White Colander Crime

by Victoria Hamilton

  Pondering her picnic baskets made her think of Jakob, though to be fair, almost everything seemed to make her think of Jakob these days. He had talked about getting her ideas for expanding and changing up his Christmas tree farm for next year’s holiday, and she could think of a half dozen, one of them being involving him in her picnic basket rental. She wondered if he had room for an open bonfire and makeshift outdoor kitchen near the tree fields. If he did they could have folks come out, drink hot chocolate, eat an outdoor picnic lunch, and if there was snow, have snowman building and sleigh or cart rides. Then the family could choose their tree and take it home.

  She rested her cheek on one hand and stared out the back window, through the summer porch to the yard. She was becoming alarmingly mushy, her insides like warm pudding when she thought of him. He was good-looking in a sturdy Teutonic way. Jaymie was feminist to the core; she felt that men and women should be treated equal and must receive equal pay for equal work. The world wasn’t there yet, not by a long shot, but being a feminist didn’t stop her from deeply appreciating the wonderful differences between men and women. Jakob Müller made her feel beautiful when he held her in his arms. She sighed and smiled.

  However . . . time was fleeting. She told herself to stop daydreaming and, after consulting her purse appointment calendar, wrote down her itinerary for the next few days. One day at a time, she told herself, with regards to Jakob; that was how she took everything in her life. She hustled through making some more brownies to give out when she did the pamphlet walk for Dickens Days again, and thought to call Heidi.

  “Hey, Heidi, how is it going?”

  “Pretty good. Bernie came over today and we made cookies. She’s been practicing what you taught her.”

  Jaymie had given them both a few cooking and baking tips, but Bernie was the only one of the two who had put them into use.

  “We made the cutest cookies shaped like little men.”

  “Gingerbread cookies?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess.”

  “That’s good! I wondered if you were helping at Dickens Days this week?”

  “I’ll be there!”

  “Good. I’m going to be at the manor Thursday, Friday and Saturday until seven, but I’ll be heading straight to hand out pamphlets for Dickens Days from there. I’ll see you then, I guess.”

  “I’m going to the manor today to help with the cleaning,” Heidi said.

  “Really?” Heidi was wealthy and had a cleaning service for her own home, even though she didn’t have a job or any real responsibilities. It was heartening that she had volunteered to help with the unglamorous and largely thankless task of cleaning Queensville Historic Manor. “I’m doing the same a little later today, at about three o’clock. Can I meet you there? I have a question slash favor to ask.”

  “Okay. What about?”

  “Glenn Brennan.”

  “Yuck. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you,” Jaymie said. The moment she hung up from that call, Becca phoned with questions about getting their grandmother into their Queensville home. Grandma Leighton was a little unsteady on her feet, but Jaymie thought if she took up the throw rug in the front hall there shouldn’t be any trouble. “I’ll make sure the path is cleared so it isn’t too difficult for her, but the bathroom is upstairs. What can we do about that?”

  “I know Mimi and Grant are opening their house for the holidays, too,” Becca said, about the Watsons, next-door neighbors who were longtime friends of the Leighton’s. “They have a powder room on the main floor, so Grandma can get to that one if she needs to go before we return her to the Queensville Inn.” The Watson’s house was indeed very close, because homes on their street were not separated by lanes.

  After that they went through their to-do lists together, but finally Becca asked, “So, are you really looking into the death of that poor girl?”

  “How did you hear about it?” Jaymie asked, astonished.

  “How do you think? I called Valetta to ask if she could look down the road to see if the work on the house is going ahead,” she said, talking about the house she and Kevin were converting into an antiques and fine vintage china shop. “I would have asked you, but Valetta is right there. I guess the roofers are patching up the problems, even in this weather, so hopefully it won’t leak anymore. Then she told me about that editor of yours asking you to investigate. I think it stinks that she’s put you in such a position, and at this time of year, when you’re busy. You should have said no. You’ve already got too much on your plate, and it could be dangerous.”

