“I agree with Daniel,” Becca said. “Let the police do what they need to do.”
Jaymie looked toward her sister with surprise, she who just hours before had been so contrary with Detective Christian. She decided to let it slide. “Okay. All right. Fine.” No promises, though. She’d do what she wanted.
Conversation turned to other topics. Dee and Becca went inside to prepare a treat, butterscotch pecan cookies and Dee’s homemade ice cream, served in vintage crystal champagne saucers that Jaymie liked to use for dessert. What was the point of nice things if you never used them?
When Jaymie strolled over to tempt Hoppy away from the fence, where he was whining at Dipsy Poodle, Heidi followed her, a troubled expression on her pale, pretty face.
“Jaymie, can I talk to you for a moment?” She plunked down in the grass and extended her tanned legs, leaning back on her hands.
Jaymie sat down by her, cross-legged, and snapped her fingers, trying to get Hoppy’s attention. “What’s up?” Heidi wasn’t often so serious. Her perpetual expression seemed to be a sunny smile.
“I got to thinking about it, and…well, actually, Joel seems to think I wasn’t sensitive to your feelings yesterday, the way I told you about us getting married.”
That was Joel, censoring his girlfriend again. He needed to constantly “fix” the women in his life, critiquing their mannerisms and vocabularies, their ways of interacting with other people. Why had Jaymie put up with him for so long? And why, oh why, had she ever imagined she was in love with him? Every little detail she learned of his behavior toward Heidi was another step on the road to recovering from their failed relationship. “Don’t you worry about that,” Jaymie said, holding Heidi’s gaze. “You were understandably happy and excited. Don’t let anyone, least of all Joel, dampen that.”
Tears welled in Heidi’s eyes. She reached out and pulled Jaymie into an unexpected hug. “Thank you. You are just the sweetest…why did Joel ever leave you? I don’t understand.”
“Well, he had you,” Jaymie pointed out, bluntly, pulling away. She had never intended to become Heidi’s “bestest friend.”
“Oh. Right.”
Dee, her eyes wide with curiosity, brought them each a bowl of ice cream and a cookie, and Jaymie smiled up at her reassuringly. She trotted back to the group and whispered to Becca, then settled down to eat. Jaymie scooped up some of the ice cream with the cookie as Heidi delicately spooned some into her mouth, then set the dish aside. Hoppy trotted over and polished off her deserted dessert, cookie and all, while Dipsy barked from the other side of the fence.
“Heidi, if we’re being honest, why do you put up with Joel?” Jaymie asked, setting her empty bowl down in the grass. “He can be a great guy, but he’s so critical. Doesn’t that drive you nuts?”
“But he’s usually right,” she said, drawing her knees up and hugging them. “I can be thoughtless. I never realized how screwed up my whole family was until I came to Queensville to live. My daddy treated me like I was the center of the universe, you know? When he wasn’t working, that is. And he was usually working. But suddenly he’d notice me, and then it would be a lavish birthday party, and a cruise and new clothes. A pony that I was afraid of. A trip to Switzerland.” She sighed and rested her chin on her knees. “I hate skiing.”
Poor little rich girl. “There are good things about being wealthy, Heidi.”
“I guess. I don’t have to work.”
“That wasn’t actually one of the good things I was thinking of.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Jaymie remembered something from the day before. “When you and Joel were coming along the path yesterday, you stopped and talked to Craig and Kathy. I didn’t even know you knew them.”
Heidi colored faintly, her cheeks tinged with pink, and looked away. “Um, well, Joel uses Craig at tax time, and…”
“Go on,” Jaymie said, puzzled by Heidi’s sudden reticence.
After a long pause, Heidi said, softly, “Kathy kind of made friends with me when I first came to Queensville and Joel and I got together. No one else would talk to me, but Kathy was really nice. They had us over to dinner and everything.”
Jaymie didn’t say anything. She was not going to hurt Heidi by saying that Kathy likely befriended her because she perceived her to be Jaymie’s enemy. The girl’s next words showed that such a comment was unnecessary.
