1 Through a Glass, Deadly

by Sarah Atwell

  This time the first officers to arrive were strangers, but Matt followed hard on their heels. “Morning, Em. What’s the problem this time?”

  I tried to smile but failed. “Back door,” was all I could say. He gave me a long look, then left.

  He was back in under five minutes. “Who is he?”

  “He delivers my supplies. His name’s Tim. . . .” I faltered, my mind spinning, trying to remember. “Starts with a B. Ben, Bert—Bernowski! But he’s probably got identification on him. I don’t know his home address, but it should be in the truck.” I fought to swallow a sob, and Matt took a step toward me. I held up a hand. “No. Don’t be nice to me, or I won’t be able to handle it. Tim was a friend and a decent, hardworking guy. I want to know why he’s dead, and why here. Damn!”

  “What was he doing here last night? Must’ve been late.”

  I shook my head. “Tim kept his own hours. Part of the last shipment of supplies was delayed, so he must have made a special trip to drop it off.”

  Matt gave me a moment, then said, “Em, I think it’s too much of a coincidence that you’ve found two dead men on your property in the space of a week.”

  “You think so?” Sarcasm counteracted tears, I had found.

  Matt ignored my snide tone. “They have to be related somehow. But let’s take this one step at a time. Did you touch the body?”

  I shook my head. “No. It was clear that he was dead. Besides, I know the routine now, don’t I?”

  “All right. Was the back door open or closed?”

  “Closed. And before you ask, there was no sign of a break-in up here, either. Why don’t I think robbery was the issue here?”

  “Did Tim have a key for deliveries?”

  “No. I never thought he needed one. I’m almost always around to let him in, or Nessa is. And he usually gives us a heads-up when he’s going to be delivering.” A thought struck me, and I riffled through the papers behind the counter. I held up a slip of paper. “Nessa made a note that he called yesterday and said he was stopping by—I guess she forgot to tell me. We were out yesterday for most of the day, and I only saw her for a few minutes.”

  “We?”

  “Cam—he’s still here—and Allison. And me.”

  “Allison is staying with you?”

  “Yes. Is there anything wrong with that?” I didn’t like Matt’s tone.

  “It’s just that she seems to be a magnet for trouble. After all, you never found a dead body before she appeared on the scene, did you?”

  He had a point. But I refused to believe that Allison had anything to do with this, at least not directly, or deliberately. “What—you think she sneaked downstairs last night and whacked Tim? Why would she do that?”

  Matt cocked an eyebrow at me. He wasn’t a great fan of sarcasm. “No, Em, I don’t think she killed him,” he said patiently. “But you have to admit it’s likely that she’s connected somehow. Is there anything else you can tell me? Did you hear any noises last night?”

  I thought back. A pleasant dinner, with a bottle of wine. We had watched a video, at least for a while. I had retired early, pleading a need for sleep after all that fresh air and exercise, leaving the field clear to Allison and Cam. What they had done after I was gone was none of my business.

  “Not that I recall. I went to bed early. We went to the botanical gardens, and then we ate dinner and watched a movie. I don’t remember hearing the truck pull in, but that’s not unusual. And he would have shouted or called me to let him in.” If he’d had time.

  Then another thought hit me. “Wait a sec. When he made a delivery last week, he said something about seeing a couple of guys hanging out in the alley. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but maybe somebody was unhappy that he’d seen them. Maybe they were back, and he recognized them. Oh, hell, I don’t know!”

  Matt still looked like he wanted to offer comfort, but I glared at him, and he backed off and lapsed back into officialese. “We’ll look into that. In the meantime, we’ll want to talk with your brother and Allison, see if they heard anything. And we’ll canvass the neighbors.”

  “Fat lot of good that’ll do you,” I said bitterly. “It’s mostly businesses facing the alley, and it was Sunday night.”

  “I know, Em,” he said gently, “but that’s the routine. I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged. “I know. You want to talk to Allison now?” I was not looking forward to breaking the news to her that there had been another murder that could, maybe, be laid at her feet. She’d probably leap to that conclusion anyway. At least we’d had one happy day in the midst of all this mayhem.

