“I don’t see a car,” Jaymie said with a frown, searching the drive and road in front. “Do you know what Isolde drives?”
“Not me. I don’t know her too well, just what I’ve seen at the meetings, and that’s her hanging on Carson’s every word.”
“Maybe she parked somewhere else and walked here, or maybe she’s parked around back of the garage.” The garage—quite large and built in the style of the house—was original, a leftover from the days of horse and wagon, and had once served as the livery stable. Because of that—the horses and attendant noise and smell—it was set a ways back from the house with a circular lane in front of it. “Okay, let’s go in and see what she’s found.”
Jaymie picked Hoppy up and they ascended the steps to the house. Valetta took out her small flashlight and turned it on; the door was locked and there were no lights on anywhere.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Jaymie said, her stomach clenching. “Isolde can’t be in there; there aren’t any lights on in the house. And no vehicle . . . why would she park behind the garage, anyway? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What about the back door?” Valetta said, playing the flashlight beam around the porch and lawn. There was no sign of life at all. “Wasn’t Bill going to be clearing that today so you all could use it for bringing things in the back way?”
“True. I called him about how hard it was to take the Hoosier in last night and he said he’d get right on it,” Jaymie said. Hoppy sniffed the door and whined. It was downright frigid, and a wind was coming up. “Okay, we’ll check the back door, but if we don’t see anything we’re going home.”
They descended the front steps and circled to the back along the walkway Bill had laid, using flagstone, to fill in the dirt path that got muddy every time it rained. The back stoop, unlike the front porch, was only three short steps up because the land ascended toward the back of the property. They came around the corner and headed for the back door that led to the mudroom off the kitchen, and indeed the junk was cleared away. But in the dim posttwilight illumination it was clear there was still something there. What was it? Why had Bill not cleared away everything? He was always so thorough. Jaymie’s bad feeling was growing stronger. Valetta turned her light to play over the stoop.
“It’s a person!” Jaymie cried. Hoppy yipped excitedly. “Isolde?” She dashed forward and tugged at the individual on the steps, but it was not Isolde. It was Theo Carson, and his eyes were wide open. He was very, very dead, his head smashed in, blood across his startled-looking visage and a bloody steel-headed meat mallet lying on the step next to him.
Eight
“YOU ARE BAD luck, Jaymie, I swear!” Valetta muttered, staring at Theo Carson’s dead body by the steady beam of her flashlight.
Jaymie was silent, no words adequate for how awful she felt. He was dead, and there was not a single thing she could do for him. But someone, some murdering jerk, had seen fit to take a mallet to his head, and whoever it was would pay. Seeing a few dead bodies in the recent past had stiffened her backbone and she would not hop around shrieking or lamenting, even though she did feel woozy. She focused on the mallet; it was one she recognized and had handled herself: very heavy, red handled, with a steel head meant for pounding out and tenderizing large slabs of meat.
Despite her determination to stay strong, her stomach roiled. Last time Jaymie had seen the mallet, it had been in the pail in the kitchen with some of the other heavier ones she hadn’t wanted to lug home. How did it get outside, where it had been used against Theo?
“This is awful,” Valetta said, her words muffled by her hands covering her mouth as she stared, then turned away. “I didn’t like the guy, but he didn’t deserve this.”
Hoppy started barking and danced around, then abruptly stopped and began sniffing the ground. Jaymie tugged him away from the stoop. Poor Carson. Nothing could actually prepare you, she decided, for dealing with a life cut short in such a brutal manner.
She dialed 911 on her cell phone and tersely explained the situation as she gazed sadly at the dead man by the light of Valetta’s flashlight, examining his rumpled jacket and jeans, bloodstained from his bleeding head wound. “Yes, I said the weapon appears to be a meat mallet,” she said to the operator. “How do I know? I saw it! See it. Whatever.”
She frowned and stared, focusing on anything but the bloody wound. The jacket was awfully light for evening in November. Had he been assaulted or killed before night fell and the temperature plummeted? Or had he driven there in a warm car, and so had not needed a heavy coat?
