Off the Beadin' Path, Glass Bead Mystery Series, Book 3

by Janice Peacock

  “Idiot! How many times do I need to tell you? You’ve got to keep the colored glass out of the crack-off bucket. I can only recycle the clear—” Duke saw me and stopped in mid-sentence. “What are you doing here? Oh, I get it. Abby sent you to get me to come to class.”

  “No. I came on my own.”

  “I already explained to Abby, unless Marco is back from the dead, I’m not returning to Old Firehouse Studio.”

  “Not even if his brother were teaching class?”

  “Yeah, Abby called me and told me about Dario, but seriously? He hasn’t blown glass in years, there’s no way Abby would be able to convince him.”

  “Abby didn’t have to. Tessa did.”

  “Huh. I don’t know…It would be good to see Dario.”

  “You know Dario?” The glass world was small, so it wasn’t surprising that the men knew each other, but somehow, I thought I would have known that by now. “You knew Marco?”

  “Oh, sure, I’ve known both of them for years. Can’t say I’ve been in touch with them much.” I recalled the first night of class whenMarco was rude to Duke. At the time I thought it was Marco reacting to Duke’s surly attitude. In fact, there was some personal history there and that had most likely intensified Marco’s reaction to him. Duke brought me over to a wall of photos at the back of his workshop. “Let me show you something. Here we are at Hillside Studios in Montana. None of us had slept for days. We were partying and blowing glass. It was our last night, and, oh, we were going to have a massive hangover the next day,” Duke chuckled, the first sign of humor I’d ever seen in the man.

  I gazed at the photo. A group of ten men and one woman stood with their arms around each other, smiling, each holding a blowpipe. I focused more closely on the woman.

  “Is that Abby?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is. She and I go way back.”

  “And Dez, too?”

  “Oh yeah, he was there, messed up with the rest of us. And there’s Marco and Dario, right in the middle.”

  Off to the side, nearly out of the frame, one man caught my eye. Who was that guy? The one wearing the Ciao T-shirt with the burn mark on the left sleeve.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I headed to the Homicide Division offices of the Seattle P.D.

  I’d visited Zachary’s office last year when he demanded that Tessa and I show up so he could question us about the murder of a young woman whose body we discovered behind Aztec Beads. Zachary had been quite stern with me back then, though he certainly had warmed up in recent months. In thinking it through, now that I was walking down the hall toward his office, I probably should have called to ask if I could come by. Realizing I should not have come unannounced, I decided a quick retreat was the best course of action and made a spontaneous U-turn, smacking right into none other than Zachary himself.

  “You came by my office, how nice,” Zachary said. “I hope this is a social visit.”

  “I brought you your handkerchief,” I said, pulling it out of my handbag and handing it to him.

  “You certainly didn’t come all this way to give me that.” Dammit. He saw right through me.

  “Um, yes, well, also,” I said, flustered, because I was weighing my options. Should I tell him the truth, that I was there on a mission to find Marco de Luca’s killer? Or should I fib and tell him I had come only to see him? I didn’t need to answer. Zachary figured it out on his own. He was a detective, after all.

  “I see. So maybe I was too hopeful that you’d want to stop by and see me? And maybe too hopeful, as well, that you’d leave this murder investigation alone?”

  “You need to hear me out, okay? I have an idea, and I don’t think it’s too crazy.” Zachary grasped my elbow and ushered me toward his office. I wriggled out of his grip. “Please. I’m sorry to be meddling, but I think I’ve got something here. I need to see the Medical Examiner. Actually, I need to see Marco.”

  “Marco? Trust me, Jax, you do not want to see a body after it’s been through an autopsy. It’s not a pretty sight.” Zachary pulled off his heavy-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. For the brief moment while his glasses were off, I remembered how incredibly sexy he was, and longed to spend some time with him, and not at the police department. Zachary put his glasses back on, and I snapped out of my reverie, which was a good thing since I was getting a little carried away thinking about what we could do together.

