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

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Leave It to Cleaver (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery Book 6) Page 7

by Victoria Hamilton


  “Indubitably,” Imogene said, and harrumphed too. The two women headed for the door. “We’ll tackle Haskell Lockland,” Imogene said, speaking of the heritage society president, as she paused and turned. “And we’ll bring it up for a vote. Then we’ll see who is right and who is a dimwit!”

  With that parting shot the two stalked out the front door. Mrs. Stubbs chuckled, a dry, dusty sound from a woman who didn’t laugh much or often. “I believe a fight has been joined.”

  Wouldn’t be the first time a heritage society meeting had erupted into a verbal skirmish. Nor would it be the first time Mrs. Stubbs relished the conflict. “Good to see you out here, Mrs. Stubbs,” Jaymie said, bending and hugging the woman.

  “Edith drove me. We have a van now that will take my wheelchair in the back . . . Edith’s idea. She’s been good for Lyle, I will say that, and for me, as much as I don’t approve of how they’re living.” Lyle Stubbs, her eldest son, owned and operated the Queensville Inn and now had the help of his live-in girlfriend, Edith. “I don’t see why they don’t just marry and get it over with, like you and the Müller boy.”

  Marry and get it over with. That was the most unromantic description of her wedding Jaymie had ever heard, but you had to know Mrs. Stubbs to realize it was not personal. It was the way she thought and spoke; taking offense would be silly. “I can’t wait to get it over with,” she said with a smile.

  Mrs. Stubbs glanced up at her and clutched her arthritis-knotted hands together, elbows resting on the arms of her mobility chair. “You know what I mean. I can’t abide this current fad of either living together as if it’s the same as marriage or making every wedding into a big hoopla event. It’s the marriage that matters, not the wedding.”

  “No offense, Mrs. S., but I’ve seen your wedding photos. Your dress rivaled Princess Elizabeth’s and it seems your family made a very big deal out of your wedding.” The Stubbs were one of the wealthiest families in town, along with the Perrys, which was Mrs. Stubbs’s maiden name. Her marriage had been a joining of two local dynasties.

  A broad smile suddenly wreathed the old woman’s wrinkled face and she chuckled. “You’re right, Jaymie, you are right.” She smacked Jaymie’s hand. “I’ve gotten old and cranky, but that’s no excuse for forgetting my own past. You’re the only one I let get away with that nonsense, you know, correcting me. Not even my children dare do that.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of correcting you; you have to know that,” Jaymie said, stricken at the thought that she had taken advantage of their friendship.

  “Now, don’t spoil it by taking it back!” The woman chuckled, a dusty laugh more like a cough.

  “I’m glad to see you, though, Mrs. Stubbs. I suppose you’ve heard about the body in the Paget house basement and the one in the car they dragged out of the river.”

  Her rheumy eyes brightened. She loved to talk about Jaymie’s investigations and got a thrill out of helping with any information or reasoning she could offer. Since her knowledge of the town and people in it was vast and her memory rather good, she was often a true help. “I heard you were involved in that, you and your sister. Read the piece in the paper. But wait!” She held up one gnarled hand and glanced around at the gloomy room, with the curtains drawn against the late-day light. “Let’s go somewhere comfortable in this big drafty house. Get us a cup of tea and let’s talk. Edith is coming to pick me up in . . .” She pushed her sweater sleeve up and checked her old gold watch. “Half an hour. And she is punctual, I’ll say that for her, though she can’t carry on a conversation to save her life.”

  “She doesn’t talk?”

  “Oh, she talks. She chatters incessantly, about television and movie stars and the latest diet she’s on. But that’s not conversation.”

  “I was hoping to pick your brain. You may have information I need.”

  “I’ll do my best to come out of my shell and tell you whatever you need,” she said with her dry humor.

  Five minutes later they were ensconced together in the library, a gem of a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with old tomes in faded red, hunter green, and umber, picked out in gold lettering and gold raised lines on the spines. The rug covering the hardwood floor was a sturdy commercial-grade imitation antique Turkish rug, taped down to withstand foot traffic, buggies, walkers and wheelchairs. The two women sat in a ray of sunlight that beamed through a side window that looked out toward the evergreen forest that bounded one side of the property. It was a cozy nook with a settee, two club chairs and a low table, a silver epergne with fake fruit centered on it.