But then she looked around, holding the phone away from her as she waited for instructions from the 911 operator. Her stomach twisted with fear. “Valetta, where is Isolde? I got that text from her saying she was at the house, but I haven’t seen her anywhere.”
Valetta’s eyes widened. “Do you think something’s happened to her? Do you think the murderer—Jaymie, tell them to hurry up!”
“Please hurry,” Jaymie said into the phone, her voice breaking. “Valetta, really, though . . . maybe Isolde is inside, hurt, needing help. Should we . . . should we leave Carson? Go inside and look for her?” Jaymie stepped back and looked up at the house, but there were absolutely no lights on. Isolde could not be in that dark house alive, unless she was terrified and cowering somewhere in the shadows.
Hoppy tugged at the leash as Jaymie glanced around. Maybe she was outside, close by. Or was she dead, too? A wave of fear engulfed her, but her concern for Isolde was stronger. “I have to look, to see if Isolde is here and needs help!” Jaymie cried, following Hoppy’s lead and letting his leash reel out of the holder as he took off toward the garage behind the house. “Go find Isolde, Hoppy!”
“Jaymie, Jaymie! Be careful!” Valetta hollered, but then she started hustling after her friend, muttering, “Darn it all. I can’t let you wander off alone with just a three-legged Yorkie-Poo for protection. Wait up! There could be a murderer lurking out there!”
They circled the garage, a structure big enough for several cars. It was dark in the shadows behind the building, so Valetta played her flashlight around the property. The beam was narrow and weak, but there was no car and—thankfully—no Isolde. But there were car traces left in the grass, muddied from rain in the past few days. And Jaymie noticed, as Valetta cast the flashlight beam around, that the back window of the garage was broken.
“When did that happen?” she exclaimed. “One of the committee members would have noticed if they parked their car back here and it was like that. And I know Bill Waterman has been storing some of his tools in the garage . . . he would have noticed the broken glass.”
Valetta stepped closer and hopped up to look in, her superior height a distinct advantage. “There’s nothing inside that I can see,” she said, stepping back.
Just then sirens sounded in the distance and came closer, as a Queensville police cruiser barreled down the road and screeched to a halt in front of the manor. “Police!” a voice called out. “Who’s there? Step into the light with your hands up!”
“I’m the one who called this in,” Jaymie said, stepping into the beam of the headlights, hands up as requested. Hoppy started barking and tugging at the leash again, excited by the police presence.
“Jaymie?” Bernie said. She was one of the two officers responding. “What the heck is going on here?”
“I . . . we—Valetta and I—found Theo Carson. He’s over there. Dead. With a bloody mallet!” The horror rushed over her in a wave, and she picked Hoppy up, cuddling him to her, as Valetta put one arm over her shoulders.
“Good grief,” Bernie said and ordered her fellow officer to check the perimeter of the house, but carefully. “All right . . . okay. Valetta, Jaymie, stand down!” she said, retrieving a flashlight from the car and switching it on. She swept the broad beam around the property and spotted Carson’s body. “You two go and wait by the squad car
until we check things out.”
“Bernie, we’re worried about Isolde!” Jaymie exclaimed, shivering. Rubbing Hoppy’s damp paws. “We came out here because I got a text from her saying she’d found something and I should come see it, but when we got here, she was nowhere in sight.”
“She may be inside or on the property, hurt by whoever did this to poor Theo.” Valetta was as calm as Jaymie on the outside, and probably as torn up inside. “That’s why we were looking behind the garage, but she’s not there!”
“But there is a broken back window in the garage,” Jaymie added.
“Okay. Do either of you have your keys to the house?”
Jaymie handed her set to Bernie as she explained about the back door being newly cleared of junk by Bill Waterman just that day.
“Stay put, both of you,” Bernie warned, “And Hoppy, too! We’ll take care of looking for Isolde.”
