“But then, why Delores too?”
She shrugged.
“Becca, I know you wanted to talk to me about the shop and show me around, but I’ve got a jam-packed day. Can we do this later?”
“Sure. Kevin is coming tomorrow morning. He’s bringing his sister, Georgina, here for the shower. We’ve got her apartment ready in the back and she’s anxious to see it, so she’s going to stay in it while she’s here. She’s looking forward to the shower and getting to know all the ladies of Queensville.”
Jaymie felt a trill of nerves that may have also been excitement. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. “I’m so anxious! In a way, I’ll be glad when this is all over with and I’m living my life again.”
Becca grabbed her shoulders and turned her around, staring straight up into her younger sister’s eyes. Her glass lenses caught the sunlight and reflected the blue of the April sky. “Honey, don’t you wish away this time. I know you. You’ll only be doing this once in your life, so enjoy every minute of it. Be present. Relax. Don’t worry about everything going perfectly; that’s my department. You’ll enjoy the memories even if there are screwups along the way.”
Taking a deep breath, Jaymie held it for a minute, then let it out, slowly, and folded her sister into a hug. “You’re right.” She released her big sister. “I gotta go, but don’t forget, Becca: you have to talk to the police chief about what you remember about that day.”
“Oh. Oh! Jaymie, I did remember something. Not about that day, something else. Delores was angry at her aunt and uncle. She wanted to get her driver’s permit, but she needed her birth certificate for it. They kept stalling, she told me. They wouldn’t hand it over, not even to apply for a social security card. She started to believe they didn’t have it.”
That fit with Jaymie’s suspicions that Delores was not their niece, and may even have been a stolen baby. She kept coming back to the central hypothesis: both girls had been murdered the same day by the same person or people. But if that was true, what was the motive that covered them both? The idea of Delores being kidnapped and Rhonda helping her figure out the truth was all she had, so far. And it was enough, if she were going to pin the blame on the Pagets. Stealing a child was an offense that could have landed them all in jail for life.
But now there was the added wrinkle of Brock’s behavior; he was a point of contact for both girls too. If he had killed Rhonda and Delores found out, he would have had to kill her too to keep his secret. She shook her head. That was far-fetched, but it did make her quest to discover the truth more urgent. Valetta was suffering the anguish of suspecting her brother, who was a jerk but whom she loved. “I have to go, Becca. If you go back to the house let Hoppy out, but make sure both animals are back in before you lock up and leave.”
Becca rolled her eyes. “You would think I was not the older, more responsible sister.”
“Older, yes, but you’ve never had pets!” Jaymie laughed and trotted back to her van. “I have to drop off a check at the florist in Wolverhampton,” she said over her shoulder. “See you later.”
“I’m going to take Valetta and Dee out for dinner while Kevin helps his sister set up house, so we might all be late.”
“That’s okay. I might go over to Jakob’s this evening anyway.”
• • •
SHE DROPPED THE CHECK OFF at the florist, then stopped at the bakery. Tami was taking care of a customer, so Jaymie waited.
“What can I do for you?” Tami asked as the customer left the shop.
“I’m going to have lunch with someone I don’t know very well and I’m wondering what to take. Maybe some tarts or little cakes?”
“Oooh, is it a secret rendezvous?” she said, lifting her brows. “Cheating on your honey?”
Jaymie laughed politely, but didn’t think it was a very funny joke. “No, actually—you’ll find this interesting—I’m going to talk to Petty Welch. She’s Rhonda’s aunt. She has a lot of Rhonda’s stuff tucked away and said I can have a look at it.” Jaymie eyed the glass cases of pretty and tempting bakery goods. “Maybe I’ll get a dozen of those pastel petit fours.”
Tami grabbed a box. “I’m surprised you’re wasting your time on all of that when you have a wedding to plan. You wouldn’t find me doing that. Not with a guy as great as Jakob wanting to marry me.” The woman eyed her critically. “Maybe they’re right, after all,” she said.
Jaymie paused. “Who is ‘they’? And what are they right about?”
Tami shook her head. “Never mind.” She filled the box and told Jaymie the price.
