Jaymie told Petty a bit about Becca knowing Rhonda and Delores, and how it had hit them all hard. “I’ve poked around for the police chief before. I seem to have a nose for trouble . . . or actually for solving trouble.”
“I’ve seen your name in the paper attached to investigations.” Jaymie’s explanation seemed to be enough. Petty poured more steaming tea into her cup. “I feel so guilty, so responsible. If only I’d gotten the message that day; it mightn’t have changed anything, but the thought nags at me. I hope I can help, but I’m not sure how.”
“Tell me whatever comes to your mind about Rhonda.”
Petty spoke quietly but with deep emotion about her niece. They had a kindred bond, more like sisters than aunt and niece. Petty took her to concerts, let her drink wine, and they shared long phone conversations, even though Petty lived near Detroit for her job in newspaper research.
“How was her relationship with her parents? You spoke of some estrangement?”
Petty frowned. “Rhonda was in her senior year. She didn’t see why she couldn’t live in their home alone. She could drive; she was responsible. But Roger wouldn’t hear of it. That was one sore spot. Another was that she was dating.”
“Gus Majewski.”
Petty nodded. “I never met him, but Rhonda seemed smitten.”
“Was there anything else to their troubles?”
The woman frowned and set her cup down. “There was one thing that was a bit weird. She wrote to me a few days before she disappeared. She was asking strange questions, like, could I look up accidents in Michigan and Ohio, ones where two parents had died leaving a baby girl?”
“Did she think she was adopted?”
“I thought that’s why she was asking at the time. I didn’t write back because I was coming to see her at her new school on Saturday to take her out to dinner, make sure everything was okay. I thought I’d leave it to talk to her then, in person. It didn’t make any sense. We had had conversations. I’d told her since she was little about seeing her just an hour after she was born, and how precious she was.”
“Petty, I know you hadn’t met him, but do you know anything about your niece’s relationship with Gus Majewski?”
“It was pretty new, I can tell you that. But it seemed more serious than others she’d had. She was popular, but she always told me life was too short to have a steady guy.”
“Yet it seemed more serious, you say. Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t even remember why I thought that. It’s an impression left from something she said, I guess.”
“What was she like?”
Petty reached over the arm of the sofa and grabbed a slim album from a basket. “I got this out recently for the police. It has photos of Rhonda.” She paused, took a deep breath, and cleared her throat. “She would be fifty,” she said, tears welling, and one trailing down her cheek to her chin. “We’d be friends. If she had kids . . .” She cleared her throat. “I loved that girl so much. I was devastated when she disappeared, but for a long time I held out hope we’d find her. Then the hope faded and I accepted what I’d known all along, that she was dead.”
Jaymie took the album and leafed through it, letting the woman rein in her emotions. There were the typical grainy color photos, faded with time, of a baby in a bassinet, then a chubby toddler with dark curls, then a slim child: playing baseball; wearing a confirmation dress in front of a church; having a birthday party. Then there were more of the two of them, Petty recognizable despite the years, dyed blonde hair in eighties curled profusion, and dark smooth-haired Rhonda, a slim and gorgeous girl with a direct and intelligent gaze. Arms over each other’s shoulders, they did look more like sisters than aunt and niece.
And that was it; Rhonda Petty never aged past her last photo, almost eighteen, with her aunt at an exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Art.
“She was kind and capable,” Petty said. “She was smarter than my brother ever was. Always got the best of him in arguments and that drove him nuts. She was stubborn. She was good in science. Wanted to be a nurse.”
“What do you think happened?” Jaymie asked, remembering Nan’s wild and improbable theory that Rhonda killed Delores and then herself.
“If it was just her that died I’d think she was leaving the school—maybe that’s what she wanted to tell me—picked up some bad dude hitchhiking, and he killed her then ran the car into the water.”
“Is that the kind of thing she’d do, pick up a hitchhiker?”
