It was irritating that she just didn’t know, and she was no closer to knowing than she was the night of the murder. It was creepy, knowing there was a murderer out there. Garnet and/or Ruby could not be the guilty parties. They were just too sane. But if that was true, then what did Ruby mean when she said to her brother, “I didn’t mean to do it”? The logical solution to her puzzlement was to just ask the woman, and she would do just that.
But first she needed to go back and handle Sammy. The boy was drawing something on a clipboard when she joined him behind the house, after confining Hoppy to the cottage. She didn’t want her exuberant three-legged Yorkie-Poo lurching around the mucky work site.
Putting herself in Sammy’s shoes, she empathized with how overwhelming everything must seem for him at that moment. “You okay, Sam?” she asked, watching his face.
He nodded, but didn’t answer. His lower lip trembled, and huge tears welled in his eyes, splashing down on the clipboard.
“Come and sit,” Jaymie said, grabbing his arm and tugging him to the steps up to the deck. “If this is a bad day and you want to go home, it’s okay. I should never have expected you to do this, not while . . . not while you’re grieving.” She took the clipboard from his quivering grasp and set it aside. She then pushed him to sit, and sat on the step beside him. “Talk to me, Sam.”
“I just . . . I looked down at that field of dirt, and I thought, that’s where my dad died.” His shoulders shook and he buried his face in his hands.
“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” Jaymie said, gently. She rubbed his shoulder.
Just then, Daniel came around the corner of the cottage and approached the deck. His expression sobered when he saw the teenager sitting by Jaymie. “Hey, guys. Did I come at a bad time?”
Jaymie said, “No, it’s okay. Sam, this is Daniel Collins, my . . . my boyfriend.”
Daniel caught her hesitation and eyed her, gravely.
“You’re Sam Dobrinskie, right? I’m so sorry. I heard about your loss.” He stuck out his hand, and the teenager took it and shook. “I know how you feel . . . well, kinda. I lost my dad when I was younger than you. It hurt bad.”
“You lost your dad?” Jaymie asked, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
He met her gaze and said, “Roger Collins married my mom three years after dad was killed. I took his name. He’s been a great father to me.”
How did she not know this about him? She stared at Daniel, her head swimming. What else didn’t she know?
“Thanks,” Sammy said. “It’s just . . .” He waved a hand helplessly over the ridged dirt of the backyard. “This was where he died. I’ve managed to shut it out until now, but . . . it’s hitting me how awful it is.”
“But he didn’t die here,” Jaymie blurted out, then wished she had kept her mouth shut.
“What?” Daniel gazed at her in astonishment. “How do you know that?”
“Did that cop tell you that?” Sammy demanded. “That detective who was here this morning?”
“Zack was on his way past the cottage, jogging, and stopped to talk,” Jaymie explained to Daniel, then turned back to Sammy, so she didn’t have to see the questions in Daniel’s eyes. “No, he didn’t tell me anything. I figured that out on my own.” She explained how she knew, citing the sand in the boot treads as proof. “If your father had been killed here, there would have been mud in the boot treads, not sand.”
The information had helped; she could see that as she regarded Sammy’s face. He was relieved, and heaved a deep breath, steadying himself as he looked out over the dirt gully. “So . . . where was he killed? And why bring him here?”
Those were questions she couldn’t answer. “Your mom said you were at a sleepover that night. Were you?”
Daniel flashed her a questioning look, but Sammy answered without hesitation or guile. “Nah, I was home. I don’t know why she said what she did. I was in my room on my computer.”
“Did your dad come home at any point?”
“I think so.” He squinted toward the Redmonds’ place, across the gully. “I heard him and Mom argue; then he left, and I think Mom . . .” His eyes widened and he shook his head. With sudden energy he stood, shifting his baggy cut-off shorts. “Look, if we’re going to do this stuff, we need to get at it.”
Had he been about to say that his mom followed his dad that night? Jaymie wondered. She tried to figure out a way to ask, but how did you ask a kid to incriminate his mother in his father’s murder? “Sammy, did you, uh, see your mom later that night, or—”
“So, have you got the sod coming?” Sammy asked, grabbing his clipboard and glaring down at it.
Daniel exchanged a glance with Jaymie, behind Sammy’s back, then said, “Yes, it should be coming anytime now. My dad is coming over to help lay it.”
“Then we need to get moving to prepare the site,” Sammy said, hustling off and trudging down to the muddy gully.
“What was that all about?” Daniel asked Jaymie. “Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing? Do you really think his mother killed his father?”
Jaymie shrugged. “I just don’t know. You haven’t met her, Daniel. She’s . . . odd.” She told him about the exchange at the Dobrinskie home. “She’s got to be glad Urban is gone.”
“Don’t bet on it,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Love’s not a fairy tale, Jaymie,” he said, impatiently, shoving his glasses up on his beaky nose and pushing back his sandy hair. “I think you’d better stop reading those romance books. Just because the guy was a jerk sometimes doesn’t mean his wife wanted him dead.”
She bridled. “I know that! Do you think because I read romance novels I’m not realistic about love?”
