White Colander Crime

by Victoria Hamilton

  Four

  SHE PARKED THE van in the usual spot by her garage in the parking lane that ran behind the houses on her street and headed into the house. She always left the garage for guests, since her van was so old and decrepit it would go into shock if garaged.

  The next few days were going to be busy. Tomorrow morning she had to be at the Emporium for a half day of work, and then there was the evening volunteering for the historic society. Her job, to hand out pamphlets for the historic manor, meant a lot of walking and a lot of talking to folks, dressed in one of the long cloaks the society had for its strolling singers. They were wool, and warm, but also heavy! It would be exhausting, but she was up for it, and looked forward to talking to folks about the historic house.

  So her evening at Jakob’s log home outside of town would be a pause before the craziness that was Dickens Days. With a mixture of nerves and hope she looked forward to it, but before that, she still had a few tasks. Once home, she got down to some household jobs. The house was chilly, so she turned up the thermostat and raced around organizing herself for the next few days. She brushed down her Victorian cloak and hung it on the hook on her bedroom door, then put together her bag to take with her the next morning for work. Hoppy raced around the house after her, barking his encouragement, while Denver insisted on going outside to sit under the holly bushes and grumble.

  The day’s light was fading when she finally looked at the clock; time to change her clothes and drive over to Jakob’s. She was nervous and excited and her stomach felt faintly ill. Taking a deep breath she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her plump cheeks were flushed with pink, and her brown hair hung in a silky sheet to her shoulders. She smoothed some moisturizer on her face and dabbed dusty rose lipstick on her lips; that was all the makeup she generally used, and tonight she wanted to be wholly herself. Jakob had seen her at her worst and at her best and seemed to like her just for who she was.

  She turned from the mirror. Hoppy sat in the doorway looking up at her. Smiling, she waited one moment, then said the magic phrase, “Want to go for a car ride?”

  Hoppy yapped and whirled, skittering in his wobbly manner down the stairs to the front hall, then back and through the kitchen, as Jaymie followed at a more sedate pace. She opened the back door, crossed the summer porch and opened the door. “Denver, come on in, sweetie,” she called.

  Her crabby tabby turned his back and glared at the fence. She sighed. “I’m not leaving you outside. I may be late and it’s getting cold.” She slipped on the shoes she kept by the back door, crossed the lawn and picked him up, cradling him in her arms. He glared up at her and started purring. He was getting fatter now that she had had his teeth fixed and fed him soft food. He wasn’t a whole lot more friendly, but he had never once growled at her, even when he was in pain. And he purred now! Amazing.

  “Jaymie, hellooo!”

  She peered through the dusk toward Pam Driscoll’s voice. Pam was looking after the bed-and-breakfast next door for her friends, Pam’s cousin and cousin-in-law Anna and Clive Jones. “How are you, neighbor?” she said, approaching the fence between the two properties. She had thought Pam was going to be a nuisance when she first moved in to look after the place because she seemed kind of needy, but she had turned out to be a surprisingly efficient manager.

  Pam stepped out of the doorway onto the deck, which overlooked the Leighton property. She stood close to the deck rail and wrapped her sweater around herself, shivering. “I’m good. Just got off the phone with Anna. The baby is almost due. She and Clive are anxiously awaiting! She’s hoping it’ll be a Christmas baby, because she’s been telling Tabby that there is a special delivery coming! She said to tell you to call or email!”

  Jaymie missed Anna and her little daughter, Tabitha, so much! “I’ll email her, or maybe we can Skype! I miss her like crazy.”

  “Me, too. Tell her to email you pics of Tabby in her new Christmas outfit. And of herself. She’s enormous! Looks like she’ll pop any minute.”

  “Are your bookings up? I have some pamphlets of the Dickens Days festivities if you want to share them with your guests.”

  “I’ll take them. I’m still learning what there is to see and do around here. I’m fully booked for the weekend. Two are overflow guests from the inn! I guess they overbooked.”

