She stopped. To tell, or not to tell, that Craig had a lover on the side? On the one hand, it was a contributing factor to thinking Craig might have done it, but on the other hand…what kind of a gossiping snitch was she? It didn’t feel right, not when she didn’t have any concrete reason to think Craig had killed Kathy.
“What are you thinking right now?” he asked.
“I’m just…” She shook her head. “Look, this isn’t fun, informing on my friends and neighbors. Did you come here for anything specific?”
“I understand Dan Collins had to leave town, and your sister is away, too.”
“Yes. And?”
He crouched down beside her and turned her face toward him, his fingers warm on her cheek. He gazed up into her eyes. “I’m being serious, Jaymie. Stop trying to do my job. It’s dangerous. If you ask the wrong question of the wrong person, he—or she—could see you as a threat and come after you. I really don’t want to see this pretty face in the morgue.” He patted her cheek and stood.
“Who has been complaining about me asking questions?” She watched his face after she asked that question. “Let me guess…Could it be Craig Cooper?”
“Look, Jaymie, I believe Stanko did it despite what your friend Valetta thinks. It’s the simplest answer, and simplest is usually right.”
“Occam’s razor,” she murmured.
He stared at her, eyebrows raised. “Okay, yes. The theory that the simplest explanation is actually correct applies.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised that he understood her allusion. “That’s not really what Occam’s razor means, and I’d bet you know that. So let me use it correctly: Yes, Stanko’s fingerprints are on the bowl, and he was heard to threaten Kathy. She’s dead. Simplicity suggests that there is a correlation.” She thought for a moment. “However, I would say that his motive is weak: anger. But if we accept that he had a problem with impulse control, then surely he would have attacked her then and there, rather than waiting hours?”
Christian nodded and sat down opposite her, elbow on the table, chin in his hand. “Go on, Miss Leighton. I’m fascinated.”
He was laughing at her, but she didn’t mind. “Yes, Stanko’s got a record,” she continued, “and some of the charges are for violence. He threatened her. But he’s never been a planner. I don’t know for sure, but I would bet that all of his offenses in the past have been where he was insulted or criticized, and he struck out then and there. So other explanations may end up being less simple, but more correct.”
The detective sat back in his chair and put his ankle on his other knee. “The DA is happy, and the judge agreed with us that he is a flight risk.”
“Look, logically, if you’re right, and Stanko is guilty, then I’m not getting into any trouble asking questions.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know that. There are secrets that people will kill to keep, and if you stir up the muck, you might inspire another killer to come out of the woodwork.”
She couldn’t disagree with anything he said, and she shrugged. “Valetta just doesn’t think Stanko is guilty, and she’s backing that up with her own money.”
“Hey, I’m glad he’s got friends, but the best lawyer in the world isn’t going to help with his fingerprints on the murder weapon and his footpr—” He stopped and shook his head. “Never mind.”
She watched his face, and the scene of the crime came back to her. “His footprints were in the mud near the ladies’ washroom, weren’t they?” she said. She could see the truth in his eyes and how the noose of justice was closing around Stanko’s neck with each bit of circumstantial evidence gathered against him.
“I didn’t say that,” he said, his brows drawn down over his gray eyes. He bolted to his feet and headed to the back door. “And now I need to get out of here before you figure out our whole case!”
He left, and Hoppy gave a final bark at the back door, sending him on his way. Jaymie was on the phone to Valetta in seconds, updating her on what she had learned and what the detective had not said. Valetta was grateful. The lawyer would get all of that information, she said, from what was called “discovery,” when the prosecution would have to reveal what evidence they had on Stanko, but it was good to have it earlier.
“I’m just guessing,” Jaymie said. “He wouldn’t confirm it, but ask Johnny why his footprints would be there, at the scene of the crime.”
When she hung up, she felt an urge to call her mother, and Joy Leighton was home, for once. She told her mother all that had happened and about her day and, finally, about Mrs. Hofstadter’s farm.
