Victoria Hamilton - Vintage Kitchen 04 - No Mallets Intended (20 page)

“You are freakin’ nuts, lady.” Isolde was trembling and had turned white. “I never touched him. I was hurt, too, in case you didn’t know!”

“Hah! I don’t believe that for a minute.” Mrs. Carson moved toward her, but Isolde backed up. Shaking her finger in the younger woman’s face, Theo’s mother shrieked, “You… you Jezebel, you user! You were just trying to ride his coattails. A successful author like my son… all you wanted was to piggyback your way to being published, too!”

“Me?” Isolde cried, incredulity on her pale, beautiful face. “I didn’t need
his
help. I have advanced degrees in comparative and classic literature! I’m an educated woman, not a self-trained hack like Theo.” Isolde lowered her chin and glared at Mrs. Carson. “You had better back off, lady.” She began to turn.

But Mrs. Carson launched herself at Isolde, flailing with her purse and fist.

“Uh-oh, definitely time to step in,” Jaymie muttered, as Valetta, too, stood and headed down the steps toward them. “You take Mrs. Carson,” Jaymie said to her friend.

Valetta successfully blocked, with her chin, one blow from the older woman’s purse, then grabbed her by the shoulders as the crowd that had gathered tried to help. Bill Waterman, who had raced over from his workshop, stepped up to help Valetta, and Jewel pelted out of her store saying she had called the police.

“Isolde, come with me!” Jaymie said, urgently, and guided her to the Emporium, where Mrs. Klausner now stood on the front veranda, arms folded over her narrow chest. She must have parked at the back and entered that way, because Jaymie hadn’t seen her arrive. “I’m going to take her home with me,” Jaymie said to Mrs. Klausner, of Isolde. The store owner nodded and serenely went to work in her store.

“I don’t understand that woman’s problem,” Isolde fumed, allowing Jaymie to guide her. She was trembling, and her cheeks were red with agitation.

Jaymie grabbed her purse and lunch things, shouted to Valetta that she’d call her later and led Isolde away. “You don’t understand? For heaven’s sake, the problem is her son is
dead
,” Jaymie said, leading the woman by the arm in the opposite direction from Valetta, who was still talking to a weeping Mrs. Carson.

Isolde looked chagrined, but didn’t comment. “Where are we going?” she said.

“To my house. I want to talk to you.”

Isolde meekly allowed herself to be led through Queensville, down Jaymie’s back lane and up to the door, which Jaymie unlocked. Hoppy skittered out like a house afire and headed to his little private sanctuary by the garage for a piddle. Denver strolled past them out the door, looking over his shoulder once, as if to say,
Don’t mind the dog. The little savage doesn’t know how to use the indoor facilities.

“Come in,” Jaymie said, slinging her purse over a door handle. She waved toward the table and chairs. “Sit, and have a cup of tea. Or coffee. What do you drink?”

“How about a good stiff glögg,” Isolde said, sitting at the trestle table in the kitchen and covering her face with her hands, scrubbing her eyes.

“Sorry, no glögg and no aquavit. We’ll have tea.” She filled the kettle and put it on the stove, turning the knob so the flame leaped up under it. “You know, Mrs. Carson is deeply hurt. Put yourself in her shoes, having lost a son. She has to blame someone,” Jaymie said, sitting down opposite her guest.

“Yeah, well, she doesn’t have to blame me. I’m no praying mantis.”

The kettle whistled merrily so Jaymie jumped up, made a pot of tea and set a cup down in front of Isolde. “I don’t know how you take it,” she said, pushing the cream pitcher and sugar bowl across the table. She sat down opposite her again. Isolde seemed on the level about not killing Theo Carson, but there was so much else involved. “Did you ever find your cell phone? The one used to text me?”

“No. Why?”

“Just curious.” Jaymie watched her. “
Someone
used it to get me there, after all. If it wasn’t you, then who else had access to your phone?”

Isolde shrugged. She ladled sugar into the tea, whitened it with milk, then sipped and made a face.

“When did you lose track of it?”

