“I’m really happy for you Jax, you deserve it. I didn’t do much. People just love your beads.”
“Thanks, Tessa. You’re not angry I’ve been gone for so long?”
“I’m okay. Glad I could help my best friend make a ton of money. You’re buying me dinner this week, of course, to make up for all my hard work,” Tessa said.
“Absolutely. Any restaurant you want. You want me to take you to Ray’s Boathouse?” That was one of Tessa’s favorite places, near her house on the Shilshole Bay. We’d spent many afternoons drinking white wine on the upstairs deck, watching the sun sink over Puget Sound.
“That sounds great,” Tessa said, giving me a big hug. “Did you find the mystery bead seller?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. Her name’s Brynne,” I said. “And after talking with her, I have some serious questions for Miles.”
“What does he have to do with all of this?”
“It looks like Miles asked Brynne to make beads for Saundra. He’d bring her designs, and she’d make the beads. At some point in the process, Miles would pay Brynne and deliver the beads to Saundra.”
“So you’ve uncovered a pretty unethical way of doing business. You don’t think it’s illegal, do you?” asked Tessa.
“No, as long as the bead designs belong to Saundra, she could do what she wanted with them, including have someone else make them.”
“Really? Because that just doesn’t seem right,” she said.
“What I want to know is how Saundra’s murder fits into a scheme in which Brynne, a beadmaker no one knows, makes beads for one of the most well-known glass bead artists,” I said.
“If someone murdered Saundra to hide this scheme, could they also be after Miles or Brynne?”
“If someone was after Brynne, they’d have trouble finding her.” She didn’t want to be found, but I wasn’t sure why.
And what about Miles? Was he in danger? Or was Miles a mastermind who had created a plot that had ultimately led to Saundra’s death? After all, Miles had been near Saundra when she died. Why Miles would want to kill Saundra was another question entirely, other than the fact that she treated him badly, which didn’t seem like a reasonable motive for murder.
Time to track down Miles, and, to use Tiffany’s expression, have a chat.
THIRTY-FOUR
MILES WASN’T AT MINNIE’S BOOTH, where he’d been most of the weekend. So much for him helping me at my table.
“If you see Miles, send him over, okay?” I asked Tessa as she sped away to shop one last time, worried, I was sure, that if she didn’t leave now, I’d ask her to man (woman?) the booth for another hour or two.
“Can I get those extra books back from you?” Miles asked when he showed up at my table a few minutes later.
“Did Tessa tell you I wanted to see you?”
“I haven’t seen her. Look, I just need to get those books. A bead store is coming by the loading dock to pick them up. I promise I’ll come right back.” He reached under the table and grabbed the box of books.
“Miles. Sit.” Miles perched on the chair next to me, the books in his lap. “Are you okay? I’ve been a little worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” said Miles. He wasn’t giving me anything to go on.
“Nothing’s bothering you?”
“No, I’m cool,” Miles said, adjusting the vintage watch on his wrist.
“And how’s Minnie?”
“She’s fine too.” I needed some lessons on how to interrogate someone. I wasn’t sure what questions to ask Miles, but I didn’t want to alarm him, or have him think I was accusing him of anything. Asking questions like “Did you kill Saundra?” and “Do you know who did?” were right out of Tiffany’s playbook, not mine.
One of Minnie’s bead trays crashed to the floor, and Miles looked over as she scrambled around picking up beads. Miles looked at me with sad puppy eyes. He reminded me of Stanley the Basset hound, minus the bloodshot eyes and droopy lids.
“Go on, go help her. I’m fine,” I said. “Here, take this envelope back to Minnie. It’s everything I borrowed this weekend, plus twenty dollars to pay her for the supplies I used.” There weren’t going to be many more sales this weekend. I held on to a partially used receipt book, in case there were some last minute buyers.
“I promise we can talk a little later,” Miles said, dashing off to help his new girlfriend, the manila envelope resting on top of the box of Saundra’s Celestial Bead Designs books.
