“Sure, I’m fine,” I said. It was cramped in the back seat of the Fiat, which was more of a two-person car. It wasn’t that there was a small amount of backseat legroom; there was no legroom at all. As Tessa drove, I kept my knees pulled up toward my chest, alternating with stretching my legs across the seat until they started to cramp. Neither of these positions were comfortable for a middle-aged—pre-middle-aged, that is—woman for longer than a few minutes
We arrived home late that night after a long journey to the San Francisco International Airport, a cramped Alaska Airlines flight to Seattle, and a thirty-minute drive to my house. It felt like an eternity since we’d left to find Dario. I was exhausted. I didn’t have a place for him to sleep, and that was going to be a bit of a problem. If I sent him over to Val’s, we might never get him away from her, although it sounded like her mystery guest might be keeping her busy. Tonight, I wished I had a cute little guest room in my attic. Dario was far too tall to fit onto my velvet sofa in the living room, which meant I’d be sleeping there, while I gave up my own bed to him.
I pulled out some extra blankets from the linen closet, and headed toward the sofa.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take the sofa?” Tessa asked when she met me in the hall.
“No, it’s okay. It won’t be for long. You’re all settled in the Bead Lair, so you should stay. There’s no sense in you moving,” I said.
“I am sorry to be taking your room. Thank you for your kind hospitality,” Dario said.
“Listen, both of you, I’m fine. It’s really no big deal,” I said. After all, he had lost his brother. He needed all the comfort he could get, and that meant a room of his own—my room, and my cozy bed.
SIXTEEN
The next morning I woke up and rolled over, nearly falling off the sofa. Dario was moving silently around the kitchen making coffee and scrambling eggs. Two pieces of toast popped out of the toaster.
He glanced over and saw me looking at him.
“Good morning, Jax. Are you ready for some coffee?” he asked. He waited for my nod and handed me a cup.
“Thanks,” I said. What a gem. Tessa made an interesting choice by marrying Craig instead of this sexy Italian man. Craig was a terrific guy, but more cuddly than sexy. My friend followed her heart, and I understood that, even if her parents and grandparents hadn’t.
Gumdrop was purring and rubbing up against Dario’s legs while he moved around the kitchen. Usually Gummie didn’t like the men I brought home, although he had warmed up to Zachary when he came over on Valentine’s Day a few weeks ago.
Tessa shuffled out a little later.
“And for you, dear Tessa,” Dario said, handing her a cup of coffee with a flourish and a smile. She smiled, gave him a hug, and curled up in the paisley chair.
I called Abby.
“You are not going to believe who is standing here next to me,” I said.
“I hope it’s Dez, because he’s still missing, and if I don’t find him soon, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Dario de Luca.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Tessa and I went to San Francisco to tell him the news about his brother. We convinced him to come back with us. And guess what? He said he can step in and teach the class, now that Marco is, you know...no longer able to.”
Tessa grabbed the phone from me.
“Listen, Abby, I’ve known Dario for a very long time. He is at least as good as Marco ever was at creating murrine. He’s here, and he’s going to teach the class. Okay?”
I grabbed the phone back.
“You find the students, and we’ll bring the teacher.”
“I guess we’ll have to see if anyone complains. Better than canceling class, that’s for sure. Good work, both of you. I owe you one, hell, I owe you ten! I’ll call the students and tell them we’ll start back up today.”
“Great! We’ll be out there with Dario in another hour or so.”
While Dario was a terrific guy when making breakfast, he turned out to be a wreck when it came to getting ready to leave. Tessa was waiting impatiently with me as I sat on the sofa in my pajamas, nursing an almost cold cup of coffee, while he used my bedroom to get ready.
“I can’t even get to my clothes. They’re all trapped in my room with Dario,” I told Tessa. We sat for a few more minutes, and then I’d had enough.
“Are you about finished in there?” I asked, knocking on the bedroom door. “I need to get ready to go.”
“I need one more moment,” he said.
