The Face of Deceit

by Ramona Richards

  Karen bit her lip to keep from laughing. “That sounds like him.” Joining Jane in the kitchen again, she pulled a bag of Kona coffee from the freezer and a jug of filtered water from her fridge. The sight Mason had made standing on her porch that first day drifted through her mind as she prepared a fresh pot of coffee.

  His notoriety intimidated Karen, but his peppered questioning cut to the heart of her craft, its history and its techniques. The accent certainly caught her off guard, as well. Southern but not twangy, the slow, easy-spoken combination of Alabama flatwoods and Louisiana bayou had a thick Cajun edge to it, and when excited, Mason would occasionally season his sentences with French words or phrases that Karen never understood. At least…she thought they were French.

  His looks had also gotten her attention, almost as much as the accent. Jane made him sound antic and half-mad, but Mason DuBroc was far from an absentminded professor. His brown eyes were intense and held a curiosity that seemed relentless. His lean frame was wiry, and his dark hair hung mostly straight, with a tendency to curl just on the ends. His eyes and skin were darker than most of the men she knew, and he had high cheekbones so sharp they could have sliced bread. He called himself “a mutt, a result of a lot of familiarity between the Native Americans, Cajuns and a conglomerate of English and Scottish folks hanging out in the Delta,” a description that made her own mostly Irish and German heritage sound downright plain.

  And the way he smelled. Aromas were vital to Karen, and she didn’t know if he wore a cologne or if his scent came naturally from who he was and what he did. He smelled like…Karen searched her mind for a comparison. Like opening a new book in the middle of a pine grove. Maybe a hint of sage. Whatever. It made her want to stand closer to him, and she inhaled deeply, just thinking about it.

  “Do you want Parmesan on the lasagna?” Jane asked as she lifted one of the wrapped plates from Laurie’s Federal Café. The café was known for its home-style meals and white decor, which Laurie kept scrubbed and polished: solid white tables, chairs and dishes. Laurie refused to use chintzy to-go containers, insisting that the locals were honest enough to return real dishes.

  Karen snapped back to the present as the thick garlicky scent of the lasagna got her attention. “What? Oh. Yes.”

  “Thinking about Mason again?”

  Karen sniffed. “No. Yes. A little. Maybe. How is Laurie?”

  Jane went with the change of subject as she pulled the wrapped paper off the plates and dusted the Parmesan over the entrées. “Cool as ever. Two of the old farmers who hang out there in the mornings got into some kind of squabble about crop rotation this morning, and she told them she’d start serving only decaf if they didn’t quit. Settled them down right away.” Jane paused, then picked up the plates and headed to the table. “She also wanted to know if you had turned serious about Mason yet.”

  Karen pulled two mugs from a cabinet and ignored the question. “How did you hear about the vase?”

  Jane barked a laugh. “You’ve lived here all your life. How do you think I heard?”

  “The Peg Madison party line?”

  “Her only son may be police chief, but I think she mothers everyone in town. She’s worried about you.”

  Karen watched as the coffeemaker gurgled out its last drops, steam rising from the pot and the filter bucket. Even the scent of the rich, dark coffee refreshed her and she inhaled deeply. “Please tell Mama Peg that I’m fine.”

  “Which vase was it?”

  Karen shrugged. “Too shattered to be sure. One of the emerald-green ones I made early last year, I think. The bigger shards were green and orange. I did find the mark, but it was just the KONA, without the diamond.” Every potter scratched a distinctive mark into the bottom of each piece, a way of signing the artwork. At first Karen had used only her initials, KO, but over the past two years, her mark had evolved into a distinctive KONA, which stood for both her favorite coffee and for Karen O’Neill Artworks.” Late last year she’d added a diamond shape to it.

  She pulled the coffeepot out of the maker and filled the two mugs. “I just don’t understand—” She broke off and fanned her free hand as if to wave away the question. “I guess there are nuts in every business.”

  Jane picked up the plates and headed to the dining table. “Sister, you said a mouthful.”

  That afternoon, Karen returned to the studio to get her mind off the auction. She soon lost herself in the work. The whirling pot on the wheel before her so captured her that Lacey finally resorted to using claws to get her attention. Karen jumped, an action that caused one finger to break through the wet clay on the wheel, turning a shimmering vase into a pile of mud.