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry! Look, Alan and I are coming up two weeks early to visit Mom Leighton and Becca in London. I think we’ll come to Queensville and stay at the house for a week before the cottage is vacant. Maybe I can get some of the girls together and we can go help Martha out.”
It was a stunning offer from her mom, who disliked housewifely chores. In Florida, she hired a local woman to do all the heavy cleaning, and Jaymie’s dad did dishes and cooked, now that he was retired. “Would you, Mom? That would be awesome!”
“Honey, don’t say awesome. You’re not eighteen.”
“I don’t know if you realize how much work it will be, though.”
“I think I do. Did I say we’d do it alone? You and Becca and Valetta and Dee will all be there, along with Mimi and me and the other older women. Trust me, I wouldn’t tackle it by myself. But Martha won’t know that until we all show up.”
“Mom, she’s going to resist. She’s become a bit of a hoarder.” She took a deep breath and decided to be completely honest. “Actually, she’s a terrible hoarder. She didn’t even want to give me my casserole dish back.”
There was silence for a moment. “Jaymie, maybe you don’t remember this, but I’ve been chair of more committees than you can shake a stick at, and I’ve wanted to shake a stick at many of them. If I can steamroller twenty fractious women into a smooth-running organization, I can handle Martha Hofstadter. You leave that up to me. We’ll be up in two or three weeks. In the meantime, I will rally the girls and make sure Martha has someone dropping in on her every day. Now, how are you and that young man doing? Becca told me all about Daniel Collins, and my advice is, grab him before he marries someone else!”
Jaymie rolled her eyes and sat down, knowing she would not get off the phone until her mother had given her advice on “Husband Hunting: How to Catch and Tame the Bachelor Male.” After a half hour, she finally managed to get her mother off the phone and made dinner, just a salad. Her shorts were far too tight, and she needed to fit back into her summer clothes instead of having to buy a whole new wardrobe. She sat in the garden to eat, reading a romance book to try to calm herself after Detective Christian’s unsettling visit and her mother’s lengthy monologue. The coming meeting between her mother and Daniel, and maybe even Daniel’s parents, was going to be simply awful, no matter how much she tried to believe otherwise. Her mother wanted grandkids, and Jaymie was her only shot at it.
Instead, she would think about something less intimidating than her determined mother, like the murder investigation. After dinner she was going to tackle something she just wasn’t sure about. She decided to go over and talk to Ella Douglas about Kathy Cooper’s July Fourth visit.
But first, the phone messages.
She listened to them; Becca had called, asking how things were going. Dee Stubbs had called to ask about Kathy Cooper’s memorial service. Heidi had called and simply asked her to call back, but when Jaymie did, there was no answer. And Daniel had called to say he missed her already. She hadn’t really thought about him much, but that might be because of how busy she’d been. Shouldn’t she think of him anyway, if he was her boyfriend, as people seemed to figure?
She’d definitely have to put some thought into that. How much should she miss Daniel when he wasn’t around?
Sixteen
IT WAS A lovely evening, with a light breeze that tossed the tops of the poplars
but was gentle as a caress down at street level. As she walked toward Ella and Bob Douglas’s home, Jaymie pondered the day. The tangled threads of the mystery of Kathy Cooper’s murder seemed knotted even tighter. Was she being a fool? Was Johnny Stanko the real villain after all?
What Detective Christian had said to her earlier remained in her mind. He warned her not to go asking the wrong questions of the wrong people. But how did one know what was safe and what wasn’t with a murderer in their midst? Some innocent remark could be misconstrued, and wham!—she was the next victim. She pondered his contention that even if Stanko was guilty, it wasn’t good to go asking awkward questions, because you never knew what trouble you were stirring up. But heck, if you went around with that thought in your mind, you’d never talk to anyone about anything!
