Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery)

by Hamilton, Victoria

  “Jaymie, we’re taking this slowly, I know, but . . . are you still interested? In me? In us? I don’t want to be anyone’s safe choice, or second choice.”

  She felt a shudder pass through him, and looked up into his questioning eyes, partially hidden behind his glinting lenses. “Where is this coming from, Daniel? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” He was silent for a moment, squinting off to the horizon. “I just need a little security, I guess.”

  “Security? What, like a guarantee? There are no guarantees in life; you know that.” She could see by his expression that she had not reassured him; nor did she really intend to. She wasn’t sure of her own feelings yet, and couldn’t promise anything. “You’ve never struck me as insecure.”

  “I care more now, I guess. And when I heard that you had dinner with that cop . . .” He shrugged and gazed down into her eyes. “I’ve just got a feeling, I guess. Promise me you don’t . . . don’t have feelings for him?”

  Uh-oh. How to put this without lying, hurting his feelings, or ruining everything that was so good between them? “I explained why I ended up having dinner with Zack. He’s just a casual acquaintance, Daniel, nothing more. Honest. He asked me to have dinner with him another night, and I said no. Would I do that if I was interested in him?”

  “He asked you to have dinner? Doesn’t he know we’re dating? Why would he do that?”

  His panicked tone suggested she had gone wrong. Why was he focusing on the one part of the statement that wasn’t important? She sighed in exasperation. “Daniel, I said no! He’s just new in town and doesn’t have a lot of friends, that’s all.” Why on earth was she having to reassure him about Zack’s nonexistent feelings? Surely that was the least important part of it all. It was what she felt and did that was important! She pulled away from Daniel. “We talked, and were friendly, but nothing more. Honest.”

  The ferry chugged up to the dock and several people disembarked. Daniel looked torn, but finally said, “I guess I’d better get going. Just ignore what I said, Jaymie. I was just . . . I think I’m going a little crazy, with Mom and Dad here.” He kissed her quickly, ran to the ferry and hopped aboard, waving at her from the railing as it chugged over to Queensville.

  She stood and watched as the ferry disappeared into the dark, then appeared again by the lights of the Queensville dock as it approached shore. Was his sudden insecurity completely about Zack, or something to do with his mother? She clearly did not like Jaymie, and who knew what the woman was saying to him when she wasn’t around? And now she was being paranoid. She was going to cut Daniel some slack and stop obsessing. In a thoughtful mood, she returned to the cottage and leashed Hoppy.

  “C’mon, fella . . . let’s go for a walk. You need to pee and I need to think.”

  She walked through the village part of the island first. Tansy’s Tarts was locked up tight, and Jaymie saw in the windows of the apartment above the unmistakable flickering of a television set. Were her faint suspicions of Sherm just lingering questions? Hard to say. She looped around and walked past the Dobrinskie house, but it was dark. Where had Evelyn and Sammy put her numerous houseguests? She remembered Evelyn’s panicked state in Tansy’s Tarts the morning after the murder; Tansy said she’d help her find vacancies, but if the Dobrinskie family members had come from Canada, they could just as easily stay on the Canadian side of the island.

  She looped around and past the Ice House restaurant, then cut down an alleyway and past a Dumpster, where Hoppy had to stop and sniff. “C’mon, fella. This place reeks of fish.”

  Movement caught her eye, and she saw Garnet stealthily slipping into the back door of his restaurant. Why the secrecy? Or . . . was he just being quiet for some reason? It was odd, but she shook her head and let it go.

  As she walked down toward the marina and dock, though, she pondered the mysterious phone calls and what Lisa, the waitress, had said about the Redmonds’ actions the evening of the murder. Both had been missing for a portion of the evening, it seemed. Both, therefore, had the opportunity to slip out for the necessary length of time to kill Urban Dobrinskie. Ruby had outright said she worried that Garnet had done it. This had to indicate something much more serious between them and the marina owner than an insult to Ruby. Did it have to do with Garnet’s desire to buy the marina? Even that seemed ridiculous. Killing Urban did not assure that Garnet would be able to buy the marina, as had been proven true just recently.

