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

by Victoria Hamilton

  “No.”

  He thought fast. “How you gonna get there?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll hitch.”

  “Let me give you a lift,” he said, thinking he had one more shot at some fooling around.

  She eyed him, squinting. “Okay. But straight to my place.”

  “Straight to your place,” he agreed. “Clifford isn’t there, is he?”

  “He’s not supposed to be. He’s doing someone’s roof in Wolverhampton. Why?”

  Brock shrugged. “I don’t like him, that’s all.”

  “That makes two of us,” she muttered. “You giving me a ride or what?”

  “All right, okay. Don’t be so crabby.”

  “I’m in a hurry,” she said, and eyed the clock on the wall, an orange-and-yellow relic of the last decade.

  “Then let’s hit the road.” He grabbed the car keys from the holder near the door, glad that his mom walked—to save gas—when she went to Mrs. Stubbs’s place to work.

  • • •

  April—The Present

  IT ALWAYS SEEMS, Jaymie thought the next morning over tea, that the moment you meet someone, or learn about them, you see their name everywhere. Jaymie read a story on her tablet in the Wolverhampton Weekly Howler—which was weekly in print but updated daily on their website—about Henk Hofwegen, who had been hit by a car on the highway and taken to Wolverhampton General for observation.

  With a name like that he had to be the same guy in the boat when Clifford Paget went into the St. Clair River. Interesting, but not particularly relevant to anything, since Clifford Paget’s death was probably unrelated to Delores’s. Clifford may have been the one who killed her and Rhonda, but that wouldn’t have had anything to do with Hofwegen.

  She turned the tablet off, set it to recharge, then washed her mug and cereal bowl. It was going to be a busy day, no time to linger. Becca and Kevin were coming over from Canada and would see her at the new store to check out the final décor and fixtures, ready to load in the antiques for their grand opening weekend. The question was, in what order should she do all that needed doing?

  She got Hoppy’s leash and jingled it, but he would not be moved from a spot under the table. “What are you sniffing, fella?”

  She bent over and discovered the plastic bag of stuff from the dressing table that had been delivered to Bernie’s place. “No, don’t touch that, honey.” She picked it up in two fingers and tossed it out on the summer porch, which lined the back of the house, providing a nice barrier from the cold in winter, and a lovely place to get some bug-free cool air on a summer evening. She had no clue what was in the bag, and worried it had already brought vermin into the house. She’d have to look into it later, because she could never just throw something in the garbage until she knew what was in it, but for now it would stay on the summer porch.

  She clipped Hoppy’s leash onto his collar and exited through the back door—after tugging him away from the bag once more—and set out on their walk, leaving Denver behind in the backyard to recline under the holly bushes. She strode full-speed to the river, her favorite walk, and then headed through town to the Queensville Inn. Mrs. Stubbs was at her best first thing in the morning, so she would do her promised visit while walking Hoppy.

  The Queensville Inn, the largest accommodation establishment in the village, was an old Queen Anne yellow brick home extensively renovated and added onto in the eighties to make it a welcoming hostelry. Lyle Stubbs provided a wheelchair-accessible suite on the main floor for his elderly mother. Jaymie breezed in through the glass double doors with Hoppy bouncing beside her, waved to Edith at the registration desk and went down the long hall directly to Mrs. Stubbs’s room. She tapped on the door. Cynthia Turbridge opened it.

  “Cynthia!” Jaymie said as Hoppy yapped a greeting. “What are you doing here?”

  Cynthia, a slim petite brunette in her late fifties, had given up a high-profile career in finance to move to Queensville. Bored with semi-retirement—she taught some yoga classes at the community center on the other side of the village—she had opened the Cottage Shoppe, where she sold upcycled items, mostly shabby chic. Forks and spoons became wind chimes; old wood crates became chic glass-topped side tables; teacups became pendant light fixtures. She was also an alcoholic who was battling back after a recent brief relapse, throwing herself into her healthy lifestyle with a vengeance. “Have you forgotten I’m a yoga master?” she asked. “I’m volunteering with the hospital outreach. I’ve developed a program to help seniors regain mobility and strengthen generally, and I’ve been working with Mrs. Stubbs on chair yoga.”

