A Murderous Glaze (3 page)

“Then why on earth didn’t you come to the shop and announce yourself instead of hiding in the shadows like some kind of mad fiend?” Honestly, the man could drive me bonkers sometimes.

“Didn’t think you’d like it if I just showed up like that,” he said gruffly.

The poor dear, he was probably right. I don’t respond well to coddling; I never have. I kissed his cheek, something that clearly startled him, then said, “You have my blessing to walk me to my car at night anytime you’d like.”

“Good,” he said. “Now let’s get you home. I can’t have you out taking chances like this at night. Do you
want
to be next?”

If only he knew to stop while he was ahead. There were a dozen things I could have said in response, but for tonight, I decided to let him have the last word. “Let’s go home.”

He nodded, and I put my arm in his as he walked me to my Intrigue. My husband, no matter how bristly he could be at times, was quite a lovely man.

“Carolyn, you’re so brave carrying on like you are doing. What with all the talk around town.” Kendra Williams—owner of Hattie’s Attic and the biggest gossip in Vermont—had cornered me on the sidewalk the next morning before I even made it to my shop. I’d parked in the upper lot again, out of habit instead of having any legitimate reason this time. I was more than a little grumpy before Kendra even spoke.

Hannah had begged off on our morning coffee, and I’d gone without myself. Blast it all, I needed that jolt to get my day started, and quite frankly, I loved having a few minutes with Hannah in the morning, too. But she’d claimed she was buried up to her eyebrows in essays on Shakespearean comedies and couldn’t meet me. I didn’t believe her, not for one second. Hannah had been angry when she’d found David at the shop instead of at the university, and she was clearly taking it out on me. I’d have to make things right with her, and soon, even if it meant banishing David to an education he only tepidly embraced.

Now I had the owner of Hattie’s Attic on my back, too. “Kendra, you need to believe me when I tell you that I didn’t kill Betty Wickline.”

She actually managed to look shocked by my abrupt declaration. “Carolyn, I never thought you did. I just meant that some of the tongues around here are wagging about what might have happened to poor Betty.”

“Let them wag. I have to go.”

Kendra called out to my rapidly departing back, “Call me if you need to chat. I’m here for you.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather eat a turkey, raw,” I said softly. I thought the woman wouldn’t be able to hear me, but she must have had the ears of a basset hound.

“What did you say?” she called out sharply.

“I said thanks for the offer. I might just give you a call.”

She didn’t believe me—the arch of her eyebrows was clear about that—but she waved and said, “Please do.”

“When pigs fly,” I whispered, but just in case the old bat really could hear me, I added, “I said I’ll try.”

I’d have to watch what I said around the woman, no matter what the distance was. The last thing on earth I wanted was for Kendra Williams to have it in for me. As my key neared the lock of the door to Fire at Will, my hand actually shook. What was I going to find there today? Carolyn, I said softly to myself, you’re acting foolish. You’re a grown woman, a success in marriage and business. Go in the shop. Now.

I didn’t quite believe the pep talk I’d just given myself, and for a moment, I wished Bill was there with me. There was no danger of that, though, not after the scolding I’d ended up giving him after all. My, how brave and independent I’d been in the safety of my own kitchen.

How cowardly I felt right now, though.

“Hello? David?” I called out as I walked into the shop.

On the minus side, my assistant wasn’t there yet, though he’d been scheduled to come in early today.

On the plus side, there weren’t any new bodies left scattered around the place.

I checked the store’s answering machine, and found a “2” on it. The first message was from a woman in Burlington asking about discounted glaze, and the second was from David.

“Hey, Carolyn. Listen, I’m sorry, I know you were counting on me, but I’m not going to be able to make it in today. I’ve got to catch up on the work I missed last night. I’ll talk to you soon.” The poor boy sounded angry and cowed at the same time.

I picked up the phone and dialed Hannah’s number at the university. I had a sneaking suspicion that if I called her cell phone, she wouldn’t pick up.

“Hello, Professor Atkins.”

“Hi, Hannah, I know you’re busy, but I need a minute.”

