White Colander Crime

by Victoria Hamilton

  She also texted Jakob, remembering that she had planned to drop by the tree farm to see him, but he texted back that he was already on his way to Marine City and wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. It looked like she wouldn’t get to see him after all. She sent him a frowny face and said she’d call him that evening, after he was home from Jocie’s winter pageant.

  Nan texted back, telling Jaymie to call her house, where Cody was staying, whenever she wanted. She then made a note to track down Lily Meadows and find out if she was at the book club meeting on the Friday night of Shelby’s death, and anything else she could discover about Delaney’s wife, about whom two people had vastly different opinions. The note in Delaney’s planner about Dickens Days and “SF” nagged at her. If Lily was at the book meeting she could at least eliminate one person from the pool of suspects.

  She sat back and sipped her tea, and accidentally tuned in to a conversation at a table behind her. What caught her attention was the name Natalie. It wasn’t an especially uncommon name, but Queensville was a small town; not that many Natalies around. Two women were talking in hushed whispers.

  “(Unintelligible) . . . but I know the truth. She was scared, so she left town.”

  The other young woman said, “I don’t think so. I think she’s dead.”

  “You don’t . . . You can’t know that for sure. Who knows?”

  “I think she got in trouble with . . . (unintelligible) . . . and took off, and got in bad company and died.”

  Jaymie shifted to hear better, but the girl gave her a look. Sighing, she turned in her chair to face them. “Pardon me, but I couldn’t help overhear you talking about Natalie. That wouldn’t be Natalie Roth, would it?”

  The girl facing her, a pretty blonde not more than twenty-one or so, blinked and started, then said reluctantly, “Why?”

  Jaymie hesitated, but then said, “I know her father. He’s so upset. He doesn’t know if she’s alive or dead, and you can imagine how awful that is.”

  The other of the two girls, a brunette with olive skin and almond-shaped eyes, turned in her chair. Her dark eyes were clouded with doubt. “No one thought anything of it when she said she was working for Delaney and going to Korea. I know another girl who did it, and came back okay.”

  “Actually, she never left Queensville,” Jaymie said. “Her passport and ID are all still in her apartment.”

  The first girl’s expression cleared and she sighed in relief. “Well, that’s good! She probably took off on a vacation, or with some man!”

  “For six weeks?” the brunette said. “No, this is worse. Much worse. Someone would have found her or she would have contacted someone in that time. When the police came around asking questions I couldn’t think of anything to tell them. I mean, I don’t know anything. But this is bad.” She met Jaymie’s gaze. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I’m Jaymie Leighton. How do you girls know Natalie?”

  The girls were Dawn and Honey. They both worked at the call center and knew Austin Calhoun. He was bitchy but fun, they agreed. Yes, he was friends with Natalie; they saw them together quite often. They only knew her from lunches at the Bean & Leaf, but she had talked about her new job, though so far she had only done an auto show and a convention. She was excited about the opportunity, both agreed, to travel to Korea. She liked travel a lot.

  “If she had a good experience I was going to try to get the same job,” Dawn, the pretty blonde, said.

  “Honey, you said a few minutes ago that you thought she got in trouble with—and I couldn’t hear that part—and took off, got in with bad company and died. Who were you talking about? Who did she get in trouble with?”

  She exchanged a look with her friend, who shrugged.

  “Just tell me; I’m interested, and it won’t go any further, I promise.”

  Honey looked round the room, then bent forward. “I just don’t trust Delaney Meadows. There’s something wrong there, don’t you think? Does he look like the kind of guy who’d start a modeling agency?” She sat back. “I did say I thought she took off, got mixed up in bad company and died. But . . . that’s all.”

  Jaymie watched her for a moment, but she remained calm. “What is it about Delaney Meadows you don’t trust?”

  Honey frowned down at her cup. “He’s just kind of . . . weird. I don’t know what else to say. Just this feeling, like, he watches you with these cold eyes, like he’s taking inventory.”

  “And he’s around at all hours,” Dawn added. “I’ve seen him sneaking in here at midnight.”

  “What were you doing here at midnight?” Honey asked, eyeing her friend.

  The blond girl giggled. “I was meeting a friend on the sly. He had something I wanted.” She widened her eyes and pinched her fingers together, taking a hit off an imaginary joint.

  “And you saw Delaney?”

  “Yeah. He was sneaking into the building.”

  “Sneaking?” Jaymie said. “He has a business here. He could have just remembered he needed to do something.”

  Dawn nodded. “I guess.”

  “Was Natalie dating anyone? Was she worried about anything, or upset? In any kind of trouble?”

  “Well, actually . . .” Honey blinked once, calculating, it appeared to Jaymie. Then she nodded. “Okay, I’m not sure if this means anything, but I know one thing; Natalie was dating, for a while, at least, Shelby Fretter’s brother, Travis. When she dumped him, he showed up here and said he wasn’t leaving until she talked to him. Shelby had to come out and calm him down. Natalie wasn’t even in the building that day—she only came in when she had to talk to Delaney—but Travis was really upset.”