  As much as Jaymie loved her own home, it was enchanting to pretend to be the lady of Queensville Historic Manor, hosting afternoon tea. She sat in a club chair by the low table, with a china tea service laid out. Mrs. Stubbs, in her mobility wheelchair, was close enough to the table to be able to set down her teacup if she needed to. Jaymie poured tea and set out some of the cookies she had just made in the historic house kitchen.

  As they sipped and munched, Jaymie told Mrs. Stubbs, who had been invaluable in one or two past investigations and read murder mysteries by the hundreds, about her and Becca’s gruesome discovery and her own witnessing of the car being dragged out of the river. She told her all the speculation, that they were Delores Paget and Rhonda Welch, that both girls attended Wolverhampton High (though Rhonda had recently moved schools) and had disappeared the same day.

  “But here’s the odd part, Mrs. Stubbs, and you can’t share this with anyone.”

  Mrs. Stubbs leaned closer, her eyes wide with interest. “Go on.”

  “Both girls were wearing identical red sweaters, supposedly knitted by Mrs. Nibley out of some weird yarn that didn’t disintegrate after over thirty years in a trunk, and even thirty years submerged in water!” She was making the assumption that Rhonda’s sweater was the same as Delores’s, though it hadn’t absolutely been confirmed. “How did Rhonda end up wearing a sweater exactly like Delores’s?”

  Mrs. Stubbs frowned, her lips wreathed in deep lines in which her face powder settled. “There’s something in my memory, something about red yarn, but I can’t remember. It’ll come to me.”

  Jaymie continued talking about the connections among Delores, Becca, Valetta and Dee, as well as with Brock. “And it gets weirder; both girls had talked about taking off, which is why both were thought to be runaways.” As she spoke, sadness washed over her at two young lives cut short. Two teenagers who never got to experience life as an adult, all the excitement and nervousness of school, dating, travel, love, sex . . . so many choices and chances, joys and sorrows.

  Mrs. Stubbs spoke of what she had read in the paper about Petty Welch, Rhonda’s aunt, and Jaymie told her, in confidence, what she had learned about the aunt’s thoughts on Rhonda’s speculating on her birth. “That red yarn is plaguing me,” Mrs. Stubbs said, frowning down at her hands, clutched around the teacup. “But I have to leave it alone or it won’t come back. Some of it seems like yesterday to me, though I know it’s a lifetime for you. Johnny was dating DeeDee Hubbard, as she was then,” Mrs. Stubbs reflected. “I always liked Dee; sensible even as a teenager. But I knew what kind of a girl she was. She was not one to put up with tomfoolery. I was afraid Johnny was going to mess it up with her by going after other girls who would put out.”

  Jaymie gasped at the frank language, and Mrs. Stubbs gave a dry chuckle, eyeing her with satisfaction. She loved shocking people. “Boys have always been after the same thing. He was wilder than Lyle, who was always a plod-along type of fellow, reliable but not much fun.”

  “What are you saying?” Was she throwing her own son, Johnny, under the bus? “Did he . . . was he going after one of those girls?”

  She shook her head. “Pay attention, Jaymie. I said I was worried about it, not that he did anything. I was worried enough that I listened in . . . heard him talking on the phone, and with his friends in the backyard. I eavesdropped . . . snooped. Boys that age, hormones running amok . . .” Her voice wa
s scratchy and she took a long drink of her tea and set the cup down with a clink against the saucer. “Turned out Johnny was okay. He was a good boy, and I think he knew he’d lose Dee if he messed up.”

  “They’ve been married a long time.”

  “They’ve had their troubles but always make it through. Not like Lyle and his wife; divorced after a few years. No stamina.” She paused, took another sip. “Johnny’s friends were a different matter. Brock Nibley was a filthy liar. He was the worst of ’em all. I didn’t like him then and don’t like him now, though he seems to have settled into being a good enough father to his two kids. But back then? He’d tell any girl anything to get into her pants.”

