Snuffed Out (Book 2 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) (23 page)

I spotted the braided candle Mrs. Jorgenson
had given me and decided to light it for my companionship. The
braided wicks, overdipped a few times to make them one piece, lit
readily as the candle began to burn.

By the time the pasta was ready and the
sauce heated, the three candles had burned enough to separate
slightly before rejoining. What a wonderful gift from my star
student. The pasta was good, though the sauce was a little sweet
for my taste. I blew the braided candle out, then curled up on the
couch to finish my book. For once, I was able to spend a quiet
evening alone at River’s Edge.

I was in dire need of it, even if it did
turn out to be the calm before the storm.

Chapter 17

I need to speak with you,” I said the next
morning as I saw Heather going into her shop. I’d been watching out
for her since I’d come down, the note weighing heavily on my
mind.

“
What’s up?” she asked as
she walked in ahead of me.

I followed her, then said, “Do you happen to
know anything about this?”

She took the note from me and read it, then
shoved it back at me. “It looks like Sanora didn’t take too kindly
to your interference yesterday.”

“
So you didn’t write
this?”

“
You’ve got to be kidding
me. How long have we known each other, Harrison? If I felt this
way, do you honestly think I’d write you a note?”

“
Of course not,” I said.
“Not if I was around to yell at,” I added with a grin.

“
Exactly. Go talk to
Sanora.”

The potter was outside in front of her shop
displaying some small pieces on a table.

“
Aren’t you afraid somebody
will steal these pieces?” I asked.  

“
From my bargain table?
They’re welcome to them, if they’re that desperate. I put my culls
out here, marked down of course, then if they like what they see,
it brings them inside. You should try it with some of your
candles.”

“
It sounds like a good
idea,” I admitted.

“
So is that why you’re here,
looking for retailing tips?”

I shook my head. “It’s about this.”

She didn’t even touch it, but read it in my
hands. “My goodness, you certainly made Heather mad yesterday. You
should talk to her about it. Look how hard she wrote the letters.
The paper’s even torn in a place or two.”

“
So you didn’t write it
either, then.”

She frowned. “Of course not. I’m an adult,
Harrison. If I have a problem with you, you won’t find out about it
from a note, believe me.”

“
Heather denies writing it,
too. So if you didn’t write it, and she didn’t, who
did?”

Sanora said jokingly, “Who else have you
offended lately? For a candlemaker, you certainly do cultivate
trouble, don’t you?”

“
More than I ever imagined,”
I said as I excused myself and headed back to At Wick’s End. If
Sanora and Heather were both telling the truth, then I had offended
someone else with my meddling. Could one of the other tenants have
resented my inquiries the day before? Or was this about something
else entirely? If it involved Aaron’s murder, then I’d struck
closer to home than I’d realized. If I only knew which arrow had
hit its mark.

In the meantime, I decided to take Markum’s
advice a little more seriously than I had up to then. It was time
to start watching my back.

I found Cragg in his office after my lunch
break and decided to show him the note as well.

“
And you think I wrote
this,” he said after examining it.

“
I don’t think anything. I’m
just asking.”

“
If I ever decide to write
you, it will be in the body of a lawsuit,” the attorney
said.

There wasn’t much room for doubt in that,
either.

I went through the rest of the day at the
shop, but Eve would have probably been better off if I had called
in sick. I couldn’t get the warning out of my mind, wondering what
it meant.

She said, “Harrison, I need your key to the
back door. Mine is at home.”

“
Sorry, what was that,
Eve?”

She shook her head. “Honestly, what world
are you in? Let me borrow your key to the back, I need to get to
the dumpster.”

I fished into my pockets and pulled out my
keys, bringing out the crystal piece Sanora had found in her shop
along with them.

“
That’s pretty,” Eve said,
spying it. “What is it?”

“
I’m not quite sure,” I said
as I handed her the keys.

Eve said, “Can I trust you to wait on our
customers while I’m throwing out those boxes?”

“
I’m fine.”

A customer came in while Eve was throwing
out the trash, and I found myself debating the merits of stearins
versus releases with him by the time she came back. The rest of the
day passed quickly enough, though I was no closer to the truth than
I had been earlier. At least I’d sold a fair amount of supplies and
candles, enough to make my nut for the day, at any rate. I was
going to have to leave the detecting to Sheriff Morton and stick to
what I knew.

Payday was the next day, and I’d managed to
spend my last check completely, even given my free rent and
utilities. It was sandwiches tonight, but I promised myself steak
the next night.

Though the meal wasn’t all that formal, I
lit the braided candle again and watched it burn as I ate. There
was something about the way the lights brightened when the wicks
burned together, then lessened as they separated. I felt in my
pocket for the piece of quartz and held it up to the candlelight.
Light danced through the facets, throwing off a glow that
intensified the candle’s output.

Suddenly I knew where the piece had come
from. And unless I missed my guess, I had a good idea who had
dropped it in Aaron’s shop. Following the logic of all I’d seen and
heard, that led me to the murderer. I thought about confronting the
killer, but decided to call the sheriff instead. It was his job,
after all, to take the risks.

He was singularly unimpressed with my
detective work. “Harrison, I’ve got a fever and a case of the
trots. I’m not getting dressed and driving all the way over there
at night based on one of your wild theories.”

“
Will you at least come by
in the morning?”

“
We’ll see,” he said and
hung up.

I wasn’t about to wait until morning,
though. While the killer was away, I was going to do a little
detective work on my own. Maybe if I had more hard evidence by
morning, Morton would be more inclined to listen to me.

I pulled the key I needed off Pearly’s board
in the maintenance room, glad I’d insisted on having the key to
that area myself. What I was doing was probably breaking and
entering, but if I happened to be caught in the act of snooping, I
was all ready with my story. I was going to claim that I’d smelled
something burning and had investigated before calling the fire
department.