“Oh, absolutely! She always thought she could judge a person just by looking at them; I guess that’s the naïveté of youth. When you get older you realize that jerks also come in pretty packages.” She gave a rueful smile, and Jaymie thought that was perhaps hard-won personal knowledge on her part. “But if it was tied to Delores Paget’s murder? I don’t know.”
“Did she ever mention Delores to you?”
Petty shook her head.
“What about friends? Did she mention Brock Nibley, or anyone else?”
Petty shrugged as she shook her head. “I’m sorry I’m not more help.”
“Did Rhonda keep a diary, or write you letters, other than that one? Do you have any of that kind of stuff left?” It was unlikely, but still . . . things you would normally get rid of you might not, if your niece disappeared and it was all you had of hers.
There was a shift in Petty’s expression and her eyes widened behind the glasses. “I should have remembered this when the police came to ask me for photos! I kept a bunch of totes with stuff from when Iona went to the retirement home after Roger died. Iona was a saver, not like me, so there may be some things in there of Rhonda’s. It was Roger and Iona who collected her things from the school.” She moved to the edge of her seat. “I could look through that stuff, see if there’s anything.”
Jaymie felt a tingle of excitement. “Would you? You never know what may help.”
“Should I give it to the police?”
Pausing, Jaymie thought for a moment. “Would you mind if I saw it first? The police should definitely have it, but I would like to get an idea what was in it. Chief Ledbetter knows I’m talking to you, of course. Do you have anything yourself? Like the letter she wrote asking about babies and accidents?”
Regret on her face, Petty shook her head. “I’m a scrapper, not a saver. All this collecting,” she said, waving her hand around at the stuff crowding her neat and pretty living room, “is recent. Since I’ve retired I find myself holding on to more, I don’t know why. I don’t have anyone to save it for.”
Jaymie surreptitiously glanced down at her watch. If she was going to check in with Valetta, do the other half dozen things she needed to get done that day, have something to eat and then go over to Bernie’s, she needed to get a move on. “Is the stuff easy to get to?” Jaymie asked. “Could I look through it now?”
“It’s up in the attic. I have a few totes up there of mine and many more of Iona’s, but only a couple will have Rhonda’s things in it, if they do at all. Can you come back another day?”
Jaymie stood. “That’s a good idea. I’m on kind of a tight schedule today. As much as I’d like the tour of your kitchen—and your garden, by the way, which looks beautiful—maybe I can come back and do that all at once? I’ll bring a camera and get some shots of your Pyrex so I can feature it.”
Petty agreed to call her when she had it all together, and Jaymie left.
• • •
HOME, DOG, CAT, LUNCH, catching up with Jakob and a brief call with her dad from Florida about their travel plans for returning to Michigan for the weddings. Just as she was getting ready to slip out the door, the phone rang again.
It was Mrs. Stubbs. “Jaymie? That you?”
“Yes, it is. Is everything okay?”
“I remembered something. One day, a few days before they disappeared, if memory serves, I saw Rhonda Welch and Delores Paget together in the library. I eavesdropped, and I’m trying to remember what they were talking about.”
There was a long pause, the sound of the elderly lady’s breathing on the line. “I think I’ve got it. First, those two together was a real mystery to me. They were so unalike! Ran in different circles, one popular, the other a loner.”
“You’re right about that.”
“But the two girls were thick as thieves that day, heads together, whispering and scheming. Saying something about going together to see someone, a ‘her.’”
“Going to see a ‘her,’” Jaymie mused. Slowly, she said, “I think I may know who the ‘her’ is, and I may even know the why.”
“What is it?”
“Mrs. Stubbs, I’d love to tell you, but I have got to run. May I visit with you tomorrow sometime? Becca is coming into town and I have to go to her new shop with her. I also need to stop in at the Emporium for my vintage picnic baskets. But I’m sure I can fit in a visit, either before or after, if that’s okay?”
“You know where I’ll be.”
Jaymie was off again then, walking this time. She had a dear friend who she needed to smooth things over with. It was late afternoon, and though the Emporium would remain open for another few hours, Valetta would be locking up her pharmacy counter at the back. Jaymie caught her as she was leaving to walk home, lunch bag and purse over her shoulder.
