Free Freezer I'll Shoot (A Vintage Kitchen Mystery) by Victoria Hamilton Page B

head, clicking his tongue against his teeth. “Garnet was married, but his wife died about ten years ago, from what I understand. Tragic situation . . . She died down in Jamaica; fell off of their sailboat. He’s never remarried.”
    “Wow. I never knew that! What about Ruby?”
    “She’s never been married, I guess. Leastways, I never heard her talk about a husband. I kinda thought she was . . . you know.” He waggled his eyebrows and winked.
    “Gay?”
    He nodded and his cheeks colored up red. “I never cared, you know, ’cause they’re good folks.”
    That was Sherm Woodrow’s charm; he was a gossip, but not judgmental. He liked everyone, and talked about them, but there was never a mean spirit in his chatter. “Just because she never married doesn’t mean she’s gay,” Jaymie said, repeating what she had said to Zack when he made the same judgment.
    “I guess. I say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. I like Ruby—she’s a real sweetheart—but I never seen any woman handle a sailboat like her.”
    Tansy came out, and her eyes lit up. “Jaymie! You okay? I heard about the trouble over at your cottage.”
    Just then the door chimes sounded and a woman entered the shop. Sherm’s eyes widened. “Evelyn!” he said, and rushed out from behind the counter. “Oh, honey, are you okay? Well, of course you’re not, but . . . let me get you a chair.”
    Evelyn . . . Urban Dobrinskie’s wife? Jaymie was stunned. What was she doing in the bakery? She must have been told about her husband’s murder just hours before.
    Tansy joined her husband, who was helping the new widow sit down on the retro vinyl café chair Sherm had hauled over from a little café table near the window. Jaymie watched. Evelyn was a small woman, with a round face and fluffy dark hair streaked with gray; she was dressed in a skirt and sleeveless blouse, exposing white, thin arms, one with a purple bruise. Was that bruise a result of Urb’s temper flaring? Jaymie’s mind kicked into questioning mode, something that had not happened up until now. She had been in shock, she supposed, but now she was truly curious. Who killed Urban, and why behind her house? It seemed an odd place for him to be.
    “I . . . I’m so sorry, Mrs. Dobrinskie, about your husband,” Jaymie said.
    She looked up, a question in her vivid cornflower blue eyes, the only real color on her face other than the dark smudges under her eyes. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
    “No,” Jaymie admitted.
    “This is Jaymie Leighton. Poor Urb was found behind her cottage; you know, Rose Tree Cottage, on the River Road? The pretty little blue clapboard one?” Sherm helpfully supplied.
    The new widow’s eyes teared up. “What was he doing there?” she whispered, and one fat tear trembled and overflowed down her pale cheek.
    “I don’t know,” Jaymie said, crouching by the woman. “Do you have any idea?”
    She shook her head and looked to Tansy. “He didn’t come home last night, but I thought he just had a meeting, or . . . or was at the Boat House. I . . . I just came in to . . . Tansy, what am I going to do? Urb’s family is going to come down from Canada . . . his mother . . . I don’t know if I can . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head.
    The baker seemed to know exactly what she was saying. “Look, hon, don’t you worry about it. I’ll call the business association . . . Urb was active in it, and the Polish-Canadian club over in Johnsonville, right?”
    “Urb was Canadian?” Jaymie interjected.
    “He was born in Poland, and came over to Canada,” Evelyn Dobrinskie said, the tears in her eyes gleaming in the sun streaming in the window. “Then he came here, to the island, and that’s when we met, and got married. He was so handsome. My parents didn’t like him, but I knew he was the one for me.”
    Evelyn colored, faintly, and Jaymie could see that when young, she had probably been one