“We never used to lock our doors at night,” Will said. “But we do now! My wife, Barb, is really upset.”
“I can’t believe I was so close to it all,” Jaymie said. “It scares the heck out of me.” She glanced between Sammy and his mom; Evelyn had gone even paler, and looked about ready to faint. “I’m sorry . . . We’re discussing all of this, and you . . .” She shook her head. “You’re still suffering the shock and loss. You were probably sleeping soundly in your bed, that night, not knowing what was going on.”
“Sammy was at a sleepover with his pals that night!” Evelyn said, her gaze defiant.
Hmmm, odd reaction. Unless Evelyn thought Jaymie was implying Sammy may have committed the murder. Was the sleepover story true? The boy had glanced at his mother with a furrowed brow.
“So you were all alone?” she asked Evelyn point-blank. “Was Urban at home and left? Or did he get any phone calls or anything that evening?”
There was a kind of collective gasp.
“Jaymie!” Joel said, giving her a disgusted look.
Okay, maybe she had gone too far in her consuming need to find out what had happened in her backyard that night. “I mean, that must be hard to remember,” Jaymie added, glancing around, “that you were alone when . . .” There was no way to continue that; she had boxed herself in, and Evelyn Dobrinskie would be within her right to ask her to leave. “I’m sorry,” Jaymie said, surprised by her emotion, her voice thick. How did cops do it, probe open wounds, expose people’s raw emotions, without getting tangled up in them? “It’s been a really difficult time, finding Urban like . . . like I did, but even more so for you, Evelyn, Sammy. I’m so sorry.”
Heidi put one hand on her arm. Jaymie glanced at her, grateful for her supportive gesture.
“You’ve had your share of dead bodies,” Evelyn said, her voice brittle. Her chin went up, in a combative expression. “Sherm says you’re a regular Jessica Fletcher.”
Will stared at Evelyn, his eyes wide. He had probably never seen his partner’s wife so outspoken as she had been today. How the worm had turned! “I, uh, have to go,” he said, standing and looking around at the rest of them. “I’ve gotta . . . do some things.”
“It must be a busy time, with no partner to help run the day–to-day business. Robin told me that Garnet Redmond is buying out the Dobrinskies’ share of the marina,” Jaymie said.
“He’s talking about it,” Will said, cautiously, glancing over at Evelyn. “We don’t know if that’s what Evelyn and Sammy want yet. I don’t want them to rush into anything. I really gotta go. I’ve got a customer coming to look at a boat.”
“Not the Sea Urchin, though, right?” Joel said, standing and thrusting out his hand.
“Nope. You guys and Sammy have a deal on that. We can’t do the paperwork until the will is probated, but as soon as that happens, I’ll let you know.” Will shook his hand, and said to Evelyn, “I’ll let myself out, okay?”
Joel turned to Jaymie and said, “We ought to leave these people be, and let them get back to . . . to whatever.”
“Sammy,” Jaymie said, turning to the teenager. “I like your sketches and plans, and we—my family and I—would like to work on it with you. My dad thinks it would be a good investment. Robin said he can spare you to work for a few days on the landscaping. Do you want to do that? I mean, I’ll understand if you don’t.” Given that his father had died right there, and that she had been a bit aggressive with his mother, it seemed even odds that he would turn down the work.
He exchanged a glance with his mom, who nodded, and he turned back to her. “I’d like to help. Will I be able to take photos along the way, so I can make a project out of it when I get to school?”
“Absolutely!” Jaymie said, sighing with relief. “You can take as many photos as you want.”
She trailed out after Joel and Heidi, lugging her shopping bag and accompanied by Sammy. Evelyn stayed behind, gathering glasses onto a tray. Sammy scooted ahead of them, guided them around the side of the house, and let them out a gate. Jaymie was wondering, all the while, about Evelyn’s assertion that Sammy was at a “sleepover.” Surely a guy in his late teens didn’t still do “sleepovers”? But maybe she meant he was hanging out at a friend’s place, and sacked out on his couch.
