Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery)

by Hamilton, Victoria

  She shook her head. Not about this; it just didn’t add up. Ruby was smart and even-tempered, and Dobrinskie had been an angry twerp. Still, Ruby’s words haunted her; she had said, “I didn’t mean to do it.” Do what?

  After lunch Mr. Klausner came back from his doctor’s appointment, and Jaymie headed home a roundabout way, reluctant to return home immediately. As she passed Jewel’s Junk, she noticed the store next door—it had been a bungalow once, but had become a store since, a bookstore in its last incarnation—with the door wide-open and a sign leaning against the railing. She had heard about a new shop opening, but when it didn’t happen by Memorial Day weekend, she had put that down to unsubstantiated rumor.

  She peeked in, curious.

  “Hi there!”

  Jaymie started, but then realized that the disembodied voice was floating down from the top of a ladder, and it was someone she knew. “Cynthia!” she said, to Cynthia Turbridge, transplanted big-city yoga instructor. “What are you putting in here? Your yoga studio?”

  “Nope, I’m opening a junk store,” she said, with a laugh. “My cottage is too crowded with shabby chic, so I decided to open the Cottage Shoppe. Check out the sign outside when you leave.”

  Jaymie glanced around at the boxes piled high with linens and white-painted furnishings lined up along the walls. “What a great idea! Can’t wait till you open.”

  “About a week. Actually, you could do me a favor,” Cynthia said, climbing down from her perch, where she had been hanging white and gold drapes. She dusted her hands off and stared at the drapes, adjusting them slightly. “I hear you know all there is about vintage kitchen junk. My vision for this place is the complete shabby chic cottage, and I need some advice on the kitchen.” She explained that each room was going to have stuff for sale related to that room, like bed linens and furniture in the bedroom, china in the dining room, etcetera. “But when it comes to the kitchen, I’m stumped.”

  Shabby chic, Jaymie mused. She wasn’t quite sure what it would entail. Cynthia, maybe seeing her puzzlement, rooted around in one of the boxes and produced some magazines. “Here, this will show you what I mean, at least as far as the bedroom goes. I just can’t figure out how to apply shabby chic to the kitchen.”

  “Okay, I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  “You’ve already inspired me, without even knowing it!” the older woman said. “For the front porch, I’m going to have some Adirondack chairs, of course, and a porch swing, but for the backyard, I was thinking of something like your picnic rigs!”

  Jaymie returned home in a thoughtful mood. The Cottage Shoppe was going to be her kind of store, it sounded like, except she was thrifty, and Cynthia was likely going to charge an arm and a leg for her artistic vision of cottage life, planning to milk the tourists for their vacation shopping bucks.

  Jaymie’s mom and dad were out with the Collinses golfing, their note said, so she settled down to her computer in her office to try to work on the article while she had the house to herself. It was no good. Her attention just wasn’t there, not with this murder hanging over them all, and her beloved cottage right in the middle of it. She picked up the phone; she needed answers.

  First the police department. She gave her name and asked for Zack Christian. He was not available, but surprisingly, she was put through to Chief Ledbetter.

  “H’lo,” he said, ending the word on a harrumph.

  She apologized for taking up his time, then asked about her property, and whether she could arrange for the plumbers to do their work.

  “Yeah, okay. We’re finished with your property, Miss Leighton,” he said. “But I do have a few questions.” Without waiting, he charged on: “You said you saw a flash of light. Can you describe it for me a little better, where it came from?”

  She thought back, and said, “It was kind of like when you’re in the woods, and someone has a flashlight, and they play it around an area, you know?”

  He grunted; then there was silence for a minute. “When you saw the body, did you know who it was?”

  “Yes, of course! I had seen him not too long before, after all.”

  “What about before that? Would you have recognized him before the argument at the restaurant?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But your family has had the cottage there a long time, right?”

  “Sure, but I don’t spend that much time out there now, you know. And Dobrinskie had only been a part owner of the marina for . . . a few years? I’m just guessing. I don’t really know a thing about him.”

  He grunted again, and again there was a long pause. “Okay. You can tell your plumbers they can go ahead.”

  “Chief Ledbetter,” she shouted, before he could hang up. “When can I get my digital camera back?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Come in tomorrow and get it. I’ll make sure they have it for you at the desk.”

  “Chief, are you close to an arrest?”

  “No comment.” Click.

  Jaymie cuddled Denver and fed him, then snapped a leash on Hoppy, and headed down to the marina. Usually she loved the trip. The ferry’s approach to the island was done from the tip of the heart shape of Heartbreak Island, and on the bluff overlooking the river was a lonely cottage that Jaymie always watched, trying to imagine the view. It looked uninhabited, to her, but it was probably just used by vacationers, like many of the cottages, including her own.

  As the ferry chugged toward the marina, her stomach did a few flip-flops that she knew were not motion sickness. Though she spent only a short while there every year, Rose Tree Cottage was her refuge. To get it back to being that, she had to hope the police solved Urban Dobrinskie’s murder, and erased all the bad feelings associated with Heartbreak Island.