Heidi said, “I know why she talked to me, why she went out of her way when no one else would give me the time of day, but Kathy had a nice side. I know you may not—”
“No, I get that. Really, I do. I only experienced one side of Kathy in the last few years, but we were friends once, and she was a nice girl.”
“I feel so bad about what happened to her,” Heidi said, with a sniffle. “I guess that’s why I’m so emotional today. I just feel bad about…about still being happy.”
Jaymie filed away the thought that Joel had made it seem like he didn’t know Craig and Kathy beyond retaining Craig as an accountant, but they had been to the Coopers’ home for dinner. That indicated a social relationship beyond what he was admitting to. “No matter what Joel says, Heidi, you are not insensitive. Don’t ever let him make you doubt yourself.” She paused, then went on, “You know, you might be able to help me.”
“Really? How?”
Becca and Dee were still eyeing her and Heidi as they sat together talking, and even Valetta was watching them. Joel was too busy bending Daniel’s ear about something to notice.
“Heidi, let’s take Hoppy for an after-dinner walk.”
They both jumped up, and Jaymie took their bowls into the kitchen and grabbed Hoppy’s leash, and they took off down the walkway to the back gate. Once they were out on the lane, Jaymie introduced Heidi to Trip Findley, her elderly but fit neighbor, whose property was behind theirs on the same back lane. Just back from his evening stroll, he lingered and flirted a little with Heidi, who giggled, then Jaymie turned toward the river and they proceeded.
“So, what did Kathy say to you yesterday?” Jaymie asked.
“Well, she congratulated me on the engagement.” She thought for a moment. “Nothing else, really.”
Jaymie was disappointed. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for; anything at all, she supposed, that would give her some indication of who else Kathy had angered lately, or threatened. Anything to point the investigation away from herself. The streets were quiet, the shops on Main were all closed and only a few folks strolled by on their evening walks. Mrs. Imogene Frump, working in her garden on her prizewinning roses, eyed them as they passed. Then, as Jaymie waved to her, she waved back and hobbled into her house as quickly as her arthritic hip and artificial knees would take her. Jaymie figured it would be all over the Queensville “telegraph system”—a string of geriatric gossips—that Jaymie Leighton had lost her mind and befriended the girl who’d stolen her boyfriend away.
The inhabited portion of the town dwindled as they approached the parkland that lined the river. It was time for some hard facts. “Heidi, because of the tension between Kathy and I and the public squabble we had yesterday and the fact that the weapon used to kill poor Kathy was my stupid bowl, I’m a suspect in her murder.”
“Oh no!” Heidi exclaimed, turning toward her. “You wouldn’t hurt a fly!”
“I know that, and you know that. All my friends know that. But it doesn’t look good, so I want the police to find out who did it quickly.” She paused, then added, “For her family’s sake, too. I can’t imagine how they feel right now.”
“Poor Kylie is devastated.”
“Do you know Kylie well?”
“Not really. But she must be, right?”
“What about Kathy? If you spent time with her, did she ever mention anything in relation to anyone who had threatened her, or with whom she had trouble?”
Heidi shrugged. “Maybe Joel will remember something.”
Not likely. Joel was pretty self-absorbed and rarely noticed anything not relating to himself. So Heidi
would not be a fount of helpful information. It was disappointing, but okay; the real reason Jaymie had wanted to go on this walk had been to have a look at the area again, to try to figure out if she had missed anything. Heidi wasn’t the ideal companion, but no one else would have wanted to do this tonight, and Jaymie didn’t want to wait.
Heidi shivered and rubbed her arms. “I should have brought a sweater.”
A sweater? In July? “Do you want to go back?”
“Oh no! It’s okay.”
Heidi was thin, one of those girls with small bones and a petite frame. Not that Jaymie was gargantuan, but she was well rounded and curvy, especially after six months of testing recipes. Jaymie climbed the sloped grass to the railed path overlooking the river. A few sailboats were just heading into the marina for the evening.
They strolled down the walk, stopping often for Hoppy to examine every post of the railing, until they came to the very spot where Jaymie and Becca had been sitting. “Are you sure that when you stopped to talk, all Kathy said was congratulations on your engagement?”
