Bowled Over

by Victoria Hamilton

  “So?” she said. “You guys solved the world’s problems yet?” Emma looked down at Dani and examined her face.

  “Not yet, but we’re working on it. I’m fine, Emma,” she said, patting her girlfriend’s hip. “You can go wash up. There’s still coffee.”

  “I love your carrot cake,” Jaymie said. “You should make it next year for our annual Tea with the Queen event!”

  Emma stood and hesitated. “The Heritage Society is a lot of old ladies. I…I wouldn’t want to shock any of them by joining in, and I won’t change who I am or hide anything.”

  Dani’s face held a look of tenderness as she took Emma’s hand. “It took a lot for Emma to come out. I’ve been out a long time, but she’s only been out a few years, and she’s lost family from it.”

  “My parents are fine with us, thank God, but my brother…he hasn’t spoken to me since.”

  “I’m sorry.” Looking between them, Jaymie smiled. “I think you might be surprised at some of those old ladies, though. When my friends, Anna and Clive, bought the bed-and-breakfast next to me, Clive was a little worried. He’s Jamaican, and Queensville’s population is, as you know, quite…well, very pale complected. But Mrs. Bellwood—she plays Queen Victoria at the tea every year—said that Clive, if he wanted and was willing to grow a beard and wear a turban, could play the part of Queen Victoria’s dear friend and confidant Abdul Karim. Mrs. Bellwood really takes her part seriously and has done a lot of Queen Victoria research. She said Clive was so tall and handsome, that he would do the part justice. Not all of the old ladies are narrow-minded bigots. Gossips, yes; prejudiced…not necessarily.”

  “I’ll think about contributing next year,” Emma said. “I’m going upstairs to wash and change. Can I get you two anything else?”

  “No, we’re fine. Go ahead, Em,” Dani said.

  When she was gone, Jaymie said, “One other thing I’ve been trying to find out…was Kathy a part owner of Laskan Cooper?”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Well…if she was, and if Craig was planning on leaving her, it could get messy.”

  Dani did the necessary logic, and her eyes widened at the implication. “You don’t really think Craig is capable of killing Kathy, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” Jaymie said, sighing in exasperation. “Someone did it, and it was someone who knew how she felt about me, because they took my bowl and hit her over the head with it.”

  “I didn’t think of it that way, as a purposeful thing, choosing the bowl. So you think it was meant to point to you?”

  Jaymie said, “It could have been chance, I suppose.”

  “But you don’t really believe that.”

  “No, I don’t. I think someone knew that was my bowl, and also knew I’d had a public argument with Kathy. Someone wanted me to look guilty. I doubt if they planned it ahead, though, because they couldn’t know I’d argue with Kathy in front of everyone, nor that we’d be sitting close together, nor that I would bring a heavy glass bowl to the picnic. So whoever did it was smart and willing to take chances.”

  “I wish I could help, but I’ve told you everything I can think of.”

  “And I appreciate it. Do you know Matt Laskan very well?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Well, I guess that’s it, then,” Jaymie said.

  Fifteen

  JAYMIE FINISHED HER coffee and excused herself, saying she was going on to Mrs. Hofstadter’s farm to talk to her. She didn’t really expect to find anything out from the woman; the visit was just to check in with her and express her mother and grandmother’s sorrow for the loss of Kathy. Dani invited her to come out to their farm again under better circumstances to ride, if she wanted, and to bring a friend, and she and Emma both said if they thought of anything, they’d call Jaymie.

  Back on the highway, heading toward the Hofstadter farm, Jaymie thought over her conversation with Dani Brougham. It was news that Kathy had planned to drop in on Ella and Bob Douglas the morning of the Fourth. If Jaymie could find a reason, she’d visit Ella and ask her about it. Despite Kathy’s seemingly good intentions, had the two fought? Ella had been a bully in high school. Given Kathy’s sensitivity toward bullying, had she upbraided the invalid for her past behavior? Ella wasn’t high on her list of suspects, but it was worth a visit to check into it.

