“Well, we sure wouldn’t have!” Ella snapped. “We came home and stayed home for the rest of the day.”
It seemed that there was nothing here. Ella certainly had no reason to wish Kathy harm, nor did her husband. “I’ll leave you be, then,” Jaymie said.
“Make sure you leave everything the way it should be,” Ella fretted. “Except, can you take that toast and throw it out? I’m just not hungry tonight.”
“I will.” She took the plate and their mugs to the kitchen, tidied everything back to how it was and rinsed out the teapot, then took her leave, feeling deeply sorry for someone whose health was so compromised. Ella was peevish and demanding, but who wouldn’t be in that situation?
As she left, Jaymie took a look at the wheelchair lift attached to the vine-covered porch. It was certainly likely, looking at the thing, that Ella could work it herself. It was intended for the wheelchair-bound person to use alone, in fact. It was barely possible, then, that Ella could have left the house without Bob knowing, and gone to the park to confront Kathy. But why? The theory didn’t make much sense.
The phone was ringing as she got home, and it was Wendi, her university friend in Port Huron, the one she had called about Matt Laskan.
“Girl, you caught yourself a humdinger,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Jaymie said, walking to the back door and sitting down on the step to watch Hoppy take his last piddle of the evening, then scratch grass over the spot.
“This Matt Laskan fellow? He was arrested on charges of assault and, get this, attempted kidnapping in January. Charges were dropped, but still! That is serious stuff.”
“Assault? Attempted kidnapping? Matt Laskan?” Jaymie sat, mouth open, thinking of the buoyant yet calm fellow she had only met a few times. “Was he drunk?”
“No record of any blood alcohol level.”
“Who was the victim?”
“I wondered if you’d ask that. Thirty-nine-year-old female by the name of Janet Broadhouse.”
“I wonder why she dropped the charges.”
“Maybe the girl’s got more important things to worry about.”
“Like what? What do you mean?”
“Oh, maybe like the drug and prostitution charges she’s facing in court next month?”
* * *
JAYMIE HAD A difficult time getting to sleep and kept waking up. It was a restless night. She was trying to reconcile the calm accountant that Matt Laskan seemed to be, with someone who would get himself into such a spot that he would be arrested on assault and attempted kidnapping charges with a druggie prostitute.
The next morning, as she drank her first cup of coffee and got ready to go over to the bed-and-breakfast, she still pondered it all. He was really lucky the charges were dropped, because attempted kidnapping could be hard time. Was this what Kathy had over his head? And would he kill to keep secret that he associated with a prostitute? His girlfriend would surely not be too happy about that, Jaymie imagined, on any level. The possible health consequences and the damage to their relationship aside, if she was thinking of a senate run, Matt’s legal problems could kill that for her. But how would Kathy have found out about the arrest?
Valetta called just as she was on her way out. “I’m off again today. Have you figured anything out, Jaymie?”
“We should talk. I’m trying to work things out, but I have found some interesting information, and I want to see what you think. I’m taking a run to the thrift store in Wolverhampton when I get done at the B&B. I desperately need more vintage melamine and wicker baskets for the rental business, if I can find any. Can we get together after that?”
“Why don’t you pick me up and we’ll go to town together, if you don’t mind.”
“Works for me.” Jaymie got done quickly at Anna’s and took Becca’s car to pick up Valetta. It was going to be hot, and her van didn’t have air-conditioning, unless you counted an open window. She didn’t mind, but she didn’t want to subject Valetta to the heat.
“So what’s new?” her friend said, slamming the door shut. “Sounded on the phone like you found out something juicy.”
Jaymie retraced her steps from the day before, ending with the shocking call she’d gotten from her friend in Port Huron.
“Kidnapping? Assault? How did Matt hide that?”
“The charges have been dropped,” Jaymie said.
“Dropped. Hmm.”
“Wendi speculated that the woman has so much on her plate—other legal problems of her own—that she doesn’t want to go to court to follow up on the charges.”
“Or the charges are baloney, and she doesn’t want to get caught lying.”
“Possible. Matt Laskan does not seem the type to get physical. But then he doesn’t seem the type to use prostitutes, either.”