“You’ve got just that,” she said curtly.

“Then let me come right out with it and say that I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to interfere with David’s education. I know how important it is to you.”

Hannah snapped, “It’s important to him, too, you know. After he gets his degree, I don’t care what he does with his life, but until he does, he’s got to go to classes. You can’t let him skip any more lectures, Carolyn.”

“Wait a second. I can’t make him go to class any more than you can.” I’d already raised two boys, and I wasn’t about to take David on as a surrogate third.

“You know what I mean.”

I took a deep breath before I trusted myself to speak. I was on dodgy ground here, torn between my responsibilities to my friend and those to my employee. Being in the middle of a fight was not where I wanted to be. “I won’t keep him here at the shop late,” I said, “but he wants to be here in the day. Don’t take Fire at Will away from him, or he might drop out of school altogether.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath and then dead silence. I wondered for a second if I’d killed her. “Hannah? Are you still there?”

“I am, but I’ve really got to go.”

“Blast it all, I really am trying to apologize.” Hannah could be more stubborn than Bill sometimes, and that was saying something.

“I know. It’s fine. We’re all right, but I really do need to go. I’ll call you later.”

“Bye,” I said as she hung up.

Had I made it better with that last comment, or perhaps worse? David’s employment at my shop was a sore point with Hannah, but we couldn’t keep tiptoeing around it. He wanted to be a potter, and he found something working for me that was lacking for him at school. There was no doubt that David had a gift for clay, but what he lacked was the discipline, the patience of a master potter. As for his attendance record in school, they’d have to work it out between themselves. I had a shop to run. I glanced at the schedule to see if we had any groups coming in, and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that we were clear of group lessons. In a moment of temporary insanity, I’d offered the teachers of Maple Ridge Elementary an overly generous discount, and most of them had taken me up on it. Things were just starting to slow down again, and I was looking forward to a quiet day—despite my worry about the lack of business.

Twenty minutes after I opened the shop, I heard what sounded like a flock of grackles outside my door. When I peeked outside, I saw twenty-five or thirty grade-schoolers heading my way, led by a young blonde with a look of sheer exasperation on her face. I knew I had to stop the horde from pillaging my place, so I walked outside, putting myself between them and Fire at Will.

Before I could say a word, the woman leading them said, “Hi, I know I didn’t call ahead, but I promised them a field trip, and the bowling alley isn’t open, even though I called them yesterday, and one of the children threw up on the school bus and our parent chaperone Mrs. Beasley had to take her back to school, so I’ve got all these kids and I can’t bear to disappoint them. I’m Emma Blackshire. I’m new.”

I don’t know how she managed to get all that out without taking a breath or a break, but she did. There was no way I could handle this crowd without help, and there were no reinforcements I could call on. I was about to turn her away when I spied one of the little boys, a towhead who looked just like my son Timothy when he was that age. The poor sweet child looked as though he were ready to burst into tears, and my heart melted.

“Bring them in,” I said, and the young boy smiled. I was going to picture that expression all day. It was the only thing that was going to get me through what I knew was about to happen.

That, or a shot of bourbon, though I doubted Miss Blackshire would approve. Then again, based on her agitated state, she might just join me.

I managed to round up enough of the small bisque fired saucers we used for school groups, and the kids seemed to have a good time, though they did wreck the place as only a class of grade-schoolers could. After they were gone, I stacked two of the kilns and started firing their works. Once that was done, I was scrubbing down the tables when the front door opened. Not another student group, I prayed under my breath.

The second I saw who it was, I found myself wishing for the entire student body of the elementary school instead.

It was the sheriff, John Hodges, and I could see by the way he was looking at me this wasn’t going to be pleasant conversation for either one of us.

“Come to paint some pottery, Sheriff?” I asked in the sweetest voice I could muster. If he could tell I was being sarcastic, he didn’t show it.

“You’re kidding, right?” he said. “I’m here about Betty Wickline.”

“Give me a second. I need to turn off the lights and lock the door.”

That stumped him. “What are you talking about, Carolyn?”

