A Deadly Grind

by Victoria Hamilton

  “Judging from that scene in front of your house, Lynn Foster must have heard her husband had more money than she thought,” Anna said, sitting with Jaymie in her backyard while Hoppy frolicked with Tabby.

  “By then she knew she wasn’t getting the Button letter, and any money is better than nothing, I guess,” Jaymie said. She sat in one of her vintage Adirondack chairs. “I will say this; it looked for all the world like she was trying to interfere with the officer giving Nathan CPR. I wonder if she knew what she was doing? I wouldn’t put it past her. Those two were a matched set of scheming jerks. I hope they charge her with attempted murder on poor Heidi.”

  Daniel was sitting in the grass with Denver on his lap, while Valetta Nibley stood nearby, watching Tabby play with Hoppy, a wistful look on her homely face. Joel had even come over with Heidi, newly released from the hospital. The poor girl sported some purplish bruises but still looked pretty. Anna had directed people to go to her deck and bring back the chairs she had there, to allow enough room for folks to sit in the late afternoon golden sun. Dee had just arrived bearing a casserole, and she made coffee, using the huge urn the Leighton family stored in the pantry. Jaymie had already made a big pot of hot tea and put it in a carafe.

  “So what exactly happened?” DeeDee said, balancing a melamine cup of coffee on the arm of her folding lawn chair. “I still don’t understand. Last I heard from Lyle yesterday, Lynn Foster was in jail, and I thought that was that?”

  “I thought she was the one, I really did,” Jaymie said. “When I looked in her room at the Inn, I found evidence that pointed directly at her, but I didn’t realize that what it really meant was Nathan Foster was setting her up to take the fall for everything he’d done. He even went so far as to toss that diamond pin on the dirt by my new holly bushes, just hoping it would be found and traced back to her. He couldn’t have known it would be found. It was a sloppy plot, created on the fly, I suppose, as their plan to get the Button letter evolved after the fiasco at the auction. It almost worked, though!”

  She detailed much of what she knew, then said, “I don’t think Lynn even knew about the Hoosier receipt stuck in the collector’s magazine. I interfered in Nathan’s plan, but he decided to use even that to his advantage. I had already loudly claimed at the police station that Lynn Foster was the murderer, but they didn’t have enough to hold her on. I gather Nathan’s lawyer told Lynn to force the police department’s hand; she wouldn’t talk to them, and told them to either charge her or she was walking out. They couldn’t charge her with Trevor’s murder based on what they had.”

  “That is unthinkable,” Joel said, indignant. “Why couldn’t they hold her?

  “Look at the result,” Jaymie said. “If they had charged her with murder, she’d have a good case against them. And it did look like I had masqueraded as a maid on purpose to plant things in her room. There was enough ambiguity that they couldn’t risk a lawsuit for false arrest, so until they had a chance to unravel everything, all they could do was warn her to stay in Queensville for a few days.” She squinted into the distance. “The police must have been following Lynn Foster, though, I suppose. That’s probably why they arrived so quickly after she did.”

  Denver had abandoned Daniel to lie in wait for Hoppy, so he could pounce on the dog if he got too close, and Daniel now sat in the grass near Jaymie’s feet, legs tucked under him, elbows on his knees. “I sure thought we had it right,” he said.

  “We didn’t know the inner dynamics of their marriage, I guess,” Jaymie mused. The sun of late day angled onto her face, and she sighed, relishing the cooling breeze of a May early evening. She was happy to be safe and secure in her home, surrounded by her friends. “Lynn was sick of her husband and planned to ditch him, but he was no idiot, despite seeming kind of gentle and befuddled. That was all an act. Pretty convincing to me. I figure he knew about Brett and her, and he knew she was planning to double-cross him, ultimately, with the Button Gwinnett letter. He didn’t have enough money for her, maybe, but he was still loaded. At least by all of our reckoning.”