  I led the way upstairs, carrying the dogs, one under each arm, and let Matt take over once I’d opened the door. It was like watching a TV drama: Police Officer makes dire announcement; Fair Damsel (Allison) swoons; Brave Hero (Cam) provides stalwart support to aforementioned Fair Damsel. Much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. Me? I was the Silent Witness, having said my very small piece, so I devoted myself to reviewing what I had told Matt to see if I had missed anything. And Matt would probably want to talk to Nessa. . . . That stopped me. The unknown man that Nessa said had come by asking for Allison. A new player, and mere hours after his first appearance, another man was dead. Oh, that was a good clue, and one I needed to share.

  “Matt?”

  He turned to look at me, annoyed at the interruption. “What?”

  “Nessa said there was a man she didn’t know who came in yesterday looking for Allison.”

  “Did she get his name? A number?”

  I shook my head. “No. She told him to come back later, but we never saw him.”

  “I’ll talk to Nessa. You have her home number?”

  “Of course.” I rattled off her home number, and added her address for good measure. I debated about mentioning that Nessa had not found him menacing, but decided I might as well let her tell the story, and Matt could draw his own conclusions. He would anyway. He was always good at putting together the pieces of a crime—it was only his own life that he was clueless about.

  Finally he was done, and he put away his notepad and stood up. “You’ll let me know if you remember anything else? Em, see me to the door.” It was an order. I complied.

  “What now?” I said in a low voice.

  “I’m going to beef up the police patrol here at night. I’m not convinced your delivery guy was the target. And if he wasn’t—”

  I finished the statement for him. “Then I was, or Allison. I know. I’m not stupid. So where the hell were they last night? Coffee break?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Most likely they saw the delivery truck and didn’t think anything more about it. And it pretty well blocked the view of the rest of the alley.”

  “How handy for the murderer,” I said bitterly.

  “Em,” Matt said, annoyed. “Look, just stick around the place today, will you? And keep your phone handy. If you see anything out of the ordinary, don’t hesitate to call for help.”

  “Yes, sir. Look, I have no desire to tangle with whoever is doing this, and I think two bodies should give me some credibility if I call the cops, right?”

  “Right. Sorry, Em.”

  He did look sorry, although whether he regretted that this was happening to me or that this string of murders was screwing up his sterling record as police chief was hard to tell. But still. “I know. Just catch the guy, will you?”

  “I’ll do my best. We’ll talk later.” And with that, he rode off into the sunset—or down my stairs—leaving me to deal with the emotional wreckage.

  I didn’t want to watch as they bagged up Tim’s body and hauled him away, so I shut the door and turned to my companions. Once again, four sets of eyes looked at me expectantly. As though I had a better handle on what was going on than they did. Ha!

  “Oh, Em,” Allison whimpered, close to tears. Cam wrapped a manly and consoling arm around her shoulders and glared at me, as though I had reduced her to
this state. I glared back: It would have been nice to be on the receiving end of a little comfort and sympathy myself, but all of his was going to Allison. I was the one whose business was being trashed by the villains, whoever they were, and I’d lost a friend. And Matt’s reassurances were not very convincing, even though rationally I knew he didn’t have a whole lot to go on.

  “I know. It sucks.” I straightened up. “Well, there’s no point in sitting around moping. I’ve got to turn out some glass pieces, and I promised you a lesson—right, Allison?”

  She looked at me in bewilderment, then nodded.

  “Then we’re going to the studio and we’re going to work. Cam, you want to come?”

  “I’m not leaving the two of you unprotected. I’ll bring my laptop along.”

  I flashed on an image of Cam defending us by bashing a villain with his laptop. Unfortunately it wasn’t very funny. We made a somber procession down the stairs, although we left the dogs behind—they’d had enough excitement for one day. The police had removed Tim’s body, but the truck was still there. I wondered what I was supposed to do about that. As far as I knew, it was Tim’s personal property, but I wasn’t sure if it was evidence. Maybe the forensic guys would come and drag it away? I’d have to call somebody and ask. But right now it was only a minor inconvenience, and we had work to do. I unlocked the door to the studio and walked in.

