A Crafty Killing

by Lorraine Bartlett

  Her stomach twisting with anguish, Katie set the ledger aside and tackled the stack of bills, most of them at least a month overdue. The cash flow—or what there was of it—was definitely out of kilter.

  Chad had told her that when Ezra first bought the building, the old apple warehouse had been divided to house up to four small businesses, as well as Artisans Alley. Ezra figured with that space leased, there’d always be income, since his artist vendors only paid on a month-to-month basis. All but one of those rental spaces was currently empty. It housed a photography studio. Apparently the previous lease holders had been so successful, they’d moved into larger quarters on Victoria Square.

  Chad had wanted to hire Fred Cunningham of Cunningham Realty to list the vacancies, but Ezra wouldn’t hear of it. Fred represented the owners of the old Webster mansion, and she and Chad had consulted with him on many occasions as they’d saved to buy the old colonial-style building. Unfortunately, miserly old Ezra felt he was perfectly capable of renting the space himself. He’d been wrong, and the little shops had sat vacant for months—some more than a year. If Katie couldn’t fill them with retail establishments, she’d let them out as office space. And she would hire Fred to do it PDQ.

  It was after two when Katie opened the middle drawer of Ezra’s desk, looking for a pen that didn’t skip, and found a brass key with a card tag attached. By now she recognized Ezra’s handwriting. It read, “Chad’s pad.”

  Her heart raced, and she clasped the key so hard it bit into her palm.

  After a ferocious argument that sent Chad flying out their apartment door, he’d lived in a storeroom somewhere on the Alley’s second floor, which had been totally illegal, and definitely not safe, given the age and condition of the building. How many times had Ezra encouraged Katie to come by to empty out that room? How many times had he invited her to become more involved with Artisans Alley?

  She hadn’t, of course. For a long time she couldn’t even think about the place without anger boiling through her. Artisans Alley—and Ezra—had ruined her marriage. The place had seduced Chad with its siren’s song. It had caused him to empty their bank account, to abandon their dreams of running a bed-and-breakfast for an interest in this ... this decaying money pit.

  Katie unclenched her fist, staring at the key and the dents it had made in her hand, her anger flaring once again.

  If it hadn’t been for Ezra and his unnatural need to keep this sorry excuse of an enterprise going, Chad would still be alive.

  Katie’s throat tightened and tears threatened as she remembered her last sight of Chad laid out in his casket—dressed in his best suit, his waxy face lax, his hands folded over his abdomen, looking like no one Katie had ever loved; certainly not the man she’d lived and shared so much with. Six months later, the memory continued to haunt her dreams.

  Pocketing the key, Katie got up from her chair. The vendors’ lounge was just outside her office. “Lounge” was a definite misnomer, for it was not a place to hang around and pass the time idly. “Stark” was a better description. There was a table, where lunches could be eaten, an apartment-sized fridge, a microwave, and a coffeemaker. An out-of-date calendar hung on one of the drab brown walls, but there was no other decoration.

  Katie crossed the room in a hurry and entered the main showroom to wander Artisans Alley’s aisles, hoping to shake off the restlessness that prickled beneath her skin. Poor lighting made the area look dingy. Already she could see so many ways to improve the operation—and its bottom line. Had Chad seen the same things? Had Ezra been just too stubborn to take her husband’s advice?

  Dust-collecting objets d’art held little allure for Katie, who’d grown up in a house without them. It was Chad’s interest in the arts—and their long-term goal to open an inn with perhaps a minigallery—that had brought them to McKinlay Mill in the first place. The mills had shut down more than a century ago, leaving nothing but fruit farms to take up the economic slack. Now, thanks to Victoria Square, the little town was on the verge of a financial reawakening. The new marina on the lakeshore might help draw in more visitors, too.

  Katie twirled a lock of her hair around her middle finger, an idea glimmering in the back of her mind. Bringing Artisans Alley to life was the only way to resurrect her dreams of opening a sumptuous bed-and-breakfast inn. No one in his or her right mind would buy this place in its present financial state, but if she could bring it to the break-even point, someone with a love for the arts might be able to turn it into a smashing success.

  For the first time since Chad had invested in the place, the possibilities of its success intrigued her. She’d been running on autopilot for far too long. It was well past time to take an interest in the place. Because if she didn’t, she could kiss Chad’s seventy-thousand-dollar investment good-bye forever.

  Katie found herself drawn to and then climbing the stairs to the balcony that overlooked the main showroom. Bypassing the overhang, she entered the first of the warren of rooms that made up Artisans Alley’s loft area. It must’ve all been used for storage at one point, she mused, taking in the booths and shelves now filled with pottery, paintings, sculptures, and other handcrafted items. The booths petered out as she neared the back of the large open area. A thick layer of dust covered the taped lines on the old plank flooring, the markings delineating possible rental spaces. She estimated another twenty artists could easily occupy the space.

  Making a circuit of the area, she noticed a locked door on the south end. Chad’s pad?

