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

by Victoria Hamilton

  Jocie was grinning and hopping on one foot in her dad’s arms.

  “And I think Jocie owes him an apology too.” Jaymie caught the principal’s eye. “Do you think that’s fair, Ms. Thorndike?”

  “I do.” She stood and circled the desk, opening the door out into the anteroom. “I’ll talk to the little fellow’s parents, see if we can get them on board with modeling more appropriate behavior. Dina, I’ll be having another parent with you in the school yard for a while until we see if you understand acceptable behavior. You can head out.”

  Dina left in a huff. Jakob squeezed Jaymie’s hand. She had been worried that she was taking the lead when she still wasn’t married to him and legally had no right, but he looked satisfied.

  “That was productive,” the principal said and smiled at Jaymie. She had circled back behind her desk and shuffled her papers together. “Jocie, do you understand what we’ve been talking about? That what the boy did was wrong and that Miss Dina should have listened to you?” Jocie nodded. “But that you can’t push either, that that wasn’t right?”

  Jocie nodded. “I’ll apologize. If he apologizes first. Because he pushed first.”

  “Okay, I think that’s fair, Jocie. That’s good enough for this time, Mr. Müller, unless you have any questions?”

  “I think we need to talk at the next parent-teacher evening about parent volunteers . . . maybe some training in school yard etiquette. And maybe a code of conduct for the kids?”

  “We do have something in place, but it may be time to revisit it. Perhaps you can raise the topic.” She turned to Jaymie and held out her hand. “Welcome aboard, Jaymie. It seems like you’ll fit in just fine here as a parent.” She and Jaymie shook hands.

  Jakob took Jocie’s hand and led her to the door.

  “I’ll follow you in a moment, Jakob, if you don’t mind,” Jaymie said. “I have an off-topic question for Ms. Thorndike.”

  Once they were alone, Jaymie sat back down, and the principal, looking mystified, did the same. “Do you have some questions for me?”

  “Yes, but not about the school, or Jocie, or anything like that.” She paused, wondering where to start, then made up her mind. “If you’ve been watching the news, you’ll know that the bodies of two teenagers missing since 1984 have been found. I found the first one, Delores Paget, and the MSP found the second . . . Rhonda Welch.”

  The woman took in a deep breath and sat back, folding her hands over her stomach and pressing. “I knew I’d seen your name in the paper. You’re wondering about Rhonda Welch. I was a schoolmate of hers briefly—very briefly; a few days—at Chance Houghton Christian Academy.”

  “And gave them a statement at the time. Rhonda apparently said something to you about not finishing her school year at Chance Houghton.”

  “She was dead set on getting away from CHCA.”

  “But did she actually say she was running away? Do you remember exactly what she said?”

  “After over thirty years? Not likely.”

  “Please try.”

  “Why is this important?” she asked, fiddling with the string on her glasses. “And why are you asking me?”

  “The police chief knows I’m asking around. He’s okay with it,” Jaymie said to reassure her. “I know many of the people involved. In fact, my older sister was friends with poor Delores.”

  “I see.” She turned her thoughts inward, staring down at her hands. “I’m trying to remember that day. It was . . . the beginning of November, a Thursday, I think?”

  “I believe so. November first.”

  “I liked Rhonda. I’d only known her a couple of days, but . . . I really liked her. She was so beautiful, that thick black straight hair, the most lovely skin. And she was nice to me. I already had a mad pash on her,” she said, a watchful look in her eyes as she met Jaymie’s gaze.

  “Pash?”

  “Sorry . . . my Aussie roots are showing. I was infatuated with her.”

  “Her aunt said she was a lovely person,” Jaymie said softly. “I can understand you having a crush on her.”

  The principal nodded, sadness softening her regal expression. “She was . . . she was when I knew. She was so kind to me. I believe she knew how I felt but she didn’t make a big deal out of it, or try to avoid me.”

  Jaymie understood what she was saying.

  “I don’t remember exactly what she said to me that day, but I took from it that she was leaving.”

  “Could it have been something slightly different? Like . . . maybe she wasn’t running away, maybe she intended to go stay with her aunt? With her parents gone overseas, perhaps she thought she could talk her aunt into taking her in.”