He regarded her steadily, as the sun peeped above the peak of the house and beamed down on them. “I don’t know what you think.” He turned and joined Sammy and the two began gesturing and planning out the day’s work.
Back at you, buddy, she thought. “I’m not sure I know much about you at all,” she muttered, still wondering how she could not know that Roger Collins was his stepdad. What else hadn’t come up in the two months or so they had been dating?
The day was backbreaking, and the work hot and miserable. Roger Collins did arrive, and he had his new golfing buddies Grant Watson and Jaymie’s dad in tow. With all the turmoil of the past week, Jaymie had not foreseen how much work simply laying the sod would be. Sammy was invaluable. Because he had done his mom’s garden and yard so recently, he knew exactly who to call for estimates on patio stones and water piping for the water feature she still wasn’t sure about. He consulted with the various specialists who arrived to give quotes, and gravely wrote down figures.
Jaymie was glad her father was there, because he could help her make decisions. It was almost noon, and she stood with him in the shade of the copse of trees at the bottom of the gully and looked around. Her brain was mush, the heat having simmered it like a snail in a shell. “What do you think, Dad? Fountain? No fountain? I need to figure this out. Help!”
Sammy joined them, pulling up the bottom edge of his filthy T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
“What’s your vision, son?” Alan Leighton asked, his bluff face red and his sparse white hair standing up in a corona around his head. “You’ve probably spent more time thinking about this than any of us.”
When Sammy began to talk, Jaymie was mesmerized.
“This place,” he said, waving his hand at the grove of alder trees around them, “is like a staging area, you know? You look at everything else from it. But for a minute, picture this spot where we’re standing after a hot day like today, a stone terrace here, some nice furniture, and the splashing water from a fountain. Did you know that even the sound of running water cools people off? It’s, like, psychological.”
The way he said it, Jaymie could a
lmost picture the fountain and the stone terrace, a seating area for them and their guests after a hot day on the water or out golfing.
“Now look toward the house.”
Jaymie obeyed, turning toward the back of the cottage on the rise above them, the scruffy wooden deck, which had definitely seen better days, and the PVC patio furniture, which needed to be replaced. She wasn’t sure whether the stuff she had bought at auction would be enough now.
“This fall you could take that deck off the back, and build a two-level stone patio that overlooks the gully. I’d plant some scattered trees along the slope, instead of terracing like the Redmonds have done. If you plant some poplars, you’ll have good fast growth, and soil retention. You’ll have to avoid the leaching bed—you don’t want tree roots interfering with that—but if we mark the perimeter, we should be able to do it. It wouldn’t hurt to give your property some privacy with a copse of evergreens at the far edge.
“Now, if you want to make the patio a covered deck instead, and do a railing,” he continued, “you might even be able to put an outdoor heater on it and rent the cottage out in fall, right up to Christmas. You’re close to the river, and some folks come to Queensville for Dickens Days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
“Wow. You’ve given us a lot to think about, Sam. You seem to have thought this through,” Jaymie marveled, examining the teenager. He had chosen the right profession.
Her dad said, “It’s about time we invested in this old place, don’t you think, hon?” He put his arm over Jaymie’s shoulder and squeezed. “Sammy, I was wondering about sound. Can we wire up the patio with speakers?”
The boy’s brown eyes lit up, and he swiped shaggy bangs off his forehead. “That would be off the chain, Mr. Leighton. Do you want me to price it out for you? We can lay the wiring at the same time as laying the waterlines for the fountain. It’ll take an electrician, but if we have one out for the fountain wiring, he could do it at the same time. I know just the guy, and he could do a small job like this in two hours.”
“If you do me the quotes, I’ll be able to make a decision right away.”
“That would be awesome!” He bounced off a ways, and whipped his cell phone out and started making calls.
“Speakers? Dad, are you serious?” Jaymie asked.
“Why not? It’s about time we started fixing this place up.”
A sudden idea twisted her stomach. “You don’t want to sell it, do you?”
“What? No way!” He grabbed her around the waist and squeezed. “I’d never do something like that without consulting you girls first. I just think the old place needs something. Next year we can talk about the inside.”
He trotted off to consult with Roger, Daniel and Grant, leaving Jaymie in the shade, watching the hubbub. She retreated inside, made stacks of sandwiches and wraps for lunch, also cutting the rest of the sandwich loaf into slices, and brought them out with a dozen or so bottles of water and cans of pop. They ate lunch; then everyone went back to the task at hand.
Many hands make light work, it is said, and that turned out to be true. By late afternoon, with Sammy’s excellent direction, the sod was mostly done, and the water, electrical and sound wiring was planned and the trench dug, waiting for the professionals. The last bit of sod would be laid after the wiring was done, and trees and perennial plants to implement Sammy’s vision were to be delivered the next day. Daniel suggested they order dinner in for everyone, and Jaymie suggested they go to the Ice House instead.
Daniel eyed her, with a question in his eyes, but agreed. Jaymie invited Sammy, and he said yes, if he could bring his mom.
Her voice clogged with emotion, Jaymie squeezed his shoulder and said, “Of course. You’re a nice kid, to think of your mom like that.”