She threaded her way through town, admiring gardens, enjoying the summer air. She had looked up where the Douglases lived, on a street in the older section of town. When she got to the house, she stopped and examined it. An old frame cottage-style home not far from Johnny Stanko’s house, it was modified to take into account Ella’s motorized wheelchair. A lift had been added to one end of the porch, which stretched the whole width of the house.
There was no vehicle in the drive, but that only meant that Bob was out, because Jaymie knew Ella didn’t drive. It was Ella she wanted to talk to anyway, so she mounted the steps and knocked on the door. After a few minutes, she was about to turn and leave when she heard the deadbolt click, and the door creaked open.
“Yes?” Ella Douglas said, weakly, peering out at her.
“Hi, Ella. It’s Jaymie Leighton. How are you this evening?”
“I’m all right.”
“Can I come in? I’d like to talk to you.”
There was silence for a long minute. “Okay. For a few minutes.”
“I won’t keep you long,” Jaymie said, slipping through the open door. She heard a beep beep and saw Ella motoring down the hallway. She followed her to the living room, a cramped space with just enough room for the wheelchair to wend its way to a spot cleared for it. By her wheelchair there was a floor lamp, a low shelf filled with books pushed in haphazardly and a small table with a plate of uneaten toast and jam on it. A book was overturned in the jumbled mess.
“Bob’s at a Rotary club meeting,” she said. “He usually does the dishes after supper, but he was in a hurry tonight.”
“Can I help? Would you like a cup of tea?”
Ella eyed her warily. “Tea would be okay, but please don’t disturb anything in the kitchen; Bob likes things just as they are.”
“No problem.” She made her way to the kitchen, past a multitude of bookcases stuffed with books on holistic medicine, herbal remedies and the philosophy of medicine.
The kitchen was a bit of a mess—toast crumbs, an open jar of homemade jam, a dirty plate in the sink—but Jaymie had said she wouldn’t touch anything. She looked for the kettle, found some tea bags—there were dozens of boxes of different types of herbal teas as well as some orange pekoe—and a teapot. She dropped the teapot lid, but luckily it didn’t break.
“What’s going on in there?” Ella called. “Did you break something? What are you doing?”
Jaymie came to the living room door and said, keeping her tone cheerful, “Just being clumsy. I dropped the lid of the teapot, but it’s fine. No damage.”
“Try to be more careful,” the woman said, flexing her fingers on the armrests of her wheelchair.
Jaymie didn’t reply, opting to go back and finish making the tea, using the orange pekoe bags instead of the more risky herbal teas, because she didn’t know how they tasted. She found a tray, and put the teapot, two mugs and the bowl of raw sugar and a pitcher of soy milk on it, and carried it into the living room.
“Where would you like me to put this?” Jaymie said.
Ella blinked and looked around. “I don’t know. Wherever you can find room, I guess.”
Setting the tray temporarily on the floor, Jaymie moved a stack of books that were on the coffee table to a spot on the floor, and put the tray up on the table.
“You’ll put that back, won’t you? The books? Before you leave?”
“Yes, of course. How do you like your tea?”
“I don’t really like black tea. Wasn’t there some chamomile, or mint?”
Jaymie stifled a sigh of exasperation. She reminded herself of how difficult it would be to be confined to a wheelchair. The Eleanor Grimshaw she remembered had been a strapping, energetic girl. She took one of the cups back to the kitchen, made a mug of chamomile and brought it back in, removing the uneaten toast and setting the tea in the pool of yellow light from the floor lamp. She made up her own mug and sat back in one of the overstuffed armchairs.
Eyeing her with suspicion, Ella said, “If you want to know if I know anything about poor Kathy’s tragedy, then you’ve come to the wrong place.”
Okay, so no subterfuge, no sneaky way of interrogating Ella. “I just wondered, I guess, if you’ve had any dealings with her other than that confrontation in the Emporium.” Jaymie watched the woman’s face, noting sallow cheeks, ashen skin and wary, sunken eyes. A nerve jumped in Ella’s temple, but other than that, her expression didn’t change. “Someone told me that she intended to drop in on you the morning of the Fourth,” Jaymie pressed. “Did she?”
