Ill-Gotten Panes (A Stained-Glass Mystery) (16 page)

“How did that argument end anyway? The one you were having that day?”

“You mean after I told him he ought to treat his customers better?” He winked.

Holy crap, he actually winked! How was I supposed to focus on price gouging when Mr. Blue Eyes and Broad Shoulders winked at me? I distracted myself by folding up the order sheets and passing them back. He set them underneath the phone, still on the table.

“I left the store,” Tony said. “I got back in my car and put in a call to the Town Council’s emergency number.”

“What did they say?”

He lifted his water glass, swirled the contents until the ice cubes clinked against the glass. “Please leave a message.” After a healthy swallow he set the glass down. “I never got a call back. But I figured with Andy’s passing, the timing wasn’t right to pursue a complaint or suggest renegotiating the agreement.”

“And now it doesn’t matter, right? You can order your supplies from anywhere.”

A tip of his head showed his agreement. “The hardware and lumber, yes. Please don’t mistake me. I’m sorry about what happened to Andy. And I’m trying to balance that regret with the relief that I can resume construction. It’s tough.”

He didn’t deny what he couldn’t. He was free to purchase hardware from any source he chose. Tragic as Andy Edgers’s death was, it was also a boon for Tony Himmel.

Watching him as our dinner plates were cleared away, his easy posture, his half smile, I tried on the idea that in his determination to get his project back on track, he had killed Andy Edgers. It didn’t fit comfortably.

But what did I know, really, about reading men? The man I had once planned to share the rest of my life with had turned out to be a man I would not want to share my Tic Tacs with. Who was to say I couldn’t sit across a table from a murderer and think him a gentleman?

Because the fact remained,
someone
in Wenwood had murdered Andy Edgers. The polite little town was home to a killer. He—or she—could be anyone.

Anyone.

*   *   *

I
pulled the Jeep into the closest parking spot I could find. The lot in front of the dine-in was reassuringly full. At least for one night it looked like people weren’t opposed to patronizing Grandy’s place of business.

Flip-flops scuffing against blacktop as I walked, I tucked the keys in my purse and crossed the lot. With each step I tried to force down the recent memory of dinner with Tony and the uncomfortable questions it raised. I couldn’t believe he had killed Andy Edgers. Or did I not want to believe it because a little tingle of attraction raced through my veins at the remembrance of his smile? But certainly I wasn’t the best judge of a man’s character . . . except for Grandy. I had no doubt about the quality of Grandy’s character. Some other folks appeared to need convincing.

On the sidewalk in front of the entrance, I paused. The lobby doors would rattle in their frame when I tugged one open. Staff members would know I’d arrived. Not that my presence was a secret. More that, having arrived at my destination, I worried about the wisdom of my plan. Sure it all sounded good in my head after I’d said good night to Tony—and tried to identify whether I was relieved or disappointed there was no parting kiss—but now that the moment was upon me . . .

Drat it. Grandy, who had never denied me love and support and desserts, was sitting in jail, and I doubted the decision to try and find out why his head cook just happened to visit Edgers Hardware.

With a disgusted huff at my own spineless streak, I yanked open the lobby door and tried not to wince at the rattle of the glass in its frame.

I bypassed the empty ticket booth and was halfway to the refreshment counter before the clerk behind it turned and saw me.

“The movie’s already started,” she said, sliding open the front of a napkin dispenser. She had a paper-wrapped package of napkins within reach, ready to refill the dispenser so the next night’s clerk was ready for an opening rush. Grandy had trained her well. Or someone had.

I continued toward her. “I’m here to see Matthew,” I said. “Is he still in the back?”

Her eye roll would have put a varsity cheerleader to shame. “You can check.”

She could also have poked her head through the door at the back of the counter and looked for herself, but I let that one slide, fairly certain I was better with an element of surprise. But as I continued through the lobby then through the doors to the theater proper, I revised my opinion of her being well trained and determined someone other than Grandy had taught her.

Through the doors and along the short hallway to the kitchen, the swelling sound of James Bond’s theme music expanding behind me from the theater alerted the previously quiet butterflies residing in my stomach that something dangerous was afoot.

