A Flicker of Doubt (Book 4 in the Candlemaking Mysteries)

by Tim Myers

  “No, I don’t have a ton of spare cash just lying around,” I admitted.

  He offered me the money again. “Take it If we don’t need any of it, you can pass it on to her next of kin in good conscience; but truthfully, if her heir wasn’t looking for this, there’s no way it would ‘accidentally’ turn up. Chances are, whoever bought the furniture would be in for a surprise the first time they pulled the drawers out, and nobody would be served by that”

  I stared at it the wad for a second, then took the money and jammed it into my pocket The last thing I wanted was to be carrying Becka’s money around with me. I couldn’t imagine what I would do if Sheriff Morton showed up at the apartment, but it would surely look a lot worse with a thousand buds stuffed into my pocket

  “Are we finished now?” I asked, worried more and more about the money now in my possession than the fact that we were in the apartment illegally.

  “I’m nowhere near it,” Markum said. “Have you seen her personal files?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Think about it. She had to pay bills, keep track of things like that, didn’t she? I don’t see a computer around here. Did she have one?”

  “No, I can guarantee you that. Becka was a Luddite when it came to computers. She believed the world was too dependent on technology.”

  He shrugged. “That’s easy enough to say, but a lot harder to live by. So how did she keep track of her life?”

  I scratched my nose, then said, “She had a personal organizer in her purse. Did you see that, by the way?”

  “It hasn’t been anywhere I’ve looked so far. Maybe it was near the point where she went into the water.”

  I shuddered at the thought. “The sheriff thinks she went in near the overlook. I guess we could look around there.”

  Markum put a hand on my shoulder. “That I won’t put you through, my friend. After we leave here, I’ll - drop you off at the candleshop and I’ll go look myself”

  I didn’t put up much of a fight, mainly because I couldn’t stand the thought of going to the place where Becka had spent the last seconds of her life. I said, “I just remembered something. Becka kept her bills in one of those accordion files. It should be around here somewhere. There’s surely no reason she would have taken that with her.” We both finished searching the living room and found the folder together. It was pushed into ‘ the corner of the room under a chair, almost as if she’d been working on her accounts the night before and hadn’t returned it to its proper place.

  Markum picked the file up and said, ‘There’s too much here to go through right now. I guess we’ll have to take this with us, too. Let’s get going. We’ve got a lot more ground to cover before we can go.”

  I was about to reply when I saw Becka’s front door handle start to turn.

  Chapter 4

  What should we do?” I whispered fiercely to H Markum.

  “You locked the door behind us, didn’t you?”

  I thought back to the moment after I closed the door. “Yes, I’m positive.”

  “Then we’re all right”

  “Unless they have a key,” I whispered, but at that moment I realized they would have already been inside if they’d had one. .

  I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when I heard a stranger’s voice outside the door say, “I knew it was too easy. We should have paid off the super for the key first, just like I said.”

  More words were spoken that I couldn’t make out, then the nearer voice said, “Give him a hundred, he won’t argue. If he does, just take it from him.” A pause, then he replied, “Because somebody’s got to stay here and watch the door.”

  Markum grabbed my arm, held a finger to his lips, then he whispered, “We go out the back way.”

  He unlocked the sliding patio door and I followed him outside. At least we’d be out of the line of sight of whoever was trying to get in. I started around the side of the apartment away from Becka’s door when Markum said, “Those aren’t cops. I want to get a look at who’s trying to get in.”

  I nodded reluctantly and followed him around the building the other way. A man in a nice suit was coming out of one of the apartments, and I wondered if it was our guy. After a minute, Markum followed him, with me close on his heels.

  We were almost to the door when there was a police siren in the distance, coming closer by the second. I didn’t know what to do, but Markum didn’t hesitate. He raced for my truck, and I was half a step behind. I had the key in the ignition and was ready to start it when he said, “Don’t”

  “Are you crazy? They’ll catch us.”

  “We want them to. You might want to take off your gloves before they get here, though.”

  I hadn’t realized I was still wearing them. “Sorry,” I said as I shoved them under the truck seat as he stashed the accordion folder under his.

  “Markum, why are we hanging around here?”

  “Our story is that we just got here ourselves,” he explained. “Let those guys come up with a reason why they’re inside. If Morton sees your track flying out of this apartment complex, he’s going to know what we’ve been up to.”

  “So tell me, what are we going to tell him when he asks why we’re here?” I asked as the sheriff’s car raced up.

  “It’s simple. We came to find the super to tell him about Becka so we could get the phone number for her next of kin, but the door to her apartment was already open when we got here.”

  I couldn’t believe his audacity. “And you think there’s a chance he’ll actually buy that?”

  Markum grinned. “Why shouldn’t he? We just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Morton got out of his car, glanced casually in our direction, then did a double take and approached us. Don’t tell me this is about you two snooping around where you don’t belong.”

  I pointed to the open door. “We just got here. There must be somebody else inside.”