“Valetta, can we talk?” she said, racing up to her friend, who was stepping down to the bottom step of the wooden stairs that led from the store.
“Jaymie! I’m so relieved. I’ve wanted to call you every night the last few.” She blinked behind her glasses and played with her purse strap. “Can you come over for a cup of tea? I need to talk to you. And I’ve got some things to show you.”
They headed to Valetta’s nearby cottage, talking only of inconsequentials on the way. Neither got down to business until they were ensconced in her living room, in which every surface was cluttered with knickknacks of vintage origin reflecting Valetta’s varied interests: cat figurines, collecting magazines, bowls, lamps, candle holders, pop idol figures, and dolls.
There was silence for a moment. Jaymie was about to speak but Valetta held up one hand. “I have to say . . . I know what you and Becca and everyone think of Brock.” She hugged her knees and looked down at the carpet. “He can be hard to take.” She looked up at Jaymie. “But he’s my brother.”
“I know that, Val, and I’d never—”
“Jaymie, hold on. Though he’s my brother, if I thought for one second that he had done anything like . . . like hurt those girls, I’d turn him in. I’d never stand for it.”
“I know that, Val.”
“I’ve thought about it a lot, and I want to help. If we uncover who killed Rhonda and Delores it will clear Brock. I don’t want people looking at him funny.” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “A real estate agent has to have people trust him. Women need to trust him. They have to meet him at vacant houses. This is important to me.”
“Okay.”
“But I won’t let Brock pit me against the rest of you anymore,” she said with a shake of her head. “He does stuff like that all the time. He’s always felt like an outsider, in a way, and he expects me to feel like an outsider too.”
Jaymie decided against saying that Brock was Brock’s own worst enemy.
“But I know as well as anyone that Brock is his own worst enemy,” Valetta continued. “He’s not going to change now, though. Not at his age.”
Jaymie held back a smile and nodded, patting her friend’s hand where it rested on her knee. “Val, you’re my best friend. I care about you and I want you to know that none of us thinks any differently about you, no matter what Brock is like. He’s just . . . Brock. We know that.”
Val nodded with a sigh. “Anyway, I have some things I want to show you.” She disappeared into her spare room and came back out with a battered cardboard box labeled “Old Stuff.” She dropped it on the floor between them and flipped open the flaps. “This is stuff from my teen years. I pretty much have everything I ever owned, even my old clothes. I was never sure why I don’t get rid of stuff, but now I think it was because when I was growing up, we didn’t have much. Dad died when I was four, and Mom struggled. So we did well just to have a roof over our heads.” She shrugged and pushed up her glasses, meeting Jaymie’s eyes. “So . . . I’ve saved everything. This is stuff from the eighties.” She reached into the box and took out an old diary that was covered in loopy pink hearts and stickers of John Cougar and Joan Jett.
Jaymie smiled. “Isn’t his name John Cougar Mellencamp?” she asked, pointing to the sticker.
“Well, yeah. But before that, in 1982 or so, he was just John Cougar, and I was totally in love with him. I always said if I had a daughter I’d name her Diane.”
Jaymie was mystified for a moment, then remembered his song “Jack and Diane.” She took the diary from Valetta. “So is there anything in here about Delores or Rhonda?”
“Some. If you think it will help, you can take it home and read it.”
“You don’t mind?”
Val smiled. “It’s so long ago. I may have had a few hurtful things to say about Becca—I was jealous about all the time she spent with Delores that summer—but it was kid stuff.”
“I’ll take it. Anything else?”
In the end there was a small pile of notes, school papers and a journal.
“Val, I keep wondering about those sweaters,” Jaymie said, straightening. “I know Brock went out with both girls.”
Valetta nodded.
“But he apparently only went out with Rhonda once or twice. Why did your Mom knit both girls sweaters?”
