High Strung: A Glass Bead Mystery (The Glass Bead Mystery Series) (19 page)

“I’m on it.” Val pulled a rhinestone-covered phone out of her pocket. Since her nails were too long for her to use her fingertips, she used a knuckle to press the keypad.

We sat down on the curb and waited for the fire department to arrive, hoping we were not
about to witness Seattle’s biggest fireworks display, when my house, both halves, were blown to smithereens.

“
Biscotti? Wine?” Val suggested, completely ignoring the severity of the situation. “Sorry, no glasses, unless you want to risk going back inside.” This was what I loved about Val—she never took anything seriously. Even though she might be about to witness the destruction of everything she owned, it didn’t seem to bother her, as long as she could have a glass of wine while it happened.

“
It’s okay, I can drink right out of the bottle,” I said, taking a swig of tart white wine followed by a bite of biscotti.

“
What did you say was in this cookie?” I said, choking, and wondering why it tasted like Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo. I swallowed the dry chunk of biscotti and washed it down with more wine.

“
Oh, it’s got some rosemary from our front garden, and you know, some anise, and a little bit of mint. I added some extra to give it a kick.” I hoped it was really mint and not Gummie’s special catnip. And I wished Val would stop experimenting with her recipes.

Fire trucks arrived, followed by two police c
ars, an ambulance, an emergency response vehicle, and the hook-and-ladder engine. It was an impressive response to our crisis.

“
Hunky firefighters,” Val said, nodding in their direction as they piled out of their red trucks.

“Oh, yes
,” I said, taking another bite of cookie, which didn’t taste any better than the first bite. I sat there wondering if my house was all going to go up in a giant KABOOM, and knowing there was nothing I could do about it. I’d just have to trust the firefighters would do all the right things.

When
a police officer approached, we told him we could smell natural gas, and that it smelled like it was coming from the stove in the kitchen. I said that I had not been cooking in the kitchen since the day before, and that I didn’t think my houseguest had done any cooking, either.

My houseguest. I looked down the street and saw Marta rounding the corner
. “There she is now,” I said.

Marta
saw all of the fire engines, and then she saw me sitting on the curb. She turned and started to run in the other direction, poor Stanley trying to keep up on his short basset hound legs.

“
Do you think she has anything to do with this?” the officer asked, since running away was usually considered a suspicious activity.

“
Yes, I think so,” I said. “I definitely think she has something to do with this.”

It was easy for the cops to catch up with Marta
—she was middle-aged woman with a dog who couldn’t run without stepping on his own ears, and they were two fit thirty-year-old police officers. They were driving their police car, so that made it even more of an unfair race.

They caught up with Marta
, and we could see her talking and waving her arms around excitedly. The police officers were equally animated. They were too far away for Val and me to hear anything. We could see poor Stanley watching the conversation like a tennis match, his head moving from side to side as he listened to each person yell at the other.

They put Marta
and her dog in the back of the police car, and then drove toward us. One of the officers rolled down his window. “We’re taking them in for questioning.”

“
Them? You are seriously going to take the dog in for questioning?” I asked.

“N
o, actually, we were going to drop the dog off at Animal Control until we can figure out whether to keep Ms. Ellison in custody.”

“
What? No! You can’t take Stanley to Animal Control. He’ll die in there!” squeaked Marta, from the backseat of the cop car. “He’s a pure-bred dog, a champion, not some dirty mutt.”

“
Not some mutt like Rosie’s dog?” I asked her.

“
Rosie didn’t deserve to have that dog. She deserved to lose everything!” Marta yelled, coming unglued right before our eyes. “I wanted to take everything she loved. Her dog. Her store. Her daughter. Everything!”

“
Her daughter?” I asked, my head swimming, taking this all in. “You wanted to take her daughter away from her?”

“Rosie has everything—a family, and a wonderful life here with her new shop. Me, I have nothing,” said Marta, tears welling up in her eyes. “She needs to know what I feel like, having lost what I wanted most.”

“Marta, I lost my cat for a couple of days—and I have to say it was terrible to have lost something as precious as a pet,” I said.

