White Colander Crime

by Victoria Hamilton

  The chief harrumphed. “We are reviewing all statements for irregularities. I wouldn’t answer your question even if we were just talking as police chief and citizen, but you are now working for Nan Goodenough. I won’t be quoted in the press, Jaymie.”

  She was silent for a long moment, then said, “I understand, Chief. But I do find it interesting. There’s more, though.” She told him about the call she received, explaining about the blood on Cody’s coat that was purported to be Shelby’s. She hesitated, then gave the name of the girl she suspected, Mikayla Jones, and told him her reasoning. “I’m not one hundred percent certain, but it sure sounded like her.”

  He was silent, but it was the quietude of rumination, not anger.

  She said tentatively, “And, Chief . . . I know you probably have this, but I’ve been thinking about something I noticed that night, the fabric caught in the splinter in the table. It wasn’t from anything Bill would wear, I’d swear to that. What it looked like to me was the lining of a suit jacket.”

  “You do notice a lot, don’t you? We had already figured that out, and that’s all I’m going to say.”

  It was all she needed, as it confirmed her guess.

  “And, Jaymie, I suppose you’d want to know this, if you don’t already. We’ve released Cody Wainwright for the time being. We didn’t arraign him on the murder charge.”

  Jaymie was stunned into silence.

  The chief chuckled. “Sounds like Mrs. Goodenough hadn’t told you yet.”

  “You seemed so certain, Chief; what changed your mind?”

  “Where’d you get the idea I was certain of anything? The arrest was premature; the DA decided against arraigning him on murder right now. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, just that it’s been deferred.” He harrumphed. “Hasty, that’s what the arrest was. That’s what happens when I go out of town.”

  After she hung up the phone she called Nan, who was happy but cautious. Until the true killer was behind bars, she wouldn’t rest. Jaymie hung up, made a cup of tea and wrote an organized list of her day. She performed all her usual morning tasks and took care of the animals.

  She then packed a little bag of goodies and dressed carefully in business-appropriate clothes. For her that meant a skirt, boots, sweater and her best winter coat, a cream wool trench handed on to her by Becca, for whom it was now too small. Pinned to the lapel was her favorite seasonal pin, a vintage Christmas tree with pearls and red and green stones as decorations. She walked through the village, saying happy holidays to those she knew, smiling and nodding to those she didn’t. Queensville meant so much to her. It was home in every sense of the word, and though she didn’t understand how her parents could move to Boca Raton and love living there so much, she went to visit them at their condo once a year in March. Still, she didn’t get the attraction—the older she got the more she understood the saying “to each his own.”

  For her, that was Queensville.

  The Queensville Inn was formerly the largest Queen Anne style home in the village, but when it was converted to an inn it had been expanded. A two-floor addition housed the more luxurious modern rooms and suites. She was meeting Lynnsey Bloombury in the coffee shop through the double doors and just off the main entrance. She waved to one of the waitresses she knew and found a table, carefully hanging her coat on one of the coat trees sprinkled throughout the restaurant in the winter. There were many people, tourists and locals, having their morning coffee, and some were breakfasting. Queensville didn’t have any other real restaurants, so the inn provided one of the few places for folks to meet for business or pleasure.

  An auburn-haired young woman entered, glanced around and spotted her, and crossed the room to stand by the table. “Jaymie Leighton? I’m Lynnsey Bloombury.” She stuck out her hand and they shook. She took off her long parka, slung it over the back of the chair and sat down with a sigh opposite Jaymie. “I’d forgotten how different it is looking for a job in Queensville than San Fran,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “You’re here looking for a job?” Jaymie was surprised, given that Lynnsey had a good job in the tech industry, from her mother’s report.

  “Yeah, I’m kinda lonely on the coast. I was coming back anyway for Christmas, but this thing with Shelby hit me hard. I miss my folks and my friends. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look around while I’m here.”

  “But the Queensville Inn?”