  Morton said, “Don’t go anywhere,” then pulled out his revolver and started for the door.

  After two minutes, he came around the back way and walked over to us. “Surprise, surprise, nobody was there.”

  “They were there. We saw them go in.”

  The sheriff was doing his best to ignore Markum, a hard thing to do given the man’s physical presence. “You. What did they look like?’

  Markum said, “One of them was already inside, so we didn’t see him, but we did hear his voice. The one still outside wore an expensive black suit He was average, that’s all I can give you.”

  “Come on, you can do better than that. Try.”

  Markum tilted his chin to one side, then finally said, “His hair was dark, but I didn’t see his eyes. He stood a little undo’ six feet tall and weighed about one-eighty-five.”

  “That’s better,” the sheriff snapped. “What else did you see?”

  “Hey, all I got was a quick look. So who called you?’

  The sheriff said, “A concerned neighbor called nine- one-one. Do you two really believe I’m buying your story?”

  I stared at him as I said, “Frankly, it really doesn’t matter to me what you believe. You still think Becka killed herself.”

  “Harrison, don’t start with me.”

  I shrugged, but didn’t say a word, though I’m certain he noticed the insolence in my expression.

  Morton shook his head, then said, “What a waste of my time. Both of you stay here.”

  He took off on foot in the direction of the super’s apartment, and after he was in deep conversation with the man who answered his knock, I asked, “What are we supposed to do now, just sit here and wait?”

  “We don’t have much choice,” Markum said. “Give me a second. I’m trying to read the super’s lips.”

  “Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.

  ‘It comes in handy in my line of work.” I saw him studying the man’s face, and finally, Markum said, “He’s not admitting to anything.”

/>   “Why am I not surprised?”

  The super pointed to a nearby apartment, and Morton walked over there. An older woman in a bathrobe and curlers answered the door, and as Morton spoke to her, she looked squarely at us both. After a few moments, she shook her head and went back inside.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  Markum said, “I think we’re in good shape, but don’t say anything that might make the sheriff suspicious.”

  “You mean more than he already is?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if there was anything short of a full confession that would make him surer that we were up to something.

  Twenty seconds later, Morton was back. He said, “I’m pretty sure your mystery men bribed the super to get in, but he won’t admit it, and without that, what can I do about it?”

  “What did that woman have to say?” I asked. “And why was she looking right at us?”

  Morton huffed out a breath. “I wanted to see if you two were the ones she saw going into Becka’s apartment. She cleared you both. Funny, she gave me the same description you did, Markum. It was almost like she’d been coached.”

  Markum said softly, “Or it could have been that we were both telling the truth. Did you consider that possibility?”

  “Briefly,” the sheriff said.

  I felt the weight of the money in my pocket. “So, can we go?”

  Morton looked like he wanted to spit. “Go? You shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”

  As I drove off, I felt the relief of our escape. ‘That was close.”

  “Not by a mile, Harrison.”

  “You’re not the one with somebody else’s grand in your front pocket”

  “No, but that can be explained easier than the files under my seat and Becka’s answering machine tape in my possession, Harrison, how would you like a drink?”

  “A drink’s the last thing I need in the world right now. Markum, what about those men we saw? What were they after? Should we just leave? What if they comeback?”

  “Morton’s probably going to have somebody watching the place, and I doubt they’d invite us to their stakeout

  I don’t know what those two were up to, but hopefully there will be something in what we found to point us in the right direction. Shall we meet up tonight in my office after everyone else is out of River’s Edge? In the meantime, I can check around at the overlook, then paw through those papers and see what I can come up with.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  He laughed. “What you do best, my friend. Sell candles.”

  It was a relief getting back to the candleshop and a world I was familiar with. Though I’d been forced through circumstances in the past to investigate a murder on my own, I’d never taken such an active role in things, and I was feeling shaky on new ground. I wondered yet again about my friend Markum and how little I knew about his life and his business. He’d been asking me for months to accompany him on one of his salvage and recovery jobs, but I wasn’t at all sure it was something I wanted to do.

  As I walked in the door of At Wick’s End, Eve said, “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back. Gary Cragg’s been looking for you. He says it’s urgent” She was in a snippy mood, and oddly enough, that just made me feel more welcome in my shop. I didn’t want anyone tiptoeing around me. I’d had a shock, but there was nothing I could do about it except try to deal with it

  “With Cragg, it’s always urgent I’ll talk to him later. I thought you might be able to use a hand,” I said.

  “Harrison, I almost forgot, you need to call Mrs. Jorgenson. I promised her you’d call the second you got back in. She’s determined to talk to you as soon as possible.”

  “What did she want?” I asked. As my star candle- making student, Mrs. Jorgenson expected my full and immediate attention, and she paid for the privilege. There were times when the check from her private lessons made the difference between bankruptcy and solvency for my business, so I indulged her whenever I could.

  “She didn’t say. You know how she feels about dealing with anyone but the owner.”