  “Actually, I need to see his T-shirt, the one he was found dead in.”

  “You don’t need to see Marco’s body to see that shirt. It’s in evidence. What do you think it will tell us?”

  “I’m not sure, but I don’t think it was his shirt.”

  “Certainly, someone wouldn’t commit murder because Marco stole his shirt,” Zachary said in a dismissive tone.

  “I want to see if the shirt I saw in a picture at a local glassblower’s workshop is the same one Marco had on the night he died. It has the word Ciao in fancy script across the front of it.”

  “Certainly, there could be more than one T-shirt like that,” Zachary said.

  He dropped me off in his office and went to pull the shirt from the evidence center. While he was gone, I sent a text to Vance asking him to send me one of the pictures he took from the first night of class, hoping it would reveal another clue that would lead us to the killer. I removed a stack of files from Zachary’s only guest chair and sat down. When he returned, he pulled the T-shirt out of a plastic evidence bag and spread it out a metal tray.

  “What are we looking for?” Zachary asked.

  “We’re looking at the holes.”

  “The holes?”

  “See, there’s one here on the left sleeve. I saw someone wearing a shirt like this in a picture from ten years ago. Back then it was a burn mark, and now it’s a hole.”

  “There are all sorts of holes in this shirt,” Zachary said. “Let’s see what the M.E. has to say in her report,” Zachary said, pulling up the report on his computer screen and reading aloud. “‘Subject exposed for thirty-plus hours…’ sounds like he was pretty bloated by the time she did the autopsy. The M.E. said there was low blood loss at the point of entry of the weapon, indicative of what, she was not certain.”

  “But he was dead before he went in the river, right? Tessa did see Marco in the hot shop and he was already dead.”

  “Yes, right here it says there was water in his airway, but not in his lungs. He didn’t drown,” Zachary said, pointing at the computer screen.

  “She doesn’t say anything about the shirt?”

  “No, but she’s a medical examiner, not a detective. She cares about what the body can tell her.”

  “So, who’s the detective working on this case? Is it you?” I asked.

  “I’m working to get this case transferred to me, but so far your buddy Sheriff Poole isn’t letting go of it, so I can only work on this in an unofficial capacity. But, I’ve got to say, looking at this shirt, all I see is a shirt with burn holes in it. I don’t see a cut from a knife.”

  My phone pinged. It was a message from Vance, with the photo I’d hoped he would send. I zoomed in on the picture of Marco’s shirt. I showed Zachary the picture on my phone that Vance had taken the night Marco had died with all of the students gathered around him in Old Firehouse Studio’s kitchen. Marco was wearing his holey Ciao shirt, only there was one less hole in it than there was in the shirt on the desk in front of us.

  “This burn hole right here,” I said, pointing to the hole in the center of the o in Ciao on the T-shirt. “There was no hole there the last time we saw Marco alive.”

  “And what does that tell us?” Zachary asked, taking off his glasses to look more closely at the hole in the center of the o.

  “What does the M.E.’s report say about glass? Did she find any glass in the wound in Marco’s chest?”

  Zachary tapped the keys on his
keyboard. “Hm. Doesn’t say she found anything.”

  “How hard would it be for her to look again?”

  “I can make the request. Why?”

  “Because I think I know what the murder weapon is,” I said.

  “We had a CSI team out there all day scouring Carthage, the studio, the river, Main Street. We didn’t find a weapon that matched the wound. Your knife doesn’t match it, you’ll be pleased to know.”

  “They’re not going to find it. If you come over tonight, I can show you.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I answered the door at seven o’clock. There was only one problem. The man standing on my welcome mat was not Zachary, but Ryan.

  “Ryan? What the heck are you doing here?”

  He shoved a bouquet of purple tulips at me.

  “These are for you. Please, accept my apology for pulling Tessa over, and uh, pulling her over again.”

  “And for rescuing me from the clutches of Sheriff Poole,” I added.

  “Okay, except I’m not sorry about that. I’m glad I was able to help you.”

