A Fatal Slip (9 page)

“Forget about that,” David said. “It’s not important right now.”

“How can I get any calls if my battery’s dead?” I asked as I rooted around in our junk drawer near the register.

“You need to worry about that later,” David insisted. “Would you stop digging around in there and listen to me?” Something in his voice told me he was serious, but I was sure he could wait a few seconds.

“Here it is,” I said as I pulled the charger out and closed the drawer. I plugged it in, then docked my phone in the receptacle. “Now, what’s so urgent?”

“The sheriff came by looking for you. From the way he acted, he was ticked off about something.”

“How could you tell? That’s his natural state of being,” I said.

“Maybe so, but he said he needed to talk to you the second you got back to the shop. Here’s his number.”

David held one of the sheriff’s business cards out to me, but I didn’t take it. “Just put it on the counter. I’ve talked to him so many times in the past few years I know his number by heart. I’ll call him later.”

“Carolyn, I don’t think he was kidding about this.”

I let the sigh forming on my lips escape. “I know I need to talk to him, David, but I just can’t face him right now. I will later, I promise.” I looked around the empty shop. “Has it been this dead since I left?”

“No, there’s been a steady flow of customers. I signed up two coeds from the university for a pottery lesson. There’s just one problem.”

David wouldn’t meet my glance, so I knew something was up. “What is it? What’s the catch?”

“They want me to teach them, and not Robert.”

Robert Owens, my part-time pottery teacher, was in all honesty turning out to be more trouble than he was worth. Still, he was a gifted craftsman, and despite his occasional rude behavior, the man could teach ceramics from A to Z. I’d be lying if I said his finished work in my display window didn’t raise the level of what we had to offer for sale, too. While I wasn’t ready to cut him loose, I didn’t want to aggravate him to the point of making him leave on his own, either. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. You know how territorial he is about his teaching.”

David scowled. “That’s not fair, and you know it. I can teach a beginner class just as well as he can. You should know they both said if Robert was teaching the class, they weren’t interested. Come on, Carolyn, give me a chance. We don’t have to tell him what I’m doing. It’s still your shop, isn’t it? This is important to me.”

I thought about what it would mean if Robert quit when he found out I’d let David teach one of the classes. Then I realized I could afford to lose him more than I could afford to alienate David. There might be a way out of it yet, though.

“I thought you were signed up for classes this summer yourself. You know the agreement we made with your mother. You can’t put the pottery shop before your education.”

He looked at me as though he’d expected me to raise that particular objection. “That’s the beauty of it. Both girls work as waitresses at night, so this would be in the mornings. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“Fun for you.”

“Income for you,” David countered.

“I won’t pay you extra for teaching,” I said, reaching for one last straw to discourage him.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” he said with a big grin. “What do you say?”

I was all out of objections. “Fine. We’ll try it, but if it doesn’t work out, I’m reserving the right to pull the plug at any moment.”

“Fair enough.”

Another thought struck me. “Have you run this past Annie? How’s she going to feel about you teaching pottery lessons to coeds?”

He shrugged. “I’m sure she’ll be fine with it. She cleans every day anyway, so it’s not like I’ll be taking time away from her.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said.

“Everything’s okay,” he said, blowing off my comment.

Fine. It was his love life; he could take care of it himself. In the meantime, I had to prepare myself for Robert Owens’s wrath. I loved having his work associated with Fire at Will, but his night classes hadn’t been the boon I’d hoped for when I’d hired him, probably because he was so reluctant to actually teach many classes. I had enough on my mind without worrying about a pampered potter’s feelings.

The front door chimed, and Sheriff Hodges walked in, the usual scowl plastered on his face. David discreetly faded into the back room, and I didn’t blame him a bit.

“Where were you?” he asked without any preamble.

“Do you mean when you came by earlier? I was on my lunch break. You were gone when I got back. I figured it must not have been that important, or you would have waited for me.”

