“You’ve known Sammy for a while,” Jaymie said. “He seems like such a nice kid, but with a dad like Urban . . . that can’t have been easy on him. Or his mother!”
“He is a nice kid, and a hard worker, but his mom . . . She’s a little odd. I know she loves her son, but . . .”
“How do you mean, ‘odd’?”
He shook his head, then glanced around, hunkered closer to her, and said, “I’ve never told this to anyone, but from what I understand, Evelyn used to follow Urban when he went on his little ‘dates,’ you know?” He waggled his unruly eyebrows.
“Why is that ‘odd’?” Jaymie asked, not surprised that Urban was widely known to have outside interests. The island was small, and people talk. But who was he cheating with? Ruby, as Brock Nibley had asserted?
Robin’s brown eyes widened and he reared back. “You mean you’re not surprised?”
“That a woman would tail her cheating louse of a spouse? No.” An unacknowledged ribbon of anger in the pit of her stomach, left over from Joel’s cheating on her, surfaced. “Maybe she wasn’t sure. Maybe she wanted details.” Maybe she was planning on divorcing him, but murder seemed simpler?
Zack Christian walked toward them, that moment, in just his swim trunks and with his towel over his shoulders. Just then a shout from his men called Robin away, and Jaymie was left with a shirtless Zack.
“How is the investigation going?” she asked, trying not to stare at his chest, chiseled abs and all.
“Why? You want to come work for us?” he joked, using the towel to dry his arms and stomach.
Sweat or river water, she wondered, distracted; what liquid was racing in droplets down his chest? Focus, Jaymie, she commanded herself. “Zack, this is important to me. That cottage is my . . . my haven.”
“You need a getaway from the hustle and bustle of Queensville, Michigan, so you cross a few yards of water and camp out?”
She eyed him speculatively. Was he distracting her from the investigation by throwing bon mots her way? Not-so-witty repartee as a diversion? “So, was Urban murdered with that ice pick or not?”
“You know I can’t give you that information,” he said. Hoppy trotted over to sniff his leg and the detective watched him, warily. “He won’t pee on my leg, will he?”
She rolled her eyes. Good grief. “He doesn’t cock his leg and pee against things like most male dogs. Not very well, anyway. He’s a little wobbly, being a ‘tripod’ as one of my friends calls him.” She was not going to be deflected. “Okay, assuming it was the ice pick, how much strength would it take to push that thing in deep enough to kill him? Would a woman be able to do it?”
“Depends on the woman,” he said, shifting impatiently. “Look, Jaymie, I have to go. This was just a break, and I’m late for work.” He whirled and strode away, his shoulders set in an angry line.
What had she done to set him off? She shook her head; no telling. She pondered her ice pick query. The tool was sharp, even though it was old, so surely it wouldn’t take that much strength to push it in, as long as one didn’t hit bone. She shuddered, a little alarmed at the way her mind was working these days. Heck, if she was home, she’d do a little research on the Internet—she was becoming quite proficient at finding out esoteric information—or ask around, but out here, she was Internet-less. It occurred to her in that moment, though, that if the ice pick was the weapon, it really did limit the number of people who had access to it. The last she had seen it, it was in Garnet’s hand, so Garnet and Ruby were the most obvious. Would Evelyn Dobrinskie or her son even have been able to get ahold of it?
That was the sticking point for her, the one thing that kept her coming back to Garnet and Ruby Redmond. How could the murderer be anyone else, if the ice pick was the weapon?
Hoppy whined, so she moved along, the heavy bag bumping against her leg, clanking like a bag of tin cans; she let Hoppy sniff farther afield along a line of ornamental shrubs that bordered the customs shed, while she pondered the possible murder weapon. What had Garnet done with the ice pick when she was done photographing it? She couldn’t just assume the murder weapon was the ice pick. With all the fuss over the drill bit that was found near where Urban’s body lay, she had to wonder, could the same damage come from a drill bit as an ice pick?
