Bowled Over

by Victoria Hamilton

  She pushed the bell and waited, taking deep, cleansing breaths. Heidi came to the door, and her pale face flushed a bright pink. “Jaymie!” she squealed. “How nice, you just dropping in like we’re best friends. Come on in!”

  Jaymie followed Heidi to the living room. She might have owned the house for less than a year, but it looked like she had done a lot. It was a 1960s ranch-style home formerly owned by the couple who’d built it, but who had moved to a new condo development in Wolverhampton. It had gone from sixties kitsch—Jaymie knew this because she and DeeDee had attended the garage sale where the couple and their kids had disposed of a lot of junk that Dee had bought and promptly sold on eBay—to its current state of mid-century modern opulence.

  “Wow,” Jaymie said, turning around and gazing at the white shag carpeting, a red Eames sofa and, surrounding the slate fireplace, a red accent wall. “You’ve done a lot of work. And an honest-to-goodness Eames sofa?”

  Heidi made a face. “A copy. I couldn’t find what I wanted, so I had to make do. Come on, sit. Can I get you coffee? Please? It’s the one thing I do well. My friend Bernie is coming over, so I want to make a pot anyway.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt you and your…friend.” Jaymie furiously pondered…Bernie? She didn’t know any guy in the village with that name. Someone from New York, maybe? “I really came to talk to Joel. Is he around?”

  “No,” Heidi said, heading back toward the kitchen. “He’s off on one of his sales jaunts. I’ll be back in a minute. Just let me get the coffee on.”

  “I don’t want to interfere,” Jaymie called out.

  Heidi poked her head back in around the doorframe and smiled. “Don’t be silly. Sit! I’ll be back in a sec.”

  Jaymie wandered the room for a moment, exploring Heidi’s unique and simple décor. If she did it all herself, the girl was a genius, melding mid-century modern vintage pieces with newer items. The mantel, one long, beautifully grained slab of wood set directly in the stone, was topped by a large canvas of what looked like one of the romance comics of the sixties. The mantel also held some white pieces—a vase, some figures—and one red porcelain heart tipped on its side.

  She sat down on the sofa, finding it more comfortable than it looked, and saw that the journal open on the oval coffee table was a bridal magazine. Heidi would make a beautiful bride; Jaymie just hoped she knew what she was getting into with Joel. And she was pleased she could think that with no stabbing ache in her heart. She took another deep breath and relaxed.

  A knock at the door was followed by a woman poking her head in and hollering, “Heidi, you here? I’ve got something for you!”

  Jaymie stood, feeling awkward, as a young black woman in jeans and a pink, scoop-necked T-shirt, entered and looked at her.

  “Jaymie Leighton!” she exclaimed. “How are you since…since the other night?”

  It was Officer Jenkins! “I’m…okay, I guess.”

  The woman nodded, and Heidi entered with a white tray laden with a red coffee pot. “Bernie!” she cried. “I didn’t hear you ring.”

  Bernie…aha! Bernice Jenkins.

  “I knocked. I found something I know you want,” she said, racing back to the door and opening it. “Look!” She started to pull a plain wood cabinet inside.

  “Let me help you,” Jaymie said. She and the policewoman dragged the piece into the living room.

  “Oh, Bernie, it’s gorgeous!” Heidi said, hopping and clapping in genuine enthusiasm. “Did you find it at that auction in Wolverhampton?”

  “I did. And it was a steal!”

  “Uh, what exactly is it?” Jaymie asked, as the two women looked the piece over.

  “It’s a martini bar!” Heidi said, opening one door to show glass shelves inside. “Isn’t it cool? Oh…Jaymie…you’ve met Bernie?”

  “We did meet.”

  “On the job,” the woman said. “Even before the other night. Jaymie very nicely brought me a cup of coffee while I was doing watch duty in her back alley in May.”

  “I appreciated knowing someone was there, believe me,” Jaymie said. “And I was so glad to see you the other night when I…when I found poor Kathy. But how did you two meet?”