“Please, tell me what you mean,” Jaymie said, fishing for the money in her wallet while still watching the baker.
Tami put her hand to her mouth, a stricken expression on her narrow, lined face. “Now I’ve offended you. I’m so sorry! It’s just . . .” She sighed. “Some people—I shouldn’t be listening to that kind of people I guess, but there are all kinds in the world—say you like being the center of attention. Some people are even saying that you get involved in all these murders because you like being part of a circus.”
“That couldn’t be less true,” Jaymie said. As much as she was stung by it, she knew what Tami said was true; there were people who looked askance at her for having gotten mixed up in multiple murders. “I didn’t choose this, but I won’t shrink away from it either. Especially this time! This case directly affects friends and family who knew those two girls. Like your brother; he loved Rhonda. Don’t you think he would like to know what happened?” And to be out of suspicion himself, Jaymie wanted to add but didn’t.
Tami handed over her change. “Maybe you’re right. How are you going to figure it out, though? I mean, it was so long ago. All the evidence is gone, right?”
“It wasn’t that long ago. All their friends are still around, and even the detective in charge is still alive. I’m going to see him as well as Petty this afternoon.”
“You know . . .” Tami looked thoughtful, but undecided, then seemed to make her mind up. “I still have my diaries from when I was a teenager. I wonder if there’s anything in there that would help?”
Jaymie smiled. People soon got on board once they realized that it was not impossible to figure out. “I’d love to see it, or you can hand it over to the police, if you think it would help.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s probably nothing there. I’d feel a fool handing it to the police. You’d probably be best to look it over first and see if there’s anything there that would help.”
“What kind of things did you write in your diary?”
“Geez, I don’t remember. What was going on at school, I guess, when I went. What the family was up to. What Gus was doing. I went to all his football games.”
“He was supposed to go on to college on a scholarship, right? Did he?”
Tami shook her head. “He wasted every opportunity that was given to him until he was washed up. Now look at him. Wife. Kid. Struggling to get by.” She shook her head.
Not knowing what to say, Jaymie simply smiled and headed out, with Tami calling after her that she’d find her diary and give her a call.
Jaymie realized that the detective’s home was on the way from Petty’s cottage to Queensville, so when she pulled up the lane she paused and texted the police chief to say if it was all right, she’d be stopping around at Detective MacDonald’s home that afternoon sometime. Then she picked up the bakery box and her camera and headed to Petty’s front door. They greeted each other and Petty exclaimed over the box of petit fours and made a joke on her name, petit fours for Petty.
The morning sun streamed into the cottage, making it a pretty and inviting place to linger, but the hostess said, as they paused in her living room, “I have a sheltered back patio and it’s actually quite warm with the sunshine. We’ll have lunch out there. But I could show you my Pyrex collection first, if you don’t mind?”
“I’m game if you are.”
Petty led her into her sun-soa
ked kitchen and Jaymie caught her breath. It was gorgeous. A pastel pink paradise, as feminine a kitchen as one could ever hope or wish to see. The cupboards were painted ivory, but the sink was pink, as were the stove and fridge. The floor was a muted check done in white, pink, blue and butter yellow linoleum tiles. The table was robin’s-egg blue arborite, which set off the piles of pastel Pyrex mixing bowls, refrigerator dishes, serving dishes and accoutrements to perfection.
“I’m . . . speechless. Overwhelmed. And I want to photograph it all!”
What wasn’t Pyrex was melamine, or glass, or even plastic, but all pastel and mostly pink. There was a set of canisters, salt and pepper, egg cups, serving trays, a foil and plastic wrap dispenser and a hundred other “smalls,” as small items are known in the vintage and antique business. It took time, but Jaymie eventually began to process it all and found angles to photograph it to highlight the Pyrex.
They talked about the allure of Pyrex—equal parts utility, beauty, durability and ease of acquisition—and how collectible it was. Petty, with excellent instincts and a vast knowledge of her collection, helped set up the shots. Jaymie found a collecting sister in the woman, and in the process a friendship began.
