Wreath of Deception

by Mary Ellen Hughes

  “Yes. Today was my grand opening.”

  “And you hired this man, Kyle Sandborn, to work for you?”

  “For five hours. He was handing out free gifts and such for us, out front.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “About five hours.”

  Lieutenant Morgan’s eyebrows arched upwards.

  “I never saw him before he showed up today at eleven. I hired him through the Stewart Entertainment Agency in Baltimore.”

  “He lives and works right here in Abbotsville. You never saw him before?”

  “I’m new here, lieutenant. I know very few people so far. No, I never saw him before, although I understand he does some acting at the Abbotsville Theater.”

  “You knew that.”

  “Yes, he mentioned it as I was writing his check.” Why was she starting to feel very uncomfortable? Was it this man’s dark eyes, boring into her as if trying to read her mind? Jo slipped her hands into her pocket, then pulled them out, realizing as she did so that she was fidgeting.

  “He was here until the end of the day?”

  “No, just until four.”

  “What did he do after that?”

  “I thought he left. I was very busy around that time. He took his check, and I assumed he left soon after.”

  “You never noticed if a man in white face paint and fuzzy red hair walked out your front door?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Jo discomfort flared into anger. What was he implying? “He told me he wanted to change in the back. If he had, he would have walked out looking like anyone else. I never noticed that he hadn’t left.”

  “And when was the last time you went into your store room.”

  “Besides when I found him dead?”

  “Yes.” Lieutenant Morgan stared hard at her. Jo glared back just as hard, ready to spit out her answer, then realized she didn’t have one.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I went in this morning, before we opened up. I’m sure I ran in a few times during the day, but I can’t remember just now when the last time was.”

  “You closed up when?”

  “At six.”

  “You didn’t go into the back room at that time?”

  “No. Carrie - my co-worker, Carrie Brenner – and her husband, Dan whisked me away for dinner. It was an exhausting day. Lieutenant, tell me, please. What happened to Cudd – , I mean, to Kyle? What killed him?”

  The lieutenant’s eyes bored into her once more, but Jo stood her ground, waiting. It was a reasonable question, she felt. She had every right to know before someone’s lawyer – Kyle Sandborn’s mother? or wife? – slapped her with a million dollar lawsuit for wrongful death. The lieutenant didn’t seem to see it that way, however.

  “We’re looking into that,” he said. “Now, this Carrie Brenner. Is she here?”

  Jo sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  <><><>

  Jo flopped into her bed after what felt like days since she’d left it. She had been right after all, she thought as she punched up her pillow, although being right wasn’t offering any satisfaction. Never get too optimistic, no matter how great things seem to be going. It only sets you up for the fall. Expect the worst, and maybe it won’t be such a shock when it slams you in the face.

  Except, how in the world could she have even halfway expected what slammed her today?

  A less-than-grand opening – that she had been prepared for. Things going wrong, nobody showing up – those she knew were all possibilities. Even catastrophes like floods or fire – forget famine, Carrie would always have food around. But natural catastrophes one’s mind could deal with. They happened. Finding dead bodies in one’s back room, however, didn’t happen, or wasn’t supposed to.

  Why, oh why, had she ever hired that man in the first place? He was a headache for her while he was alive, and now dead — Jo caught herself. What was she thinking! This man, Kyle Sandborn was dead. Whether she’d liked him or not, whether he’d been a major pain the whole day or not wasn’t important anymore. The guy was dead! After what he’d probably expected to be a normal, boring, safe, job, he was dead!

  Yes, her grand business venture, her new life start had probably gone down the tubes. But shouldn’t she still put it in perspective?

  Jo tried. She tried to think of Kyle Sandborn as a man deserving her sympathy, but his whining, grinding voice kept slipping through, grating at her. She tried reminding herself that he was dead, whereas she was alive and well. But thoughts of the horrendous bills she still had to pay off, the inventory that would sit unsold in her stock room, the workshop registrations that would be cancelled faster than you could stamp the words, NO WAY! crowded everything else out.

