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

by Victoria Hamilton

  Tami nodded, her face a mask of sadness and tears in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, Tam?” Gus turned to the police chief and then to Jaymie. “What’s going on here?”

  Tami glanced toward Jaymie and the police chief, then back to her brother. “I . . . I overheard the chief. That body in that car they dragged out of the river, it’s Rhonda Welch!”

  Gus appeared stunned and leaned heavily on the counter. “It . . . it can’t be her. She left . . . ran away . . . she was pregnant, and . . .” He covered his face and doubled over. “She killed herself?” he cried, his voice muffled by his flannel-clad arms. He groaned in wordless anguish.

  Jaymie was taken aback and exchanged a look with Chief Ledbetter. “Gus, what are you talking about?”

  Tami slipped under the pass-through countertop and grabbed her younger brother in a hug, quivering with nerves and sorrow. Her voice choked with tears, she said, “He and Rhonda were dating. They were serious.”

  “But pregnant?” Jaymie asked.

  “She’d just found out!” he sobbed. “I was gonna quit school. I was going to get a job and we were going to move in together! Have a . . . have a baby!” His words came out between choking sobs.

  Jaymie’s heart broke for him as she reached out to touch his shoulder, shuddering under the weight of his grief as Tami clung to him. Gus was the most loving father she had ever seen, other than Jakob. He doted on his daughter, who was two years old and in day care. Jakob said that Gus was committed to giving her the chances he’d never had and making her life the best possible. “I’m so sorry, Gus.” She glanced at the chief, who watched with a furrowed brow. “And I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

  He looked up, his cheeks tear-stained. “When I heard about that car being found and all the speculation, I was sure it couldn’t be Rhonda. All these years I thought she had taken off, that she got scared or didn’t want a baby, and decided to leave. She hated that school she was at. She wanted out, but her parents . . .” He straightened, shaking his head, but still spoke between gasping gulps of air. “. . . her folks never would have accepted her having a child out of wedlock. They were strict. They sent her to that boarding school to split us up.”

  Chief Ledbetter glanced down at his notebook, then back up. “Mr. Majewski, when did Rhonda tell you she was pregnant?”

  He blinked. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Just think, please.”

  “Uh . . . the day after her folks took her to that boarding school. She called me.”

  “What’s going on, Chief?” Jaymie asked.

  “I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I tell you that Miss Welch was not pregnant, nor had she ever been.”

  Ten

  TAMI BURST INTO TEARS. “Oh, thank goodness!” she sobbed into her hands.

  Jaymie was surprised by the outburst. “Why do you say that, Tami?”

  “It would have been so awful if she . . . that is, she and a little one . . .” She shook her head, unable to continue, and knuckled the tears from her eyes.

  “C’mon, sis, let’s go back and get you settled down.” Gus turned to Jaymie and the chief as he lifted the counter of the pass-through and pushed his sister to go to the back. As she retreated, he leaned back toward Jaymie and the police chief. “Who did this, Chief? Did Rhonda kill herself?”

  “We don’t know yet, Mr. Majewski.”

  “Did the same person kill her and poor Delores, maybe?”

  “Do you know of any connection between the two girls?” His expression was neutral, giving away nothing.

  Gus looked back, but his sister had disappeared. He paused and wrinkled his brow. “Those two girls couldn’t have been more different.” His expression became pained and his eyes welled. “Rhonda was someone special. I mean, she was beautiful, but she was nice, too. Kids thought she was snotty but she would do anything to help anyone, that girl would. That’s why I loved her.” He cleared his throat. “I do know one thing: Brock Nibley dated both Delores and Rhonda. He was such a jerk toward Rhonda when she started going out steady with me. I’m not sayin’ he did it. I don’t like the guy much, but he’s never struck me as a murderer. I will say this . . . if you find the bastard that did that to Rhonda, I’ll string him up myself.”

  “We’re investigating all possibilities,” the chief said. “Tell your sister I’ll come back in a while for my order. I’m truly sorry for your loss, Mr. Majewski.”