  “That is wonderful!”

  “Is that you, Jaymie? Come, come! We were about to drink some of this dreadful green tea that Cynthia insists on pouring down my throat.”

  The other woman made a face, lines creasing around her mouth and across her forehead. “She’s stubborn as a mule.”

  Jaymie let Hoppy off his leash and he waggled, hobbling, over to Mrs. Stubbs, who usually had a treat for him: a corner of cheese, a bite of cookie. She did not disappoint and leaned over in her chair to offer him a tidbit. Jaymie explained about her busy day and her decision to come over early to talk to Mrs. Stubbs.

  “I heard about your discovery,” Cynthia said, packing up her equipment, which included some light hand weights. She was the lithe and glowing picture of health, a tribute to her own practices. “Finding bodies, again!”

  “I know. I’m going to get a reputation if I don’t watch it,” Jaymie said. “Oops, too late!”

  “Come, Jaymie, before I forget what I want to tell you,” Mrs. Stubbs said, beckoning her. “Sit. Drink this ghastly green swill.”

  Cynthia waved goodbye and headed out. The moment the door closed behind her, Mrs. Stubbs commanded Jaymie to dump the green stuff and get her a hot cup of the good black stuff, instead. As she obeyed, Hoppy settled on Mrs. Stubbs’s feet and curled up with a sigh.

  Mrs. Stubbs drank some of her black tea, a good English breakfast blend. “This is better. Now . . . I told you I remembered those girls talking, Delores and Rhonda. Unlikely pair, for friends. Anyway, Rhonda said that she had written a letter to ‘her,’ whoever her was, and that maybe ‘she’d’ help Delores. What could that mean?”

  “Is that all you heard?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “I think it does show the connection, and I have a feeling I know who ‘she’ was, and what problem Rhonda thought she’d help Delores with.” Jaymie explained about Petty Welch, Rhonda’s aunt, that she was a newspaper researcher and that Rhonda had a strong bond with her. She also spoke of the letter Petty got from Rhonda about baby abduction and fatal accidents.

  Mrs. Stubbs nodded and drank her tea. “That makes sense. I suppose many girls fantasize about not being their parents’ child, especially when they’re estranged, but Delores may have had good reason, given her aunt’s and uncle’s story. Do you think there may be a motive there?”

  “For both girls’ murders?” Jaymie thought it over. “Possibly. It’s certainly something I’m going to mention to the chief. If Delores was stolen or abducted as a baby, that’s a federal crime. If she found out, and the Pagets were afraid of her going to the police, they could have killed her. But why Rhonda?”

  “If Rhonda knew what Delores was investigating, that would make her a danger. They needed her to die, perhaps, before she went to her aunt to ask her help in discovering the truth.”

  “You may have a point,” Jaymie said. “But how did they get to Rhonda?”

  Mrs. Stubbs thought for a long moment. “Is it possible that Rhonda went to the Paget home to pick Delores up for some reason? Do you think they could have been on their way to see this Petty Welch, wherever she was?”

  “That could be it!” Jaymie felt a tickle of excitement. “I always wondered why Rhonda left the boarding school in the middle of the day. And Delores skipped out, too. Maybe she was going to pick Delores up to take her to Petty Welch to ask for help
in tracking down the truth. Ms. Welch, being a newspaper researcher and fact checker, had access to more information in the pre-Internet days than most would have, and what she didn’t know, she knew how to find out. Kids then didn’t have Google to rely on. Petty would have been an ideal ally for two teenage girls trying to find something out.”

  “I wonder if there’s a way to establish some kind of timeline for that day, the day the two disappeared. If you should discover that they met up, or were at the same place at the same time, or even if you could place Rhonda at the Paget residence, you’d have something.”

  “Mrs. Stubbs, you are a genius.”

  “Just the George to your Nancy, my dear. I also remembered something about the red yarn.”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing important . . . just that it’s Phentex. I went over to Johnsonville with Valetta’s mother and we bought out the store. It was all the rage back then, Phentex yarn. We made slippers, hundreds of slippers.”