  Daniel was conspicuously silent, and Jaymie realized, with shock, that he probably had many times the money in Nathan’s estate. It made her a little uncomfortable, as Dee eyed her with a knowing smile. To counter the blush that rose in her cheeks—Daniel had made his interest in her plain, maybe too plain—she hurried to continue explaining. “If Nathan divorced Lynn, he would have had to give her alimony, but if she was convicted of murder, he may have been able to keep most of it. I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know, but I assume he could have made a good case, given that she was drugging him. He might even have been able to claim that she was trying to kill him. Maybe he was setting her up for that.”

  “Kind of ironic that he almost died with her hanging over him,” Dee said. “I wonder if she’ll get his money?”

  “Probably,” Jaymie said. “Why wouldn’t she? I suppose she figured her boyfriend, Brett, killed Trevor. She was cold-blooded enough not to care, I guess.”

  “So how do you figure it happened?” Heidi asked. Joel sat on the other Adirondack, and she sat on his knee, her arm around his neck, looking adorably frail with a bandage on her head covering seven stitches from Lynn’s whack.

  “It started quite a while ago,” Jaymie said, and related what Lynn had told her about joining the collector’s group where they’d met Trevor Standish, and then Brett Delgado. The Fosters made a deal with Trevor to fund his search for the Button letter, and they followed him to Queensville to keep an eye on their investment. “When Brett showed up with his forger pal in tow—which Lynn did not expect and wasn’t pleased about—I think Nathan knew for sure that Lynn was playing him for a fool and, worse than that, had no intention of sharing the Button letter with him.”

  “That would do it . . . your wife’s younger lover shows up in the same village at the same time?” Joel laughed. “Even an idiot would get the not-so-subtle hint that his marriage was over.”

  Daniel threw Joel an exasperated look. “He must have known about it long before that.”

  “I think, though, that the final straw was that Nathan must have seen her at the auction talking to Trevor alone. Nathan really did want the Button, and the thought that his wife and his ‘employee’ were scheming to deprive him of it just infuriated him.”

  “But he’s dead now,” Heidi said.

  “Lynn’s apparently claiming that she was under her husband’s thumb and afraid of him,” Jaymie said, shaking her head. She had heard that from a friend who worked in the payroll office at the police station. “Everything she did, she did at his command, she told the police, even holding me hostage. I think she’s intent on divorcing herself from any part of the whole thing. It’s easy to blame a dead man. And she wants to be sure she’s positioned as his heir.”

  “How can she do that, put all the blame for kidnapping you on Nathan? You can prove her wrong,” Valetta said.

  “I think she’s just trying to confuse the issue. They’ll still have her on the attack on Heidi, which she admitted to me.”

  The conversation turned to other things—it was the first holiday weekend of summer, after all—and her friends headed in to load up plates of the casserole, salad and other goodies laid out on the trestle table in the kitchen. As Jaymie rose from the Adirondack, she looked back to see Anna head down the lawn toward the back gate, Tabitha’s small hand in hers.

  “Hey, aren’t you staying to have a bite to eat?” Jaymie called out, following her.

  Anna turned and shook her head, rubbing her stomach. “I’m not feeling too well. I’m just going to go back to lie down for a while. I have guests, and more arriving tonight.”

  Jaymie walked with her to the back gate as Anna picked up her sleepy daughter. “I’m sorry you’re not well.” She looked at Anna’s face, and suddenly said, “You aren’t . . . you aren’t expecting, are you?”

 
Anna’s pale cheeks turned pink, and tears welled up in her eyes. She nodded. “I think I am,” she whispered, cuddling Tabby to her breast. “But don’t tell anyone. I haven’t told Clive yet, because I’m not sure. I missed taking my pill a few times.”

  “Oh, Anna . . . are you happy?”

  She hesitated, but then nodded and dashed the tears away with her free hand. “I am. I really am. We always planned on more kids. I just don’t know how I’m going to handle the Shady Rest. I had an awful time with morning sickness with Tabby, and cooking eggs for guests . . . it’s going to be torture!”

  Jaymie only hesitated a moment before saying, “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it as long as necessary.”