  The Hofstadter farmhouse looked the same as it had on her last visit: desolate. Jaymie parked and took a moment to look around the yard and outbuildings. The barn was sagging alarmingly to one side, and there were huge gaps in the walls; you could actually see daylight right through it. But worse than the decrepitude of the barn was the amount of garbage everywhere. Stacked in front of the drive shed were what looked like old moldy mattresses rotted out by the hot summer sun, springs and a dozen or so sets of headboards and footboards. Several rusty vehicles—tires off, one burned out, one even had been spray painted with graffiti-like scrawls—sat in the circular drive. She had an eerie sense she was being watched, but Jaymie guessed that was from the cats who stretched out everywhere, on the hoods of the cars and up in the haymow. The door to the haymow was long gone, and Jaymie could see a variety of ginger and tabby cats lounging in the open space where the July sun warmed the barn’s wood floor.

  There were dozens of partially filled bowls and trays outside the back door, some with kitty kibble in them. As Jaymie made her way to the back door, one cat leisurely followed and rubbed against her ankle. The ginger tom rubbed and purred huskily; she bent down to pet him, scruffing him under his chin until his purr was as loud as a motorboat.

  “That’s Killian,” Mrs. Hofstadter said.

  She stood in the open door, a dirty apron on over her housedress. Stockings sagged down her ankles, and her bare legs showed bites, probably flea bites, Jaymie guessed.

  “He knows you’re the one made the macaroni and cheese,” the woman continued, swiping back wisps of gray hair that escaped from an untidy bun. “Too much for just me, so I shared.”

  “That’s okay, Mrs. Hofstadter. I’m glad the cats enjoyed it.” She approached, and again, from the open door, wafted the smell of decay and mold. She was overwhelmed with sadness that this woman, once a member of Queensville society, or at least on the fringes of it, should now be so isolated and clearly having significant problems, hoarding being just one of them. “I just came to pick up the casserole dish.”

  “Oh…I…I don’t know where it is,” the woman said, her gaze sliding away from Jaymie.

  “Can I come in? I can find it, I’m sure.”

  There was a long pause. “All right,” she replied, but she was clearly reluctant to let a virtual stranger into her house.

  Jaymie was not about to let that stop her, and eased past her through the mudroom into the kitchen. Her breath caught in her throat. It wasn’t just the smell—decay and mold—but the mounds and stacks of junk everywhere. There were a table and four chairs, but the set was buried under papers: newspapers, advertising flyers and mail. There were dozens of shopping bags full of stuff, most of it new. Some of it was cleaning supplies, multiples of powder cleanser, detergent, dish soap, spray cleaner and sponges.

  Jaymie glanced around and spotted her glass casserole dish sitting atop a stack of advertising flyers. The food had been scraped out of the dish, but it was still dirty. “There it is!” she said. “How about I just clean it here and take it with me. Is that okay?” She was uneasy about the woman. How could she live in this wreck? Did she even have access to clean bathroom facilities? How could her daughters let her live this way? She picked up the casserole dish.

  “That’s not your dish!” Mrs. Hofstadter said.

  “Yes it is!” Jaymie said. “I recognize it. It’s one I bought at the church bazaar last fall. Look…it still has some of the mac and cheese in the corners.”

  “No, I…” The woman shook her head and mumbled.

  Jaymie watched her; she looked confused, her sagging cheeks threaded with broken capillary veins, puffing
out with each breath. “Mrs. Hofstadter?”

  “Oh, go ahead, take it!” she snapped, waving her hand.

  The woman appeared worried, and cast her glance around the room, as if memorizing everything else she owned. Her heart pounding, Jaymie wondered: Was this what she was going to be like? Becca called her a hoarder. Forty years from now, would she be closeted in her home in Queensville, surrounded by so much junk she couldn’t move? She loved buying stuff, she enjoyed new acquisitions and found it difficult to get rid of anything. But no…this was not her future. There was something else going on here beyond merely liking to acquire stuff.

  Gently, she said, “I’m just going to wash it up, Mrs. H. Is that okay?” She moved toward the sink and began piling the dirty dishes to one side. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

  The older woman shook her head. “I…I don’t remember. With Kathy gone, I just don’t know.”