  “And Mrs. Nibley made sweaters.”

  “The thing about Phentex? The color never fades and it is virtually indestructible.”

  “Even after being in a trunk for thirty years.” Jaymie shuddered, remembering the water sluicing through the broken window of the Falcon. “Or even after thirty years in the St. Clair River.”

  • • •

  JAYMIE RETURNED HOME with Hoppy and let him off his leash to piddle in the backyard while she called the chief. She explained what she and Mrs. Stubbs had spoken of, and he was cautiously optimistic that she may have figured something out, certainly about why Rhonda and Delores disappeared on the same day. If any of it was true, it may provide a motive for the Pagets, one or all, to kill the two teens.

  “By the way, Chief?”

  “Yup?”

  “Was there any thought that Clifford Paget may have faked his death?”

  “You’re thinking that if he killed the two girls he may have faked his death so he could disappear. I’ll do some digging and find out if he was considered a suspect, or if he had an alibi, but it was years later that he died.”

  “I heard that Henk Hofwegen, the fellow who was with him the day he drowned, was hit by a car and is in the hospital?”

  “Yup. Drunk again.”

  “Maybe he’ll be willing to talk to you. He’s a captive audience.”

  “Might do. I’ll talk to him. I’ll also see if there was anything in the nineties being done that might have triggered a sudden need for Clifford to flee.”

  “Chief, I’m also reading some friends’ diaries and things from 1984,” she said, purposely vague. “I’ll be sure and let you know if I figure anything out. Is that okay?”

  “Yup, as long as you turn them in to me. We don’t have time right now to go through them, but the longer we go without figuring this thing out the more detailed we’re gonna get.”

  “Also . . . I was given the name of the detective in charge at the time, a Lenny MacDonald. I was thinking of talking to him. Would you object?”

  “Not at all. I’ve talked to him a time or two myself. Interesting fellow. You tell him it’s okay by me if he wants to talk to you. Now, you will remember to have your sister call me about her memories of Delores and Rhonda, all righty?”

  “Will do, Chief.”

  Becca was already in town. She texted Jaymie to meet her at the new antique store. Jaymie was about to walk out the back door when the phone rang. Keys in hand, she stared back into the kitchen. To answer or not to answer? With a sigh she knew what she had to do. She ran back in and snatched the phone up before it could go to voice mail.

  “Jaymie? This is Petty Welch. I’ve retrieved Rhonda’s stuff out of my attic. Do you have a few minutes today to come by?”

  Three million things to do; of course she didn’t have time. However . . . “Sure. Will after lunch be okay?”

  “Do you have a luncheon date? If not, you could come by here and I’ll make you lunch. I have the prettiest vintage luncheon set I never get to use!” Jaymie was about to say maybe not, when Petty added, “I don’t have many friends, or at least not many around here. It would be so nice to serve lunch for once!”

  “Sure. Will one o’clock be okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  That changed her day. She retrieved her camera from her room, put down a pee pad for Hoppy in case she was late, made sure both animals’ bowls were full, Denver’s up on the table so Hoppy couldn’t eat all the cat food—Becca was going to freak about that, feeding the cat on the table, but cat food was not good for Hoppy—and grabbed her van keys.

  Becca’s car was parked by the antique store, but Jaymie knew once she was with her sister she’d never get to the Emporium, so she started at the store. Mrs. Klausner was behind the counter knitting while her granddaughter Gracey, who was working more and more these days, stocked shelves. Jaymie had a feeling she would soon be out of one of her part-time jobs, as the granddaughter and a couple of other grandchildren were gradually making her presence less necessary. And that was okay.

  Once she was done consulting her vintage picnic basket rental book and spoke with Mrs. Klausner for a minute, telling her about her decision to close out the small business, she caught sight of Valetta, who was beckoning her from her pharmacy counter in the back.

  “What’s up?” Jaymie asked, coming to the pharmacy window.

  Valetta hushed her with one finger to her lips. “Can I talk to you out back?” she muttered.