  “At Jewel’s Junk,” Heidi said. “Let’s sit. I made coffee.”

  They sat and talked for a while, first about the teak-and-glass martini bar—both women were mid-century modern enthusiasts, it turned out—and then about Heidi and Joel’s wedding in December. “I always wanted to be a winter bride,” Heidi said, clasping her hands in front of her.

  “So, will you be getting married here in town?” Jaymie asked. “Or going back to New York?”

  “Oh, here. This is home, now.”

  “How about your family? Will they be coming to Queensville, then? It’ll be neat to have Locklands back in Queensville. The Heritage Society will make a big fuss. Homer Lockland is kind of a hometown hero, the local boy who made good in the big city.”

  “Weeeell, actually, I don’t know how much of my family will come,” Heidi said, her gaze slipping away to the martini bar.

  Bernie stayed mum, examining her magenta nails. Jaymie looked from one to the other, feeling like there was something she was missing. “Why? Your mother and father will want to see their daughter get married, won’t they?”

  “I haven’t actually told them yet,” Heidi murmured.

  “But she should,” Bernie added, watching her friend with concern. “They have a right to know, Heidi.”

  “Does Joel know you haven’t told them yet?” Jaymie asked.

  She shook her head, tears welling up in her blue eyes. “How can I tell him that? He’ll be so hurt. But when I do tell my parents, they might cut me off. Then what will I do?”

  She explained to Jaymie what Bernie apparently already knew: she had bought the home using her trust fund money, but still received an allowance that could be cut off if her parents disapproved of her behavior. Heidi was apparently afraid that getting engaged to an almost-penniless pharmaceutical sales rep would be considered bad behavior by her wealthy and snobbish parents. They talked for a while longer, but Jaymie remained defeated on what she really wanted, which was to talk to Joel about Matt Laskan.

  Conversation inevitably turned to the murder of Kathy Cooper. Jaymie told them what she had just discovered about the genesis of her and Kathy’s “feud,” and about her own innocence. “All this time, one conversation could have solved it, and now it’s too late.”

  “But you didn’t know,” Heidi said, her hand on Jaymie’s arm.

  “So, if you didn’t say what you were accused of saying, then someone else claimed you did. Maybe they wanted to sabotage your friendship with Kathy, or just make you look bad,” Bernie said, leaning forward and holding Jaymie’s gaze. “Did anyone have it in for you in high school?”

  Jaymie thought back. She was popular in school, but not by any means the most popular girl. When Kathy deserted her, she had started hanging out with a couple of other girls, but never with the same bond of friendship. “Not that I know of.” She vividly remembered the sense of hurt and betrayal when Kathy turned on her. That’s the moment she’d begun to distrust other relationships, something that had tainted her emotional response to her first couple of boyfriends.

  And Joel. Like a bolt of lightning, the similarity hit her: when Joel deserted her, she had retreated into that same suspicious shell. Whoa…that was something she needed to think about, her response to a sense of betrayal, and how it was perhaps making her wary of Daniel. She knew she was keeping him at arm’s length, in a sense. And was that why Joel always said that she seemed so self-sufficient that she never needed anyone else? That had been his major complaint about her, and until now she had passed it off as nonsense, but what man didn’t want to feel needed?

  “Maybe someone wanted you to hang around with them, so they managed to separate you and Kathy,” Bernie added.

  She considered it. “I can’t think of anyone who would have deliberately sabotage
d our friendship. What I really want to know is, who had it in for Kathy now?”

  Bernice’s dark eyes shuttered and she withdrew. “I can’t really talk about the case, you know.”

  “No, of course not,” Jaymie murmured, curiosity tugging at her like an impatient two-year-old.

  Heidi, who had been looking back and forth between the two of them, rose, and said, “I’m going to refill the coffee pot, girls!”

  When she was gone, Jaymie said, “Bernie, I know you can’t tell me anything about the investigation. The detective has already been around to my place, and we talked, though, so I’m pretty much up to date.”

  Bernie’s eyes widened. “He talked to you about it all? So it’s true…Detective Hotstuff does like you!”

