Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery)

by Hamilton, Victoria

  Tapping her pencil on the clipboard, she felt that pressure in the lower regions that comes from too many cups of tea late at night and no bathroom facilities. She glanced up at the old clock, an electric rooster-shaped clock that had been in the cottage as long as she could remember. It was one o’clock in the morning, and sleep seemed an elusive chimera. If she could just go to the bathroom, she’d be fine.

  She looked out the back window that topped the kitchen sink and stared through the gloom toward the Redmonds’ home. No lights. Darn! Ruby had said that the back door would be open, and to come on over whenever she needed to, but it would feel weirdly invasive to just walk in. Maybe she should just do what she had done as a kid on rare camping trips, and go in the bushes. That gave her the creeps, though, since she was so close to neighbors. It was definitely a last resort.

  Hoppy trotted out to the kitchen, took a long slurp of water, and then scratched at the back door to go out. If only it was that easy for humans, she thought, as she stepped out on the back porch to wait for him to cock his leg and come back in. Not that he actually did cock his leg, exactly. He was three-legged, and wobbly, but he was still a boy dog and gamely tried. His late-night ventures were never long, just enough time to piddle, so it was a surprise when he suddenly bounded out into the lawn and began to bark.

  “Hoppy!” she hissed, going to the edge of the deck and searching what was left of the grassy area behind the cottage. “Come back here!”

  Barking again.

  “Hoppy!” Darn it! She did not want him wandering out onto the mucky leaching bed, because that would mean having to bathe him. She ducked back into the cottage and grabbed the flashlight that was attached to the wall by the back door. She turned it on and swept it around the mess of her backyard. Hoppy was on alert, his quivering nose pointed toward the small grove of crab apple trees that puddled around one small spot in the hollow between the Leighton yard and the Redmonds’.

  Please don’t let it be a skunk, Jaymie prayed! She tripped and skidded down the slope and across the mucky backyard, then pounced on her Yorkie-Poo, grabbing his collar. “Hoppy Leighton, you are not going be skunked tonight,” she whispered. She carried him back in, hoping he had done his business, and wishing it were so easy for her.

  It took a good ten minutes to wash his paws and her own, and then she was left wanting a cup of tea but not daring to drink one more ounce of fluid, and sitting at the table drumming her pencil while Hoppy stared at the back door with wistful eyes. She still had to go! She paced and glanced out the back window again, hoping to see a light on in the Redmonds’ kitchen. She thought she saw a flash, but it was gone in an instant.

  Okay, ignore the urgent need to relieve yourself, she thought, as she settled down to work. An article on ice harvesting and ice cream making. Ice, ice, baby, she hummed; it caught in her brain, repeating like a manic refrain. She had to think of a way to start her article.

  In the beginning, there was the ice age . . .

  Or . . .

  I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream . . .

  Rotten beginnings, both of them.

  Summertime, and the livin’ is easy . . . but it wasn’t always so far as making that delicious summertime treat, ice cream. Today we head to the supermarket and buy a quart, but not so very long ago if you wanted ice cream to go with your cherry pie, you depended on a ready supply of ice and hours of hand churning. But where could you go to get ice in the age before mechanical refrigeration?

  Not too terrible. Maybe she could do something with that. As she sat cudgeling her brain, noise erupted in the backyard, a loud shout and clang of metal. Then Jaymie clearly heard, through the open back window, “Get off my property!”

  The voice was loud and harsh, not one she recognized. Jaymie bolted up out of her chair and hustled out to the back deck, but couldn’t see anything. There was a light on in the Redmonds’ kitchen now, but there didn’t appear to be any movement. Hoppy started barking, and Jaymie was stunned into inaction for a moment. That voice had been clear as a bell, floating in her back window. If it was from the street in front of the cottage, she wouldn’t have heard a thing.

  She reached back in, pushing Hoppy away with her foot as she grabbed the flashlight again, and played it across the yard. There was a dark hump down the slope, in the gully between her and the Redmonds’ backyard. She slipped flip-flops on her feet and trotted down the hill as her neighbors’ back porch light came on.