  Anna reached out to her with a sob of gratitude. “Thanks, Jaymie! You’re such a good friend.”

  As the two women hugged, Tabby sleepily patted Jaymie’s cheek, and echoed, “Such a good fwiend!”

  Twenty-four

  IN THE BRIGHT light of day Jaymie could see that the Hoosier still wasn’t as clean as she wanted it, so she did it over more thoroughly. Now it was truly clean, the drawers sitting out in the backyard in the sunshine drying. It was the Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend, and Becca would be arriving anytime. Jaymie was busier than ever. That morning she had cooked breakfast for all of Anna’s guests, and her friend was tearfully grateful. The tearful part was now more understandable, given Anna’s “delicate state,” as the historical romances Jaymie read would have put it.

  Lots of work lay ahead for the summer, because Jaymie had struck a deal with the Emporium owners—for whom she worked occasionally—to fill picnic baskets with vintage melamine and linens for “rental” during the summer. The group would put a deposit on the basket and pay for the food filling it; when they returned the basket and dishes, their deposit would be refunded. Jaymie had scoured a local antiques market for more melamine and a couple more baskets, because it was proving to be a popular idea.

  The tourism season was officially in full swing. The Queensville/Johnsonville regatta was coming up on the July First–July Fourth Canadian/American holiday, after which the town would celebrate Founder’s Day, and a slew of other special days, not winding down until the autumn events, Harvest Fest, Thanksgiving, and then “Dickens Days,” the Christmas festival in Queensville, and New Year’s Eve on the Boardwalk. That was the rhythm of life in Queensville, Michigan.

  But right now she was at peace with the world and enjoying her Hoosier.

  “Jaymie!”

  She looked up. Daniel was at the back gate, and Hoppy was leaping for joy, yipping excitedly. He came through and ambled up the long stone walkway to the summer porch.

  “It looks great,” he said, of the now clean but otherwise untouched Hoosier cabinet.

  “I had given it a scrubbing before, but in the light of day I could see how much grubbiness remained, so I just had to give the drawers a better going-over,” she said, pushing her bangs off her forehead. “I’ve finished waxing the tambour door track so it will roll smoothly,” she said, stepping over to it and demonstrating the tambour now moving smoothly on its track.

  “Looks fantastic.”

  “So, have you heard from Trevor’s mother?” she asked as she shifted the porcelain work top, propping it against the kitchen door.

  He nodded, looking a little glum and wiping his eyes, which had welled with moisture for his lost friend. “She had warned Trevor not to get in over his head, she told me. She just got a note from him day before yesterday. It said that if he got into trouble she was to look to Nathan Foster, who, he had a feeling, was a ‘bad dude,’ in his own words.”

  “That guy sure got around a lot for a sixty-something man. He had followed Trevor, who was working for Lynn and him, and snatched what he thought was the Button letter before killing Trevor.” She still felt a chill down her back at the thought, but shrugged it off. She was not going to let the awful events on her summer porch ruin her summer.

  “I still don’t understand why Ted Abernathy ended up murdered?”

  “Didn’t I explain? The day Abernathy attacked me, he said he’d figured out a way to make some money off the deal, even without the letter. Nathan Foster told me Abernathy tried to blackmail him. The guy was desperate for cash—he said he ‘lost’ some money that didn’t belong to him—desperate enough to risk meeting with Nathan in private at the marina. That was his undoing. Nathan killed him to keep him quiet.”

  “Grim.”

  “I know. I told Detective Christian all of that.” Her heart leaped a little when she thought of the handsome detective, and a blush burned her cheeks, but how silly was that? He’d barely noticed her, and then only as a suspect.

  Just then, the man himself, Detective Zachary Christian, strolled through her back gate and up the stone path, carrying a longish box. Jaymie watched him silently, noting his casual garb. No suit today, but jeans and a polo shirt stretched taut over an athletic frame.

  “Detective Christian,” she said. “What brings you here?”

