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

by Victoria Hamilton

  Despite multiple people lying about that day, it was most likely a case of that lowlife, Clifford Paget, killing two girls: Delores, who rejected his advances maybe—or who finally told him to lay off—and another, Rhonda, who perhaps was collateral damage. Maybe Rhonda had arrived at the farmhouse to meet Delores and witnessed the murder.

  Jaymie spread all the material out on the table and started going through it yet again. Maybe she had missed something. She looked at Valetta’s diary entry about the day Rhonda and Delores died. Then she read Tami’s diary. Thursday, November first, she simply wrote: School all day, then caught Gus’s football game. Went with him and some friends after to get a hamburger at Tovey’s in Wolverhampton.

  Well, that was clear enough, and gave Gus an alibi for much later in the day. Except something was off about that. It was getting dark outside. She should be getting Denver to come in. Hoppy was outside again—he’d go in and out a million times a day, if she let him—and started barking. What now? Mr. Findley taking his evening walk? A cat other than Denver in their yard? A car going by?

  She was about to go out to check when she saw a figure at the door. She ran to open it. “Tami! What a surprise!”

  “Hey, Jaymie. Can I come in?” She was shivering. It was May, but evenings in Michigan were still coolish, and she was just wearing a hoodie over a T-shirt.

  “Sure. Want a cup of tea?”

  “I’d love one.” Tami seemed nervous, but that was usual with her. As long as Jaymie had known her she was a nervous, pacing, agitated mess half the time.

  Jaymie put her whistling teakettle on the burner, turned it on—the snap of the dial and poof of the flame so comforting, signaling tea would be ready soon—and sat back down.

  Tami was staring at the papers laid out. “You’re really into this, aren’t you? Why don’t you leave it up to the police to investigate? They’re the professionals. It doesn’t seem right that a citizen is getting so involved in police work.”

  Jaymie watched her fidget with her purse strap, her gloved hands twisting the strap over and over. She suddenly remembered what bothered her about the Thursday, November first, entry of Tami’s in the diary. Tovey’s in Wolverhampton had just celebrated their thirtieth anniversary in business in March. So unless there was a previous Tovey’s Hamburger Joint, the entry was impossible. As was . . . gosh, she knew this. The movie Dirty Dancing didn’t come out until 1987; it was one of Becca’s favorites, and Jaymie had watched it many times with her sister, so it should not be mentioned in a diary from 1984.

  The diary was a fake, an attempt to throw her off something. Tami must be covering up for Gus somehow, trying to alibi him for later that day, which indicated at the very least that she suspected him. “You and your brother were close when you were teenagers, right?” His stinging words about his sister came back to her. Gus had seemed intent on destroying Tami’s credibility, looking back at her conversation earlier with him. What was he afraid she’d say? Did he not trust her to alibi him?

  Tami nodded. “We were close. He’s my little brother. I love him. I’d do anything for him.”

  Even lie, falsify a diary entry to alibi him that afternoon. Jaymie watched her gloved hands, twisting the purse strap. Twisting and twisting, hands in wool gloves too heavy for May. She swallowed hard. “You were angry that he wasted his chance to go to college. Why?”

  “He could have been something. He could have . . . I don’t know. Become a doctor, or a lawyer. Had a business. Instead he’s running a junk store, stuck in the same stupid town his whole life.”

  “So you must have been upset when he talked about dropping out of school and marrying Rhonda, when they thought she might be pregnant.”

  Tears welled in Tami’s eyes and traced ribbons of pale skin through the makeup on her cheeks. “Scheming slut! Thought she was better than me. They all did, but she was the worst. And then she went to a Christian boarding school because her parents were missionaries! What a joke.”

  “You weren’t in school that day, were you, Tami?” She held up the diary. “This is fake. You were home that day. Gus said you dropped out that year.”

  “I hated school. I never fit in.”

  Things were becoming clearer by the moment. Sometimes families pin all their hopes for the future on one member, the one who seems to stand out, the one with talent, or looks, or ambition. “No one fits in at high school,” Jaymie said, gently. She slid her cell phone over and tapped the screen, hitting the icon for a handy app she often used when she was interviewing someone and wanted to remember their exact words.

