Valetta never saw a mug she didn’t love, so she had over a hundred. Valetta’s proclaimed, Caffeine . . . my drug of choice. Jaymie’s said, I wish this was wine. There was truth to these mugs.
“Really, Jaymie . . . I’m serious. What were you thinking? I mean . . . buttoning your lip?”
“I looked like an idiot.” She put her head in her arms on the Arborite tabletop. “I know it’s only ten thirty, but I’m so tired. I’d better get home before Hoppy decides he’s bedding down here tonight.” She sat back up. The little guy was looking very sleepy, leaning against Valetta’s avocado green retro stove, blinking up at them.
“Oh, relax. It’s not like he’s a Great Dane that you can’t carry. So . . . who do you think did it?”
Jaymie took the question seriously. It wasn’t her first rodeo, after all. Too many times she had been the one to find a body alone, and she was just grateful that this time she had company. “I keep wondering about Isolde. If she’s missing, is she dead? If she isn’t dead, did she kill Theo? I think I would, if I had to listen to him much.”
“I know he is . . . was . . . a pill, but there’s a lid for every pot.”
“That’s something my grandmother would say. The guy had a way of ticking people off. Like Dick Schuster. And Prentiss Dumpe.”
“Everything ticks Prentiss Dumpe off. I always thought he medicated half the people he saw as a psychiatrist just so he didn’t have to listen to their problems.” Valetta shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said that. Strike it off the record, please.”
“Done,” Jaymie said promptly. Valetta must be tired, too, because she never commented on the doctors or their patients for whom she dispensed drugs. Jaymie watched her older friend curiously, in the dim light that illuminated the counter work area. Valetta had curly, graying hair and wore thick glasses. She dressed in odd kitten-emblazoned sweaters and quilt work, and even granny square vests, the very image of a maiden aunt, as she was to William and Eva, Brock’s two kids. And yet she had a quirky, hilarious sense of humor and a steel-trap mind. She never forgot anything, which was handy in her job as Queensville’s pharmacist.
“Where is Isolde?” Jaymie fretted, working at a ragged flap of skin by her fingernail. “Why did she text me? Or did she text me? And if she didn’t, who has her phone?”
“All good questions,” Valetta said. “But you shouldn’t be worrying about that. What can we do? The police are on the case.”
Good advice, except Valetta was almost as snoopy as Jaymie.
“How about I come over first thing tomorrow and tell you what’s up, if I’ve heard anything?”
“Good idea,” Jaymie said. Valetta was news central in Queensville; if anything was buzzing, she would hear about it first.
“I’m giving you and Hoppy a ride home,” Valetta said. “And no arguing!”
Jaymie was too tired to argue and went along meekly. She, Hoppy and Denver retired to bed immediately, but not to sleep, at least not for Jaymie. The detective had kept her phone, and Jaymie wondered if Daniel was trying to reach her. She’d have to call him tomorrow. She lay on her bed staring straight up at the ceiling while Hoppy on one side and Denver on the other slept soundly, pinning her like a mummy within her blankets. Questions whirled through Jaymie’s brain.
Who killed Theo Carson? And why? Immediately she could think of several folks who might be ticked off at the writer.
Dick Schuster had virtually accused Carson of stealing work and publishing it as his own. What did he mean by that? And was the theft egregious enough that Schuster would be murderously angry? Wasn’t that the kind of thing that, if it was true, Schuster would sue over? And when Jaymie gave Schuster the opportunity to spill his guts, why did he not do so?
Prentiss Dumpe. He didn’t really have any reason to do Carson in, did he? Not as far as she knew, but if there was anything Jaymie had learned in the last few months, it was that motives were like fault lines . . . invisible to the naked eye and only coming to the surface when there was an upheaval.
Cynthia Turbridge; now there was someone who really had a reason to wish ill on Theo Carson. Heaven knew, Jaymie had felt like doing Joel in on more than one occasion after he dumped her. But at the meeting Cynthia had said only that Carson was a jerk; still, she seemed like an emotional basket case over him, though, so who could tell? The elegant, calm yoga instructor obviously had a passionate nature. That could lead to murder. Jaymie shook her head . . . not Cynthia. It just wasn’t possible.