  “But didn’t you get into a lot of trouble?”

  “I did,” admitted Ryan. “But I’m sure it will be fine.”

  Gumdrop met us on the landing by the front door, and I picked him up. I had an idea. I stepped onto the porch and knocked on Val’s door.

  “I won’t be but a second.”

  Val opened the door a crack.

  “Can you do me a favor? Gummie needs to be groomed, right now. It’s urgent.”

  “What? Grooming? I didn’t say I’d groom him. I’m a hairdresser for humans, not pets. Although I did give Stanley a bath after his romp in the mud with you.” Val looked at me like I was a crazy person. What I needed was for Val to rescue me by getting rid of Ryan. She needed to do it fast, because Zachary would be here soon and I didn’t want to see those two clash.

  “Oh, I thought you said when Ryan arrives I should bring you Gumdrop.” I glared at her, hoping she’d catch my drift. She had no idea what was going on. “You know, you should really say hello to Ryan, maybe invite him over to um…”

  Freddie sauntered up behind Val.

  “What a beautiful looking animal you’ve got there. I’d be happy to take him for a little while. And Valerie, it seems like maybe you should invite that nice young man in, too,” Uncle Freddie said, pulling Ryan inside and grabbing Gumdrop as well.

  One thing was certain, while Val was clueless about what I was trying to do, Uncle Freddie had it all figured out. For now, at least, Ryan was out of the way.

  When Zachary arrived, I took him back to my studio. I showed him some of my beads, the glass-working and jewelry-making tools, the dozens of colors of Italian glass rods I stored upright in mugs and vases, and my table-mounted torch.

  “My torch runs on oxygen and natural gas, and I light it like this,” I said, using a striker to create a spark, while the gas flowed from the tip of the torch. The gases ignited, and soon I had the perfect eight-inch long blue flame, hot enough to melt glass. This was my comfort zone, when it came to melting glass. It was certainly much more manageable for me than the incredibly hot furnace that I simply couldn’t seem to master.

  “I had no idea how this all worked,” he said, as I introduced a long thin rod of glass into the flame and heated it until it glowed orange. As the glass melted, it balled up at the end of the rod. I pulled it out of the flame and using my tweezers I pinched the molten blob of glass and pulled it out to a thin, needle-sharp point.

  “See this? Imagine if it were eight inches long instead of an inch? Marco was stabbed with a glass knife. And the glass must have been hot when Marco was stabbed. That’s why there’s a burn hole, and not a cut, in his shirt.”

  “I could see that, but where is the weapon? Officers have searched the studio and surrounding area, and can’t find anything that matches the wound.”

  I plunged the still-hot glass needle into an old mug of water on my workbench, my miniature version of the hot shop’s crack-off bucket. The glass instantly broke into a million pieces in the bottom of the cup.

  “The disappearing weapon. How ingenious,” Zachary said.

  “That’s why I wanted to see if the M.E. had found any glass in Marco’s wound. I was wondering if maybe some pieces would have chipped off if they struck a bone when he was stabbed.”

  “Let me check and see if there have been any updates to the files from the M.E. after my inquiry about glass in the victim’s wound. Can I borrow your laptop?” Zachary asked.

  I grabbed my computer and we settled down on the sofa. Zachary logged in to the police department system, jumping though all the security hoops to get to the appropriate screen, which showed him the updates from the Medical Examiner.

  “Aha! It looks like the M.E. found three small pieces of glass, each two millimeters wide,” Zachary said.

  “So, I’d say that confirms it. The murder weapon was a glass knife. I haven’t had enough courage to blow glass at all, so I’m not in the running as the murderer. I couldn’t make a glass knife even if I had wanted to kill Marco.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that,” Zachary said. “I wouldn’t want to have to arrest you.” He gave me a gentle kiss on the lips. “I wouldn’t want to throw you in jail,” he added with another kiss, this one a little more intense than the last.

  I was getting pretty hot and bothered.