  • • •

  AS JAYMIE WALKED home, she considered what else Honey and Dawn had to say. Natalie, like Shelby, dated a lot, several different guys. She was a gorgeous girl and once told Dawn that she should consider doing what she did, date guys who could offer some financial reward for the time and trouble. Both girls knew about Meadows’ dating site, but were divided on their opinion of it. Dawn thought it was harmless, but Honey was leery, saying it felt like a scam to her. She had logged on once, and when it said that girls could subscribe free but guys had to pay, she said it felt off.

  Jaymie agreed with her. She was familiar with ladies’ nights at clubs, when women got in free and men had to pay a cover charge. Club owners knew that guys were generally more likely to attend if there were large numbers of girls to hit on, and would buy more drinks for themselves and girls. But this felt kind of like the men were paying for introductions to girls, which was one step away from some very unsavory dealings.

  The information about Travis was interesting: that he had been upset when Natalie stopped seeing him. Did Shelby suspect he was behind Natalie’s disappearance? Is that what they were arguing about the night of Shelby’s murder, that she was going to turn him in? She had to find a way to meet and talk to him, as well as to connect with Lori Wozny. That was going to be tricky, but she only had a very short time left before her self-imposed deadline, though she knew enough for her to make one decision right now, actually. Cody was not the killer. There was more than enough doubt to go around, and several viable suspects with more motive than he had. She wanted to know, both for Nan and for herself.

  Once home, she made a to-do list and sat down at the kitchen table with the phone to work her way through part of it. She made some business calls for the picnic baskets as well as for Dickens Days. She touched base with Mabel and Dee, then called Valetta quickly.

  “Can you answer me one question?” she asked. “The night of the murder, did you, from your angle, see Delaney Meadows that evening? At all?”

  There was silence for a moment, then Valetta said, “I had to think for a second, but yes, I did see him. I’m trying to pin down what time.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “It was probably around nine or so;
I saw him scurrying off down the road.”

  “Scurrying?”

  “Like a rat will do.”

  Jaymie chuckled. “Nine, you say . . . and scurrying.”

  “Do I sniff a mystery?”

  “Just developing alternate theories. It’s possible that he killed Shelby for reasons I’ll explain at some point, and that was why he was scurrying. I’ll have to work out the timing, but it sure does seem possible to me. Now . . . did you at any time see Travis Fretter alone?”

  “I can’t say that I did.”

  “Darn. Okay. Gotta go.” Valetta was protesting that Jaymie couldn’t leave her hanging like that as she clicked the off button on the phone.

  She then settled down in the parlor and called Cody. He sounded groggy at first.

  “I didn’t sleep much in jail. Uh . . . thanks for getting me out.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that. Chief Ledbetter and the DA decided there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute you. The only way to ensure that you don’t end up back in trouble is to figure out who did this.”

  “I want the cops to find out who killed Shelby.” His voice cracked as he said her name.

  “Good. I have a lot of questions, Cody. How did you and Shelby meet?”

  He shrugged. “A bar. How else do you meet girls?”

  “Did you approach her or did she approach you?”

  “Neither. I mean . . . a mutual friend introduced us.”

  “Who was the friend?” Jaymie asked.

  “Her brother, Travis.”

  Interesting how Travis’s name kept popping up. “How do you know him?”

  “Just from playing pool at Shooters.”

  Easy enough to set up if it was not by chance. She wasn’t sure why she was suspicious of Cody and Shelby’s relationship, but it was odd that Shelby would go out with Cody when he was the son of a woman she despised. And it was even odder that she would keep going out with him when he apparently hit her. “Are you and Travis still friends?”

  “We never were really friends. The guy’s a punk.”

  “Did you know a girl he was dating, Natalie Roth?”

  “I’ve heard her name; Shelby talked about her. But I never met her.”

  “You said to your mom that Shelby thought Nan was out to get her and her whole family.”

  “Yeah, she bitched about that a lot.”

  “But was there a single thing your mother’s paper reported that wasn’t true?”

  He paused, then said, “I don’t know. Shelby thought they couldn’t catch a break, that’s all, and that everything they did was reported, while other stuff wasn’t.”

  “Did she ask you to get your mother to back off?”

  “No. I just figured she didn’t want to come between us.”

  Interesting that she never tried to get him to interfere on her family’s behalf. What was the purpose of befriending him and dating him, if not to get Nan to stop her supposed vendetta against her family? “Do you think that your mom had a vendetta against Shelby and her family?”

  “I don’t know. I tried to defend Mom, but Shelby just wouldn’t listen.”

  “Did you ever see her writing in a journal or diary?”

  “A journal? She did have this book that she kept in her purse all the time, and she wrote in it. I figured it was just a date book, you know, so she wouldn’t forget stuff.”

  So she kept it in her purse. Did the police have it, Jaymie wondered? She’d give a lot to know what was in it. “Was there anything suspicious, or odd, about her behavior? Anything you felt she was hiding or lying about?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, his voice clearer, more awake. He shifted like he was finally sitting up. He told her that he stayed at Shelby’s apartment for a couple of weeks after Nan kicked him out. “I saw Shelby a couple of times haul this duffel bag out of her closet and root around. When I came close she kind of shielded it. I asked her what was in it, and she just said old clothes.”

