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

by Victoria Hamilton

  “I don’t know what to expect, Val,” Jaymie said as they drove over through the spring dusk in Val’s sensible sedan with a bobblehead cat stuck on the dash. “Heidi has good taste in clothes, but for me? I’m not so sure. Even though she did help me choose a pretty dress for the shower. I love a thrift store, you know that, but a used wedding gown . . . ? I’m not sure.”

  “If you don’t like it, don’t wear it,” Valetta said, glancing over at her. “Your wedding, Jaymie, not hers.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Jaymie fretted.

  They parked in Bernie’s driveway behind Heidi’s car and headed to the door. The sun was very low on the horizon and it set the yellowy red brick of Bernie’s mid-century ranch-style home aglow. Jaymie hiked her purse over her shoulder and rang the doorbell.

  Bernie, also known as Bernice, threw open the door and welcomed them both with hugs, her dark eyes sparkling. With dark skin and dark eyes, her hair short-cropped and natural, gorgeous smile and full lips, she looked like a slightly shorter version of the actress and singer Jill Scott. Bernie was compact and medium height, but strong and athletic, as it behooved an officer of the law to be. She and Heidi went to the gym in Wolverhampton to work out together all the time. They had invited her to go with them, but Jaymie’s idea of exercise was a walk by the river with Hoppy.

  “Come on down to the rec room. I’ve started the cocktails . . . your wedding cocktails, Jaymie!” she said with a bounce. “A Müller Mull and a Leighton Pink Lady!” She led the way down some steps of the back split ranch to the rec room. As heavily into the mid-century modern look as Heidi, Bernie had found at auction a highly lacquered all-in-one unit that held her collection of vintage barware, as well as bottles of alcohol. Heidi was putting a record on the stereo and the sounds of Dean Martin, followed swiftly by his Rat Pack pal Sammy Davis Jr. floated out of the speakers.

  But all Jaymie could focus on was a white clothing bag hung from a floor-to-ceiling pole light near the stereo. Even as Jaymie was staring at it, Bernie shoved a drink into her hand and said, “Try this!”

  Jaymie sipped and her eyes widened. She looked at Bernie, who was handing a drink to Valetta. “This is delicious! What is it?”

  As Bernie recited the recipe, which had apple brandy and some other ingredients, Heidi waltzed over and grabbed Jaymie, dancing her around the room so violently her drink sloshed on the hardwood floor.

  “Drink up!” she crowed. “And another!”

  Ten minutes and two drinks later, Jaymie sat down on the sofa, feeling woozy. Valetta, biting her lip to keep from laughing, joined her. “I think you’d better slow down, kiddo.”

  “I know. I’m not used to drinking.”

  Bernie shoved another drink into her hand.

  “Nooo, Bernie, I can’t!”

  “Relax, lightweight, it’s ginger ale. I know how to pace myself and others too.”

  “Now, for the reveal!” Heidi said, unzipping the clothing bag. She pulled out the dress. “Ta da!”

  Jaymie stared at it, doing her best to clear her mind. It was ivory lace, long lace sleeves with satin buttons at the wrists and with a fitted bodice, but no corseting or any of the other uncomfortable structures she disliked about the wedding dresses she had tried on. The front bodice had a chevron design of satin ribbon, and a satin cord laced it all the way from the waist up to a sweetheart neckline.

  It wasn’t as bad as she had feared, but it was impossible to tell if it would be right for her. “Do you think it will fit?” she asked with some apprehension. She was a solid woman, not slim, like Heidi, or compact and well-muscled like Bernie.

  Heidi, one hand on her hip as she held up the dress with the other, glared at Jaymie. “Do you think I’d have bought it if I didn’t know it would? Honey, I’m good at this. I’ve been shopping my whole life for myself and everyone else I know. You have to try it on!”

  What did she have to lose? She had not been able to find a wedding dress on her own, particularly because she was not willing to spend a couple of thousand dollars for a dress she felt certain would be the recipient of wine and food spills, doggy hair and kids’ sticky hands by the end of the night. An elegant and expensive gown was fine for others, but not for her.