And then there was Isolde Rasmussen. Where was she? If she was not another victim—and Jaymie hoped she was not—could she possibly be the killer? Cynthia had called Isolde a barracuda and said she was ambitious, only hanging on to Theo Carson because he could benefit her career. Jaymie had heard from Nan how ambitious and persistent she was, too, but why did Cynthia think that? She’d have to ask her next chance she got.
Hoppy sighed, groaned and turned in a couple of circles. Denver woke up, grumbled and swatted across Jaymie at the little dog.
“You two get along. Denver, behave.” The tabby grumbled some more, turned around a couple of times like Hoppy had, flopped his tail over his face and went back to sleep.
Jaymie closed her eyes and tried to sleep, too, but all she saw was poor Theo’s eyes staring, no life in them, the spark gone. She had thought a lot about life and death in the last few months, and it always came down to the same thing: no one had the right to end another’s life, except in the defense of their own. And even then . . . paranoid delusions of a perceived threat did not make an adequate defense, or so she wished, anyway.
She must have fallen asleep at some point. Pounding on the back door and Hoppy scrambling off the bed, barking his little head off, awoke her with a start. Brilliant day had dawned, and Jaymie staggered from bed feeling like she had only been asleep for ten minutes, not several hours. When Jaymie got to the kitchen Hoppy was clambering around the back door barking and yipping.
“Jaymie open up!”
It was Valetta. But when Jaymie did open the door she was not expecting the sight that greeted her. Her friend was propping up a sagging and weeping Isolde Rasmussen.
“What’s going on?” Jaymie cried, dashing forward onto the summer porch and taking Isolde up under her other arm, helping her through the summer porch and into the sunny kitchen.
“I was coming over to have coffee with you and I found Isolde in your back lane, crying,” Valetta said.
Isolde, her beautiful blue eyes rimmed in smeared makeup, looked up and cried, “He’s dead, isn’t he? Oh, God, he’s dead!”
Nine
AS VALETTA CALLED 911 on Jaymie’s home phone, Jaymie sat Isolde down at the table, got a blanket around the chilled and shivering woman, then crouched down beside her. She was a mess, her blond hair full of dirt and tangles, her eyes glazed, her skin pale and smeared with dirt.
“What happened to you?” Jaymie asked. “Where have you been?”
Isolde covered her eyes and wept into her hands, muttering incoherently. It sounded like she was telling what happened, but Jaymie could understand only one word in ten, so “dark,” “scared,” “noise” and “hit” stood out, but nothing more.
“Tell them to hurry!” Jaymie said over her shoulder, feeling helpless. “I don’t know what to do!”
Valetta asked the 911 operator what to do for her, and then passed on the information that keeping her warm was important and they could give her some water if she seemed dehydrated. Jaymie filled a glass from the tap and set it in front of the other woman, then wrapped her own housecoat around her shoulders and crouched down at her side again. “Isolde, why did you text me? What did you find at the house?”
She dropped her hands and stared at Jaymie. “I . . . I d-didn’t text you,” she moaned, shivering uncontrollably.
“But I got a text from your phone telling me to come to Dumpe Manor, that you’d fou
nd something important.”
It was as if a veil dropped over the clear blue of her eyes, and she glanced off sideways, then back at Jaymie, all frankness gone. “I didn’t text you, Jaymie, you’ve got to believe me.”
“What happened, then? Where is your phone? And how did you get in the alley behind my home?”
Isolde was silent for a moment, apparently lost in thought as the sound of sirens filled the frigid November morning air.
“Isolde, what happened?” Jaymie asked urgently.
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“You must know something! What did you do? Where did you go?”