I recalled what I’d found in the envelope the day Miles gave it to me. There were detailed sketches of a design that looked like one of Saundra’s beads, and several pages of notes, written in a round-lettered handwriting that many girls in middle school tried to perfect. Saundra had told me she was unveiling new designs in the Celestial Bead Designs book at Bead Fun. If that was true, why did Minnie have Saundra’s notes and drawings? Had Minnie stolen them from Saundra?
Tessa had given me Saundra’s book, and I found it on the floor under my tote bag. It had a big, gorgeous image of the new Cosmos bead design on the cover. I wondered if this book would ever be worth much. I wasn’t sure if I could even bear to keep it, since I’d just as soon forget about this weekend. I opened the cover of the book. Saundra’s spidery signature was scrawled across the first page. Ostentatious until the end.
The signature looked nothing like the writing on the note pages I’d seen in Minnie’s envelope. Saundra’s writing was jagged and sweeping. The pages of notes had looping round letters. If that wasn’t Saundra’s writing on those note pages, whose was it? Minnie’s? And if they were Minnie’s notes, what did that mean?
I looked over at Minnie’s booth. A sheet had been thrown over the top of her display. She was gone, and so was Miles. Minnie had left her beads and her show gear on her table, so I knew she’d be back, but I couldn’t wait until then. I was worried about Miles—had he gotten caught up in something he couldn’t handle?
Miles said he was headed to the loading dock, and it was possible that Minnie was with him. Adriana was wandering from table to table, making some last minute purchases, perhaps trying to see if any vendors were willing to give her some end-of-show discounts.
“Adriana!” I shouted to her. “Can you help me for a few minutes?”
“Sure. No problem,” Adriana said, sliding behind my table. “What do I need to do?”
“Just sit here and make sure no one steals anything. If a customer wants to buy something, just have them pay in cash. And if anything complicated comes up, call me. Thanks!”
I trotted down the aisle, dodging dazed customers who were wrapping up their weekend of frenzied bead buying. At the back of the ballroom, I passed the utility room, then sprinted down an industrial gray hallway. I skidded around the corner and smacked into the side of an orange forklift at the back of a large warehouse.
THIRTY-FIVE
FROM MY HIDING PLACE behind the forklift, I could hear Minnie shouting. Her words, echoing inside the cavernous warehouse, were punctuated by the sound of a thrown object meeting its target, followed by a small squeaking sound.
“YOU (thunk squeak) GAVE (thunk squeak) THOSE (thunk squeak) PAPERS (thunk squeak) to JAX (a final thunk, but no squeak).” Minnie must’ve missed Miles that time. “I was in the clear. Nobody needed to know what happened.”
I peered around the front of the forklift. Miles was standing at the edge of the loading dock, his hands protecting his head. Minnie was ten feet away with a half-dozen books in her hands and an empty box next to her. Books surrounded Miles, covers open and pages torn. Minnie had been throwing Saundra’s books at him, and some of them had caused him damage, judging by the red welts on his face and arms. I couldn’t stand seeing poor Miles abused like this. Against my better judgment, I decided to rescue him.
“Cut it out, Minnie. You have no right to treat Miles that way,” I said as I ran to his side at the edge of the loading dock.
“No right? No right! I most certainly have a right. He work
ed for that monster. She stole my design and put it on the cover of her book. How could you let her do that, huh, Miles? How could you?”
“I swear I didn’t know it was your design. Saundra said she invented it, and I trusted her. She was my mentor, why would I think she was lying?” said Miles.
“The Cosmos design was mine,” Minnie said, throwing another book at Miles. He dodged it, and it went flying over the edge of the dock. “I showed her some pages of notes—these notes—six months ago at a bead retreat.” There were loose pages of drawings and notes on the floor that I recognized as the ones I had just given back to Miles. Minnie stomped on them with her floral army boots. “She said the design was okay, but she didn’t think it would sell very well. I was discouraged and didn’t make any more after that.” Minnie started to deflate as she heard herself admit her own failure in giving up so easily. Miles stood a little taller, precariously close to the edge of the dock, kicking books off his chukka boots.