Another police car screamed up to the site, along with an ambulance and a volunteer fire department truck, and the scene devolved into what looked like chaos to Jaymie, though she knew better. With Bernie in charge, the perimeter was established and, once they had backup, she and her fellow officers entered the house, guns drawn. Ten minutes later the two exited and Bernie announced the manor was clear. No Isolde inside; no one at all, in fact.
The ambulance left, as did the volunteer firefighters, but more police cars arrived. The site was closed off until the detective, a woman named Angela Vestry—now Detective Vestry, since Zack’s departure—arrived. Then she and the newly hired assistant chief, Captain Deborah Connolly, conferred with the officers in charge, Bernie and her partner.
Jaymie watched with a detached sense of unreality. If she had only stayed away. If she had only ignored the text, or not seen it. But no, then one of the ladies of the heritage committee, like Mabel Bloombury or Mrs. Frump or Mrs. Bellwood, may have found the body. That would have been horrible for whoever it was, and Jaymie had to be happy that she and Valetta, younger and stronger, had been the ones to find Theo Carson. She grimaced at her own chain of thought; Mrs. Stubbs would tell Jaymie that she would pit an older woman against a younger one any day for a strong stomach and acceptance of death.
Her mind turned to poor Theo. Had he been snooping and caught someone trying to break in? Or was there a more sinister explanation, one directed at him, not just anyone who happened to be there?
“I understand you two found the deceased?” the detective asked as she strode toward them. She was a tall woman, fortyish, her hair scraped back into a severe bun and no jewelry or makeup to soften her appearance. Her only accessories were a no-nonsense attitude and a grim expression.
“Yes, I’m Jaymie Leighton, and this is Valetta Nibley.” By the flashing police light on the top of the squad car Jaymie could see how pale Detective Vestry’s skin was, almost translucent.
“I know the detective,” Valetta said, without further comment. As the town’s pharmacist she had dealt with almost everyone, at some point, except for those who preferred to go to the drugstore in Wolverhampton.
“And you say you came out here in response to a message of some sort?” Vestry asked.
“I got a text message from a friend, and she said to come out because she had found something at the manor.” Jaymie was proud of her steady voice and calmness.
Detective Vestry looked down at a small notebook in her hand. “And this friend is Isolde Rasmussen? Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And we’re worried about her,” Valetta said, her voice quavering. She wrapped her arms around herself, keeping her composure, but only with effort, it seemed.
“Our officers are doing a more extensive check of the grounds even now, and it’s entirely possible that she was home or somewhere else when she sent that message,” Detective Vestry said. “Could I see your cell phone, please?” She held out one manicured hand.
Jaymie fumbled for it, and then noticed how her hands were shaking. She was appalled. She had thought she was handling it so well, but as she clicked through the messages, she was getting more and more upset.
“I’d like to just see it, now,” the detective said, snapping her fingers. She plucked the phone from Jaymie’s hand. “I’ll find it myself.” She swiftly scanned through the messages and evidently found what she was looking for. As Jaymie watched, she read it through. “Why did this make you come out here?” she asked, looking up at Jaymie.
“Other than the fact that it asks me to come out here?” Jaymie said, doing her best to keep her tone free of sarcasm.
The detective watched her through narrowed eyes. “You told the officer that you texted Ms. Rasmussen back and even called her, but didn’t get an answer. Why did you come out here, then, if you didn’t get an answer?”
“But . . . well . . . that’s kind of why, don’t you see?” Jaymie hesitated, but then plunged into an explanation of how she and Bernie, in the manor house, had overheard a conversation between Theo and Isolde about something he was looking for, and how she thought Isolde was texting her to come look at it because she was mad at Theo. “I figured she was just busy or that she regretted telling me she’d found something. Bernie can tell you, those two were up to something.”
“Okay, wait!” the detective said, holding up one hand in a “stop” gesture. “So this Bernie . . . am I to understand you’re referring to Officer Bernice Jenkins?”