Or was that what he told his mother? Who knew her job site better than Sammy, who had been working on it for Robin? At that moment, something else occurred to her, and she stopped stock-still on the sloping lane. She eyed the teenager, as he talked to Joel and Heidi.
Means, motive, opportunity.
Who knew the plumbing job site, where Urban’s body was found? Robin, Garnet, Ruby and Sammy.
Who would gain from Urban’s death? Evelyn, Garnet (indirectly, if he was cheating in the sailing race) and Sammy.
And who had opportunity? Garnet and Ruby, if they were working together, but otherwise it would be risky for either of them to go it alone. Evelyn, if she was alone, as she appeared to be, but then there was the problem of knowing the site. And Sammy.
A terrible idea occurred to her. Had the intention been to bury Urban in her backyard, in the mud of the leaching field? Sammy would have known they were not finished yet, but he may have intended to bury Urban in a part of the site that would not be disturbed by the work. Was he interrupted midplan?
Sammy was the common thread, it seemed, among those with a motive to want Urban Dobrinskie dead, and those who had the means and opportunity. She thought of all the famous cases of the last twenty years of sons killing their fathers in a fit of rage, or sometimes coldly calculated fury. Abuse was a common thread in those trials, and she had an eyewitness account that Sammy was his father’s victim, in that sense.
It was more important than ever to find out what Sammy was up to that night, and the only way to do that was to get him to talk. As Heidi and Joel finalized their plans with the kid, Jaymie approached and said, “So, Sam, if I clear it with Robin, can you start tomorrow morning? My boyfriend is calling the company that provides him with sod, to see if they can bring it over here, but I should have asked first if you knew any suppliers that served the island.”
“Sure, I’d be happy to start tomorrow. There aren’t any sod suppliers on the island. If you want to use my plans, we’ll need to take measurements first, and then I can tell you how much you’ll need.” He seemed surer of himself away from his mother, more confident already, with his father out of his life.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Jaymie said about the measurements, stricken by how much work this could turn out to be. What had she pictured? She had just thought she’d sod over the whole area and be done with it, a couple of hours, and presto, a new lawn. “Can you swing by later to do that? I need to call my dad and boyfriend to see what’s going on, on their end.”
“Sure.”
Sammy walked back to the marina with Joel and Heidi. He had agreed to take them out, with Will’s help, to see how the Sea Urchin worked. As they walked away, Joel was enthusing about her “clean lines,” and asking about the shrouds, and Sammy was just listening, his shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets.
Jaymie returned to the cottage even more confused about the murder, and the possible guilty parties. She unpacked the bag and put the enamelware in the sink to wash. While Hoppy noisily ate a bowl of crunchies, she made a cup of tea and some phone calls. First, Valetta.
“Hey, kiddo, what’s up?” Valetta said.
Jaymie related the details of her afternoon, then asked, “So, what do you think? Is Sammy Dobrinskie even capable of killing his dad?”
“Now, you know my thoughts on that,” Valetta said. She had often asserted her belief that anyone could commit murder, given the right circumstances. “I don’t know the Dobrinskies that well, but Sammy has always seemed such a quiet kid, to me. He’s babysat for Brock a couple of times.”
Brock Nibley was a widower
and the proud father of two kids Jaymie nicknamed Evil and Wicked. Their real names were Eva and William.
“I’m trying to figure out how the ice pick—if it’s the murder weapon—got from the bar into Urban Dobrinskie if the murderer wasn’t Ruby or Garnet.”
“Do you know for sure it was the murder weapon?”
“No, and that’s the frustrating part. Detective Zack won’t say. Guess I can’t blame him for that. But he acted kind of weird when I saw him today. I asked a few questions about the murder, and he got huffy and walked away.”
“Hmm. Huffy in what way?”
Jaymie described what happened.
“Maybe just for once you should try talking to him as a friend. He probably doesn’t know that many people here, and he’s lonely. Don’t tackle him with murder questions every time you see him.”
Jaymie thought about it for a long minute. “He wasn’t in work clothes. I guess it wasn’t fair to attack him with work-related questions in his off time.”