“I don’t know. I had it, then I didn’t have it.” She wouldn’t meet Jaymie’s gaze.

Odd. “I never did get the whole story of that night, you know,” Jaymie said. “What exactly happened? Theo was over at your place, and…” She waited for the woman to fill in the rest.

Isolde shifted, looking uncomfortable. “Look, Theo Carson was an asshole, not a saint, as his mother clearly thinks. I would have dumped him in a New York minute if I didn’t think there was something he knew about that house, something he didn’t want anyone else to know.”

So, it wasn’t just ambition but the hope of something else that had kept her with the guy. Narrowing her eyes, she examined Isolde. “What exactly do you mean?”

“What do you
think
I mean? You know the score; you did the same thing. I saw the national headlines when you found that Button Gwinnett letter in the Hoosier cabinet. You just
happened
to find it… riiight,” she drawled, with a knowing lift of her brows. “You were looking for it. Theo was the same. He was looking for something in that place, and I wanted to be there when he found it. He was
not
going to get all the glory for the find, and I am
not
going to stay a docent in a two-bit historical museum for the rest of my life!”

Twenty

T
HERE WAS NO
use protesting that she had no clue what she was doing when she found the historically significant letter in the spring, Jaymie immediately decided. There had been a couple of interviews, and even a bit on her on CNN, but the furor had swiftly died down once it became obvious to the press that she really was as boring (in their eyes) as she seemed. Even dating multimillionaire Daniel Collins hadn’t been enough to keep her in the limelight, and she was relieved. But Isolde would never buy that.

“I have heard a few things about hidden stuff at the house. You say Theo believed it?” Jaymie didn’t. Folks had been through the house time and again, and squatters had salvaged everything of worth. They were extremely lucky that all the copper pipe and wiring hadn’t been stripped from the place, because that was the only thing of value left when the society bought it.

“He did,” Isolde said. “And the man, for all his faults, was not stupid. He wasn’t as smart as me, but he wasn’t stupid.”

“So you followed him that night?” She didn’t need to specify which night.

“He snuck out of my place when he thought I wasn’t aware.”

“Did you know right away where he was going?”

“I suspected.” She sat up straighter and looked around. “Hey, do you have anything to eat? I’m starving. And something to drink other than this?” She pushed the tea away.

Jaymie made up a plate of leftover turkey roulettes, some pickles and cheese and put a square of apple crisp in a bowl, then filled a glass with milk. As Isolde dug in, Jaymie asked, “Why did you suspect where he was going?”

“He was fixated on that place. And…” She frowned and took a sip of milk. “He got a call on his cell phone a few minutes before we… got comfortable. It seemed like he was in a hurry.”

“A hurry?”

“When we jumped in the sack,” she said, impatiently. “What do you think I meant? He rushed through, then snuck out.”

“What did you see as you drove up? Was there a car there? Two cars?”

“
No
cars… that’s what I couldn’t figure out, because I was sure he was at the house. I got out to see, and that’s when I got hit.”

That was another thing Jaymie did not know, what had happened to Theo’s car. Reason said, then, they were dealing with more than one culprit, if one supposed that the murderer or murderers had come in a vehicle as well, and took off with Theo’s car.

Did the police have it? Was there anything important in it, or any incriminating prints? She didn’t suppose even if she knew, it would help her figure out who did it; it was the kind of information the police could work from better than she could. “How many people did you see?”

“It was dark; who knows? One… two.” She took a big bite. “Look, why do you want to know all this anyway?” Isolde mumbled around a mouthful of food.

Jaymie looked away. The girl had the appearance of a Danish saint and the manners of… well, Jaymie had known truck drivers with daintier eating habits. “I found him,” she said. “And the weapon was one I handled. I can’t let it go.” She watched Isolde. “I feel tied to it, you know? And I wonder, was
my
attacker the same one who killed Theo? Was I close to being murdered, too?”

