Fourteen

 

Jaymie gasped, her breath squeezed from her lungs. “What do you m-mean? How is that . . . ?” She blinked and stared.

“You reportedly openly invited people at the heritage meeting to come get some holly from your backyard.”

“For decoration purposes.”

“Someone wanted a festive corpse, I guess. They stole a stake from Bill Waterman’s workshop and a hunk of holly from your backyard. Either one—or both—of you took part in the murder, or someone is trying to implicate you, together or separately.”

Jaymie jumped to her feet and grabbed her purse from the floor under her chair, shaking with anger. “Sure, why not . . . Bill and I conspired to kill him in the most festive way possible! We thought we’d leave his corpse in the diorama we spent hours and hours creating.” Tears stung her eyes. “And I did not invite people to come get holly. I told them to ask me and I’d cut them some!”

Her anger died a little as she turned her thoughts to the heritage meeting. She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “So, Detective, do you think whoever killed him was at that heritage meeting?” She clutched her purse to her chest and leaned back against the wall. “Bella and Ben Nezer were there, as well as Jacklyn Marley.”

“We’re not wedded to the theory that whoever did it was there, but they knew that your property had holly, and where it was, and where to find a wooden stake. Someone involved in either the killing or in the moving of the corpse had heard about your generous offer and knew—or could find out—where your house was.”

“But why? Why would they do that? To the body, I mean, and . . . and to me, to take the holly from my backyard. I don’t understand.”

“It’s possible that they wanted the holly to make a point and didn’t know where else to get it. Your backyard is private and so it seemed ideal. But think about it, who would go to that length? Anyone come to mind?”

Jaymie plunked back down on the hard chair and considered it. “It seems to me that whoever did that, the killer or an accomplice, wanted to point the finger at someone. But that doesn’t make sense. That’s my diorama, and I didn’t have a problem with Evan.” She frowned and looked down at her nails, pulling at a loose piece of skin. “But Bill Waterman built my diorama and helped me set it up. And you haven’t found out who set fire to the cider booth yet. Could it be the same person? The arsonist and the killer? And were they trying to single Bill out, maybe?”

“We don’t have evidence of that at this point. I’d appreciate it, Jaymie, if you would seriously and deeply think about this, and give us any information or thoughts you may have. I don’t mean to make you feel that I don’t trust you, however . . . I don’t believe you’re telling me everything. This is an ugly one; it almost looks like the person wanted not only to kill Evan Nezer but to kill Dickens Days too. Or—I hate to say this, but I want to warn you—it could be a pointed warning to you. Or a challenge. You’ve become notorious in these parts for your inventiveness in helping the police solve crime. A local hero, of sorts.”

“I . . . I never fancied myself a local hero,” Jaymie said faintly.

“Regardless, there it is. I spoke to Chief Ledbetter and he’s a little worried.”

Her heart thudded. Chief Ledbetter, her old friend. She hadn’t seen him for a while. “You spoke to him?”

“I’d be crazy to ignore his experience and wisdom. I consult with him sometimes.” She was silent for a minute. “Look, Jaymie, I’m not going to pressure you. Yet. But if you think of anything you forgot to tell us, we’d be happy to hear it. In the meantime, we have a team at your Queensville house investigating the yard. We ought to be done in a few hours.”

“Are you sure the holly came from my backyard?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I saw bunches of it at the farmers’ market on the weekend. There are other places to get it, including florists, this time of year.”

“We’re considering every source. Why don’t you go over there now and let us know if your holly looks like it’s been damaged. It would help. We have someone there investigating right now.”

“Okay, but wait . . . I’ll tell you everything I’ve thought of, but it doesn’t amount to much at this point.” The detective sat back down across from her and Jaymie told her about Finn Fancombe at the back door of the Nezer residence, and how she’d heard he charged in later, and how Nezer had spoken to him. She told the detective everything else she had considered and wondered about.