  “Lacey!” Karen stopped the wheel, scolding the gray half-Persian at her feet. She cupped the distorted clay mound in both hands while glaring at Lacey. “Look at that!”

  The golden eyes of the annoyed feline didn’t relent, and the ferocious meow and sharp swish of tail that followed told Karen that she needed to forget about ruined art and open the back door now.

  “All right!” Karen glanced at a clock near the door and immediately felt a twinge of chagrin. “Four-fifty! No wonder you’re desperate.” She sighed and headed for the door, followed by the prancing cat. “Sorry about that. I should have let you out before I started. You know how I get.”

  Meow. Swish.

  Karen laughed and used the towel hanging at her waist to open the door to her basement studio. Lacey fled, her thick gray coat a quilt of light and dark shadows as she moved through the fading sunlight. Karen glanced down at the threshold again, but only a light shifting of clay dust remained from this morning. She closed the door again and returned to her wheel, sinking down on the stool behind it, her mouth twisted into a grimace as she gently touched the destroyed vase. It had been on its way to beauty, molded from a brownish lump of clay to an emerald-green work of art. “Sorry.”

  Karen molded the wet earth back into a ball but didn’t restart the wheel, suddenly aware of how tense her shoulders were and how much her back and arms ached. “Four-fifty,” she repeated. Almost four hours had passed since she’d sat down at the wheel. Not unusual, though. When the wheel began to turn, the moist clay changing shape beneath her hands, Karen lost track of time, space, even the air around her. Her aunt, Evie, not understanding how Karen could so completely lose herself in the artwork, called it “that thing with the clay.” When she worked, Karen’s world narrowed to the wheel and the clay, and the only sensations that she remained aware of were the musty smell of damp earth and the feel of the water and earth beneath her hands. She’d been known to work five hours straight as her art formed under her hands. As a result, she usually let Lacey out before she sat down at the wheel, but this afternoon she’d forgotten.

  Karen stood, rolling her shoulders, and went to the sink to wash her hands. Time for a break, more coffee, maybe check to see if there were new orders on her fax machine. Or e-mail from Mason. She pulled the towel from the waistband of her jeans and dried her hands.

  Karen paused, her hands wrapped in the worn towel, looking at a shelf holding nine vases similar to the ones Mason planned to bid on. Each stood about eighteen inches high, broad at the base, a bit narrower in the middle and flared at the top with the edges jagged and wild, points and curves going in all directions. “Face vases” were not unique in the world of ceramics, but what made Karen’s vases distinctive was the face itself. Neither male nor female, it was a horror mask, twisted and grotesque on some, leering and grinning realistically on others. The vase colors were a kaleidoscope nightmare, swirling around the face in stripes and curls. Although each vase featured different colors, the face remained the same, which was especially noticeable when they were lined up together. The same down-turned eyes, full lips and white streaks slicked back from the scalp. Of course they’re the same, she thought ruefully. They come from the same source.

  Tossing the towel over the edge of the sink, Karen headed upstairs, pausing to glance out the windows at the b
ack of the studio at Lacey, now in the process of stalking a wayward butterfly. The metal of the stairs chilled her feet, so she scuffed them a bit on the carpet of the small dining area that separated the stairs from the kitchen. She poured the last cup from the lunchtime pot of Kona into a ceramic mug, and headed up the stairs near her front door.

  A polite scratching on the door stopped her, and she opened it. “Already?” she asked as Lacey strolled past her, tail held high. “I thought you were on a butterfly hunt out back.”

  No meow this time, just a thank-you figure eight around Karen’s ankles. Then both of them headed upstairs to Karen’s office, where an odd-looking sheet of paper slowly peeled its way through her fax. She pulled it off the machine and turned it around.

  The fax had rendered it black and white, but the sheet was clearly a page from an auction house catalog, and Karen grinned as she recognized the angular, dramatic handwriting of the phrase scrawled across the bottom.

  Lot 21 could be your salvation. Lot 21, which consisted of four unique vases of Karen’s own design.