“I assume you’ve decided to dispense with an actual investigation and go ahead and arrest me. David’s not coming in today, and I’d rather not leave the shop door standing wide open while you haul me off in the back of your squad car.”

That made him mad—probably not the best tack I could have taken, but I resented even being on his suspect list. Honestly, I was probably the only one on it, knowing the sheriff’s dislike for actual work.

“I’m not here to arrest you,” he shouted.

“There’s no need to yell. I can hear perfectly fine. If you aren’t going to handcuff me, then why are you here?”

“Just because I’m not planning to arrest you this second doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to you about what happened here. I need that list of people who have keys to your shop.”

I’d nearly forgotten all about it. “It’s in my purse. Let me get it.” Still smarting from his tone of voice, I handed him my purse. “You’d better retrieve it yourself. You never know, I might have a gun stashed in there somewhere.”

He looked at the offered purse like it was a snake. “I’m not fool enough to go diving into a woman’s purse without more reason than you’ve given me. At least not yet.”

I retrieved the list, with no more names added to it than I’d shared with Hannah, and handed it to him.

He studied it a second, then said, “I’ll look into this.”

“There’s something else you should know,” I added reluctantly.

“Well, don’t make me pull it out of you. What is it?”

“There’s a chance that I might have left the front door unlocked when I left the day of the murder. It’s happened a few times before. Anyway, I thought you should know.”

“And you’re telling me this now?” He glanced down at the list. “That makes this pretty much worthless, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not saying that I
did
leave the door unlocked. I just thought you should know it was a possibility. Oh, there’s something else I should probably tell you. Robert Owens is on your list, and he’s been out of town since before the murder. He went back to North Carolina three days ago to get the rest of his stuff. He’s just moved to Maple Ridge.”

“I’ll check him out. Since I’m already here, I’d like to ask you a few more questions, if you don’t mind.” I hated orders that sounded like requests.

“Do I have any choice?”

“Don’t be that way, Carolyn.”

“Fine, ask away.”

He looked at me a second before he proceeded. “There’s no easy way to ask this. When was the last time you saw Betty alive?”

“I told you that the night I found her body.”

“Tell me again.” His gaze never left me.

“She came into the shop that afternoon. We talked for a few minutes, then she left.”

He raised one eyebrow. “What did you talk about?”

“Who remembers? It wasn’t all that significant. Something about a firing, I think.”

“Are you sure you weren’t having an argument?” He was being much too smug for my tastes.

“Why? What have you heard?”

The sheriff shrugged. “I understand it wasn’t so much of a conversation as it was a fight.”

That was all I could take. “Where did you hear that? Tell me who it was.”

He backed up a step. “It was an anonymous tip, but the whispered voice sounded like she knew what she was talking about.”

“Then your heroic witness is full of hot air. Nobody was in the shop when Betty was here. Not even David.”

Hodges looked at me a long time before he spoke. “Just because you say it, that doesn’t make it so.”

“Nor should you take the word of some coward with a telephone over mine. We’ve known each other a long time, John. Do you honestly think I’m capable of murder?”

He took much too long to answer to suit my tastes. “You’ve always had a sharp tongue, Carolyn, and Betty managed to bring out the worst in folks. I can’t rule anything out yet.”

“Well, until you do, perhaps you should start looking for the real killer instead of wasting your time with me. Now if you’re not going to lock me up, I suggest you leave so I can go about my shop’s business.”

He nodded and headed toward the door, but before he left, the sheriff turned to me and said, “You’re not planning any trips out of Maple Ridge anytime soon, are you?”

“Why do you ask?” Did he honestly think I was capable of murder? Or that even if I was, I’d actually flee the area? Honestly, where would I go? I’d lived here all my life.

“I’d just rather have you around in case I come up with any more questions for you.”

“I’ll be here,” I said. I couldn’t believe the sheriff actually thought I’d had something to do with Betty’s death. He’d known me forever. But if he could believe it, other people might, too. I was going to have to do something to clear my name. There was no way I’d be able to live in Maple Ridge with the whispers and the speculation. If Sheriff Hodges wasn’t going to help me, I was going to have to do it myself.