Finally it was time for lunch. The back patio was sheltered out of the breeze by the back wall of the cottage, a board-clad shed attached, and a copse of trees. They sat at a vintage wrought-iron patio set and chatted over a lunch of dainty crustless sandwiches, shrimp salad and tea, all served on Fire King Anniversary Rose snack sets, pretty milk-white oblong glass plates with a teacup inset in a depression, decorated with pink roses and trimmed in gold. It was a most civilized way to dine, and Jaymie vowed she’d get herself a snack set sometime.
Jaymie told her new friend all about her family’s cottage on Heartbreak Island, and Petty asked about the wedding. Jaymie had to explain her unique function, where she and her sister had combined their weddings in deference to their older relatives. “Becca and I are closer now than we’ve ever been, in some ways,” Jaymie mused, feeling a peace seep through her as she sat on the sunny back patio and sipped tea from the pretty Fire King teacup. “So it makes sense. I was hesitant at first, but now I’m happy.”
“You’re so lucky to have a sister,” Petty said. “In some ways that’s what Rhonda was to me. There was about the same age difference between me and Rhonda as there is between you and Becca.”
“Did you know who her friends were? Who she liked, didn’t like, that kind of thing?”
“Unfortunately I was kind of persona non grata with my brother, so I didn’t get to see Rhonda that often the last year or so of her life. I was a woman living alone. To my brother’s thinking I should have stayed at home until I was married, but I moved out and lived in a bachelorette apartment. I dated. I went to bars. I danced. I drank.” She sighed. “Not to excess, but I enjoyed my life. He was afraid I’d infect Rhonda.”
“What a waste,” Jaymie murmured.
“I did get to know one of her friends, Sybil Thorndike. She spoke to me once; called me out of the blue for some reason a few months after Rhonda disappeared.”
“What did she say?”
“I can’t quite remember. I was in a fog a lot of that time, trying to understand what was happening. Maybe it will come back to me.” Petty frowned, lines pinching between her eyebrows. “It was something to do with something Rhonda said to her. I don’t know what. Let’s go in,” she said with a shiver. The sun was moving and they were now almost in shade. “I have Rhonda’s stuff in the living room.”
They retired to her pretty living room, where two cardboard boxes, dusty and battered, sat near a slip-covered chair. Jaymie sat in the chair, pulled the flap of the first box open, then looked up at Petty. “You don’t mind if I dive in?”
“No, of course not, but . . . would you prefer to take them with you?”
Jaymie considered; she had so much stuff at home already: there was Valetta’s box, and a couple of boxes of stuff on the summer porch from her most recent thrift store visit, among others. Becca was staying the weekend with Kevin. The two sisters’ constant tussle over the cluttered nature of Jaymie’s idea of homey was one brick in the wall that sometimes threatened to separate them.
But it was her home most of the time, and she needed to live as she wanted to live and not make choices based on her fear of what Becca would say. “If you don’t mind, it might be helpful. I don’t know if I’ll find anything out but I might. Have you looked through them?”
She nodded, tears gleaming in her eyes. “After she disappeared I did read some of Rhonda’s stuff they had at her school; I was hoping it would give me a clue as to where she had gone and why. But when my brother and sister-in-law came home they shut me out. They blamed me for Rhonda disappearing, especially my brother. Said if I hadn’t encouraged her to be defiant of them, she would have stayed at Chance Houghton where she belonged.” She sniffed back a tear.
“You know that’s not true.”
Petty nodded, tears glittering. “Rhonda was her own person. And now I know for sure it had nothing to do with me. The police finding her has given me peace. I think you’re right; I believe Rhonda was going to enlist me to help Delores find out if she was adopted or abducted.” She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. “I opened these up when I got them down out of the attic and went through the stuff,” she said, waving her hand at the boxes. “There’s a journal in there you might find interesting. I hope it helps you figure out what happened. I can’t go through it all; it hurts too bad.”