  Jaymie stiffened, took in a deep breath, then let it out without saying what she wanted, which was for big sister Becca to butt out. “Nan has been good to me, and I know I could have said no. I decided to go ahead, but I’ve given myself a time limit; if after three days I don’t feel I’m getting anywhere, or I still feel that her son is probably the killer, then I’ll tell her I’m done.”

  Becca was silent for minute. “I guess. If that’s how you want to handle it.”

  “That’s how I want to handle it,” Jaymie said firmly. Her whole life Becca had been stepping in, trying to tell Jaymie what she should be doing. It was, she supposed, left over from many years before when Jaymie had needed her almost as a surrogate mother. Fifteen years older than Jaymie, Becca had stepped up, giving four-year-old Jaymie the safety net she had needed when their parents went through a rough patch, bickering constantly and almost separating.

  “I’ve made you mad,” Becca said, a rueful tone in her voice. “I just can’t help it. I still feel like I should tell you what to do.”

  Jaymie laughed out loud. “As long as you don’t mind me pushing back, we’ll be just fine.”

  “I don’t mind. Kevin says I boss you around too much. Maybe he’s right.”

  “Give Kevin a hug for me and tell him he’s about to become my favorite brother-in-law of all time,” Jaymie replied, and they hung up on laughter.

  The week and a half before Christmas would be organized chaos, so she wrote a timeline for the next few days, with places she had to be penned in, and the duration of the event. That afternoon she had Cynthia and Jewel down for two hours, then the manor for two hours to clean. The evening was hers to write her no-bake fruitcake recipe and column, and get it in to Nan.

  She put the rest of the soup away, fetched her coat and boots and was just ready to don her winter gear and leave the house when the phone rang. Hoppy danced around and she nearly tripped, but she got to it and answered. “Hello?”

  “Is this Jaymie Leighton?” the youngish woman said, her voice breathy and nervous.

  “It is. Can I help you?”

  “You shouldn’t be trying to help that newswoman get her son out of jail, you know,” she said, her tone hardening. “He’s a jerk, a murderer and he killed poor Shelby. I have inside information. You probably don’t know this, but Cody Wainwright was seen following her that night.”

  “Oh?” Jaymie was trying to place the voice . . . Had she heard it before? Where did she know it from?

  “Yeah, oh! Why don’t you ask him how he got Shelby Fretter’s blood on his coat? Let him try to explain that.” Click.

  Thirteen

  THE DIAL TONE hummed in Jaymie’s ear.

  Who was that? The voice sounded hauntingly familiar. But she had interacted with several young women over the last couple of days and it could have been any one of them. In a thoughtful frame of mind she pulled her boots on and grabbed her cell phone, pulling the charger cord out and checking her text messages. Nothing from Nan yet on the biker. She stuck it in her purse, pulled on her coat, and headed out to the van. She was driving because right after Cynthia and Jewel, she was going to the historic manor and she just didn’t have time to walk, even though she had promised herself to get enough exercise and eat right over the holiday season.

  The voice on the phone nag
ged at her brain; she knew she had heard it recently, but when? And where? Was it . . . Ah! She pulled up to the curb between Jewel and Cynthia’s shops, but before she got out she texted Nan to ask her a question. It had taken a few minutes, but she was almost certain that the voice on the phone was the girl at the jail who had checked her in. Nan might know who she was, or might be able to find out.

  She sat thinking for a moment, staring across the road, examining the cottage Becca and Kevin had bought as a joint venture. They didn’t have a name for it yet, but it was going to be an antiques boutique, filling a gap in Queensville’s growing antiques-and-vintage-destination profile. Becca and Kevin’s store would sell vintage and antique china, and early-to late–nineteenth-century fine antiques: sideboards, etageres, dining room furnishings, Turkish rugs, chandeliers and elegant knickknacks.