  He nodded. “Even after thirty years it stings. My first love, I guess. Who knows what would have happened? I let Rhonda go because I thought that’s what she wanted, away from me. I thought I was the reason she took off.”

  “I’d like to speak with you about when she disappeared.”

  “Any time,” he said, looking toward the back area, where Tami could be heard sobbing still. “Just not right this moment.”

  “I’ll be in touch. Come along, Jaymie,” the chief said, heaving himself up and opening the door for her.

  Out on the sidewalk, Jaymie said, “She took that so hard!”

  Chief Ledbetter nodded. “Everyone has their trigger, you know. With her, it’s babies.”

  “With me it’s animal abuse; I see those Humane Society commercials showing abused dogs and cats and bawl like a child.” Jaymie sighed and looked up the street, clearing her head. “I’m glad Gus is there to comfort her. Though Rhonda was his girlfriend; you’d think she’d be comforting him.”

  “What’s he like?” Chief Ledbetter asked.

  “Gus?” Jaymie cocked her head to one side, thinking about it. “I don’t know him very well. He strikes me as the kind of guy who took a long time to figure life out, you know? He went away and worked different places for years, but about seven years ago or so he came back, and since then he started the junk store business with Jakob and met his wife, had the baby. He’s happy now. Why do you ask?”

  “We always have to consider the boyfriend.”

  “Actually, Chief . . .” She hesitated and took a deep breath. She couldn’t not say this. “Chief, what Gus said is true; I know for a fact that Brock did date both girls, Delores and Rhonda.” She told him what Helmut Müller had told her.

  “Yup. Helmut called and told us about it, what he knew. He’s been helpful.”

  Thank goodness, Jaymie thought. At least it didn’t originate with her, and she didn’t have to feel guilty toward Valetta. “I have to go talk to Nan about my column.”

  “I’ll walk with you, if you don’t walk too fast.” He pushed his shirtsleeve up to show a black wristband around his meaty wrist. “One of them walking counters. M’wife says she wants me to lose twenty pounds before retiring.” He sighed heavily. “She says she doesn’t want to be married to an old fart who can only be ballast in the fishing boat.”

  As they walked, the chief told her more about what they had discovered about Rhonda and Delores’s last day. School records showed the last day the two were marked as in class at their schools was November first, a Thursday. Police records revealed how soon they were each reported missing. Rhonda was reported missing almost immediately. She didn’t attend her two afternoon classes, and teachers alerted the office. The evening of the day she went missing it was reported to local police; the school was some miles from Wolverhampton, but it was noted in the official police report that her car was missing too, and a schoolmate at Chance Houghton admitted Rhonda may have been planning to run away. Delores wasn’t reported missing by her aunt and uncle until the next day—Friday, November second—after she didn’t return home from school the previous day or evening.

  “Odd that they didn’t call the evening she disappeared,” Jaymie said. “I sure would if a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old was missing after school and didn’t come home by bedtime. Did they call friends to see if she was staying over?”

  “The Queensville Township PD notes said the officer asked them about friends, but the Pagets reportedly said she didn’t have a single one.”

  Jaymie shook her head
and looked over at the chief as they walked, tucking a blowing strand of hair behind her ear. “But that’s not true. My sister was a friend. Enough so that she spent time out there riding horses that summer. And invited her to her sweet sixteen birthday. That’s a pretty big deal.”

  The chief’s gaze sharpened. “I knew ’bout some of that, but I didn’t realize the friendship continued after the summer. Will you ask your sister to give me a call? I’d like to speak with her again.”

  “She’s not in town right now, but she’s coming for the weekend. Is that soon enough, or do you want her to call you from London?”

  “This weekend is fine.”

  “Did you talk to Brock Nibley about seeing Delores that day?” The chief nodded. “What did she say?”

  The chief paused to catch his breath and sat down on a wrought-iron; Jaymie sat beside him.