  The key from her pocket easily slid into the lock, which clicked as she turned it. For a moment she was afraid to enter. A Chad she no longer knew had lived behind the door. Not that they hadn’t communicated. In fact, their conversations had improved from barely civil to quite friendly during the months they had lived apart before his death. There’d be no unfriendly ghost inside, she chided herself, and opened the door.

  The darkness inside was complete, the feeble light from the loft doing little to illuminate the gloom. Katie groped along the edge of the doorjamb, found and flipped on the light switch. A bare bulb overhead flared to life, barely illuminating the tiny room.

  Chad’s coffee-table art books filled shelves lining the walls of the tiny room, which couldn’t have measured more than eight by ten feet. In front of them were stacks of Chad’s unsold, unframed paintings—priced and ready to sell—ones he said he didn’t love. She’d kept seven or eight of his favorites, but had taken them off her walls after Chad’s death. Maybe it was time to hang them again.

  A cot, neatly made up, filled the nearest corner with a small pine nightstand and pottery lamp beside it. A sagging upholstered chair and floor lamp were the only other furniture. A small oriental-patterned scatter rug beside the bed was one of the few cheerful accents. An easel at the end of the bed held an unfinished canvas of lovely cosmos swaying in a breeze—one of Katie’s favorite flowers. Chad’s artist’s palette was clean, as was the brush that sat on the top of the shelf.

  Katie’s throat constricted. Everything must have been as he’d left it more than six months before. She wrinkled her nose at the dry, stuffy air. Chad had left their homey, comfortable apartment for this horrible, barren little room?

  A wide-striped Hudson Bay blanket, serving as a bedspread, lay wrinkled where someone had sat on it. Ezra? Had he come here to mourn Chad?

  She stepped inside and noticed a book—she could tell it was a journal—lying on the cot’s pillow, just daring her to open it. A box hidden in the back of her closet held the journals Chad had kept since his teen years. She’d respected his privacy and had never opened one of them—not even after his death.

  Katie approached the bed. “I’m not afraid of anything it might say,” she told herself, her words sounding hollow in that morbid little room.

  She picked up the journal. It was nothing special. No tooled leather cover, just a cheap book of lined paper. Something Chad had probably bought at the McKinlay Mill Dollar Store. Katie flipped though the pages and r
ecognized the cursive script that was indeed his handwriting.

  Along with jotting down his thoughts and feelings, Chad had used the journal as a place to sketch ideas for future paintings. One of them was of a large pansy. He’d even filled in the petals and leaves with colored pencil. It was pretty. A note jotted just under it said, I’ll paint it for Katie. Maybe when I give it to her, she’ll take me back.

  Katie frowned. She’d never seen the finished painting. It wasn’t among those canvases stacked on the floor of this tiny room. Maybe he’d changed his mind about finishing it.

  The breath caught in her throat as she read a sentence for the next day’s entry. I dreamed of Katie again last night.

  She slammed the pages shut, all the heartache from their months of separation—and then the loss at his death—welling up within her again.

  Then again, maybe she wasn’t ready to confront Chad’s innermost feelings at their separation. Still, she couldn’t leave the journal there. Chad’s body might be buried in the McKinlay Mill Cemetery, but the unassuming book contained at least a small piece of his soul.

  Journal in hand, Katie closed and locked the door to the little room and headed back to Ezra’s shabby, littered office. Setting the book on the desk, she slumped back into Ezra’s grungy office chair, staring out the window to the parking lot and the rusty Dumpster, and to the gray, cloud-filled sky above it. All her dreams for the future had died with Chad.

  She checked the pocket of her skirt, but found no more hard candies. Damn.

  Katie looked down at the cover of the journal on the desk before her. No. If she was honest with herself, her hopes had died the day Chad had invested in Artisans Alley.

  “Katie?”

  Katie started at the sound, and then anger flared through her at the sight of Vance Ingram standing in the office doorway—the man Chad had considered to be second in command at Artisans Alley. Vance always reminded Katie of a skinny Santa Claus, thanks to his snowy hair, neatly trimmed white beard, and blue eyes half hidden behind gold wire-frame glasses. At that moment, she wasn’t feeling quite so charitable.

  “I came as soon as I heard. What in blazes happened?” Vance asked, his voice shaking.

  “Where were you last night? I thought you always helped Ezra close.”

  Vance winced at her tone.

  She hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory.

  “I was”—Vance hesitated—“called out of town.”

  The lack of conviction in his voice made it sound like the lie it probably was.

  “It was only for one night,” he continued. “How could I know—”

  Katie waved a hand to stop his explanation. “It’s up to the police to figure out who killed Ezra and why. He trusted few people. You were one of them.”

  Vance ignored the compliment, looking guilty. “Did you find him?”

  She shook her head. “Mary Elliott, one of the Victoria Square merchants, did.” Vance nodded. “Ezra had to be coming down the stairs or standing at the base of it when someone hit him from behind, and probably fractured his skull,” Katie said. “The till was empty, but it looked to me like someone took the money to cover for killing him.”

  “Who’d want to do that?” Vance asked.

  “That’s what the police are asking. Did Ezra have any enemies? Any problems with the artists or maybe bill collectors?”