“Heidi may be right about him. He does seem to like you. A lot.”
“Uh, no! She’s way off base about that.”
“Okay. Well, you know best. Hey, do you need a hand getting things ready for the family dinner at the cottage, with everything else you’ve got going on?”
“Maybe,” Jaymie said. “Look, you want to paint that back room of yours this fall, right? Well, I’ll trade you help with that, for some work here.”
“Agreed. No landscaping, though, and no mud.”
Jaymie laughed. “Interior work only. Now I just have to convince Daniel’s mother that having the dinner out here won’t be a dangerous event. She and my mom are driving me nuts.”
“What about a compromise?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to get to the whole time, but nobody is going along with me. I wonder what I can offer her?”
“What does she want?”
Gloomily, Jaymie said, “Good question. For Daniel to break up with me, it seems. I can’t do anything right for her, nor can my mother. What does she want? Complete control?”
“Doesn’t every woman want control? Give her a little, and see if it helps.”
“But that just puts her in charge, and we end up having dinner at Stowe House!” Jaymie wailed. “I don’t know where this thing with Daniel is going, but if it’s long-term, I think giving in to his mom is a bad precedent.”
“I don’t mean give up total control. You just have to make it look like you are. Let her handle some key part of it so you can do what you want for the rest. Make a deal.”
Thinking about it for a long moment, Jaymie said, “Like, if I said she could choose the menu, as long as we hold the dinner at Rose Tree Cottage.”
“Now you’re thinking!”
“Valetta, you’re a lifesaver. But I gotta go and arrange for sod and backbreaking work, if we’re going to be able to do that.”
She called Daniel, who said that he had spoken to the supplier who provided his landscaping needs, and they could indeed supply sod to the island. She told him she’d call him with the amount, once Sammy told her, and then she asked to speak to his mother.
“Why?” he asked.
Taken aback, she said, “Why not?”
“Okay. Uh, I’ll get her.”
“Thank you.”
When Debbie Collins came on the line, Jaymie made polite chitchat for a minute, then said, “Mrs. Collins, I have a proposition for you. If you will agree to come to the Leighton family dinner at Rose Tree Cottage on Heartbreak Island, I will be pleased if you would help me plan the menu. Daniel has said what a wonderful cook you are, and I’d be happy to have the help.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “All right. But why don’t you let me take care of all the food? You just worry about getting the cottage ready, and I’ll plan the menu and cook.”
Jaymie held her breath for a moment. Was she making a mistake? Their dinner had always been corn on the cob, ribs and salads. But surely that was pretty much what Mrs. Collins would plan, knowing this was a summer dinner. And did it matter what they ate? The most important detail for her and her family was upholding tradition by having the meal at Rose Tree Cottage.
Her own mom had too much on her plate, with helping Anna and other assorted activities, and truth be told, she wasn’t really much of a cook anyway. Jaymie had been looking forward to investigating some old recipes and trying them, but with all the landscaping to do yet . . . She made a sudden decision. “Great. Do we have a deal?”
“Absolutely. I’ll put Daniel back on, dear.”
Dear?
“What did you say to her?” Daniel said, his tone full of awe. “She looks like the cat that swallowed a canary.”
Uh-oh. “Is that a good thing?”
“If you knew my mother really well, you might not think so.”
She told him what she had done. “It’s all in the name of compromise, right?”
“Well, that ought to be okay. Call me when you find out the sod requirements, and we’ll get to work.”
The moment she hung up, Sammy called and said he was on his way over. Ten minutes later they were standing on the slope of her backyard, and he had out his measuring tape, a heavy industrial-looking affair. He directed her with all the confidence of an accomplished landscaper, and she thought how well he was going to do in his life’s work. But this blossoming of confidence . . . had it required Urban Dobrinskie’s death to bring it to fruition? And which of them was more likely the culprit, he or his mother?
“Sammy, I really am sorry about your father,” she said, as he sat on the deck writing down some figures.