  But there was a lot of work to be done on the cottage before then. When Jaymie first heard about the venture, she was afraid Becca would ask her to run it. With the number of commitments she already had, she didn’t want to be tied down to a six-days-a-week shop. But one of Kevin’s sisters who already lived in the States would be moving to Queensville. She would have an apartment in the back and run the store.

  In the background her mind had been working; she was sure who the caller was, and disturbed by what she had said. Should she call the chief? Or was that going too far? She’d wait until Nan returned her text before deciding.

  Jaymie climbed out of her van and turned, transfixed for a moment by the sight of the yellow fluttering crime scene tape on Bill’s workshop behind Jewel’s store. It was a forlorn sight, and took her right back to that moment of finding poor Shelby Fretter, her hours on earth numbered, though no one knew it then. Overwhelmed with sadness as she was, Jaymie still felt so alive, the cold crisp air filling her lungs, the energy coursing through her. Poor Shelby would never again experience all the joy and sorrow, drudgery and excitement, loveliness and awfulness that was life. She deserved to have her true killer found and convicted, whether it was Cody or someone else.

  Jewel stepped out her front door with a long twist tie in her hand and wrapped it around the railing, fastening a bit of the sagging garland. She caught sight of Jaymie and followed her gaze to the workshop. “Bill is beside himself,” she called out as Jaymie headed toward her. “The cops won’t tell him when he can have access to his workshop again.” She crossed her arms over her chest, tucking her hands under her arms. “You’d think they could let him have his place back.”

  “It can take anywhere from hours to days to clear a site,” Jaymie said. She followed Jewel into her store and they set to work on a display that the shopkeeper was changing up.

  After about an hour Jaymie headed over to Cynthia’s Cottage Shoppe, where she helped do much the same. When they were done, Cynthia insisted on making Jaymie a cup of tea, so she waited in the living room display, smiling at the look of the place. There was a puffy sofa with a gorgeous soft white cover and chintz cushions, and in front of it a coffee table cobbled together from reclaimed wood and the legs of a broken chair, painted aqua and sanded to have a weathered look. It was rustic and charming, perfect for a cottage. Shelves lining the walls held old birdcages painted white and filled with flowers, as well as cutesy knickknacks like china poodles in tutus and little girls with sun umbrellas. It was Valetta’s kind of kitsch, but Jaymie’s friend preferred hunting for those items at thrift stores and junk shops rather than paying the inflated prices Cynthia’s chichi store demanded.

  It was overwhelmingly claustrophobic, every surface covered, every item painted white or a pastel, everything made over into something else. She liked a lot of it, but her taste ran to using vintage items as they were meant to be used. Her cell phone chimed and she read a text message from Nan. It addressed both what Jaymie had texted her about and her previous request about the biker dude. Jaymie was frowning down at it when Cynthia came in with a tray bearing tea in Christmas mugs and a plate of mint green–tinted spritz wreath cookies adorned with pastel and silver sprinkles.

  She took a cup and sipped. “Cynthia, are you still . . . uh, friends with Johnny Stanko?”

  The older woman blushed. Cynthia was a midfifties elegant big-city transplant who had recently suffered an addiction relapse, her past drinking problem rebounding after a broken heart. But she was working through it now, and had made unexpected friends with a rough-hewn shambling late-thirties fellow by the name of Johnny Stanko, who treated her as if she were a delicate piece of china he was not fit to touch. They were dating, though most dates were, it had been whispered, attending twelve-step addiction meetings together. “I am friends with him. We do a lot of things together, actually.”

  “Does he still work as the busboy and bar back at that place on the highway?”

  She nodded, with a hint of suspicion in her blue eyes. “Why?”

  Jaymie filled Cynthia in on the bare bones of what she was trying to do for Nan. “I just got a text saying that one man Shelby had been seen with is a biker fellow who frequents the bar where Johnny works. He’d probably know him to see him. If I gave you the name, could you have Johnny give me a call when he comes into the bar again?”

  She hesitated. “This won’t get Johnny in any trouble will it? With anyone? His boss, the biker?”