  “That’s what everyone says, but every single kid I saw had friends, some place they fit, even the geeks like your friend Valetta. She had Dee and your sister. Not me. I didn’t have anyone.”

  “But someone invited you to Becca’s birthday party.”

  She snorted. “Hah! That was a mistake. My mom worked at the grocery store, and your dad and mom shopped there. I guess they’d talk. Your father thought Becca and I were friends. He called our house and talked to my mom, telling her to bring me to the party. Mom made me go. No one wanted me there.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jaymie said gently, her voice trembling ever so faintly. This was becoming troublesome; Tami’s manner had gone from nervous to resentful, and the gloved hands were still twisting the purse strap. “So you were home that day, not at school.”

  Tami nodded.

  “Did Rhonda call your place?”

  Tami nodded again and stared off into space. “I knew you’d figure this all out,” she said, her tone feathery and distracted. “As soon as we talked in the bakery I knew the diary was a mistake, but you wouldn’t give it back.” She shook her head. Her voice a whisper, she repeated, “You wouldn’t give it back.” She snatched it from the table and stuffed it in her purse. “I’ll take it back now.”

  Jaymie swallowed. “Rhonda did call?”

  “She wanted to know what time Gus would be home. She’d completely forgotten he had a game that day. She said she had something important to discuss with him, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was. I knew she was going to get him to run away with her.” Tami frowned and looked across at Jaymie. She leaned forward, her eyebrows drawn down. “And then every hope, all his plans, would be washed down the drain. I was furious.”

  Jaymie knew the truth from Sybil, that Rhonda was going to tell Gus she wasn’t pregnant and that she thought they should cool it for a while. It would all have worked out if only Tami hadn’t interfered. Rhonda had plans, ambitions. She also had no future past that afternoon, but she didn’t know it.

  Urgency coursed through Jaymie. This moment, at this exact time, Tami was ready to talk. Later, with a police warning and a lawyer, that might not necessarily be true. She had a feeling that didn’t bode well for her, but she could take on Tami. She was strong and Tami was skinny as a rail. Consciously calming herself, slowing her breathing, Jaymie said, “So you told Rhonda . . . what?”

  “I said that Gus was coming home early. If she wanted to see him, she should come to our house, not the school.”

  Jaymie swallowed, her suspicion confirmed. The murderer wasn’t Gus at all. It was premeditated; Tami had planned to dispose of the woman she thought was carrying her brother’s baby. This was even worse than she thought, not the impulse of the moment but a cold-blooded plan. “And then what?”

  She shrugged, still twisting the purse strap, wearing her gloves so she wouldn’t leave fingerprints in Jaymie’s kitchen. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, leading her to confess. Jaymie should make an excuse to get out, but in the meantime she needed to keep Tami talking, make her calm, soothe her. She swallowed, hard, and was about to repeat her question, when Tami answered.

  “So Rhonda came over, and I killed her.”

  Jaymie took in a swift breath; it was so harsh, so baldly put.

  The confession seemed to act like a bomb, bursting the dam of reticence. In a rush, Tami leaned across the table and said, “I strangled her and she wa
s dead and the phone was ringing. The damn phone, again! I answered and it was that little witch Delores, and she was asking was Gus home. I said no, of course not, and she said well, Rhonda was supposed to pick her up and then go see Gus before they took off, but things had gotten screwed up, and what should she do? Where should they meet?”

  Delores had misunderstood; Rhonda must have said she was going to go see Gus and then pick up Delores, but the teen had gotten it backward. Jaymie’s heart pounded and sweat started trickling down her back. In a movie it was never a good sign when the killer told you everything; they were venting, getting it all out to a person they knew wouldn’t live to tell. After a lifetime of concealment there was a gush of words, a relief of sorts.

  “I told her she had just missed Rhonda.” Tami giggled and covered her mouth. “Oops, not funny, right?” But she giggled again, her eyes gleaming with manic humor. “But it is funny; just missed her! But, I said—and I thought quick about this, because I realized at that point that Delores knew too much already and could pin Rhonda down to our place—I said I knew where Rhonda was going to be. So I’d meet Delores at her house and take her to Rhonda. She wanted me to pick her up in Queensville at some guy’s house but I only had Rhonda’s Ford Falcon, and I didn’t want to drive into town in that, so I said no, her house in the country.”