  “He said that he was at the Queensville Emporium just sitting there, and she came into the village looking around, like she was looking for someone. He talked to her, and she told him she was taking off.”

  “Hmm. What was he doing in town in the afternoon of a Thursday? Shouldn’t he have been at school?”

  “Yeah, about that . . . he says he just took a break. He didn’t have another class scheduled until after lunch, which gave him a couple hours free, so he hitched into town, then hitched back out and went to his afternoon classes.”

  Would any kid do that, hitch all the way from the high school to Queensville only to hitch back out again?

  “Anyway, Jaymie, I’d better get going,” he said, standing back up. “Cold cases take time, sometimes years, and we have lots to do. We’re starting from day one, in a way, now that both bodies have been discovered. We’re still trying to make more of any connection between the two. One bit of information I don’t want spread around . . .” He looked undecided, squinting his perpetually watery eyes.

  “You know you can trust me, Chief.”

  He nodded. “We do believe that Delores—if the body in the trunk is hers, and I think it is—was killed right there in the kitchen of the Paget house. We pulled up some of the linoleum, and there was blood seepage into the board floor underneath. Jenkins did some research and found that the linoleum in that kitchen was likely installed sometime in the late eighties. She’s a peach, is Jenkins,” he said with an admiring nod. He was referring to Bernie, of course. “She tracked down the style and it wasn’t available until 1985.”

  Jaymie stopped dead and stared at the police chief. “Are you saying the linoleum was installed to hide the blood from Delores being murdered?”

  “Not making that assumption. Not yet. And we still have some testing to do on the floorboard sample. We’re also trying to dig up blood typing from Mr. and Mrs. Paget. We think we can get it from the hospital, once we have permission. Olga Paget was given transfusions after her fall.”

  “Oh. So you’re checking the blood type for . . . why?”

  He shrugged. “One more piece of the puzzle. Trouble is, if Delores had the same last name as Jimbo, that might mean she was his niece, not Olga’s, and we don’t have a blood type for Jimbo Paget.”

  Blood on the kitchen floor. It was sobering, and sickening, to realize that the murder had perhaps happened right there where the cleaver came at Jaymie in the kitchen. “Chief, what about Clifford Paget? I know he drowned in the river, but . . . is he a suspect?”

  “He is, at least in Delores Paget’s murder. But if there is a connection between the two girls, it’s hard to make a case against him in Rhonda’s death.”

  “Though the amount you don’t know means there could be a connection, you just don’t know what it is.”

  “We have a long ways to go yet,” he said, nodding. “Like I said, cold cases can take years. So, your sister is coming for the weekend?”

  Jaymie nodded and flushed, putting her face up to feel the spring breeze on her cheeks. “It’s our combined wedding shower this weekend, out at the historic house.”

  “Ah, yes. Looking forward to the wedding, Jaymie. You’ve got a good fellow, one almost worthy of you.”

  That was the gushiest thing he had ever said, and she’d known him almost a year. Inviting him and his wife to the wedding had been an impulse, but one she didn’t regret. He had been kind to her.

  “I’m going out to talk to Ms. Welch again,” he said, walking again, determinedly picking up the pace. “She lives outside of Queensville.”

  “Ms. . . . oh, Rhonda’s aunt! Do you think she’d talk to me about her niece?”

  He glanced over at her, his face red, his breath coming in huffs and puffs. “I’ll ask her. You got your cell phone with you?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll get Bernie to text you the answer. Whatcha thinkin’?”

  “Nothing really,” she said, trotting to keep up with his pace. “Trying to piece it all together. Trying to help any way I can.” They arrived at the Wolverhampton Weekly Howler office and paused, the chief taking in a long gasp to catch his breath. “Chief, unless the two deaths are related, it’s a heck of a coincidence.”

  He nodded, the color gradually subsiding from his flushed cheeks and his breathing returning to normal.

  “So it’s likely they’re related. Two girls who knew each other, who went out with the same guy and who had gone to the same school until days before their deaths, killed two different ways? It’s weird,” Jaymie mused. “If the deaths were related, I can’t help but wonder, was only one of them the real target, and the other got in the way? And if so, which one was the target?”

