’d been living alone for several years except for occasional visits from Becca, who co-owned the house, and less frequent visits from their parents, Alan and Joy Leighton, who had moved to Boca Raton years ago. But being alone was different now. She was anxious for her life and Jakob’s to be merged.

  In fact, she felt lonely, but as she thought that the phone rang and a long conversation with Jakob settled her down. She’d have loved to have taken him up on his invitation to come out to the log cabin for a couple of hours, but couldn’t. She cradled her head on her arm and petted Denver with her free hand while hol
ding the receiver to her ear. “I have to get up super early tomorrow and drive up to see Grandma in Canada, and then Monday I have to get up super early again and go out to the cottage to clean up,” she said, talking about the Leighton property on Heartbreak Island, Rose Tree Cottage. “Our landscaper is going to be working on the patio behind it to get it done before peak rental season, and I promised I’d send him pictures to start his plan with.”

  “I miss you.”

  “Mmmm.” She shivered delightedly. “We’ll be together all the time, pretty soon,” she whispered, even though there was no one else in the house. “June seventeenth.”

  They had decided not to live together until they were married, partly because they wanted to make the day momentous, symbolic of their joining together as a family, but mostly for Jocie’s sake. Her life was going to change enormously, and even though she loved Jaymie and looked forward to the wedding, she deserved time alone with her father before the change happened.

  “I’m having trouble waiting,” he murmured. “Your little friend has been harassing me nonstop, one more reason to look forward to the day.”

  “My little friend?”

  “Heidi Whatshername. She’s called me a dozen times in the last two days, for a million reasons. My best man’s name, colors I prefer, my parents’ phone number . . . so many things! She’s bugging Gus, at the shop, and has put reserved tags on a bunch of stuff at the store that she wants to use for the wedding. Are you sure it’s easier if she takes care of it?” he asked.

  Jaymie giggled happily, then gave in to a belly laugh. Denver, offended that the bed was shaking, jumped down and ran out of the room, but Hoppy leaped around; he loved laughter. “Jakob, you have no clue! She was on the phone to me as soon as I got home this afternoon. But honestly, she would have pestered me until I let her do it, so it was a foregone conclusion. And this way you don’t have to hear me and Becca fighting about all of this. Heidi is our referee. I have no talent for this kind of thing anyway. Heidi does, and she so wanted to do it!”