“I’ve got better things to do than stand around here wondering if you’re even coming back to your own shop.”

I matched his scowl with one of my own. “What is it you wanted? Contrary to what you might think, I’ve got a business to run.”

“I need an alibi,” he said.

“My husband already told you where he was,” I snapped. “If you want anything else, talk to him.”

“I’m not talking about him. I mean you.”

I could barely contain my shock. “Do you honestly think I killed Charlie Cobb? Sheriff, don’t you think it’s time to go ahead and retire? Surely you can get by on a partial pension, and it’s pretty obvious your heart’s not in it anymore.” Everyone in Maple Ridge knew that Sheriff Hodges was hanging on to his job long enough to qualify for full retirement benefits, but to my knowledge, nobody had ever called him on it to his face. Until now.

His expression shut down, and I immediately regretted my choice of words. There was no apologizing or backing down now, though.

His next words stabbed at me like a knife. “Where were you when Cobb died?”

“I was with Hannah Atkins, Rose Nygren, and Shelly Ensign during different parts of the evening. Go talk to them. I know they’ll back me up.”

He frowned. “You were with all three of them?”

“That’s right.”

“Was there ever a time after four in the afternoon that you were by yourself?”

I thought about it and realized that there were some blocks that were unaccounted for. “They weren’t shadowing me the entire time,” I admitted.

“So your alibi isn’t as solid as you’d like me to believe.” The man was fishing, and I wasn’t about to rise to the bait.

“If I needed an alibi, do you think I would admit that there were gaps? Go away, Sheriff, and don’t bother coming back until you have something more than wild guesses about who killed Charlie Cobb.”

He stared at me a few seconds, but my return gaze didn’t flicker. With a brief nod, he dismissed me, then he walked out of my shop.

David rejoined me in a flash. “Did I hear that right? You should have just thrown a pot at him if you wanted to get him mad at you. It would have had the same effect.”

“Maybe, but then I would have lost a perfectly good pot, wouldn’t I? If he’s going to act like that, he has to expect getting smacked down every now and then.”

“Somehow I don’t think most folks around here are as willing and ready to take him on as you seem to be.”

I shrugged. “Their loss, then. I need help with our bisque order. Do you want to give me a hand?”

He grinned. “After watching that, do you think there’s a chance in the world I’m going to say no to you?”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day,” I said. As we worked up an order, I couldn’t help thinking about why the sheriff had really come by Fire at Will. He already knew where I was when the building inspector was murdered. Was he goading me because I’d tweaked him, or had he changed his mind at the last second about what he’d wanted to ask me? Either way, I was sure I hadn’t seen the last of Sheriff Hodges, especially when he found out the Firing Squad was running an investigation of its own.

 

Soon after David and I finished our bisque order, customers started coming back into the shop. I didn’t even have to look out the front window to know that it was raining again. Thankfully, at least for the store’s bottom line, we were busy until closing. In fact, it was thirty minutes past our regular closing time when David said, “I hate to do this to you, but I’ve got a class in twenty minutes.”

I looked at the clock and was startled to see the time. “Go. I can take care of everyone here. Do me a favor. Lock the door on your way out but flip the sign to “Closed” first, okay?”

“I could hang around a little longer,” he said. “Nothing ever happens in the first twenty minutes of this class anyway.”

“Your mother would shoot us both. I won’t be here long,” I said. To reinforce that, I said to the four people still in the shop, “We’re closing up, but you’ve got fifteen minutes to finish your designs.”

Then I turned to David and added, “There, are you happy?”

“I guess. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye, David.”

“Carolyn? Thanks for letting me teach this class. I won’t let you down.”

I patted his shoulder. “I know you won’t. Now get out of here.”

He grinned. “I’m already gone.”

I finally got everyone out, but I still had a lot of cleaning up to do before I could go home. Some of my customers were meticulous in keeping their work areas clean, and some of them treated my place like one big kindergarten playroom. Today I’d been invaded by preschoolers, if not in actual age, then in general disposition.

