Off the Beadin' Path, Glass Bead Mystery Series, Book 3

by Janice Peacock

  “No, I’ve not arrested you—yet, but you’ll leave when I’m ready for you to leave. It’s a long walk back to Carthage. Besides, you bolting out of here is going to make you look mighty guilty.”

  He finished his sandwich, licked the tips of each finger, wiped his mouth, and burped. What a classy guy. The door opened behind me. I twisted around to see who it was, hoping Tessa had come to rescue me.

  Instead, I stared slack-jawed at Ryan Shaw standing in the doorway. What the heck was he doing here?

  “Hello,” Ryan glanced at the sheriff’s badge. “Sheriff Poole. I’m Ryan Shaw, Seattle P.D.” Ryan did not look my way.

  “Nice to meet ya,” the sheriff said, shaking Ryan’s hand. “You can call me Harvey. We’re pretty casual out here.”

  “And what are you doing with this young lady?” Ryan got two points for calling me a young lady.

  “Interrogating this suspect. Her fingerprints are all over the murder weapon used in the homicide of that EYE-talian man over at the glassblowing place,” the sheriff said.

  “That’s because it’s my knife! I dropped it the other night,” I said, glancing up at Ryan, who still didn’t address me directly, but instead kept his gaze leveled on the Sheriff Poole.

  “You’re aware of section RF-328 sub-section B of the King County inter-jurisdictional guidelines?” Ryan asked the sheriff.

  “Of course, I am. I’m not some sort of yokel, you know. I know the laws, even that RF-32…uh, you know the rest,” the sheriff said.

  “Then you know I have authority to take this individual for interrogation at our HQ.”

  “Well, I, of course, but, then—” Harvey sputtered.

  “I’ve got the release papers right here.” Ryan pulled a sheaf of papers from his leather notebook.

  “Fine. Take her,” Harvey said, defeated.

  Ryan returned the papers to his book, grabbed me roughly under one arm, and pulled me to a standing position.

  “You better not try to escape, miss.” He pulled me toward the door.

  Ryan had never called me miss before.

  “Oh, no, officer, I promise to stay right here by your side,” I said.

  “And Harvey, I’m sure you know you need to complete transfer form AD-794.”

  “Of course, I’ll get that done right away.”

  “What the heck is going on? Can you let go of me? You’re hurting my arm,” I said, once we were in the parking lot next to Ryan’s police car. I yanked my arm out of his grip.

  “Please, miss, you need to get in the back,” Ryan said, looking over his shoulder at Sheriff Poole peering out the window at us. He opened the back door of his cruiser, put his hand on my head and pushed me into the car, slamming the door behind me.

  Dazed, I sat in the back seat of the patrol car, which looked like a normal car except for two unique features. There were no door handles or window controls, and there was heavy-duty mesh between the front seat and the back to keep criminals like me from escaping.

  “Dammit, Ryan! What’s going on?”

  Without a word, he put the car in gear and headed down the narrow road away from the police station. Ryan found a quiet side street and pulled over. He got out of the car and opened the rear door, an unusually stern look on his face.

  “Would you like to get out of the back seat, miss?” Ryan couldn’t contain himself any longer and burst out laughing.

  “Can you please tell me what’s going on here, because I am very confused,” I said, pulling myself out of the back seat and landing a little too close to Ryan. “And stop calling me miss!”

  “I’m transferring—”

  “Yes, I know, with some complicated form,”

  “That doesn’t, in fact, exist.”

  “I saw the papers, you nearly handed them to him.”

  “Nearly. If he’d taken them, he’d have discovered that they were printouts of the parking citations I gave last week.”

  “There’s no RF dash whatever it is?”

  “No, Jax, there’s not.”

  “You! Big! Liar!” I said hitting him on the shoulder with each word. “Harvey’s going to be pissed off when he finds out you stole his prize suspect—me!”

  “I don’t think he’ll find out. We had a pretty convincing show when I jammed you into the back seat.”