I stopped at the swinging door to the kitchen and peered through the circular inset window. As I’d hoped, Matthew had yet to go home. Once again, though, I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

Shoulder to the door, I pushed into the kitchen. A unique aroma wafted on the air, putting me slightly off balance mentally. Where the scent of fried onions and grilled burgers should fill the room, instead the fragrance was a mix of something sweet and savory, something familiar. Despite my recent meal, my mouth watered. And my eyes locked on to the plate Matthew held.

He stood at the aluminum prep table in the center of the kitchen. His brother—Grandy’s assistant manager, Craig—stood beside him, chewing . . . until he spotted me. A mix of annoyance, and curiosity, created wrinkles in his forehead.

“I’m Georgia Kelly,” I said. “We’ve spoken on the phone.”

Understanding lit his eyes. He nodded and resumed rapid chewing, while checking the integrity of the knot of his tie. Moving toward me, hand outstretched so I could shake it, he swallowed loudly. “Craig Meadows. How’s Pete?”

I shook his hand, cut my gaze to his brother. “Stubborn as ever,” I said.

Matthew lifted the plate from the prep table and turned his back on me, but not before I caught the scowl that creased his face.

“What have you got there?” I asked. “Smells good.” I hoped the complimentary-acting-friendly approach would keep things low-key. If Matthew really had been the one to kill Andy Edgers, probably best not to get him riled up.

“Mud pies,” he growled over his shoulder, “from my own garden.”

Craig grinned, clueless. “He’s kidding. That was a little pulled pork. We served mac and cheese wedges earlier.”

“Craig,” Matthew snapped.

I didn’t know which required explanation first, what a mac and cheese wedge was or . . . “What do you mean,
served
? Does that mean you were off menu?”

Matthew huffed and turned to face us. “No, served as in handed legal papers. What do you think it means?”

The first question that sprang to mind was the next thing to fall out of my mouth. “Does Pete know about this?”

“See? I told you,” Matthew snapped, eyes on Craig. “No way can I change so much as a pinch of salt without Pete Keene’s approval. And no way is that approval ever going to come. As long as he runs this place—”

“Now, now, now . . .” Craig held up a hand.

Matthew turned his anger on me. “What, did someone call you? Do you have spies? Or are you psychic or something?” He moved to step toward me, but banged a hip against the prep table, setting the aluminum clattering. I flinched at the noise, jumped back, hopefully out of his reach.

“Look, I only came by to ask, um, by any chance . . .”

Matthew opened his eyes wide, inclined his head toward me as though impatient to hear what I had to say.

“Did you, um, happen to be in Wenwood the other day? I thought I saw you—”

“Saw me . . .”

I tried to swallow down my nervousness. “Going into the hardware store.”

The wide-eyed look remained. “And you came all the way up here to ask me that?”

“Well, no. I came to see how everything was going, what with Pete not around, just in case there was anything I could do, but it seems like everything is okay.” I knew I was babbling but couldn’t stop. Must have been the wine. “And I figured as long as I was here, I would ask about, you know, the hardware store.”

“Since you explained so nice, no.” Matthew smirked. “I didn’t go to the hardware store. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

The tiny bit of courage I screwed up outside the dine-in shriveled to nothingness.

“You know, everything is fine here, just fine.” Craig grinned. “Good-size crowd tonight. Nothing to worry about. Next time you see Pete, you can let him know that everything’s fine. Fine. Good really.”

Reluctantly I turned to face Craig. “Good. Good to know.” I didn’t want to put my back to Matthew, especially when he was within an arm’s reach of an impressive variety of knives. “I’ll just—I just wanted to say thanks, Craig, for handling things here while Pete is . . .” Still I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. “Thanks.”

Then I turned and walked away as fast as my flip-flops allowed, frightened and humiliated and wishing I’d stayed and had one more drink with Tony Himmel and not gone to the dine-in at all.