He squinted up at the descending sun, the freckles across his nose standing out and the sunlight picking golden highlights out in his sandy hair. His expression serious, he said, “I’m all she’s got now. Dad wasn’t much good, but at least he was someone to look after, you know? She lives for that kind of stuff, cooking and cleaning. That’s why she wants to move to be near me when I go to college next month.”
Jaymie still believed, despite Daniel’s doubt, that Evelyn would enjoy life a lot better now. Her beloved son was able to do what he wanted, and she now had the freedom to take care of him near his college of choice. It had to be better than staying on the island looking after an insufferable ass of a husband, while worrying that her son wasn’t being allowed to pursue his passion. But she wasn’t about to make such a comment. “We’ll meet you and your mom at the restaurant, okay?”
Everyone parted ways to clean up, Daniel, the dads and Jaymie using the cottage. Grant Watson refused the dinner offer. He was going back to the mainland, he said, to find out what trouble his wife, Mimi, and Jaymie’s mom had gotten into. Jaymie called her mom, to see whether she wanted to come over to the island and join them for dinner, but she was taken up with Anna, Tabitha and Anna’s cousin, Pam, and told them to go ahead and have dinner at the Ice House, as long as her husband made the last ferry back.
Jaymie walked Hoppy, then, at about eight, locked him up in the cottage with a bowl of crunchies. The four of them walked down to the marina before heading to the restaurant, where they were going to meet Sammy and his mother. Daniel wanted to show his dad the marina, and he pointed out the path on the Queensville side of the river, where he and Jaymie had watched the July Fourth sailboat race, and where they often walked.
It was a lovely evening. From looking like it was going to storm again, the late-day mugginess had eased off. A breeze now scooted along the river, blowing away the clouds that had been so ominous earlier.
Roger and Jaymie’s dad walked down the pier that cradled the marina. “I want to show Roger the Redmonds’ boat, the Heartbreak Kid,” he called back to his daughter. The Redmond siblings’ boat was gorgeous, all sleek, polished wood and brass. Many people took the walk to admire it, where it sat in the last slip near the ferry dock.
“Sure, you guys go ahead.”
Daniel took her hand and led her to a bench by the marina. “Sit. You look tired.”
They sat for a few minutes, while the sky turned a pinky-orange color to the west, over the rooftops of Queensville.
“Jaymie, I’m sorry about that crack this morning, about romance novels.”
“It bugged me,” she admitted, turning on the bench to look into his brown eyes. “Why does everyone believe that if you read romance novels, you must have your head in the clouds and believe that the world is full of rainbows and unicorns? I’d never make assumptions about someone who . . . I don’t know . . . read spy novels or murder mysteries. I don’t figure that folks who read murder mysteries are bloodthirsty!”
“I know. I was wrong.”
She smiled over at him. One of his many charms was the ability to truly apologize with sincerity and absolutely no irony or subtext. “Forgiven, and it’s forgotten.”
“You have seemed a little distracted lately, though,” he added, his smile dying.
Aha. So maybe he was still brooding about the Zack problem. Her little slip that morning, the hesitation in calling Daniel her boyfriend to Sammy, had not gone unnoticed. “It’s the murder. Finding a body—especially when it’s your third in three months—is upsetting. Am I some kind of trouble magnet all of a sudden?”
“Just bad luck,” he said, rubbing her shoulder.
“There’s something I haven’t told anyone yet,” she said. She felt him stiffen, and looked up at him. His expression was blank, but his posture was stiff. “Why do you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Every time I say anything like I want to talk, or I have something to say, you stiffen up and get this look, like you’re going to be a strong little soldier and not cry.”
“I don’t do that.” He frowned and looked down at he
r. “Do I?”
“You do.”
He rolled his shoulders and moved his neck, as if he was holding tension there. “I guess it’s just a reflex. Whenever Trish would say that, it would mean she was about to drop a bomb. I guess it’s just reflexive.”
“Daniel, your mom said that the trouble with Trish happened five years ago. Are you ever going to get over being dumped? Was she the love of your life or something?” Jaymie was a little exasperated, and it showed in her voice.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No, of course she wasn’t. I didn’t mean to express any doubt, Jaymie. It’s just a word.”
Just a word. Words held meaning, she had always believed, so why should this be any different? “Let’s get going to the restaurant,” Jaymie said, standing. She was being irrational and she knew it. What was wrong with her? As she watched Roger Collins walking back toward them, deep in conversation with her father, she knew what it was.
How could she not even have known Daniel’s natural dad died when he was young? It had thrown her for a loop. It might not be the kind of information you led with—Hi, I’m Daniel Collins and I lost my father at a young age—but it was certainly something that should have come up in the last several months they had been dating. It led her to wonder what else she didn’t know about him. She was an open book, but was he?
She walked toward the fathers, near the marina office. Just then the door to the office flung open. Garnet Redmond stormed out, and shouted back in the door, “I won’t be jerked around, Will. I mean it!” He stomped off toward the stairs that led up to the road above the marina, not even noticing Jaymie and the others.
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