  “Hey, you gotta start somewhere. Any job to start is better than no job.”

  Jaymie nodded, appreciating that attitude. “What do you really want to do?”

  She shrugged. “I just don’t know. All my friends in school seemed to have some goal, some idea of where they were headed.” She gazed out the window as the wind blew across the outdoor patio, now shrouded in covers over the wrought-iron tables and chair sets. “I never did. And I still don’t. I’m a receptionist slash gofer at the firm where I work. They keep saying they don’t know what they’d do without me, but . . . it’s just not enough. They’re all so driven and into their work. I can’t hang out with them, because work is all they talk about and I only understand a quarter of what they say, if that. I feel like a fish out of water.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Jaymie said, and explained her own lack of an identifiable “career,” and how she was finally at peace with it. “I’ve just decided I’m not a career kind of person, and that’s okay. I like working, but I get bored easily . . . Funny to say that, when I live in a small town, with no excitement . . . or what other people would call excitement.”

  The waitress came over and she and Jaymie exchanged pleasantries, then they ordered coffee and pastries. “The pastries are to die for,” Jaymie said. “The chef is French Canadian. I run a picnic basket business, among other things, and his pastries are always a hit. I guess I’m lucky,” Jaymie went on. “I have several jobs and hobbies and I’m always running, but I love my life.”

  “You are lucky. I did that in school, a variety of things, I mean. I took office admin and secretarial, organizational classes. After leaving school I worked at a high-end boutique, a cooking school and then in a real estate company. But I just get restless. I moved on to the tech company I work at now, but I’m already bored out of my mind. At least here I’ll be restless among friends.”

  They shared a chuckle, but Lynnsey’s expression grew serious. “But first, I want to help you find out what happened to Shelby. She was my BFF, you know? We went to school together. I lost track of some of the others, but Shelby and I just clicked and stayed clicked, you know?”

  “I understand.” The waitress brought their coffee and pastries, and Jaymie poured cream in her cup. “I still stay in contact with the girls I went to university with in Canada and we meet at least once a year no matter what. I email them all the time.” Jaymie examined the other girl. Lynnsey was a tidy, smartly dressed redhead with a pretty, small-featured face and bright hazel eyes. Outwardly she didn’t appear to have much in common with Shelby, who was harder edged, more intense, but as friends they may have filled in each other’s empty spots. “I’ve heard all kinds of stuff about Shelby, but if I’m going to figure out what happened to her, then I need to know more from an insider, someone who truly knew her.”

  “That’s me,” Lynnsey said, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I miss her already. We were going to get together when I came back for Christmas and moan about our boyfriend troubles.”

  “Boyfriend troubles?”

  “I can never find a nice guy and she was bored with dating really off guys lately. Said they were all dogs.”

  Odd, considering she kept dating, but maybe . . . Jaymie tilted her head to one side as an idea began to form. Were there reasons other than a desire for a love life that kept her dating several men? “Did she mean Cody Wainwright in particular?”

  “That’s the guy who’s in jail for killing her, right?”

 
Jaymie didn’t correct her; that Cody was now out of jail was neither here nor there.

  Lynnsey frowned down into her coffee cup and took a long swig. “He was your typical young guy, she said.”

  “But he knocked her around. Did she ever tell you that?”

  “Did he really do that?” Lynnsey, eyes wide, stared at Jaymie. “Look, you gotta understand something. Shelby was . . . different. She sent me a few emails telling me that she was scared of Cody, but still she kept him around. I didn’t get it. And then she emailed me that if anything ever happen to her, I ought to look at Cody. I called her, scared out of my mind, but she kind of brushed it off, said she was half joking. It made me crazy. It was one of the things I intended to talk to her about over Christmas. I wanted to know what was going on.”

  Jaymie stirred her coffee. “I’m surprised you even question his guilt, given the emails. Most people are assuming he’s guilty, and they don’t even have that insight.”