  “Jaymie, is that you? Everything all right?” came Garnet’s voice floating down to her.

  “I don’t know. There’s something down here. Did you just yell at someone to get off your property?”

  “No! What’s going on?”

  “Is everything okay?” That was Ruby’s voice, thick with sleep.

  A dog barked in the distance, then yelped; it sounded like someone had thrown something at it. Jaymie stumbled down the slope and across the muddy ravine, over the ruts of dirt, to the clear space that the plumbers were working in. She stepped over PVC piping, and played her flashlight over the grass as Hoppy barked at the back door. Other lights were beginning to flicker on through the woods that separated their cottages from others.

  Where was that dark spot she had noticed, the one that hadn’t been there earlier? There! She approached and the flashlight pinned on the dark spot, which quickly became a human form. “Garnet, call 911!” she cried.

  “Jaymie, are you okay?” Ruby shouted, as Garnet said, “What’s going on?”

  “Someone’s hurt,” Jaymie yelled, and, gasping for breath, approached the figure. She played the flashlight over the man, beginning at the feet, shod in sand-clogged, deep-treaded work boots. As the light moved up the paunchy body, she wondered at the stillness. “Mister, are you okay? Can I get some he . . .” She stopped talking. The glassy eyes, wide-open and staring, as well as the bloodred stain drenching his golf shirt left no doubt that help would be too late. She sobbed, her voice clogged and unnatural sounding. “It’s Urban Dobrinskie,” she yelled. “And he’s . . .” She paused as her stomach heaved. She reached out and touched him; he was cold! She retched, then cried, “He’s dead!”

  Not again, not again, not again; the refrain thrummed through her brain. Another body?

  “What? Impossible,” Garnet said, his voice coming closer as he spoke, echoing her own thoughts.

  It was impossible. And yet . . . there was Urban. Garnet came up to Jaymie and hovered over her shoulder as she trained the flashlight on the remains of what was once the marina co-owner.

  “Damn!” Garnet yelled, backing away, stumbling a bit. “It is Urban.”

  “What’s going on?” Ruby hollered.

  “Call 911, and don’t come down here, Ruby,” Garnet said. “It’s Urban. He’s . . . damn! Just call 911!”

  Garnet stayed with Jaymie while Ruby made the call, but unlike the last couple of times she had found a body, now there were no sirens, no onslaught of cops swarming the place. They were on an island, after all, and one with very few motor vehicles and no physical police presence. Neighbors began to gather, and some even trudged through the dirt of the bared leaching bed toward Jaymie and Garnet before being warned to stay away.

  Fifteen minutes later the bobbing stream of light from another flashlight played across the slope and the ridges of dirt. “What’s going on here?” a voice called out.

  Zack Christian! Well, of course the police would call their very own eyes on the island, Detective Christian. It was comforting, in a way, that he was the one arriving to take charge.

  He approached, cautiously, and said, “I understand you’ve found a body, Jaymie. Again.”

  She slumped in weariness on a mound of dirt and covered her face with her dirty hands.

  “This is no time to be caustic,” Garnet said, his voice hard with anger. “This young lady is ready to collapse. She wouldn’t leave poor Urban
alone, though, and I wouldn’t leave her!”

  “I know, I know.” The detective cautiously stepped closer to them and bent over the body, shining his flashlight over Urban. “Have either of you touched him?”

  “No,” they both said in chorus.

  “Well, yes,” Jaymie said. “I had to be sure, that he was . . . you know. And he was . . . is. He’s dead!”

  “But this is exactly how you found him?” The detective reached out and touched the man’s gray skin, his quick eyes scanning Urban’s face. “You two need to go to your homes and wait, while the Queensville team gets here.”

  “They’re coming to the island?” Jaymie asked.

  He nodded.

  “Police boat,” Garnet murmured and Zack again nodded.

  Of course! Every riverside municipal police force had a boat or two. Just as she thought of that, the thrum of a heavy outboard motor sounded, echoing in the quiet night as it approached the Heartbreak Island marina.