  There had to be something more.

  Little, niggling details, things she had noticed, came back to her. She paused and let Hoppy sniff a light standard. Why was Ruby so camera shy? The woman had positively blanched and skittered away when Jaymie was taking photos, and would not allow herself to be in a picture with the ice chests. Was that normal? Was she really that shy? What could account for that?

  She pressed on, waiting for Hoppy to do his job, plastic bag in hand at the ready. Nothing yet. He was prolonging the walk, as he always did, and would probably not stop to poop until they were on their way back to the cottage. As she walked along the dock, she saw a shadowy figure near the marina office, and realized it was Will Lindsay. “Hey, Will,” she said.

  He yelped and spun around. “Gosh, you scared me, Jaymie!”

  “What are you doing here this late? I thought you were always home by eight?”

  “I just forgot some papers.”

  She pointedly looked at his empty hands.

  “I thought I left them here, but they must be in my home office. That’s what happens when you have two offices; you can never remember where you left things.” He bent over, petted Hoppy, then straightened. “What are you doing . . . catching the last ferry back to town?”

  “No, I’m staying out on the island another couple of nights. Now that the landscaping is done, I need to clean up the cottage. Valetta is coming out to help. And my new patio furniture is coming over tomorrow.”

  “Nice. Well, I told the wifey I’d only be a few minutes, so I’d better get going home.” He strode off whistling, his hands shoved in his shorts pockets.

  “Say, Will? Did you see Ruby down here earlier? Did she catch the ferry over to the mainland?”

  He turned back, frowning, his face illuminated by the security lighting near the marina office. “Ruby Redmond? No. Why?”

  “Just thought I saw her heading for the marina, that’s all.”

  “Nope . . . can’t help you there.” He turned to walk away, but then turned back toward her, with a perplexed frown on his face. “Now, that’s odd. I didn’t see Ruby, but . . .” He shook his head.

  “But what?” she prodded.

  “I thought I saw Garnet. I could be mistaken. I just caught a glimpse, you know, and it is getting dark.”

  “Garnet? Really? How long ago was this?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know . . . twenty minutes, half an hour? Maybe more. Gosh, I’m terrible with time, especially when I’m busy! It was when I got here, and I don’t know how long I’ve been looking for that darned paper. I must be wrong. It was just a quick glance, you know, and then the guy was gone.” He waved one hand in dismissal. “Nah . . . he’d be at the restaurant all evening. Forget I said anything.”

  He headed off, and she led Hoppy down to the dock and sat on a bench, while Hoppy sniffed around and growled. She gave him a little more lead, and he pulled all the way to the end of it.

  The thought that had been in the back of her mind all day as she went about her business came back to her. Who had killed Urban Dobrinskie and dumped him on her property? And why there? It made no sense at all, unless the killer was Evelyn or Sammy Dobrinskie. Sammy, especially, would know about the wheelbarrow and the muck and might think burying him would just make the problem of his father disappear. Was he capable of the coolheadedness necessary to think fast enough to shout, “Get off my property,” making it seem like Garnet was speaking? The more s
he thought about it, the less likely that seemed.

  Something struck her in that moment. She was automatically eliminating Garnet from the pool of folks who committed the murder because of that voice, and her assumption that he had been in his house at that moment, along with her feeling that he wouldn’t plant the body in his own backyard.

  But she really only had Ruby’s word for that. How could Ruby be so sure her brother was in the house? If she shut her bedroom door, she would never know if he crept out. It would be a clever double bluff to yell that phrase, and Garnet was clever; she knew that. She got a weird feeling that crept up her back. Valetta had said there was something “off” about Garnet and Ruby, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She needed to pin her friend down on that feeling, see whether she’d thought of what it was that made her say that.

  “C’mon, Hoppy, let’s get back,” she said, tugging on the leash.

  But the little dog was on the edge of the dock peering down into the water and could not be pulled.

