White Colander Crime

by Victoria Hamilton

  She felt her color heighten and she buffeted him on the arm. “You stop! Enough of that. We’re just friends.”

  “Sure you are. You say hello to him for me, and that I’ll be out to The Junk Stops Here tomorrow to pick up that antique sleigh we talked about. I’m thinking about fixing it up and giving sleigh rides through the village.”

  She was enchanted, and clapped, jumping up and down. “Could we maybe plan that for next year’s Dickens Days? Maybe we could even do rides out to the manor house.”

  “One step at a time, Jaymie. There isn’t always snow this time of year, like now. You go on. I’ve got to finish this door for a very particular customer.”

  She knew he meant Becca and chuckled. Light-headed with hope and relief—it was good to share her worries about Nan and Cody with someone who understood, someone as steady and trustworthy as Bill—she drove her rickety white van out to Queensville Historic Manor, where she would deliver a stack of pamphlets, place her centerpiece creation on the Hoosier and make sure her kitchen had survived the ins and outs of the various heritage committee members, some of whom preferred to enter though the kitchen door rather than circle all the way to the front.

  In the slanting late afternoon light, she drove up the lane and around behind the garage, where some parking spaces had been delineated for committee volunteers, grabbed her white colander centerpiece and stack of pamphlets, locked the van and circled the house to the front to get the full view. The former Dumpe Manor, now Queensville Historic Manor, looked wonderful. A massive Queen Anne–style home, with copious gingerbread and clapboard siding, bound on two sides with forest and the other with open fields, the house had been painted a lovely soft blue and the gingerbread a sparkling white. The broad porch and steps had been repaired by Bill and were now safe to mount. The whole was fronted by a lighted sign announcing the name and hours.

  She stood near the road and gazed at it, biting her lip and grimacing at the huge blow-up gingerbread man cookie that waved and waggled in the wind, the generator groaning and puttering. Most of the older committee members had been horrified when some of the younger ones had suggested renting a blow-up decoration to draw attention to the historic manor’s Christmas opening, but Jaymie had agreed that however you got feet through the door didn’t matter. And folks with kids wanted kid-friendly things to look at. The gingerbread man cookie was the best of a bad lot, she thought, better than the Santa on an airplane or sock monkeys on a scooter that were other possible rental choices. But it sure did look tacky in front of the elegant manse! Oh well, it would come down just after the New Year.

  She mounted the steps and entered, pausing as she removed her boots to appreciate the beauty of the old house. It never failed to awe her, the lovely old pendant lights, the elegant wood baseboards and beautiful finishing they had all strived to perfect over the last couple of months. An amazing amount had been done in a short time, mostly due to the organizational skills of Haskell Lockland and the handyman ability of Bill Waterman, as well as the dedication of the volunteers, like her, each with their own specialty.

  In the main hall they had placed a long, low Chippendale-style table topped by a big mirror, and on the table were pamphlets and what little literature they had pertaining to the Dumpe family and Queensville’s history, postcards to buy and one Lucite pamphlet stand just waiting for the literature she had in hand. She filled it with the pamphlets, stacking the rest on the table behind the stand, and then, carrying her boots, strode through the hall to the back of the house where her precious kitchen seemed like an afterthought, when it was the heart of the whole manor house project, if you asked her.

  But the kitchen wasn’t empty. A fiftyish woman in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, bleached hair pulled back tight in a frizzy ponytail, was on her hands and knees scouring the oven of Jaymie’s precious antique gas stove, which was sans knobs, sans burner drip pans, sans grates, sans . . . everything!

  Three

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing?” cried Jaymie, dropping her boots.

  The woman jolted, whacked her head on the top of the oven and scrambled out, leaping to her feet and whirling. “What the . . . ? Who are you?”

  “Never mind that, who are you? And what are you doing to my stove?” Shaking, Jaymie carefully set the decorative colander down on the porcelain top of the green-and-white vintage Hoosier and stood, staring forlornly at her disassembled stove. The same stove she had just thoroughly cleaned according to instructions from a website on antique and vintage stoves, and which she had just got working right with a lot of trial, error and burned cookies.