Except for one thing: she said nothing about Sarah Nezer’s books being stolen by her ex-late-husband and the lucrative movie options on them. She wasn’t sure why she held that back, but she was deeply conflicted about it. It felt like it would be a betrayal of a vulnerable woman who had suffered so much. And yet there was the note to Ben . . . she didn’t know what to think.

By the time she left the police station, her mood was somber, her thoughts in a turmoil. She drove over to the Queensville house to find Becca and Kevin in the parking lane talking to Bernie, who was taking notes while a police photographer took pictures. Trip Findley, their back-lane neighbor, wandered through his back gate and joined them as Jaymie parked along his fence. There were two police cars taking up other spaces, and an area by their wrought iron fence cordoned off.

She joined her sister and brother-in-law and got caught up. She stood on tiptoe and peered at her holly hedge, planted two years before. She gasped. “They’ve cut a huge chunk out of the middle! Who did that?”

“I thought you did it,” Becca said.

“Seriously, Becca, why would I? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this. When did it happen?”

Becca was silent for a long moment and exchanged a glance with Kevin. “Well, here’s the thing—”

“You don’t know! How can you not know?”

Becca sighed. “I didn’t notice it until today. Not everyone notices every little thing, Jaymie.”

Jaymie caught the stifled smile Bernie was trying to hide. “Okay, I get it. You’ve probably come home most often in the dark. It gets dark so early this time of year.”

“And in the morning you know what I’m like until the second coffee has kicked in.”

“Well, I was here on Friday bringing stuff for the fridge for you and Kevin. I’m not sure what time that was, but I know it was okay then.”

“I know when it happened!” The voice was from slightly above; they all looked up. Pam Driscoll, who was managing the bed-and-breakfast next door, was on her back patio, which was slightly elevated. “Friday afternoon. I looked out at about two and everything was okay. I did see you cutting some holly, but you didn’t cut much. Later, about four thirty, I was in the kitchen making dinner for Noah and saw the bush kinda pulled apart. I thought it was your doggie or something.”

“Thanks, Pam!” Jaymie said. So, between two-ish and four thirty; that gave the police a window of time to ask for suspects’ whereabouts.

Bernie headed over to take her statement as Jaymie pondered the new information. This all meant that someone planned the murder and shocking display of Evan Nezer’s body, and that the plan was in place before the party. But did that mean that nothing that happened at the party had anything to do with it? Logically that didn’t necessarily follow. She couldn’t discount that whoever had planned to kill him didn’t also have a conflict with him at the party. This was getting more and more complicated by the minute.

Brock drove his car down the lane that moment, arriving to show the house next door. He got out, careful to keep his dark wool trench coat away from the dust on his car. Of course he had to know everything going on, and Jaymie filled him in.

His long, plain face held a look of dismay. “That’s crazy! All that elaborate staging of Nezer’s death . . . it’s weird. Why would anyone go to that much trouble? Why not leave him where he was killed, behind his house’s shed?”

Jaymie stared at him in surprise. “How do you know where Nezer was killed?”

“Hah! So Jaymie the great detective didn’t know? It’s yellow-taped-off. I wouldn’t have known either, but I was showing a house with a backyard backing it.”

He had to toddle off to show the Walters house to a couple. Bernie returned from speaking with Pam Driscoll, and Jaymie asked her about the area behind the Nezer home. “Is it really where Evan Nezer was murdered? How do you know?”

Her dark eyes held a troubled expression. She shook her head, then glanced over to where Becca was still speaking with Trip. “Look, if I tell you, you won’t say anything?”

Jaymie nodded.

“Okay, it is not where Nezer was killed; honestly, we don’t know where that is, yet. It’s cordoned off for another reason.”

Jaymie asked why, but Bernie shook her head.

“I’m stepping out of bounds even now, but all I can say is, it is not where Nezer was killed.”

Something was bothering Jaymie badly, and she knew she had to sort it out or it would continue to bother her until she confessed to the police. But first . . . she drove the SUV down to the street of small houses near the docks and went to Sarah Nezer’s door. The woman was home. She greeted Jaymie with a look of distrust. “Do you want tea again?” she asked. “Or will you be telling the police about that, too?”