  “Hoppy, come on!”

  He growled, but didn’t obey. It was probably a big fish at the water’s edge. He hated carp, for some strange reason, and would bark ceaselessly at carp, goldfish, suckers, any kind of big, slow fish. What was he glaring at this time?

  She inched to the edge of the dock, and saw something floating, something blue. Blue? Not a fish, then, at least not the kind that frequented the dull waters of the St. Clair. There was too much shadow for the light overhead along the dock to help, so she dropped her dog’s leash, scooted off the edge of the dock near the shore, shed her sandals and waded out, the squishy muck on the bottom of the river oozing up through her toes. She caught hold of the blue cloth, but it was fixed to the dock support. She pulled harder, with Hoppy barking at her from the edge.

  Just then she heard a commotion from up the beach.

  “Ruby!” a voice called. “Ruby, is that you?”

  Jaymie’s stomach lurched, and she grabbed hold of the blue cloth and pulled harder. The figure pulled free and floated toward her. A face moved into the light. “Oh my G—Help! Help me!” Jaymie cried, as she stared down at the body of Ruby Redmond.

  Nineteen

  GARNET REDMOND CAME clumping toward Jaymie, and when he saw who she was holding on to, he cried out in anguish, “Ruby! My God, what happened! Ruby!” He leaped off the edge of the dock, grabbed her up in both arms and carried her to the edge of the river, his shadowy figure appearing and disappearing by the dock lights as he splashed toward shore. Another dog started barking in response to Hoppy’s yapping, and in the distance someone shouted, trying to make it shut up. Jaymie waded ashore behind Garnet. He gently laid his sister on the muddy shore and tilted her head back, trying to breathe into her mouth to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but fumbling. It was a surreal scene, like some waterlogged love scene made even stranger by the fact that they were brother and sister.

  Soon others joined them on the shore in the spill of light from the dock lamps, but one man in shorts and a T-shirt elbowed his way through the crowd. “I’m a doctor; let me through!” Garnet surrendered his spot, and the man knelt by her and began CPR. In two minutes, miracle of miracles, she sputtered and he turned her over, as a rock fell out of her sweater pocket. A gush of water flooded from her and she coughed, choking and gasping.

  Garnet wept with relief, then collapsed to the mucky shore, clutching his sister to his chest. Tears streamed down Jaymie’s face as Zack raced down the beach toward her and Hoppy, who was dancing around her feet, yapped nonstop.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Zack said.

  Jaymie picked up Hoppy as she explained.

  Will Lindsay raced toward Jaymie, too. “What’s going on? What happened to Ruby?”

  As Zack whipped out his cell phone and called for an ambulance, Jaymie quickly told the marina owner about her discovery.

  “Oh my God!” Will whispered, his glance slewing toward Garnet, who held Ruby while the doctor checked her pulse. Tears glimmered in the corners of Will’s eyes. “I was just down here, and I didn’t . . . What happened? How . . . ?” He choked back a sob and pushed his fingers through his hair. “She could have died!”

  “I know. Thank heavens for Hoppy!” Jaymie hugged the pup to her and gave him a kiss. He wriggled, wanting down, so she set him gently on the gravel that lined the approach to the dock.

  “What is going on in this place?” Will said, still staring at Garnet.

  The marina owner then joined a knot of curious, chattering onlookers, while Zack directed a local, who was one of the township’s volunteer firemen, to fire up his motor boat and take Garnet and Ruby over to Queensville. The fireman was a trained paramedic, but the doctor who had revived Ruby insisted on going along. The detective then strode off and made another cell phone call, as an ambulance roared up to the dock on the Queensville side, along with a police car.

  Zack walked back toward Jaymie, still talking on his cell phone, then clicked it off.

  “What could have happened? How did Ruby get down almost under the dock?” Jaymie shivered, the night air cool on her wet skin. Hoppy whined at her feet, and she picked him up again, cradling him to her as she retrieved her sandals and slipped them on.