  “Sorry, Mason,” she murmured, her eyes bright with amusement. “My salvation comes from a much higher source.”

  Yet she knew what he meant, and she glanced at the Felix the Cat clock on the wall behind her computer: 5:05. The auction must be over by now. The fax machine clicked and whirred again, and a second sheet emerged. This one was white, with only four lines scrawled across it.

  $8,000!!! Didn’t get them. Will talk to agent who did. See you tomorrow!! M

  The paper fluttered, blurring the words, as her hands shook. “Eight thousand?” Her knees weakened and Karen sat hard in her office chair. Tears blurred her eyes. Two thousand apiece! She’d never gotten more than five hundred for one of her vases. Mason DuBroc had succeeded in almost quadrupling their value.

  Velvety fur brushed her ankles, and Karen glanced down as Lacey circled around her bare feet again. Her hands still quivering, she clicked her tongue and, with a rattling purr and tinkling bell, the eight-pound fur ball landed in her lap. Karen scratched the cat beneath the chin and was rewarded with a swish of Lacey’s thick tail.

  “Lacey.” The shudder in her voice did not surprise her. Karen felt as if she were shivering from head to toe. “I’d better get back to work.” She nodded, then reached for the phone. “First I have to call Jane.”

  Jane insisted on taking Karen to Portsmouth to celebrate, buying her dinner in a cozy boutique restaurant near the water. When they returned, midnight had come and gone, but Karen still felt wired and restless. Wandering into the office, she found fourteen new orders for “face vases” waiting on the fax machine. She glanced through them, overwhelmed. “Oh, Mason. What have we done?”

  Sleep helped. The next morning a much calmer Karen awoke early and this time let Lacey out before she even showered. Then she took her first coffee of the day out on the back deck of the house, raising it toward the heavens. “Thank You, Lord,” she said aloud. She settled in one of the deck chairs and sipped again, then set the cup on the deck rail and looked out over the yard, feeling blessed. The sun struggled to get above the tallest trees, barely illuminating the May morning with bands of gold shot through the mist. Karen’s hair, still darkened from its normal red-gold sheen by her morning shower, dried quickly in the early-morning breeze, and she fluffed it before picking up the mug again.

  This was her time. Prayer time. The day never felt quite right without it. The sun now winked at Karen over the top of her tallest birch, and she closed her eyes for a moment. Taking a deep breath, she whispered, “Thank You, Lord. I know Your hand is in all this, all along. Thanks for bringing Mason to Jackson’s Retreat to write his book, and thank You for…”

  Inside, her phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. She scowled, then looked upward, waiting for the answering machine to pick up. When it did, she returned to her prayer, moving from praise to requests, the last one for herself. “Help me understand all this and Your will in it, Lord.”

  She sat for a few more moments, enjoying the coffee and the morning air, then headed back inside. She hoped Mason would come by early to talk about the auction, but she had not heard from him since yesterday’s fax. Karen left her cup on the bottom step of the staircase, then bounded up, her hair flapping against her neck. Fifteen minutes later, she’d scooted into a pair of jeans and a light sweater, plus her hiking boots in case Mason wanted to walk into Mercer. She’d gone light on the makeup and turned on the blow-dryer long enough that her hair wouldn’t completely frizz out as it finished air drying. A touch of mousse, and she was ready just about the time the doorbell rang.

  “Coming!” Karen yelled, her boots clumping on the stairs. She kicked over the cup and fussed at herself as she picked it up, thankful it was empty but wishing with a fleeting thought that she had time for another cup of her Kona. She unlocked the front door, pulling it open.

  Her cheerful “Good morning!” faded away as she stared at the two men on the front porch. Mason was there, but he looked as solemn as she’d ever seen him. Behind him, oversized hat in hand, stood Tyler Madison, the local police chief.

  Mason cleared his throat, but Tyler spoke first. “I hate to bother you this early, Karen, but we’ve got to talk about your broken vases.” He cleared his throat. “Broken vases,” he repeated, “and a murder.”

  TWO

  Twice in twenty-four hours, Karen’s world flipped upside down. As the two men sat in her living room and laid out their story, she couldn’t keep from blurting out, “But who would kill over a vase?”