Jaymie sighed. “Sarah, I had to give the police that note. I couldn’t . . .” She shook her head.

“It’s okay,” the woman said wearily. “It’s not important now.” She retreated, leaving the door open.

Jaymie followed, taking the open door as an invitation. “I . . . I have a question. I won’t take up much of your time,” Jaymie said, glancing at the laptop and work spread out at a tiny desk in a corner of the living room.

“You want to know what the note meant. So did the police.”

“No, I won’t . . . I mean, I’d like to know. But I don’t expect you’ll tell me.”

“I did tell them, but I won’t be telling you. But it wasn’t advice to hold off on murdering his father until a later date.”

Jaymie didn’t know what to say.

“Sit,” Sarah said, taking a spot on the soft sofa along one wall. It was topped by an original painting, an abstract that looked like a woman with dark skin, hints of blue and purple swirled in confusion, creating an eloquent figure with rounded features and elongated legs and arms. Jaymie sat in a sixties-style chair with a crocheted cushion. “What’s on your mind?” the woman asked.

“I wanted to tell you, Sarah, that yes, I gave them the note and told them about seeing you there that night. But . . . I didn’t say anything about Evan stealing your work, and . . . and all the money he was making from the movie offers.”

“I don’t care about money!”

“It was a lot, though, and made off your work . . . again! That had to sting.”

“Do you think I killed my ex-husband?”

Jaymie didn’t answer right away. She examined Sarah, who had her white frizzy hair pulled back into a bun today, and wore a long patchwork skirt and a matching vest over a turtleneck sweater. She glanced around the homey, cozy room, modest and shabby compared to the Nezer home. There were many shelves, with books lining most of them and a small flat-screen TV taking up one space. Above that were family photos.

“I love family pictures,” Jaymie said and got up, crossing the room to look them over. There were ones from the fifties, a handsome couple shoulder to shoulder, both with cigarettes in their hands, staring into the camera with intense gazes. “Your parents?”

Sarah nodded. “Both gone now, but never forgotten.”

There were pictures of Erla Fancombe and Sarah goofing around on a campsite. It was odd to see a younger, slimmer Erla—pretty and happy—with such a big smile. Better times. There was another of two skinny, tanned boys, Finn and Ben clearly, on a sunny beach, gap-toothed grins on their faces, arms over each other’s shoulders. “Do I think you killed Evan?” Jaymie asked, turning back and examining the woman on the sofa. “Not really. But . . . is the note for Ben the only reason you were in those bushes by Evan’s house that night?”

“Our house! That was supposed to be our house,” Sarah said, a burst of annoyance in her tone. “He promised me we’d sell that damn suburban ranch-house box and move to the Nezer family home one day, but we never did. Not until the trophy demanded it.”

The trophy . . . Bella Nezer. So there was a hidden well of anger there, and resentment. “I suppose she’ll inherit the house now?”

Surprise and alarm flared in her eyes. “No, Ben will get the house! I’m sure of it.”

“But they had been estranged, right?”

“It doesn’t matter. Evan would never let that house slip out of real Nezer hands.”

“I don’t know about that. He let it sit for years, rented out to companies and vacationers, right? He may not have felt as strongly about the place as you think. Does Ben even know where he stood with his father? I mean, if their quarrel was only made up recently he may not have made a will leaving Ben anything.”

Sarah was clearly alarmed at the new ideas Jaymie was introducing to her. She seemed distracted. “They had made up, as far as I know. Ben and I haven’t spoken for a few weeks. That’s . . . that’s why I was there that night, to give him that note.”

“Yes, but you forget I read the note. I know it was some kind of follow up to some conversation you must have had with your son. It told him to hold off. Hold off on what?”

She shook her head and stayed silent.

“Sarah, can I ask you something?”