  “That was one smooth rescue mission there,” I said, pulling myself up to sit on the hood of the car.

  “I couldn’t see you getting thrown in the drunk tank.” He faced me, his knees now pressed against mine. “I want to apologize for so many things, for that ticket I gave Tessa, for being out of touch since I moved here. I’ve been trying to make a good impression, working extra hours when I can, attending all the in-service training.”

  “It’s okay, I understand,” I said, although I remained a little peeved that he had given Tessa a ticket only a few days before.

  “So, what happens now? Are you going to take me into custody?”

  “No, I thought I’d kiss you.” He bent forward and lightly kissed my lips. I felt my neck flush red. I was pretty sure that was not the most attractive way to blush, but it was all I had, and given all the other ways my body betrayed me on a regular basis, it wasn’t so bad.

  “So, no custody for me, then?” I said, releasing him before things got too hot and heavy here on the hood of a Seattle P.D. sedan.

  “Why? Did you do something illegal?”

  “No! Did Tessa get ahold of you?”

  “No, but I was…”

  “You were what?”

  “Already out here,” Ryan said, a note of embarrassment in his voice.

  “We are way outside of Seattle. This can’t be part of your beat. Did you follow me?” Ryan had followed me once before, trying to keep me out of harm’s way when I was looking for a mysterious woman on the streets of Portland late one night a few months ago. “Well? Did you?”

  “I was only trying to keep you safe,” Ryan said, an earnest smile on his face—on his handsome, irresistible face. Then I recalled the ticket he gave Tessa and the time he pulled us over to apologize. I pushed him back and slid off the hood of the car.

  “We’re done here. Thanks for the rescue and all, but seriously, it really creeps me out that you’d be stalking me out here in the boondocks.”

  “Stalking is a pretty strong word, Jax.”

  “Fine. Call it what you want. I don’t like being followed. It’s like you don’t trust me to take care of myself. And I assure you—”

  “It’s only because I care,” Ryan said, grabbing me by the forearm as I turned away.

  “You want to know how you can show you care? By calling me on the phone. Send me a text, maybe with a cute little heart emoji sometime.” I yanked my arm out of his grip. “Can you please take me back to the studio?”

  Wordlessly, we both got in his car. This time, I rode in the front seat. He took me back to Old Firehouse Studio.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, as he pulled up to the studio.

  “You’re welcome. Stay out of trouble, will you?”

  “It’s not like I mean to get into trouble.”

  “Try and listen to Tessa a little more. I don’t want to rescue you again.”

  “You didn’t need to rescue me. I had things under control!” I glanced up as a dark government-issue sedan parked a few yards away. Oh, dear. It was Zachary.

  “Zachary! Wow, I—” I said as he got out of the car and headed toward me.

  “Tessa called me. She said you were in trouble and needed my help, but it looks like you got a better offer,” Zachary said.

  “No, I—he—” I said using my most eloquent words. Ryan got out of the car and came around to meet Zachary between the two sedans.

  “I happened to be on patrol, and happened to be on hand to help Jax,” Ryan said, puffing
himself up a bit to stand a little taller than Zachary. Zachary stared back at him silently and then focused on me.

  “Zachary, I didn’t ask him to come. He showed up,” I said, and then realized I was not being considerate of Ryan, who after all, had pulled off a pretty amazing rescue less than an hour ago. “He just happened to be here to help me.”

  “Happened to be here? Happened to be way out here in the sticks?” Zachary asked, incredulously. “I seriously doubt that. No Seattle officers are assigned this far off the beaten path. Are you even on duty right now, Officer Shaw?”

  “With all due respect, sir, you are not my superior officer,” Ryan said, a tinge of defensiveness in his voice.

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to find out,” Zachary replied, pulling out his phone.

  “Guys! I think we should let this go, okay? Ryan, I bet you need to get back on your patrol,” I said, although I was actually wondering, now that Zachary had brought it up, whether he was on duty. “And Zachary, I’m fine. I’m thankful Tessa called you, but I really had things under control.” Although it was not, strictly speaking, true.