She hugged herself and rocked. “I’m going out to see my sister-in-law this afternoon. I’m not sure she truly understands about the body being found, and I want to talk to her in person.” She took in a long, shuddering breath, composing herself. “The retirement home has offered to have a memorial service for Rhonda. I want to help plan it.” She blinked back the tears, then continued. “Would it be asking too much . . . if you find anything in there we could read at the service, or artwork or pictures . . . could you set it aside? I know I’m being a coward, but . . .” She shrugged, grabbed a tissue from the side table and sniffed.
“No, I understand,” Jaymie said. She shifted the box and closed it. “I’ll look through this stuff and if I see anything, I’ll set it aside.” She went over her calendar in her mind. Tomorrow was Friday, and Saturday was the wedding shower. “I may not be able to do it until after this weekend. Will that be okay?”
She nodded, her eyes still shining, her fingers restlessly plucking at the patchwork quilt over her chair arm. “Do you think it’s possible to find out who killed Rhonda all these years later?”
Tami had asked pretty much the same thing. “I do. It’s not that long ago, and there’s lots of material. The police are being meticulous, starting from the beginning and working through it step by step, and I know the chief well enough to know he won’t be satisfied until they get there. I’m going to try to help any way I can, Petty. I think it was probably Delores’s aunt and uncle or cousin who did it, but there are a couple of more possibilities the police are interested in.”
“I’ll help you get these to the van,” Petty said. Jaymie carried one box and Petty the other. “I have remembered one thing,” she said as they went out to the front where the van was parked. “That evening, the evening she disappeared, the school said that another call came in for her early in the afternoon. It was urgent, the caller said—a young female, the secretary told me—but the caller wouldn’t say why it was urgent. They went looking for Rhonda but she was gone by then, which is why they were kind of odd to me when I phoned them later that afternoon following up on Rhonda’s call to me at work, the one I missed.” She sighed as Jaymie unlocked the van. “If only I’d gotten that call. It may not have prevented her going missing, but I may have known more, been able to tell the police she was not running away! I did try to tell them that if she was going anywhere she would have at least told me, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“That’s interesting.”
A call from a female saying it was urgent. Could that have been Delores trying to talk to Rhonda? Were they meeting somewhere? “If I figure out who it was from, I’ll let you know.”
Petty nodded.
As they slid the boxes into the back of the van, Jaymie turned to her new friend on an impulse and said, “If you’re free on Saturday, would you care to come to my wedding shower? It’s at the Queensville Historic Manor outside of Queensville.”
The woman appeared taken aback.
“I mean, it’s family and friends, yes, but that’s a pretty broad group,” Jaymie said, prompted by Petty’s surprised expression. “You’d like them all. It’s not your typical wedding shower; no gifts, no games, just tea and food and chat. You’d meet so many of the town ladies! And you could see my work in the vintage kitchen of the house. It’s my own, top to bottom.”
“If you’re sure I wouldn’t be in the way I’d love to come. You know, I moved here two years ago when I retired. Then my brother died shortly after and I was his executrix, so I had to help my sister-in-law move to the retirement home and close up and sell their house. I’ve been busy redoing this place, too. I don’t have any friends, I’m afraid, not around here, anyway; I haven’t had time to meet any until now. I was thinking I should take a course, or volunteer, just to meet people.”
There was a haunting loneliness in Petty’s voice, a wistfulness. The discovery of Rhonda’s body had likely made it worse. Now she knew her niece wasn’t out there somewhere in the world, ready to pop back up at any time. Jaymie reached out and hugged her new friend. “Come. It starts at two in the afternoon, everyone welcome.”
As she drove away, she tooted the van horn and eyed the small figure in the rearview mirror. Somehow, some way, she would find justice for Rhonda Welch and Delores Paget.
Sixteen
DETECTIVE MACDONALD lived on a rural gravel road. As was true of most country homes, there was a number signpost at the road for emergency vehicles to identify it. Jaymie drove up the lane and stared. It was an old farmhouse with stained white vinyl siding and a wrought-iron porch probably added in the seventies; unremarkable enough, but what stretched out around it was indeed extraordinary. The property had numerous outbuildings, and every single one had rusting farm machinery, old cars, and piles of tires and car parts around it.
Leave It to Cleaver (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery Book 6) Page 16