“You can never tell,” Valetta said, her mouth setting in a grim line.
They parked on the main street in Wolverhampton and went into Dollar Dan’s Thrift Store and More. As usual, Valetta tried to get Jaymie to buy every kitchen utensil or bowl that looked to be more than ten years old, and Jaymie resisted. She did her best to keep her mind off the vintage bowl used to kill Kathy, but the murder was like a dark blotch in her brain, a spot that she couldn’t ignore, one that filled her with horror.
Instead, she haunted the kitchenware aisle, gathering some vintage melamine, and even found a couple of nice willow baskets that she could transform into picnic baskets with vintage gingham linens and the right accompaniments. Acrylic wineglasses and a couple of straw wine-bottle holders attracted her attention, and she snatched them up to use in the Lover’s Lane basket. In no time, her cart was full, and she took a deep breath. Retail therapy for her was a trip to a junk or antique store.
She moved on to the furniture, examining a nice wood bookcase. Jaymie’s romance novel collection was almost as large as her cookbook collection and needed its own home. As Valetta approached with a full cart herself, she said to her friend, “I think I need this for my collection of Mary Baloghs and Jo Beverleys.”
“Then you should get it.”
Jaymie stole a look at Valetta, and said, “Not to beat a dead horse, but you’re really sure Johnny Stanko didn’t kill Kathy, aren’t you?”
“I believe him,” she said promptly. “Whenever he’s done stuff in the past, he’s always admitted it. He’s adamant he didn’t do this.”
“So where was he? What was he doing?”
“He says he was just sitting alone watching the fireworks.”
Jaymie nodded. It wasn’t an alibi, but it was an explanation. “I think I will take this bookcase. Can you help me haul it out to the car?”
“Becca’s going to have your guts for garters when she finds out you’ve been carrying stuff home from the thrift store in her Lexus.”
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “Where do you get those phrases, Valetta? Guts for garters?”
“I read,” she replied, her tone dry. “Kinda like you, kiddo. Okay, let’s get out of here. I’ve got so much stuff here, we’ll be lucky if we fit it all in Becca’s car.”
“I should have brought the van. It doesn’t have air-conditioning, though, and it’s going to be blazing today. You want to get lunch?”
“I’ll buy,” Valetta said, and suggested a new tearoom she had been dying to go to. “Violet wants to go on her birthday, but I want to be sure she’ll enjoy it. You know what tearoom means to most. Pathetic pallid tea and dry cake.” Valetta’s sister-in-law, wife to her and Brock’s late brother, was English. She had stayed in North America even after her husband died, relocating across the river to Canada to be closer to some of her own family, who had moved to Sarnia, Ontario, in the eighties.
They made their purchases and exited to the car. By the time they managed to stuff everything into the car, including the bookcase into the trunk, they were dripping with sweat. They walked down the block to the tearoom, Wellington’s Retreat. It was faux snug, with a f
ireplace that was thankfully not on, pretty shelves lined with teapots and teacups, and smallish tables. A chalkboard menu at the cashier’s desk stated that the lunch special was cold cucumber soup and watercress sandwiches.
“I think I’ll go with the special,” Jaymie said doubtfully, as they approached the cash desk to order.
The cashier, a polite older woman, wrote that down, then looked to Valetta.
“Me, too,” she said. “The special. And one of the coconut jam tarts for dessert.”
“And tea,” Jaymie added. “Black, nothing fancy.”
“Tea?” Valetta said, raising her eyebrows and mopping at the perspiration on her brow with a tissue.
“Tea!” Jaymie said firmly. “Even on a hot day I like tea. You can’t bring Violet here if you haven’t tried the tea.”
“I’ll take your word for it and have an iced tea, instead.”
They took a seat at a table near the window, and the air-conditioning gradually cooled them down. Talking desultorily about the murder, trying to come to some conclusions, they took each person in turn and laid out the case against them. Jaymie took a notebook out of her handbag and began to jot down what they were saying. “You know,” she said, glancing up at her friend, “it is entirely possible that it was a complete stranger who killed her.”
