Victoria Hamilton - Vintage Kitchen 04 - No Mallets Intended

by Victoria Hamilton

  She shook her head, frowning. “I don’t know. We never spoke of specifics. He just said he knew what was going on.”

  Jaymie watched her for a moment. “I think I’ve found out all I can here. The police have been through carefully; if there were any clues they would have found and removed them. Why don’t you go back to the bed-and-breakfast for a rest? Take the phone back with you and call the police; tell them how you found it and give them everything, even the envelope.”

  “I will. It will give me a chance to talk to the police chief again. Maybe he’ll know more.”

  Mrs. Carson was exhausted and trembling with sadness. Jaymie took the tablet away with her, not sure how to tell Theo’s mother that it was possibly stolen. She wanted to check with Valetta first anyway, though, before calling the police about it. For all she knew, Brock had lent the tablet to Theo. She made sure the room was locked back up and they left.

  Jaymie drove Mrs. Carson’s car and delivered the disconsolate woman back into Pam Driscoll’s nurturing care. Pam even told Mrs. Carson that when the time came, she’d be happy to help pack up her son’s belongings. Jaymie returned home and let Hoppy out into the chilly November air. Haskell had left a message on her phone that the system was in place and armed, so the house should now be safe from intruders, as he put it.

  Jaymie sat on the summer porch and read through the information about the alarm system as the sun sank in the west, a ball of red, leaving a glow over everything. She needed to know exactly what to do to set the system, since she fully intended to be there a lot in the next two weeks, alone or with others. Once she read the information through, she felt she understood. She hoped she understood.

  Restless and consumed by what she had been thinking and talking about every day for the last while, she grabbed the cordless and made a phone call. Isolde was at work—that was where she had been hurrying when she left Jaymie’s home earlier—but between tours of Wolverhampton Historical Museum, when Jaymie called.

  “Can we talk?” Jaymie asked.

  “About what?” the woman said, her tone odd.

  “About the information you wanted from Theo, the information he wouldn’t give you.”

  There was silence on the other end, but finally Isolde said, her voice trembling with conviction, “Have you been snooping through my emails? How did you do that? I had nothing to do with Theo’s death, you know. I swear it. But I think I know who did.”

  Jaymie felt fear knot in her stomach. “Who?”

  “As if I’d tell you! You’ll hog all the glory. I’m going to get something out of this if it kills me.”

  The knot wrenched. “You need to go to the police, Isolde. Don’t mess around with this. If you have information—”

  “No way. They’re not going to get the identity of the killer until I find a way to get Theo’s notebooks.”

  “His notebooks? Why?” Jaymie scanned her brain, trying to imagine any place in his room that she had missed, any place that could conceal notebooks.

  “He knew something about stuff going down at Dumpe Manor.”

  Jaymie thought for a long minute. “You mean the will? Or having to do with the family?” She thought, but didn’t say, the cache of stolen goods? “What exactly are you talking about?”

  “The will? What will? What are you talking about?” Isolde said.

  Jaymie shook her head and stared at her phone. “Isolde, can we meet and talk? Come over here. We need to clear the air.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll feed you!” she offered.

  There was still silence on the other end. But finally Isolde said, “No. I am not sharing this information, especially with you. Look, I’m working, I gotta go.”

  “Isolde, wait!” But it was too late. The line was dead. Jaymie sat down at the kitchen table and considered what the woman had said. Theo had known about what was going down at Dumpe Manor. What did that even mean?

  The stolen goods in the attic and root cellar—didn’t that have to be what he was talking about? That part of the mystery didn’t seem to jibe with what she knew of Theo, but what if it was about that all along? What if that was how he got Brock’s tablet… it was stolen property! And what if whoever was using the place as a handy drop-off for stolen goods decided Theo Carson was getting too darn snoopy for his own good?

  She grabbed the phone and called Valetta.

  “What’s up, kiddo? I gotta hurry… I’m just locking up now and I have to go to Brock’s to babysit tonight.”

  “I won’t keep you. Maybe if you see Brock tonight you can ask him about a tablet.”

  “A tablet? What, drugs?”

  “No! You know… a tablet computer. Did he have one? Does he still have it?”

  “I don’t need to ask him… he’s been complaining about it. It was stolen from his car a couple of weeks ago.”

  • • •

  WHAT TO DO? How to figure this out? There were too many questions and so few answers. Jaymie paced to her kitchen window and looked out at the descending sun. There was nothing left out in the root cellar now, she knew. Everything had been confiscated by the police, and Iago was being watched carefully. She was certain he was the thief who was storing the stolen goods in the Dumpe Manor attic and the root cellar, but that didn’t mean he was Theo’s killer.

  It was still light enough that she could take another look around. There were things clattering around in her brain and maybe a drive would blow out the cobwebs and help her think. She was beginning to have a sense that Isolde was more involved than she let on. The police chief’s questions about where she actually was and what she had truly seen the night of the murder left Jaymie unnerved.

  A wind had come up and now battered at her back window. Denver grumbled and turned around in his little bed by the stove, while Hoppy climbed in with him. For once the cat didn’t growl, but actually let him curl up, too, in the warmest spot in the house.