  Who would ever want to step into her shop again, after what had happened? Her cozy craft corner had turned into a shop of horrors which would be shunned by all the decent, safety-conscious people of Abbotsville. She would never ring up a sale again.

  Poor Kyle Sandborn, she tried to think, but it kept detouring into what am I going to do now!

  CHAPTER 4

  Jo stood outside her Craft Corner, watching mournfully as the crime-scene cleanup crew, gear in hand, invaded her store. The police had informed her that this was a necessary step, as they turned the store back to her after having finished gathering their evidence.

  “But I’m perfectly capable of washing things up,” she had protested, thinking of the expense.

  “No, ma’am. I’m afraid the blood from the scene is a biohazard, and this is a place open to the public. It’s required.” The officer gave her the names of a couple of firms in the area, and left, leaving Jo to worry where she would find the money for it.

  Dan came to the rescue with his advice to check with her insurance. “This kind of thing is probably covered, though nobody ever expects to have to use it.”

  He had been right – on both counts. Thankfully, her insurance would pay, and Jo arranged to have a crew come out the next day. She had envisioned, though, the usual housekeeping or janitorial-type workers, quietly doing their job with mops and buckets and such. What arrived was a huge van – bright yellow – which parked itself smack dab in front of the store. The crew that emerged from the van suited themselves up in spacemanlike outfits complete with breathing apparatus, and unloaded high-tech-looking equipment which they dragged into her store.

  Crowds quickly gathered, of course, eyes wide with curiosity, heads together exchanging whispers, and fingers pointing, all of which caused Jo to groan. This was not the way she ever wanted to draw a crowd. Her cozy craft corner, she feared, was doomed to be forever known as the house of death.

  Hold on, she instantly chided herself, don’t be so quick to give up. Yes, things had come to a bad state, but shouldn’t she be looking at this cleanup as a turnaround? She had been a take-charge person in the past. Wasn’t this an opportunity to put things back on track?

  “Hi, Aunt Jo.”

  Jo turned to see Charlie, hands jammed deeply into pants pockets and shoulders hunched. She was glad to see him, and said so. “Are your folks here too?”

  “They went to Amanda’s soccer game, but Mom’s not staying long. She said I should come over and see if you need some help.”

  Charlie, unlike what Carrie had bemoaned in the past, didn’t look as if this time he had to be pushed very hard. As he spoke, his neck craned to see what was going on inside the store.

  “So it happened back there, huh?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “So, will they let us in, do you think?”

  “No, Charlie. I’m sorry, they won’t. They have those biohazard suits on because it’s considered dangerous.”

  “Oh.” Charlie’s face fell, and Jo moved to console him.

  “But once they give us the all-clear, you can come in and help me move things back where they should be. That should give you the chance to look around.” Jo didn’t add that by the time they went in, all that would be left to see would likely require muc
h work by Charlie’s imagination.

  What she said seemed to satisfy Charlie, and he hung around, watching with Jo as the crew trudged back and forth from the back room. They sometimes carried sealed bags, and Jo guessed they might hold cleaning utensils that came in contact with the blood. As they had suited up, the lead man of the crew had explained about some of the concerns with blood-borne pathogens, such as HIV, or hepatitis. Who knew if Kyle Sandborn’s blood actually contained anything dangerously contagious? But no one, apparently, could take the chance that it didn’t. Jo, on reflection, was grateful not to have to deal with it herself. But, she thought, glancing back at the gawking crowds, she did wish this crew could have somehow handled it more discretely.

  Carrie showed up as the crew packed away the last of their gear.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “The professional’s are done,” Jo said. “Looks like just some tidying up to do.”

  “Good. I’ll help you straighten up in the store room. Charlie,” Carrie turned to her son, “I’d rather you stay out of there, okay? There’ll be plenty to pick up in the front part of the store.”

  Jo smiled to herself, thinking that was probably as hopelessly wishful as trying to hold back tidewater. Charlie would manage, one way or another, to get an eyeful of the crime scene, and Jo was also sure that at fifteen he would be okay with it. She settled up with the cleaning crew, and watched them drive away. She, Carrie and Charlie then slipped into the store. As she locked the door firmly behind her, Jo saw the last stragglers from the crowd outside wander away. The show was over.