  “All good questions, Jaymie.”

  After saying their goodbyes, Jaymie strolled into the newspaper office, buzzed through to the back by the receptionist. Nan was in her cubicle, chewing on a coffee stirrer. She fairly radiated agitation. On her computer screen was some information on the disappearance of Rhonda Welch and Delores Paget.

  They greeted each other, Jaymie sat in the visitor’s chair, and she got down to business, going through her ideas for her column and how she wanted to change it up. Nan gave her her complete attention.

  “I know I started out saying I wanted to do vintage recipes so I can work toward the cookbook,” Jaymie said. “But I’d like to do some columns on foods of the past, like how packaged mixes became fashionable between the thirties and the fifties, and how televisions and TV dinners changed eating habits in the fifties and sixties.”

  “I was a kid in the sixties. No one I knew was eating TV dinners,” Nan said as she scribbled notes. “We couldn’t afford it in my house, even though both my mom and dad worked. Do you think readers will be interested?”

  Jaymie looked down at her nails; they were a mess. Another thing to think about before the wedding. “It will depend on how I present it, don’t you think?”

  Nan frowned at her computer screen, jiggling her mouse to get the resting computer to restart, which it did with a beep. Rhonda and Delores’s pictures popped up on the screen again. “Jaymie, I have mixed feelings about this. Why are you considering changing your format?”

  “I don’t want to become complacent, you know? Shouldn’t I be thinking of ideas to move ahead?”

  “Change for the sake of change is rarely a good idea.” The editor smiled and twiddled her coffee stirrer between her fingers, leaning back in her chair. “You think you need to get serious, or change things up, or something like that?”

  Jaymie nodded.

  Nan sat up, with a squawk of protest from her swivel office chair. “Did you know I get more people stopping me in the supermarket to talk to me about ‘Vintage Eats’ than any single column?” she said, pointing her coffee stirrer at Jaymie. “Sure, readers ask me about the news items and sometimes opinion pieces, but the regular columns? You know we have a pet column, and ones on gardening—popular, but seasonal—local history, crafts, some rotating columns. Without exception, your ‘Vintage Eats’ is the one I get asked about most.”

  Jaymie was taken aback.

  “Look h
ere,” she said, grabbing a newspaper from the stack on her desk. It was from mid-March. Among the ads for a special on asparagus at the supermarket, an article about the Queensville Methodist Church’s pancake supper, and a notice of a thirtieth-anniversary celebration for Tovey’s Hamburger Joint, was Jaymie’s column with a vintage recipe for corned beef hash to use up all the leftover corned beef from St. Patrick’s Day. “I had four people stop me in the grocery store to comment on that, and quite a few letters to the editor about how it brought back such great memories.”

  “So don’t fix what ain’t broke; is that what you’re saying?”

  Nan smiled, a rare flash of humor. “You could say that. Your blog traffic is up, yes?”

  “I hit three thousand followers this week.” She tried to update every two to three days, but it got difficult at times to come up with blog ideas. “I’ve started to think about putting in some kitchen utensil blog columns . . . you know, on old utensils, antiques. With photos.”

  “Then maybe that’s where you should write your articles on food fads of the past, too. Stick with vintage recipes rethought for ‘Vintage Eats.’”

  “Okay, I get you.” She grabbed her purse, ready to be dismissed.

  “Now, about these two girls,” Nan said, pointing toward her computer screen. “I understand that your sister knew them both?”

  “Everyone in town knew them. Everyone around the same age, anyway. Valetta Nibley, Dee Stubbs, Brock Nibley, Gus and Tami Majewski . . . all of them. Even Jakob’s older brother, Helmut, knew Delores.”

  Nan’s lips twitched in a smile. “Lord, sometimes I forget how insular this place is. I grew up in a big city. Everyone dispersed after the school bell rang, so we didn’t hang out with kids from our school, you know?”