I stomped back out to the living room. “He needs one more moment. I’m hoping his moments and minutes are the same thing.”
When Dario finally appeared, he looked fine. Why it had taken him thirty minutes to look that way, I had no idea. It took me five minutes to get dressed and I was back on the sofa with Tessa. After waiting for him again while he finished getting ready in the bathroom, we finally left. It was a good thing Tessa was so petite. She fit in the Ladybug’s cramped back seat with no problem. The rain was coming down steadily again, and the car’s wipers sloshed the water off the windshield at the fastest speed possible as I drove toward Carthage. When we arrived at the studio, we ran through the parking lot in the rain to the warm studio. I hoped when we got inside we’d find a group of students and not just an empty hot shop.
• • •
“Everyone, this is Dario de Luca. He’s Marco’s brother, and he helped Marco develop the murrine techniques you’ll be learning,” Tessa said, trying her best to make sure everyone knew Dario was talented enough to teach the class. “I think you’ll be able to learn the skills you need, and he’s a great guy. Like his brother, Dario is an expert glassblower. These days he owns a chic destination winery, glass gallery, and restaurant called Vino e Vetro in Napa Valley, California.”
“We are all so grateful Dario is here, thanks to Tessa and Jax. I’m happy we can carry on with class, even in light of this horrendous tragedy. We want our students to be happy,” Abby added. “So now, I’ll turn things over to Dario.”
“Ciao. Hello. Nice to meet you,” Dario said, addressing the class. Hearing the word ciao made me think of the holey red T-shirt with the word Ciao printed on its front in fancy script letters that Marco had worn the night he died. “I am here because I know my brother would have wanted me to continue to teach you his—our—techniques. I will not let you down. Now, I will start with a demonstration.”
We watched as Dario pulled out bags of slices of patterned glass canes from his brother’s toolbox. One bag contained bullseye designs, similar to what Marco had demonstrated on the first night of class, one was full of flower designs, and another bag was full of slices with letters on them.
“We have several types of murrine to choose from,” Dario said, showing us a handful of the pea-sized circular slices.
“What are the letters for?” I asked.
“Oh, you can lay out the letters and pick them up on the glass, like any type of murrine. I use them to add my initials. It’s my way of adding a signature to a piece. But for this demonstration, I’ll be using the traditional millefiori designs.”
“Do I have an assistant?”
Sam stepped forward and shook Dario’s hand. “I’m Sam, the head glassblower here. If you need anything, let me know.”
“Sure. Sam. We have met, no?” Dario asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. Dario handed a bag of flower-patterned glass slices to Sam. “Can you preheat these?” While Sam went to the kiln and set up the murrine, Dario looked at his students.
“Does anyone want to get me a big gather of glass from the furnace on a blowpipe?”
Katia raised her hand, and headed to the furnace, and Vance opened the door for her. She gathered some hot glass from the furnace on the end of a pipe and brought it to Dario, who was sitting at the glassblower’s bench, ready to m
ake this shapeless blob of glass into something magnificent. Dario worked quietly, occasionally telling students what he was doing. He started by blowing into the blowpipe, and then capping its mouthpiece with his thumb. A bubble formed in the center of the molten glass sphere on the end of the pipe. Dario picked up a moist piece of newspaper, and holding it in the palm of his hand, cupped the paper around the hot glass while rotating the glass on the blowpipe. Steam rose from the paper as he skillfully formed the glass into a perfect ball.
Katia stepped away when Sam returned to help Dario. He opened the furnace’s door each time Dario needed to add glass. The men repeated the process of adding and shaping the glass a few times, with Dario blowing into the tip of the blowpipe to expand the bubble and use the wet newspaper to shape the piece after each addition of glass.
“Are you ready with the murrine?” Dario asked Sam. Sam went to the kiln, the same one we used to cook our pizza on the first night of class. He pulled on a pair of Kevlar gloves, opened the kiln, and pulled out a metal tray covered in an array of murrine. After closing the kiln, Sam brought the tray of hot murrine to the marver and set it down. “We’ve preheated these slices so when I add them to the vase, they won’t break. If they are cold, they might crack.”