  “Not official business, don’t worry,” he said with a smile, one foot up on the top step. “So this is the infamous Hoosier cabinet. I looked at it when we were here, but I didn’t really get what it was for.” He stepped up and moved closer.

  Jaymie explained the history of the Hoosier and the starring role it was set to play in her second Recipes from the Vintage Kitchen cookbook, then said, “Now I want to get this in place in the kitchen. Can someone help me carry it in?”

  Both men stepped forward, then eyed each other.

  “We can do it together,” the detective said, setting the box aside. “Right, buddy?”

  Daniel pushed his glasses up on his nose, and said, “Sure.”

  So Jaymie was in the novel situation of having not one, but two men to direct. They carried the base unit into the house and pushed it into the space she had cleared for it as she carried the tabletop in. She lifted the porcelain tabletop and pushed it into place, then asked them to get the upper cabinet. When they gently lowered it into the brackets, working together better than she would have expected, she got a screwdriver, this time eschewing anyone else’s help. Some things she wanted to do on her own.

  As she worked, attaching the upper cabinet to the brackets, she wondered anew why Detective Christian had shown up. “So what brings you here, Detective?” she said, over her shoulder.

  “Call me Zachary, or Zack.” He smiled down at her as she bent to slot the screwdriver into the vintage screw she was using.

  The burning spots in her cheeks could easily be explained by her position; the blood was just rushing to her face.

  “I just wanted to let you know, we found the real murder weapon, and according to the medical examiner, it wasn’t your grinder. Your information helped, what you told us about Nathan Foster’s statement to you.”

  “Nathan said he used a crowbar,” she said, straightening.

  “That’s right. It was probably Trevor Standish’s, from his rental car, judging by his fingerprints all over it.”

  She nodded. “It was what he used to pry my door off its hinges.”

  “Foster was clumsy; his prints are on it, too,” the detective said. “I have a feeling he thought he was so clever, we’d never imagine it was him.”

  “He told me he lost his grip on it, and since Trevor had pulled the grinder off the work top when he fell, Nathan picked that up for one last blow.” She shivered.

  “Where’d you find the crowbar?” Daniel asked. He strolled across the kitchen toward the stove and picked up the teakettle.

  “In the trunk of the Cadillac. I think Foster assumed he had gotten all the blood off of it, but luminal shows everything! I don’t have the typing back yet from the lab in Wolverhampton, but I have a feeling we’ll discover it’s Trevor Standish’s. Sorry, buddy, I know he was a
friend of yours.”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Ted Abernathy’s murder is a different matter,” the detective said.

  “Did you find the knife yet?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. It may wash up, or it may not. In any event, we have Foster’s deathbed confession.”

  Jaymie swallowed and shook her head. So much for leaving it all behind.

  “Want me to put the kettle on, Jaymie?” Daniel asked. “You look like you could use a cup of tea.”

  “Sure. Good idea.”

  The detective smiled, that gorgeous, quirky smile she had seen only once before. He picked up the box he had laid down and handed it to Jaymie. “This is your grinder.”

  She backed away. “I don’t think I want it.”

  “I had it professionally cleaned by the lab. No traces of anything remain, honest. It really was not the murder weapon, Jaymie. The ME thinks Standish was dead by the time Foster attacked him with the grinder. Keep it in the box, put it away somewhere and forget about it. You may be happy you kept it someday.”

  She retrieved the bottom drawer from outside, had the detective drop the box in it and pushed it into its slot in the Hoosier. It would stay there indefinitely.

  “I have to go,” the detective said. “I’ll leave you two to . . . whatever.”

  “Wait!” Jaymie said. “One question I’ve had all along is, how did Trevor Standish apparently text Daniel, when the guy was already dead?” She wasn’t about to say, with Daniel there, that she had suspected Zell based largely on the cell phone usage and text message to Daniel.

  “That was another thing we wondered, too. What happened to Trevor Standish’s cell phone? We got the records, and could tell someone had used it after he died—to text Dan, here—but there wasn’t another single call or text made on it. The phone completely disappeared, and I’d bet it’s in the St. Clair River with the knife.”