Heidi frowned. “I think so. Let’s see, Craig was talking to Joel, I talked to Kathy briefly…nope. Nothing else.”
Jaymie sank into thought, recreating moments during the day, random comments that had puzzled her and still did. Something was nagging at her, some sound or sight that she hadn’t processed yet. What was it? Something around the time she was looking for Connor’s mom for him.
If she was going to figure out who did this and get herself off the hook—yes, the police had a better chance of figuring it out, but she hadn’t done half bad the last time, when she had sniffed out the killer of Trevor Standish—then she needed to organize her thoughts and write down all the random bits and pieces of stuff to follow up on. The day before had been confusing and busy and upsetting, the ideal situation in which to get away with murder.
As Jaymie saw it, there were two possibilities: either the murder had been planned to take advantage of the crowd and the confusion, or it had been a spur-of-the-moment crime necessitated by something Kathy was either going to do or say. Of the two, the second seemed more likely, given that the killer could not count on finding a weapon like her heavy glass bowl handy.
As sad as it seemed, Kylie certainly had a motive, given that, from what Jaymie understood, Kathy intended to try to get custody of her nephew, Connor. That meant Andy Walker had a motive, too. It would have been a lot harder to see his grandson if Connor were in Kathy’s custody and they moved out of state. But there were other suspects. The husband was always a possibility, but as far as she knew, Craig and Kathy had a normal, imperfect but reasonably healthy marriage. She needed to find out more about that. Johnny Stanko was a great candidate; he had a hair-trigger temper, and had squabbled with Kathy just hours before her death. Valetta might not want to admit it, but he was also the last one who’d had the bowl…as far as she knew.
“How far are we going?” Heidi asked. She looked tired already, and cold.
Jaymie sighed. Heidi was not a great partner in crime fighting. Ideally, a coconspirator ought to be as curious as Jaymie was, and as energetic. That description fit more than one person in her circle of friends, but the absolute epitome of it was Valetta. She’d remember that the next time she wanted to snoop around. “I want to go as far as the public washroom.” Hoppy eagerly tugged at the leash, wobbling on, nose to the ground. He had the energy and curiosity of a Jack Russell in the body of a Yorkie-Poo.
Twilight was gathering, but Jaymie could still see well enough. The crime-scene tape fluttered morosely from a post by the washroom and a nearby light standard, with a long strand of it wound around the railing by the river. Jaymie picked her way closer, examining the ground. She hoped Heidi wouldn’t ask what she was looking for, because she had no clue. There were a lot of footprints, large, medium and tiny, and there was a deep line etched into the muddy ground. She had noticed an officer with a wheeled instrument, presumably measuring the crime scene, since he was calling out distances to a fellow officer who was sketching, so the line was likely just from the wheel of that tool.
She circled the washroom, watched by a wide-eyed Heidi, and nervously approached where Kathy had lain dead. Emotion welled up in her, and she experienced a sickening lurch of horror. What had Kathy felt? Had she faced someone she knew, watching in puzzlement as they raised a glass bowl above her head? Or had a stranger approached from the shadows and hit her before she had time to react?
And why was Kathy behind the washroom? There was no indication that she had been dragged, so she must have gone there purposely. Or had someone she knew been lurking in the shadows and called out to her? Something was nagging at her yet again, something buried in her memory…
“Can we go back soon?” Heidi asked, her voice thin and reedy.
Jaymie looked up; the poor girl was shivering uncontrollably. Hoppy was still sniffing the area near the spot where Kathy had died, but Jaymie had no wish to examine the ground to see if there was blood mixed with the muck. “Sure, let’s get back. Joel is probably wondering where you are.”
“And Daniel will be wondering about you,” Heidi said, happily scaling down the sloped embankment that acted almost like a levee for the St. Clair River.
Jaymie hoped not. She assumed Daniel would trust her ability to go for a walk in Queensville without getting into trouble.
They were silent on the way back, and Jaymie had too much time to think. Tears welled up in her eyes, tears for Craig and Mrs. Hofstadter and Kylie and Connor, but most of all for Kathy, whose life, no matter what anyone else thought of it, was precious to her. She had plans, ambitions, desires and seemingly years ahead of her.