“Animal comp—”

“Shut up, Marta. Look, I lost Gumdrop, and it hurt so much. Imagine how you’d feel if you lost Stanley?”

Marta gasped for air,
and then said, “I can’t bear to think of it.”

“Then think of Rosie.”

“That bitch stole my dream. Stole it right from underneath me.”

“How’d you know Rosie?” I asked. “How’d you get to the point where you wanted to hurt her so badly?”

“I worked with Rosie in Spokane at the Godiva Call Center. You’d think working for a company that was all about chocolate would be heaven, right? Well, it wasn’t. It was just like any other stupid job, and I hated it. All I wanted to do was get out of that God-forsaken place,” Marta said.

“
Every day I’d look online for the perfect place to live and work—a place where I could open a dog-supply shop and doggie spa,” she continued. “I had the perfect dream, to find a cute little neighborhood where I could sell my dog necklaces, with an upstairs apartment, and a yard where my dog could play. I found my perfect place in an online ad, and I showed it to Rosie on my laptop during one of our lunch breaks.”

“
Rosie’s shop? Rosie’s apartment?” I asked.

“It was supposed to be
my
shop.
My
apartment,” Marta said, wrapping Stanley’s leash around her hands and pulling it tight. “When I decided to come here this weekend, I thought maybe I’d discover that the place wasn’t that great, and I could feel better about what happened.”

“
But didn’t Rosie notice you at the shop?”

“
I wasn’t at the shop until the party. Besides, when she saw me, she knew I was a beadmaker, so there was no reason why I shouldn’t be there. And I told her there were no hard feelings. That, of course, was a big fat lie.”

“
And me? Why try to kill me?”

“
You’d have figured out about Tito’s collar, as soon as you talked to Rosie. She would’ve told you she didn’t place a special order, and then you’d know the only reason I had the collar was because I’d taken it off Tito when I dropped him at the pound. Then Rosie, and everyone else would know what I was up to. It was perfect, really. I realized I could just leave the stove on in the kitchen. You were back there, working in your studio. You’d light your torch, and BOOM, you’d be gone. It would look like a studio accident. Easy. No one would suspect a thing.”

“
Ma’am, we need to take this woman down to the police station. It seems like we have several things to talk about with her,” said the officer in the passenger seat, bending his head low to look at me out of the driver’s side window.

“
Jax, Jax, I beg you,” Marta called to me. “Take Stanley, please. Help me in just this one way. I know I shouldn’t have done these things. I couldn’t take it. Rosie had taken so much away from me, I just wanted to see how she would feel to have what she loved taken away from her.”

Val piped up.
“Let the dog out. I’ll take care of him until this is all settled.”

“
Thank you,” said Marta, wiping the tears off her cheeks.

The officer opened the back door and let Stanley out. Then he got back in the car and drove away.

We could see Marta’s face staring sadly out of the back window as the police car got smaller and smaller, and then disappeared from sight.

“
So, Stanley. I guess you are going to be with us for a while,” Val said, reaching down and giving him a big scratch between his two floppy ears with her long nails. Stanley’s eyes closed as he enjoyed the attention.

“
Us?” I asked.

“
Well, you know, joint custody. I wouldn’t be taking him if you hadn’t had the bad judgment to invite a crazy killer into your house.”

Stanley was listening to us, and wagging his tail. He
was
kind of cute, but I was sure Gumdrop would hate him.

“
And dogs, guys love dogs. Dogs are guy-magnets!” Val said, trying to convince me. I wasn’t buying it.

Just then, a cute firefighter came over.
“Your gas has been turned off. Looks like you left your stove on,” he said. I knew who had left the stove on, and it wasn’t me.

“
Thanks,” I said, finally relaxing now that I knew my house and all of my belongings weren’t going to explode.

“
Nice dog,” the fireman said, as he reached down and gave Stanley a big pat on his side. “What’s his name?”

“
See? See?” Val whispered in my ear. “This dog’s a magnet.”

“
Stanley,” I answered.

We finally
were able to go back inside the house. We went into the kitchen and poured our wine into glasses.