  Michigan, where you can get four seasons in one day, Jaymie thought. Of course, didn’t almost everyone say that about their own weather? There was the old joke about if you didn’t like the weather, just wait ten minutes, and she had heard it from Ontarians, Minnesotans and Michiganians. This day, which had started sunny, was quickly turning into an old Gordon Lightfoot song, with the gales of November battering on her back door.

  She realized she had already made the decision to do some more snooping. She briefly thought of Daniel’s admonition not to go out alone. It wasn’t that she didn’t think there was danger out there in the real world, it was just that she was not going to be cowed into hiding in her home without a big strong man to take care of her. If she got in trouble she’d figure a way out of it or pay the consequences; she would not be reckless, but she would not be intimidated, either. People took calculated risks every day; some called it fun, jumping from airplanes, riding horses, scuba diving, parasailing.

  Jaymie snooped.

  It was too windy and too cold to walk, though, so she’d take the van out to the house.

  She loved how her house looked in fall. She looked it over as she unlocked her van, parked in the back alley by the garage. There was still a light on in the kitchen and it glowed, making the house seem a warm, inviting place. The grass was still green, and the holly bushes along the fence that bordered her property and the bed-and-breakfast struck a festive note for the season that was still a few weeks away. She paused, thinking, did she really want to go out in the cold and wind that night? Why not just make some cocoa and sit in the parlor with a good book?

  However… how would she concentrate on even the best book with all this stuff hanging over her head? She needed answers. They may not be found at the historic house, but it was as good a place as any to start looking. She got in, gunned her engine and headed down the lane to the road out of town, away from the river.

  As she drove, she pondered the random thin
gs that were troubling her. Where had Isolde’s cell phone come from? The packaging was neat and so was the writing on the envelope, tidy block letters with no embellishment. The package had been mailed from the post office in Marine City and… Marine City. Like a weird echo in her mind, she heard Jewel saying, about their Monday buying trip and stop in Marine City, “Cynthia had to mail something or other, so I went to an antique store…”

  Had to mail something… but how did she get Isolde’s cell phone?

  Jaymie pulled up in front of Dumpe Manor and sat staring at the road. If she could still safely assume that Cynthia Turbridge was not the culprit, there was only one answer: the cell phone had been in her car. Finding it would have terrified Cynthia. The knowledge of that lost night, the fear that she had done something horrendous: that would have driven her to conceal her discovery, to just mail it where she thought it might be found.

  However, if she was guilty she might still do the same thing, just to get the cell phone out of her possession. She shook her head; surely if she had murdered Theo, then found Isolde’s cell phone in her car, she would just have dropped it in a Dumpster out of town, not mailed it to Theo’s address. Before she went home Jaymie thought she’d take a little side trip to Cynthia’s to get the truth out of her.

  She pulled up the lane and regarded the house, bathed in the slanting light of November sunset. It got dark so early now; she had forgotten how early. One minute the sun hung low in the sky, and the next it was dark. Why was she even here? She sat staring at the house, looking up to the peak and thinking about the security expert who had installed the alarm system. He had told her that the ways into the house were various, and a locked door was not going to stop a break-in. Nothing could stop someone determined to break in, and even a security system was only as good as the people who used it. He had strenuously advised against giving out the entry methods and codes to too many people, saying it defeated the purpose.

  But Lockland was equally certain that every member of the society should have access to the house if they hoped to get it up and running on time. Jaymie had read the pamphlet thoroughly, and thought she understood how the security panel worked, but would Imogene Frump or Mrs. Bellwood get it?

  She went back to the problem at hand: who had killed Theo Carson? It all came down to why the author was at the house that night, and who had texted Jaymie to come out as well. Isolde had claimed not to know who took her cell phone, but the most obvious answer was Theo, and that would answer Jaymie’s puzzlement over him going to the house alone, when he had seemed so adamant against that. He hadn’t intended to be out there alone. He had figured on getting Jaymie there with a text supposedly from Isolde.

  Everyone thought she was a snoop, and he must have bought into that. He certainly implied it in their conversation at the meeting. But why did he want her there? She tapped the steering wheel. He was looking for something, and she had a knack for finding things. Ergo, he had hoped to appeal to her famous snoopiness. Maybe he intended to confide in her and ask for her help. Isolde had seemed certain that Jaymie had sought and purposely found the valuable letter back in the spring, even though it had been pure dumb luck.

  But then… why had he ended up dead? Someone hadn’t wanted him in the house searching it. It could be because of the stolen goods, but those were hidden pretty well. It would take a determined snoop with a lot of time to find those totes, the few that were left. No, it was… her eyes widened. It was all about the spurious will. Theo might find it, and he was exactly the wrong person. Not wanting to be caught snooping, he could just destroy it, or take it away with him.

  If that was true, then this all came down to Prentiss Dumpe. He wanted the will discovered in a controlled manner by the right person; he must have been keeping an eye on the house. He didn’t like or trust Theo, and so figured Theo, feeling the same about him, would destroy the will because it benefited Prentiss. She remembered something, suddenly… an antacid wrapper in the garage when she had searched it, and Prentiss munching on candy from a roll at the heritage society meeting. He had broken into the garage and was hanging around there, watching the house, waiting until someone discovered the will. In fact, he had likely put it in the kitchen cabinet because of Jaymie’s vaunted sleuthing skills and habit of finding things. He intended to use her supposed skills to bolster his claim to the house.

