A Murderous Glaze Read online

  I started to unlock the front door when I realized it was already unlocked. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and walked inside. “Hello? Is anyone here?” I searched for a weapon—anything I could use against an intruder—but there was nothing within reach except a forgotten umbrella in the stand by the door. It was better than nothing, I supposed, so I grabbed it.

  “Hello?” I called again. What was I doing? Someone had been murdered in my shop last night, and here I was, armed only with an umbrella, preparing to confront a prowler. What an idiot I could be sometimes. I started to back out of the shop so I could call the sheriff when a familiar face popped out of the back room.

  “Is it raining, Carolyn?”

  My assistant, David, had never looked so handsome to me in his life. Twenty years old, David was slim like his mother, but instead of brunette hair, he was blond—just like his dad—though David’s ponytail was at least twelve inches longer than Richard Atkins’s hair had ever been. The shade of David’s hair was the only thing—besides his last name—that he had inherited from his father. Hannah told me once that Richard had been mysterious and a little dangerous when they’d first met; that had been her initial attraction. She had wanted to tame the bad boy in him, to reform him, until she realized he was perfectly happy being the way he was. Still, she’d been willing to stick with him, but the day Richard found out she was pregnant with David, he left town without saying a word.

  “I asked you if it was raining,” David repeated.

  “What? No, of course not. There’s not a cloud in the sky.”

  “Then why the umbrella?”

  I’d honestly forgotten I was holding it. “Well, just because it’s not raining now doesn’t mean it won’t later.”

  I hoped that statement made more sense to him than it did to me, but I wasn’t about to admit that I’d been using it for protection.

  “I guess,” he said. “I came in early to clean up, but everything looks just like it did when I left it.”

  “You didn’t think they’d leave the body here, did you? Looking for a chalk outline, perhaps?”

  He was clearly appalled by my comment, and I realized it probably had sounded a little harsh. “Sorry, I guess I’m still a little on edge.”

  David smiled in relief. “Me, too, but I wasn’t going to be the first one to admit it. Do they have any idea who might have done it?”

  “Besides me, you mean? No, but I’m hoping our esteemed sheriff is out tracking down clues even as we speak.”

  I wasn’t ready to open the shop yet, so David and I kept the door locked and the overhead lights off. We managed well enough with the sunlight coming in through the windows. I wasn’t sure if we’d be deserted or jammed with customers today. It was hard to tell what was going to happen on a good day, and I had a feeling in my gut that this was going to be anything but one of those. I studied the laden shelves that covered the walls in the front half of the shop and checked our inventory of bisque-fired pieces, just in case we were busy today.

  Most folks don’t realize it, but to glaze a pot, it almost always takes two trips to the kiln. The first firing is the bisque stage. That hardens the clay into a porous ceramic and makes it easier to glaze in the next step. After the pieces are decorated with paints and then coated with glaze, they are fired again. The results are dramatic, going from dull, faded pieces to elegantly glazed and shiny pottery.

  At Fire at Will, we offered mugs, salad plates, full-sized dinner plates, bowls, vases, and other items for our customers to decorate. At each of the four tables in the paint-your-own section, we had brushes, stencils, and sponges, along with a selection of glazes and paints from which customers could choose. The paints were all nontoxic, so they could eat and drink out of their wares once we’d fired them a second time. There was a long table for snacks, or it could double as a buffet if someone were having a birthday party, a wedding celebration, or some other catered event. In the back space we had three pottery wheels, four kilns, a bathroom, a small couch, a tiny office, and a storage area. It was a business I’d always dreamed of owning, and though it took a great deal of hard work to keep it afloat, Fire at Will was a labor of love for me.

  As we checked our inventory levels, David asked me suddenly, “You don’t have much faith in Sheriff Hodges, do you?”

  I shook my head. “He’s hanging on to his job until he can retire with full benefits. I doubt he’d recognize a clue if it snuck up and bit him on the nose.”

  David nodded. “I thought you’d probably say that. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “That the killer will probably never be caught?” I asked.

  “Not unless we find him ourselves.”

  I frowned, then asked, “How do you know it’s a ‘he’?”

  “Hey, I believe in girl power as much as the next guy. Okay, let’s go find her, then.”

  “David, what makes you think we can solve this ourselves? I’m a pottery-shop owner and you’re my assistant. We’re qualified for raku firing, not police work.”

  “We can get help, then,” he said enthusiastically. “You’ve got lots of connections.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  He nodded. “Just hear me out. We can start with the Firing Squad. Jenna Blake is a retired judge; that means she’s got to still have friends in the legal world. Sandy Crenshaw is a reference librarian, so I doubt there’s a topic she can’t research.”

  “Enough. This is foolishness.”

  “Is it?” David asked. “Butch Hardcastle could help, too. You know he could.”

  Butch was a retired and reformed crook, a big and burly man who loved decorating porcelain figurines. “I suppose you think Martha could help, too.”

  “Are you kidding me? She knows everybody in town. I’m telling you, we can do this.”

