A Pour Way to Dye (Book 2 in the Soapmaking Mysteries) (28 page)

“
Very good, Ben, but you’re
a little late.” She laughed shortly, then added, “That’s good. In a
second, that’s exactly what you’re going to be; the late Ben
Perkins.”

I had to keep her talking. It was my only
hope. “But what about Ralph?” I asked as I inched closer to the
only weapon in sight, the gilded brick still on the counter.

“
Who’s going to believe an
ex-con, especially when I had evidence to send him back to prison?
He was leashed, good and tight. That’s why he hated me so much.
There wasn’t a thing he could do to stop me.”

“
So you killed Andrew to
cover up your father’s murder,” I said. I was almost there, and if
she noticed me inching toward the brick, she didn’t let
on.

“
I told him we’d claim his
overdose was another murder attempt, and that would clear him
forever with the police.

Andrew was almost grateful to swallow the
pills and bourbon when I promised him I’d call an ambulance, so
he’d be perfectly safe. At that point he was desperate to do
anything to stay out of jail. I waited until he took the pills, and
then slipped out the back. The fool came out of it long enough to
call an ambulance, so I had to make sure he never woke up at the
hospital.”

“
So you killed him again?”
Okay, I knew it didn’t make sense as I said it, but she
understood.

“
I would have if I’d had to,
but he never woke up. No, Ben, I’m sorry, but the way I see it,
you’re my last loose end.”

I saw her finger tighten on the trigger when
I heard Molly pound on the front door.

“
Drop it,” she
shouted.

Just as I grabbed the brick, Terri shot at
me, and I thought I was going to die. The lead brick caught the
bullet, though, and it was knocked out of my hand as it saved my
life.

Molly put one shot into Terri’s torso, and I
knew that I wouldn’t have to dodge any more bullets.

Terri Joy, like the rest of her family, was
dead.

Chapter 13

“
I’ve never been so happy to
see you in my life,” I said. “What made you come in?”

As she knelt down to search for a pulse I
doubted she’d find, Molly said, “Some things didn’t add up in
Terri’s story, so I wanted to ask her a few more questions. When I
saw your car parked in the lot, I was ready to chew you out, but I
guess you knew what you were doing after all.”

I reached down and picked the brick up. “I
got lucky, and I know it.” I looked down at Terri. “She didn’t want
to go to prison, did she?”

“
No, and it looks like she
got her wish. Suicide by cop is the worst way to go. I didn’t have
any choice, Ben. I couldn’t just let her kill you.”

“
Thank you, Molly. I thought
I was going to die when I saw you through that door.”

“
I’d say you dodged a bullet
here, but it’s a little too close to the truth, isn’t it?” She got
on her radio and called in the death, and I stared into the display
case. There were bodies everywhere, all because of one family’s
greed.

“
Now tell me what you know,”
Molly said after she was through.

I brought her up to date, then said, “You’ve
got to stop Ralph Haller. He was leaving town when I saw him half
an hour ago, and if you can catch him, I’m willing to bet he’s
still got some of those coins on him.”

She nodded. “I’ll radio the state police. Why
don’t we wait outside?” Molly said as she looked down at the
body.

I agreed, and we moved out to the parking
lot. “Ben, are you going to be okay?”

“
Once I catch my breath,
I’ll be fine,” I said. “Molly, do you think I might be able to keep
that lead brick?”

“
That’s a pretty gruesome
souvenir, don’t you think?”

“
I don’t think so at all.
After all, it saved my life.”

She nodded. “I’ll see that you get it.
Listen, there’s no reason for you to hang around here. Why don’t
you go over to the soap shop, and when I’m ready for you, I’ll come
over there.”

“
Thanks,” I said. “For
everything.”

“
You’re welcome,” she
said.

Since the Miata was blocked in, I decided to
walk to Where There’s Soap. I’d have to call Paulus and tell him it
was safe to come home now, though I was tempted to leave him on
Lois’s couch for a while out of spite.

