Victoria Hamilton - Vintage Kitchen 04 - No Mallets Intended (27 page)

“Finally!” Jaymie sighed. “Now I can get out of their relationship, where I don’t belong.”

After Bernie left, Jaymie checked her cell phone. There was another text from Zack, just along the lines of “Call me,” so since she was on a roll she decided to take a chance. She clicked through, and he answered.

“Hey, how are you?” he said. “Staying out of trouble?”

“Not so much,” she said with a chuckle. Given everything that had happened, that was laughable. “What’s up?” she asked, wondering if he was going to ask her out. Did he like her that way? Was he interested? She wasn’t sure of her own feelings, nor what she’d say if he did ask. He was a nice fellow, but…

They chatted for a few minutes. He loved his new job with the Detroit force; it was a real challenge, and he felt like he was making a difference. And his life was better than it had been for a long while. “Thanks to you, I decided to handle a few things in my life.”

“Thanks to
me
?”

“Yeah. You always face life head-on. That’s what’s cool about you. Anyway, I caught up with some old friends. Turns out I was mistaken about a few things. There was this girl…”

He broke off, and Jaymie rolled her eyes. What was it with her? Men seemed to want to
confide
in her, make her their best buddy, ask for advice. “There was this girl…” Jaymie repeated back to him. “And?”

“She was the reason I got in trouble in Chicago. She was a material witness in an important case I was a detective on, and we got involved, but that ended when I got fired. Things went bad, and the case never made it to court. The DA said that my involvement with the witness tainted the evidence. I thought she’d blame me, and I left town. Anyway, I called her a few weeks ago, and we got to talking. We’re seeing each other now.”

Jaymie sighed. “That’s good,” she said, almost to herself. “That is
really
good. I’m so pleased for you, Zack, I really am.”

They chatted for a few more minutes, but they didn’t have a lot to talk about. Jaymie certainly didn’t want to talk about what had been going on in
her
life; it was all too confusing. But once she hung up, she realized that she felt more at peace than she had for a long time. Resolving issues seemed to have that effect on her.

She had always known deep in her heart that she and Zack didn’t have enough in common to date, as hunky as she found him. He was one more guy with itchy feet, and that didn’t appeal to her. She wanted solidity, stability, roots, not wings. She wanted a sense of home. “And this is it,” she said out loud, looking around the kitchen. “I’m home, and I’m happy.”

Hoppy danced around at her feet.

She leaned over and scruffed his cheeks. “I said I’m happy, not Hoppy! Let’s go for a walk through our town, maybe go visit Mrs. Stubbs.”

Twenty-six

A
SNOWY
T
HANKS
GIVING CAME
and went. She had a riotous turkey dinner with Bernie, Heidi and Valetta, during which much wine was drunk, many toasts made and thanks given for friends and safety and happiness. It was a real
girls’
weekend that meant the dinner together on Thanksgiving, Jaymie and Valetta working at the Emporium on Black Friday—in Queensville the biggest shopping day of the year meant the usual trickle of locals plus a couple of Johnsonville Canadians over on the ferry—and continued with karaoke at Bernie’s newly redecorated home on Saturday night. Jaymie sang a duet with Bernie that was so bad, it was good. Sunday she went to church with Valetta, then to the historic house to catch up on the last odds and ends that needed to be done.

Her mom and dad called; they were happy and healthy, always a good thing. She talked to Grandma Leighton and Becca, who had dinner with Kevin at a local restaurant. Her blog gained another few followers, and she worked some on the vintage recipe book. Another
Howler
column came out, with the recipe for the turkey roulettes and absolutely no mention of mallets of any kind. Eventually she would do an article on them, but right now they gave her the heebie-jeebies.

The first of December, the Monday after Thanksgiving, dawned with another day at the historic house for Jaymie. Dickens Days had officially started in Queensville, and they were having the soft opening of Queensville Historic Manor the next weekend, then a grand open house the week after. She needed to get the last few things done before then. She had little time and still much to do, including working on her costume. Mabel was making her a pinafore-style apron, which she would wear over an appropriate Depression-era dress as she busied herself in the kitchen. Bill Waterman had made the deal on the stove he had seen and was having the owner of the Junk Stops Here bring it in his truck.

It was freezing, and the house
would
not warm up, partly because people kept going in and out, leaving the door open half the time. Jaymie had on a ratty old sweater she kept in her van for emergencies, as well as baggy jeans and a sweatshirt, appropriate clothes for what she had been doing, rooting around in the junk left up in the attic.

The house was full of people and noise. Cynthia Turbridge was there, and she looked better. Jewel was keeping an eagle eye on her friend and accompanied her almost everywhere. Valetta had told Jaymie over Thanksgiving that, in an astonishing turn of events, Cynthia and Johnny Stanko were becoming friends. He was not the kind of guy Jaymie would have pictured with elegant Cynthia, but one never knew. He had proved to be more gentleman than the lout who’d attacked her, that was for sure. They could at least be sober buddies, as both had had their problems with alcohol.

While she waited for the stove, Jaymie stood in the middle of the black-and-white-tiled floor and looked around the kitchen of the Queensville Historic Manor. It was almost done. The green and cream color palette was a little chilly, but she would warm it up with the displays she had planned of kitchen implements and some vintage Christmas décor she just happened to own. She was using a lot of her own vintage kitchen tools, many of them red handled, to go with the Christmas theme they would be creating.