  And started issuing orders. Somebody had to take charge here. “Cam, you make sure everything’s shut down in the shop, then come back here. If you stay there, somebody’s bound to come pounding on the door and asking questions.” Surely some neighbor would have noticed that the police had become regular visitors. “Allison, draw the blinds on the front windows, will you? I don’t feel like having an audience today, and I’m not even going to try anything fancy, just the bread-and-butter stuff.”

  She wandered off to inspect the intricacies of the front blinds. I turned to the annealer, now cool, and opened it. Chad’s pieces looked kind of lumpy, but I didn’t have time to worry about the flaws in his technique now. I conscientiously transferred them to a shelf, since I would need the space in the annealer. Then I opened my furnace door to check the glass level, and turned on the glory hole.

  Allison had drifted back like a wraith and now hovered at the fringes of the work area. Cam returned, then rambled around the room with his laptop, looking for the best reception. He finally settled himself in the front corner, pulling up a stool to the bench that ran along the wall, and started clicking away at the keyboard.

  “Okay, Allison, we’re going to start at the beginning. I’ll make a couple of pieces, and you can watch, and then you can take a stab at it.” I fell into the easy rhythm with my tools and my glass, commenting as I went. I didn’t have the heart for anything intricate or fancy today, so I stuck to the basics, using clear glass, and showed Allison how to make the gathers on the blowpipe, and how to shape and trim. I made a few small molded pieces to show her what else was possible. And as I kept one eye on my glass, I kept the other on her. Despite her earlier shakiness, she seemed fascinated by what I was doing, and rapidly lost any self-consciousness. Cam ignored us entirely, lost in his own cyberworld. As I had hoped, this return to normalcy was calming.

  After a couple of hours had flown by, I asked Allison, “You think you’re ready to try?” She looked torn, and I took pity. “Look, everybody screws up their first pieces. That’s why we use the clear glass in the beginning—it’s cheap. If you don’t like what you make, it’s no big deal. But you’ll never know until you try, right?”

  She summoned up a smile. “Right. Let’s do it.”

  I handed her a pipe and escorted her to the furnace, then pulled back the cover. “Go forth and gather!”

  She dipped the pipe into the glowing mass in the crucible, tentatively at first, then with more assurance as she gained a sense of the texture of the material, its fluidity.

  “Good. Go in at an angle. Now roll it—that’s right. Pull it out a little, so the first gather can cool—just a little. Great. That’s enough—you want to start small. Now, pull it out and we’ll go over to the bench. But remember to keep turning your pipe all the time, or else the glass will just ooze off the pipe altogether.”

  She caught on quickly. For someone who gave the impression of frailty, she was strong—all that waiting on tables must have strengthened her arms and her balance. I’d never thought that waiting tables would be good training for glassblowing, but maybe I should reconsider. I showed her how to shape the piece with the blocks to give it symmetry; I coached her on how to tell if it was getting too cold to work, and how to insert it in the glory hole to heat up again; but mostly I let her play, let her learn how elastic the hot glass was, how forgiving. And how quickly it became stiff and unforgiving. Her face was dripping with sweat, but she looked happy.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 15

  scudge: slime, scum, snot, undesirable stuff which mysteriously appears on your glass (Edward T. Schmid, Advanced Glassworking Techniques: An Enlightened Manuscript)

  The alley door crashed open and two men stormed in. We froze, and Allison dropped the blowpipe she had been holding. It hit the concrete floor with a resounding clang. After scanning the room quickly, the intruders both made a beeline for Allison and grabbed her, one on each side. Either they knew her, or they had a description: She was certainly easy enough to identify with that hair. But they had known she was here. Why?