  Jaymie let out a long breath she hadn’t even known she was holding. That was how everything tied together.

  “Stupid kid. She was rude. So rude! What a brat. I drove that freakin’ Ford Falcon of Rhonda’s, with her dead in the backseat covered in a blanket, and pulled right up to that dingy farmhouse.” She stopped and looked at the stove, the burner aflame under the kettle, which was starting to simmer. “She lived like we did. Dirty, poor. Grubby. I should’ve felt sorry for her, I guess, but I didn’t. It was her own fault, being rude to me like that. Disrespecting me. I walked right into that house, asked if anyone was home, and when I found out there wasn’t anyone there but us I asked her for a drink of water. When she turned around, asking where Rhonda was as she did it, I picked up a cleaver off the counter and hit her hard. Shut her up for good.”

  Jaymie’s head swam, and she felt nauseous. Now was the time to get out, out the back door and run. She got up casually as the kettle began to heat up. She crossed around back of Tami to the canister on the counter and got out the teabags, as if she was going to make a pot. “And then you put her in that trunk in the basement,” Jaymie said.

  “No way,” Tami said, twisting and watching Jaymie. “I left her right there where she fell, with that cleaver still in her head.”

  Jaymie stopped, teabag in hand, and her breath caught; that’s what Clifford had done, what he was feeling guilty about! He’d hidden the body, or started to. Maybe he came home and found Delores dead. Or maybe Jimbo and Olga did and thought Clifford had killed Delores. But whatever happened, they knew damn well they couldn’t report Delores dead in their kitchen with their cleaver in her head, not with all they had done. So they hid her body in a trunk in their cellar and lied about it for decades. They must have been relieved as hell when Brock said Delores took off. All they had to do was go along with it, say yes, she’d talked about running off. The perfect cover. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of kids disappeared every year.

  But when Jimbo died Clifford got scared and “disappeared” himself. Olga just kept on lying. “And so what about Rhonda?” Jaymie asked over her shoulder.

  “Her?” Tami’s chair creaked. “I took that car over to Heartbreak Island and drove it up to a place where I knew there was deep water, near the shipping channel. There’s a spot we used to jump off for thrills, so I knew it was deep. There are cottages there now but it used to be a kind of park. You know, I’m a good driver. A great driver. Always have been. Used to have a boyfriend who did stupid stunts with his car, but I was even better at it than he was.” She chuckled, seemingly becoming more relaxed as she talked. “Damned if I didn’t almost kill myself that night! Put her in the front seat and gunned it, then jumped out. Almost took me with it. I could have died that night.” She paused, then softly said, “But I didn’t.”

  “And no one heard the noise and investigated?”

  “I’m sure people heard. But there aren’t that many people on the island that late in the year. You ought to know that.”

  Jaymie was startled by the implication; Tami apparently knew about the Leighton cottage on Heartbreak Island. But what she said was true. By November most of the island cottages were empty. Only a few, housing the island’s permanent residents, were occupied.

  Heart pounding, Jaymie glanced over at the back door, then at a rolling pin that was on the counter. Was her best plan to make a run for it, or hit Tami with the rolling pin? “You’ve done a good job of hiding it ever since.”

  “But I’ve suffered!” Tami cried, her words catching on a sob. She twisted in her seat, trying to look at Jaymie. She twisted the other way. “Every time I thought about Rhonda being pregnant, that I’d killed that poor little baby . . . I almost went crazy a time or two. Tried to kill myself once. Or twice. I’ve suffered enough, and all for nothing because she wasn’t even pregnant. I’m done.” She was becoming agitated.

  There was no more time to lose. Jaymie made a move to bolt for the door, but Tami seemed to anticipate it. She shrieked, “What are you doing, Jaymie? Don’t get any—” The kettle started to scream as Tami, startled into action, jumped up and whirled, looping the purse strap around Jaymie’s neck before she could bolt past her. It jerked Jaymie backward; she stumbled and the purse strap dug into her neck, choking her and making her cough. Hoppy, outside, began barking frantically and the phone started ringing, a din that was added to when Jaymie screamed as loud as she could while being choked as she clawed at the looped purse strap.