  “Well,” Carrie said, looking at the floor, “I guess tracked-in dirt isn’t considered bioharzardous.”

  “No. They focused on the back,” Jo said, making her way to the storeroom. “The fingerprint powder is cleaned up,” she said, poking her head in, “and the floor looks good. But the stock is all over the place. We have a lot of reorganizing to do.”

  As she said it, Jo slipped once more into wondering if it would be worth all the effort. She had the depressing feeling that her budding craft business faced an insurmountable obstacle in trying to recover from its disastrous opening day. She avoided saying so to Carrie, though.

  Carrie and Dan had helped her so much, had been pulling so hard for her, that, although the Craft Corner’s failure would be Jo’s loss, she worried as well about the effect it would have on them. So she tried her best to push away thoughts of the likely futility of it all, and plugged on.

  As she and Carrie sorted through the stock, Jo realized she had not lost as much as she had feared. Though greatly disarrayed, her sealed boxes of supplies had remained sealed, and the crime scene techs had thankfully restricted their powdering to surfaces that would reasonably retain a fingerprint. Unlike most of the flat surfaces, it would have been difficult, if not impossible to thoroughly clean her heaps of Christmas greenery and trimmings. A few items that had been close to Kyle’s body had been carried off, presumably for further testing at the crime lab, but Jo had been given a receipt with some vague hope of either return or reimbursement.

  As she moved about the room, visions of the dead Cuddles/Kyle lying there continually intruded, and Jo struggled to keep them away. Charlie might be excited over the idea of violent death, but his fascination, she knew, came from the movies, not reality. Jo, however, had come face to face with reality, finding a person lying dead who had been alive and well just a short time before. There was no fascination to it for her, only shock and a fervent wish never to have seen it at all.

  “We’ll have to dump some of these yarns, don’t you think?” Carrie asked, breaking into Jo’s thoughts. She held out two skeins that had been in open cartons and showed signs of dark powder having drifted through. A few others had been knocked onto the floor.

  “Right,” Jo agreed. “There are also things over here that either got stepped on or mashed by something heavy being set on top. No use trying to salvage them either.”

  They grabbed trash bags and began to fill them, setting them at the doorway for Charlie to carry out to the dumpster. He managed several good looks around the back room in the process, as Jo had expected, which seemed to satisfy him, despite the missing gore.

  Charlie filled his own bags with broken items from the front, and swept up excess dirt before Jo came out and wet-mopped. Little by little the place returned to order. After a couple of hours, Carrie leaned her own mop handle into a corner one last time, and plopped down on a chair.

  “I think that’s it,” she said, with a tired sigh. “Jo’s Craft Corner is back in shape and ready for customers.”

  “Well, back in shape, anyway. Thanks, Carrie.” Jo turned to Charlie, who was returning from carrying out the last of the trash “Thanks a whole lot, Charlie,” she called out. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Charlie shrugged, causing Jo’s first smile of the day. A young man of few words, she thought with amusement, though his eyes, and probably his imagination, had been busy.

  Carrie pulled herself out of her chair. “Time to get on home, I guess. There’s homework waiting to be done. See you tomorrow, Jo. I can open up if you like.”

  “No, don’t bother. You might as well sleep in.”

  “But —”

  ”Oh, I’ll come down and open up, but I don’t expect to have much to do. Jo’s Craft Corner, I expect, will be quiet as a – forgive the word – morgue.”

  <><><>

  The next morning, Jo woke early, despite her tired body. She spent the extra time dawdling about the small house, sipping coffee as she sporadically watched the morning news shows, restless but enervated. Finally she could put it off no more, and she showered and dressed, then drove glumly to the store, prepared for a day of dreary emptiness.

