White Colander Crime Read Online Free Page B

puttering. Most of the older committee members had been horrified when some of the younger ones had suggested renting a blow-up decoration to draw attention to the historic manor’s Christmas opening, but Jaymie had agreed that however you got feet through the door didn’t matter. And folks with kids wanted kid-friendly things to look at. The gingerbread man cookie was the best of a bad lot, she thought, better than the Santa on an airplane or sock monkeys on a scooter that were other possible rental choices. But it sure did look tacky in front of the elegant manse! Oh well, it would come down just after the New Year.
    She mounted the steps and entered, pausing as she removed her boots to appreciate the beauty of the old house. It never failed to awe her, the lovely old pendant lights, the elegant wood baseboards and beautiful finishing they had all strived to perfect over the last couple of months. An amazing amount had been done in a short time, mostly due to the organizational skills of Haskell Lockland and the handyman ability of Bill Waterman, as well as the dedication of the volunteers, like her, each with their own specialty.
    In the main hall they had placed a long, low Chippendale-style table topped by a big mirror, and on the table were pamphlets and what little literature they had pertaining to the Dumpe family and Queensville’s history, postcards to buy and one Lucite pamphlet stand just waiting for the literature she had in hand. She filled it with the pamphlets, stacking the rest on the table behind the stand, and then, carrying her boots, strode through the hall to the back of the house where her precious kitchen seemed like an afterthought, when it was the heart of the whole manor house project, if you asked her.
    But the kitchen wasn’t empty. A fiftyish woman in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, bleached hair pulled back tight in a frizzy ponytail, was on her hands and knees scouring the oven of Jaymie’s precious antique gas stove, which was sans knobs, sans burner drip pans, sans grates, sans . . . everything!

Three
    â€œW HAT ARE YOU doing?” cried Jaymie, dropping her boots.
    The woman jolted, whacked her head on the top of the oven and scrambled out, leaping to her feet and whirling. “What the . . . ? Who are you?”
    â€œNever mind that, who are
you
? And what are you doing to my stove?” Shaking, Jaymie carefully set the decorative colander down on the porcelain top of the green-and-white vintage Hoosier and stood, staring forlornly at her disassembled stove. The same stove she had just thoroughly cleaned according to instructions from a website on antique and vintage stoves, and which she had
just
got working right with a lot of trial, error and burned cookies.
    The woman peeled her rubber gloves off, the smell of harsh modern chemicals wafting out of the oven, from which the door had been removed. “I was hired to clean, so I’m cleaning.”
    Controlling her breathing and carefully inflecting her tone to somewhat close to politeness, Jaymie said, “My name is Jaymie Leighton, and this is the kitchen I designed and furnished. You must be Lori Wozny. I was on the committee that looked at everyone’s references and we were so pleased to hire you. However, I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear, but no one meant for you to clean the vintage appliances.” She glanced around, noting the knobs laid out on newspaper with some kind of cleaning solution on them.
Argh!
It was almost physically painful to consider the damage that may have been done to them. “Besides, I’ve already cleaned the stove.”
    â€œNot very well,” the woman said, her tone huffy, as she tossed the rubber gloves down onto newspaper that was protecting every surface. “It’s still dirty. And under the knobs was all this grease! Took me half an hour just to get it off.”
    Jaymie closed her eyes and swayed. “The grease is