“When I saw the pages of notes that Jax had, I recognized your writing. I watched you write receipts for three days, so I know how you write, like some of the girls I knew in junior high, the loopy words with hearts dotting the i’s,” Miles said.
“I don’t dot my i’s with hearts,” Minnie said, dropping a pile of books on the floor for emphasis. The noise reverberated through the warehouse. “At least not very often.”
“When I brought those pages back to you, I didn’t really understand what they meant. But I get it now, those were the drawings of your design,” Miles said.
“Cosmos was my design, and Saundra stole it. When I saw the beads on the cover of her book, I just lost it. How could she do that to me? Why didn’t she even talk with me about how she wanted to make something similar?”
“You could have made your designs anyway,” I said. “She wasn’t the only one who was allowed to make beads that look like a starry night sky.”
“And have everyone say my work was soooo derivative of Saundra’s? That I was copying her, when really it was the other way around? That woman was vile and deserved to die.”
“You killed Saundra?” asked Miles.
“No! What? No, I didn’t kill her. Seriously, I wanted to kill her, but really, I wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right,” Minnie said.
“Why does it matter that I had the notes?” I asked. “Saundra was dead, and if you didn’t kill her, the notes don’t matter.”
“But they do matter. I didn’t want anything to connect me to Saundra—I didn’t want to be accused of killing her because she’d stolen my design.”
“After I told you I had some of your papers at the Cheesecake Factory, did you realize what I had and try to get them back?” I asked.
“I did, but obviously, I wasn’t successful. There was always a security guard watching the door to the ballroom, so I couldn’t check to see if you had my papers in your booth. The only place I could look was in your room.”
“Did you trash my room looking for your notes?” I asked.
“When I got to your room last night, someone had already been there. There was a security guard standing at the open door. His face was red, his nose looked like a…a…strawberry. The place was upside down—but I didn’t do it. When I saw the guard, I just kept walking down the hall,” Minnie said. She had described Carl Shulman, the guard with the ruddy face and the bulbous nose.
“You’ll have to tell that story to the police. I’m sure they’ll want to hear it, especially since that security guard was found dead in a stairwell last night,” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! But I know this—I can’t go to jail. Do you know how it would be in there?”
“I imagine it would be pretty awful,” I said.
“They wouldn’t serve kale—or quinoa. I’d have to wear an orange jumpsuit, which would be fine, except everyone else would be wearing one too. There’d be arts and crafts using yarn and wooden beads. Trust me, I know how it is…”
“You’ve been in prison,” I realized. “And you don’t want to go back.”
“My parole officer has been looking for me. I really don’t want the police to track me down—I’ll end up back in prison.” Minnie rushed toward me, hands out, trying to push me off the end of the dock. “Let me show you how serious I am about you keeping your mouth shut.”
And while a drop of four feet wouldn’t kill me, I didn’t want to crack my head open. I’d had enough of people doing that this weekend, and for the rest of my life.
“Jax!” Tessa called out to me from across warehouse.
The cavalry had arrived.
THIRTY-SIX
WITH HER GUN DRAWN, Detective Tiffany Houston swung into the warehouse and ran toward the edge of the loading dock where I stood with Minnie and Miles. Tessa, Val, and Ryan were right behind the detective. “Everyone, I want your hands where I can see them,” she shouted.
Minnie spun around to face the detective. We all put our hands up.
“Jax, you can put your hands down,” said Tiffany, through gritted teeth.
I put them down and moved away from Minnie and Miles. If Tiffany was going to shoot, I didn’t want to be in the line of fire.
“Minnie Dean, you are under arrest for the murder of Saundra Jameson,” Tiffany said.
“But—I—I swear it wasn’t me,” Minnie said. “I’m a vegetarian, I can’t even think about killing an animal. How can you think I could kill a person?”