  “Sure.” Jaymie went out the front, waving goodbye to Mrs. Klausner, then circled to the left of the Emporium, up the grassy rise, past the old oak tree and to the back parking lot behind the store. Valetta came out the back door, her lab coat still on and her arms crossed over her chest. Something was wrong. “Valetta, what is it? You look awful!”

  Valetta, her voice catching on a sob, said, “I don’t know what to think of Brock. He’s lying to me, Jaymie.”

  “About what?”

  “About where he was the day Delores disappeared.”

  Jaymie felt her stomach twist. “Val, that could mean nothing. You know that.”

  “But why would he lie, Jaymie? Why? He’s trying to tell me that he was in school all day that day, but he wasn’t. I was in phys ed, running the track out back of Wolverhampton High. I saw him leave. He didn’t see me. I was going to call out, but I whammed into another slower girl. He left at noon that day. But he told me this morning that he was in school all day that day.” Her words caught on a sob. “Jaymie, why would he lie?”

  Fifteen

  THIS WAS NOT NEWS TO JAYMIE, and was what had troubled her about Valetta’s diary and the police chief’s relation of what Brock had told him. Brock had told Chief Ledbetter that he did see Delores in Queensville, yes, but that he hitchhiked back to school that afternoon and never saw her again. But Valetta’s diary said differently, stating that Brock was gone all day. Jaymie had little comfort for Valetta, but did tell her it could just be a matter of Brock forgetting because it was such a long time ago. Her friend went back to work somewhat mollified, but still . . . it wasn’t good. Unless he truly did forget, there was no good reason for a lie.

  Heading across the street to the antique store, Jaymie tried to shake off Valetta’s gloomy and fearful mood. There was no way that Brock, who she had known her whole life, could have done such a thing as kill Delores.

  Could he?

  Her sister and brother-in-law-to-be’s antique store was in a small cottage, one of a string on the main street in Queensville that were gradually being turned into touristy shops specializing in vintage, antique and retro goods. The external walls were covered in what Kevin, who was English, called pebble dash but what Jaymie thought of as stucco. Pebble dash was certainly a more accurate description of the pebble-covered cottage exterior, now painted a medium gray. With black window awnings and the trim painted white, the effect was tailored and modern.

  As she approached she saw a Wolverhampton sign company’s truck parked along the lane. The couple ha
d tossed around many names for the shop but had settled on the prosaic and descriptive Queensville Fine Antiques, to differentiate themselves from Jewel Dandridge’s retro and funky shop Jewel’s Junk, and Cynthia Turbridge’s Cottage Shoppe. Becca and Kevin’s would sell antique furniture as well as fine china and other good-quality antiques.

  Becca strode out the front door with a guy in green work pants and a paint-stained T-shirt. She trotted down the front steps and pointed to the roof of the cottage-wide deep front porch, about midway along. That was where the signage would go, front and center, hard to miss. He beckoned to his workmate, a guy who had been smoking a cigarette and plucked it from his mouth, flicking it off into the grass. Becca upbraided both guys. He sheepishly retrieved the butt, stomped it out, and stuffed it in his cigarette pack.

  Jaymie hid a grin. No one messed with Becca, her property, or her family. The two sisters greeted each other with a hug and chatted while the two men constructed a mount for the sign, simple black and white but with the shop name, phone number and website on it. After catching each other up to date on wedding news and about the wedding shower, Jaymie also murmured what Valetta had spoken about, her worries about Brock.

  “Do you think he’d ever do anything like that?” she whispered. “I feel creepy even asking. I mean, I’ve known him my whole life.”

  Becca adjusted her glasses and watched while the lead sign guy began bolting the bracket to the porch structure. “I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t bet my life savings on it, you know?”

  “Why is that? Shouldn’t we have a feeling, one way or the other?”

  Becca glanced over at her. “I remember how he was when Rhonda told him to take a hike. He was really angry. If he had more guts he would have fought Gus Majewski, but Brock . . . he’s a coward.” She sighed and frowned, then glanced over at the Emporium. “I hate to even think it—for Valetta’s sake, mainly—but that kind of guy might take it out on a girl, you know? Maybe if he did, Rhonda was his target.”