  Both men glared at each other, turned, and headed silently toward their cars.

  • • •

  I found Tessa and the rest of the class in the hot shop making murrine.

  “Jax! You’re back,” Tessa said, jumping up and giving me a hug. “The sheriff let you go.”

  “I was rescued by Ryan. He sprang me from jail. I need to avoid the sheriff from now on. He thinks Ryan has taken me to Seattle to be interrogated.”

  “What? I sent Zachary to rescue you,” Tessa said.

  “I ran into him outside when Ryan dropped me off. That was awkward. Those two definitely don’t like each other.”

  “Or are jealous,” Tessa replied.

  “Either way, I’m hoping I don’t have to endure another meet-and-greet like that one.”

  In the hot shop, the Twins were stretching a hot glass cane. One stood by the furnace holding a punty while the other was nearly out of the rolling door’s opening, pulling the glass with diamond shears. I’d never seen them do anything but string necklaces and say negative and pretentious things, so I was surprised to see them being so competent. After stretching their cane and setting it down on the floor, Dario approached and nipped it up into sections with a tile cutter. He picked up a still-hot piece with tweezers and together we looked at the end of the cane so we could see the design: a skull. Of course.

  “Okay, Jax, are you ready to try?” Dario asked, nodding toward the furnace.

  “Not really.”

  “Come now, I will help you. Here is a punty. You hold it like this,” he said, placing it in my hands and guiding me toward the furnace. “Sam, can you open the door, just a crack?” Dario stood right behind me and whispered into my ear. “Okay now you take one step forward and now another. Now, you slide the punty into the furnace. Are your eyes open?”

  “No.”

  “Che casino!” he said. It was funny to hear someone use this expression other than Tessa. Somehow, I thought it was a phrase only she used. “Well then, open them!”

  I did what he said, sliding the punty into the furnace, getting a mass of glass on the end of it, and then pulling it out. A dime-sized blob of glass hung from the tip of the punty.

  “Dammit!” I said. “I honestly tried. I swear. I don’t think I’m cut out for doing this glassblowing thing.”

  “We will try again another day.”

  “I think I’m going to stick to glass beadmaking,” I said, crashing the punty into the bucket of water at my feet. The hot glass sizzled and popped off the thick metal rod, the clear rubble mixing in with some colored glass in the bottom of the bucket.

  “Ah, yes. I am looking forward to having us all make glass beads on the torches. When do we get to do that?” Dario asked Abby.

  “Oh, well, the schedule got thrown off track. I’m not sure when that’s going to happen, but we could do it tomorrow, if that works for Tessa.” Tessa had agreed to let the students use the torches at her studio during the class, since Abby and Dez’s studio didn’t have any beadmaking equipment.

  “That’s great. I’ll make sure Fremont Fire is ready for everyone,” Tessa said, then gave the students the studio’s address.

  “Well then, it is settled. Tomorrow we have a field trip to Tessa’s studio in Seattle,” Dario told the class.

  “Are you going to stay at my house again tonight?” I asked Dario.

  “No, I can’t possibly let you sleep on the sofa for another night. Abby was able to get me a room at the Cascade Corners Motel. Apparently someone checked out, so she reserved a room for me.”

  I kicked myself for not having checked for vacancies at the motel. I was sure Tessa and Vance felt the same. Vance could have gotten out of the rain, and Tessa and I could have stopped our maddening drive each day. At least I knew I could sleep in my own bed tonight.

  Katia smiled a little when she heard the news that Dario was staying at the same motel as she was. She might not have liked Marco, but she seemed smitten with Dario.

  “And who can give Dario a ride to Fremont Fire tomorrow?” Abby asked.

  “I’ll do it,” Katia said quickly, before anyone else could volunteer. I’m sure she relished the idea of spending a forty-five minute drive alone in her car with a sexy Italian glassblower.

  Violetta wandered into the hot shop from the break room. “May I come to your studio tomorrow to give a presentation about my Venetian beads?” Violetta asked Tessa. “You can invite whomever you like.”