“How would a stranger get your bowl, though?”
Jaymie pondered that. “I don’t know. Chance? Was it just sitting somewhere? I’ll have to think about it. Let’s stick with who we’ve got, so far. Kylie Hofstadter. Motive: to stop the custody suit her sister was bringing against her, and maybe to get the insurance payout.”
“Insurance payout?”
“Oh right! I haven’t told you.” She related to Valetta what she had learned from Mrs. Hofstadter about the large insurance policy Kathy had purchased to benefit her nephew. “I’m not sure, but it is probably in Kylie’s name. Anyway, means: Kylie was close enough to pick up the bowl at some point. Opportunity: her alibi is Andy Walker, I guess, and she is his, but I’ve never yet established where they were at the time of the murder. And how did they lose sight of Connor?” She jotted that down. “That seems odd to me.”
“Now, Johnny Stanko,” Valetta said.
“But you don’t think he did it.”
“That doesn’t matter. Write it down.”
Jaymie obeyed, and unfortunately he had no alibi and all the motive, means and opportunity in the world. “Now, Craig. I have no clue where he was; he said he was working, but he wasn’t at the office. Matt Laskan looked at him oddly when he flubbed about that. He doesn’t appear to have means or opportunity, if he’s telling the truth about where he was, but he could be lying and I wouldn’t know.” She thought about it. “I really do think he was lying, but why? I have to establish his alibi. I’m sure the police know where he was—or at least where he says he was—but Detective Christian is not going to tell me.” She filled Valetta in on his visit to her and his warning to her to stop asking questions.
“It’s just like a romance mystery novel,” Valetta said, her eyes wide behind her thick lenses. “You know, the kind where the plucky girl detective keeps getting into trouble and the handsome cop warns her to stay out of it.”
“Except I’m not getting into trouble. Now, Matt Laskan. Given what I found out about his run-in with the cops, he’s looking better as a suspect. No alibi that we know of, so his means and opportunity are the same as Craig. But motive? Well, pretty good, actually, now. If anyone finds out about him being arrested on kidnapping charges, who is going to go to him to do their books? And his girlfriend…if she wants to run for senate, Matt’s problems would not look good at all, so if Kathy threatened to talk…” Jaymie thought about it. It was sounding better and better all the time.
“But you’re assuming that the charges in Port Huron, and him being involved with a prostitute, is what Kathy was holding over him,” Valetta said.
“You’re right. I guess it could be something completely different.”
Just then the tearoom door opened, and a pretty blonde dressed in a skirt suit walked in. The waitress, who was bringing Jaymie and Valetta’s order, greeted her. “Hey, Lily. The usual?”
“Sure. I’ll take a booth.”
Jaymie sat, stunned. Lily? Could this be Matt Laskan’s girlfriend? It sure looked like the person in the photo on his desk. While Jaymie accepted her lunch plate, she watched the young woman, and then, when the waitress had gone over to her, she whispered her thoughts to Valetta. Between them they decided it must be her.
A car pulled up to one of the metered parking spaces just outside of the tea shop, and a man got out and fed the meter. When he turned, Jaymie smiled. “Hey, there’s Craig,” she said. She waved out the window, but when he saw her, he stood stock-still for a moment, then whirled on his heel and headed across the street. “I wonder why he did that?” she said.
They ate lunch and puzzled it out. Jaymie decided that after her run-in with Craig the day before, he didn’t want to see her. Lily kept looking toward the door, expecting a lunch date, perhaps. It appeared she was being stood up, Jaymie thought, as she finished her tea and last bite of sandwich. Was she waiting for Matt to come in?
The young woman’s phone rang, and she looked at it, clicked the button and picked it up. She spoke for a moment, then whipped her head around, meeting Jaymie’s gaze head-on. For a moment, Jaymie was embarrassed to be caught examining her, but then she realized that the other woman was even more mortified than she was. Lily whispered something into the phone, closed it and stuck it in her handbag. She threw a five on the table, got up and hustled out of the tea shop without another word, not meeting Jaymie’s gaze again.
