Bowled Over (34 page)

“I think you ought to stay right there for a minute, until we know you’re okay,” he said.

Bernice eyed the detective and Jaymie. She swiftly hid a smile, but not before Jaymie caught that look. Christian knelt beside her, his arm around her, and she looked up into his gray eyes. This was not going to quell the rumors that he liked her, she supposed. But did she care? “I’m okay, really,” she said, her heart pounding again. She pulled away.

The detective’s concerned expression was soon shielded by a mask of professionalism. As the ambulance carrying poor Ella Douglas roared away, Christian took Bernice
aside. The officer talked to him nonstop, pointing out the neighbor, who now sat on the front step of the Douglases’ home, and Jaymie, who hugged herself, feeling chilled and damp from the night air.

At that moment, Valetta, her face slathered in white cream and her glasses askew, came running down the street, shrieking when she saw Jaymie sitting on the ground. “Jaymie, Jaymie, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Valetta, relax!” She explained what had happened, beginning to shiver halfway through. “Why am I so cold all of a sudden?”

“Shock,” Valetta said. “You just had an awful scare.” She whipped off her housecoat to reveal a shorty set underneath, pink with gray Parisian poodles and Eiffel Towers all over the top and shorts. “Put this on,” she said, wrapping it around Jaymie.

It was warm from her friend’s body and smelled of Jergens and Noxzema. The shivering settled. Valetta marched over to the detective, and said, “Jaymie needs to get someplace and have a cup of tea or something. I’ll take her home, then meet you over the police station, okay?” She didn’t wait for the detective’s answer, she just grabbed Jaymie’s arm, hauled her to her feet and marched off with as much dignity as a woman in shorty pajamas and her face slathered in cream could muster.

Twenty-one

S
UGARY TEA AND
a sweater from Valetta’s closet made Jaymie feel better, and after that, Valetta insisted on driving her to the police station. Jaymie had made one call, though, before they’d left Valetta’s cottage. She just wasn’t sure that she had gotten through to the paramedics, so she called Wolverhampton General Hospital, insisted on talking to the nurse in charge of Ella Douglas and told her that Ella might be suffering from solanine poisoning. If they pumped her stomach, they’d probably find the residue of red berries, deadly nightshade.

At the police station she was faced with a weary-looking Detective Christian, who eyed her cherry red sweater adorned with fluffy kittens gamboling with balls of yarn. She didn’t feel like explaining that it was Valetta’s. The almost-fifty-year-old woman had some peculiar fashion tastes, as evidenced by the Parisian-puppies nightwear. “I know you’ve probably got a million questions,” she said to
the detective, “but I have to be sure I was clear. Solanine poisoning…look at the crust of toast with red berry jam that’s on the little table in the living room by Ella Douglas’s motorized wheelchair.”

“Solanine. What is that?”

“Atropine. Belladonna. Deadly nightshade,” Jaymie said tersely, scrubbing her gritty-feeling eyes. “I’ve done a lot of research lately, and I believe Kathy Cooper had gone down the same research paths, given her interest in herbal medicine. Maybe check her computer?” She paused, as a bit of information came back to her. “You know, she may even have been talking to someone at the Payne Institute. I was at her house a couple of days ago when they left a message for her to contact them, so maybe she was asking around. I remember seeing advertised in the
Howler
that they have a course on the poisonous plants of Michigan.

“Bob Douglas was poisoning his wife with deadly nightshade. I think Ella was sensitive to it anyway, which sped up the process.” Jaymie stopped and thought back. “I went to visit her a few evenings ago, and there was some uneaten toast on her side table, and Bob was out
that
evening at a Rotary club meeting, too. Oh my gosh! I think he tried to kill her then, but she didn’t eat it!”

Jaymie, with the detective’s thorough questioning, took him and Bernice Jenkins, who sat in taking notes, through her last few hours, how it all had come together, from Kathy Cooper’s naturopathy catalog through her interest in nursing. She told them about her worries for Ella, when she hadn’t gotten an answer on the phone, and about finding the Uncle Sam costume in the spare room. She went through how she’d figured out about the splash she’d heard that night, and got a surprising admission from Detective Christian that they had found an Uncle Sam beard and wig in the river
near the crime, and it matched the fibers found in Kathy’s hand. They had been trying to trace it to someone ever since.

“We’re going to have to put you on a retainer if you keep solving crimes,” he said, finally, with a rueful smile.

“I’ve got another one for you,” Jaymie said. She told him what Bob Douglas had said concerning the death of his first wife.

The detective and Bernie left the room. Jaymie got up to look in the big mirror that lined one wall. Good heavens! She looked a fright: smears of dirt on her cheek, her hair like a rat’s nest. She jammed her fingers through it, trying to comb it out. Why didn’t Valetta tell her she looked like crap? Detective Christian came back in, quickly hiding a smirk. Was that a two-way glass, she wondered? Had he seen her primping? Red flooded her cheeks.

Sobering, he said, “You’ll be happy to know that Miss Nibley called Mr. Stanko’s lawyer, who is, at this very minute, at the jail. His client will be released as soon as the paperwork is done.”

“Johnny sure didn’t help himself, did he?” Jaymie said. “I thought he was probably guilty, you know. But Valetta was
so
sure he wasn’t, and I thought I’d sniff around. He’s really lucky to have a friend like her.”

“She’s the kind of friend you’d want on your side.”

“One question I had was, how did Johnny Stanko know about my bowl being the murder weapon?”

“Ah yes, you found out about that—him knowing the bowl was the murder weapon—on your visit to him, which you never told me about.”

She flushed and wisely remained silent.