  “Of course. Do you want some help packing up your beads?” Tessa asked.

  “Grazie. That would be very nice,” Violetta said.

  Tessa and I followed Violetta into the break room to help her pack up. She handed us stacks of plastic zippered bags and tissue, and we painstakingly wrapped each strand and put them into plastic bags, then placed them into a rolling suitcase with all the other valuable merchandise. When we were nearly done, Abby called Violetta into her office and left us alone in the break room. Tessa took one of the strands out of a bag.

  “You’re not seriously thinking of buying that, are you?”

  “No. Shhh.” Tessa said, untying the strand, removing three beads, pocketing them, retying the strand, and replacing it.

  “Did I just watch you steal some beads?” I asked in a whisper.

  “Borrow, Jax. Just borrow. I’m sure they’re Venetian, but not sure they’re old,” Tessa said. “Let’s get out of here before Violetta comes back and finds she’s a few beads short of a strand.”

  “You’re a few beads short of strand,” I said.

  “Are you saying I’m crazy?” Tessa asked.

  “Yes, but no crazier than I am.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Back at home, after our dinner of Chinese takeout, Tessa pulled Violetta’s beads from her purse and set them on the kitchen table.

  “There’s something wrong with these beads,” Tessa said.

  “You mean other than the fact that their price is astronomical?”

  “There’s something weird about them. See how they look compared to my nonna’s.” Tessa rummaged around in her purse and found her grandmother’s beads.

  “See, they’re different,” Tessa said, placing the beads side by side.

  And they did look different. The colors in Tessa’s grandmother’s beads were muted, and the shapes of the patterns were more complex than those in the beads she had taken from Violetta. One explanation was simply that the beads were made by different people who had access to different supplies and tools.

  “I don’t know enough about vintage beads to be able to tell if this set is old,” I said picking up Violetta’s beads. “But I think I know someone who can help us figure it out.”

  “Rosie?” Tessa replied.

  �
�Rosie? No. She may sell a lot of new beads, but I don’t think she knows much about old ones. We need someone who knows about antiques, not just about beads. We can also hear what he has to say about the whale carving we found in the trunk.”

  “Who?” asked Tessa.

  “Mr. Chu!”

  “You’re going to ask the crazy cat man?”

  “He may be a crazy cat man, but he’s also an antiques dealer. I think it may be a package deal along with the cats, you have to own an antiques store.”

  “We don’t have to go into his house, right? I think that would freak me out,” Tessa said. She didn’t dislike cats. She liked Gumdrop. But even I, loving cats as I much as I did, didn’t think I could set foot inside of Mr. Chu’s house without feeling a little claustrophobic—or was that cat-strophobic?

  I looked out the window toward Mr. Chu’s house across the driveway. His lights were on. Silhouettes of two cats crossed back and forth along the sill of his curtained window. Mr. Chu was awake, and I hoped he was willing to accommodate unexpected visitors at such a late hour.

  “I know this is a scary thought, but we should go see him,” I said. “Now. If these beads are fakes, they might have something to do with Marco’s death. If Mr. Chu could help us determine whether the beads were truly old, that might put us on the track of the killer. Think of it as an adventure.”

  “I know about you and your adventures. Somehow, they always end up with us in trouble,” Tessa said.

  “I don’t know how much more trouble I could get into this week. I’ve already found a dead body, been accused of murder, taken to jail…”

  “Okay, but only if we talk with him on the doorstep. I’m not going in,” Tessa said.

  As we headed through my studio, I remembered the whale carving in the trunk beneath one of my worktables. Diving under the table, I found the whale carving in the trunk and pulled it from its pouch. Tessa brought the beads from her grandmother and Violetta, and we headed out the back door. She didn’t look happy about it and I wasn’t too thrilled either, but if it could help us find Marco’s killer, it would be worth it.

  We walked across the alley and knocked on Mr. Chu’s back door. After a few minutes, he opened it a crack.