  Jaymie sat back, mouth open. This she had not expected. “Me? Uh, are you talking about Detective Christian?”

  Bernie grimaced and fell back against the sofa seat. “You didn’t know about the rumors, huh?”

  “I’m confused.” And blushing again. Did she want to know what Bernie meant? Or would it complicate her life too much?

  “I’ve said too much,” the woman said, jumping up as Heidi came back, her eyes bright with curiosity. “Please, Jaymie, don’t tell anyone what I said.” She turned to her friend. “Look, Heidi, I’ve got to go. I’m working graveyard tonight, and I need some sleep. I think I’m already running on too little,” she added, ruefully, giving Jaymie a quick glance.

  “Wait! Let me pay you for the bar. It’s perfect, by the way! Exactly what I was looking for.” Heidi made out a check, and as she signed her name with a flourish, she said, “Bernie, Jaymie knows all about old kitchens, and you’re looking to find stuff for yours, dishes and the like. You two should talk.”

  “I’d love to help, if I can,” Jaymie said, feeling the blush gradually ebb from her cheeks.

  “I just might take you up on that,” the policewoman said, heading toward the door. “Catch you on the flip side!”

  Eleven

  AS HEIDI CLOSED the door behind her friend, she cried, “Did I overhear her right when I eavesdropped? Did she say that Detective Yummers has the hots for you?”

  Jaymie sighed. In a town as small as Queensville, she supposed it was inevitable that a guy as good-looking as Detective Christian would have dozens of women swooning over him and giving him silly nicknames. When she’d first seen him, she’d sworn he was right out of the pages of one of her favorite romance novels. “No, that is not what she said, and she’s mistaken anyway.”

  “Well, spill!” Heidi said, dragging Jaymie back to sit down. “What did she mean, then?”

  “She meant that he likes me. Likes can mean a lot of things, Heidi, and in his case, I’m afraid I amuse him. It’s just a rumor anyway. Rumors are lies that people enjoy spreading around, if you ask me.”

  “Okay, all right, it’s best if you keep thinking that way anyway,” she said, with a wise little wink and nod. “He might be good for a roll in the hay, but Daniel Collins is the marrying kind.”

  Jaymie closed her eyes and counted to ten, took a deep breath, then opened them again. “Heidi, you said something about you and Joel going over to the Coopers’ place for dinner. Was anyone else there?”

  She nodded. “Matt Laskan and his girlfriend, Lily. She’s a nice girl, real pretty.”

  So Matt Laskan had a girlfriend. That and his business partnership with Craig were two fertile areas to expose something unsavory that could possibly hurt someone. But if the supposed secret was business-related, Kathy would not have been keeping it to herself and using it as leverage for blackmail, would she? She’d have told her husband if it affected their livelihood.

  Something personal, then? What could make Matt so angry he’d kill Kathy to keep her from spreading it around? And what would she have been able to find out about his personal life?

  “Are Lily and Matt getting married?” That seemed to be the kind of thing Heidi would be interested to know.

  Heidi frowned and sipped her coffee. Cocking her head to one side, she said, “I don’t know, but they seemed real close, you know? She’s a nice woman with a great job.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a town councilor in Wolverhampton, the youngest woman ever to do that, I think. That’s what Matt said anyway. She’s real smart. She has a double degree in social work and law, and folks around here think she should run for…something or other at the state senate. Is that what we have, a senate?”

  Jaymie nodded absently. If there was anything sordid in Matt Laskan’s life, it could certainly hurt his girlfriend’s chances in a senatorial race, but even beyond that, if his girlfriend didn’t know about it, it could end the relationship. “How did Craig and Kathy’s relationship seem to you? I heard something about them moving, leaving town?”

  “I heard about that. It was supposed to be a secret; I don’t know why.” She frowned and thought about Jaymie’s question. “They got along, I guess.”

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  Heidi shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard to judge relationships from the outside, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose that’s true. Why did Joel say he didn’t know Craig and Kathy well when you went to their place for dinner?”