  “I’m so sorry about Kathy. My mom and grandma both wanted me to express how awful they feel, and how much they know you’ll miss her.”

  “She was the one who kept me organized.”

  Jaymie had some time, certainly enough to help Mrs. Hofstadter. She cleared a chair near the counter and made the older woman sit; then, while talking about the town, and upcoming events, she filled the basin with hot water and dish soap. At least the woman’s utilities were all working. Then she cleared the dish drainer of clean dishes, stacking them in the cupboard, and piled dirty ones in the suds to soak. She bustled around, not asking, but clearing space at the kitchen table while she talked.

  It looked like someone had tried to do the same recently, because the stacks of stuff on the table were newish, papers from just the week before. Mrs. Hofstadter talked a little, telling Jaymie that Kathy used to come see her every day to make sure she was all right and had enough to eat.

  The fridge was surprisingly clean, but there were signs that the latest food had been purchased was July third, one day before Kathy’s death. Jaymie fought back tears, realizing anew what a hole that woman’s passing would leave in many people’s lives, especially that of her mother. She made a big pot of tea and moved Mrs. Hofstadter over to the table to drink some. She found some bread in the freezer and made her some toast too, with jam. “Kathy was a good woman,” Jaymie said, her voice trembling. “I wish we had stayed friends.”

  Mrs. Hofstadter pursed her lips and shook her head. “My poor Kathy was so sad about that. She came home one day and said she wouldn’t be going to your place anymore. I was surprised. I called your mom, but Joy didn’t know what had gone wrong, either.”

  “You called my mom about it?” That was something she hadn’t known.

  “She said we’d have to let you girls work it out, but you never did. Kathy got closer to her sister after that. She always loved Kylie so much, looked after her. When Drew died, Kathy took care of her. Practically moved in here to help Kylie and me and little Connor. That’s when she took out the policy.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The insurance policy. Kathy took out a big one—a million dollars, I think—for Kylie and Connor. In case anything happened to her, you know.”

  Jaymie was stunned. A life insurance policy to benefit Kylie and Connor? From being eased off the list of suspects, Kylie had popped right back onto it.

  Mrs. Hofstadter continued, becoming more lucid and settled as she ate her toast and drank her tea. “Kathy worried about them so much. But Connor will have enough money to do whatever he wants now, if Kylie manages things right. He can go to school, even become a doctor. That was Kathy’s dream, you know, to become a doctor or nurse. But we couldn’t afford to send her to medical school. Maybe Connor will do it.”

  With a million bucks? That was possible. But it sure would be interesting to know about the actual policy, and if the payoff was Kylie’s to do whatever she wanted with, or if it was to be kept in trust for Connor until he reached a certain age.

  Yes, it sure would be good to know.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE GOT back home, there were several messages on the answering machine, but she didn’t have time to listen to all of them. A knock at the back door sent Hoppy into a barking frenzy. “Why can’t I train you like Emma Spangler has her dogs trained? Come on in!” she called out, hanging the phone up without retrieving her messages.

  And in walked Detective Christian in yet another dark suit. “Ms. Leighton,” he said, nodding.

  “Hi!” she replied. “What’s up?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. You’ve been talking to people, Ms. Leighton.” He circled her kitchen, picking up items, looking them over and setting them back down.

  “I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to talk to people anymore,” she said, her tone acid, but feeling a chill of apprehension. She quickly reviewed what she had been discussing and with whom that morning. Anything that the police should know about? Any bone of gossip she could throw him to keep him from looking at her with that fishy-eyed, suspicious stare?

  “Why are you talking to people, Ms. Leighton?”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Are you going to go all mysterioso detective on me?” she demanded. “Remember my first name? It’s Jaymie. You can call me that, you know. Anyway, me? Mostly, I’ve been trying to solve the riddle of why Kathy Cooper stopped talking to me in high school.”

  “And?”

  “It was all a misunderstanding.”

  “I don’t think that’s all you’ve been doing. You’ve been digging around in the dirt, haven’t you? Asking questions, getting people riled up. That’s my job.”