Isolde gulped down some more milk but said nothing. For someone who’d slept with the man, someone who’d spent so much time with him, she seemed unmoved by his death. Was that shock left over from having witnessed the murder? Or was she naturally cold? If she wasn’t going to respond to the emotional aspect, maybe Jaymie needed to pursue another line of questioning. Not that she was questioning, but… well, yeah. She was questioning Isolde. She had the uneasy feeling the chief wouldn’t approve of her going this far, but she had a stake in this, too, since the culprit was possibly the same person who had attacked her. “I’ve never asked you this, but why were you driving by the house that night when you found me?” Jaymie asked. “I mean, I’m grateful, but…”

The museum guide sighed and shrugged, chewing another mouthful of food. “That night I knew Theo was visiting his mom out of town, so I went out to the house to see if I could get in and look around without him. I knew he was looking for something, but I didn’t know what. That’s why he stole a key to Dumpe Manor, had it copied and then put it back.”

Jaymie sat up straight. “How did he do that?” Originally Isolde had said that Theo borrowed a key to get in.

“Are you kidding?” Isolde swallowed and chuckled, shaking her head. “You people are so trusting! Wolverhampton would never fall for some of the crap that goes on here. Bunch of newbies.” She eyed Jaymie. “Theo had access to people on the historical society, right? He was supposed to talk to them, blah, blah, blah, about the history of the Dumpe family. It was
soooo
easy for him to distract them while I lifted the key. He got it copied, then returned the key without anyone being the wiser.”

Jaymie stuffed down her building fury. “Who was the society member?”

Isolde rolled her eyes. “It was that annoying Mrs. Frump.”

“So, you helped him steal a key from Mrs. Frump. And you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

Isolde stiffened and sat up straight. “We just borrowed it. I told you that… that he borrowed a key. I wasn’t lying. We weren’t going to take anything.”

Jaymie held her tongue, though there were a hundred things she wanted to say, none of them nice. Stealing and copying a key was not borrowing, not by any definition. However, there was a lot more she wanted to know from Isolde. Sweetly, she said, “Would you like your apple crisp heated up? And with whipped cream?”

Her blue eyes widened. “Would you do that?”

Jaymie heated the apple crisp in the microwave and blanketed it with real whipped cream that melted and flowed over the steaming dessert.

Isolde dug in and heaved a spoonful into her mouth, rolling her eyes and chewing. “This is so good!”

“I never really
got
Theo,” Jaymie said, determined to get more information out of the woman. “Never understood him. He seemed really… egotistical. I thought you two were fond of each other, but you seemed to have a pretty clear view of him. What happened between him and your ex? I’ve heard stories, but I don’t know what’s true.”

“It was so embarrassing! This was last month. Theo and I were at a restaurant in Wolverhampton. We’d just started going out after he dumped that sad sack Cynthia. Anyway, Milton charged into the restaurant and made a huge scene and tried to haul me out by the arm. Theo stood up to him and got punched in the ear for his troubles.” She shrugged once again, an elegant hunch of one shoulder. “Milt ended up in jail, and stayed there because the attack meant he broke probation and a restraining order.”

So that was why the guy was still in jail, Jaymie thought, but… could he have talked someone else in jail into killing Theo? Surely the police would have thought about that, she figured. “Dick Schuster had some wild story about Theo stealing a manuscript from him, but it didn’t make much sense to me.”

Isolde swallowed and scooped up another spoonful of apple crisp. “That guy is a flake. He hated Theo, but there wasn’t a bit of merit in what he said. Theo never stole anything from Dick Schuster. I saw his notes; he was a pretty good researcher.”

“But you called him a hack writer to his mother.”

“I was mad. He didn’t have the degrees to back it up, but he was a decent enough writer. Let’s just say he knew how to write for the general public.”

That sounded like the snarky remark of a college-trained writer against an author who knew how to appeal to the masses, Jaymie thought, remembering Nan’s comments about Isolde’s pompous writing style. It sounded like she resented Theo; interesting thought. “How well did Theo know Dr. Prentiss Dumpe?”

“You mean that guy who says he should own the house? The one who was at the last heritage meeting?”