  I had to laugh, since Eve still knew more about candlemaking than I did, although I was learning in great leaps and bounds. It was amazing how quickly I took to candlemaking, even with the motivation I had to learn.

  I looked through the register receipts until Eve said impatiently, “Harrison, aren’t you going to call her?”

  I smiled at Eve and reached for the telephone. I had just hit the sixth number when the door opened and the lady herself walked in.

  “I was just trying to call you,” I said.

  “I grew weary of waiting,” she replied curtly.

  “Sorry about that. I had quite a shock today. I’m not myself.”

  Mrs. J’s eyes softened for a moment “So I heard.” Though the shop was relatively empty, she asked, “May we speak in private in the classroom?”

  “Lead the way,” I said, and followed her through the aisle to the backroom where Eve and I taught our lessons.

  Once we were there, I asked, “So, are you ready for ‘ your next lesson? We’re going to tackle pouring next, right?”

  ‘That’s what I wanted to speak with you about”

  I felt a sudden icy ball in the pit of my stomach. Was she leaving my class—and my shop—at last? I’d been dreading the day, but I wasn’t any more prepared for it than I had been the first time she’d walked through my door. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  She said, “Is there any chance you have time for a lesson now? I’m really quite eager to get started on pouring techniques, and I’m not at all certain I can stand to wait another minute.”

  Something must have shown on my face, because she added, “Harrison, I know you’ve had a difficult day. If you’d rather not, I understand completely. I do want you to know that I’m willing to pay extra for the privilege for such short notice if you’re willing to teach me today.”

  “Mrs. Jorgenson, candlemaking is exactly what I need in my life right now. I won’t even charge you extra for the privilege. Let me tell Eve, and then we’ll get started.”

  Eve was watching behind me as I approached her and started gathering up some of the basic supplies I’d need for the lesson. “What did she say?”

  “She’s decided she wants a candlemaking lesson right now. We’re going to do a pour if you can handle the front by yourself.”

  Eve nearly shoved me back to the classroom as I finished grabbing the last few items I needed from our stock. “Go. I’ve got this covered.”

  I walked back into the classroom and offered Mrs. Jorgenson the choice between using pellet wax and a solid block, and she didn’t disappoint me.

  “What’s the difference between the two?” she asked.

  I held up a bag of pearly white pellets. ‘These melt faster, and the results are the same as using wax you break up yourself. I thought you might want to save some time today.”

  “We’ll break the wax up ourselves,” she said firmly. “No shortcuts, particularly the first lesson, you know that, Harrison.”

  “Okay, here’s the best way to do it.” I chose a heavy Mock of translucent wax, then grabbed a flat screwdriver and a hammer. As I slipped on a pair of goggles from the selection on the shelf behind me, I said, “The object here is to break this block of wax up into small pieces so it melts faster. I like to have chunks about the size of a fifty-cent piece before I’m ready to melt.” I put the wax in a large plastic container on the work table and gave it a few good whacks. Then I retrieved one of the pieces and handed it to her. “That’s a good size.” I started the water boiling on one of our hotplates and put the double broiler on. “The wax melts in here,” I said as I added a few of the chunks I’d freed. “It needs to be around two hundred degrees before we’re ready to pour.”

  Mrs. Jorgenson took one of the other pairs of goggles and picked up the tools as if she’d been using them all her life. She attacked that wax block like it owed her money. As I added her shavings
and scraps of wax to the double boiler, she said, “I always thought each wax came to you tinted.”

  I showed her an array of the blocks I’d grabbed from one of our displays. “It’s a lot easier this way. You can choose whatever color you like. You can even make your own shade or hue, if you’re interested.”

  “One step at a time, Mr. Black. Let’s make a basic poured candle first: no dyes, no perfumes, no additives; just the wax and the wick.”

  “We can do that,” I said, wondering why anyone would want to make such a simple candle, though not surprised that Mrs. Jorgenson had chosen that route. I showed her how to check the temperature of the wax with the candy thermometer—we weren’t anywhere near where we needed to be yet—and then I showed her how to coat the mold with release. She’d chosen a small tin cone mold to start, one that came with its own base.

  “And we just pour the wax straight into it?”

  I shook my head. “The wick goes in first. Tie one end to this dowel stick. You can use a pencil if you don’t have one of these handy. Now run the other end through the hole in the base of the mold.” She tied the wick off, ran it through the tin mold, then I handed her a ball of mold seal.

  “And this seal is for what purpose?” she asked.

  “It keeps the wax from running out the bottom. Get it tight. Is your wick directly in the center of your mold?”

  “I think so,” she said as she handed it to me to check.

  I glanced at it, then handed it back to her and said, “It looks good to me.”

  “What if it’s not in the middle?” she asked.

  “It’ll be hard to change it after the wax is poured,” I said with a grin, forgetting for a moment her lack of a sense of humor. I added quickly, “To get an even burn, you need the wick to be centered in the wax. Let’s check that temperature again “