As I walked, I thought about how one family
had been decimated by greed, a stain on the soul so deep that no
cleaner on earth could wipe away its traces. My family had many
flaws—no one knew that better than I did—but we loved each other,
and in the end, that was really all that mattered.

Recipe for Basic Hand-Milled
Oatmeal Soap

Oatmeal soap is a classic, known to soothe
irritated skin.

INGREDIENTS:

10 ounces of grated soap or noodles

8 ounces of water

¾ cup oatmeal long cooking or rolled oats
only

chamomile, cary sage, or cinnamon
optional

DIRECTIONS:

First, melt the grated soap with the water
added in a saucepan.

Then grind the oatmeal in a blender or food
processor until the flakes are about one-sixth of their original
size.

Add the oatmeal and stir the mixture until it
starts to thicken. The goal here is that you don’t want all of the
oatmeal to settle to the bottom.

After you’ve reached the desired consistency,
it’s time to add the optional fragrances if you’d like. Go with 8
drops of chamomile oil, 4 drops of sage oil, or a few drops of
cinnamon.

Then pour sour soap into molds. Wait until
the soaps form a skim laser on top, then put them in the freezer.
Check on them in an hour, then every half hour until they are
solid. Freezing isn’t absolutely necessary, but it usually makes
the soaps easier to remove from their molds. After that, allow them
to cure on an open-air rack for two to four weeks, turning them
occasionally to allow for uniform drying.

Now it’s time to put that new soap to use, so
have fun with something you made yourself

Soapmaking Tips
for the
home hobbiest

Hand-milling soap is a great way to make a
quality soap that can easily be tailored to your specific needs.
Why go to the trouble of hand-milling? Many people find that
hand-milled soaps have a more pleasing texture than soap that
hasn’t been ground. They last longer, and allow you to use
fragrances and colors with a greater efficiency as well.

Hand-milling, also sometimes known as
rebatching, simply means grinding or grating a basic bar of soap,
then mixing it with water or milk, heating it, enhancing it, then
pouring the finished mixture into molds. The tools needed are most
likely ones you already own.

While you can hand-mill your own soap if
you’d like, soap noodles are readily available from most suppliers,
and they make the process much easier. These noodles are made from
soap that has already been grated, then extruded in a meat grinder
and placed in plastic bags to retain moisture and workability.

And now a peek at Mold for Murder, Book 3 in
the Soapmaking Mysteries

MOLD FOR MURDER

By Tim Myers

Chapter 1

In a way, I suppose you could argue that the
murder was my fault.

After all, I’m the one who came up with the
idea of hosting the Soap Celebration at my family’s soap boutique
and custom soap manufacturing production business.

Where There’s Soap is the adhesive that holds
my family together. My three sisters work in the front boutique and
teach most of our custom soapmaking classes, while my three
brothers operate the production line in back. My mother oversees
the entire business, and my grandfather takes a turn at advertising
now and then, though he was in Europe at the moment of the
homicide. I envied him the ability to come and go as he pleased,
but with my responsibilities, there isn’t much time for travel.

I am the family and business
troubleshooter.

My name’s Benjamin Perkins, and there are
more times than not that I would have traded with any of my family
members for a job with well-defined duties and responsibilities.
Not that I don’t keep busy. I like to help out wherever I
can—whether it is teaching a class of my own up front or helping my
brothers in back—but usually there is something urgent that needs
my attention.

I’d come up with the idea for the Soap
Celebration as a way of adding some normalcy to my professional
life.

And then it backfired on me, and I had a
murder to deal with instead.

She swept into the soap shop an hour before
I’d been expecting her, wearing a regal shade of red, from her
gloved hands to her dress to her shoes. At first, I didn’t
recognize Contessa New Berne from the glamorous photograph her
publisher used on the backs of her crafting books. The photos had
to have been at least twenty years old, and even then, they had
obviously been retouched by an expert. Also in my defense, some of
her features were hidden by a floppy hat in the pictures, and I
wondered if she thought it made her look fashionable, or
mysterious, or maybe she was just inordinately fond of headwear. At
least she wasn’t wearing one now, though the rest of her outfit was
identical to the one in the photograph. It was like an odd portrait
of Dorian Gray, the woman changing but the outfit staying the same
over the years.