Her shivering had subsided. She pulled the blanket closer around her and sat up straighter. “Theo was at my apartment. We had dinner and fooled around. I was almost asleep on the couch, but when he tried to sneak out of my place and ditch me, I f-followed him.”
Odd . . . very odd. “Why did he try to ditch you?”
“There was something in Dumpe Manor that he wanted,” she said, frowning down at the floor, her forehead pinched into wrinkles.
“You don’t have any idea what it is?”
She hesitated, but then said, “I thought it might be this Dumpe family manuscript that tells the truth, or so I’ve heard.”
“The truth about what specifically? The old Nazi sympathizer rumors?”
Isolde shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. Theo said once that ‘they’ were keeping it away from him. I asked who ‘they’ were, but he wouldn’t say. And then he started looking for something in the house. I’m just guessing, but . . .” She shrugged, then shivered again.
It was logical. Jaymie tucked the blanket around her more closely, as she watched Isolde’s face. She had a feeling the woman was being evasive. Jaymie knelt on the floor by Isolde and looked up into her blue eyes. “So you followed him to the house . . . and then what?” she prompted.
The sirens had stopped, and Valetta headed toward the front of the house to meet the paramedics, giving Jaymie one long look over her shoulder before leaving the kitchen.
Isolde didn’t answer, so Jaymie asked again. “What did you see?”
“Nothing. I . . .” She frowned down at her hands, then took a drink of water.
“Do you know what happened to Theo? You must, because you said he’s dead. Did you see what happened? Did you see who did it?”
She shook her head.
Jaymie changed her approach; anything to get the woman talking, because Jaymie needed to know who had committed the brutal murder. Start with something easy, but quickly! “Isolde, how did you and Theo get into the house the other night, when I brought the Hoosier?”
“S-someone . . . uh . . . loaned Theo a key.”
“But who?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Are you sure you didn’t see anything last night?”
Isolde shook her head again and sobbed into her hands for a long moment as the sound of the paramedics coming through the house and a police officer loudly asking Valetta what was going on echoed down the hall. Hoppy bounced around, barking and growling and complicating their progress.
“Look, I don’t know what happened, honestly!” Isolde finally said, her voice quavering. “I drove up the road and parked. I didn’t see Theo’s car, but he parked behind the garage once when we went to the house, I don’t know why. As I walked up the lane I saw someone being attacked. I thought it was Theo, but I wasn’t sure.” Her voice broke, and she sobbed into her hands. She took a deep breath, looked at Jaymie, then away, and said, “Then s-someone grabbed me from behind. I was stuck in the car trunk and left there for hours, while they drove somewhere and left the car. I was s-so scared. And it got cold . . . bitterly cold!
“I tried to get out, but I couldn’t make the trunk release latch work. I passed out or fell asleep, then this morning the car started up again, and I was dumped at the end of this back lane with a paper bag over my head and the ties around my wrists cut. I was staggering along the alley, trying to clear my head, when Valetta found me.” She looked down at Jaymie. “That’s all I know,” she said, her blue eyes wide.
There was more, Jaymie could tell, but the police officer and paramedics came in just then, and chaos reigned. It wasn’t her job to ask the questions, she knew, but the need to understand what she had become a witness to was like an itch. However, now that Isolde was in police hands, she would possibly never find out what really happened.
An hour later the police were gone and Isolde was, too, taken to the hospital for observation, though aside from some bruising and minor scrapes she seemed fine. Isolde had babbled much the same story as she had told Jaymie to the police officer, who then went out to cordon off the lane and initiate a search. Valetta headed off to church.
Jaymie went upstairs to her home office, a tiny little closet of a room on the second floor, to check that her blog entry for the day had launched in the middle of the night like it was supposed to. She glanced out the window at the back lane and watched for a moment; Bernie was one of the officers and she called another officer over to where she was searching. It looked like she had found something. Jaymie longed to know what it was, but knew she shouldn’t jeopardize Bernie’s career by presuming on their friendship and asking.