“Exactly.”

She frowned down at her bowl, playing with the apple crisp and whipped cream. “I
think
he interviewed the guy about the Dumpe family background. It’s in his notes.” She tilted her head to one side and frowned. “Theo was kind of secretive about what he found out.”

Jaymie didn’t miss the fact that Isolde said Theo was secretive, and yet she had seen his notes. The implication to Jaymie was that he had not
shown
her the notes, so she must have looked through his stuff. Since her ethical code did not forbid stealing—or rather,
borrowing
—a key, intellectual theft might not be beyond
her
, even though she claimed Theo didn’t indulge in it. Was she planning to try out for the now-vacant job of writer of the Dumpe Manor history? And if so, had she hastened Theo’s death? Far-fetched, but an interesting thought. However… it was far more likely that if Isolde had been involved in Theo’s death, it was for the elusive something that everyone was after at Dumpe Manor.

She eyed the younger woman, who scooped the last of the dessert into her mouth and drank the melted whipped cream. What a great cover story it would be to witness the murder, then be kidnapped and held in a trunk all night! An alibi and cover story all in one, and it could explain a host of forensic details, like blood transfer from Theo if the murderer or murderers had grabbed her. As far as Jaymie knew, Isolde was the only one who could tell them that there were possibly two assailants. She wondered if the police had forensic evidence to back up her statement that there were two attackers, but Jaymie would never be privy to that. Her hesitant friendship with the police chief only went so far. He had seemed interested in her speculations, and now she was speculating that Isolde Rasmussen killed Theo Carson for some reason, either professional ambition or just plain annoyance. What would he say if she told him
that
?

But… could this beautiful, ethereal Scandinavian blonde actually commit such a brutal murder? Having seen her in a sleeveless blouse, Jaymie knew that the docent had impressive muscles on a taut frame; the mallet was steel headed, but meant for a woman to wield. It was definitely possible.

The phone rang, and Jaymie jumped up to answer. It was Valetta. “I can’t talk this minute. May I call you back?” she said, looking over her shoulder at her guest.

“Hmm… sounds interesting,” Valetta said. “I’m at work. Call me here.”

“I have to go out to meet the alarm installer and Haskell at the house, first, but I’ll call you when I get home.” Jaymie hung up and turned, but Isolde had stood and was putting her jacket back on.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Wait… I was going to ask—”

“I have to go to work. Thanks for the food.
And
for keeping that lunatic woman away from me. Talk to you later!” She was out the back door and gone in two seconds, before Jaymie could even respond.

Jaymie watched her jog down the back path. Hoppy bounced after her, then stood at the back gate and watched her scurry off down the lane, skirting the spot where she had reportedly been dropped off. She seemed to be in one heck of a hurry.

•   •   •

T
HE DAY HAD
turned from brilliant fall warmth to November in its worst mood. That was so common that Michiganders tended to look up at the sun, nod knowingly and dress for a blizzard. The wind had come up, the trees tossed uneasily and the sky was the color of a new bruise. She had driven her van out to Dumpe Manor and was glad she had, since the house was without electricity at the moment, a hopefully brief blackout. It wasn’t uncommon for homes outside of the town proper, she had heard, to lose power, especially on windy days. She sat in her van waiting for both the power and the alarm installer.

She had put a call in to the police chief from her cell while she waited, and it chimed. She looked at the screen. Aha! “Chief Ledbetter! I’m glad you called me back,” Jaymie said.

“Well, I told you to keep in touch,” he said, a trifle wearily. “Can’t really blame you for taking me at my word, can I?”

Jaymie flushed, glad that he couldn’t see the chagrin on her face through the phone. She had been phoning quite a bit, but usually she didn’t talk to him, she just left him messages about her observations. He’d started it, with his impromptu visit and urge to share what she was thinking. She had told him, finally, about the will found in the kitchen cupboard, and about the Snoop Sisters’ search for the Sultan’s Eye, not that either of those things had anything to do with the murder. She had shared most random information she came across and even many of her nighttime musings.