  It was becoming torturous and upsetting to even think about it, considering that her wedding was a month and a half away. Heidi grabbed her hand and hauled her into the furnace room, where she had a makeshift dressing room set up with a full-length mirror and a dressing table, along with accoutrements: makeup, a veil, and a hair piece.

  Jaymie decided to give herself over to the process and let Heidi do what she wanted. Soon she was laced into the dress, her luxurious hair—long, light brown and wavy—coiled up and pinned, with a long wavy pony over one shoulder, and the veil pinned to a pearl clip ornament. Heidi fussed at her some more, putting some lip gloss and mascara on, things Jaymie didn’t wear unless it was a formal occasion.

  Finally, Heidi stood back and nodded. Were those tears in her eyes? Jaymie wondered how bad it was.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice croaky with worry.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Heidi said, her voice thick with weepiness. “My friend. I’ve never had a friend like you.” She shook her head, swallowing hard. “I can’t imagine what my life would be like in Queensville if it wasn’t for you.”

  Jaymie was touched, but heavens . . . she wasn’t perfect. She had been so very jealous of Heidi at first. It had taken months to get over that. When Joel first moved out of her home and into Heidi’s, she had driven past the house many times, her heart aching, hating the woman inside.

  Until she got to know her. “Heidi, everyone loves you for you. You must know that. I may have got the ball rolling, but the rest is all you.”

  Heidi nodded. “Maybe. But you started that ole ball rolling. I might not have stuck it out, you know. I might have sold and moved back to the city. Even if I never marry Joel, I have a home here now.” She rushed at Jaymie and hugged her extravagantly. “Thank you.”

  “Aw, sweetie, it’s okay.” Jaymie hugged and released. “How do I look?”

  “You look like an angel. Come over to the mirror.” Heidi grabbed her hand and hauled her to the full-length mirror. “Look!”

  Jaymie took a deep breath, faced the mirror and opened her eyes. She looked . . . she looked like a fairy-tale princess! She had collarbones and slight cleavage and good skin, and her hair was nice . . . she actually did look beautiful, as Heidi had said. “It’s perfect! Oh, Heidi . . . it’s kind of fairy-tale princess-y, but not in a bad way. Jocie is going to love this!”

  “I told you, I told you!” Heidi leaped around and crowed.

  “Come out!” Bernie yelled from outside the door.

  “We want to see!” Valetta said. “We need to see!”

  “Go sit down!” Heidi yelled back. “And we’ll come out.”

  Shy, but determined to moved forward, Jaymie emerged from the furnace room and faced her friends. Val and Bernie were both silent, staring, setting Jaymie’s nerves aflutter.

  “Well?” she said. “What do you think?”

  Bernie bounced up out of her seat, rushed her and hugged. “It’s perfect!”

  “Val?”

  Valetta stared at her, tears gleaming behind the glasses. “I think my best friend is getting married,” she said, her voice thick. “It fully hit me. Jaymie, you look lovely.”

  “Jaymie Leighton,” Heidi intoned, standing beside her. “Do you say ‘I do’ to this dress?”

  Jaymie nodded, tears spontaneously welling. “I do,” she croaked.

  • • •

  BACK IN HER REGULAR CLOTHES, Jaymie and the others chatted for a while over retro snacks: French onion dip and chips served in a glass chip-and-dip bowl from the sixties, platters of tiny sandwiches, including white bread spread with peanut butter, wrapped around a banana and cut into thick round slices, as well as shrimp cocktail in vintage champagne coupes and tiny grilled-cheese sandwic
hes. It was all delicious and had Jaymie thinking of doing a “Vintage Eats” column on party foods of the past.

  Bernie’s rec room was comfortable, with a brick fireplace that held a modern gas insert, which she turned on since evenings in April are chilly in Michigan. She had furnished the place with Danish modern repro sofas, as well as real vintage coffee tables and side tables. The retro blonde-wood-paneled walls were adorned with kitschy cool “big eye” and black velvet paintings. Over the fireplace hung a thrift store find, a vintage Hawaiian sunset paint-by-number that was not quite done. It gave the whole room a quirky finesse.