  “All we need to do is check on the firing from last night,” I said. “I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about us solving this ourselves. Agreed?”

  “Fine,” David said reluctantly.

  I was restocking the cash-register till with money when David came back up front. I didn’t like the look on his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You turned the kilns on yesterday evening, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.” I’d had to admit to the sheriff that I hadn’t been sure, but I wasn’t about to tell David.

  “That’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing. The firing should be done by now, but the witness cones are still upright. Something must be wrong with the kilns.”

  The best way to tell if a firing is done is when premade test cones of clay droop in the heat of the kiln at the proper temperature. In theory, a perfect firing would see the cones bent over at ninety degrees, so they should have been sagging like a dowager’s chin by now. “Wonderful. That’s just what we need, another expensive repair bill.”

  “Maybe it’s just a fluke,” David said.

  “Maybe,” I agreed. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was 10 A.M., time to open for the day. Taking a deep breath, I asked David, “Are you ready?”

  “We might as well open up. I just hope we don’t get mobbed with customers looking for information about the murder.”

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but as I unlocked the door and opened it, we were greeted by nothing but a chilly breeze. I poked my head out and saw people milling up and down the walkway, though none were heading in our direction.

  “It looks like it’s going to be a quiet day,” I said as I came back in. “They might not think we’re open for business today because of what happened.” I couldn’t bring myself to say “murder.” “Let’s drag the sale table out front and see if it helps.” We had a table of discounted pottery items that had flaws of one sort or another, or had been abandoned by their owners. Usually it was a sure way to get browsers to stop by, but after two hours without a single visitor, I was beginning to wonder if I should have bothered openin
g up after all.

  I looked over and saw David smiling ruefully at me. Without waiting for him to speak, I said, “No. I’m not going to do it.”

  “What? I didn’t say a word.”

  “But I know what you’re thinking.”

  His grin didn’t waver. “Then maybe you should open up a psychic’s shop instead. Do you mind if I go ahead and take my lunch break?”

  “I think I can handle the rush on my own,” I said.

  Ten minutes after David was gone, Herman Meadows, my landlord, poked his head in the shop. “I got here as fast as I could. What happened last night, Carolyn?” Herman was in his midfifties, a bantam of a man barely managing five and a half feet tall. I wasn’t that fond of his choices of cologne, but he was a decent sort, at least to me. He apparently thought of himself as some sort of ladies man, but he’d never made a pass at me. I didn’t know whether to feel virtuous about it or be offended by his lack of attention.

  “Betty Wickline was murdered,” I said.

  “I heard that much,” he said dismissively. “Did you do it?”

  “You’re so smooth, Herman. You should be on the police force. Of course I didn’t.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “But if you did, you wouldn’t exactly confess it to me, would you?” I didn’t like the way he was grilling me, but at least he had the decency to express his doubts about my innocence to my face. That was more than I could say for some of my fellow townsfolk.

  “You’ve got a point. What else would you like to know?”

  “I’m wondering what she was doing here in the first place after hours. You didn’t let her in, did you?”

  “Don’t be foolish. I’m not sure how she got into the shop. The sheriff asked me to make a list of everyone who has keys to the place.”

  He scowled. “Did you tell him that you probably left the door unlocked yourself? It’s happened before, Carolyn. No matter how many times I’ve told you to be careful about locking up whenever you leave, sometimes you forget. I’ve jiggled your front doorknob more than once when I’m on my rounds inspecting my properties, and it’s opened to my touch without a key more times than I can count.”

  That was all the lecturing I was going to take from him. “It happened twice in the last six months. Sometimes I slip. But it was locked last night when I left. I’m certain of it.”

  “How can you be so positive? For that matter, you could have used your key this morning to unlock a door that was already open.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  I smiled at him, then said, “Because I didn’t unlock the door this morning at all. David was already here.”

  He shook his head in obvious disgust. “You should tell the sheriff about leaving the place unlocked before, Carolyn. He needs to know.”

  “I will if he asks,” I said. “Is that all? I’ve got work to do.”

  He looked around the shop’s deserted aisles. In a gentler voice, he said, “I’m sorry business is off. Don’t worry, they’ll come back. Give them some time.”

  At least he didn’t make any cracks about me meeting my rent payment. Herman wasn’t a bad guy, he just sort of focused on the bottom line. “Thanks,” I said as I started tidying up the area around the register.

  “If you need me, give me a call,” he said. “Now I’ve got to check on my other properties.” Herman owned and managed several of the shops along the brook, having inherited them from a grandfather who’d seen the great potential of converting the walkway into a tourist attraction.

  I was still tidying up the register display area when the front door chimed.

  “Oh, it’s just you,” I said as my husband walked in.

  “I can leave, if you’d like,” Bill said gruffly. How is it that men look so majestic when they age, and I just seem to look older? His hair was a lion’s mane of silver, and though he’d gained a few pounds over the years, he still might be able to fit into the suit he’d worn at our wedding, whereas I’d have to have some serious alterations—to my body or my gown—to get my wedding dress over my hips ever again.

  “Stay, you old goof.”