  “I can’t imagine why it would. I just want to know so I can catch the guy in a more relaxed setting, not track him down at home.” Cynthia still hesitated, so Jaymie added, “All I want is for Johnny to point the guy out. I’ll take it from there.”

  “I’ll call him and get back to you tonight.”

  “Thanks, Cynthia.” She gulped back the rest of her tea and nabbed a couple of cookies. “I have to get out to the manor,” she said, standing. “I’m going out to do a shift cleaning. Heidi is meeting me there and says she’s going to clean, too!”

  Cynthia gave a wry chuckle as she followed her to the door. “You may need to follow her around and clean up after her. I have an idea she doesn’t know which end of a dust mop to use!”

  Jaymie sat in her van for a second, ate the cookies and reread Nan’s lengthy text message beyond the stuff about the biker. Nan said that the girl Jaymie was referring to at the jail was probably Mikayla Jones, Travis Fretter’s occasional girlfriend. Jaymie’s personal information was on her consent form she signed at the jail; that explained where Mikayla got Jaymie’s name and phone number. But why the anonymous call to inform on Cody? Given who she was, all this did was pique Jaymie’s interest in, and suspicion of, Travis Fretter, moving him up the list of suspects. Unless there really was Shelby’s blood on Cody’s coat and it turned out he had been following her, verified by another independent witness, Jaymie would set aside that whispered information as useless, motivated likely by a desire to turn Jaymie’s attention away from Travis.

  Jaymie drove out of town and was happy to see others at the house. The Queensville Historic Manor was only open from Wednesday through Sunday, so some of the heritage society would be taking advantage of today to spiff up the décor and clean. Jaymie entered to the cheery sounds of hammering, chatter and the occasional thud that echoed through the manor. She popped her head around the corner and found Mabel in the dining room resetting the table carefully with the red and white transferware loaned to them by Becca. She had laid a red toile runner, and was centering a red transferware tureen in the middle, brimming with long-needled white-pine branches, threaded with pearls and holly sprays. “That’s going to be so beautiful!” Jaymie said.

  Mabel turned and smiled. She was a compact little woman, full busted and stocky, but swift and light in her movements. “Thanks to your wonderful sister. She came through for us with this; she loaned me a complete set of Romantic England transferware by Meakin, with the tureen, serving pieces . . . everything! I’m going to do up the sideboard in the same way,” she said, waving her hand at the tiger oak mirrored sideboard, mounded with Christmas greens and table
linens at that moment, as well as a basket full of china dishes.

  “Do you need any help?”

  “Oh, no, dear, thank you. This is an absolute pleasure. I have two sets of china and my husband will divorce me if I start any more collections, so this way I can play with other patterns!” She chuckled. “Besides, I like working on my own. I’m getting it done today because my youngest daughter is coming to town early for the holidays.” Her vivacious manner dimmed. “She was friends with Shelby Fretter, you know. When I told her what happened she was shocked. She got a text from Shelby just last week saying that when they got together over the holidays she had some things to tell Lynnsey.”

  Jaymie’s interest quickened. “Did she say any more? What it was about?”

  “I don’t know.” Mabel paused and watched Jaymie for a moment. “Do you think that Cody boy really did it? Killed that poor girl?”

  “I don’t know,” Jaymie admitted. “His mom sure doesn’t think so.”

  Tears started in Mabel’s eyes and she shook her head, fiddling with a teacup then setting it down. “It’s so sad! And at this time of year, too. I know it would be the same any time of year, but Christmas! Christmas means family to me. Poor Lori. I can’t imagine walking around Queensville, seeing everything so festive and people wishing each other Merry Christmas, and all the while there’s this hole in your heart where your child should be.”

  That was probably the best description Jaymie had ever heard for what Lori Wozny must be feeling. But Jaymie had seen the possibility of that same heart hole for Nan, the same feeling of emptiness if it was proved that her son did it. “I don’t know if Cody did it, but he says he didn’t. I’ve told Nan Goodenough I’ll see if I can find anything out.”