  “I don’t know,” Zack said, “but I am sure going to find out. And you are going to stay put and tell me everything that happened.”

  He supervised the moving of Ruby onto the boat, and clapped Garnet on the shoulder, saying something to him. Garnet looked around and spotted Jaymie; he tossed her a set of keys and called out, “Can you tell the staff at the Ice House what’s going on—not everything; make something up—and lock up the cottage for me? I . . . I don’t know what else to say!” His patrician face held a look of confusion and agony.

  “Don’t worry, Garnet. I’ll take care of it.” Even as she said that she wondered, should she be telling Zack immediately what Will said about thinking he saw Garnet on the dock earlier, and her witnessing him sneaking into the restaurant? Ruby was safe in the protective embrace of the law and the paramedics, but Jaymie would have to tell Zack what she had heard and seen.

  The crowd abated, walking away from the marina in groups, heads together, telling and retelling all the known and unknown details. Will began to walk away, but Jaymie called out to him, “Hold on, Will!” She jogged over to him. “I think you should tell Zack that you saw Garnet earlier, down on the dock.”

  His face was shadowed, but she could see his dismay.

  “Look, Jaymie, I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but . . . I don’t think it was Garnet I saw. It can’t have been! You saw how he was; his sister is the most important person in the world to him. If you’re thinking he did anything to her, you’re dead wrong!”

  “Look, I know you’re friends, but . . .”

  “I imagined it, okay? Just drop it!” He whirled and stalked away.

  She watched him go. She understood his reluctance to implicate a friend in any kind of wrongdoing, but Ruby was his friend, too. Wasn’t it best to let the police sort it out? Her mind was in turmoil, and she was caught in a dilemma.

  When Zack was done on his cell phone, and the ambulance left the dock on the other side, he came over to her and said, “Let’s talk.” He took her arm and guided her to a bench on the gravel approach to the dock.

  But she was too anxious to sit, and so she paced, as Hoppy sat and watched her. She told the detective, minute by minute, exactly what happened. Kicking at a sizable rock that sat on the smooth beach almost where Ruby had lain, she finally finished her story and looked up at the detective. “There’s one more thing I have to tell you,” she said.

  He was alerted by her tone and watched her. She sat down beside him.

  “While I was down here, Will Lindsay was just coming out of his office. He asked me if I had seen Garnet. He said he thought he saw Garnet down by the dock, but then, just no
w, he said he couldn’t swear to it, and he was clearly upset. I think he did see him—in fact, it felt like he may have been more sure now, not less sure—but he’s afraid you’ll think Garnet did something to his sister.” She told him what she saw, too, Garnet sneaking into the back door of his own restaurant.

  “Excuse me for a minute.” He walked a ways away and pulled out his cell phone, making a quick call, no doubt to police headquarters. He came back and sat down. “Thanks for being honest, Jaymie. I appreciate it.”

  “I couldn’t handle it if I didn’t say something and anything happened. But I just can’t believe Garnet could have done that to his sister. They’re so close!” She paused and looked off toward Queensville, the Victorian-style lampposts lining the walkway across the river invisible except for the faint glowing blobs of yellowy light in the humid night air. “How the heck did Ruby end up in the water?” she muttered. “I just don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Zack said, rising. “But before the night is out, I intend to.”

  As he strode away, no doubt headed for a sleepless night, Jaymie walked to the restaurant. Her little dog was getting weary, so she carried Hoppy in just to the cash desk where Margaret, the bar manager, stood tallying the night’s receipts. Jaymie had known Marg for years from her high school days working part-time at the Queensville Inn, where the older woman had been the housekeeping manager.

  “Marg, can I talk to you outside?” Jaymie asked.

  She locked up the cash desk and followed Jaymie out to the board sidewalk, their heels clattering and echoing in the quiet night. They stood in the lemony pool of light cast by the restaurant’s outdoor bug lamps. “What’s up, hon?” Marg asked, her whisky voice gruff, but soothing. “You look upset.” She reached out and scruffed Hoppy’s chin whiskers.