It came together in that moment who her lunch date was to have been. Lily, Matt Laskan’s girlfriend, had been about to meet Craig Cooper for lunch. Lily was beautiful, tall, willowy and blonde. Lily, Matt’s lovely girlfriend, was Craig Cooper’s mystery mistress.
Seventeen
SHE SHARED HER theory with Valetta, then Jaymie hustled up to the cash desk to pay, even though Valetta had told her lunch was on her. “I thought I recognized that woman who just left,” she said to the cashier/waitress, as she handed her a twenty. “Was that Lily…oh, what is her last name? Lily something or other.”
“Lily Fogarty? Yes!” the woman said, making change.
“Town councilwoman, right? Isn’t she usually here with a fellow? Kind of medium height, medium hair, gray eyes, wears glasses. A button-down kind of guy?”
The middle-aged woman cooled perceptibly. “I’ve never seen you here before. What’s your interest in Lily and her boyfriend?”
It was an acknowledgment of sorts. So Craig was sneaking around with Councilwoman Lily, his partner’s girlfriend! “I…uh, I just know him, that’s all.”
“Then you don’t need me to tell you if she’s been here with him or not.”
“My friend didn’t mean any harm,” Valetta said, sticking a generous tip in the tip jar. “She’s just naturally inquisitive. Craig’s a neighbor of ours in Queensville.”
The woman relaxed. “Craig…yeah, that’s her new guy. I’m hoping it turns out well for her. She’s such a great gal; she could go all the way to becoming president if she put her mind to it!”
On the sidewalk outside, Jaymie said to Valetta, “Thanks for bailing me out in there; I got a little overexuberant. And nice move, getting her to acknowledge Craig’s name! So now we know for sure. But really…President Fogarty? Not if folks find out about her rotten taste in men. First someone who almost went to jail for assault and kidnapping, and then a married man!”
“Do you think one has to do with the other?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think Lily found out about Matt’s trouble in Port Huron and turned to Craig?”
Jaymie thought for a moment. “Interesting theory, but it still doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Kathy’s death, unless…unless Craig’s relationship with Lily was his motive f
or killing his wife. He wouldn’t be the first guy to think of murder as a way to avoid splitting up the marital assets.” She shivered. “I can’t believe we’re talking about neighbors, fellow Queensvillians, as potential murder suspects.”
“We’re trying to do them a favor, trying to eliminate them!” Valetta looked up and down the street. “I’ll bet those two arranged to meet somewhere else.”
“Maybe, but it’s a big town. They could be anywhere.” Jaymie thought about it for a long minute. “I wonder if their relationship explains why Craig is being so shady about where he was at the time of the murder, and why Matt’s girlfriend canceled on him when she was supposed to have a picnic dinner with him?”
“You think Craig and Lily were together on the Fourth?”
“It’s possible.”
“Well, let’s find out,” Valetta said. She whipped out her cell phone and did a search, found Laskan Cooper’s website and Craig’s cell number. “What should we say to him? Should we ask him about Lily?”
“No, not by text. I want to see his face. Ask him to meet us at…” Jaymie looked around. “At the donut shop,” she said, pointing down the street at the Tastee D’s coffee and donut shop.
“Craig, we know you’re in W; meet us @ Tastee D’s,” Valetta typed, then hit send. “Let’s go to the donut shop and see if he shows up.”
They waited and waited, and finally Craig, a sullen expression on his face, walked in, saw them and slowly walked over to their table.
“Pull up a chair, Craig,” Jaymie said.
“Why are you following me?” he said, towering over them, glaring down at Jaymie. “I told the cops to make you leave me alone.”
So that explained Detective Christian’s visit the day before. Jaymie picked her words carefully. “Craig, I am not following you. Valetta and I came to Wolverhampton to shop. We have a carload of bags and a four-foot bookcase, if you want to see it all.”
Valetta added, “You don’t have a reason to be paranoid, do you?”
Jaymie watched his face as his gaze flicked from one of them to the other and back. He was trying to figure out how much they knew. “Why’d you walk away when I waved to you from the tea shop?” she asked.
Bowled Over Page 20