It was the same with beadmaking. I had to be careful when introducing cold glass into my torch because it could crack from thermal shock, the process of heating up or cooling down too quickly. All of the glass shards in the bottom of the crack-off bucket were evidence of thermal shock, caused by hot glass from the furnace dripping into the cold water, and breaking into a million tiny pieces.
Dario heated the piece in the glory hole, then turned and rolled it across the tray of murrine. As he rolled, the murrine stuck to the glass bubble. After he completed the rotation, the entire piece was covered in hundreds of miniature flowers. It was absolutely magical! Dario continued to shape the vessel until it was a perfect gallon-jug-sized cylinder on the end of the blowpipe. The piece was transferred to a punty so Dario could do some final shaping and then placed in a kiln to cool.
We all applauded as the kiln door was shut. Dario hadn’t lost his skills as a glassblower.
“Thank you very much,” he said, looking proud, and relieved, that he’d succeeded. “Now, let’s work on making canes for beads so you can make miniature versions of the vase.”
• • •
As I glanced out the window into the utility yard, I noticed a team of uniformed men walking through the field. A CSI team was scouring the area around the studio and the river. The men waved their metal detectors back and forth across the weeds, as they covered every inch of the slope. I wanted to see what they were doing, but felt I needed to buckle down and participate in class.
Each of us used a unique color combination so we knew whose murrine were whose. By the end of the day, we all had plenty to use to make beads. Except for me. I’d been unable to gather the courage to pull glass from the furnace, even with Dario’s support. He promised me that even if I didn’t make any murrine myself, I’d be able to use some of his to make beads. That was reassuring, but I still was feeling low about being such a complete failure at glassblowing.
Late in the afternoon, the sheriff showed up to talk with the class. Abby gathered us into a circle in the hot shop, and Sheriff Poole stood in the center to address us.
“As you know, we have a homicide on our hands. Well, not on our actual hands, but we’ve had a murder, and we officially call that a homicide. What I’m going to do, just to save time, is I’m going to ask you all some questions, and you’re going to answer them, got it?”
We all nodded, and the sheriff did an awkward 360-degree twist to make sure we all agreed.
“Here’s what I want to know. Where were each of you the night Marco de Luca died and who were you with?”
“We were in our trailer stringing necklaces,” Sara and Lara said in unison.
“Tessa and I were together in my car,” I said, deciding not to raise his ire by reminding him that he already knew our whereabouts that night.
“I was in my tent. Sorry, no one can vouch for me,” Vance said.
“I walked with Katia down to the motel. We were together until we got to our rooms. I was alone after that, but don’t know about her.” Duke said, nodding his head toward Katia, who quietly added that she, too, was alone that night.
“Did anyone see anything unusual the night of the murder?” the sheriff asked.
“I saw a car speed away from the studio, but I can’t tell you more than that. It was dark and rainy, and I didn’t have my glasses on,” Vance said.
I stood quietly and said nothing. It was likely the car Vance had seen was mine. I was fairly certain the figure we had seen thrashing around in the bushes next to the studio was Vance. When Vance approached us at the riverside wrapped in his tarp the day we found Marco’s body, he looked a lot like the cloaked figured we’d seen the first night. I decided to keep quiet, and hoped Tessa would, as well. I didn’t want the sheriff to decide Tessa and I were suspects, and I didn’t want him to consider Vance to be one either. I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain he wasn’t the killer, since he had been alone during the moments before Tessa saw Marco dead in the studio. Since Vance was one of the sweetest men I’d ever met, it was hard to imagine he was a killer. On the other hand, Vance would have been strong enough to drag Marco into the river that night to get rid of the body, with no one but the Twins nearby as witnesses. But what would have been his motive?