  Heidi shrugged. “I don’t know. That surprised me, too.”

  “And you didn’t ask him about it?”

  She looked startled. “Why would I do that?”

  And that explained a lot about why Joel had thrown Jaymie over for the sweet and trusting Heidi. They chatted for a while longer, and Heidi showed her the bridal magazine and what dress she was considering, then Jaymie finished her coffee and left.

  She had a lot to do at home, so she returned, worked on research for her second cookbook for a while, then sat back at her desk. It was hard to work on More Recipes from the Vintage Kitchen when she didn’t know the fate of book one. She had researched the publishing process, trying to find out what to expect. But though she could find lots on the Internet about how to sell a novel, there was little information on how to approach a publisher with a cookbook: what they wanted to see, how long to wait, or even if she should be approaching more than one publisher at a time. She was so afraid of stepping on her own toes that she was nervous to the point of inertia.

  She gave up in disgust. Her mind kept returning to the awful murder of her childhood friend. She grabbed a clipboard and some lined paper and descended to the kitchen, then made a pot of tea and took a cup and the cordless phone outside to sit in the shade of the trumpet vines that climbed all over the garage.

  Who had killed Kathy Cooper? Jaymie wanted to know for several reasons, not the least of which was that she herself was a suspect. Take the emotion out of it and think logically, she admonished herself. First, who might have wanted to do it? She made a list: Craig Cooper, Kylie Hofstadter, Matt Laskan, Johnny Stanko. Anyone else? She tapped her pencil against the board, then jotted down another name: Andy Walker. In the Emporium, Kathy had told Connor his grandpa didn’t want him, which was clearly not true. And at the picnic, Kathy had loudly said that Andy Walker had been trying to alienate Connor from her for months. The whole family was in turmoil, and the center of the hurricane was Kathy. Jaymie didn’t know Andy Walker, but people had committed murder for less important reasons than keeping a beloved grandson in their lives.

  Should she add Ella Douglas? After the confrontation in the Emporium, perhaps. But it just didn’t feel like a big enough deal, from Ella/Eleanor’s viewpoint, to make her kill Kathy. And a woman in a wheelchair? Ella looked as weak as a kitten. Could she even lift the heavy glass bowl, much less wield it as a weapon? However…maybe Ella’s husband was pissed off enough at Kathy’s behavior to take matters into his own hands. Jaymie needed to examine every possibility, and Bob was certainly a possibility. She added his name to the list.

  From here, then, she needed to figure out how much she knew about where each one of them was at the time of the crime. The phone rang
; it was Jaymie’s mom.

  “Honey, what’s this I hear about Kathy Hofstadter being murdered?”

  “Cooper is her married name, Mom. Kathy Cooper. Have you been talking to Becca?”

  “No, Mimi Watson called to ask when we were coming up, and she told me about it. I had to hear it from a neighbor, not from my own daughter, who found that poor child! Your dad is frantic with worry.”

  That was most likely an exaggeration. Her mom projected all her worried feelings onto her husband, and if one listened to her, one would think he was a nervous wreck, when he was likely out golfing.

  “It’s awful, just awful!” she continued. “I knew you and she weren’t close after high school, but…anyway, is it true that you found her?”

  The local gossip machine even worked between Queensville and Boca Raton! Jaymie told her mother what was going on, but omitted any mention that she was a suspect.

  “That’s so sad! I’ll have to send flowers. How is Martha doing?”

  “Martha?”

  “Kathy and Kylie’s mother! Jaymie, you know who I mean.”

  “Sorry, Mom. I always called her Mrs. Hofstadter. I don’t know how she is. I went there briefly, to drop off a casserole, but Kylie was there, and she was none too pleased to see me.”

  “Poor girl. Poor Martha! Will you tell her for me that when we come up, I’ll visit her? I always liked Kathy, you know, and Martha, too.”

  Jaymie was silent for a long moment. “Why? Why did you like Kathy, Mom? I’m not trying to be smart, I really want to know.”