  “Shelby was getting more erratic; I was worried. Cody killing her just seems . . . I don’t know. Too easy,” Lynnsey said. “Nothing in Shelby’s life was ever that simple and clear cut.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “Just that she complicated everything.”

  “How?”

  “You had to know how her mind worked. She’s like me in some ways . . . easily bored. So she would deliberately complicate things.”

  “How do you go about complicating your life?”

  “She thought it was fun to make people a little crazy . . . Like in high school, she deliberately pitted two best friends against each other. It started as an experiment of social science, or at least that’s what she said it was. She was good at justifying her own brand of crazy. She wanted to see if she could turn close friends against each other just using social means, like gossip and innuendo.”

  “That sounds . . . pardon me for saying it, but it sounds cruel.”

  Lynnsey shrugged. “She figured they deserved it. Trust me, those girls were the queen biotches of the school, so Shelby was just having some fun with them. She managed to have them at each other’s throats in no time. They had a huge fight in front of everyone. Even when they found out it was all based on lies, they were never friends again after that.”

  Trust was such a fragile thing, and once broken it was difficult to mend. Jaymie was horrified but stifled her personal opinion since Lynnsey didn’t seem to think it was such a big deal. It did offer a revealing insight into Shelby’s character and gave Jaymie food for thought. “So you don’t think Cody killed her?”

  She knit her reddish brows. “I didn’t say that, I just said it seemed too simple an explanation. She was done with him, though, so who knows?”

  “She was done with him? Did she tell you that? Was she serious?”

  “I think she was. She had some plan for getting rid of him once and for all.”

  “What was the plan?”

  “She didn’t tell me. Said she’d tell me all about it at Christmas. I was going to stay with her.” The tears resurfaced but she dabbed at her eyes with her paper napkin and went on. “She was thinking dating older men might be the way to go: money, security, better sense. I said, yeah, but what about all that baggage, you know, children, ex-wives . . . and she said, ‘Who said anything about ex-wives?’ Weird comment. But she wouldn’t say any more.”

  “Lynnsey, did she ever mention anyone named Natalie?”

  The young woman’s eyes brightened and she leaned forward. “She sure did. She told me she needed someone to talk to away from the village about something. Natalie Roth is the girl who disappeared.”

  Jaymie nodded.

  “Shelby had an idea she knew what happened to the girl, and she was going to take that information to the police!”

  Seventeen

  “WHAT DID SHE know? What did she tell you?” Was the mystery going to be solved as easily as that? She’d love to be able to tell Clutch what happened to his child.

  Lynnsey shook her head, her mane of auburn curls bouncing. “She told me some, but not all. We got interrupted. She had phoned me from work, I think, maybe from the cafeteria or lunchroom. I’m not positive of that; it could have been some other coffee shop, I guess. I could hear other voices in the background. Anyway, she told me that Natalie was mixed up in something real nasty, and she was killed so she wouldn’t talk.”

  “Did this have to do with her boss, Delaney Meadows?”

  “I don’t know. We got cut off before she told me much.”

  “You must have had an impression, though. Could you tell anything?”

  Lynnsey bit her lip, a streak of pink lipstick smudging her teeth. “I just don’t know. She just said ‘something real nasty,’ those exact words, but like I said, we were cut off. She said she was hoping it would solve the case, but that she was sure of one thing; Natalie was dead. She was going to have to tell Natalie’s father.”

  This was awful, but Clutch himself believed Natalie was dead. Jaymie sighed and stifled tears. It was going to be devastating to him, another family torn apart.

  Speaking of which . . . “Lynnsey, if you knew Shelby in school you must know her brother, Travis.”

  Lynnsey rolled her eyes. “What a jerk he is! Those two hated each other. When he was a kid he was one of those mean little boys, throwing frogs at cars and spinning kittens by their tails.”

  “Literally?” Jaymie said, gasping.

  “Literally! I guess he stopped doing crap like that, but I still couldn’t stand him. When we were teenagers he was always hitting on me and trying to get a peek at me in the bathroom.”