“As you may know, the victim was stabbed to death. The CSI team has located the murder weapon and I’m going to show it to you now. Perhaps one of you can identify it for me.” Sheriff Poole reached into a nylon bag at his feet and pulled out a plastic zippered evidence bag with a long kitchen knife in it.
“Does anyone recognize this knife?” he asked. I shut my eyes and evaluated my options. I knew I hadn’t killed Marco, but the sheriff didn’t know that. Slowly, I raised my hand. If I didn’t admit it was my knife, someone would tell the sheriff it belonged to me, and then I’d be in hot water, hotter water than I’d be in if I admitted it myself.
“It’s mine,” I said.
“I think you better come with me,” Sheriff Poole said, grabbing me harshly by the wrist and pulling me out the door toward his car, while the rest of the class stood aghast, silently watching the sheriff drag me away.
“Where are we going? Are you arresting me?”
“I’m taking you in for questioning,” the sheriff replied.
“Tessa! Help me!”
“I know exactly what to do,” Tessa said, as she gave me a double thumbs-up.
SEVENTEEN
The sheriff’s station was bleak with its gray walls, matching floor, and short row of cramped cells. The first cell was painted a hideous drunk tank pink. I was certain Dez had spent some time in the bubble gum colored cell. I hoped I wasn’t about to get thrown in there, too, and not only because of its bright color, which I noticed was nearly the same shade as Val’s vibrant pink sofa.
Sheriff Poole sat me down in the guest chair next to his desk. “It’s my lunchtime. I hope you don’t mind if I eat,” he said, pulling a fat sandwich out of a crumpled bag, the words Meat and Eat in bold letters across its front. He clearly didn’t believe in deconstructing his enormous sandwich before trying to eat it, as we had done. I was surprised to see he could open his mouth wide enough to take a bite, but maybe not that surprised. I sat there looking at him, suddenly hungry. I hadn’t eaten since the breakfast Dario made this morning, but it was clear the sheriff wasn’t going to share. I tried hard not to look as pathetic as Gumdrop sometimes does when I’m eating and he’s hungry, of course, he’s always hungry, but never for the crunchies in his bowl.
“Why am I here?”
“Because the knife, the murder weapon, belongs to you.”
“I don’t deny it’s my knife. I used
it to cut Tessa’s birthday cake,” I said.
“The weapon was here the night of the murder.”
“There were all sorts of sharp objects around the night of the murder.”
“The knife had your fingerprints all over it.”
“Because it’s my knife!” I said, slamming my hand down on the desk.
“It just so happens the DNA from that EYE-talian guy is on the blade.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m the one asking the questions right now. Let’s get down to business. Why don’t you tell me what happened on Friday night,” the sheriff said, clicking his pen and starting to write.
“I saw you on Friday night, remember? I was at the car repair shop with Tessa. We called 911! How could we be the murderers?”
“You shut your mouth and keep it shut. Now, tell me about what led you to kill Marco de Luca.”
I said nothing.
“Well? Well?”
“You told me to shut my mouth. I didn’t kill Marco de Luca.”
“Oh, so your friend Tessa, maybe she’s the culprit? She was out of your sight before she discovered the victim.”
“She was never out of my sight and even if she was, she was gone for only a second before returning, not long enough to have killed anyone. She is far too petite to have overpowered a man of his size and strength.”
“I think you should fess up and then we can process your paperwork. Maybe I need to put you in a cell for a little while. Let you think about what you’ve done. Then maybe you’ll be ready to tell me what happened.” Sheriff Poole took another bite of sandwich. A chunk of onion fell onto the desk. He scooped it up and pushed it into his mouth.
“I’ve got nothing to confess…” I closed my eyes, and tried to pull myself together.
“I know you’re feeling guilty. Are you gonna cry? Terrible business, killing someone like you did.”
I opened my eyes and glared at the piggish sheriff.
“Am I under arrest? Because if I’m not, I’d like to leave,” I said.
Off the Beadin' Path, Glass Bead Mystery Series, Book 3 Page 12