“You can ask. It doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”

Jaymie had no right to intrude, she knew that. “Sarah, I . . . I don’t know why, but I’m usually pretty good at figuring out who killed someone. I don’t think you did.”

“Well, thank you very much for that,” she said, a brittle edge to her tone.

“But it doesn’t mean I believe every word you say, either.” She sighed. “People hide things for all kinds of reasons. I started wondering, why was Evan ready to sell the ancestral Nezer home one minute, then decided to keep it and move into it the next. It seemed odd, and no matter what you think, Bella could not have influenced that. Now, I know he is involved in changing things at the college . . . trying to up the prestige. The party Friday night was all about that. He had the new money from the movie rights, but why use that on a house he hadn’t seemed to care about before?”

Sarah’s gaze was blank.

“The house certainly does have an air of prestige, especially with all the money Bella has thrown at it in the last month or so. Maybe that is becoming more important to him now. I wondered if he was being paid off by the college president to help in the transformation of Wolverhampton College from a third-rate college to a more prestigious institute. They were using Evan’s book and new stature as a conservative voice to attract funding via a think tank, which would have attracted major donors.”

“Okay. What does that have to do with me?”

“Because you would not like him using money from your feminist books being made into movies to finance that kind of cause, would you? Evan was the living, breathing antithesis of everything you believe, wasn’t he?”

She sighed and sat back against a crocheted pillow. “Look, not to be rude, but I don’t have time for—”

“It made you deeply angry, I’m guessing.”

She swiftly raised her eyebrows. “Angry enough to kill him? Is that what you’re hinting? I thought you said you believed I didn’t do it.”

“I said it and meant it. I don’t think you killed Evan.”

“Look, I don’t want to be rude,” Sarah said, a troubled expression on her face. “But there is no reason on earth why I should be answering questions from you. I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of, and Ben hasn’t either. If I were you, I’d be looking for who else Evan had angered lately. He was always launching lawsuits; why hasn’t anyone mentioned that?”

She asked Jaymie to go, as she had somewhere she had to be. Jaymie was out the door and on her way to her SUV in two minutes. Sarah was rattled, but why? She wasn’t at the meeting where the holly was mentioned, but Ben was. Was she so sure Ben didn’t kill his father? What else could the note mean? Was Jaymie wrong? Were mother and son in on it together? Was that why the death was staged the way it was?

Sarah had raised one interesting point, something that had slipped Jaymie’s mind until she said it. Evan Nezer was known for launching frivolous lawsuits, one after another. His court costs never amounted to much because being a lawyer, he represented himself, from what Jaymie understood, so all he paid were filing costs. As far as his lawsuits against Dickens Days had gone in the past, judges had dismissed the suits as frivolous, but who else had he sued lately? She got out her phone and texted Nan. If anyone could find out, it was the Wolverhampton Weekly Howler’s reporter.

Jaymie returned to downtown Queensville and parked near the Emporium. Crime tape was still up at the diorama, fluttering disconsolately in the breeze, which was stiffening. An officer sat in a car nearby. Another police car pulled up and Detective Vestry emerged, then headed up the side stairs to Jacklyn Marley’s apartment. Uh-oh. Well, she’d told Jacklyn she couldn’t keep her computer hacking a secret, but it seemed that she hadn’t been the first to tell them that anyway.

Jaymie sat in her vehicle, trying to figure out what was going on. As she had reasoned, though it appeared that the planning for Evan’s murder had been done before the party, it didn’t follow that the events that took place there had no bearing on it. Maybe there was something in the evening that confirmed or refuted her Sarah and Ben theory. She didn’t want it to be true; she liked Sarah, and didn’t want Valetta’s good memories of her to be tainted. But liking her or not had nothing to do with guilt or innocence.

There were other suspects in her mind, and she needed to eliminate them before coming to any conclusions. She couldn’t spend all day at it either; she had responsibilities. She checked her watch and got out her phone. It was three. She had time to make one more quick trip.