  “What else would you not want to do?” I asked, teasing him.

  “I definitely would want to put you in handcuffs,” he said with a sly smile.

  “What? You would or wouldn’t want to put me in handcuffs?”

  Zachary was flustered now, as he clearly had slipped up and not said exactly what he meant. Or had he?”

  “A-hem!” He cleared his throat and tried again. “You know, I wouldn’t want to do anything—uh, that would—uh, put you in a compromising position, I mean, uh, complicated, or uncomfortable position.”

  “Shhhh,” I said, giving him a kiss. “I think it’s better if we don’t use our words right now.

  • • •

  As we stood on the front porch, Zachary kissed me one last time. I felt a tingle all the way down to my toes. Since Tessa was staying with me, we couldn’t have gotten any more serious than kissing for fear that she might come home and catch us in a compromising position, to use Zachary’s slip of the tongue.

  Zachary turned and trotted down the front steps and waved as he got inside his car. I sighed. Even though he was serious and at times awkward, he had a gentleness that attracted me. I was definitely starting to have feelings for this complicated man.

  I tapped on Val’s front door, hopeful that Ryan had already left and that I wouldn’t have to deal with him again tonight.

  Val peeked out at me.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Is Ryan still with you?”

  “No. Come in,” Val said opening the door far enough to allow me to slide inside. “So, did you have a nice time with Zachary?”

  I decided to try the strategy Tessa used to avoid answering questions.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Come on. Did you have a really, really nice time?”

  “It’s very complicated.”

  “I don’t think she’s ready to talk about it.” Uncle Freddie was sitting on the sofa strumming an acoustic guitar. “She doesn’t want to ‘Kiss and Tell’,” he said, playing a riff from that Bryan Ferry song. Freddie was definitely more tuned into what was going on with other people than Val, and I liked that about him.

  “I thought you came to tell me about how you finally pointed your heels up to heaven, if you get my drift,” Val said with wink.

  “Sorry, my heels were firmly on the ground. I just came to retrieve Gumdrop.”

  “Oh, right! Let me go get him.” Val headed d
own the hall, returned with my cat in her arms, and passed him to me. “Gumdrop sure seemed to like Ryan—what a hunk!”

  I hefted Gumdrop in my arms. “I don’t know, Gummie, you seem pretty hunky to me—or maybe that’s chunky? As for Ryan, he does have a lot of animal magnetism, but I’m afraid that may be his only asset. Thanks for taking care of Gummie and Ryan,” I said, making a quick escape so Val couldn’t continue to grill me about how I’d spent the evening.

  Returning to my studio, I shut off the oxygen and natural gas to my torch. Gumdrop jumped onto my workbench and cruised over to see what I was doing. I gave him a long stroke down his back, and he closed his big green eyes and began to purr. He flopped onto his side, pushing the mug of water over. Water and bits of glass gravel rushed across the table top. As soon as the water hit Gumdrop’s paws, he leapt from the table, and was gone.

  “Dammit, Gummie,” I said, grabbing some paper towels to sop up the liquid. I used a little whisk broom to sweep up the bits of glass. As I looked at the bits of glass, I was struck with a memory. I remembered seeing colored glass in the hot-shop’s crack-off bucket the first time I worked with Dario in the studio. But, the last time I worked with him the bucket was clean, except for the small bit of clear glass that I had deposited when I’d placed my tiny gather of glass into it. If the colored glass in the crack-off bucket was from the murder weapon, then that could tell us who the culprit was. I wished I could remember what color it was, but I just couldn’t recall.

  I called Tessa.

  “Are you still at your studio?”

  “Why? Do you and Zachary need a little more time?”

  “What? No. He just left.”

  “Oh! Ha! That was only a guess—he was actually there? And how was the stern detective?”

  “Not that stern, more like stumbling. Every once in a while, he says something completely wrong and embarrassing—sort of like a Freudian slip. It’s like he’s repressed, and occasionally something inappropriate pops out. Anyway, I sent him home a little while ago.”