I grabbed a seat across from him. "Butch, you haven't been backsliding, have you?"
He patted my hand. "Carolyn, I appreciate your con cern, honestly, I do, but I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself."
"I know you can. I just worry about you sometimes. I can't help it, so don't ask me to stop."
"I won't," he said. "I'm here this early for a reason."
"Not just my company? I figured as much. What's up?"
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded enve lope. "I may have found something about Richard Atkins's first disappearance." He slid the envelope across the table to me. "See what you think."
Inside was a faded and yellowed newspaper article, and it broke in two as I unfolded it. "Sorry about that."
"That's all right. Read it."
Holding the pieces together, I scanned the article, then looked up. "It's about a jewelry store robbery. I remember reading about it back then." In fact, Kendra had brought up the subject when she'd first heard that Richard had returned to Maple Ridge.
"Look at the date," he said as he tapped the paper.
"Okay. It doesn't have much significance to me. I'm sorry, I must be a little slow this morning."
Butch sighed. "Think about it. You know David's birth day, don't you?"
"Of course I do. It's March eleventh."
"You know the year as well, I'll wager. Take that date, count back seven months, and what have you got? I imagine it's about the time Hannah knew she was pregnant with him."
I frowned at him. "Are you saying that the two events are related? Do you honestly believe Richard Atkins found out his wife was pregnant, then decided to go out and rob a jew elry store to celebrate? The owner was shot and wounded. It hardly seems the proper way to celebrate."
"I don't believe in coincidences, Carolyn. This has to be related."
"But how?"
"Give me some time. I'll dig into it and get back to you. But first I've got to go out of town today."
As we stood, I said, "I'm not even going to bother asking you where you're going."
He smiled. "Good. Then I won't have to lie to you. If you're in a hurry for the information, it won't hurt my feel ings if you look into this yourself."
"I've got a better idea. Why don't I ask Sandy?"
"That works for me. I'll stop by when I get back into town."
I couldn't let him go yet. I held his hands in mine, then said, "Be careful. Promise me that much."
"Yes, ma'am."
Once he was gone, I dialed Sandy's number at the li brary. Before I could tell her what I wanted her to investi gate, she said, "Carolyn, I haven't had a chance to look into that ClayDate thing since we spoke yesterday. Things have been kind of crazy around here."
"That's fine." It looked as though I was going to have to research the robbery myself.
Before I could hang up, she asked, "That was why you were calling, wasn't it?"
"No, but it can wait."
"You can't tease me like that," she said. "I'll fret about it all day."
I quickly relayed Butch's hunch to her, expecting her to dismiss it out of hand. Instead she said, "I can get back to you in half an hour."
"I thought you were busy," I said.
"I've got time for this. It's an entirely different kind of search. This is all open information. Will you be at the shop this morning?"
"Who knows? I think so, but that's no real indication, given the way my days have been going lately."
"I'll track you down, then," she said, and then hung up.
David wasn't due in for an hour yet, and though I had a hundred things I could do, I didn't want to do any of them. Was I losing my drive for running Fire at Will? No, I still loved working with clay, glaze, and paint. It was just that I had so many distractions to deal with, I couldn't enjoy my real purpose in life.
I decided to open my kilns to see how the cottages had turned out. As I unloaded them, I marveled at the simple little structures, and how much fun they were to make. Though they were all the reddish pink of bisque-fired clay, I could imagine the many variations we could make with paint and glaze. Taking one of the cottages I'd created, I sat down at one of the painting benches and lost myself in dec orating the structure. When I looked up from my work, I saw that I should have opened my door twenty minutes ear lier. I'd been so wrapped up in what I'd been doing that the time had flown past me. As I unlocked the door, I was a little disgruntled that no eager customers had brought my tardi ness to my attention.
I'd just flipped the sign on the front door when David came trotting up. "Sorry I'm late. I slept in."
"Is that good news, or bad? Did you have any luck with Annie?"
"She's thawing, but it's still kind of chilly," he admitted as he took off his jacket and hung it on a peg. "Speaking of arctic blasts, I talked to my mom this morning."
"Did you? What did she have to say for herself?"
He whistled. "I thought I was the only one in the world who could push her buttons like that, but you must have found a few I didn't even know existed. You probably should know that you're not one of her favorite people in the world right now."
"I didn't think I was," I said as I returned to my cottage. I'd suddenly lost interest in working on it, but it was nearly finished. It had been for ten minutes, but I'd been enjoying adding little details, like a black cat perched on the front stoop. The next house I did would have a three-dimensional feline on it. I had a core group of customers who would buy anything I made as long as it had a cat on it. The only catch was, it had to be unique, so I was constantly searching for more ways to add cats to my pieces. I loved them myself, but it was strictly a marketing decision. Okay, that wasn't true. They were fun to do, and I considered it a challenge making the felines fit in.