Bill said he figured he could have the stove hooked up and working that very day, if it all went smoothly. Jaymie hoped to wear her costume for the open house, baking Christmas cookies as folks toured. This would all help her move toward her goal of becoming a knowledgeable and locally well-known resource on vintage cooking and kitchens, part of her overall scheme of getting a cookbook published.

She heard a rumble outside and pulled open the kitchen curtains. A truck with a big side panel that proclaimed
THE JUNK STOPS HERE
pulled up the drive. Jaymie was so excited she jumped from foot to foot. It was probably the same excitement felt by a bygone housewife when a new stove was about to arrive. Bill was guiding the driver, and Jaymie opened the back door, taking a deep breath of frigid air as she stepped down to the step where Theo Carson had died. She had avoided this entrance lately, but she couldn’t keep doing that. Bill himself had pointed that out to her, saying there had been several folks who’d died in the house, but it didn’t mean those rooms were shut forever. It was a part of life, and even if Theo’s death was not natural, they had to keep going, and keep moving ahead.

She was just glad Bill didn’t say,
Theo would have wanted it that way
, because the historian’s death did not change the fact that he was self-centered and a bit of a jerk. He would have wanted a shrine at the door, she thought. That was perhaps unkind to think, but she was a realist. She felt very sorry for Mrs. Carson, but that woman had attained some peace, she said, by the capture of the culprits. She had turned over Theo’s research notebooks to the historical society—he had hidden them under the mattress in his room, so he and Isolde had probably even slept on them more than once—and headed back to Cleveland and, Jaymie hoped, the loving embrace of her family.

Bill jumped up into the truck and helped the proprietor unload the stove while Jaymie propped the door open with a box and made way, laying cardboard on her brand-new, era-appropriate tile floor. She danced back and forth, guiding, chattering and chuckling over the green and white beauty that would soon be operational. She paused to thank the proprietor of the Junk Stops Here and turned, looking up at him. Her breath caught in her throat. “Jakob!” she cried. “Jakob Müller!”

“Jaymie Leighton,” he said with a grin. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again, but I didn’t expect it to be under these circumstances.”

Her feelings were doing somersaults and she was giddy, light-headed even. She stared up at him, the scruffy chin, the intelligent brown eyes, the thatch of thick, black hair, the flannel-clad arm that reached out to her. She took his offered hand and they stopped for a long moment, staring at each other, hands clasped. His was warm, and the warmth transferred to her; her cheeks flooded with heat. “I am so glad to see you,” she finally said, her voice husky, as she shook his hand. “I wanted to visit you, but I wasn’t sure… that is… how
is
Jocelyn? She wasn’t… upset by everything that happened, was she?”

“My little Jocie seemed to think it was some kind of joke,” he said with a frown, shaking his head. “I wasn’t going to tell her the truth, that we really were in danger.”

“No, best she think it was just a game.” Jaymie was at a loss for words, but her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. Everything lurched in her world, and she wished she had taken a little time over her appearance that morning, instead of just pulling her long hair up in a ponytail and donning her grubbiest clothes.

Bill Waterman cleared his throat. “If you let me at it, I can begin to hook the stove up, Jaymie.”

She moved aside, and Bill, with Jakob’s help, moved the stove into place. Bill hooked up the gas, and everyone gathered, including Cynthia, Jewel and the Snoop Sisters, to witness it working. Jaymie, her breath held, turned the knob, then lit it with a long match. It sprang to a flame and burned steady! She jumped up and down and clapped.

“It works! Oh, Bill, it works! You’re a genius.” She hugged him and he smiled.

“You really do like the old ways and the old stuff, huh?” Jakob said, watching her face.

“I do. I collect vintage kitchen stuff mostly, but anything old is cool! I noticed everything at your house and wished I had a chance to examine it all.”

“Yeah, I collect, too. It all has so much… I don’t know how to say it: heart? Meaning?”

“It’s like these things had a life before I got them,” Jaymie said, waving her hand toward the counter littered with vintage tools and baking sheets, colanders and even the mallets. “They can teach me more about the old days than any book, even though I love reading.”

He smiled at her. “I’ve always felt like I was born seventy years too late. Why don’t you come out sometime and check out my collection?” He paused and cleared his throat. “You know, Jocie talks about you. She told me she never did get a chance to show you all her pictures. And you could come to the store and see if there’s anything there for this house.”

“Or for my own collection,” Jaymie said, oddly breathless as she stared into his brown eyes.

“If you came back out to the cabin, though, you could get a Christmas tree. I sell them; just one of my businesses. But I’d like to
give
you one, a nice one.”

“I’d like that.”

Imogene Frump cleared her throat, but Mrs. Bellwood dug her in the ribs with her elbow. “Let’s leave these two to talk,” she said, taking Bill Waterman’s arm. “Now, Bill,” she said, tugging him toward the hall, “Imogene and I have been thinking of the Sultan’s Eye, you know, and we were wondering if there was a secret compartment in the wall. Jane was tricky, you know. Maybe you can tell us if anything looks unusual…”

They sauntered from the room, their words becoming indistinct. Cynthia caught Jaymie’s eye and winked, before heading out of the room with Jewel. Jaymie felt her cheeks color and burn even hotter, that old curse, the too-easy blushing, coming back in a flood.

“Do you want to go grab a coffee?” Jakob said, taking her hand again. “I’d love to talk some more. I’ve got some books at the store you might like, you know, old books with some mention of the Dumpe family, and the history of the house.”

“I’d like that,” she said, staring up into his eyes. “I’d like that very much.”

“I would, too,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It’s a date.”