White Colander Crime (17 page)

“That's me,” Lynnsey said, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I miss her already. We were going to get together when I came back for Christmas and moan about our boyfriend troubles.”

“Boyfriend troubles?”

“I can never find a nice guy and she was bored with dating really off guys lately. Said they were all dogs.”

Odd, considering she kept dating, but maybe . . . Jaymie tilted her head to one side as an idea began to form. Were there reasons other than a desire for a love life that kept her dating several men? “Did she mean Cody Wainwright in particular?”

“That's the guy who's in jail for killing her, right?”

Jaymie didn't correct her; that Cody was now out of jail was neither here nor there.

Lynnsey frowned down into her coffee cup and took a long swig. “He was your typical young guy, she said.”

“But he knocked her around. Did she ever tell you that?”

“Did he
really
do that?” Lynnsey, eyes wide, stared at Jaymie. “Look, you gotta understand something. Shelby was . . . different. She sent me a few emails telling me that she was scared of Cody, but still she kept him around. I didn't get it. And then she emailed me that if anything ever happen to her, I ought to look at Cody. I called her, scared out of my mind, but she kind of brushed it off, said she was half joking. It made me crazy. It was one of the things I intended to talk to her about over Christmas. I wanted to know what was going on.”

Jaymie stirred her coffee. “I'm surprised you even question his guilt, given the emails. Most people are assuming he's guilty, and they don't even have that insight.”

“Shelby was getting more erratic; I was worried. Cody killing her just seems . . . I don't know. Too easy,” Lynnsey said. “Nothing in Shelby's life was ever that simple and clear cut.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Just that she complicated everything.”

“How?”

“You had to know how her mind worked. She's like me in some ways . . . easily bored. So she would deliberately complicate things.”

“How do you go about complicating your life?”

“She thought it was fun to make people a little crazy . . . Like in high school, she deliberately pitted two best friends against each other. It started as an experiment of social science, or at least that's what she
said
it was. She was good at justifying her own brand of crazy. She wanted to see if she could turn close friends against each other just using social means, like gossip and innuendo.”

“That sounds . . . pardon me for saying it, but it sounds cruel.”

Lynnsey shrugged. “She figured they deserved it. Trust me, those girls were the queen biotches of the school, so Shelby was just having some fun with them. She managed to have them at each other's throats in no time. They had a huge fight in front of everyone. Even when they found out it was all based on lies, they were never friends again after that.”

Trust was such a fragile thing, and once broken it was difficult to mend. Jaymie was horrified but stifled her personal opinion since Lynnsey didn't seem to think it was such a big deal. It did offer a revealing insight into Shelby's character and gave Jaymie food for thought. “So you don't think Cody killed her?”

She knit her reddish brows. “I didn't say that, I just said it seemed too simple an explanation. She was done with him, though, so who knows?”

“She was
done
with him? Did she tell you that? Was she serious?”

“I think she was. She had some plan for getting rid of him once and for all.”

“What was the plan?”

“She didn't tell me. Said she'd tell me all about it at Christmas. I was going to stay with her.” The tears resurfaced but she dabbed at her eyes with her paper napkin and went on. “She was thinking dating older men might be the way to go: money, security, better sense. I said, yeah, but what about all that baggage, you know, children, ex-wives . . . and she said, ‘Who said anything about
ex-
wives?' Weird comment. But she wouldn't say any more.”

“Lynnsey, did she ever mention anyone named Natalie?”

The young woman's eyes brightened and she leaned forward. “She sure did. She told me she needed someone to talk to away from the village about something. Natalie Roth is the girl who disappeared.”

Jaymie nodded.

“Shelby had an idea she knew what happened to the girl, and she was going to take that information to the police!”

Seventeen

“W
HAT DID SHE
know? What did she tell you?” Was the mystery going to be solved as easily as that? She'd love to be able to tell Clutch what happened to his child.

Lynnsey shook her head, her mane of auburn curls bouncing. “She told me some, but not all. We got interrupted. She had phoned me from work, I think, maybe from the cafeteria or lunchroom. I'm not positive of that; it could have been some other coffee shop, I guess. I could hear other voices in the background. Anyway, she told me that Natalie was mixed up in something real nasty, and she was killed so she wouldn't talk.”

“Did this have to do with her boss, Delaney Meadows?”

“I don't know. We got cut off before she told me much.”

“You must have had an impression, though. Could you tell anything?”

Lynnsey bit her lip, a streak of pink lipstick smudging her teeth. “I just don't know. She just said
‘
something real nasty,' those exact words, but like I said, we were cut off. She said she was hoping it would solve the case, but that she was sure of one thing; Natalie was dead. She was going to have to tell Natalie's father.”

This was awful, but Clutch himself believed Natalie was dead. Jaymie sighed and stifled tears. It was going to be devastating to him, another family torn apart.