  The woman peeled her rubber gloves off, the smell of harsh modern chemicals wafting out of the oven, from which the door had been removed. “I was hired to clean, so I’m cleaning.”

  Controlling her breathing and carefully inflecting her tone to somewhat close to politeness, Jaymie said, “My name is Jaymie Leighton, and this is the kitchen I designed and furnished. You must be Lori Wozny. I was on the committee that looked at everyone’s references and we were so pleased to hire you. However, I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear, but no one meant for you to clean the vintage appliances.” She glanced around, noting the knobs laid out on newspaper with some kind of cleaning solution on them. Argh! It was almost physically painful to consider the damage that may have been done to them. “Besides, I’ve already cleaned the stove.”

  “Not very well,” the woman said, her tone huffy, as she tossed the rubber gloves down onto newspaper that was protecting every surface. “It’s still dirty. And under the knobs was all this grease! Took me half an hour just to get it off.”

  Jaymie closed her eyes and swayed. “The grease is there on purpose, just a small amount to make the action smooth. And the knobs are Bakelite. Bakelite!” It had taken her some time to establish that it was indeed Bakelite and not another compound. Becca’s fiancé had visited and given her the final verdict with some tests involving hot water and a lot of sniffing. After that she had bought the proper cleaning solution, liquid metal polish, and spent hours properly restoring them. And now . . . She took in a deep breath and released it, slowly. It wasn’t helping. The woman didn’t know, she said to herself. Stay calm. “Bakelite is a special material and you never ever want to use harsh chemicals on it. Ever!”

  When she opened her eyes again and looked at Lori she realized she had offended the woman gravely, but she didn’t care at this point. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to just stop,” she said, moving toward the stove and touching the surface lightly. “This is an antique and it’s precious to me. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but harsh chemicals should never be used on antique or vintage anything. That goes for almost everything in this house.”

  Lori skittered around, packing up her stuff, throwing things in a blue plastic pail. “Fine, then. I was trying to do my job, and all I get is crap. Typical. If you all want to live in filth, or let the public think that’s how old people lived, then have at it!”

  In Jaymie’s experience, anyone who talked in italics was seriously angry. “Lori, please, don’t get offended. We value your work.” It had been difficult to find someone dependable, and the woman had a wonderful reference from Delaney Meadows, the owner of a local job placement company. Lori was the mother of one of his employees, a hard worker, apparently.

  But at this moment she was in a full-on snit. Jaymie considered her options and decided silence for the moment was best, and a word to Haskell about her confrontation with the cleaner. Lori stomped out of the kitchen and Jaymie spent the next hour repairing the damage the woman had done. There were scratches on the chrome from the abrasive steel wool soap pad she had used, and it would take some time to tell if the Bakelite knobs had been damaged.

  She folded up the newspapers, stuffed them in a garbage bag and turned in a circle, hoping the room was ready for viewing. Some people had already been through the house, but this weekend she was going to start
kitchen demonstrations with recipes she had prepared and a costume she had put together with some vintage clothes Jewel had sourced for her. She would wear a longish dress with a patterned pinafore apron over it, her hair done in a twenties or thirties style—a local hairdresser who had recently joined the heritage society showed her how—and black oxford shoes.

  The kitchen was now almost perfect, at least for the time being, painted a mellow green, with the green-and-white gas stove that Bill Waterman had found at Jakob’s store. There was also a venerable green-and-cream Hoosier, the paint all original, that she had bought at auction, and next to it an antique ice chest donated by the Redmonds, owners of the Ice House restaurant. Vintage and antique egg beaters, cookie cutters, whisks, mallets, muddles and various other implements—most of which had green or red and cream painted handles—were on display, and she had worked up a routine to demonstrate their uses. Her colander with the greenery in it added a cheery and festive note.