He did some quick sums and looked up. “Don’t worry about it.” His tanned face set in a hard expression. “He tried to ruin my life, you know, like I was never good enough to be his son. Well, he can’t ruin it now.” He bent his head back down, did a final sum and ripped off a piece of paper. “This is how much sod you need. I’ll be back first thing tomorrow to start working on the landscaping, okay?”
In an instant he was back to looking like the thoughtful seventeen-year-old young man she knew him as; gone was the hard and sullen boy. It was like a persona that flickered on and off.
“Okay. See you tomorrow.”
Fourteen
SHE PIDDLED AROUND for a while, still trying to write her bio for the newspaper, wretchedly aware that it wasn’t going at all well. She needed to send the article to Nan, and soon, but she wanted to look it over one more time, make sure it was as good as she could make it. It was difficult to focus when all she could think about was that a murder had happened in her backyard. It was bad enough that she’d been caught up in that at her Queensville home—she had just gotten over feeling squeamish about the summer porch from the incident in May—and now it had happened out here. Was she some kind of doom magnet? It was disturbing. If it kept happening, the villagers would gather and it would be pitchforks or the river for her.
But while her mother was resident in the Queensville house, the cottage was still her preferred nest, despite the horrid happening. Now that she had her bathroom privileges back, she could drink tea to her heart’s content. For her supper she was about to use the recipe that she was writing about for the article, a “sandwich loaf” in miniature.
A sandwich loaf was an amazing fifties concoction that was served at bridal showers, picnics, club luncheons and the like. It looked pretty (in the old photos she had seen, anyway) but might be a challenge to make. She took a whole loaf of bread, sliced it into four pieces with three long horizontal slices, then filled it with three sandwich fillings. She chose ham salad, egg salad and, for the center, cream cheese with chopped olives. When it was stacked, she frosted the whole with some thinned cream cheese colored pale pink. Standing back from the table she thought how pretty it looked, like a loaf cake; she finished it with a decoratio
n of olive “flowers” and parsley leaves on the top.
Before consuming it she needed to photograph it, so she took it out to the front porch, and set up a vignette with her Adirondack chair, a side table, and a frosty glass of lemonade with a cocktail umbrella in it. She tucked some pink roses from the vine that climbed the front porch into a mason jar, and set it on the little table, then carefully sliced the sandwich loaf and laid two pretty striped pieces on one of the enamelware plates, leaving the rest on a decorative tray. The blue siding of her cottage made a lovely background for the blue and white enamelware dishes, and the pink roses picked up the posies in the middle of the dishes. She hoped this was going to be good enough. She took several photos from different angles, moving things around, trying to find an arrangement that she liked.
After a couple of slices of the sandwich loaf for supper, she wrapped the remainder, put it in the fridge, and wrote the rest of the article in longhand. It was simple enough once she got going. Then she took a mug of tea out onto the front porch, sitting with her feet up on the porch railing, as Hoppy settled in next to her, with a contented doggie sigh. The sun sank behind Queensville, and the trees across the road from the cottage took on that brilliant green glow that comes from slanting sunlight.
Closing her eyes, she put her head back, trying to let go of the anxiety that spiraled through her, making her antsy and uncomfortable. Heartbreak Island had always been, to her, a peaceful place, despite the dramatic name and its history as the center of a tug-of-war between nations that finally ended in a peaceful resolution, and the splitting of the island in two. But maybe she just hadn’t spent enough time at the cottage lately to notice all the tensions and anger that swirled around among the islanders. The Dobrinskie marriage, so full of violence, and the hard-nosed competition between Urban Dobrinskie and the Redmonds were examples. Urban seemed like the kind of guy who was the center of a lot of controversy.
But what had contributed to it was the gossipy nature of such a closed environment. Everybody seemed to belong to the same clubs and go to the same places. Sherm Woodrow had wasted no time in passing on to Urban what he had heard about Garnet and Ruby buying a sail from overseas, one that was against regatta rules. But who had told Sherm that? Jaymie couldn’t remember whether he had mentioned where the information came from. She opened her eyes and watched the last rays of the slanting sunset gild the trees.
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