She went back to her computer and checked the Wolverhampton Howler online edition. Jaymie’s article on the heritage society meeting was published, but it was a note in the comments section that attracted Jaymie’s attention. Along with the usual grousing about wasteful spending—not applicable because the heritage society was a privately funded group—and the standard “who cares about history” gripe, there was one anonymous note that said something interesting.
It stated, Y was Yago Dump seen exiting the manner from an upstares window? What was he doing their?
Translated, the informant was saying that Iago Dumpe was seen coming out of Dumpe Manor from an upstairs window, and asking why. Well, if it was true, Jaymie wanted to know why, too, and she emailed Haskell Lockland with the link, asking him if he had heard anything about that, and should they be doing anything?
She then stared at the comment; it just didn’t seem quite right. The misspellings, especially of Iago’s name, and the use of Y for why just seemed . . . She shook her head and squinted at the screen. It felt deliberate. Planned. She shut down the computer, puzzled.
It was Sunday. She had a free day and knew Bill was to have finished painting the kitchen at the manor house the day before. She was anxious to see the color, and even more anxious to get the Hoosier in place and see it in the context of the room. The Dickens Days promotion was important to her, as was the whole Christmas season and what it meant to the kitchen at Dumpe Manor. Her deadline to have the kitchen ready was Thanksgiving, just a couple of weeks away.
But would she be able to get into the house, given what had happened there? She took a deep breath and pulled on a heavy sweater. She let Hoppy out to the backyard, where he proceeded to bounce in his endearingly wobbly manner down the pathway to the back gate, as Jaymie followed. She unlatched the gate and strolled down the lane to where Bernie was in her patrol car typing notes on a laptop. As Hoppy sniffed every fencepost and piddled on some, leaving peemail for his buddies and enemies alike, Jaymie tentatively approached the police car and tapped on the window.
Bernie hit the button and the window lowered. “How you doing?” she asked Jaymie.
“I’m okay, all things considered.”
“Those ‘things’ being your remarkable ability to scout out dead bodies?”
“You make it sound like a bad thing,” Jaymie said with a rueful smile. Hoppy bounded over to Trip Findley’s yard. He had his gate open and was piling leaves in some paper leaf bags, so her Yorkie-Poo trotted over and started dashing about in the leaves, staggering and falling into them as the senior laughed.
“I was wonderi
ng . . . I want to go to the house today and check on my kitchen paint, but is it going to be open? I mean, will I be let in?”
“Let me check,” Bernie said. She put up her window and radioed the station, then let the window back down again. “You can go,” she said. “The house has been cleared by detectives and is open, though the actual site outside is still cordoned off.”
“Good. I appreciate it.” She paused. “Does that mean they don’t think Theo ever went inside?”
“Detectives don’t confide in officers,” Bernie said with a grimace. “Anyway, you can go ahead and get moving on the kitchen. I know how important it is to you.” The young woman eyed her for a moment, her dark eyes clouded by questions. “Jaymie, what do you think is going on? Despite what Detective Vestry thinks about you, you do have a really good track record for figuring things out.”
Jaymie straightened and looked off into the distance, as a wind whipped the treetops into a frenzy, a shower of the last gold and red leaves fluttering on the breeze. It was not a good feeling to learn that the detective didn’t have much use for her, but it wasn’t surprising, she supposed. The snoopy local villager was a common interference in the mystery novels she sometimes read.
“I think someone either didn’t want Theo Carson to find whatever they thought was hidden, or they lured him out there under the pretense of knowing something about what was in the house in order to kill him.” She pondered that, staring off at the tossing treetops. “He was fanatical about finding whatever it was, and maybe it made him act carelessly, or he frightened somebody for some reason.”
She looked back down at Bernie, who was listening intently. “Mind you, I don’t know if there actually is any mysterious ‘thing’ that people seem to believe is secreted away in Dumpe Manor, but it’s all tied up together.” She explained what she had heard about the alleged manuscript revealing all the Dumpe family secrets and the Sultan’s Eye that Mrs. Frump and Mrs. Bellwood were looking for.
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