  She had made a nonalcoholic punch for them to try. “I have to work tomorrow night,” Bernie said with a smile as she served the drinks over ice in vintage highball glasses. “Can’t have any more alcohol. Gotta keep it sharp if I want to move up!” She was ambitious but had a ways to go to advance to the heights she intended. Her first goal was to become the first female African-American detective on the Queensville Township PD. She was taking online certificate courses to prepare to work on a master’s in Law Enforcement Intelligence and Analysis from MSU.

  The group chatted, and Jaymie was happy that Valetta was so comfortable with Bernie and Heidi. It was important that all her friends got along. The topic of conversation moved naturally from Jaymie’s upcoming wedding shower, her wedding, and finally, to what was in the news and on people’s lips: the finding of the two teenagers who had disappeared in the eighties.

  “I don’t understand how nobody connected the two girls. They did disappear the same day, right?” Heidi looked around the circle.

  Valetta, as the only one who was there then, nodded. “I know it seems obvious now. I don’t know what the officials were doing back then, but I do remember what they were saying at school.”

  “Which was . . . ?” Jaymie asked.

  “So much!” Valetta loaded a chip with dip and munched, her gaze thoughtful behind her thick glasses. She swallowed and took a sip of her punch. “At first we didn’t know about both girls disappearing, remember. Rhonda had been sent to a boarding school because her parents were off to a missionary position in Kenya.”

  Heidi snorted and caught Jaymie’s eye. “Missionary position!”

  They all chuckled, but the matter was serious, so they sobered in a second. “From what I understand the police did connect the two missing girls and considered a serial killer or rapist,” Jaymie said. “But then Rhonda’s car never surfaced and a schoolmate said she’d talked about leaving, so they figured she ran off. Delores’s people also said she was likely a runaway. I’m surprised they didn’t consider that the two girls had taken off together, but not many people knew they were acquainted, or thought they were close enough friends to run away together.”

  She wasn’t willing to share what she knew of Delores and Rhonda being seen together by Mrs. Stubbs. And she certainly wasn’t going to bring up that both girls had dated Brock Nibley. Valetta met her gaze and nodded, gratitude in her eyes.

  “It’s so sad,” Heidi said.

  Bernie nodded, but didn’t add anything. She usually did go silent when any conversations came up concerning police business.

  “I hope they can figure out what happened all those years ago. I don’t like unanswered questions,” Valetta said, her tone grim.

  “I think I’d better get going,” Jaymie said. “Val, are you ready?”

  She got up and tugged her sweater down over her hips. “I am. Work tomorrow!”

  Jaymie stood. “Bernie, this has been such a nice break. Thank you!” She turned to Heidi and drew her into a hug. “I don’t know how I’m going to thank you for the dress,” she murmured. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Not a thing,” Heidi said, pulling back so she could look up into her friend’s eyes. “It’s my wedding gift to you. Leave it here and I’ll take care of it. I know Valetta’s your maid of honor, but I’ll be your maid of the dress! I’m going to get it professionally cleaned and there are a few alterations I want done.”

  It was all a bit unorthodox, perhaps, but Jaymie wasn’t going to say no. She and Jakob were paying for most of their share of the proceedings themselves, even though her father wanted to help. He was going to pay for the catering for his daughters’ wedding—he had insisted—but the rest was up to the couples.

  “Do you know what jewelry you’re wearing?”

  “My Grandma Leighton has a set of pearls she wants me to wear as my ‘something borrowed,’ a lovely necklace and earrings. Becca wore it for her first wedding, and now it’s my turn.”

  “Perfect.”

  They all trooped outside into the chill night air, hugs all around, but then Heidi put one finger in the air. “Wait! I just remembered. I came over before Bernie got home from work to set up the dressing room, and the auction house delivered that dresser here.” She dashed away back into the house.

  Jaymie turned to Bernie. “What is up with that girl? I can’t thank you enough for taking care of the dresser, Bernie. It’s a weight off my shoulders.”

  “You don’t have to thank me. I’m happy to do it! And that reminds me, I have to lock my garage because Heidi won’t remember!” She strode away, key in hand.

  “I’ve got to give you this,” Heidi said, coming back from the house with a plastic grocery bag. “There were some things in the dresser, kind of a bundle of stuff, and I thought you may as well do something with it. I don’t want it.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “What is it?”

  She shrugged. “No clue. Papers. Junk. You can toss it in the garbage here if you want.”