  “Awesome!” Jaymie paused. She knew some of Pam’s history, enough to know that she had been abused in the past by a boyfriend and had escaped. Weighed down by the problems of Cody Wainwright and Shelby Fretter, and how it impacted Nan Goodenough, Jaymie wished she could talk to someone about it, but there was just no way to frame the question in her heart to Pam in such a casual conversation. She desperately wanted to know why a woman would stay with a man once she had been abused. Impossible to ask of her relatively new friend. Instead, she waved her one free hand and said, “I’d better get this cat inside and get moving. Talk to you soon, Pam!”

  “One thing I miss about my life in Rochester, I used to have friends there! I’d love a visit. If you can help me move some furniture so I can clean, we can chat and have a coffee.”

  “Sure, give me a call.”

  Pam wrapped her sweater around her more closely, and retreated with a wave.

  Jaymie took Denver inside and gently put him in his basket by the stove. He looked up at her, his green eyes wide, and blinked. She smiled. “I know, Denver kitty; you love me in your own way. That’s what’s important.”

  She stuck the tub of brownies in a bag and set it by the back door, then pulled Hoppy’s little specially knitted sweater, a gift from Mrs. Frump, over him, snapped it under his belly and clipped his leash to his collar. She turned out all the lights except the one over the sink in the kitchen, said good night to Denver and headed out, locking up securely after her. Hoppy wobbled out to the van and waited for Jaymie to pick him up, then settled himself in the passenger’s seat, as usual. He didn’t know where they were going, and didn’t care. He’d be happy as long as he was with Jaymie. That was the wonderful thing about a rescued dog like Hoppy; he was all heart and grateful to be included.

  She drove out of town to the highway, and headed to Jakob’s place. It had only been a few weeks since the incident that had sent her to his door, but she thanked heaven every day. She had been in terrible trouble, and Jakob’s home was the safest place she could have landed besides a police station. It was a twenty minute drive, with a few turns along the way. She tuned the radio to a Christmas station and sang along with “Jingle Bell Rock,” trying to settle her nerves.

  What was she so anxious about anyway? She knew Jakob and liked him. They had met a couple of times for coffee in the last weeks, and once with Jocelyn. Each time Jaymie had been mildly nervous, and everything had gone beautifully. But still, this mattered to her in ways she hadn’t anticipated. This was dinner at his home with Jocelyn and it felt important, somehow, like a turning point in their relationship.

  “You are going to love Jocelyn, Hoppy. She’s like you: smart, lovable and cute.”

  Hoppy put his head to one side as he watched her, his dark eyes fastened on her mouth.

  She glanced over at him, then back to the dark country road. “And I hope you like Jakob. I can’t imagine you won’t.”

  She pulled into his lane and shut off the van in front of Jakob’s log cabin. It was big enough to have a full second floor. There was a barn beyond it, looming dark in the gloomy fall evening twilight. A floodlit sign near the barn read MÜLLER CHRISTMAS TREE FARM—CUT YOUR OWN CHRISTMAS TREE, OR LET US DO IT FOR YOU! It gave the hours—they were done for the evening, which was why the dinner was a little later than the usual dinner with a family would be—and a phone number. This was just one of Jakob’s businesses, worked up over the last fifteen years on a ten acre pocket of land in the corner of his family’s farm. Like her, he had several responsibilities, because he also ran the store, The Junk Stops Here, from a former car parts
factory on a country side road near town.

  As she sat for a moment, collecting her thoughts, she caught a glimpse of Jakob in the window of his kitchen, which overlooked the deep porch that fronted the cabin. He was at the sink, tea towel over his shoulder, talking to Jocelyn. He turned, took something out of the oven and set it on the counter, then grabbed a ladle from a container of tools, ladling something out of the pan.

  It was a deeply domestic scene. She couldn’t picture Daniel or Zack, her last two love interests, cooking and sharing a home with a child. Daniel said he wanted children, but there was never a feeling from him that he would be the kind of dad she would want for a child: engaged, careful, loving and participatory. She had tried to explain to Daniel how children changed a woman’s life in ways many men didn’t understand, how wholly it became a focus, and how she wasn’t sure she was ready for that, now that she was finding her way in life, late bloomer that she was.