  Jaymie choked on her tea, holding back dismayed laughter. Mrs. Stubbs was occasionally frank to the point of discomfort, but at least you always knew where you stood with her. Nibbling on a cookie, Jaymie considered her own feelings; she had never liked Brock either, but she didn’t think he was quite as bad as Mrs. Stubbs thought him.

  This didn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with anything. “I guess we don’t know for sure that the girls were murdered . . . well, except for Delores. If that is Delores. She had a cleaver in her skull. I don’t know how to find anything out about the Pagets, it was so long ago. Did you know them?”

  Mrs. Stubbs frowned and slowly shook her head. “Don’t recall. However, the girl’s cousin . . . he must have worked somewhere. I wonder where?”

  “The aunt and uncle too, I guess.”

  “What was his name again? The cousin?”

  “Clifford Paget.”

  “I knew I’d heard that name somewhere,” Mrs. Stubbs said, patting her lap. “They mentioned in the paper that he died in a boating accident some years ago . . . in the nineties? It was August, I think . . . hot that summer. He jumped out, hit his head, his friend said, and disappeared. Both drunk as skunks. Usually the body washes up a while later, but sometimes they’re never found.”

  Clifford Paget’s demise didn’t seem to have anything to do with Delores’s quite a few years earlier, so Jaymie let it slide, and instead asked, “Were there any other teenagers who hung around with each other back then?”

  “I worked at the high school on volunteer projects, so I knew a lot of the children. Let’s see . . . Johnny and Brock were friends, much to my dismay. A couple of others, too, but they’ve moved away since then. Two of your Jakob’s older brothers went to Wolverhampton High. I knew them from the vegetable stand the Müllers used to have on their road. Best produce anywhere. The parents kept those boys pretty busy; too busy to get up to any trouble.”

  “But they might know what was going on in school with Delores and Rhonda. I never thought of that!”

  “They might. And the Majewski kids.”

  “Gus and Tami? Gus is Jakob’s partner in the junk store business.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt if they met through Jakob’s older brothers, who are more of an age with Gus. He and Tami may have known Rhonda Welch and Delores Paget.”

  “That’s something to consider.” Jaymie took a sip of tea and eyed the older woman. “The chief wants my help.”

  “No doubt. You’re a clever girl.” She patted Jaymie’s hand.

  Jaymie shrugged and began to tidy up their tea things, taking the tray back to the kitchen and washing up their cups. She returned to the library. It was almost time for Mrs. Stubbs to go. The elderly woman was napping in her chair, head bobbing to one side, sunlight illuminating the blue veins and broken capillaries on her face and gently touching her white curls. She awoke when Edith arrived. Jaymie helped get Mrs. Stubbs into the van and returned to the porch, but she saw Mrs. Stubbs beckoning her to the van and returned, looking up at Mrs. Stubbs securely belted in to one of the backseats.

  “Jaymie! There is something nagging at me, something about those two girls.”

  “Rhonda and Delores, you mean?”

  “Well, of course Rhonda and Delores. What other two girls were we talking about?”

  Edith, in the driver’s seat, compressed her lips, either in a grimace or smile, Jaymie couldn’t tell. “Do you mean something you remember?”

  The woman squinted her clouded, red-rimmed eyes. She passed one arthritis-cramped hand over her face. “There’s something there. And something about that darned red yarn. I’ll call you if I think of it.”

  “You do that. Now go home and have a nap!”

  “Got a book I’m reading . . . need to read on and find out whodunit. If only it were so easy in real life!” The van revved and pulled down the lane, with Mrs. Stubbs waving.

  Jaymie locked up and headed home. It was a long walk but it was a beautiful day and she had a lot to think about. All she wanted to do was go see Jakob and Jocie, so maybe that’s what she would do!

  Eight

  Late October 1984

  MRS. MARTHA STUBBS MOVED FROM FOOT TO FOOT, wishing she had worn her Cuban heels instead of the less practical pumps. It was her day at the Wolverhampton High School library, a boring cement block box of a room lit by fluorescent pendant row lights over scarred tables and gray metal shelves. The sacrifice of her time was occasionally worth it when she saw a student actually checking out a book to read, rather than for homework.