  “I’ll throw it out at home. We have to get going. Good night, all!” She bundled the plastic bag under her arm, waved, and she and Valetta got into the car and drove off.

  On the way home Valetta said, “I appreciate you not raising the thing about Brock dating both girls.”

  “No need to thank me, Val. It has nothing to do with anything anyway.” As far as they knew.

  “Still, I appreciate it.” She was silent for a moment, but then said, as she turned down Jaymie’s parking lane behind the house, “I talked to Delores about Brock, you know. I forgot until now, but I was worried about how Brock treated her. He was a louse; typical guy. I thought she’d be angry, but she seemed almost philosophical about it for a fifteen-year-old, you know? If I’m remembering it right.” She pulled into Jaymie’s parking area. “That was a long time ago. But I remember thinking afterward that she must not have been that crazy about him after all.”

  “Maybe that’s true; maybe she didn’t care about him much.” Or maybe she wasn’t going to confess her feelings to the guy’s sister.

  Valetta frowned and pushed up her glasses. “I don’t know. She seemed so intense whenever she looked at him. While she was dating him she dropped by our house one day; that’s the only time Mom met her, I think. She wanted to ask Mom what Brock would like for his eighteenth birthday.”

  “That sounds pretty serious,” Jaymie agreed.

  “I know. And yet a few weeks later she blew it off—her feelings for my brother—as if it were nothing.”

  “I guess teenage emotions blow hot and cold.”

  “Not that I remember,” Valetta said dryly. “Seems to me that teenage girl feelings blow hot, hotter and blazing inferno.”

  Remembering what Mrs. Stubbs had said about Delores and Rhonda being close in conversation, Jaymie asked, “Do you think Rhonda may have talked to her, changed Delores’s opinion of Brock? And why did Rhonda dump Brock . . . if she did?”

  “Oh, she dumped him all right. It was the only thing we heard about for a while. He moped around the house whining.” Val shrugged. “I don’t know. I figured that she got sick of him. No girlfriend ever lasted long with Brock.”

  “And she started going out with Gus Majewski.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Was that serious?”

  “Serious? They were kids.”

  “Val, kids get pregnant all the time. It can be s
erious.”

  Valetta cast her a shrewd look. “You know something.”

  Oh, crap, Jaymie thought. She hadn’t intended to say anything about pregnancy, but there was time to back off. Keeping her face blank and her tone even, she said, “I do not know anything. I’m speculating that teenage love can be pretty serious.” Rhonda’s pregnancy scare was not her secret to tell. If the police or Gus Majewski chose to talk about it, then fine, but she wouldn’t leak it.

  “I don’t know if Rhonda and Gus were serious. They were all over each other, I do remember that. Gus was the hot shot in school; Becca had a big old crush on him. Football hero, you know. He had a football scholarship to U of M, it was rumored. I don’t know if he ever went.”

  “And she was the popular girl.”

  “Rhonda was popular. She wasn’t a cheerleader, or anything like that. She was pretty and popular.”

  “Did you like her?”

  “I didn’t know her.”

  “Even though Brock went out with her?”

  “Once or twice, at the most. After he dropped Delores. Didn’t mean I ever hung out with her.”

  None of this seemed to have any bearing on the double murder that put Delores in a trunk with a cleaver in her head and Rhonda in the river in her Ford Falcon. “I gotta go. Thanks for being with me tonight. I was afraid of what Heidi had in store. I’m lucky it turned out the way it did. If I’d hated the dress I would have needed you to back me up.”

  “I’m standing in for Becca whenever I can. You’re like the little sister I never had, you know?”

  Jaymie reached across and hugged her, then released, patting her friend on the shoulder. “I have about a hundred things to do tomorrow,” she said, thinking of what Nan wanted her to do, to go talk to the former cop, Lenny MacDonald. “I have to come in to the Emporium briefly, and Becca is coming to town. We’re going to have a look at how the antique shop is coming. She wants to be open by the Victoria Day Weekend.” The late May Canadian holiday, the weekend before the American Memorial Day weekend, was the unofficial start of the tourism season in Queensville, since Canadians flooded across the river on the ferry to attend the annual Tea with the Queen event. “But I’ll see you when I stop in at the Emporium.”