"Do you want to talk about it?" David asked as he put on his apron.
"That's the last thing I want to do," I said. "Let's finish these cottages, shall we? I want to get them fired and in the window as fast as I can."
"We're not doing production work, are we?"
"No, but if these little buildings help pay the rent, we should embrace them."
"Okay, I get it," he said. As he looked at the pieces spread out on a table by the kilns, David said, "We've got a lot of work to do."
"I think we should just glaze half of them," I said. "We can put the others out on the open shelves for our cus tomers."
"Have you thought about what you're going to charge for them?"
"Not yet," I said. "For now, just put them in the most ex pensive pricing section and we'll figure out an exact amount later."
I had my shelves of bisqueware organized, from the least expensive saucers to the fanciest jugs and teakettles. The system wasn't perfect, but it was the best I'd been able to come up with in the years I'd owned Fire at Will. Pricing the pieces I bought wholesale wasn't that difficult. But David liked to add his own work to the shelves, and Robert Owens, the potter from Travers who sometimes taught classes at the shop, often put the pieces he didn't think were quite good enough on the shelves, too. I hadn't seen him lately, because he was on some kind of research trip in Eu rope—nice work if you could get it. I seemed to be stuck in Maple Ridge. Not that I didn't love our little corner of Ver mont, but sometimes I got the itch to grab my husband, get the next flight out, and see what the world had to offer. The funny thing was, I knew if we ever actually did it, in three or four days I'd be yearning for my kilns and pottery again. It was something that drove my husband crazy, but I couldn't help myself.
I saw David holding one of the cottages he'd made. "Are you going to do that one for the window?"
"No, I thought I'd keep this one myself. You don't mind, do you?"
"Of course not. Is it going to be a gift?"
He grinned. "It might be. It depends on how well things go later, I guess."
"You could always give it to your mother."
"Or you could make one for her yourself as a peace ges ture."
&n
bsp; I looked sharply at him. "David, I thought we weren't going to talk about that."
"Hey, don't blame me. You're the one who brought her up."
I wasn't about to argue, especially since he was right. "Are we going to decorate these or not?"
"I'm right behind you."
We quickly lapsed into our old habits of conversation as we worked on our pieces side by side. Business at the shop was slow, but at least David and I were doing something productive with our time. Summer would be upon us soon enough, and we wouldn't have much opportunity to work on our own projects. Still, I was a little concerned about the lull in revenue.
When Sandy came in, I forgot all about those concerns. The look of sheer exuberance on her face could mean only one thing. She'd uncovered something she thought was sig nificant in the case.
Chapter 11
"Can we talk?" Sandy asked me, her eyes darting quickly to David.
"I won't tell, I promise," David said. "You can say what ever you want to in front of me."
"Don't be that way," I told David. "This might not con cern you. Why don't you take an early lunch? Don't worry about the mess. I'll clean it up."
"In that case, be my guest. Sandy, you can come by the shop any time." He washed up, traded his apron for his jacket, and then David was gone.
"Sorry about that," Sandy said as soon as the door closed. "I just didn't think it was right talking about his fa ther in front of him."
"So you found something else?" I asked.
"I'm not sure if there's any fire, but I'm close enough to something to smell smoke."
"Well, don't hold out on me. What is it?"
"I didn't get this on the Internet. My boss Corki gave me the scoop about what happened. She was married to one of Hodges's deputies around the time that Richard left town."
I knew Corki had gone through a pair of dud husbands before she'd found a keeper, but we hadn't been friends back then. "What did she say?"
"It's about the jewelry store robbery. The police believed two men were in on the theft, though that never made it into the papers. They never had any idea who one of them was, but they were looking hard at one of our prominent citizens as the accomplice. Harvey Jenkins opened up his first car dealership around then, and it wasn't entirely clear where he got his backing."
"Did your boss actually say the mayor of Maple Ridge is a thief?"
Sandy shook her head. "No, apparently Harvey had an alibi, but that doesn't mean he wasn't in on it. And there's something else."
"Go on," I said. For a reference librarian—someone who made her living telling people things they wanted to know—Sandy sure seemed to enjoy ratcheting up the sus pense.
"Corki's ex also interviewed Richard Atkins. They couldn't find any hard evidence against him, but not long after the robbery, he left town, so it made the police won der."
"That's what Butch thought, but I'm still not convinced."