“Yes. Bernie,” Jaymie said, pointing her out as, with her partner, she wrapped yellow crime scene tape around the big maple tree that was on the far side of the garage. They stretched it all the way to the house, attaching it to the corner that concealed the back stoop from view. “We all were at the same auction and she helped me carry a cabinet into the house.”
“And you both overheard this conversation.”
“Uh-huh.”
The detective eyed Bernie, in the headlight beam, and made a note. “What exactly did you hear?”
Exactly? “Uh . . .” She looked over at Valetta, who was no help at all, since she hadn’t heard it. Her friend shrugged. “Let’s see . . . Bernie and I were carrying the top half of the Hoosier cabinet, and . . .” She saw the look of confusion on the detective’s face and stopped to explain a Hoosier cabinet, then continued. “I heard someone say something like, ‘What was that?’ That was Theo; I recognized his voice right away. Then Isolde said something about him changing the subject.” This was the tricky part. “I, uh, shushed Bernie and moved toward the voices, and Bernie followed me.”
“So you didn’t just speak up and ask what they were doing there. Did they have a right to be on the premises?”
Valetta exchanged a look with Jaymie and said, “Theo could kind of make a case that he had a right to be there, since he was writing a booklet for the heritage society. He apparently had a key, anyway.”
“That’s true,” Jaymie said. Who would have given or lent Carson a key? She’d have to ask around among the society members about that. Her cheeks heated up at the memory of Theo Carson’s “stupid girl” comments. She did not need to humiliate herself with telling the detective that. Hoppy shivered and whined in her arms and she set him down, but kept the leash short. “Anyway, the important part of what I heard was him referring to something he was looking for.”
“But he didn’t say what?” the detective asked, her eyes squinted in suspicion.
“No, he did not say what, even when Isolde asked him, and then someone made a noise and they heard us.” She shot Valetta a look, but her friend was oblivious.
The medical examiner, who had arrived a half hour earlier, strode up to the detective and drew her away to the other side of a cruiser. He was a big man, though, with a booming voice, so even though he pitched it at a murmur, it still carried in the chill night air. “Blunt-force trauma. I’ll know a lot more after the autopsy, but from the bruising I’d say he was attacked, but lived for a few minutes
before the death blow was delivered, and that damn thing near him likely fits the bill. Someone maybe wanted him to tell them something, or wanted him to suffer before he died. Either way, that thing makes a hell of a weapon! What is it, anyway?”
Detective Vestry’s gaze swiveled to Jaymie. “When the 911 was called in, the caller said it was a meat mallet,” she said.
“Meat mallet! That’s a new one. I guess he did, didn’t he?”
“What?”
“Meet the mallet.” The ME boomed with laughter. “That’s a good one! He did meet the mallet!” He strode off down the lane toward his car, haw-hawing all the way.
The detective came back to them and said, “I guess you overheard that, right?”
“That Theo was attacked some time before he was killed. Yes, I heard,” Jaymie replied.
“Keep it to yourself.”
Bernie’s partner came to the detective just then and took her aside, whispering into her ear. She nodded and patted him on the shoulder. “Good job, Trewent,” she said and sent him on his way. She then turned back to Jaymie and Valetta. “What was I saying? Oh, yes. I would appreciate it if you kept the details of this case to yourself for the next while. I know how difficult that is in a town like this,” she said, eyeing Valetta, whom everyone knew as a gossip but who was really a lot more closemouthed than anyone suspected. She finished by saying, “It is imperative to the investigation that we have a chance to interview folks without the details being part of the villagers’ common knowledge.”
Stiffly, Jaymie replied, “I won’t breathe a word, and neither will Valetta. Despite what you may think, we both know how to keep a secret.” Then she did something—she didn’t know why—that she hadn’t done since she was a child. She buttoned her lip and threw away the key.
• • •
“WHAT WERE YOU thinking?” Valetta asked later, as they sat in her kitchen drinking tea from two of her odd assortment of jokey mugs.
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