  “Jaymie, will you go back to your cottage, please? And no phoning anyone, either of you!” Zack said.

  Jaymie picked her way back across the dirt toward her cottage, slipped off her flip-flops and went in, putting on the kettle for a cup of tea as Hoppy danced around her. She gave him some kibble and tried to settle down, blearily reading through what she had written. It was just a jumble of letters in front of her eyes, and she gave up. She got up to look out the back window every few seconds, it seemed, as the cops stood talking at the perimeter of her property, then made their cautious way toward the body of Urban Dobrinskie.

  There were no doubt other things going on, other cops doing things: notifying Mrs. Dobrinskie, who Jaymie vaguely knew as a mousy little woman, apple-shaped, with soft brown hair going to gray. There was a son, too, she remembered hearing; Zack had said he had to stop Urban from berating his son. She could also see a uniformed officer questioning the neighbors who stood in housecoats and pajamas on the perimeter of Jaymie’s backyard. Flashlights arced beams around her yard and into the wooded copses on either side of the ravine.

  As much as she tried, Jaymie could not stop wondering, though: Who had killed the man, and right beneath her cottage? The blood had saturated the chest of his short-sleeved sports shirt, so there was some kind of chest wound, but she hadn’t seen a knife or any other weapon. She glanced out at the commotion on her back lawn again; a floodlight had been set up, the area tented with a quickly set up canopy and tarps to keep it from the eyes of the curious.

  She knew the drill; soon she would be asked to recount every moment of the last few hours, and she had best be prepared. She thought it over, and remembered the shouts of what she thought sounded like an argument. Then “Get off my property!”

  Who would have said that but Garnet? It hadn’t sounded like Garnet, but if he was angry, and from a distance?

  She was actually beginning to feel nauseous from needing to go to the bathroom so badly, but it would still be hours before she could intrude on anyone to borrow their facilities. And going in the bushes was definitely out now, unless she wanted a police officer’s flashlight shining on her behind. She looked up at the Redmonds’ cottage. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to go there. She skirted the murder scene and found Zack. “Look, I really need to use the bathroom, but with the plumbing work being done on my property, I can’t flush the toilet. I’ve been depending on the Redmonds. Can I please go and use their bathroom? I won’t stay, I promise.”

  He looked harassed and tired, and swiped one hand over his eyes, scrubbing them with his thumb and forefinger. “Okay, all right. Look, go and use their bathroom, but do not—and I mean this, Jaymie—do not speak of this to them. I’ve got a cop at their cottage, and I need to manage this scene properly, given the circumstances.”

  She was so relieved already she felt like kissing his scruffy cheek, but she sketched a wave and trotted up the hill toward the cottage.

  Coincidentally, the officer on duty at the cottage was Bernie. “I was just thinking of you,” she said to the other woman.

  Bernice was in uniform, and grim-faced. “You okay?” she asked. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard the detective say your name. Girl, you have got to stay out of trouble!”

  “I’m trying to,” Jaymie said. “But it keeps finding me!” She explained, briefly, about her family’s cottage and what she was doing on the island, and told Bernie about the leaching field and her inability to use her own bathroom right then. “Zack said I could use the Redmonds’ bathroom if I just went in and came out.”

  “All right, but be sure you just go straight to the bathroom and out!”

  Jaymie tiptoed in the back door. She heard voices, and caught a glimpse of Garnet and Ruby quietly talking in the small pantry off their kitchen. She headed toward them to let them know she was using their facilities, but paused, feeling a little awkward. Ruby was weeping; how could one interrupt that?

  “I didn’t mean to do it, Garnet. You know that!” she sobbed.

  Five

  DIDN’T MEAN TO do what? Jaymie wondered, as she began to back up, and tripped over something, making an awful clattering noise in the process.

  Garnet poked his head out and saw her. His expression wary, he eyed her as he said, “Jaymie. What’s up?”

  “Uh, I just came over to . . . I mean, I asked the police and they . . . He . . . Detective Christian said I could come over to use your washroom,” she said, practically dancing in place, she had to go so badly.