The contessa, as she liked to be called—so
her personal assistant, Sharon Goldsmith, had informed me frostily—
was the reigning queen of soapmaking how-to books, and it had been
a real coup arranging for her visit to our festival. She’d even
waived some of her usual speaking fees when I’d choked on the
amount they’d asked for. For some reason, I had been under the
mistaken impression she wanted to visit Harper’s Landing and our
little shop, but that was before she actually arrived.

She strolled up to me, scowling as she passed
the stacks of her books for sale and the worktable prepared for her
talk and demonstration later.

“
I was told you are Benjamin
Perkins.”

“
I am indeed,” I admitted.
“Are you here for the talk?”

She looked quizzically at me. “How else on
earth could you host it if I weren’t? I am Contessa New Berne.” She
offered a gloved hand to me, and I took it after a moment’s
hesitation. Upon closer examination, I could see that her glossy
brown hair was a shade not found in nature, and not even an
industrial-strength girdle could hide the extra pounds she was
sporting. I wanted to ask for a photo ID, but after staring hard at
her, I could finally make out the resemblance between the woman
standing before me and the one on the publicity posters in the
shop.

“
It’s nice to meet you,” I
said, trying to recover as graciously as I could. “I wasn’t
expecting you this early.”

She withdrew her hand and waved it in the air
like a conductor’s baton. “The bed-and-breakfast where I’m staying
is absolutely dreadful. Surely you could have done better than that
hovel for my visit.”

I knew for a fact that Jean Henshaw ran the
second nicest place in Harper’s Landing, North Carolina, and the
swankiest accommodations we could afford. I’d wanted to put the
contessa up in one of the more moderately priced hotels on the
outskirts of town, but her assistant, Sharon, had refused the
request, demanding the ultimate elegance we had to offer for her
employer. If the price was any indication, Jean’s place was indeed
one of the best our area had to offer. I’d been coerced into
providing two rooms for three nights, though the contessa would
only be appearing at our store for one afternoon. Sharon had curtly
informed me that the contessa never traveled without her, and that
I needed to find proper accommodations for them both. As to the
additional nights, since travel was so wearying for the writer, it
was explained to me, she needed time to acclimate to her new
surroundings, then to unwind after the event before jetting off to
her next appearance.

As things stood, we were going to have to
sell a ton of soapmaking supplies to recoup our investment, and I
was hoping the woman was worth it.

“
I’m sorry you’re unhappy,”
I said. “I’d be glad to personally move you out to the Mountain
Lake Motel if you’d like.” The Mountain Lake wasn’t exactly a dump,
but it couldn’t touch Jean’s accommodations.

“
I don’t think so,” she said
with one raised eyebrow. “I understand the Lakefront might be more
to my liking, though.”

There was no way on earth we could afford a
place as elegant as the Lakefront Inn, but I couldn’t come out and
say it so baldly. “We tried, but they were booked solid. Sorry”

“
Very well,” she said with a
sigh, as if her graciousness alone was all that was keeping her
there. “Now, Ben, I need your help. I must have some time alone
before I speak. Is there someplace I could get away from my fans in
order to focus my energies on my presentation?”

I looked around, and if anyone shopping in
the store had noticed her, they were doing a fabulous job of
disguising their delight. Still, she was the main draw for our
event schedule, so it couldn’t hurt to make her happy, especially
since it wasn’t costing me anything. “Of course. We have a break
room that you’ll find comfortable, and it has the added bonus of
being stocked with some of the best baked treats in this part of
North Carolina.”

“
Where is it?” she
asked.

I pointed to the door toward the back, just
off the selling floor where we were standing.

She frowned at it in disdain, then asked,
“Don’t you have anything more ... private?”