  “It’s possible. Does it matter?”

  Jaymie held back what she felt, that what Sybil said back then had misled the police to not consider her a missing person so much as a runaway. She didn’t think Rhonda had any intention of leaving for good. With the optimism of youth she probably thought that while trying to enlist Petty’s help to discover Delores’s origin, she could talk her aunt into letting her stay with her and finish out her senior year at a public school near Petty’s home. It was immaterial now. “Did she talk about her boyfriend much?”

  “Gus? She sure did. It depressed me, and I guess I knew then that I had no chance with her, but still . . . I wanted to be close to her so I listened. She really liked him. They had had sex. I think he was her first.” She paused and her eyes clouded. “Her only, I guess I should say now. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to get serious. Her parents wanted her to join them wherever they were after her school year was done, but she intended to stay here and go to college. Being away from Gus for a few days gave her some . . . perspective, I think she said? Yes; perspective.”

  “Did she mention thinking she was pregnant?”

  Sybil smiled for the first time. “She was so relieved when she got her period! She was going to meet up with Gus and tell him the good news, that he didn’t have to quit football. He was so into her that he wanted to give up his college scholarship, get a job, get married. But she didn’t want that for either of them. She had dreams, and they didn’t include quitting school and being a mom at seventeen.”

  “Did she call him? Do you know if she was going that day to talk to him?” Jaymie wondered, did Rhonda actually meet up with Gus and tell him she didn’t want to see him anymore? Was this a simple case of a rejected boy going off the deep end?

  “I don’t know. I do know she made some calls. You had to get special permission at CHCA, and there were only phones in the office that were made available for students to use. I helped her figure out the school bureaucracy, because she’d never had to deal with it before.”

  “Did you stick around while she made the calls?”

  She paused before answering, and her gaze seemed to be looking inward. Maybe she was trying to remember. “I did. I’m trying to recall if I know what she said, or if I had an impression . . . I’m starting to realize what you’ve been too kind to say, that what I said may have misled the police and ensured that they weren’t taking the threat to Rhonda seriously.” She met Jaymie’s gaze and her expression was sad. “I’m sorry for that. I told them what I thought I knew.”

  “Ms. Thorndike—”

  “Sybil, please . . . call me Sybil. I was named for a great actress.” She paused and sighed, looking toward the window that overlooked the parking lot. “I know what you were about to say; I was a teenager and can’t be held responsible for a failed police investigation. No one should assume a teen has run away. But still . . . Thoreau said to make the most of our regrets. To cherish them, because to regret deeply is to live afresh.

  “This is going to sound silly, but all these years I’ve thought of Rhonda, and I pictured her in California maybe, driving down the PCH, wind in her hair. To hear about her body being found . . . it was like a dagger to my heart.” She looked back to Jaymie, her eyes misted with tears. She reached for a tissue. “Isn’t it silly?”

/>   “No, it’s not silly. You cared about her; all we have after we’re gone is the people we’ve touched, the people who care about us. Rhonda had her mother, her aunt and you, at the very least.” She waited a moment, then said, “Sybil, I have to go, but if you think of anything, remember anything, give me a call.” Jaymie reached into her purse and got out a scrap of paper, scribbling her name and number on it. “Or if you need to talk, call me.”

  Seventeen

  THE CONVERSATION LEFT HER MELANCHOLY but she put on a happy face as she joined Jakob and Jocie in the parking lot. She gave Jocie a big hug and kiss, then told Jakob she’d meet him at the cabin, as he was taking Jocie directly to his parents’ place.

  She was actually grateful to be at the cabin alone. It was a peaceful place, with the spirits of Jakob and Jocie filling it with love. She picked up Little Bit and snuggled him, while he played with her hair and tugged it out of the band she used to hold it back. She did the dishes left from their breakfast—pancakes with sticky syrup—started dinner, and made a pot of tea. As the sauce simmered she took her cup out to the porch, sat in the big Adirondack chair and gazed out to the road. Tears filled her eyes. She was so lucky, and the deaths of those two girls so many years ago had brought it all sharply into focus. What would they have done? Succeeded in careers? Raised great kids? Been happy, been sad, loved and lost and loved again? Someone took all of that away from them, and from the world.

