Twenty

 

When they descended around lunchtime—as loath as he was to leave her, Jakob did have to get to work, though Gus was covering The Junk Stops Here, fortunately—her phone was full of texts and voice mails. Becca’s voice mail was frantic, so Jaymie called her first—they were back in Canada—and reassured her. She then called and texted until she was through all her concerned friends and relatives. Social media, too, was abuzz. The newspaper had run a story, and Nan had demanded her firsthand account. But that was going to wait because first she was going to visit the woman who Saunders had tried to kill.

She called Skip, and he told her that he had taken Miss Perry over to the Queensville Inn to visit Mrs. Stubbs. He had returned to the house on Winding Woods Lane, though, because he was packing his things while the two cousins visited. Once he had fetched Miss Perry back to her home, it was officially his last day on the job.

“She complained every second of the drive. It was like Driving Miss Perry.”

“Skip, I’ve seen your car. You don’t even have a backseat! Besides, if she’s complaining, it means she’s feeling better.”

He laughed and said he’d see her later.

Her mood lighter from the shared levity, she set out in the Explorer, heading to the Queensville Inn. Mrs. Stubbs was hosting a small tea party, with both Miss Perry and Morgan, who had been released from the hospital that morning.

The young woman leaped up from her chair and raced across the room, grabbing Jaymie in an unexpected hug. “I’m so grateful to you!” she muttered into Jaymie’s neck. “So very grateful! I thought I was dead.”

Jaymie hugged her back. “I hope he didn’t hurt you?” She examined her. There was some bruising on her cheek, which she touched delicately.

“He hit me. Knocked me right into the open trunk,” she said. She blinked and squinted, then rubbed her eyes. “It all happened so quick, I didn’t know what to do.” She shivered. “I . . . I don’t know when I’ll stop shaking, but I’m alive.”

They joined the older ladies, Mrs. Stubbs in her mobility chair and Miss Perry in a recliner that had been pulled up close, her silver-headed cane leaning against it. The bruising on her face and neck was still visible but gradually disappearing. She took her great-niece’s hand as Morgan sat beside her.

“It’s good to see you, Jaymie,” she said. “I’m so grateful that you did what you did. We almost lost this girl, and all because of that . . . that man!”

They chatted for a while, going over everything, even the attempts on Miss Perry’s life.

“I’ll never know why you didn’t tell anyone about all of that, Lois,” Mrs. Stubbs said, her tone reproving. “Someone takes a shot at me, I’m going to the police.”

Miss Perry waved it off. “Never once thought someone was trying to kill me!”

Morgan said, “There was something off about Saunders, something I noticed right away.”

“Hmph. If you’d noticed right away you wouldn’t have married the louse,” Miss Perry said, seeming to forget entirely that the day before she was castigating her niece for wanting to divorce “the louse.”

“Okay, not right away, but . . . after the glitter wore off. At first I thought he was wonderful, but that was . . . that was then.” She looked down at her joined hands with Miss Perry’s. “He pursued me so hard before we married. But afterward it was like a light switch turned off. He started criticizing everything about me.”

“That’s what con men do,” Mrs. Stubbs said. She had always read mysteries, but now she was binge reading true crime, especially old Ann Rule titles. “Once they have you, they start gaslighting you. Did he make you think you were wrong about everything?”

Morgan’s round, pretty face held a startled expression. “You know, he did. He criticized everything I did, from driving to . . . to . . . well, everything! Nothing I did was right, no opinion I had correct, no concern or worry was valid.”

“You’re better than that,” Miss Perry said. “You’ve always been a clever girl.”

“Morgan, one thing I was wondering about,” Jaymie said. “I know you bought the nutmeg grater—the one that was, uh . . . found on Fergus Baird’s body—but why did you buy it, and what happened to it?” She assumed that Saunders had filched it but was interested in hearing Morgan’s explanation.

“I was looking around in Dan’s shop—thinking how much I’d love to work in a place like that—when I saw the grater and I knew exactly what it was. I bought it to give to Auntie Lois for her birthday, but it disappeared on me. Now I know that Saunders took it and hid it.”