“
So, Val, I have some news,” I began. I needed to broach the subject of Rudy gently. “It’s about Rudy.”

“
Oh yes, Rudy! Doesn’t he look amazing? I think he looks so handsome now that I’ve cut off his icky ponytail and cleaned up those long sideburns. He looks like someone I could date.”

“
See, that’s the thing. Rudy’s married. I’m pretty sure.”

“
Oh, no he’s not. You see, I’ve started to ask every new guy I meet that question.”

“
Val, I am not sure you’d ever get a truthful answer,” I said. “I mean, really, what guy who wants to go out with you is going to say ‘yes, as a matter of fact, I
am
married?’”

“
I’ve gotten a variety of answers, and at a variety of levels of truthfulness,” she admitted. “But, here’s the thing. Rudy
did
answer me, and it was the weirdest answer I’ve ever heard, and believe me, I’ve heard a lot of strange answers. Rudy said he wasn’t really married, but sometimes he pretends to be.”

“
What?”

“It’s super-sweet. H
e said he does it as a favor for a friend. In fact, when I talked to him a while ago, that’s what he said he’d done today—helped a friend get out of the hospital, because they wouldn’t let her leave without a family member.”

“
Well, I think I know who the friend is. It’s Rosie.”

“
Thank God he’s not married to Rosie,” Val said, taking a big gulp of wine.

“I’ll drink to that!”

The phone rang around nine on Saturday morning. Fortunately, I was already up and drinking coffee at the kitchen table, with plans to take Stanley over to Tessa’s to romp around with Joey in
the backyard for a while.

My phone rang, and
I recognized the number. It was Detective Grant. I pressed the Answer button.

“Good morning, detective,” I said.

“Good morning, Ms. O’Connell.”

“What can I do for you?” It was hard to believe that a week after the murder at the bead shop he’d n
eed to follow up with me, on a Sunday morning, no less.

“I thought you might want to know there’s an excellent article in the
Seattle Times
about you and your glasswork.” The detective’s voice was missing the snarl I’d heard in it before. Off the clock he seemed like a different guy.

“That’s terrific news. I wasn’t sure when
it was coming out.” I’d have to run out and grab the paper after I got off the phone. For now, I had a few questions for the detective.

“Can you tell me what happened with Marta?”

“She confessed to murdering Misty Lawton—a case of mistaken identity. Apparently her target was Tracy Lopez,” the detective said. “Marta saw a young woman in the darkness on the patio the night of the party and thought it was Tracy. Ms. Ellison said she had some ‘dog necklaces’ in her purse. Does that make sense to you?”

“As a matter of fact, it does. ‘Dog collar’ is probably a better description.”

“She used one of those collars to strangle Misty, and then threw her in the dumpster.”

“That’s what I had pieced together from what she said before the police officers took her away,” I said. “She wanted to take everything from Rosie, it was just hard to figure out how Misty fit into that.”

“We’ve also charged Marta Ellison with the attempted murder of Rosie Lopez. In Ms. Ellison’s confession, she said she showed Ms. Lopez an advertisement for a property for lease in Seattle, and that Ms. Lopez had beaten her to it, by renting the property the same day,” the detective explained.

“Rosie stole what Marta desperately wanted,” I said. It was hard for me to believe that Marta, or anyone, would kill because of a piece of property.

“Precisely,” the detective said. “Oh, and you didn’t hear any of this from me, right?”

“No, Detective Grant, you didn’t tell me a thing.”

“
Oh, and you can call me Zachary.”

I was on a
first-name basis with the stern detective? This was an interesting development.

“And you can call me Jax.”

We were quiet for a moment. And then the moment grew into an awkward silence.

“Okay, Jax, well, I should be going.”

“Thanks for calling, Zach.”

“Zachary, never Zach,” he corrected.

The detective, even when trying to be nice, was a little prickly around the edges.

“Maybe we’ll run into each other again someday.”

“I hope so,” said the detective, and then hung up.

I hope so?

I tipped-toed barefoot out to the curb to get the newspaper. Since it had been raining all night, and I didn’t want to get my slippers wet, I’d left them inside. This made sense to me, but I can’t really explain why.