Wolverhampton College was a collection of long, low three-story red-brick buildings, all connected by glassed-in walkways and joined by a central administrative building on a large patch of land on the other side of town. She had been expecting to wait until the next day but had texted Austin to see if he had discovered anything. He might have, he texted back. She drove into the campus—she knew it well, having attended a few lectures and seminars there in the past—and parked in the visitors’ lot.

Wolverhampton College shared social accommodations, like the library, food court and recreational facilities, with the adjoining technical college. Austin met her in the large glass atrium at the back, overlooking a terrace, where a Starbucks and a Tim Horton’s competed for the coffee dollars of stressed and weary students. They both got steeped tea and retreated to the huge wall of windows that overlooked the terrace and garden, now expertly put to bed, shrubs and bushes wrapped in burlap and flower beds mounded with mulch. Outdoor tables and chairs that normally dotted the terrace had been removed to storage, leaving only cement benches around the perimeter separated by planters, garbage cans and smokers’ receptacles. Two smokers were huddled on one bench, shivering as they puffed.

“I only have half an hour before my last class of the day, event management,” he said, tearing open a packet of sweetener and stirring it into his black tea.

“I won’t keep you long. What have you learned?”

“I asked around, and talked to one of my good friends here; she runs the school paper and has been doing some digging on the college administration. There is definitely something up with President Belcher, she says, because the woman was an academic star once; she was provost at a very well-known upper-crust college . . . you know, one of those New England tony places where everyone is called Biff or Skippy or Heather.”

Jaymie smiled. “Go on.”

“She left there abruptly three years ago. Her official statement was she was leaving to spend more time with her family.”

“That’s what they always say.”

“Political code-speak, right? And it almost always means some kind of scandal hushed up. My friend thinks her downfall was sexy in nature, but c’mon . . . you’ve seen her. Even her nighties are probably tweed.”

Jaymie stifled a chuckle. Austin’s cattiness was funny, but she tried not to be malicious about other women. “So, what do you think?”

“Financial tomfoolery or academic fraud.”

“Like embezzlement, you mean, or her background isn’t what she said it was?”

He nodded. “Maybe. My friend is checking those things out. It should be pretty easy to uncover, right?”

“I have a connection or two myself. I may set my own bulldog on it,” she said, thinking of the Howler reporter she had set on a task. “I know of someone who is particularly good at sniffing out corruption and tracking down its origin.”

“Speaking of which . . .” He gave her an embarrassed look. “I needed to trade something for info. So I offered you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, well, your connections. She’d like an introduction to your editor at the Howler.”

“Oh, okay. That’s actually not a problem.”

“Thank goodness,” he said, hand over his chest. “I thought I had overstepped.”

“No big deal. I’ll be happy to introduce your friend to Nan. She’s always willing to help a budding reporter.”

“Goody. I’ll keep digging too, sweetie.” He jumped up, sloshing his tea. “Air kisses, and I have to run.”

Jaymie sat and finished her tea. This seemed like a long shot, running after President Belcher as a possible suspect. It felt like in Sarah, Ben, Bella, Jacklyn, Erla and Finn she had much better suspects. But Chief Ledbetter had always said it didn’t pay to become wedded to one theory.

She got home in time to meet Jocie’s school bus. Shannon was taking a study break in the kitchen, poring over her econometrics text, which was loaded in e-format on a tablet. She made notes the old-fashioned way, though, with pen and notebook, saying she remembered stuff better when she wrote it down. Jocie was thrilled to sit at the same table and do her own homework.

Jaymie had filled her slow cooker with all the ingredients for loaded baked potato soup that morning, so all she had to do was add a few last-minute ingredients; dairy didn’t do well in a slow cooker, so she added sour cream for the last half hour or so. She cut up a crusty loaf of bread, crumbs shattering and falling to the floor as she sliced into the loaf, and grated some cheddar to sprinkle over the soup. Hoppy and Lilibet raced over and cleaned up the bits of food on the floor.

Who needed a broom when you had animals?