It was all too confusing, and she didn’t know the folks involved well enough. But one thing she was sure of: to kill someone with either the drill bit or the ice pick would require close quarters and a cool, brutal side to one’s personality. It wasn’t like a shooting, where the perpetrator could commit the crime from some distance, or poison, where you didn’t need to see the victim die. No, this was up close and personal.
Sammy and the others wandered back to the dock area and stood talking for a few minutes. Heidi saw Jaymie, and said something to Joel, then sprinted over to join her.
“Are you buying the boat?” Jaymie asked.
“I think so!” she said, bouncing up and down, her silky hair flying out in a wave. Hoppy yapped and danced around, and she laughed. “It depends on Joel. He’s making the deal now. It’s so exciting!”
Jaymie had known Joel awhile, and never once had he expressed any interest in, or even any acquaintance with, sailing, but it wasn’t up to her to break that news to Heidi. “Well, good luck.”
“It’s been a couple of years since I sailed. I think I’ll need a refresher, some lessons or something. I asked the kid if he would take us out so I could see how she handles.” She glanced back at the guys. “He looked a little hesitant.”
“I don’t think he’s fond of sailing,” Jaymie said. “Robin—that’s the owner of the plumbing company that’s excavating the harbor; Sammy has worked for him all summer—said as much. His dad used to bully and berate him, and maybe that’s his only memory of sailing.”
“Aw, poor kid!” Heidi said, quick to empathize, as always. She picked Hoppy up and cuddled him against her cheek. “Why would any daddy do that to his ’ittle boy,” she said, her voice skirting dangerously close to baby talk territory. Hoppy, of course, loved it and wriggled, licking her face. She giggled.
“Heidi, if you guys are going back to the Dobrinskies to do anything—sign papers, or hand over money—can I come? I . . . I’d like to see the landscape work that Sammy has done.”
Her head cocked to one side, Heidi asked, “Why don’t you just ask to see his work?”
The straightforward approach; it had its merits. “I never thought of that until now.” The guys were coming toward them. She knew Heidi was eyeing her with curiosity, and she realized that Heidi was likely not up to speed on all the relationships, but it was too late to explain.
“Hey, sweetie, it’s all set,” Joel said, putting his arm around Heidi and squeezing, scruffing Hoppy’s head with his free hand. “We are the proud new owners of the Sea Urchin!”
“Congrats, Joel, on achieving your lifelong dream,” Jaymie said, her tone laden with sarcasm. “Didn’t you always talk about sailing the seven seas, or . . . something?”
He shot her a quelling look. “When I found out how much Heidi loves sailing, well . . . this seemed perfect. It’ll be a wedding present.”
A wedding present. Confused, Jaymie said, “From whom to whom?”
Will Lindsay glanced back and forth between the two of them, a question in his eyes. But Joel ignored her. As Heidi gently set Hoppy down, Joel turned to Sammy, who was pink with embarrassment and shifting from foot to foot. “If you were older, I’d buy you a drink to celebrate,” he said.
Heidi was about to speak, but Jaymie beat her to it. “Sammy, I’d like to talk to you about your landscape ideas, but I wondered if I could see what you and your mom did in your backyard? Just as a reference.”
“Uh, sure. Okay. I’ll let my mom know we’re coming.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and called home, hunching his shoulder and moving away from the group.
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Too late, Jaymie realized how rude it was to blurt it out, like that. She had interrupted the celebration, and could have been more delicate in her approach. Should she even be butting in on his mother, especially given that she had lost her husband and was in mourning? Will Lindsay was staring at her as if she were a ghoul, and she shifted, uncomfortably aware of her lack of sensitivity. They hadn’t even had the funeral yet, for crying out loud. She felt bad, but the knowledge that someone had killed Urban Dobrinskie in her backyard—and was so far getting away with it—fueled her.
“I . . . I told her ab-bout selling the sailboat, and everything, and she said for you all to come over for lemonade.” Sammy slipped the phone back in his cargo pants pocket.
“Great,” Joel said. “I’d like to meet your mom, assure her we’ll take good care of the Sea Urchin.”
