She headed away from the police station and directly to Craig and Kathy’s home, a modern rambler in the newer section of Queensville. She may not have spent time with them socially, but she did know exactly where they lived, and, grieving widower or not, she was going to tell Craig to stop trying to implicate her. If that’s indeed what he was doing, was it to turn investigators away from examining his relationship with his wife? Why would he have killed her? It had always appeared to be Craig and Kathy against the world. Jaymie knocked on the door.
A woman about Jaymie’s age opened the door. She was slim, with tri-colored, asymmetrical razor-cut hair, the bold slash of pink on one side a startling contrast to the white and black streaks of the rest of it. She wore a ripped long T-shirt and skinny jeans. “Yeah?” she said, staring at Jaymie curiously.
“Uh, is Craig home?”
“No. Who are you?”
“Jaymie Leighton. I think you might have met my sister, Rebecca Leighton Burke, yesterday when she brought some food over?”
“Your sister? She’s a lot older than you, yeah?”
This must be Chloe Cooper, Craig’s sister, the hairdresser from Wolverhampton. Jaymie was curious about why Chloe disliked Kathy so much that even Becca caught on. Maybe this was an opportunity to find out. “She had to go back to Canada, but she asked me to drop in and see if Craig needed anything, any help with arrangements, any errands run. He has to be suffering. And you, too! You must miss your sister-in-law.”
Chloe laughed. “That’s funny, me missing Kathy. Wanna know the truth?”
Jaymie waited; was Chloe going to trash her late sister-in-law?
“I’m bored out of my mind. I’m staying here to help Craig, but then he screws off and leaves me alone. You want to come in?” She stepped back and held the door open.
“Sure.” Jaymie entered, and Chloe slammed the door behind her. “Uh, does anyone know when the service is going to be, Chloe?”
“The cops haven’t released the body to the funeral home yet, so it’s anyone’s guess. If they hold on to her too long, Craig’s gonna have a memorial service, and then the funeral will be private.”
Jaymie followed her through the living room into the sunny kitchen and took a seat at the breakfast bar. She glanced around, imagining Kathy in this clean, bright house. The kitchen was decorated in white and yellow, cheery and modern, with white appliances, bare white countertops and blond wood cabinets. It was about as different from the Leighton kitchen as could be imagined.
Chloe offered her coffee and babbled about how she was missing work at the hair salon in Wolverhampton, but how she was going back in a few days. “You need a new hairstyle,” Chloe said, bluntly, plopping a mug in front of Jaymie without asking if she wanted milk or sugar.
“I what?”
“You need a new hairstyle. And highlights, at least. You’re what…late thirties?”
“Early thirties,” Jaymie said.
“That’s what I mean; you look older than you should. Your hair’s mousy. You need a hipper hairstyle.”
Like hers? “I don’t think—”
“Come in to A Tressful Time and I’ll give you a new do.”
“Sure,” Jaymie said, knowing she never would.
“Hey, that detective guy is a hottie, right?” Chloe said, leaning toward Jaymie over the breakfast bar with a wicked smile. “You’ve met him, right? The one who is questioning everyone? I felt like confessing just to have him grill me gooood!”
Startled, Jaymie said, “Confessing? You didn’t do it, though.”
“Of course not. I wasn’t anywhere near here. I was with some friends down at Cedar Point,” she said, naming the amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. “But I’d love that guy, that Detective Zack, to lock me up and have his way with me over the interrogation table.” She stuck her hands out and mimicked handcuffs on her slim wrists.
“Sandusky…is that near Toledo?”
“Not really. Why?”
“I heard that Kathy and Craig were thinking of moving to Toledo. Is that true?”
“Nah. I heard something about that a while ago, but I think they’d given up on the idea.”
There was a knock at the front door, and Chloe bounded out of the room toward the sound. Jaymie heard voices as Craig’s sister talked to someone. The phone rang; after a few rings the machine clicked on, and Kathy’s voice filled the kitchen: “Hi. We can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a message after the beep.” It was so weird to hear her voice, knowing that she was gone.
Jaymie barely listened to the message, something about an appointment Kathy had missed at the Payne Institute—the unfortunately named local medical school—as she heard voices rise in the living room. She slipped off her stool and moved toward the door.