“He apparently got an anonymous call about it—we think that was from Bob Douglas, but we’re not sure—its purpose to incriminate Stanko by making him too knowledgeable
or making him run. We think Bob is the one too who called us and told us about Stanko being in his house, resulting in the arrest. He was seen skulking around the neighborhood.” He gazed at her steadily, his gray eyes warm. “Jaymie, you need to keep your nose out of investigations, though, and I’m serious. It could be really dangerous. It
was
really dangerous. Bob Douglas intended to kill you.”

“I know. But I was just poking around,” she said. “There were things I wanted to know, but most of them had
nothing
to do with Kathy’s murder.”

“You didn’t know that at the time,” he pointed out. “That turned out not to be the case!”

“But I didn’t go to Ella’s because I was investigating. She hasn’t been well, and I was worried about her when she didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t figure out about Bob until I found her half-dead and saw that berry jam smeared on the toast. That’s when it all came together.”

He finally let her go. Valetta took her home, made sure she was all right and left her with Hoppy and Denver guarding her well-being.

The next couple of days were busy, and the town was buzzing with the news. The memorial service for Kathy was postponed, and a funeral was planned for Monday, after the arrest of Bob Douglas, first on charges of attempted murder of his wife, then finally—as the news came to Jaymie through the Queensville telegraph, i.e., Valetta—with Kathy Cooper’s murder.

Jaymie attended Kathy’s funeral with Becca—she had returned without Kevin—and Dee and Valetta. Dani Brougham and Emma Spangler were there, Dani weeping softly, leaning on Emma’s shoulder. Craig Cooper sat with his sister and Lily Fogarty. Matt Laskan sat alone, eyeing Lily with a heartbroken expression. Kylie, Connor and Andy
Walker were there, as was Mrs. Hofstadter, also weeping inconsolably. Kylie, Jaymie heard, had prevailed upon her mother to stay at the Walker home for a few days. She would try to talk to Kylie and tell her that her mother wanted to help Mrs. Hofstadter, but she wasn’t sure how Kylie would receive what could possibly be viewed as interference.

The Methodist church was crowded, and the hymns chosen appropriate. Matt Laskan glowered over at Craig and Lily as the choir sang, from “Depth of Mercy”: “Now incline me to repent, / Let me now my sins lament, / Now my foul revolt deplore, / Weep, believe, and sin no more.”

“I found something out,” Valetta murmured to Jaymie after a prayer. “About Matt Laskan and his arrest. Remember I told you I might have a contact? I know a girl who does booking and admin at the jail. We can’t say a word about this to anyone, but the kerfuffle with Matt Laskan? It was a big mistake. Word is, he goes to Port Huron once a week to visit his sister!”

“His
sister
? Okay…but—”

“Shush. Just listen. She’s on the street,” Valetta said, casting the fellow a glance. Matt was still focused on Lily, but with a softened look and a trembling lip. “She’s an addict, and she hooks to support her habit. He goes to the city once a week to make sure she has been eating, and to try to talk her into going into rehab. Her pimp interrupted them, and Matt took a swing at him, then tried to take off with his sister in the car. The cops were called, and in front of her pimp she had to say Matt tried to kidnap her. But the charges were dropped when it was all sorted out.”

“Wow. In a million years I would never have guessed that explanation. So that’s why he was so puzzled, and asked why Lily would care? It’s no one’s business, really; he’s just a nice guy trying to save his sister from herself.” She felt
awful for him. His sister was an addict, and his fiancée had dumped him for his business partner; all in all, not a great week for Matt Laskan.

The service was finally over, and everyone adjourned for coffee and cake in the rectory hall. Matt Laskan disappeared, though Craig and Lily were conspicuous by their solidarity in the face of disapproval. One generally did not attend one’s wife’s funeral with one’s girlfriend, but if they had a future together, maybe it was the best strategy to move forward.

The next afternoon, Jaymie picked some roses from her garden and took them to Wolverhampton General Hospital. Becca offered to go with her, but Jaymie really wanted to talk to Ella alone. When she entered the invalid’s room, Jaymie paused a moment, watching her. She was lying in bed staring out the window to the blue sky, streaks of sunshine blazing through the horizontal blinds, laying bars of shadow across her blankets. Her color was so much better than it had been that it was startling. She was hooked up to an IV, probably fluids, since the solanine poisoning had taken so much out of her.

“Hi,” Jaymie said, coming in, flowers thrust forward.

“Hi! My savior. I’m so glad to see you!” Tears gathered in her pale eyes and trickled down her cheeks, soaking into the neck of her blue-patterned hospital gown. She took the roses and buried her nose in the bouquet.

Jaymie pulled a chair up to the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than I was. I’m back to being just a cripple!”

Not knowing how to answer, Jaymie was silent.

“So…I understand Kathy has been buried,” Ella said, a catch in her voice.

“Yes, just yesterday. It was a lovely service. Everyone talked about how much she’ll be missed.”

There was silence between them for a while. Then Ella said, her tone pensive, “You know, I’m the one who told the guy that Kathy liked, back in high school, that you said she and her whole family stank.”

Jaymie felt the gut punch, but in the last few days she had begun to wonder. “Why did you do that, Ella?” She searched the other woman’s face.

“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you the whole stupid, sad story.” Eleanor Grimshaw was new in school that year, and she wasn’t cool, the way some kids were, nor pretty, nor popular, nor smart or athletic. She was just “the new kid.” Her family’s farm was down the road from the Hofstadter farm, and Eleanor began to fantasize how nice it would be to have Kathy as a friend, to be able to hang out at each other’s places and ride the school bus together, to go to school dances as buddies. “But she had you. The last thing she wanted was another farm girl as a friend, because Kathy never wanted to be a farm girl, she wanted to be a townie.” Her voice faltered; Ella was clearly weary.