  “Oh yeah, go ahead,” he said, as Ruby hid her face in her brother’s shoulder.

  Jaymie scooted down the hall. Relief! She scrubbed her hands and her face, drying them on the pretty finger towel on the rack by the sink. It was an almost blissful moment, and she felt human again, until she remembered what she had overheard and wondered what it had to do with Urban Dobrinskie’s murder. Or maybe it wasn’t murder; maybe . . . Oh, who was she kidding? It was murder. She went back to the Redmonds’ kitchen to find them both sitting at the table, composed and stoic.

  “I have to go right back,” Jaymie said, feeling awkward for any number of reasons.

  “Are you okay?” Garnet asked her, his eyebrows slanting over his gray eyes.

  Bernie came to the back door. “You done, Jaymie?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m leaving. I just . . . I’ll be right out.”

  The officer nodded, her gaze darting between Jaymie and the siblings.

  Jaymie glanced out the Redmond back kitchen window to the ravine, where the white tent glowed from the floodlights within it. It was a surreal scene, like some secret government operation in one of those alien life-form movies Joel had always been fond of. Glancing back to the Redmonds, she whispered, “The cops let me come over here on the promise that I wouldn’t stay, or talk about this.”

  “I understand,” Garnet said, getting up and walking her to the back door. But he grabbed her arm with a steely grip when they got there. “Jaymie, I don’t want you to misinterpret what you heard just now,” he muttered, glancing over her shoulder at his sister, who still sat at the table, looking tired and worried. “Ruby was talking about something else, not . . . not that,” he said, motioning down the hill with a nod of his head.

  Jaymie nodded. “Of course. I know that, Garnet,” she said. There was no way Ruby Redmond could kill someone, even Urban Dobrinskie, who had been so rude to her.

  He squeezed her arm and released her.

  “Who do you think did this?” she whispered, looking over his shoulder at Bernie just outside the door. She was on her radio, talking intently to someone.

  He shook his head. “I just don’t know.”

  Jaymie exited, nodded to Bernie, who was still talking to someone, and walked down the slope and across the lawn, avoiding the tented area. Dawn was just beginning to break, the pearly light making everything gray and sage, as mist rolled over the landscape from the river.
She was so tired, and yet on edge. Just knowing there was a body there, behind the tent, was unnerving. It didn’t matter that what she had seen of the man she had not liked; Urban was a human being. And the fact that such violence had happened right there in her own backyard was awful.

  Her torn-up, muddy backyard; what about the plumbers! Oh Lord, she was going to have to call them and tell them not to come. There was no way the area would be clear for them until later in the day, at best, or the next day, even. She looked up the slope to her back deck. It seemed so long a climb, the weariness she was feeling burrowing right down to her soul. How could cops deal with such cases day in and day out?

  Zack came out of the tented area just then. She felt a sudden pang; he looked as tired as she felt, so maybe it affected the police, even as they did their job. Ruby’s statement, “I didn’t mean to do it,” echoed in Jaymie’s brain. Should she tell Zack about that? How would he take it? Well, how else would he take it? She was so torn! But deep in her gut she did not believe that Ruby could kill anyone.

  “Jaymie, can we talk for a moment?”

  She nodded, motioned to her cottage, and he followed her. She led him in the back door, and Hoppy skittered around him, wuffling and sniffing his shoes, which he removed at the door and left on the rubber mat, as they were caked with mud.

  He gently pushed the little dog away. “Nice cottage.”

  She smiled and glanced around at the blue painted cupboards and natural wood countertops. She had resisted Becca’s desire to modernize the cabin. It was a cottage, not a house, she insisted. When people rented it, they wanted the rustic cottage feel. Secretly, she wondered whether she was right about that. Lots of cottages on the island had been remodeled or rebuilt with gorgeous glass enclosures, modern openness, and there was a certain grace about them that made pokey little Rose Tree Cottage, with its flaking blue paint, seem more worn-looking than rustic.