“You tell your effing brother that I want his effing lawyer off my back.” Kylie Hofstadter’s strident voice was filled with anger. “Kathy’s dead, and she’ll never get her hands on my son now, so they can just screw off.”
Ten
THE ANGER IN Kylie Hofstadter’s voice was chilling. Jaymie didn’t know whether to stay where she was or go to Chloe’s defense.
“You get the hell away from here, Kylie,” Chloe said.
“I have a right to be here. I’m getting something that Kathy had and wouldn’t give back.”
Jaymie moved to the living room just in time to see Kylie barge past Chloe and head up the stairs. Chloe was following, screeching at Kylie to get out or she would call the cops.
“Hey, hey! Let’s talk about this,” Jaymie said, emerging from her spot near the kitchen door.
“What are you doing here?” Kylie asked, pausing in her ascent and looking down at Jaymie. “First Mom’s place, and now Craig’s? You stalking us?”
Chloe glanced over at Jaymie with a frown. “She said she came to see if we needed any help with arrangements.”
“Help? Hah! She’s a suspect in Kathy’s murder, you know.”
Sighing in exasperation, Jaymie said, “I am not really a suspect, any more than anyone else who was there is. No more than you are! Listen, I was trying to make amends with Kathy, and now I just want to get to the bottom of things. I’m really sorry about your sister’s death, Kylie.” She watched the other woman’s face squint, and had a feeling she was trying to force back tears. Kylie sat down on the steps as Chloe uneasily glanced back and forth between Kylie and Jaymie.
“I know you were in a custody fight with Kathy over Connor, but still…it must have been a shock to lose your sister that way.”
Kylie drew in a long breath and covered her face, leaning against the banister. “We were coming to terms that very day,” Kylie said, her lank brown hair falling in her face. “She said things had changed. She said she knew she wouldn’t get Connor, and she was glad I was getting my act together.”
If that was true, it explained why Kathy had been sitting with Kylie, Connor and Andy Walker when Jaymie came back from taking Hoppy home. But what had happened to change Kathy’s mind from just a while before, when she had stated so positively to Matt Laskan that she, Connor and Craig were moving to Toledo? “What had changed?”
“I don’t know. I asked, but she wouldn’t say.”
There was something there, something elusive that Jaymie was going to have to figure out later.
Chloe had been hovering nearby, but she now said, “Just get what you have to get. I don’t really care.” She turned away and headed back to the kitchen.
Jaymie approached the stairs and looked up at Kylie through the painted wood railing. “I’m so sorry,” she said, searching the younger woman’s expression. “I really am.”
“Why? You and my sister were enemies. You hated her. Why would you be sorry she’s dead?”
“But I didn’t hate her. I never even really knew her as an adult.”
Kylie’s expression hardened, the tears drying on her pale cheeks. “I’ll never believe that. Kathy had her faults, but she didn’t imagine things. You were a bitch to her i
n high school, and you took every opportunity to try to make her look bad, like that episode with Ella Douglas in the Emporium, making it seem like Kathy was being mean to a helpless invalid.”
Jaymie shook her head, frustrated. “I didn’t…look, you were too young back then to know anything about what happened in high school. I still don’t understand it myself.”
Kylie gave her a withering look and stood, heading up the stairs. “Kathy was right; you’ll always be little Miss Goody Two-shoes Leighton, who can do no wrong in this town,” she threw over her shoulder.
Jaymie stood for a moment in the quietude of the chilly living room: a white leather sofa nobody sat on, a bland modern art piece over the sofa, pale gray carpet, pale cream walls. It was Kathy’s home, the nest she’d created for herself. No family photos adorned the surfaces, no signs of her life or personal interests at all. Becca always said Jaymie was addicted to clutter, and maybe that was so, because this uncluttered, seemingly serene room, made her sad. She shivered and headed back to the sunny kitchen.
“I’ll go now,” she said to Chloe. “I’m so sorry about that scene with Kylie.”
“It doesn’t take much to set off those sisters,” Chloe said, looking up from her hair-styling magazine.
“You didn’t get along with Kathy, I take it?”