Sammy gave him a startled look. Jaymie surmised that his mom had little or nothing to do with the sailboat and couldn’t care less about it, except as a source of revenue for her boy to go to college. They all hustled off, an ill-assorted group—Will Lindsay went with them, probably feeling protective of Sammy, with such a group of ghoulish hangers-on—headed for a visit with a woman Robin had called “odd.”
It took only ten minutes to walk there. The Dobrinskie house was a white clapboard two-story, a little run-down, one of the bigger houses near the center of the island, close to the border between the Canadian and US sides of Heartbreak Island. It was on a hill, the walkway up to it punctuated with several runs of three or four steps with black-painted plumbing pipes as railings. Sammy raced up the steps and dashed ahead of them, into the house. Hoppy yapped and strained at the leash to follow. The rest of them followed at a more sedate pace, and were greeted at the door by Evelyn Dobrinskie.
Jaymie was startled by the difference in the woman she knew only from her brief encounter with her at Tansy’s Tarts. There she had been wan, pale and nervous. But now her cheeks were pink, and she was smiling as she held the door open and asked them to come through to the back garden. The big house echoed with their footsteps. They followed her through a dim hallway to a sunny, modern kitchen that smelled of fresh herbs, then out sliding doors to a garden.
The garden; Jaymie stared at it, her mouth open. Sammy had not done justice to his and his mother’s project. Up near the patio there was a normal kind of garden that held a tumult of flowers and herbs breathtaking in their variety. Dotted among the exotic were plants that Jaymie knew: rosemary beside geraniums, varicolored thyme accompanied by dwarf daisies, and assorted other herbs alongside more prosy flowers, and all interspersed with some plants Jaymie didn’t recognize.
But the vista that opened out below the patio area and beyond was enchanting. There was a gully, with steps down into it, and pathways cutting through sections that held a pagoda surrounded by leafy ferns. There was, partially shaded by overhanging bushes, a lovely water feature, the whole garden walled by casual-looking but beautifully planned rockery plants, interspersed by outcroppings of lichen-covered rocks.
“This is lovely,” Jaymie breathed, standing and staring, stupefied.
“Mom, this is Jaymie Leighton. She’s the one I was doing the garden sketches for.”
The woman turned knowing eyes toward her, and there was some fleeting expression of worry on her face. “We met at the bakery on . . . on that day.”
Joel and Will were talking, off to one side, but Will was watching her, Jaymie knew.
Heidi clapped her hands. “Oh, Sammy, this is lovely! I had no idea you were so talented!”
He flushed and shuffled his feet. Evelyn took Heidi by the arm and guided her around the garden. Jaymie, after tying Hoppy to a deck railing and stowing her noisy bag of enamelware under the table, followed in their wake, and Sammy trailed behind, punctuating his mother’s running commentary with his own explanations. They made an odd little train.
Upon returning to the patio area, Evelyn offered everyone cold drinks in the shade of the deck pergola. The day was heating up, and refreshment was welcome.
“So,” Evelyn Dobrinskie said, when everyone had a cold lemonade in their hands. Her voice seemed brittle, as if she were on the edge of cracking. “How about a toast to the memory of my husband? My dear, departed husband?”
Thirteen
THERE WAS AN awkward silence; then everyone got that hearty “We’re uncomfortable but we’ll pretend not to be” expression and clicked glasses of lemonade. Hoppy, seeming to sense the tension in the air, looked around, his tail wagging intermittently, like a windshield wiper in a drizzle.
“Mom, that’s messed up.” Sammy shrugged and looked away.
Her expression softened. She reached over and caressed his shoulder, saying, “It’s okay, Sammy, we’re with friends. Everyone knows that your father and I didn’t . . .” She shook her head, tears gleaming in her pale eyes.
Robin’s comment on Evelyn’s “oddness” came back to Jaymie. How many people would make that kind of a toast with virtual strangers? Did that qualify as “odd” behavior? And she had called them “friends.” Did that mean she had no real friends, or was she being facetious?
Sammy said, his voice taut with strain, “Just let it go, willya?” He scuffed at the deck with his Adidas, staring down at his feet the whole time.