  But with Jakob, she could see it. Her scalp prickled and she swallowed hard. She was anxious and just a little fearful, but knew she was letting herself get ahead of the relationship. She didn’t truly know how Jakob felt about her. She needed to just let it be what it was, and take one lovely day at a time.

  He looked up at that moment and caught sight of her van and waved. She got out, setting Hoppy down on the frozen ground and grabbing the bag with the tub of brownies off the dashboard. He had the door open by the time she got to it, and opened his arms. She walked right into them, and was enveloped in a hug so warm and comforting she felt all her nerves and tension ease away into the night.

  And then chaos erupted as little Jocie trotted to the door, Hoppy yapped a greeting and Jaymie let go of the leash. The two met in a joyful melee of cheerful pandemonium, and raced about for a half hour nonstop. The whole cabin had the fragrance of rosemary and thyme, with a dash of good strong coffee thrown in, and Jaymie pitched in, washing up dishes left over from cooking. Jakob set the kitchen table for dinner with a homely mismatched set of red earthenware dishes on a plaid tablecloth.

  She had brought a baggie of Hoppy’s food, but Jocie sneaked him bites of delicious homemade meatloaf under the table. Jakob had also cooked garlic mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. While they ate, Jakob told her about starting his Christmas tree farm.

  “I was home from college one summer and thinking of ways to make some money. Papa was thinking of selling off some of the farm, but I asked if I could work it instead.”

  “Why would he sell part of the property?” Jaymie asked.

  “He was thinking ahead to retirement,” he said. “For one thing, this part isn’t arable for other crops, though it works just fine for conifers. It’s hilly and rocky, with outcroppings of stone left from the glaciers, so it won’t take a plough. My family has a lot of land, and at that point none of the other boys seemed to want to take over the farm.”

  “How many of you are there?” Jaymie asked.

  “We are five.”

  Jaymie’s eyes widened. “Five sons? How did your mother bear it?”

  He shrugged and grinned. “She’s German. She had no problem ruling us, let me tell you.”

  “Oma says that they were all mühseligste,” Jocie said, with a giggle.

  “What does that mean?”

  Jakob rolled his eyes at his daughter. “That is when my mama is being polite. It means most troublesome.”

  “How old are you all?”

  “There was a first child, a girl, Berthe, who was stillborn,” he said, quietly. “Then there is Dieter, fifty-three. He moved back in with Mama and Papa because my father was in hospital for a while. Franz is fifty-one; he’s married and has four kids. They live near Livonia. Helmut is forty-five, not married but living with a lovely woman he met on the Internet. Sonya has two children. I call her my sister-in-law anyway. Manfred is forty-one. He’s the wanderer of the family and has been all over. Right now he’s living in Papua, New Guinea. Then there’s me!”

  Jaymie smiled. She already knew Jakob was thirty-seven. “You were talking about your father selling land?”

  “This was in the nineties just after I got out of high school. I said instead, why didn’t I take over part of it and see how it went. I told him my idea for a Christmas tree farm. We always planted our own Christmas trees over the years, my brothers and I, and we competed for the honor of having one of our trees chosen to be the season’s Christmas tree, so I knew what I was doing.” He shrugged and grinned. “Or I thought I did. It was a lot of work, and we knew it wouldn’t pay off for years, but I was young and ambitious. I got a couple of my buddies and we planted ten thousand seedlings one April.”

  He paused. Jocie was getting restless, kicking the leg of the table and shifting. “Let’s have our dessert, the wonderful brownies Jaymie brought, in the living room by the fire,” he said to his daughter.

  Jocie hopped down and helped her father clear the table, as he insisted Jaymie go make herself comfortable by the fire. Then the little girl raced around some with Hoppy, who began finally to lag a bit, sleepy after so much unaccustomed exercise. Jakob sat with Jaymie on his new sofa—he had replaced the two chairs he had in front of the fire with a red plaid sofa, and moved the chairs off to one side—and they watched Jocie lying on the rug by the hearth with Hoppy. They were playing some milder game that only the two of them understood, where she would put her hand on the rug and he would put his paw over it, then she would cover his paw, giggle and let go. They did it over and over, with Jocie laughing every time.