  “But you thought she was lying?”

  “I don’t think it, I know she was. She would never let me stay home when she wasn’t there . . . She said I should be out looking for a job anyway. But one day when she was out, I went back to the apartment and got the bag out of the closet. I opened it and it was full of stuff.”

  “But not old clothes, I’m assuming. What kind of stuff?”

  “I only saw it for a minute because she came back in. I thought she was gone for the day but she’d just gone to the store for milk before work.”

  “And?” Jaymie asked impatiently.

  “It had a stack of bills, like fives, tens, twenties; a lot of them. There were a couple of cell phones, those cheapie pay as you go. They were still in their packaging, you know? There were some clothes, like underwear and pants and T-shirts, and a thick stack of gift cards: Visa, Mastercard, Walmart, Walgreens and cell phone minutes.”

  Jaymie was silent for a moment. “Was she planning to leave town?” Though that did not seem like typical packing for a vacation or moving; it felt more like . . . well, it felt like a runaway’s bag.

  “Not that I know of. I mean, it’s not like there was anything keeping her, if she wanted to go, right? Why hide it? I asked her if she was going anywhere.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t answer.”

  She filed that thought away for future reference and pondering. “So is that all? You rooted through the bag, and then what?”

  “Like I said, she caught me. I told her I was just looking for something of mine I lost, but she didn’t believe me. She tried to act like she was cool, that she was just mad I was looking through her private stuff, but she took the duffel with her and stashed it elsewhere. I never saw it again and she kicked me out of the apartment two days later.”

  Jaymie had an uneasy feeling. She asked Cody a few more questions, her mind teeming with ideas and worries. Most important, she asked where he thought Shelby took the duffel bag. Possibly to a friend’s or to some kind of storage place?

  “The gym,” he said promptly. “I’d bet on it. She wouldn’t want to leave it with a friend. She was real suspicious of everyone, and she’d want access to it whenever. And I have the extra key.”

  Twenty

  HE WOULDN’T TELL her how he got the gym locker key, and didn’t have anything more to say. She told him to stay away from the gym and her locker, whatever he did. The last thing he needed was to look even more guilty. He couldn’t go in there anyway, he said, because it was an all-female gym. He pled his innocence, repeated that he’d never do anything to hurt Shelby. He loved her, even if she didn’t love him.

  Jaymie was uneasy about the bag, but curious. And yet . . . it didn’t feel right. Cody’s refusal to tell her how he got the locker key sat in her gut like a lump of something tainted. Since he wasn’t kicked out of her apartment until two days later, Jaymie assumed he had searched and found the extra key, because Shelby certainly would not have given it to him. The duffel bag was the murder victim’s property and what was in it could have some bearing on the case, could even exonerate Cody! It would be worthless if she or anyone else tampered with it. Any DA or defense attorney worth his or her salt would argue that Jaymie could easily have put anything into the bag, so whatever was found in it would be useless as evidence.

  But the other side of the argument was this: Cody had the key to her locker, and thus access to her duffel bag, despite his claim that the gym was for women only. Wasn’t the bag useless as evidence anyway because he could have tampered with it at any point? In that case her looking into it wouldn’t matter one way or the other.

  It might just be time to talk to Chief Ledbetter about the case again, and all she had uncovered. For all she knew they already had this info, but Jaymie doubted it. First, she needed to get her ideas
organized, and she needed to talk to Lori Wozny and Travis Fretter.

  The phone rang just then.

  It was Valetta again. “Are you up for anything this evening, even just a movie night . . . before the madness that is the last week before Christmas?” Valetta asked.

  “Maybe. Starting tomorrow I’m crazy busy; Dickens Days, Queensville Historic Manor, working at the Emporium and then family. Grandma Leighton is coming to town for the first time in years. And then . . . there’s Jakob.”

  “I’ll understand if you’d rather spend this evening with Jakob, you know,” Valetta said.

  “No, they’ve got a school thing this evening. Jocie’s gymnastics group is doing a tumbling routine during the winter pageant and the whole family will be there. Jakob asked me if I’d like to go, but I’m not ready for that, I don’t think.”

  “Oh, I think you’re ready, but you’re not sure his family is ready.”

  “Maybe. I’m afraid to rush things with them. Look how it worked out with Daniel’s mother! I do not want a repeat of that.”

  “I don’t think that will happen with Jakob’s family, but there’s no rush, right? You’ve got time,” Valetta agreed.

  “What I need is someone dispassionate to help me hash out this stuff with Shelby. Would you be up to coming over for dinner? And talking about the case?”

  “Done and done! I’ll always come over if you’re cooking.”

  “You might end up eating a ten-pound brick of sticky-sweet no-bake fruitcake,” she joked. She had peeked at the so-called fruitcake and it didn’t look too good.

  “May as well glue it directly to my hips,” Val joked.

  “It wouldn’t need glue,” Jaymie replied.

  She had an hour before Valetta was to come over, so she sat down and made notes for the fruitcake article, then took the loaf out of the fridge, where it had resided in foil-covered mystery since she made it. It was actually as heavy as several bricks. She peeled back the foil, and it was, as she had worried, sticky.