  She finished up and washed her hands. As usual after she chastised someone, she now felt awful. Lori had only wanted to make the room the best it could be. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know how to care for vintage appliances, nor did she know it was not part of her job. She was one of those who is almost too thorough. Jaymie grabbed her jacket from the kitchen chair, where she had slung it after finding her kitchen in disarray, picked up her boots, strode from the kitchen and passed through the parlor to the dining room. Mabel Bloombury was polishing a silver epergne and centered it on the tiger oak pedestal dining table.

  “This looks wonderful!” Jaymie exclaimed. She had expected Christmassy red and green, but the table was set with a blue tablecloth, and adorned with all blue and silver.

  Mabel stood back and clasped her hands in front of her generous bosom. “Do you like it? The china is one your sister suggested, Sevron Blue Lace, from the nineteen fifties. And the glassware is Libbey Silver Leaf. I thought we’d do it up this weekend for Hanukkah, and then go to the red-and-white transferware patterned china your sister loaned us the next weekend.”

  “What a great idea!” Jaymie said, eyeing Mabel with respect. She hadn’t thought the older woman would show so much innovation with the table décor.

  Mabel shot her a side glance. “My husband’s people started in this country as Blumbergs,” she said. “I wanted to honor the celebration of lights, you know.” She touched the elaborate silver candelabra in the center of the table and waggled her fingers at the silver and crystal epergne that gleamed softly in the chandelier’s illumination.

  “I think it’s lovely. Say, Mabel, did you see Lori Wozny in the last little while? Is she still here?”

  “I think she’s upstairs. She stomped through here mumbling under her breath; she seemed in a dreadful mood.”

  “That’s my fault, I’m afraid,” Jaymie said, and relayed what happened.

  Mabel touched her arm, her fingers icy. “Don’t worry too much about it, dear. That young woman seems to be a touch flighty. It runs in the family.”

  “Runs in the family?”

  “She’s a Fretter, you know, despite her married name.”

  Jaymie started and stared at Mabel. There was that synchronicity thing happening. She’d always noticed that once you heard about something or someone, they just kept popping up everywhere. Of course, if she hadn’t just heard about Shelby Fretter, it wouldn’t have meant anything to her other than a brief acknowledgment that they were known locally as the family whose name was most often seen in the Police Blotter column of the Howler. “Is she, by any chance, Shelby Fretter’s mother?”

  Mabel nodded. “I always felt sorry for those kids. Lori went from man to man to man. The oldest kids’ dad—Shelby and her brother are twins—is long gone, didn’t even stick around long enough to give them his last name.”

  “So that must mean Shelby is the one who works for Delaney Meadows, the one who gave Lori her reference? Or is it another of her kids?”

  “No, that’s right, that’s Shelby. She’s great friends with my daughter, Lynnsey; they went through school together. Shelby has worked for Meadows for almost a year at his business, some kind of white-collar placement agency. It’s in one of those big houses on the north end of town that has been converted into office space.”

  And now she was going out with Nan’s son. Small world. Jaymie made a quick decision. “In the interests of harmony, if Lori’s going to keep working here I ought to apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings.”

  Mabel shook her head, a doubtful expression on her face. “She’s one of those who the more you apologize, the more she’ll misunderstand. You probably didn’t say anything wrong. Some folks just go through life intent on being wounded and seeing insults where none were intended. I’d let it go if I were you.”

  “But I was kind of abrupt. I feel like I should try.” She heard a vacuum cleaner upstairs, and decided to give an apology a whirl. She went through the parlor to the hallway, left her boots by the front door and climbed the front stairs, which ascended to a landing, then made a right-angle turn. She climbed to the second floor and saw Lori Wozny at the end of the dim hall, just finishing. The cleaner turned the vacuum off, yanked the cord out of the plug, and began to wind it up. “Lori?” Jaymie said, as she pulled on her jacket and zipped it up.