“No one’s pretending he was a prince among men,” she said, an edge to her voice. Two spots of color bloomed on her cheeks, and a frown pulled her mouth down as tears formed in her eyes. “He could be an ass, and everyone on the island and in Queensville knew it.”
There was a moment of shocked silence.
“You must be looking forward to college, Sammy,” Heidi said quickly. “I mean . . . I know it’s a difficult time, but you are really talented.” She waved her hand over the garden, like a garden fairy sprinkling magic dust. “Your dad would have been proud.”
“I wouldn’t even be going to college, if D-dad was still here,” Sammy blurted out, then shut his mouth, his eyes wide, his gaze now fixed on his mother. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, drying without her so much as swiping them away.
“What do you mean?” Jaymie asked.
“N-nothing.”
“His father wanted him to go to business school, not college for landscaping, right, Sammy?” Will said. “He just wanted you to explore all your options, don’t you think?”
“What he really wanted was for Sammy to make a million dollars,” Evelyn said, harsh lines bracketing her pinched mouth. The salty tears were dry now, leaving faintly puckered trails down the fragile skin of her cheeks. The brilliant sunlight filtering through the top of the pergola made her look older than she was, and wan. She had been chipper, at first, but the turn of the conversation had left her bitter. “All he cared about was money. He made fun of Sammy for wanting to work with his hands, said no son of his was going to grub around in the muck for a living!”
“Mom!”
“It’s true,” she cried, her hands gripping each other on her lap, anguish throaty in her voice. “He tried to kill your talent!”
So Evelyn killed him, instead? How far would a mother go, especially one who was clearly abused by her husband? But this was not an unplanned crime, Jaymie thought, her gaze shifting from mother to son. Who was to say how long Evelyn’s anger had festered, though, and how it might have fueled a plot to kill her difficult husband. But would she then leave his body in a place where Sammy had been working? That didn’t make sense, unless there was some kind of message there.
Sammy hung his head, not meeting anyone’s gaze. It was one of those silent, intensely uncomfortable moments, and Joel pulled Heidi to him, circling her in his protective embrace.
“That’s why the morning after he died, I called the college up right away and made sure Sammy could get in for the fall semester!” Evelyn finally said, her voice softening as she gazed at her son.
The very morning after she ha
d just learned her husband had been murdered? The same morning Jaymie saw her at Tansy’s Tarts looking like she was grief stricken?
“No one’s saying he was perfect, Evelyn,” Will Lindsay said, his tone soothing. “Urb was a tough nut to crack, but he meant well.”
“Don’t give me that,” Evelyn said, her cheeks pink. “He never saw anything but his own way, and if you thought differently, well . . .” She caressed her arm, where a faint bruise still colored the skin.
There was another longish silence. Hoppy begged for attention, and as Jaymie picked up her little dog, she began to wonder where both Evelyn and Sammy were on the night in question. As the wife and son of the victim, the police must be looking at them as possible culprits, but Jaymie had not seriously considered either. Sammy seemed too skinny to do such a heinous deed, and Evelyn too weak-willed, given Urban Dobrinskie’s hefty power and dominating will.
But she had seen for herself that Sammy was thin, but strong, a summer of hard physical work toughening him. And as far as Evelyn being weak-willed? There was a simmering anger burning in her. She may have accepted abuse as her due. But if Urb was denying his son the chance to go to the school of his choice for the career of his choice, how deep may a mother’s anger have gone?
“So, what do you think happened?” Jaymie asked, suddenly, looking around. She agitatedly scruffed her Yorkie-Poo’s tufted fur.
Silence, for another longish moment. Their uneasy little gathering seemed to be punctuated with awkward silences.
“Jaymie, no one wants to talk about that,” Joel admonished, frowning.
Heidi pulled away and straightened, sitting up tall. “I think maybe people do, Joel. You all must be terribly upset about it,” she said, gently, scanning the others. Her gaze lingered on Sammy and his mother. “It must be a little . . . frightening.”
“Frightening?” Evelyn asked.
“I mean, whoever did it must live on the island, right? And to have a killer right near you . . .” Heidi shuddered and huddled into Joel’s embrace again. “I’d be worried.”
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