I flopped down on the couch
, and Gumdrop curled up next to me, kneading his paws into my thigh.

“
Ouch!” I said as I removed Gumdrop’s sharp claws from my PJ bottoms.

I found the article in
the
Arts and Leisure
section. The article was, in a word: Wonderful. Allen had done a terrific job explaining how glass beads were made, and about the difference between artisan-made beads and those made in China that are churned out by the thousands. The article had great things to say about me, and my work, and the images Allen had chosen were brilliant. I couldn’t believe it. I figured I’d blown it, after having accused him of stealing beads and watching him march out of my house.

My cell phone rang. It was Allen. I answered, not knowing what else to do. I suppose I could have let the call go to voicemail, but I was curious to talk with him.

“Jax, it’s Allen.”

“
Yes, Allen, I saw it was you calling.” I was trying to stay calm, cool, and collected. The last time I’d seen him, he was making a fast escape from my house after I’d confiscated some beads from him.

“
I have something for you. Can I stop by?”

“
Sure. Give me about thirty minutes?” I needed to get out of my jammies and either fluff up or glue down my hair. I was pretty confused about Allen at this point. He’d written a great article about me. It made it difficult to be mad at him, and hard to believe he was angry with me. I was confused, but I figured I’d keep an open mind and see what happened.

Allen
arrived a half hour later, and Stanley and I greeted him at the door. Gumdrop was sitting on the kitchen counter, a place he’d discovered where he could be safe from Stanley. Of course, he also hoped he could score some catnip from time to time by sitting there.

“
Hi,” Allen said, grinning when I opened the door. He seemed to be really happy with himself. He looked down at his dripping boots. “Let me take these off, so I don’t get your floor all wet.”

“Good idea.”
I was playing it cool.

“
Can we go out to your studio? I want to show you something, and I think it would be best where the light is better.” It was true, the studio had terrific light, with huge windows on the side and at the back.

When we got into
the studio, he pulled out two small packages from his bag. “The first one is for you,” he said, gently placing a fiery red box in my hands.

My coolness was fading. It was hard to be mad at someone
who was giving me presents. “Should I open it?”

“
Yes! Of course!” he said, eager to see my reaction to what he’d brought.

I removed the silky burgundy ribbon and pulled off the lid. Inside was a beautiful bracelet, made of my beads.

“But, I don’t understand, I took these away from you—you stole them.”

“
I didn’t steal them, I took them so I could keep them safe. I found your bracelet broken on the balcony—I think it must’ve broken while you were struggling to help Rosie.” Allen was trying to hard to be sweet, to explain that he meant well. It would’ve been better for him to have given this crucial evidence to Detective Grant, or at least explained his plan to put the jewelry back together. Then again, if the detective had analyzed the fingerprints on the beads, he would have be accusing me of strangling Rosie, because my fingerprints were all over those beads.

If I took it to its ludicrous extreme,
I could say that because the beads were missing, the detective didn’t take me into custody. By not being in custody, I was able to discover not only Misty’s murderer, but who had tried to kill Rosie, as well.

“
But how’d you get them back after I confiscated them from you?”

“
Oh, easy. Marta. She’s one tricky woman. I had her sneak them back out of the house.” Yes, I thought, she was tricky in many ways.

I recalled asking her where the baggy of beads that I’d lost were, and she never had answered the question. Instead, she’d distracted me by giving me a glass basset hound.

“Don’t be mad, okay? I was trying to be nice,” he said, earnestly.

“
But how’d you know how to string them?” I asked. I put on the bracelet. It was perfect.

“
I watched one of the demos this weekend, of course. It was supposed to be a weekend of education, right? Well, I learned how to string a bracelet and a necklace.” Allen was proud of himself. What a great guy. I could definitely feel my coolness melt away.

“
And this one,” Allen said, opening the larger black velvet box tied with a red ribbon, “is for Rosie.”

“
Oh, Allen, it’s magnificent, you put it back together exactly how it was before.” It was Rosie’s special collection necklace, with the different beadmakers’ beads flowing together in one long strand.