“He had a plan for it even then,” Jaymie affirmed.

“When it disappeared I asked him about it but he made like I was crazy, as usual, saying he’d never seen it.” She sighed. She squinted and got out a dropper bottle from her purse and squeezed some drops into her eyes. The liquid overflowed, and she brushed the drops away carefully with one knuckle, trying not to smudge her mascara.

“Do you have eye trouble?” Jaymie asked.

“I’ve got dry eye. I don’t produce enough tears.”

Jaymie sighed. Morgan’s lack of tears when she was ostensibly upset at the murder attempt on her aunt had made Jaymie suspect her in the first place. That was the danger of jumping to conclusions without all the evidence. “What about the missing acorn nutmeg grater?”

Miss Perry nodded. “I spoke to that policewoman, Bernie . . . is that her name?”

“Yes, she’s my friend,” Jaymie said.

“They needed me to identify something; they brought me a keychain, and there was that silly acorn nutmeg grater!”

“Keychain?” Jaymie said, startled.

Mrs. Stubbs straightened, looking interested. “Let me guess!” she said, raising one hand. “It belonged to the thief who stole your silver!”

Miss Perry chuckled. “You got it. They found it on Beverly Hastings’s keys. How did you know?”

“Trophy,” Mrs. Stubbs said, her eyes gleaming. “Con artists, killers and thieves like a trophy of their crime, something to remind them. I’ll bet she didn’t just steal for profit but for the excitement.”

“Wow. It’s hard to picture Bev Hastings climbing into windows and stealing silver,” Jaymie said. “Though she does have a nephew living with them. Maybe she had him sneak in the utility room window, unlock the door and tote the heavy silver. Miss Perry, you need to reconsider an alarm.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she retorted. “This girl is moving in with me and we’ll look after each other,” Miss Perry said, taking Morgan’s hand again and shaking it. Morgan leaned over and kissed her aunt’s cheek, eyes still glittering with the liquid ready to spill over.

“Miss Perry, I have one more request of you,” Jaymie said, hoping to lighten the mood. “I would absolutely love it if you would give me some help on the spice trade lessons we’ll be doing at the heritage house.”

“She’ll do it!” Morgan said. “No one knows more about Perry family history and the spice trade than Auntie Lois!”

It was a very satisfying end to the almost-tragedy.

 

• • •

 

That afternoon, Jaymie and Jakob met at the school. She dropped in on Sybil, and they talked about the learning through objects curriculum she was developing with the heritage house, and about Miss Perry’s involvement. Of course it was only one small part of the proposed unit; others included science and nature, and Sybil was bringing in other parents with specialties that connected. Jakob was enthused and offered the Müller farm, with its variety of trees, for a section on nature.

But they were really there to witness Jocie’s integration to the dance team. Giving up tumbling had been an emotional blow to her, but that afternoon her dance class was giving a demonstration for parents. Jaymie was happy to see that Jocie was fitting in to the squad and appeared to be enjoying herself. Confident and outgoing, she was a star.

Home, with her husband, daughter and two animals, was a relief. They had an early dinner, laughing over the casserole Jaymie had prepared two days before. It was a rare fail, so PB&J sandwiches was the solution, after the casserole had been trashed. It was Wednesday, the evening of her girls’ night with her friends. Jaymie was tempted to cancel, after the events of the previous day.

“What do you want to do?” Jakob said. “I’d love to have you home, you know that, but . . . maybe you need to stick to your plans.”

So she did, dressing carefully in patterned leggings and a long sweater, her hair up and earrings on, perfume and makeup. It was a night out, after all. As always, she was welcomed warmly by her friends. Valetta’s vegan snack menu was a great success, and so were the fruity cocktails she concocted. They laughed and talked and gossiped in Valetta’s warm, homey cottage living room, while Denver insinuated himself into the party, winding between people for the maximum fuss. Her surly feline had become a social butterfly, Jaymie noted.