  Luke Knowles, a well-known auction agent, had purchased Lot 21, Karen’s vases, bidding the winning $8,000 for an anonymous client. The vases had been delivered to Knowles’s hotel room. Late last night, when Luke’s wife hadn’t been able to reach him, a manager had gone to check, finding Knowles dead and the four vases destroyed.

  Karen stared at the two men, a crime scene photo in one hand and empty coffee cup in her other. “Who?” she repeated.

  Tyler and Mason shifted uncomfortably and glanced at each other, then Mason touched her arm gently. “We were hoping you could help with that.”

  Blinking, Karen looked down at the photo in her hand again, the details registering sketchily on her mind. A hotel room in chaos; in the center, ceramic shards and clay dust—remnants of four destroyed vases—were smeared across a dresser. At the edge of the image, a man’s leg protruded into the scene. The victim, murdered because of vases she had created from her imagination and a bit of raw clay.

  The photo quivered as her fingers trembled, and Karen sat hard on her sofa. Her pottery, her art, was her heart, her livelihood and her life. Her vases, beautiful and distinct, sometimes felt like extensions of her very soul.

  But they weren’t worth dying over.

  Karen stared into her empty coffee cup as the two men sat and Tyler finished telling her about the death of Luke Knowles. She relished the security of the hard, cool ceramic under her fingertips as her eyelids stung and her vision blurred. Tyler sat across from her, his bulky frame wedged into one of her grandmother’s ancient, cane-bottom rockers, his hat clutched in one fist and a file folder in the other. Mason perched next to her on the edge of her fading rose-print sofa, his jeans a stark contrast to the feminine blossoms splayed under his thighs.

  The morning sun had broken free of the tall trees of her backyard and now cast bright yellow streaks through the windows. The room seemed to glow, despite the somber mood of the three people clustered there.

  “What about his family?” Karen’s voice was a strained whisper. “Did he have a family?” She peered at Mason, then Tyler. Her stomach felt tight, her chest constricted, but she wasn’t sure if she felt fear or grief. Or both. Hot tears leaked from each eye, and she wiped them away quickly.

  The young police chief nodded. “A wife and a grown son.”

  “I don’t understand.” Her soft voice cracked, and she swallowed again. “Why would anyone do this because of me?”

  T
yler shifted in the chair, causing the cane to creak ominously. “Just like there was a note with your broken vases, there was a note at the crime scene.” He pulled a slip of paper from a file folder and held it out toward her. Mason stood quickly and helped the paper make the cross to Karen. He slipped the photo from her fingers and returned it to Tyler.

  “That’s a copy they faxed,” Tyler explained. “The detective in New York thought you might recognize the handwriting.”

  Karen wiped her eyes again and sat the cup on the floor near her feet. She unfolded the note, her fingers trembling a bit. As if scrawled and smeared with a pen too large for the writer’s hand, the letters swirled in an almost unreadable script in the middle of the page. She studied the note, her shoulders bowing slightly as a tight chill settled at the base of her spine. She recognized the handwriting…but not from anyone she knew. The clumsy block letters were the same as in the notes that had simply said, Stop! This one, however, was more specific.

  Evil corrupts mind and soul.

  Evil must be stopped.

  All that is evil will be destroyed.

  Her head snapped toward Mason, then Tyler. “So the killer thinks my vases are evil? Or me?”

  Tyler shrugged. “New York thinks it could go either way. He could be a nutcase who has a fixation on your work, or maybe he has a problem with you personally. Or it could be a jealous—”

  “But…evil?”

  Mason cleared his throat. “Work or personal, this is about you.”

  Tyler shifted in the rocker, his mouth pursed around a word that never made it out.

  “But why?” Karen stood up and took the cup into the kitchen. Tyler caught the note as she passed by, slipping it from her fingers and returning it to the folder. She continued into the kitchen, her energy surging. She set the cup down with a solid thump on the counter that divided the two rooms. “They’re just vases.” She tapped her temple. “They just came out of my imagination and whatever I’ve learned about pots through the years.” She held her hand out toward Mason. “You know that. We talked about this!”