Speaking of which . . . “Lynnsey, if you knew Shelby in school you must know her brother, Travis.”

Lynnsey rolled her eyes. “What a jerk he is! Those two hated each other. When he was a kid he was one of those mean little boys, throwing frogs at cars and spinning kittens by their tails.”

“Literally?” Jaymie said, gasping.

“Literally! I guess he stopped doing crap like that, but I still couldn't stand him. When we were teenagers he was always hitting on me and trying to get a peek at me in the bathroom.”

“So she hated him? In, like, a brother-sister kind of way? Or something deeper?”

Lynnsey paused and thought as she drained her coffee cup. “I don't know what he felt about her. He creeped me out, so I spent as little time as I could with him. But I do know she
hated
him. Lori made excuses for him, saying he didn't have a father figure growing up, blah, blah, blah. She was always bailing him out of trouble. Shelby told me that someday he was going to do something so terrible he'd end up behind bars.”

Maybe he had fulfilled his sister's worst fears, Jaymie thought, considering the lies he'd told about his evening and the mysterious half hour or so he was missing. Natalie Roth's fate could be tangled in there, too, considering that Travis apparently dated Natalie.

They were finished with their coffee. Lynnsey had to leave, as she was looking into other job opportunities in Wolverhampton. One place she
wasn't
going was Delaney Meadows' headhunter business. When Jaymie asked why, she just said from talking to Shelby she didn't have a good opinion of the guy. Nothing concrete, just an icky feeling.

“One thing I trusted was Shelby's gut,” Lynnsey said. “She had been hit and beat up all her life, especially by her mother's boyfriends. She was angry . . .
really
angry deep inside. I always thought she'd do something important, like work at a battered women's shelter.”

“Maybe she was making a start by looking into Natalie Roth's disappearance, especially if there was something fishy about it,” Jaymie mused.

“I guess we'll never know what she may have done,” Lynnsey said, tears welling in her eyes. She gave Jaymie a quick hug, grabbed her parka and speed walked out of the coffee shop.

Jaymie didn't leave the inn. Instead she headed past the main desk, with a wave at Edith, the owner's girlfriend, who was sitting behind it, then down a familiar hallway to a main-floor suite. She tapped on the door.

“Come in!”

She entered. Mrs. Stubbs was sitting in her mobility wheelchair by the window, where the light was best, reading a large-print mystery novel.

“Jaymie!” Mrs. Stubbs cried, sticking her finger in the page she was reading. “Thank goodness. Someone interesting to talk to. Despite my books, I've been suffering from boredom.” She patted the bed with one arthritic hand, indicating she wanted Jaymie to sit. As usual she was wearing a jewel-colored velour pants and jacket set over a T-shirt. “Come in and tell me what you've been up to.”

Jaymie crossed the floor of the comfortable bedsitting room where the woman was cosseted and taken care of twenty-four hours a day by her devoted son and his live-in girlfriend. She drew out from her purse the plastic bag of treats—some brownies, shortbread cookies and fudge—and set it on the bedside table for Mrs. Stubbs to pick through later. She perched on the bed and the friends discussed family plans for Christmas, which was creeping up so quickly Jaymie didn't know if she'd get everything done.

Mrs. Stubbs looked wistful, riffling the pages of her book while she stared out the window. “I remember being that busy, when the boys were kids and my husband was alive, and my parents, too. I didn't think I'd ever have enough time to do everything that needed doing. I used to imagine a time when I could just sit and drink tea and read a book.” She chuckled, but it was a mirthless sound. “I guess that's now; I have all the time to read I could ever want. What I wouldn't give to go back and have some of that busy time to do over.”

Jaymie's heartstrings plucked, but she knew she needed to distract her friend. They talked about her Grandma Leighton's upcoming visit and that she would be staying at the inn and would be visiting with Mrs. Stubbs. That cheered the other woman immensely. Inevitably they spoke of Shelby Fretter's murder and how Jaymie was investigating it, semiofficially this time, at the request of the suspect's mother.

“I'm just not sure how I'll handle it if I think he's guilty.”

“Cart in front of the horse, Jaymie. Are you truly going into this with an open mind?”

“I hope I am now. Cody has been released, but Nan won't be happy until he's completely out of the woods.”

“Tell me what you have so far.”

Mrs. Stubbs was a remarkable woman, elderly, yes, but with a clearer mind than many half her age. She listened and commented, and then was silent for a few moments when Jaymie had told her all. It had helped to go through it all with Mrs. Stubbs, because it made it clearer in her own mind.

“We seem to have a few possibilities here, don't we?” Mrs. Stubbs finally said. “Poor Shelby may have been killed by someone close to her for personal reasons.”

“Right. It could be Cody, or her brother, Travis, who has a mean streak, and who I saw arguing with her right before she died.”