  “So she hated him? In, like, a brother-sister kind of way? Or something deeper?”

  Lynnsey paused and thought as she drained her coffee cup. “I don’t know what he felt about her. He creeped me out, so I spent as little time as I could with him. But I do know she hated him. Lori made excuses for him, saying he didn’t have a father figure growing up, blah, blah, blah. She was always bailing him out of trouble. Shelby told me that someday he was going to do something so terrible he’d end up behind bars.”

  Maybe he had fulfilled his sister’s worst fears, Jaymie thought, considering the lies he’d told about his evening and the mysterious half hour or so he was missing. Natalie Roth’s fate could be tangled in there, too, considering that Travis apparently dated Natalie.

  They were finished with their coffee. Lynnsey had to leave, as she was looking into other job opportunities in Wolverhampton. One place she wasn’t going was Delaney Meadows’ headhunter business. When Jaymie asked why, she just said from talking to Shelby she didn’t have a good opinion of the guy. Nothing concrete, just an icky feeling.

  “One thing I trusted was Shelby’s gut,” Lynnsey said. “She had been hit and beat up all her life, especially by her mother’s boyfriends. She was angry . . . really angry deep inside. I always thought she’d do something important, like work at a battered women’s shelter.”

  “Maybe she was making a start by looking into Natalie Roth’s disappearance, especially if there was something fishy about it,” Jaymie mused.

  “I guess we’ll never know what she may have done,” Lynnsey said, tears welling in her eyes. She gave Jaymie a quick hug, grabbed her parka and speed walked out of the coffee shop.

  Jaymie didn’t leave the inn. Instead she headed past the main desk, with a wave at Edith, the owner’s girlfriend, who was sitting behind it, then down a familiar hallway to a main-floor suite. She tapped on the door.

  “Come in!”

  She entered. Mrs. Stubbs was sitting in her mobility wheelchair by the window, where the light was best, reading a large-print mystery novel.

  “Jaymie!” Mrs. Stubbs cried, sticking her finger in the page she was reading. “Thank goodness. Someone interesting to talk to. Despite my books, I’ve been suffering from boredom.” She pa
tted the bed with one arthritic hand, indicating she wanted Jaymie to sit. As usual she was wearing a jewel-colored velour pants and jacket set over a T-shirt. “Come in and tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  Jaymie crossed the floor of the comfortable bedsitting room where the woman was cosseted and taken care of twenty-four hours a day by her devoted son and his live-in girlfriend. She drew out from her purse the plastic bag of treats—some brownies, shortbread cookies and fudge—and set it on the bedside table for Mrs. Stubbs to pick through later. She perched on the bed and the friends discussed family plans for Christmas, which was creeping up so quickly Jaymie didn’t know if she’d get everything done.

  Mrs. Stubbs looked wistful, riffling the pages of her book while she stared out the window. “I remember being that busy, when the boys were kids and my husband was alive, and my parents, too. I didn’t think I’d ever have enough time to do everything that needed doing. I used to imagine a time when I could just sit and drink tea and read a book.” She chuckled, but it was a mirthless sound. “I guess that’s now; I have all the time to read I could ever want. What I wouldn’t give to go back and have some of that busy time to do over.”

  Jaymie’s heartstrings plucked, but she knew she needed to distract her friend. They talked about her Grandma Leighton’s upcoming visit and that she would be staying at the inn and would be visiting with Mrs. Stubbs. That cheered the other woman immensely. Inevitably they spoke of Shelby Fretter’s murder and how Jaymie was investigating it, semiofficially this time, at the request of the suspect’s mother.

  “I’m just not sure how I’ll handle it if I think he’s guilty.”

  “Cart in front of the horse, Jaymie. Are you truly going into this with an open mind?”

  “I hope I am now. Cody has been released, but Nan won’t be happy until he’s completely out of the woods.”

  “Tell me what you have so far.”