  She bit her lip and stayed silent, watching him.

  “You know we’ve arrested Johnny Stanko for the murder of Kathy Cooper. Don’t you think he’s guilty? Do you have any other suspects in mind that you, based on your long detecting career, think might be more viable?”

  Okay, if he was going to be Mister Sarcastic Detective, she had a few questions of her own for him. Watching him as he prowled her kitchen, followed by an unhappy Hoppy, she said, “Speaking of misunderstandings…Detective, pardon me for saying this, but I’m still puzzled as to why you left your former job in…Chicago, was it? Why take a position on this tiny little force in a town that is kindly called ‘quaint,’ instead of staying where career advancement would occur at a rate quicker than glacial?”

  He smirked. “Trying to deflect my questions?” he asked, circling her. “Why would you do that?”

  “When have I done that, not answered questions?” She turned away, trying to ignore his towering masculine presence in her old-fashioned kitchen. The man just plain made her nervous. “Do you want something?” she demanded, feeling a prickling at the back of her eyelids that foreshadowed tears. She plunked down in a chair at the table. “I’m a little down right now. I was just out at Kathy Cooper’s mother’s house, out in the country, and that poor woman…I don’t know what she’s going to do now that Kathy is dead. I’m just…” Her voice choked off. She swallowed hard, cleared her throat and twisted to look up at the detective. “I just can’t understand why someone killed Kathy. I mean, I understand, I guess; she angered a lot of folks. But to kill her? That’s extreme. And why there, at the Fourth picnic?”

  “Don’t you believe that Stanko did it?”

  She hesitated, thinking about it seriously. “I don’t know. It seems logical, you know? He’s violent, I get that. He threatened Kathy. I get that, too. But the sheer number of people who benefited from her death…it’s staggering.”

  “We know that; we’ve investigated all of them. But Stanko is the only one of them to have that bowl in his hands.”

  “I would bet that you’re not so sure of that,” she said, watching his eyes, fiddling with the runner in the middle of the trestle table. Hoppy settled at her feet and stared up at him, too. Even Denver prowled into the kitchen from one of his hidey-holes and sat by the stove, glaring at the detective. “I would bet,” she said, slowly, “that there are a whole lot of fi
ngerprints on that bowl, and maybe a lot of smudging, too. I don’t know much about fingerprints, but I know it’s not always easy to tell who had an item and when.”

  “We do know that you had the bowl in your hands. And you fought with Kathy Cooper. Freeing Stanko would put you back in the spotlight.” He was watching her, his gray gaze flicking unsettlingly over her eyes, down to her mouth, back up to her eyes.

  She gazed at him steadily, hoping her eye wasn’t twitching. “We both know I didn’t have a true motive, Detective. A high school feud? You couldn’t arrest me for supposedly saying something nasty to someone seventeen years ago.” She saw in his expression that it was true. Relaxing a bit, she said, “Stanko has a history of violent behavior from what I understand, but lately he’s been trying to change his life. He certainly walked away from Kathy even when she was belligerent toward him. He said enough, though, that he sure looks like a good suspect.”

  It began to make sense. “In fact, maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong,” she said, as a light bulb began to dimly glimmer in her brain. “I thought the use of the bowl was to implicate me, but maybe they were really trying to implicate Johnny.”

  He nodded. “That’s possible.”

  So, he was still investigating even after having arrested Stanko. Had he been pressured into making an arrest? Had he even been the arresting officer? She didn’t remember seeing him there that day.

  “Who else wanted Kathy dead?” he asked.

  “Let’s see…offhand? I can’t say these folks wanted her dead, necessarily, but Kathy was a contentious sort; she seemed to thrive on conflict. Have you looked at her nephew’s grandfather, Andy Walker? Kathy was trying to get custody of Connor, and I’m sure that didn’t sit well with him. Kylie’s motives are much the same, only stronger for a mother.” She wasn’t about to tell him about the insurance policy Kathy had taken out for Connor’s benefit. She was pretty sure he’d already know anyway. “And the husband is always a possibility, isn’t that true?”