  Tami was far stronger than Jaymie had expected. Too late she saw how she had underestimated Tami; how everyone had underestimated Tami.

  They swayed and struggled. Jaymie, down on her knees, turned, reaching up and digging her fingernails into Tami’s face as the woman tightened the leather purse strap around her victim’s throat. Her breath cut off, stars began to dance in front of Jaymie and she felt herself sinking into unconsciousness, her flailing irresolute and frantic. That very moment she heard banging at the back door and Trip Findley, her back-lane neighbor, a dapper oldster with a cane, pelted into the house and began swinging his cane around so precipitously he knocked the kettle off the stove, sending boiling hot water streaming everywhere. Jaymie felt some splash on her, but more hit Tami, who shrieked in pain as Trip shouted expletives Jaymie never would have thought him capable of.

  Finally Jaymie ducked out of the purse strap and was free.

  • • •

  IT WAS A CHILLY EVENING, but Jaymie sat on an Adirondack chair in her backyard with a blanket wrapped around her. The police, summoned by multiple neighbors—including her next-door neighbor, Pam Driscoll, who ran the bed-and-breakfast for her friends—calling about a crime in progress, had an ambulance called for Tami, who had some pretty bad hot water scalds on her arms as well as bloody claw marks on her face from Jaymie. The paramedics had her bandaged and strapped to a gurney. They trundled her out the back door, through the summer porch, and down to the flagstone walk.

  “Stop!” Tami screamed. “Jaymie, Jaymie! I’m s-sorry! Tell Gus I love him, and tell his little girl . . . my sweet niece . . .” She wailed and groaned, trying to sit up, struggling against the straps. “Tell my baby niece that her Auntie Tami loves her more than life. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t.” She broke down weeping and the paramedic, at a sign from the police chief, wheeled her away carefully over the bumpy walkway.

  Jaymie, after a brief check-over from the paramedics—she had a sore throat and some bruises, but she’d recover—had already told Chief Ledbetter everything that was recorded on her cell phone and he had confiscated it. Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. She wrote down her cell phone password for him and let him tag t
he phone as evidence. The roar of a motor echoed in the night and Jakob tore up the back lane in his pickup and skidded to a stop. He didn’t even close the truck door in his haste. He squeezed past the paramedics and raced to Jaymie. He knelt by her and took her in his arms, pulling her gently close to his warmth.

  “Jakob, who’s with Jocie?” she whispered, her voice muffled by his plaid lumberman jacket.

  Shakily, he laughed. “Stop worrying. Helmut is there. He came over for a coffee, so when I heard—”

  “Who did you hear from?”

  “Me,” Valetta said out of the twilight dimness. She trotted up the walk to the couple. “Brock told me what he’d told you. I tried to call to talk it over but I didn’t get an answer. Then I heard sirens and I knew something was up. So I called Jakob.”

  Shaking with a weird amalgam of relief, tears, laughter and love, Jaymie let herself be hugged and cosseted by her husband-to-be and maid of honor, all while Hoppy, finally released from the safe part of the house, jumped around them and barked and Denver huddled under Jaymie’s chair and glared out at the cuckoo world of humans.

  “Mr. Findley! Is he okay?” she finally asked her friends. She broke away and saw her neighbor talking to Chief Ledbetter, with Bernie Jenkins standing by as they took Trip’s statement. She leaped up and hugged the slim elderly man, dressed in his best plaid pajamas. “You’re my hero, Mr. Findley,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  “Something different about Hoppy’s bark; that’s how I knew something was wrong. I’ve got a dog. When they have that frantic tone, best to investigate. It’s either a burglar or a skunk. I’ve chased away both from time to time.”

  Jaymie scooped up her little dog and held him close while he licked her face. “So I have Hoppy to thank, too,” she whispered. “For that, I think he gets to be ring bearer.” She looked over her shoulder toward Jakob. “Don’t you think?”