“Who told you that?” Ella said, sharply. Her gaze was dubious, her eyes narrowed.
“A friend,” Jaymie said, slowly, wondering why Ella was so suspicious.
“Whose friend? Yours or Kathy’s?”
“Kathy’s. Why does it matter?”
“What were you doing talking to a friend of Kathy’s about me?”
Jaymie sighed. She now remembered more about Eleanor Grimshaw’s years at Wolverhampton High. Eleanor—now Ella—didn’t have many friends. She seemed to exist on the fringes of school activities and rarely mixed with others. Maybe her current sparkling personality was just an extension of her teenage self and not the result of her illness at all.
“I wasn’t specifically talking about you at all. It just came out. Did she drop in here on the morning of the Fourth?”
“Well, yes.”
“What did she want?”
“Why are you asking?”
Jaymie let that question lie and just sipped her tea, watching Ella, trying to figure her out. Finally, she asked, “Why did you move to Queensville, Ella? Is your family still here?”
“I don’t have a lot of family left. Bob and I just wanted a fresh start. I don’t know how much of a fresh start you can have when you’re as sick as I am, but…” She shrugged. “Queensville is the only place I was ever happy.”
“It must be so tough. I’m sorry.”
“Bob has been amazing. I don’t know what I’d do without him. The sicker I get, the more he loves me!”
“What an odd thing to say!” Jaymie blurted, then reddened. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Ella shrugged and put her cup down. “Sometimes I think that Bob’s too good for me, but he’s a nurturer, you know? Someone desperate to help others.”
“There are men like that,” Jaymie said, reflecting on an acquaintance, a fellow who had married a party girl. They had three kids together, and he looked after every need of the babies they had while she went out barhopping most nights of the week. He seemed content with the arrangement, and the children adored him. Maybe Bob was that kind of guy. “It’s good that you found one.”
“No point in not telling you, I guess. Kathy did come here the morning of the Fourth,” Ella said, picking at the fluffy gray afghan that covered her knees. “She said she was sorry about yelling at me in the Emporium. At least it gave me the chance to say I was sorry too, and make sure little Connor was okay. I told her that my eyesight isn’t very good.”
“I think she was distracted that morning, and maybe upset. Did you two talk about old times at Wolverhampton High?”
Ella�
�s cheeks took on a faint pink tinge. “No, not really. What’s to talk about? The fact that we were both outcasts?” she said, bitterly, then she looked ashamed. “I don’t know if she remembered, but I was kind of hard on her in high school. I bullied her a bit. I keep trying to be a better person, but…” She shrugged. “We sat and talked, mostly about my health.”
“She planned on being a nurse, back when we were kids,” Jaymie murmured. This was proving to be a dead end.
“So she said. She wanted to make sure I was getting the right foods and taking the right supplements. I got the feeling she was interested in natural remedies.” She chuckled, but it was a mirthless sound. “I told her I’ve tried everything known to man! And a few things that aren’t.”
“Was there anything odd about Kathy that morning? Did she mention that something was bothering her?”
Ella shrugged. “Not really. My eyesight is bad, though, so I don’t notice a lot about expressions and such. Some days I just can’t even stand light in my eyes, it’s so bad.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jaymie murmured.
“Could you get me a glass of water? I’m so thirsty. It’s dry in here.”
Jaymie retrieved a glass of cold water for her, and the woman drank it down. Jaymie watched, then asked, “What did Kathy do while she was here? Did she stay long?”
“Not really. We talked for a while. Kathy made some tea, got the mail for me, went to the washroom. Bob came home, and Kathy said she had to go, that she and some friends were getting together in the park. I said I wished I could go, and Bob said maybe we would. That’s why we went for a walk there.”
“And then you came home?”
“Why are you asking questions like that? Where else would I go?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Kathy, if anyone saw anything.”
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