  “Hey, there, howarye?” Will Lindsay asked, as she disembarked with Hoppy. He looked a little harassed, his hair askew and his eyes underlined by dark circles.

  “I’m good, Will. How are you? You look tired.”

  He shrugged. “You never know how much there is to a business until you have to do it all on your own. I miss Urb. He could be an ass, but he sure know how to get stuff done.”

  Heavy machinery rumbled down the hill, and he looked over his shoulder, as Hoppy yapped and growled at the noise. It was Robin driving a tractor, pulling a generator. Jaymie waved, but Robin didn’t see her, and turned, continuing on to the far end of the marina. He was followed by a couple of other guys on bigger machines.

  “Wow. Something going on?”

  “We’re finally getting the much-needed dredging done. The ferry port is being done first; I’m always so afraid of the ferry getting grounded. Then we’ll be doing the harbor mouth and some of the marina.”

  Hoping it didn’t set her own project back, now that she had the okay from the police to continue, Jaymie said good-bye to Will, picked up Hoppy, and hustled to talk to Robin before he got down to work. She scuffed over the gravel and huffed and puffed her way over to Robin, Hoppy bouncing on her hip and her shoulder bag swinging wildly and whacking her on the back. The plumber had hopped off his tractor and was talking to one of his big machine operators.

  “Robin!” she called.

  “Oh, hey, Jaymie.”

  “I just got the okay to finish the plumbing on the cottage property,” she said, gasping from sprinting the distance. “Are you going to be available?”

  His round face wore an annoyed expression and he rolled his eyes, as if he saw dollar bills fluttering away, but he nodded. “I didn’t know when we could continue, and Will finally got the go-ahead to do the harbor work. But I promise I’ll personally come back this aft and finish up. There really isn’t that much, and a couple of my unskilled guys can do some of the heavy labor.”

  “That’s why you’re the best,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder.

  “I gotta go,” he said.

/>   She caught her breath and walked Hoppy back to the cottage. As she ascended the steps up to the cottage, keys in hand, she tried not to let the events of the past days ruin her haven. All was safe and sound, and she poured some water in a bowl for Hoppy, then glanced out the back. Garnet was glaring at the mess, hands on his hips. Jaymie exited, scaled the slope and stepped carefully past the muddy hole, moving steadily toward him.

  “Hey, Garnet,” she said, keeping her tone chipper. He looked a little gray, but pretty much as he always looked. “I just talked to Robin. I’ve got the okay from the police chief, so Robin is going to come back and finish up this afternoon. I hope. If he doesn’t get done, though, may I borrow your bathroom tonight again?”

  “Sure, Jaymie,” he said, a worried expression on his long face.

  “Everything okay? I mean, besides the obvious?”

  “The obvious being everyone in town is whispering that either Ruby or I killed Urban?”

  “No one really believes that. I’ve been through this myself, last month, when folks thought I killed Kathy,” Jaymie said, about the whispers that she had murdered her longtime foe, Kathy Cooper, at the Fourth of July picnic. “Trust me, your friends don’t think that, and even those who might believe it will be proved wrong as soon as the police figure out who did do it.”

  He smiled. “I appreciate it, Jaymie. I forgot about your trouble last month.”

  They looked over the mucky terrain. Jaymie had never realized how important the unseen and unnoticed leaching bed and septic system was until it was no longer functioning as it should. She suspected, after talking to Robin, that the failure of their septic system was due to their renters trying to defray the cost of renting by having additional family and friends come and bunk in with them, despite the written agreement, which stated no additional guests not on the rental agreement. Too many people overwhelmed the system. It didn’t help that their sump pump was draining into the leaching bed, too, though.

  But now they were putting in a system that would handle it all, something that Robin told her was a necessity if she wanted to keep renting out the cottage. The Redmonds had had to do it the summer before, she knew, and it was only the two of them. Now, that was odd. She glanced over at Garnet. She had never pondered that before, their lack of visitors. As far as Jaymie knew, the Redmonds never had family or friends bunking in with them. In general, once folks knew you lived in a tourist area they started dropping hints about coming to visit dear cousin so-and-so.

  “I’m relieved we can go ahead and get this done, anyway,” Jaymie said. Once it was done, it was done, and it was good to go—other than an occasional pumping out of the solid waste from the septic tank—for thirty years or more.

  “So what are you going to do with the property, once the leaching bed and septic system is done?” Garnet asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just assumed that you’d do what we did, take the opportunity to reimagine the landscaping.”

  He had a point, Jaymie thought, scanning the landscape. It had always been just a grassy slope, but if she looked at it as an opportunity, as the Redmonds had, it could be so much more. When the Redmonds did their septic system and leaching bed, they had built in some terraced gardens dotted over the slope, and now had a gazebo in the shade of the copse of pine trees on their side of the ravine.

  “You guys did such a great job. I’d love your opinion. What do you think we should do?”

  She walked around the muddy open pit with him, and he elaborated on the terrace idea, showing her where there could be a natural fieldstone patio, a kind of open-air living room, halfway down the slope. He mentioned patio furniture, and she tried to picture different kinds, natural rattan, or wicker, or synthetic versions. “And a swing,” she said, picturing soft summer nights and a swing set in the privacy of the grove of trees.