  Unlike other parents, she didn’t mind if what they were reading was a Sweet Valley High romance novel or even a so-called graphic novel, what she still considered a comic book. At least it was reading; any book might lead to something more challenging. However, her most frequent interaction with the children was breaking up giggling gaggles of teen girls, or amorous couples kissing in the back corner, also known as Lovers’ Library Lane, or a cruder name she preferred not to think about. They all thought she didn’t know, but she did. She also knew what the ruder children called her—Mrs. Stubb-up-her-butt—and secretly thought it was mildly humorous, if not terribly creative. Though she’d never tell her Johnny that, since he had gotten in more than one fight with a boy over the epithet.

  She patroled, helping the librarian by tidying tables and corralling stragglers. As she strolled between tables, thinking of what to cook for dinner, she saw an unusual sight. At the very back table, partially concealed by a rolling metal cart of books to be shelved, were two girls, heads together, in intense conversation. That wasn’t so unusual; it was the identity of the girls that surprised her. Rhonda Welch was one of the most popular and prettiest girls in school, while Delores Paget was one of the most forlorn and homely.

  What did those two have in common? Not a thing, except . . . ah, yes! Brock Nibley, that little toad she thoroughly despised. Perhaps she shouldn’t feel that way about a teenager, but she’d been a parent long enough to spot a wrong ’un. Martha Stubbs kept her ear to every conversation she was near, and knew that in the last two months that particular unsavory character had “dated” Delores Paget before moving on to Rhonda Welch, who went out with him twice, as far as she had heard, and never again. Going out with Brock had served the very feminine purpose of making Gus Majewski jealous enough that he solidified his relationship with Rhonda from the casual “going out” to the much more serious “going steady.”

  So Martha did what any responsible—and curious—adult would do: she found a reason to get close, checking the rolling cart for a book she wanted to recommend to a student.

  “Do you think she’ll help?” Delores was asking Rhonda.

  “Yeah, she’s cool, totally not like my parents,” Rhonda whispered. “She took me to my first concert when I was thirteen. The Rolling Stones!”

  “Well, I hope so. When can we see her?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhonda said, chewing on a strand of her straight black hair. “I wrote her a letter. Everything is so screwed up right now. My folks are leaving October twenty-ninth, but they’re taking me to that Christian school first, next week.” She groaned, a sound of misery, her face in her hands. “I’m going to be boarding there.”

  “That sucks. Why do you have to go there?”

  “I told you .
. . Mom and Dad are going to Kenya for two years. It’s a Christian mission thing for the church. They don’t trust me to live alone, and they won’t let me live with . . .” Rhonda saw the older woman lingering and turned her shoulder, giving Delores a wide-eyed look-out-it’s-an-adult look.

  Mrs. Stubbs ambled away, wondering What did Delores need help with? This was a puzzle that required some thought, but the two girls wouldn’t resume their conversation until she was well out of earshot. And indeed when she returned to the check-out counter they bent their heads together again.

  What could that mean, “help”? And who was “she”? It wasn’t necessarily anything more ominous than a planned weekend party, or sneaking out of the house, but they were an odd pair to become friends, especially given their dual connection to the Nibley boy. There were a host of possibilities that would require the help of a female adult, from acquiring drugs to planning an abortion.

  It warranted keeping her eye on them.

  • • •

  Late April—The Present

  THERE WERE A LOT OF THINGS Jaymie needed to talk to Jakob about before the wedding. So many things they hadn’t sorted out yet, not the least of which was . . . where were they going to live, in Queensville or the log cabin? It was important and they needed to talk it over. So when she returned to her sunny Queensville home, after feeding the cat and dog and letting them both out to do their business in the yard, she called Jakob to see what the rest of his day looked like.

  “Your little friend . . . jeez, why can’t I remember her name? It’s like it’s blocked again! She’s a nice kid, but she can be annoying! It’s . . . Heidi. Yeah. Heidi! She keeps coming by the store.”

  “Think of her with braids and in a dirndl.”

  “What?”

  “Braids and a dirndl, like Heidi from the books!” She paused. “Never mind.” Jaymie smiled to herself; any reader of girls’ books would have gotten the Heidi reference immediately. That was probably a good book to share with Jocie, and then they could watch the Shirley Temple movie together. It was going to be so much fun to have a daughter.

 

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