  He looked around the deserted shop. “Kind of quiet in here.”

  “You could hear a cricket’s thoughts,” I said.

  “Has it been like this all day?”

  “No, this is the highlight. At least you came.”

  Bill stroked his chin. “I was afraid of that. What are you going to do about it?”

  “David thinks we should solve the murder ourselves.”

  Before I had a chance to tell him I thought the idea was sheer nonsense, Bill said, “You’ll do no such thing.”

  “Is that an order?” I felt the hair on the back of my neck stiffen.

  “Call it what you want. I’m just telling you not to do it, Carolyn.”

  “Bill Emerson, I thought by now you’d have learned that you’re not in charge of me. I’ll do whatever I see fit.”

  He glared at me a second, then said, “You’re a stubborn woman, you know that, don’t you?”

  “I take that as a compliment. After all, I learned from the best.”

  He shook his head, then said, “Just be careful. Don’t do anything foolish, and don’t take any chances.”

  “Don’t you have a dresser to make?” Now that the old fool had backed me into a corner, I had no choice but to try to figure out who had murdered Betty Wickline, so I might as well get started. There was no way on earth I was going to admit to my dear husband that I’d had no intention of getting involved until he’d prodded me into it, and I surely couldn’t back down now.

  “I’ve got two of them to do, as a matter of fact. Thought I might take you to lunch,” he grumbled. “What do you say?”

  It was a sweet thought, but I wasn’t all that receptive at the moment. “I can’t. I’m busy.”

  “Doing what?” he asked.

  He had a point. I could have left the front door standing wide open and no one would have stepped inside. “I’ve got to solve this murder.”

  “Fool woman,” I heard him mutter under his breath.

  “What does that make you? You married me.”

  He startled me by hugging me close to him. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Honestly, sometimes he could be so sweet. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

  “You’d better be,” he said. “I’ve gotten used to having you around.”

  I broke from his grip and shooed him out. “Go on, I’ve got work to do.”

  After Bill was gone, I thought about how to go about investigating Betty’s murder. David would be delighted—he was a man of action at heart—but I wasn’t about to just charge into an investigation. I needed some advice.

  It was time to call in the reinforcements, and that meant the Firing Squad.

  Chapter 2

  “Thanks for coming, everyone. I really appreciate it,” I said as I addressed the members of the Firing Squad later that evening after I’d closed the shop for the night. “I need your help.”

  “Somebody you need handled?” Butch Hardcastle asked. He had the body of a lumberjack, and a pair of big, beefy hands that had seen some mayhem over the years. I was certain that the man was no stranger to violence in his past, no matter how much he professed to the world that he had reformed.

  “It’s not that kind of problem,” I said. “I need to solve Betty Wickline’s murder, or I might lose the business. We didn’t have a single customer today, and while I’ve got a bit of a financial cushion set aside for emergencies, I can’t afford many more days like the one I just had.” Another reason, one I wasn’t all that eager to share with the group, was that I wanted to solve the murder so I could show my dear husband I was perfectly capable of doing it, no matter what it took.

  “I was tied up with the kids or I would have come by this afternoon,” said Martha apologetically. You’d never know by looking at her that she had five children. When I’d been pregnant
with my first son, I’d gained twenty-five pounds that still refused my efforts to vanquish them, but Martha was as willowy as a sapling.

  Sandy Crenshaw said, “I had to work all day myself. We had six field trips visit the library and I had to give the same spiel six times in a row. It’s a wonder I can talk at all.” Sandy was a cute and curvy brunette with dazzling brown eyes and a ready smile.

  Jenna Blake said sternly, “Carolyn, I want my objections on record. You shouldn’t try to take the law into your own hands.”

  “She has to, if the sheriff isn’t going to do anything,” Butch said. For some odd reason, he and Jenna had formed a warm friendship that sometimes bordered on flirtatious, despite their divergent histories on opposite sides of the law.

  “Butch,” Jenna said with some affection, “Hodges may be getting on in years, but that doesn’t mean he’s not competent.”

  “It doesn’t mean he is, either. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Carolyn’s, and you know it.”

  “That’s good, because the way you were talking, I wasn’t sure there for a second.”

  Martha spoke up. “Carolyn, I’m sure we’d all love to help, but what can we do?”

  David piped up, “That’s why we need all of you,” then he stopped abruptly as he glanced over at me. “Sorry, this is your show.” I was amazed he’d been able to hold his tongue as long as he had. My assistant was cutting class to be at the meeting tonight, something I knew his mother would strongly disapprove of if she was ever made aware of it, but I hadn’t had the heart to tell him he couldn’t stay. After all, Fire at Will was a part of his life, too, and if it was in danger of closing, he had just as much a right to be there to defend it as anyone else.

  I nodded, then continued. “We need information about Betty Wickline before we can take any action in finding her killer. Could you all ask around, do some quiet digging, and see what you come up with? If you get anything, call me here and let me know what you find. It’s important that you each realize that I don’t want to get any of you directly involved in this in case there’s trouble later, but I need information, and you’re the best sources I’ve got.”