  The woman started again and whirled, one hand to her chest. “You do love to scare people, don’t you!” she said.

  “I’m sorry.” Was she always going to be apologizing as long as the woman worked for the society? “I just wanted to say I didn’t mean to offend you and hope we can be friends.”

  “If you heard the way you sounded!” she said, jerkily finishing winding the cord and pushing the machine down the hall past Jaymie to the broom closet where it was kept. Over her shoulder, she groused, “You’d think I was breaking something, the way you behaved.”

  Jaymie held her tongue. She knew that she did no such thing and that Lori was overreacting, but there was no way to backtrack now, or it would become a she said/she said argument. “I suppose I’d better get going now.”

  Lori turned around and glared, hands on her hips. “You oughta be careful, you know. Some folks aren’t as easygoing as me.”

  “I have to go. I have a column due at the Wolverhampton Weekly Howler,” Jaymie said, looking for any excuse to break off this conversation as she headed toward the stairs.

  “You work for that Nan woman, with the evil son? She spawned an abuser, and do you think she cares? Not one little bit!”

  Jaymie halted and turned around slowly. She couldn’t pretend not to know what the woman was talking about. “Are you talking about the relationship between your daughter Shelby and Cody Wainwright?”

  Lori almost smiled—Jaymie thought she enjoyed getting a reaction—but darkened her expression and grimaced. “You bet. That jerk hit my daughter, and she’s dumb enough to let him. He tries it again I’ll give it to him good, I promise you,” she said, balling her hand into a fist. “You tell that to that Goodenough woman.”

  Torn between silence and defending her friend and editor, Jaymie asked, “Is your daughter going to end the relationship? That would be best all round.”

  “As if you have a clue about it. I’ve heard all about you.” She retreated into the volunteer’s lounge and came back out with a red-plaid wool coat that she shrugged into. “You act like you’re some kind of detective or something.”

  Bewildered by the quick shift into a personal attack, Jaymie mumbled a reply, turned toward the stairs and started down. Jaymie pulled on her boots and they both exited at the same time onto the wide-board porch, the crisp December air a bracing wake-up. A beat-up Ford backed up the lane and Lori headed toward it. Hand on the car door, she turned and hollered, “You tell that Nan woman to make Cody Wainwright behave, you hear me?”

  The window was down, and Shelby Fretter, a pretty blonde with a downturned dissa
tisfied mouth, leaned across the passenger seat as she lowered the window. “Mom, why are you talking about Cody? I told you to keep your nose out of my business.”

  Lori looked uncertain and stared at her daughter, then looked back to Jaymie. “I wasn’t doing anything,” she said, grabbing the car door and yanking it open. “But some people need to be told that others aren’t angels, you know?” She slid into the passenger seat.

  How Lori Wozny got from Jaymie’s silence that she thought Cody was an angel, she did not know.

  “Cody can jam a turnip up his butt, and his mom, too,” Shelby said. She leaned across her mother and glared out the window. “Why do you care?” she yelled at Jaymie.

  “I don’t,” Jaymie called out, feeling ridiculous but not wanting to engage by approaching the car. “It was just a misunderstanding!”

  “Hey, I know who you are. Saw your picture in the paper last month,” Shelby said, staring at her. “You’re the one who keeps getting mixed up in murder. You think you’re some kind of PI?”

  Jaymie just shrugged.

  “I could investigate rings around you!” She rolled her window up.

  Mabel Bloombury had come out on the porch and stood by Jaymie. “What’s wrong?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Jaymie said as Shelby gunned the heavy-sounding motor and sped down the lane, turning abruptly and skidding off down the road toward Queensville. “I have no idea. I’d better get going,” she said and gave Mabel a brief unplanned hug.

  She headed home in a thoughtful frame of mind, wondering if Shelby would do what she ought and break it off with Cody Wainwright. And then she thought of how Cody had shouted at his mother that he was happy for the first time in his life. There was trouble ahead, but she hoped it wasn’t for Nan.