  “Hello?” Zack Christian approached from the side of the cottage just then.

  “Hey!” Jaymie said. She glanced over at Garnet, but he was looking down at the mud at the edge of the new leaching field, and didn’t acknowledge the detective.

  “Chief Ledbetter told me you’d be here,” he said. He was dressed in his off-duty clothes, a towel slung over his neck.

  “Yeah. He gave me the go-ahead to have the plumbers finish the septic system.”

  Her neighbor knelt at the edge of the muck looking at something. Jaymie glanced over at him, and said, “Garnet, what are you looking at?”

  He pointed. “There’s something wedged in the mud, something metal. What is it?”

  Zack snapped into cop mode, the difference like that between a blazing hot day and a freezer. “Don’t touch it!” he said. He whipped his cell phone out of his pocket as he knelt down to look. But he didn’t make a call; he took a photo. “It’s a drill bit,” he said, finally, as he used the end of a key to dislodge it from the muck.

  Jaymie squinted, and could see the blue steel and nodded. “You’re right! What’s it doing in the mud?”

  The detective was noncommittal, but was on the phone calling for a forensic team. Jaymie groaned. Would this put her plumbing work on hold again? Garnet shrugged and grimaced, mouthing, “Sorry.” He climbed the hill to his cottage.

  A half hour later the team had swarmed her property, after photographing and extricating the drill bit. It would be sent to forensic, Zack said, in case it was the murder weapon.

  “But I thought the ice pick was the murder weapon?”

  “It probably is, but we can’t be too careful. We are going to have to search again, just in case,” he said. “Better now than when you’ve laid sod. Have you thought of anything else regarding the ice pick yet? When you last saw it?”

  “I told you in my statement; I last saw it when Garnet had it.”

  “Okay, all right.”

  The team cordoned off the area again. Darn! Just when she thought they’d make headway and get the plumbing job finished. There was no point in staying on the island that night, and Jaymie didn’t think she could face another lonely night with no toilet, so she went back to Queensville, after calling Robin and telling him that finishing the job had to be put off for another day or two. He was relieved, Jaymie could tell.

  That evening she and Daniel went for a long walk, since both of their homes were off-limits, due to the parents being in residence. It felt like a high school date, and they shared a laugh over the annoyances attendant upon being thirtysomething and living, however briefly, with one’s parents. The evening ended with a very satisfying make-out session in the back alley of her home, interrupted at last by Trip Findley, her backyard neighbor, turning on his light and letting out his little dog, Skip. It started barking, setting off Hoppy in her own backyard.

  “Good night,” she said to Daniel, softly. She took his glasses off, ran her fingers through his thick hair and kissed him. She felt him sigh, and smiled to herself, as she carefully placed his glasses back on his nose.

  “Good night, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her forehead and ambling off.

  Sweetheart? She felt like she had retreated to the 1950s. Kind of appropriate, given her fondness for all things vintage!

  The next morning she helped Anna out at the bed-and-breakfast, giving her mom time to get ready for another day of golfing, and then updated her blog—she had three whole followers and no comments—and wrote for a while, clearing her mind of all the extraneous garbage that was plaguing her and concentrating on the words. The article on vintage picnics was coming together very well now, and she even found some recipes she was interested in trying. It was a subject, after all, that she had researched thoroughly for her thriving business.

  Then she drove her van out to the police station to retrieve her camera. She now needed to photograph some of her vintage picnic baskets for the article on picnicking the old-fashioned way. There was a bit of a holdup, but she did get her digital camera
back. She stood at the desk in the bustling office for a moment—phones rang and printers chattered to life, dispatchers talked and officers escorted the odd arrestee through the station—thumbing through the slide show of photos.

  So, the ice pick photos had been removed. Interesting. Why remove them from her camera? Shuddering, she decided that was just fine; she didn’t really want to be reminded of Urban’s death anyway, and even though she had not actually seen the pick in the man’s chest, she could imagine it all too well. She frowned and stared at the other photos, one a blurry image of the ice chests at the back, with Ruby moving out of frame. The ice pick was likely the murder weapon, but now there was the complication of the drill bit. On the other hand, it was possible that the drill bit had nothing to do with anything, and had just been dropped, not stolen.

  She turned away from the counter to leave, but just then Chief Ledbetter lumbered out from his office and yelped her name, then beckoned her back. Almost out. Oh, well. She threaded through cubicles and entered his office, a bland glass and metal box with a big picture window overlooking the back parking lot, and a desk facing away from it, with two hard chairs facing the desk. She sat down in one of them, as he circled to sit behind his desk.

  He plunked down in his chair with a grunt of relief. “You’ve been a busy little bee the last few months, haven’t you, Miss Leighton? First that body on your back porch, then that girl dead at the park with your bowl as the murder weapon, and now this, out at your cottage. You don’t have any other properties I should be aware of, do you? Anywhere else you’re hiding dead bodies?”

  As an example of gallows humor, it failed miserably, Jaymie thought, and she didn’t smile. Stiffening, she said, “A series of unfortunate coincidences.”