  Jo turned the corner at tenth and Main, and looked down the block to her store. A small crowd seemed to be gathered. More police? Reporters? Jo groaned softly. Shouldn’t that be over with by now? She pulled into an empty parking spot just beyond the group and had barely switched off her ignition when she heard her name spoken sharply.

  “Jo McAllister! You’re late!”

  Jo stared at the wrinkled face that appeared at the open passenger window of her car

  “Huh?”

  “I said, you’re late! The sign on your door says you open up at ten. It’s now ten-oh-three.”

  “You’ve been waiting for me to open?”

  The tall, gray-haired woman pushed up the sleeves of her navy velour warm-up suit. “Our power walk winds up at nine-thirty. I told the girls all about your place, and we powered on over here, hoping you might let us in early. Instead, we had to cool our heels, waiting!”

  Jo looked around, feeling dazed. Nearly a dozen women milled about, actually champing at the bit waiting for her to open her store. It was unbelievable, or nearly so, since here, in fact, they were. Jo pulled out her keys and worked her way to the door through the gaggle of chattering women, apologizing for her lateness as she went. They poured into the store behind her and spread out, barely waiting for her to flick on the lights.

  Jo dropped her bag behind the counter and unlocked the cash register, still feeling somewhat out-of-body. The gray-haired woman came up to her.

  “Ina Mae Kepner,” she said, holding out her hand. Jo shook it, feeling the strength. Despite the age evident on her face, Ina Mae was clearly in great shape.

  “I figured you might need a little boost today, after what happened on Saturday.”

  “A boost?”

  “Why, yes. I can pretty well imagine what you must have been going through. There it was, your big day, and it ends up with police and ambulance people tramping all over your place.” Ina Mae glanced around. “Looks pretty much back to order, by the way. Must have been a job and a half.”

  “Yes,” Jo admitted. “As a matter of fact it was. I had help, though.”

  Ina Mae nodded. “Carrie Brenner. She’s a good woman. Coming in today?”

  “A little later.” />
  “Good. I’d like her help picking out some yarn for a project I have in mind.”

  The bell on Jo’s door jingled as more customers arrived. Ina Mae wandered off toward the knitting section as someone asked Jo for a particular fabric paint. Then another woman wanted help tracking down all the materials Jo had used to make “that lovely autumn wreath you have hanging on the door. I just have to see if I can duplicate it.” That pleased Jo, but she realized she’d better call Carrie fast, and hope she could get down in a hurry. She still felt befuddled, trying to cope with the fact that instead of morguelike, her business was lively and bustling. But why should that be?

  Little by little, she began to understand. With every purchase of paint, or dried flowers, or picture frames, came variations of the same questions: How terrible was it finding that poor man? Was there an awful lot of blood? What actually happened?

  Jo fielded the curiosity as best she could, while ringing up the sales, but one eager face was quickly replaced by another. Then they came in twos and threes, all waiting wide-eyed for the answers that she didn’t particularly want to give, that she hemmed and hawed over to find the vaguest response, while it sank in that the big draw today was not Jo’s lovely craft items, but Jo’s horrifying, yet – to the customers, at least – exciting story.

  Carrie showed up soon, and Jo saw her encountering the same problem. How did he look? What did the police say? Carrie seemed to be handling it better than Jo, but Jo could see it begin to wear on her as well. The upside was they were doing terrific sales. The downside was wondering how quickly these customers would fade away once their morbid curiosity was satisfied.

  Ina Mae was the only one, Jo noticed, who didn’t probe for information. She even pulled a customer off when Jo was being particularly hard pressed.

  “Deirdre Patterson,” Ina Mae exclaimed at one point, “let this poor woman do her work! She’s had enough talking about this unfortunate business.”

  Deirdre Patterson was obviously not one of Ina Mae’s power walkers, but a forty-something woman who looked dressed for lunch with the girls in a green silk pant suit complete with pearls and pumps. She bristled at Ina Mae’s words, protesting, “I was only trying to offer my sympathy for a very unfortunate occurrence. Many people find it helps, you know, to talk about stressful things. Don’t you find it so?” she turned to Jo, beaming an encouraging smile.