“Or even her mother,” Mrs. Stubbs said. “Don't write her off because she's upset about it. If I was a mystery writer, I'd make the mother the murderess, just once!”

“You do have a gruesome imagination, don't you?” It was a possibility, but remote. “I don't see it being Lori. The other strong possibility, if I discount Cody, is that Shelby was killed because of what she was looking into: Natalie Roth's disappearance and probable death.”

“If Mabel's daughter is right about what Shelby told her, that she knew who had killed Natalie and was going to the police about it, then it
seems
likely the two are connected. Two young women dead, and all involved with the same people? Not likely a coincidence.” She held up the book she was reading. “In this idiot mystery the stupid girl investigating never figures things out, she just stumbles across answers. And people tell her things for no earthly reason! She doesn't even have to ask questions, they just babble to her!”

Jaymie smothered a smile. The woman was an avid reader, but not an uncritical one. “I wish people would just babble to me. Most of the time people clam up and won't say a word.”

“Yes, well, also in this idiot book no one lies to the girl detective, nor does she even consider that folks are lying to her. But people lie all the time. The more important something is, the more likely they are to lie about it. My point is, Jaymie, I know you have a real reason for looking into this, but it doesn't mean those you talk to will be any more receptive to your snooping, nor will they necessarily volunteer information, nor will they tell you the truth. You're going on to this Delaney Meadows' place of business after this, right?” Mrs. Stubbs said.

Jaymie nodded.

“Be careful, dear,” she said, putting one arthritic hand over Jaymie's where it clutched the edge of the mattress. “I have some information. I'm a little afraid to share it with you because it may get you in trouble. But . . . I trust your brains. You will do with it what you must.”

Jaymie waited as Mrs. Stubbs ordered her thoughts.

“I know Delaney Meadows by sight. His wife is a dear girl, one of the library volunteers that brings me my monthly quota of books. A few days ago when she came with my books, she was later than usual and visibly upset. I made her sit down and asked what was wrong, but she wasn't going to tell me. I winkled it out of her, though. She saw her husband coming out of one of the inn rooms with a young woman. The young woman, she told me, was Shelby Fretter, an employee of her husband's.”

Jaymie was stunned, and immediately saw that it introduced another suspect into the spectrum. Many a woman had slain a competitor for her husband's affections. She was silent a moment too long.

Mrs. Stubbs, agitated, moved restlessly. “I know what you're likely thinking,” she said, her voice creaky and clogged with emotion. “But Lily Meadows is a darling girl. She could not possibly kill someone. Even with extreme provocation. She's just a tiny little dab of a thing, sweet natured. For heaven's sake, she volunteers to bring library books to shut-ins! That makes her a saint.”

“Lily Meadows,” Jaymie mused. “Lily . . . I know someone with that name. Ah, she's in my historical romance book club! It's likely the same woman.” She thought for a moment more. “I have one sure way of eliminating her as a suspect. Book club met on Friday night, the night Shelby was murdered. If it's the same girl and she was at it, she can't be guilty because it never breaks up before ten.”

“I don't need that to know she's not guilty,” Mrs. Stubbs said. “She's a sweet girl and even if her husband is a low-life cheating scum, there is no way on God's green earth she would do anything so vulgar about it as murder.”

Lost in thought, Jaymie let Mrs. Stubbs ramble. Lily Meadows was a possible new line of inquiry, and she could approach her as a friend. But Lily was not likely to open up about her husband's supposed extramarital activities. However, just because Delaney was at the inn with Shelby did not necessarily mean they were having an affair. Though it did make some sense of Lynnsey Bloombury's remark about Shelby asking who said anything about
ex
-wives. Did she mean she was into dating married men even if they stayed married? And was dating the boss her way of climbing the ladder?

As in every investigation she had been involved in during the last seven months, things got far more complicated before the truth began to glimmer like a faint light in the distance. This was a complication she'd need to explore. She made a mental note to check in with someone else in book club to see if Lily Meadows was there that night.

“When was this that Lily Meadows saw her husband and Shelby Fretter together?”

The elderly woman frowned down at her hands, massaging the knobby joints. “Let's see . . . she always brings me my books on Thursday evenings. This was the last time she brought me books, because she had a Christmas treat she had baked using a recipe from one of the mysteries, so it was just last week.”

“Thursday evening, just one day before Shelby was murdered,” Jaymie said. “What a coincidence.” She would not say it aloud to Mrs. Stubbs, because it would upset her to know the direction of Jaymie's thoughts, but was it possible that Shelby's murder was the result of a woman scorned? Jaymie hugged Mrs. Stubbs good-bye, then left the inn by a back door and headed to the Belcker Building on Munroe Street. It was a converted old house, as were most office spaces in Queensville. This was a large two-story yellow brick, with a glass entrance foyer added on the front and a modern addition on the back, where the property sloped to a ravine.