I wasn’t eager to be caught, though. Before
I entered the shop in question, I went by the candleshop and
grabbed a taper. Overhead lights would surely give me away, and
even a flashlight could be suspect, but I was betting that a
shielded candle wouldn’t be that easily seen from the outside.

I unlocked the door, glad my tenant didn’t
have an alarm system, and started exploring the shop. I was about
to give up after an hour’s search, failing to match the piece in my
pocket with anything there.

Then I stumbled across its mates in the
workshop in back. Holding the piece of crystal up to the desk lamp,
I knew in an instant it was a perfect match.

Then the overhead lights came on, nearly
blinding me with their intensity.

“
Harrison, what are you
doing stumbling around in here in the dark?”

“
I thought I smelled
something,” I said.

“
If that were true, you
would have turned on the lights.” A look of quiet desperation
softened the hard edges of her face. “You know, don’t
you?”

“
I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

She pulled a gun from her purse almost
reluctantly, and I could see the scrolls and curlicues on the
barrel.

Tick said, “It’s an antique, like everything
else in my shop, but let me assure you, it works perfectly.”

The candle in my hand started to shake as I
saw Tick’s finger start to tighten on the trigger.

“
Can I at least know why?” I
asked, hoping to buy a little time.

“
Come now, there won’t be
any rescuers tonight, Harrison. You ask why? Aaron destroyed my
heart. He honestly thought he could cast me away like some bauble
he grew tired of playing with.”

“
But why go after Sanora?
What did she do to you?”

“
Are you talking about the
hit and run? Happenstance, Harrison, purely an accident, and one I
had nothing to do with. How delightful it would have been if it had
happened though. I’m not a fan of Sanora’s. She and Aaron talked
about everything, or so she told me. However, my name somehow never
came up, if Sanora is to be believed. I was home free until you
started nosing around.”

“
Why write that note? I
don’t understand
that.”                                

She said, “That was foolish of me. I’m not
prone to acting rash, but you visited my shop, and you suddenly
seemed to take an interest in me, so I panicked.”

“
I was just trying to get to
know you better,” I said.

“
Oh, Harrison, I’m truly
sorry about this,” she said as her finger started to tighten on the
trigger.

Behind her, we both heard the sneeze at the
same time. Her gun went from me to the sheriff.

“
Drop it,” Morton said.
Without taking his eyes of her, he said, “I knew you couldn’t leave
it alone, Harrison.” He said to her, “Give up.”

“
I hardly think so,” Tick
said. “I’ll have to do some staging, but I think I can make this
work. You shot Harrison thinking him a prowler, and he shot you
thinking the same.”

“
It’s not going to work out
that way,” Morton said.

“
Oh, I think it
is.”

I didn’t want anyone shooting anyone else. I
had an idea. Tick had told me once of her fear of fire, and I still
had a lit candle in my hand. I threw it at her, hoping that she
wouldn’t squeeze off a shot by accident, and was rewarded with a
direct strike of flames in the mass of her hair. It caught fire
from the hairspray and she dropped the gun as she beat out the fire
with her hands. I grabbed a soda from her workbench and poured the
remnants out on her head, effectively quenching the fire. After we
were certain it was out, Morton cuffed her and led her away.

“
Can you come down to the
police station?” Morton , asked after he blew his nose. “I need to
interview you.”

“
I’m right behind you,” I
said.

Tick never said another word as he led her
away.

The next day, I made a sign
that said,
closed for good
and put it in Tick’s window. Millie saw me doing
it and said, “I heard what happened. I can’t imagine all that
happening right under our noses.”

I said, “You never know about people, do
you?”

“
Poor Aaron,” she said. “He
wasn’t a prince, not by any means, but he deserved better than he
got.”

“
He crossed the wrong woman,
there’s no doubt about that,” I said.

Sanora and Heather approached together, and
it looked like the two of them were starting to patch up their
differences.

“
Harrison,” Sanora said,
“Thank you.”

“
Are you two friends now?” I
asked.

“
Let’s just say we’re making
an effort to leave the past where it belongs,” Heather said. “After
all, we both loved the same man at one time in our lives, even if
he wasn’t perfect.”

“
It’s a start,” Sanora said.
“What’s going to happen to the shop?”

I groaned and said, “It looks like I’m going
to have to find another tenant.”

Millie said, “I’ve got a friend in Hickory
who would be perfect for us. As a matter of fact, I’m going to go
call her right now. Why don’t you all join me at The Crocked Pot?
Coffee and doughnuts are on me.”

“
Why not?” Sanora said as
Heather nodded her agreement.

“
I’ll be there in a second,”
I said as I bolted Tick’s door shut.

I went back to the candleshop and finished
my display in the window first. It featured one of Mrs. Jorgenson’s
fanciest four-taper braids in the center of it, and the steps to
making it all around.

It was the least I could do, since her
candle had helped show me the way. Four lives had touched at
different times; Aaron’s, Heather’s, Sanora’s, and Tick’s; burning
separately, together, and then all apart again as time passed. And
now one of the tapers had been extinguished forever.

Candlemaking Tips and Fun with Dipped
Candles

Dipped candles, sometimes called tapers, can
be great fun, and once you’ve mastered the basic technique there
are lots of variations to experiment with. After your melted wax
reaches the proper temperature, the layers build up on your wick at
a satisfying pace; but be careful, that wax is hot! Each dip of the
wick builds another layer on the growing candle, and before you
know it, you’ve made your very own taper. You can add scents and
dyes to your wax, and make lots of different sizes, too. Sometimes
I like to make small tapers the size of birthday candles for
fun.