She invited Shannon to stay for dinner. Helmut headed home, so it was just Jakob, Jaymie, Jocie and Shannon. Shannon picked Jakob’s brain about the Christmas tree business, and his plans to extend the “crop” to nursery trees for sale to landscaping companies. They talked about the holiday store they hoped to have up and running by next Christmas, and how they would be providing space for local crafters in one section to sell their wares.

After dinner, Shannon stayed to help with the first evening of tree sales. Jocie’s two best friends and schoolmates had told her they’d be coming by that evening to get their choice of the best of the trees, so after dinner Jaymie made a big pot of hot chocolate and some hermit cookies, experimenting with a vintage recipe and some fun add-ins, like candy-coated chocolate bits and salted toffee chips. She was definitely going to use the hermit cookie recipe for her column, but she thought maybe she’d make it more holiday-festive with a couple of changes. After baking, the whole cabin smelled like Christmas, and it made her smile.

Jocie’s friends Gemma and Peyton arrived with their families to purchase their Christmas trees. Peyton’s family, though Jewish, decorated for the holidays, choosing to view it as a form of harmless socialization. Jaymie’s stepdaughter showed them how she had decorated her treehouse with brightly colored lights. Then they drank hot cocoa and ate cookies at the picnic table near the tree field while the adults chatted and loaded the trees they had picked. A few other locals came by for the first tree sales of the season, but by eight they were closed and everyone, including Shannon, had gone home.

Jocie was exhausted and slightly feverish. Jaymie came down from putting her to bed and confessed her fears to Jakob. “She’s a little warm,” she said, plopping down on the sofa beside him. “I hope she’s not coming down with anything.”

“We’ll see in the morning. How warm is she?”

“Very slightly.”

“It’s probably a normal variation, then,” he said. “We’ll make sure she’s well hydrated in the morning, and see.”

“How did you get to be such a smart dad,” Jaymie asked, curling up next to him and putting her head on his shoulder.

“I had to learn, and quickly, after Inga left,” he said. Jocie’s mother, a troubled soul, had left him and her daughter to return to Poland, where she had died shortly after. He didn’t speak about her often, but made sure Jocie had photos of her mother, and kept in contact with Inga’s family. He and Jocie were going to travel to Poland next summer to visit Inga’s parents for a week. “My mom has so many kids she can tell me almost anything I need to know. Other than that . . . books. Lots of books.”

“I love that you love books,” she said, twisting her neck to look up at his face.

“Even if what I mostly read is arborist reports?”

“Even so.”

“How are you doing, about your diorama being ruined?”

She sat up straight and turned on the sofa, sitting cross-legged. She told him about talking to the police, and how she hoped to have it dismantled before the Friday start to Dickens Days.

“How is Bill doing? Have you heard?”

“Dee texted me,” she said, of her friend Dee Stubbs, who was a nurse. “He’s had all the tests and workups. It wasn’t a heart attack, they don’t think, but angina. It’s serious, though. Val says angina is a symptom of heart disease. He’s going to have to take it easier. He’s out of the hospital and staying with his daughter—who is a nurse—for a few days.”

“Are the police any further with the murder investigation?”

She told him all that had happened that day, things she hadn’t had a chance to say since they were thrown into the tree lot business right away when she got home.

“Are you relieved you gave them the note?”

She nodded. “And that I’ve talked to Detective Vestry.” She shared what the detective had said about thinking she was smart.

“Of course you are,” he said, touching her hair, pushing a lock back off her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. “So . . . do you think Sarah was involved in the murder or not?”

Jaymie frowned and grimaced. “I don’t know. My heart says no, but . . . she had so many reasons. This murder is personal. Someone hated him.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot. The man made it his life’s work to irritate and anger as many people as possible.” He yawned and stretched. “I’m beat. Time for bed for this lad. I’m going to be up and gone early to the casual labor office in Wolverhampton,” he said. “We need a couple of more people to work the tree lot. I think I’m beginning to burn the darn candle too far down on both ends.”

“I agree, Mr. Müller. Let’s call it a day.”