By the time I had Fire at Will ready for the next day, I was too tired to do much of anything in the way of cooking dinner. I dialed our home number, expecting Bill to answer, but when the machine kicked in after six rings, I knew he wasn’t there. I could let a phone ring off the hook without worrying about answering it, but Bill couldn’t bear the suspense. I tried his cell phone, something that was almost always a waste of time, then dialed Olive’s shop. Still no response.

Grabbing my car keys, I raced to the Intrigue, got in, then made it home in record time. My husband’s truck was in the driveway, which meant he was somewhere around. A quick search of the house showed that he’d been there, but he didn’t answer my summons. I was really getting worried now. I hurried out to his shop behind the house, dreading what I might find there. I imagined his body slumped over his table saw or lying at the foot of his planer. What I never dreamed of was how I actually found him.

He was sitting on a chair under the narrow awning out behind the shop drinking a beer.

“There you are,” I said. “I was worried sick about you.”

“What? Sorry, I wasn’t trying to duck you. Grab a beer and I’ll get you a chair.”

“Stay where you are. You look too comfortable to move.” I found another chair, though not a mate, inside the shop and pulled it out beside him. The beer was tempting—I’d had a hard day—but I wasn’t willing to take on the calories.

As I settled in beside him, it started to rain again. I loved the sounds of the drops hitting the leaves, and once again I was happy that no one had built behind us in all the years we’d lived here. It was like living in the forest but still just minutes from my shop. I wasn’t sure why everybody in the country didn’t want to live in Vermont, but I was glad they didn’t. There wouldn’t be enough room for all of them, and I’d lose my beautiful view.

“Have you been out here long?” I asked.

He glanced at his watch. “About three hours. I just didn’t have the heart to work today, you know what I mean? This is a peaceful place to be.”

“Especially with no phones around.”

He smiled. “I turned off my ringer when I grabbed my first beer. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” I said. After a few moments, I added, “I had an interesting visit this afternoon from the sheriff.”

“What did he want, an alibi?” Bill asked off-the-cuff, obviously joking.

“That’s exactly what he was after,” I said. “How’d you know?”

“I was kidding.” The front legs hit the ground. “He’s really grasping at straws now, isn’t he?”

“At least he’s willing to look at somebody besides you,” I said.

“Do you honestly think it’s any better that he’s considering you as a suspect? The man needs to retire and get it over with.”

“Funny you should say that. I mentioned that exact same thing to him when he was in my shop this afternoon.”

He studied me a second, then said, “Carolyn, please tell me you’re kidding.”

“I would, but you know how much I hate lying to you.”

He shook his head, then killed the last of his beer. “You should know better than that.”

“Just because I should doesn’t mean I do,” I said. “He deserved it, and I won’t apologize.”

“It wouldn’t do you any good if you did,” Bill said. “I’m afraid the damage’s already been done.”

I stood. “I’m tired of talking about this. You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

“This was lunch and dinner,” he said as he nudged the six pack of bottles with his foot.

“Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to get something in you that doesn’t include brewer’s yeast. How’s chicken sound?”

“I could eat a leg or two,” he admitted. “But I don’t want you to go to the trouble of frying it.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to. I’m too hungry to cook it myself. Let’s get a bucket to go, and if you’d like, we can eat it out here. I’m always up for a picnic in the rain.”

“No, I’ve had enough of this view for now. Just make me one promise.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s not answer the telephone tonight.”

I grinned. “I don’t have a problem with that, but I don’t see how you’re going to manage to ignore it ringing.”

He shrugged. “Simple. We’ll turn the ringer off and let the machine catch our calls.”

“What if it’s one of the boys calling?” I asked.

“We’ll be able to hear any messages they might leave, and if it’s important, we’ll call them right back. If you’re not satisfied with that, then leave your cell phone on. You can answer your calls on that if you want to.”