“I ran your name through our police database, and it appears that you have quite a colorful history—don’t you, Minnie? Sergeant Anderson, your parole officer, has been trying to find you,” said the detective. “And Miles, you’ve had a bit of a checkered past as well, haven’t you?”
Miles stood at the edge of the dock, still holding his hands above his head.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Miles said. “And it happened a long time ago.”
“Come on, Miles, you need to tell us what you know,” I said.
“Jax, let me clear something up with you,” said Tiffany. “There is no us. There is just me. Thanks for playing along, though.”
“I told you she couldn’t be trusted,” Val whispered in my ear.
We all stood silently, waiting. Miles looked over at me, and I nodded slightly, encouraging him to talk.
“I was at U of O for a while, an art major. I got involved in some student protests, mostly about budget cuts and tuition hikes. I would bring my ukulele, and we’d sing protest songs during the rallies. I was good at playing ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ in a completely non-ironic way.
“One time when we were out in front of the administration building, a bunch of campus police officers came by, and they started harassing us, roughing us up a little bit. A big cop moved toward me, and someone pushed me from behind. The sign I was holding bashed the cop in the face. They cuffed me and took me away. A felony attack on an officer. After that, I couldn’t get a job. Any job that required a background check, which is pretty much any job, I would fail because of the arrest. But Saundra, she said she’d take me, as long as I kept her secrets. And I did.”
“And what secrets would those be?” Tiffany asked.
“Let me see if I can explain it,” I offered. “Miles, if I get something wrong, you can jump in. Saundra wasn’t making her own beads. Someone named Brynne made them.”
Miles looked at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “How did you—”
“I found her at the Saturday Market. She was selling beads that she shouldn’t have been selling. I haven’t figured out why this was going on, but it most certainly was. And I have the evidence here to prove it,” I said, pulling the beads I’d bought from Brynne out of my pocket. “Miles, you introduced Brynne to Saundra. Brynne was making Saundra’s beads, and it was a good financial arrangement for Brynne, and you too, I imagine. Have you got anything to add, Miles?”
“That’s not illegal,” Miles objected.
“No, but it certainly does make me wonder what
other secrets there were between you and Saundra. What would make you want to kill her?”
“Are you kidding me? I didn’t kill her. I worked for her. If she died, I would have no job.”
“But you set up transactions between Saundra and Brynne. You sold beads that were not made by Saundra and claimed that they were hers,” I said.
“They were her designs. She could do whatever she wanted with them.”
“In the case of the Cosmos bead design, it didn’t belong to Saundra, it was Minnie’s,” I pointed out. “That makes Minnie seem awfully guilty. She certainly had a motive, and she did have a table near Saundra that would have placed her close enough to hit Saundra with a thousand volts straight into her spine.”
“I had no idea that Minnie killed Saundra. That was a terrible thing to do, Minnie,” Miles said, standing up to his full height.
“I didn’t kill Saundra!” Minnie yelled.
“But what about Miles? How did he fit into your plan?” I asked Minnie.
“What plan? I didn’t have a plan. I met Miles, we had a little sex. And I mean a little,” Minnie said, with a disappointed glare at Miles. “He worked in my booth—he was useful. Then I realized Mister Brilliant here,” nodding at Miles, “had gone and given you the drawings of my beads and basically framed me for the murder of The Great Saundra Jameson.”
“Giving those papers to Jax along with the rest of the supplies was an accident. I was trying to be nice. You should try that some time,” said Miles. I could see that Miles’s and Minnie’s relationship, or whatever it was, was on the rocks.
“I think it’s time to go, Minnie,” said Tiffany, clipping a single handcuff onto her wrist.
Miles blew out a sigh of relief, like he thought Tiffany was going to let him go.
“And you’re coming, too,” the detective said to Miles, grabbing his wrist and cuffing him to Minnie.
A Bead in the Hand (Glass Bead Mystery Series Book 2) Page 18