“
I hope you don’t mind, but I put one of your beads in Rosie’s necklace, too. You have one less in your bracelet than you had before. But I thought she’d like to have one of your beads since you saved her life.”

“
I don’t mind at all.” I was touched. How sweet of him. I reached out to hug him, and he’d decided he wanted more than a hug. He wrapped his arms around me, and gave me a kiss. A really nice kiss. Wow.

W
e heard Stanley hacking and coughing, and trotting toward us. When Stanley got to the studio door he dropped one of Allen’s beautiful leather boots, now covered in dog spit and teeth marks, on the ground at our feet. And then he coughed up a piece of boot leather that landed on the top of Allen’s foot.

Immediately, Allen
’s mood changed. The sweetness was gone.

“Goddamn it!” Allen
yelled. Stanley turned and ran down the hall, careening off the walls.

Allen picked up the slobbery boot and headed back down the hall
, cursing the whole way to the door.

“
Where are you going? Look, I’m sure Val will pay for your boots, or I can. Wait!” I said, following after him.

“
You know, Jax, you seem like a really great person. But, I’ve got to say, this situation is crazy. Dogs eating my boots, your psycho cat attacking me, you accusing me of stealing—this place is a loony bin!”

He
stood at the front door looking pathetic, holding one boot in his hand. The other boot was nowhere to be found. Stanley probably had taken it off to a secret lair to chew on later.

“
I love my life, every single crazy bit of it,” I said, opening the door wide. “If you can’t have a sense of humor when things go wrong, then you shouldn’t be here.”

“
But I…” he gestured with the boot in his hand, frantically looking around for any sign of his missing footwear.

“
Out.”

H
e left, carrying one boot as he walked gingerly down the front path in his stocking feet. In the rain. Poor man. Bad man. At least I’d figured it out sooner, rather than later.

I found Stanley back in
the guest room with his head on top of Allen’s other boot. I reached down and gave Stanley’s head a good scratch. “Good boy,” I said. His big tail gave a few good thumps on the floor in appreciation.

I needed to get over to Aztec Beads as soon as possible. I had Rosie
’s fabulous necklace, and I knew she would be happy to see it again.

I hopped into
the Ladybug and headed over to Aztec Beads.

Rosie was
standing at the front counter when I came in the door.

“
I want you to have this,” I said, handing her the elegant black box.

“
Oh, Jax, what is it?”

“
Open it and see,” I said, urging her on.

She opened the box and was silent for a moment.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said finally. “It’s perfect. I never thought I’d see these beads again. I figured they were gone forever.”

“
I didn’t do it. Allen did,” I said, feeling like I should confess that I hadn’t put the necklace back together. “He learned how to string beads this weekend.”

“T
hat’s nice. I’ll have to thank him next time I see him.” It might be a long time before we see him again, given his exit from my house a little while ago.

“
And look,” I said, “he fixed my bracelet too.”

“S
uch a quick learner, and a nice guy too.”

“L
et’s just stop at ‘quick learner.’”

Rosie looked at me now, her expression softer than I’d ever seen it.

“Jax, thank you for helping me. I know I’ve not always been the easiest person to be around.” Understatement of the century. “I’m going to try and relax and not be so bossy, and I going to trust Tracy to take on more responsibility here at the store. I don’t want to destroy my family, or my business.”

I had a few dozen questions for Rosie, about Benny (her grandson?) and Rudy (her husband?), but those questions could wait.

I went over to Tessa’s and brought Stanley along. I figured Joey could give Stanley a good run around the backyard. The poor dog only had Marta his whole life. He seemed to enjoy playing catch with Joey, and Benny, who was over for a play date.

“
So, it turns out Marta confessed to killing Misty, and trying to murder Rosie,” I said to Tessa, sipping my coffee. We were sitting out on her back porch while the sun streamed down on us through the big pine trees in the yard.

“
Marta had her perfect dream—to live in the apartment upstairs and run her pet shop, sell her dog necklaces, have a grooming area where the gallery is now. And live happily ever after.