By ten or so, their gathering was winding down, all four women weary from a busy few days. Of course they had talked about Jaymie’s dangerous encounter and Bernie’s heroics. They had discussed Valetta’s ability to tell the police exactly what drug she thought had been slipped into Miss Perry’s dosette, a heavy dose of warfarin that would have caused her to bleed to death from a relatively minor scrape. She suspected from the questions she had been asked that they may have found orders for the drug from another country on Saunders Wallace’s confiscated computer or phone.

They chatted about the arrest of Jon and Bev Hastings for multiple thefts in Queensville, Wolverhampton, and several more towns. The pair had been supplementing their meager earnings from the bait shop with stolen goods for a couple of years, it appeared, with the aid of her ne’er-do-well nephew. A key clue to their thefts was the silver flatware that Kevin Brevard, Jaymie’s brother-in-law, had been able to hand over to the police. Bev Hastings was becoming overconfident and sloppy at hiding her and her husband’s crimes. Jaymie suspected that other items would come to light as police investigated.

Bev was no longer wearing the boot for her alleged leg injury, and the morning edition of the Wolverhampton Howler had revealed that after a tip and some investigative reporting, a local doctor’s clinic had been raided and was now closed after allegations of insurance fraud and over-prescribing. Val kept her mouth shut about it, but there was a knowing gleam in her eyes.

The acorn nutmeg grater that had been missing from Miss Perry’s place and had been fashioned into a keychain was a little bauble Bev had privately enjoyed, a sneaky reminder of her life of crime. But it was the undeniable tie-in to their robbery. The grater theft had not been noticed because the item, the smallest in Miss Perry’s collection, had usually been almost hidden in among the others. That it was missing only came to light when Morgan was cataloguing the collection for her aunt before the grater loan to the heritage home.

For Queensville residents, almost the oddest thing about the whole theft was that among them were these serial thieves. People were looking at each other a little more closely. As Valetta said, folks hadn’t put it past Bev, but Jon was well liked until he snarled on camera, as he was being arrested, that all the richie rich snobs he’d stolen from over the years deserved it. He hoped the thefts had given them nightmares. Valetta had pinned the clip on social media and replayed it on her tablet for Jaymie, who hadn’t seen it yet. It was a surprising and riveting moment on TV news.

“Heather Blake looks like she’s loving it!” Jaymie said. The newswoman had clearly relished the moment, smirking on camera as she bantered with the anchor at the end of her report on the arrest.

Valetta’s living room, redone in the last year to a new, more modern color scheme, and decluttered from her intense love of froufrou knickknacks, as Becca called it, was warm and cozy, candles flickering and soft music playing. Jaymie pulled a fuzzy throw over her lap and pulled her feet up, tucking them under her. “So, how is the dating going?” she asked Heidi.

Her friend’s cheeks pinked, but she laughed. “You would not believe what a weird dating world it is out there. Bernie knows!” She described in excruciating detail her foray into online dating. She told one guy she was a vegan, so he took her to a rib joint to try to “change her mind.” Another date told her he was thirty-five and self-employed; his social media profile pic supported his age, though it did look a little dated, like Reagan era. When he showed up at her door it turned out he was sixty-five if he was a day, and retired. “I still went out to dinner with him. He was a nice guy,” she said. “I was tempted to ask him if he had a son. Or a grandson.”

“Poor Heidi!” Bernie said with a hearty laugh.

“Not ‘poor Heidi,’” she said, laughing along. “You know what? It’s still better than being cheated on!” Joel had left town, she was pleased to inform everyone.

Denver sprawled on the hassock in front of the sofa, while everyone took turns petting him. Jaymie glanced over at Bernie, so cute in her baseball-styled T-shirt and jeans, her nails colored bright pink and her nose piercing sporting a pink gem, which she did not or could not wear during work. “Bernie, Jakob wanted me to pass a message along to you from him and Jocie. He wanted to tell you thank you for coming to my rescue.”

Her dark cheeks burned with color on the apples. “Just doing my job, and it was all down to Detective Vestry. She’s the one who put two and two together with the kidnapping report. But I am grateful that I was there and could help.”

“And that means group hug, and good night before we all get mushy!” Valetta said, laughing, as she rose. “C’mon, ladies . . . girl power!”