*   *   *

F
riday had a way of sleeping so deeply, so completely, I could lift her from where she slept and she would drape over my hand like a wet T-shirt. In the middle of the night, following my disastrous attempt at getting information out of Matthew, I lifted the wet T-shirt/sleeping kitten off my chest and deposited her at the foot of the bed. I padded into the hallway and down the stairs into the workshop. After switching on all the lights, I rolled back the sheet covering my stained glass worktable.

The oblongs of glass I had left the day before remained at the center of the table. I took a moment to switch on the old radio Grandy kept by the stairs. Classic rock filled the corners of the room while I unpacked my tools and laid out all my supplies.

With plans to keep my hand steady and my mind focused, I laid my metal, cork-backed ruler against the glass, its edge less than a quarter inch from my earlier botched break. Using the ruler to brace my cutter against, I took a breath and scored the glass. To be doubly sure I didn’t blow this second attempt, I took my line-run pliers from my tool box. Pliers aligned precisely along the score line, I applied the gentlest of pressure, and the square of glass snapped cleanly in two.

Feeling a million times better about my ability, I lay the glass pieces down, switched the pliers for the glass cutter, and scored the next line, halving the sheet again. Again I switched cutting tool for pliers and snapped the glass.

With the glass in workable sizes, I began to cut the pattern pieces. Nature doesn’t draw in a straight line. Each piece required combinations of inside and outside curves. Outside curves at the top of petals broke clean with the help of a break plier. Inside curves took a combination of tapping the glass into breakage for some. Grozing—snicking away unwanted pieces bit by bit with the pliers—was needed for others. Free of the square, the resulting pattern pieces were little bigger than the length of my thumb. Lavender teardrops and rich blue half ovals collected on the table like a trove of jewels.

Double-checking my work, I slid the pieces into place on the pattern copied onto the heavy paper. Each piece nestled into its intended place. So simple. So obvious. The teardrops laid flat snuggled neatly beside the ovals. Soft-cornered trapezoids accommodated free-form shapes. Matching one against the other, cutting and adding more pieces, the picture began to emerge.

Satisfied to have cut a good number of pieces, I picked up a handful and carried them to the glass grinder I had set up in the corner. One at a time I stroked each piece along the grinder bit, water sluicing across the surface and washing away the sand-sized bits of glass the grinding created. Applying careful pressure allowed me to smooth down the edges of the glass, grinding away sharp ridges, without reducing the size of the piece. It was an important but time-consuming process.

Working with the glass, letting my mind wander on its own, I realized what troubled me about the things I’d learned was the missing piece. In the story of Andy Edgers’s charging practices, Tony had presented the picture of a man manipulating prices to increase his profit margin. From the volume of business the marina project brought in, that margin was poised to shift from the thousands into the tens of thousands.

Yet the paperwork on Andy’s desk consisted almost exclusively of unpaid bills, some of which appeared to have gone unpaid for longer than generally accepted. The hardware store itself featured nothing out of the ordinary, no new developments. Even the register resembled something I’d find at Carrie’s antiques store.

What had prompted Andy to overcharge the way he had?

What had become of the money?

Realizing the question of the money was what was troubling me allowed the troubled part of me to relax. All at once I was overcome with profound fatigue. I did not hesitate to pack up my tools, store the liquids, and replace the sheet over the worktable.

When my head hit the pillow again, I slept as deeply as Friday, waking midmorning in the precise position in which I’d fallen asleep. For a few moments I entertained the thought of rolling over and hiding from the day, but my mind was eager to remind me of the questions that needed answers, the phone calls unreturned, and Grandy’s detainment.

I threw the covers off and tumbled out of bed. I had a killer to find.

*   *   *

W
enwood does not have a large population, so I was stunned to find a line stretching out the door of the bakery. Where had all those people come from? Was there some sort of Friday morning special I was unaware of? Had they driven in from neighboring towns to pick up a pound of Rozelle’s Linzer tarts?

Wishing I’d thought to bring a travel mug of coffee, I took my place in line among a couple dozen people I’d never met before. I kept an eye on people joining the end of the line, and people exiting the bakery. I couldn’t shake the feeling they were watching me, whispering about me, but neither could I catch them in the act.