  Her heart flooded with peace as she listened to a red-winged blackbird chirr brightly, and watched goldfinches flit from bush to bush by the porch. She had been getting more and more nervous for the wedding shower in two days and the wedding in six weeks. She’d be the center of attention. She’d be hurried and rushed and watched and applauded. None of that made her comfortable. But it was all love flowing to her and Jakob, love in waves and waves, a whole tidal rush of love. She must not let shyness ruin the experience. She had to relax into it all, let the love bathe her.

  When Jakob pulled up in his beat-up white pickup and parked it next to her beat-up white van, she set her tea aside and went to meet him. He encircled her in his arms and they stood, staring into each other’s eyes for a long time. His were brown and warm, with gold flecks. When he finally kissed her he literally lifted her off her feet and she laughed.

  “You were a rock star at the school,” he said as they entered the cabin, arms still around each other. He paused and sniffed. “Something smells good.”

  “Spaghetti sauce. There will be enough to freeze for an easy dinner for you and Jocie another day.”

  It was a lovely evening, and an even better night.

  • • •

  BETWEEN KISSES AND CUDDLING on the sofa in front of the fire that evening, with a lonely Little Bit cuddled between them, Jaymie and Jakob had talked extensively about what she was looking into. She told him about Petty, Detective MacDonald, and what she spoke to Sybil about. He made a comment that had her thinking. He said that whoever drove or pushed the car into the river on the island had to not only take it over on the ferry, but drive it into the river after dark, and most likely return on the ferry as a walk-on. The time of year was in favor of the car not being discovered, he theorized. Shipping on the St. Clair went to December, but it was slower, not many people to observe. If the winter was cold and ice floes jammed up, as they often did, it might be enough to move the car into deeper water, ensuring it never became visible.

  It gave her a lot of food for thought and ideas to share with the chief. One of the many things she loved about Jakob Müller was that he never tried to tell her what to do, or questioned her need to investigate. He accepted it as a part of her.

  The next morning she called Becca to check on Hoppy and Denver, and to remind her sister it was garbage day. Could she please put the garbage can and recycling out in the back alley, since Jaymie was running late? Becca agreed. Jaymie then rushed around the cabin to feed Little Bit and play with him, make breakfast, wash dishes and tidy. Jakob was out chopping wood for the fireplace and came in smelling of fresh pine and sawdust. He had to leave in moments to rush off to a pre-sale viewing of a liquidation lot from a home décor store a few towns away.

  “So what are you up to today?” he asked, hugging her from behind as she finished drying the mugs.

  She leaned back against him, relishing the feel of his whiskers on her neck. “I’m not sure. I have some tasks to do, but I’m confused about Rhonda and Delores. I still don’t even know who was the real target, and who was collateral damage, if that’s even how it worked. I think I need to go through all the stuff I’ve gathered from Valetta, Petty and Nan.”

  “And the stuff from the dressing table from the Pagets’ barn,” he said, releasing her.

  “What?” She turned to face him, her mind racing.

  “You told me Heidi gave you a plastic shopping bag of stuff from the dressing table at the Pagets’. Isn’t it possible that piece of furniture was from Delores’s room?”

  Oh. Oh! Jaymie stood stock-still for a moment; what if . . . “Jakob Müller, thank goodness you listen to me!” She kissed his cheek. “I have to go.” She grabbed her purse and sweater and headed to the door.

  “Wait!” He followed her and took her in his arms. “You’ve got time for a proper kiss.”

  Five minutes later she started up the van with a grin on her whisker-rubbed face, and tooted the van horn as he climbed into his truck. Anxious to look into the bag, she took off with a spray of gravel that rattled on the underbelly of the van.

  Garbage day was always a tangle in Queensville, which had narrow streets. Many, like Jaymie’s, did not have driveways, but parking lanes that ran behind houses. Jaymie scooted down her lane before the garbage truck and pulled in by her garage. She locked the van and raced to the house. When she opened the back door Hoppy belted out through her feet, as did Denver, both choosing a private place in the yard to piddle. Hadn’t Becca let the poor critters out at all that morning? Dang.