When they were kids they had all played the game of “What will I be when I grow up?” and though Jaymie’s answer changed with her whims, Kathy always said the same thing: she was going to be a nurse. She wanted to help people. What had changed in her life? Had the child she lost soured her? Or had something else, a shadow from teenagehood, darkened her outlook?
“Jaymie, are you crying?” Heidi asked.
Jaymie nodded, her mouth working. “I’m so sad for Kathy.” She couldn’t say more or her voice would break, and she held back the sob that formed in her throat as she kept walking. She felt Heidi’s small hand clasp hers.
“It’ll be all right, Jaymsie,” Heidi said, using Joel’s pet name for her and squeezing her hand. “It will. You don’t think so now, but the police will figure out who killed her, and it will all turn out okay.”
Jaymie squeezed Heidi’s hand back and released. “Thank you, Heidi. I appreciate that.”
“Did it help?”
“Sure.”
Heidi skipped one hop. “Good. I’ve been working on being more supportive lately.”
Jaymie stifled a sigh; that someone had to work on being supportive was a new one. But at least the girl was trying to improve. If every person did the same, the world would be a better place. Jaymie wished she had been as willing as Heidi to openly admit her imperfections and try to fix them. If she had, she and Kathy might have been able to patch up their problems, whatever they were.
As darkness closed in, they made it back to Jaymie’s home and their friends. Valetta, Dee and Becca were finishing up the dishwashing while the guys still chatted outside, their voices low in the gloom. She unsnapped Hoppy’s leash, and he lurched over to his food bowl by the stove and settled in for a good meal, crunching away while Denver materialized out of nowhere to stare at him as he ate. That feline intensity used to freak out poor Hoppy, but he was now immune to Denver’s attempts to unnerve him.
Daniel appeared in the kitchen. “You’re back,” he said, putting his arm over her shoulders.
He was warm, and she appreciated his solid good nature. She leaned against him, and said, “Heidi and I went for a walk with Hoppy.”
“Joel has some idea for a software application he says will revolutionize life for salespeople everywhere,” he murmured.
Jaymi
e looked up in time to see Daniel roll his eyes. She chuckled. “Was he picking your brain?”
“Kinda. I got the feeling it was really a sales pitch, because he said whatever company developed it would make millions.”
She laughed softly, longing to ask if Daniel had thought to say he already made millions, thank you very much, but that would be indelicate. Daniel never talked about money. That was one of the things she appreciated about him. He had loads of cash but drove a beat-up Jeep when he was in Queensville and didn’t throw his money around. He had to go—something about a conference call with someone in Japan—so she walked him to the front door, experienced a rather nice kiss and said good night.
Dee, Joel and Heidi left. Becca was on the phone again with her assistant, so Valetta helped Jaymie with the last of the dishes, the crystal champagne saucers, standing by with a waffle-weave tea towel.
The low light over the kitchen sink glinted off Valetta’s glasses. “You know, I know you didn’t do it, Jaymie.”
“I hope you know it!” Jaymie exclaimed, handing her older friend one of the champagne saucers to dry.
“Well, of course. That came out wrong. What I mean to say is, I know you didn’t do it, so who did?”
“There were a lot of people who had run-ins with Kathy Cooper yesterday.”
“But to kill someone? Over a run-in?”
“I know,” Jaymie agreed. The kitchen was dim and peaceful, with just the drone of Becca’s voice in the background. Hoppy was done with his meal and had curled up in his basket near the stove. Denver, happy now that everyone had gone, wound around her feet as she again dipped her hands into the hot soapy water in the Belfast sink. “The police are looking for Johnny Stanko.”
“I know.”
She glanced over at Valetta as she handed her friend another champagne saucer. “Do you know where he is?”
“I have an idea,” Valetta admitted. She dried the crystal and set it on the table with the others.
Jaymie considered her next words carefully, and then said, “Maybe he ought to give himself up, or go in to talk to the cops, or something.” She paused, but it had to be said. “Valetta, are you so sure he didn’t lose his temper and kill Kathy?”
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