“She was always trying with Brock’s girlfriends. He never managed to keep a girl for long, but she tried so hard to make friends with them. In fact, even years later she tried so hard with Brock’s wife that the poor girl eventually stopped answering the phone ’cause Mom called at all hours, wanting to gab.” Brock was a widower; his wife had died a few years ago.
“So, your mother knitted them both sweaters because she wanted Brock to do well with them?” Sounded crazy.
“You had to know my mom. She was always so overwhelmed by life; I feel bad, looking back. I, at least, tried to help, but Brock was useless. He sat around in the living room complaining. She thought if he had a steady girlfriend he’d change. You know, the love of a good woman, all that stuff. He was always a good worker, when he had a job, but he never did seem to have a clue with women.”
And he had repellent views about women right up to the present day, which made Jaymie dislike him, though she tried to hide her dislike for Valetta’s sake. There was a niggling worry in the back of her mind that Brock was somehow involved. It was the kind of thing she could see him doing; maybe not the murder itself, unless it was an accident, but the attempt at a cover-up.
“Anyway, Mom knit the sweaters and then made Brock give them to both Delores, first, and then Rhonda. I was deadly embarrassed, but both girls seemed to like them. I had one too from the same pattern and same wool and I loved it. Mom was a fast knitter. In fact . . .” Her gaze became unfocused. “Yes, I remember! I actually saw Delores and Rhonda one day in the halls talking . . . must have been just before Halloween, because the Halloween dance banner was being put up. They were both wearing the red sweaters! I overheard Rhonda say, joking, that they were going to form a red sweater club.”
And days later they would both be dead. Jaymie shivered, but then jumped to her feet, reached out and hugged Valetta. She gathered the stuff up, ready to go. “I’ve got a full day of running around tomorrow,” she told her friend. “I’ll be stopping in at the Emporium to update the vintage picnic basket rental book.” She paused, but then said, “I may be fulfilling the bookings I have and then stopping with the business. With the wedding and spending time with Jakob, I don’t think I’m going to have much time.”
“You do what you have to do,” Valetta said. “It’s been a good run, but you have too much on your plate. See you tomorrow, then.”
Twelve
JAYMIE RETURNED HOME, had a quick dinner, and sat at the kitchen table to work on the next “Vintage Eats” column. The difficult parts of any vintage recipe were details like weights and measures, and oven temperatures, which were often only alluded to vaguely, or estimated. But this time it was complicated by the handwriting, which she was trying to decipher to transcribe onto her laptop. She had dug out her grandmother’s decrepit recipe book from the 1950s, and decided to try her hand at salmon loaf. She’d tried a different recipe for salmon loaf once before and it hadn’t turned out great. But surely it shouldn’t be that complicated.
However, the difficulties began with the can of salmon; it asked for a one-pound can. Did anyone even make a one-pound can of salmon anymore? The largest she had seen was fourteen-point-five ounces, shy of a pound. She could use three six-ounce cans, maybe. And . . . what kind of salmon? Pink was bland, red or sockeye horrendously expensive. This was not a budget-friendly dish for the family, as the recipe book claimed.
But she could use the pink salmon and spice it up, so the flavors improved. Or she would use canned flaked ham, or turkey. With a sigh, she set it aside to think about. She felt scattered, like her mind was in a million places at once: wedding, murder, writing, working, historical house . . . Jakob. Ah. Jakob and Jocie. She sighed and sat back, closing her eyes. It was all going to be okay because soon she would have Jakob and Jocie full-time, her husband and her daughter; everything else would work out.
But not yet. She sat up straight and glanced at the clock on the wall over her Hoosier-style cabinet. Time was speeding, and she had a date to look at her wedding dress . . . or at least the dress Heidi had picked out for her. She felt the need of some emotional support, so she called Heidi to ask if Valetta could come along. That okayed, she called Valetta, who enthusiastically agreed and would in fact pick her up. The distance to Bernie’s place was walkable, but it would be faster to drive.
Leave It to Cleaver (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery Book 6) Page 12