  He probably thought it would be funny if she was the one to help him establish his claim.

  Headlights flashed in her rearview mirror as a car pulled in behind her. Momentarily blinded, she felt a frisson of fear as the car stopped and was turned off. Someone got out and strolled up to the driver’s side of her van. She tensed, but the face that appeared was Dick Schuster’s. He motioned for her to roll down her window.

  She hesitated, but he was talking, so she rolled it down. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  He came closer. “I wanted to apologize!”

  “For what?”

  “For earlier in the store. I was upset. I get wound up and…” He shook his head and looked down at the ground.

  “You didn’t really think I was accusing you of murder, did you?” she asked.

  He looked back up, and his eyes were gleaming with tears. “I don’t know. It’s been such an awful time. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing everything. You don’t know what it’s like to go through a divorce, and then, when people start accusing you of being a weirdo…” He shrugged.

  “Who’s accusing you of being a weirdo?” she asked.

  “Oh, just everyone,” he said, his small mouth twisting in bitterness. “It’s all Prentiss’s fault.”

  Jaymie eyed him. He looked so forlorn, she did feel sorry for him. “I’ve heard that he was your therapist for a while.”

  “Not a very good one. I’d better get going.” He turned away.

  Jaymie debated with herself, but made a hasty decision. “Wait, Dick! Hold on.” She got out of the van and chased after him. He knew Prentiss Dumpe better than she did, and maybe he could help her figure out if the man really was the murderer of Theo Carson, as Jaymie was becoming convinced, or if she was wrong.

  He stopped and turned, a frown on his face. “What is it?” He had his cell phone in hand and looked back down, hitting numbers and letters on the keypad.

  How to ask? “I don’t know Dr. Dumpe very well, but he strikes me as being a deceptive person. Is that true, in your experience?”

  Schuster trembled slightly. “I think he is probably the most vile person I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.”

  “I heard he caused problems with your wife.”

  The man froze, his eyeglasses glimmering in the slanting sunlight, concealing his eyes. “Who told you that?”

  “I… don’t remember.”

  A car passed on the road. Schuster sighed. “My wife and I had problems even before Prentiss, but he sure didn’t help. Anyway, I gotta go.”

  “Wait!” She scrambled to think of what she wanted to know, now that she had him there. There was only one thing, really. “This is important, Dick. Do you think Prentiss Dumpe could have killed Theo Carson?”

  Schuster’s eyes widened. “Do you think so?”

  It almost sounded like hope in his voice, but he didn’t seem to have an opinion. Well, it was a faint hope anyway. “I don’t know. I guess I’d better go do what I came here to do.”

  “What was that?”

  She hesitated, then said, “I wanted to be sure the security system is armed and working right. Just worried about it, I guess, with all the problems we’ve been having.”

  “I’ll let you get to it, then,” he said, and he retreated to his car, cell phone out again.

  Jaymie headed up to the house and climbed the stairs. There should be a small LED light in the sidelight window if the system was armed correctly. Because of the sheer number of people who would be going in and out, the security expert fe
lt it best to make sure there was a way for those who understood the system to be able to tell at a glance that it was working, but it was information that was going to be limited to herself, Haskell Lockland and Bill Waterman.

  It wasn’t there. From what she understood from the literature, there were two possibilities. If the power was out, then the system would go on battery power and the “armed” light would be the first energy-saving sacrifice. Or… it could just be that whoever had been in the house last—even Haskell—may not have correctly armed the system. She sighed and got out her key. There was only one way to find out which it was. If it was the latter she would need to jump through the hoops detailed in the pamphlet.

  She let herself in and turned on the hall light, as the security alarm began to beep. There was no beautiful burst of light from the pendant, though. She flicked it up and down. Nothing. So, that definitely explained the lack of a light; the wind had taken the power out. It wouldn’t be the first time, but the power generally came back on within a half hour.

  She needed to input the security code, now that she had unlocked the door, or the alarm would sound at the offices of Wolverhampton Security. Darn it! It was starting to get dark, the combination of early sunset and a gloomy sky causing a more complete duskiness than was usual for that time of day. She peered at the keypad, very faintly illuminated from the backup battery power.

  A bang startled her and she jumped, her heart pounding as the alarm system kept up its steady beep-beep-beep. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come out here. She just needed to disarm the system, rearm it and leave. Luckily, Connor had recommended an extended entry delay time to give older and vision-challenged society members time to punch in the number; she had four minutes, and she might need every second. She could barely see the keypad. A flashlight would help; she had one in the glove box of her van. She’d get her cell phone at the same time to call Connor and make sure she was doing things right. She headed toward the front door, stumbling a little as she tripped on a rug, and ran into a solid wall. A solid wall that smelled of sweat and grunted in anger. Jaymie righted herself and stared directly at the shadowy face of Prentiss Dumpe. “Prentiss! What are you doing here?”