“Who did? She called me a spoiled, selfish little brat on their wedding day, and it’s gone downhill from there.”
That unfortunately sounded just like what Kathy had sometimes said to and about Jaymie. In the past, Kathy’s anger toward Jaymie had manifested itself in irrational outbursts and dirt-slinging on social networking sites and through the town’s gossip network, but there had never been anything said that explained her animosity. She appeared to have had a problem with a lot of people, but who was angry enough at her to kill her?
“Chloe, did you ever hear anyone threaten Kathy?”
Chloe looked up again from her magazine and wrinkled her brow. “Threaten her? No, duh! I would have told the cops if I had. But she sure was mad at a lot of people; last week she was foaming at the mouth about Matt, Craig’s partner. Matt’s a nice guy—and hot, for an old dude—but Kathy said something about him living a double life.”
“What did she mean?”
“Do you think I know?” she said, with a scornful expression. She looked back down to her magazine.
A double life. Jaymie remembered the sense she’d had that Kathy was threatening Matt Laskan at the picnic. What had she known about him that might be unsavory, or even illegal? Did it have to do with business, or his personal life? She’d have to look into it, because she didn’t think the guy was even on the police detective’s radar. “Nothing else?”
The young woman shrugged, not looking up from her magazine.
“How is your brother doing? He must miss Kathy terribly. I mean, she was his wife.”
She shrugged again and frowned. “I guess.”
Jaymie waited, but Chloe was reading her magazine. She was done talking. “Okay. I’ll let myself out.” She headed for the front door, but paused and waited to see if Chloe would follow. She trod loudly to the front door, opened and closed it, then scooted back and slipped up the stairs, curious about what was taking Kylie so long.
She tiptoed down the carpeted hall, listening to the sound of Kylie shuffling through something. Peeking around the corner, she could see that the room was used for storage, with boxes lining one wall. Kylie had her back to the door and was rooting around in a closet. She gasped and stopped suddenly and clutched something to her chest. Then she started crying great gusty sobs.
Torn as to what to do, Jaymie stayed stock-still for a long moment, then crept away, feeling like a total jerk. In any other circumstance she would have offered comfort, but Kylie had already shown how little she liked or trusted Jaymie. Intruding on her in her moment of sorrow would have just made it worse. She began to slink down the stairs, but then paused, hand on the railing.
No. No! She pounded her fist on the railing. This was how her feud with Kathy had become so overblown. Jaymie hadn’t handled it properly in the beginning, hadn’t demanded answers. She needed to be more confrontational. She headed back up the stairs. Kylie’s sobbing had calmed, and she was holding something to her chest and rocking back and forth.
“Are you going to be okay, Kylie?” Jaymie said softly.
The younger woman whirled, a photo album clutched to her chest. “What are you still doing here?” she asked, her face twisted in anguish.
Jaymie sat down cross-legged on the beige carpet and gently took the photo album, opening it and glancing through. It was full of photos of a girl and a baby in the yard behind the Hofstadter farmhouse. The baby became a child as the other dark-haired girl grew to slender adolescence. Jaymie stared down at a photo of an eleven-year-old Kathy staring defiantly into the camera from her seat in the V of an old maple tree. Oh, Kathy, we used to be friends, Jaymie thought. How did it get so weird?
The answer was easy; they never solved anything because they never talked things out. Instead, Jaymie ignored the problem, hoping it would go away. It hadn’t; it hardened, turned to stone and then was put on the back burner when they all went away to college. “Your sister was the best friend I ever had,” she said. “The closest. We told each other secrets.”
“If that’s true, why did you treat her like crap?” Kylie replied, her voice trembling with emotion.
Jaymie glanced up, puzzled. “When did I ever treat her like crap?”
“Oh, come on! You know, that’s what drove Kathy crazy the most,” Kylie said, shaking her finger in Jaymie’s face. “You just denied it all ever happened. You kept acting like the innocent injured party, and everyone took your side! Kathy felt like an outsider in Queensville, and it was all because of you!”