  Jaymie sat with her feet curled up under her, completely content in that moment, at ease as Jakob turned the TV on and tuned it to A Charlie Brown Christmas.

  “We watch this every year,” he confided, setting the remote down on the side table. “I hope you don’t mind me putting it on?”

  “Not in the slightest,” she said.

  The cabin was comfortable, if a bit drafty. Jakob had explained that when he built it from a kit he didn’t know as much as he should have. He was now having to correct the mistakes he had made in his youthful enthusiasm.

  “Are you warm enough?” he asked, looking over at her.

  She wondered what would happen if she said no. Would he move over and keep her warm? She smiled to herself. A bit too soon to be thinking things like that. “I’m good,” she said, watching him.

  Jakob was a solidly built man, more substantial than Daniel, who was gaunt and bony, or Zack, who was lithe and fit. Jakob was strong, with broad shoulders and big hands, not too tall, probably five ten or so, with a hint of a paunch. His black curly hair was longish, just touching his red-and-black plaid shirt collar, and he had a bit of beard coming in. All in all he looked very much like a lumberjack.

  “Jocie, Charlie Brown is on. Do you want your chair?” he asked.

  Jocie turned from her game with Hoppy, smiled over at them, and Jaymie’s breath caught in her throat. Jocie was a little person. Her face was round and her hair a halo of blond hanging in natural ringlets. Her eyes were a chocolatey brown, not quite as dark as Jakob’s but with the same long lashes, and expressive, full of hope. She nodded, then turned to Jaymie. “Can Hoppy sit with me?”

  “He can do whatever he wants,” she replied. “If he’d like to stay, he will.”

  Jakob crossed the room to the toy trunk and picked up a small chair beside it that was actually in the shape of a big teddy bear. He plopped it down, pointed at the TV. Jocie gently picked up Hoppy and sat, carefully settling the little dog in beside her. Hoppy was sleepy and docile after two hours of excitement and play, and snuggled close to her with a little doggie sigh as she watched Charlie and the gang find the perfect Christmas tree, which turned out to be a straggly little thing that was beautiful in spite of its faults.

  “I’m not sure the lesson from Charlie Brown is one a Christmas tree farm owner ought to embrace,” she joked, as Jakob sat back down just a little closer
to her.

  “But it’s important. I tell folks, don’t look for the perfect tree, because nature makes room for imperfection, just as we should. Not one of us is perfect.”

  She put her hand on his arm and gazed steadily at him with a smile. “That is so the perfect answer!”

  He met her gaze. “It’s what I believe. I like to give folks second chances, you know? And let things go that aren’t perfect. Even if you once believed in perfection; that goes out the door when you have a kid.”

  She glanced around at the faintly shabby room, toys piled on a chest by the bookcase, where kids books were jumbled in with old texts, battered paperback fiction and one whole shelf of books on arboriculture, which Jaymie didn’t even know was a field of agricultural study until she met Jakob. “Perfection is highly overrated,” she said softly. She squeezed his arm and released, feeling just a little self-conscious and knowing she was blushing.

  They chatted quietly as Hoppy snoozed, kicking at Jocie with his hind legs as she giggled and made more room for him on her comfy chair. The Peanuts gang put on the nativity play, and Snoopy decorated his doghouse with glowing lights. They ate brownies, which Jakob declared were the best he had ever eaten as he licked his fingers. Jocie nodded in enthusiastic agreement, brownie crumbs on her pink bow lips, before her gaze returned to the TV, as the gang sang together around the now beautiful Christmas tree.

  “So did you finally find someone to work the tree farm?” she asked, as the show went to a commercial. Jakob had almost despaired of finding anyone who could work the farm and help folks cut down trees in the daytime while he took care of the junk store. He had one fellow, but needed a second.

  “I finally did. As a matter of fact, his mom is the editor at the Wolverhampton Weekly Howler, the one who hired you for Vintage Eats.”

  Five

  “DO YOU MEAN Cody Wainwright?” she asked.