  She stopped and looked around; the kitchen positively sparkled. All her paperwork was gone from the counter. Pray to heaven it wasn’t all in the recycling. She draped her sweater over a chair and called out, “Becca? Kevin?” There was a note on the table from Becca: Jaymie . . . gone to grocery store. You’re out of milk. How could you be out of milk???????

  “I’m not out of milk,” she grumbled. “I’m out of skim milk.”

  Now, where was that bag of stuff from the dressing table? Hoppy, as usual, barked frantically through the fence at the garbage truck as it clattered its way down the alley. She stepped down into the summer porch and to the back door. “Hoppy, stop it! Come in, right now!”

  Her little dog listened as well as he always did, which meant he kept barking. Oh, right, she thought; she had slung the bag onto the sofa of the summer porch, worried it had vermin from years in the barn at the Paget home. She turned and looked but it wasn’t there. The garbage truck clanked and banged closer. Hoppy’s barking got more frantic.

  Her sister had cleaned.

  “Crap!” She slid her feet back into her loafers and raced out the back door, almost slipping on the dew-damp flagstone path. She wrenched open the gate and stumbled to the back alley as the garbage truck clattered to a halt directly between her backyard and that of Trip Findley, her behind-most neighbor. He waved from his back porch and she gave a distracted flap of her hand in return as she found the garbage can and ripped the lid off. There was the bag, atop—thank goodness—the other garbage. She snatched it just as the buff young guy approached in search of her garbage can.

  “Anything else you want to rescue, ma’am?” he asked with a grin and a wink.

  “No, no, this is all. Stuff put out by mistake . . . valuable research,” she babbled, turning crimson. His laughter followed her as she checked the recycling bin—nothing untoward in there—closed her gate and returned to the summer porch. Of course, this was going to be a wild-goose chase. It was likely moth-eaten recipes or receipts.

  She sat down on
the summer porch sofa and dumped the bag contents on the floor. There was a bundle of newspaper clippings, a few tattered notebooks, a tiny address book journal with glittery heart stickers on it, some dirty combs and brushes, a dried-out and brittle bottle of VO5 shampoo, and an empty old bottle of Love’s Baby Soft. There were hair scrunchies with a tangle of dark curly hair, and photos. Jaymie got a prickle that started at her hairline and trailed down her back. This was, indeed, Delores’s stuff.

  And if not for Jakob, it would have been in the dump. It might not reveal anything, but still . . . Hoppy nosed at the pile and yapped.

  “Okay, all right, breakfast first. I doubt if Becca even realizes animals need breakfast and clean water.”

  Ten minutes later she had all the stuff laid out, including the photos and pictures, one of Delores and others in a familiar place, her front living room. It must have been Becca’s sweet sixteen birthday party, Jaymie thought, peering at the curled and mildewed photo up close, in September of 1984. This was where Delores started going with Brock, and yes, there she was beside the teenage boy staring at him with fascination. Jaymie recognized Delores from descriptions and photos in the Wolverhampton Howler. She was sporting a couple of pimples, her curly hair held back with a stretchy headband, and wearing an ill-fitting jean jacket. Brock was staring straight at the camera with a smug smirk on his face, knees spread wide, arms flung out over Delores’s shoulders on one side and Becca on the other. Valetta was in a corner looking fed up, Dee was whispering to Johnny Stubbs. Becca looked miserable. A couple of others huddled together in bored misery.

  Jaymie touched the picture; she, herself, was somewhere in the house that night, a few months old: crying, colicky, a burden to her mother, who had never bonded with Jaymie in the same way she bonded with Becca. It was to Becca’s credit that Jaymie had such a happy childhood, because she filled in so many of the spots that Jaymie knew her mother would have if she had felt better. Thank goodness for Becca, despite her occasionally annoying big-sister know-it-all moments, and their Grandma Leighton, who provided many more of her youthful good memories. Jaymie smiled and set the photo aside.