Nausea welled up in Jaymie’s stomach. She was getting close to an answer; she felt it. Did she want to know? Had she said something, done something, that she didn’t even remember to cause half a lifetime of animosity? “Kylie, pretend you’re explaining this all to someone who has no clue what you’re talking about. What did I ever do or say to Kathy to make her so angry that she didn’t speak to me, other than to berate me?”
Kylie rolled her eyes and snatched the photo album back. “You know what you said.” She stood up and put the photo album in a fabric shopping bag.
“But I don’t,” Jaymie cried, leaping to her feet, frustrated. “Kylie, please, I’m begging you, tell me?”
The young woman stopped. Jaymie could hear footsteps in the hall. She was about to be busted by Chloe for not leaving the house when she said she was, but she didn’t care.
Kylie stared at her for a moment, then said, her voice trembling, “You told everyone at Wolverhampton High that our home smelled, and that we smelled. Like pigs. You said it, and laughed. You told Hank Barlow, the guy Kathy had a crush on, and he spread it around to all the guys, like you knew he would. Kathy was crazy over Hank, and you ruined it. He never talked to her again. In fact, he made oinking sounds in the hall when he saw her.”
A line of boys, all oinking as Kathy passed, a bright red flush on her pale face. Kathy pushing Jaymie away, her body bowed by misery, her shoulders hunched in on herself. Jaymie remembered that, but she knew darn well she had nothing to do with it. “I never ever said such a…such an evil thing, Kylie, you have to believe me,” she said, her voice choked by a sob. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I could never say something so mean in my life!”
Kylie shook her head and strode past her to the hall. Jaymie followed and saw Chloe, who was just coming toward the storage room.
“What’s going on?” Chloe asked. “I thought you were gone?” She glared at Jaymie.
“I’m going now.” She turned to Kylie in the dim hallway, where sunlight never penetrated, and reached out, lightly touching her bare arm. “I hope someday you can believe me. I would never have said anything like that about Kathy. We were best friends, and I loved her.”
The other woman searched Jaymie’s face, but her expression was doubtful.
Jaymie felt the need to repeat it. “I’m so sorry that someone spread that vile rumor, but I never, ever said it.” She paused and turned to the other young woman. “I’d like to talk to Craig, Chloe, if you could let him know?”
She walked down the stairs and out the front door, holding on to her emotions until she got to the car and climbed in. Then she broke down, weeping, her forehead resting on the steering wheel. All these years it was someone’s terrible lies that had kept Kathy and Jaymie apart. How could Kathy believe she’d say something so awful? They had been the best of friends from kindergarten on. And how could Kathy hold on to that pain for so many years without even trying to clear the air?
Jaymie was not blameless, though; when Kathy had first started ignoring her, she tried to break down her friend’s walls, but she quit too soon, hurt by her former friend’s rudeness. Give her time, everyone had said, but “time” had stretched into years, and it was never resolved. It was over now, and there was nothing she could do to change the past. She stared out the window of Becca’s Lexus. Kylie, her face still pale with sadness, exited the house carrying the bag with the photo album. She cast Jaymie a quick look, but didn’t wave. She got into her truck and zoomed off.
Finding Kathy’s murderer would help everyone find solace. They couldn’t bring her back, but they could catch whoever had ended her life so violently. The police were likely to do that, and soon, she hoped, but Jaymie had some unanswered questions of her own. Starting with: what did Kathy have on Matt Laskan, and was it enough for him to kill her to conceal it? There was no way to tell the police what she suspected about Matt. The conversation she had overheard was so vague. How would she frame an uneasy sense that Kathy had been threatening Matt at the picnic with some knowledge that Jaymie didn’t even have a reference point to understand?
Joel knew more than he was saying about Laskan Cooper and his acquaintance with the principal parties, she was positive of that. She backed out of the laneway and headed toward Heidi’s side-split ranch in the new section of town. In the darkest days of the winter, when Joel’s defection had been a new, raw wound that she thought would never heal, she had driven past Heidi’s house many times, noting the transition from Christmas wreath to Valentine’s hearts to St. Patty’s Day shamrocks adorning the front door. The girl liked to celebrate every occasion, and now it had red, white and blue bunting framing the cream door, and a proud flag fluttering on a standard hooked to a flag mount beside it.
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