"Here's the part where it gets worse," Sandy said. "The jewelry store owner who was shot and wounded died a few years after the robbery. They say he was never the same af ter what happened."
"How does that fit into the rest of this?"
"He was Annie Gregg's dad," Sandy said.
"That would give her a motive for killing Richard, if he had been involved and she knew it," I said.
"And if that's true, then the mayor better watch his back as well."
I tried to picture the sweet young woman I knew doing something so cold-blooded. "No," I said after a moment, "I can't believe Annie would have anything to do with what happened to Richard. She's not that kind of girl."
"What, the kind who kills to revenge her father? Face it, Carolyn, it's hard to say who would or wouldn't be capable of that, isn't it? I'm sorry I don't have more, but there was really nothing official ever filed. As far as I know, the case is still open."
"You've given me plenty to think about," I said.
"Well, I'd better get back to the library, but I wanted to tell you what I'd heard as soon as I could."
"Thanks," I said as Sandy hurried out.
Was it possible that Annie had been dating the son of the man who'd killed her father? Could that, rather than David's behavior, have spurred the break up? I found it dif ficult to imagine Annie killing anybody, but Sandy was right. Who knew what a person was capable of, given the right circumstances.
I was still mulling over what Sandy had told me when David poked his head in through the front door. "Is it safe to come back in?"
"The coast is clear," I said, trying to lighten my dire mood. "How was lunch?"
"Is was good," he said. "I called Annie and she actually agreed to have a bite with me. I think there's a glimmer of hope there somewhere."
"Hope is a wonderful thing, isn't it?" I couldn't exactly warn David that his girlfriend might be a killer, but could I just let it go? Evidently not. "You're sure you're doing the right thing with Annie, right?"
"What do you mean, Carolyn?"
I really was out of line, especially if Sandy was wrong about Annie's actions. Whatever happened to being inno cent until proven guilty? "Don't listen to me. I'm just an old poop sometimes."
He shrugged, dismissing it. "Are you ready to do some more decorating?"
"What I'm ready for is my lunch, young man. Watch the shop. I'll see you soon." I grabbed my coat and got out of there. Until I was sure about Annie, I had to watch what I said around David. I didn't want to poison his chance at love if my suspicions were unfounded.
"Annie, it's Carolyn Emerson. Do you have a minute?" I figured the best place to get information about the girl was to go directly to the source. At least I'd remembered to charge my cell phone, so I could make this call in the rela tive privacy of a bench overlooking the brook.
"Hi, Carolyn. I just took my lunch break with David, and it put me behind. Sorry."
"This won't take long," I promised. "All I need is five minutes. I can come to you, if you'd like."
She paused, then said, "No, I can meet you. Are you at the shop?"
"Actually, I'm getting ready to go to Shelly's. I know you've eaten, but how about some pie?"
"Please, I'm getting plump as it is. David loves to eat out, and I've been gaining weight from the moment we met."
"Okay, no pie. What about coffee? We could meet at In the Grounds."
"I suppose so. Carolyn, there's no chance we can do this right now over the telephone, is there?"
"I think it would be better face-to-face," I said.
"If you say so. I'll see you soon."
I hurried over to the coffee shop, securing a table by the window where I could watch for her. Nate Walker, the owner of the place, approached.
"Hi, Carolyn. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten we were here. Are you and Hannah fighting?"
"What makes you ask that?"
"Come on, I can set my watch by you two, but lately, nei ther one of you has been coming by. I'm beginning to won der if it was something I said."
"It's not you, it's us. I'd like two coffees, please."
He looked out the window. "Does that mean Hannah's going to join you?"
"No, this one's for someone else."
He nodded gravely, then left to get my order. Twenty seconds after the coffee was delivered, Annie arrived. I was struck again by how much Annie resembled the actress Ju lia Roberts. It was easy to see why David had found her at tractive, but I knew Annie's charms went far beyond her appearance.
"Thanks for the coffee," she said as she took a sip.
"Don't you even want to know what I ordered for you?" I asked, smiling.
"If it's got caffeine, we're good," she said. "I was up pretty late last night."
"So I heard," I said without realizing how it must have sounded. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean to butt in."
"It's fine. I fully expected David to talk to you about our situation. I know you two are very close."
"We are. I'd hate to see him get hurt," I said, refraining from adding a
ny more to that statement.
"I don't want to hurt him, believe me. I care for David." I could see in her eyes that it was true.
"His father's sudden reappearance was pretty shocking, wasn't it?" I said.
"I guess. It's been hard on him all these years not having a dad."
"The same can be said for you, can't it? You two have a great deal in common in that regard," I said. Then I sipped my coffee.
The Cracked Pot Page 16