  Cam might have ignored the crash of the door, figuring that I had just done something klutzy, but the clang of the pipe made him sit up and take notice. He turned to take in the scene, then came up behind me in two long strides. But the sight of strong hands holding his Fair Damsel stopped him from going farther.

  “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “Where are they?” Thug Number One said.

  “What?” Cam and I said in unison. We looked at Allison, and she shook her head. Great—we were all in the dark.

  “The diamonds.”

  I fought an insane urge to laugh. “What diamonds? You must have the wrong place, guys. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Stuff it, lady. They weren’t on Jack, they weren’t at his place or in his car. And they weren’t at her place neither.” Thug Number One jerked Allison’s arm, and behind me Cam twitched as though they were connected by wire.

  “You were looking for diamonds?” I squeaked. I was restating the question, stalling for time, but my brain was not coming up with any answers.

  “You want to play stupid?” Thug Number Two had released Allison’s arm and was now pacing around the room. He picked up a piece of glass on a shelf, hefted it in his hand—then tossed it on the floor. It shattered into hundreds of shards.

  “No, really, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Damn it, he could go on smashing things all night and I still wouldn’t know. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of people around outside in the alley to hear the crashes, and the blinds on the street side were drawn so no one would see our odd tableau. The thugs could do whatever they wanted, and take their own sweet time about it.

  Thug Number Two picked up another piece and destroyed that too. And another. Then he looked at my face, gauging my reaction. I hope my expression was convincingly sincere, because I really had no answers for him.

  He stopped, and I could almost see the gears in his mind turning—slowly. The woman is not cooperating. Maybe I can try pain? No, please don’t go there. What else can I do? Aha, I know! Gears fell into place with an almost audible thunk.

  “All right, then—we’ll take the girl, here. Give you a little time to think about it. We’ll give you a call, eh? You give us the diamonds, we give her back. Hope you find ’em fast. Oh, and keep the cops out of it, will you? All we want is what’s ours, and we’ll be out of here.”

  Cam had apparently had enough, and he shoved past me—only to be stopped when Thug Number Two pulled a gun out of his pocket and poi
nted it in our general direction, while keeping his other hand firmly on Allison’s arm. I knew very little about guns, but this one looked real enough. I could see the round black eye of its barrel pointing toward Cam and me, and I didn’t like it. I prayed that Cam had held on to enough common sense to know that his romantic ardor, or his testosterone, was trumped by cold steel. He stayed put, quivering like a greyhound.

  “Please, guys—I really don’t know anything,” I pleaded.

  It made no difference.

  “I’ll give you some time to change your mind. Gimme your phone number,” Thug Number Two said.

  I stared blankly at him for a moment, then blurted out the number of my cell phone. Thug Number Two nodded at Thug Number One, who looked confused but recovered enough to scrabble with a free hand to find a scrap of paper in his pocket while still holding Allison’s other arm. Then he had to figure out how to juggle Allison, paper, and pencil, to write down the number. I repeated it helpfully—that much I could manage.

  “We’ll call,” Thug Number Two said. Then the two goons backed out the door, clutching Allison between them, her face dead white, her eyes begging. After a second of stunned immobility, Cam and I rushed toward the door—in time to see the tail lights of a car disappearing down the alley. And our cars were still blocked by the damn truck. By the time we’d had gotten that sorted out, they’d be long gone. No way could we follow.

  Back in the studio, I closed the door behind Cam. Not that it made any difference, since the lock was useless— again. The room was silent, save for the steady low roar of the furnace and the glory hole. It couldn’t have been more than a minute since the two men had burst in. I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole.

  Cam was slapping frantically at his pockets. “Where’d I put my damn phone . . . ?” he mumbled under his breath. He looked up at me. “Em, give me yours—we’ve got to call the police!”

  My dazed mind spun. “I don’t have it on me. But, Cam, what are we supposed to tell them? A pair of thugs charged in and grabbed Allison, because they want something they think we’ve got, and they claim it’s diamonds. And we sure as hell don’t have their diamonds. And we don’t who they are.”