  “He had no enemies that I know of. Ezra could charm your socks off—if he wanted to.”

  “And if he didn’t?” Katie prompted.

  Vance shrugged.

  Katie glanced down at the stack of bills and payment books still spread across the desk before her. “Did you or any of the other artists make an investment in Artisans Alley?”

  Vance shook his head. “Not unless you consider the rent we paid for our booths as an investment.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “More like pouring money down a drain. As far as I know, Chad was the only one Ezra ever let invest in the place. To tell you the truth, I think he wanted Chad to take over for him someday. He was real fond of your husband. It nearly broke Ezra’s heart when Chad died.”

  Mine, too. Katie thought about what Vance had said, or maybe it was the way he’d said it. Could he have been jealous of Chad’s relationship with Ezra? She’d probably never know.

  “I figured I was the only one with a financial stake here. That’s why I’ve tried to take charge,” Katie said. “I’ve been going through the files. What I’ve found isn’t pretty. Artisans Alley is in deep financial trouble. Did Ezra confide that kind of information to you or any of the others?”

  “No. In fact, I think it irked him when Chad would question him about it. I saw what Chad was trying to do and Ezra fought him at every turn,” he said bitterly. “But without Chad, we would’ve closed long before this. Most of us have just been hanging on out of habit.”

  Jealously and admiration? Maybe she was reading Vance all wrong.

  Katie set the ledger aside. “Walk with me,” she said, getting up from her chair.

  Vance followed her into the main display area. Shrouded in shadows, the place looked anything but inviting. “Take a look around,” she said. “What do you see?”

  He frowned and shrugged, his gaze taking in the uninteresting space. “Art.”

  He was so familiar with the place he probably didn’t see the mishmash of incandescent and fluorescent lights; the path-worn, spotted tan carpet rippled where it had been stretched; the dark, bland plank walls and ceiling, and the virtual sea of ugly dark brown Masonite pegboard dividing the booths. Did he smell the dry wood—sense the aura of hopelessness?

  “What’s the dominant color?” Katie asked.

  Vance’s frown deepened. “Brown.”

  “And how does that make you feel?”

  He let out a whoosh of air, the lines around his eyes creasing. “Depressed.”

  “Not conducive to a good shopping experience, is it? The only improvements made in decades appear to be the new checkout counters and the showcases in back.”

  “Ezra hired me to build them. They’ve only been in about a month.”

  Katie shook her head. “Two tiny improvements in a sea of neglect.”

  She started walking again, with Vance following in her wake. Pausing at Booth 12, she pointed at a dirt-caked spade, a rusty hoe, and a dull scythe, which leaned against the wall. “Here’s an impressive sculpture made of old farm implements. Except they’re filthy. And this carpet looks like it’s never been vacuumed.”

  “Each vendor is responsible for keeping their own booth clean. Ezra supplied vacuum cleaners for their use. I guess not many of the artists take advantage of it.”

  Katie sauntered into another booth, which featured hand-woven articles, including several beautiful wall hangings that would have shown better with decent lighting. A shelf held more items, including a small box full of colorful woven bookmarks, no doubt made on a hand loom from silky yarns. Waving her hand at the untidy heap of woven rag rugs that overflowed an old steamer trunk, Katie asked, “See anything you’d want to buy in here?”

  Vance gave the booth a quick once-over. “Not especially.”

  “What if I—” Katie sorted the rugs from the placemats, then arranged them by color, draping them artistically over the trunk—something the vendor should have done on a regular basis. Did the vendors just abandon their booths, or were their sales so lackluster they couldn’t be bothered to come in to tidy their booths on a regular basis? She finished her reorganization and stood back to admire her work. “What do you think?”

  Vance shrugged. “It looks a bit better.”

  “Just think how much more merchandise the artists would sell if they put a little imagination into their displays.”

  “Didn’t Chad tell me you had a background in marketing?” Vance asked thoughtfully.

  She nodded. “I can’t understand why none of the artists has painted their booths. It’s so god-awful bleak in here.”

  “That was Ezra’s idea. He didn’t think
one vendor should have an edge over another. He wouldn’t allow anyone to paint or put up wallpaper. Believe me, I’m not the only one who fought with him over that on more than one occasion.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, every vendor can do what they want in the way of decorating their booths if they think it will increase their sales.”

  “I’ll take you up on that,” Vance said gratefully.

  Katie scowled. “One of the merchants on the Square told me Artisans Alley is the big draw here. Well, it won’t be if we don’t turn it around—and fast.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “For one thing, we have to rent the rest of the available booths. Now.”

  Vance’s expression slackened. “Not to amateur crafters. Ezra would never allow—”

  “Ezra’s dead,” Katie said. “And Artisans Alley will be, too, if we don’t pump some life into it.”

  Hands on hips, Vance advanced into Katie’s personal space, suddenly looming over her. “You’ve never shown any interest in this place. What makes you think you can just waltz in here and change everything now?”

  Katie stood firm. “I own ten percent of this business. I’m also the executor of Ezra’s estate. That gives me the authority to do what I think is best for Artisans Alley. Including selling it outright.” She let out a breath and softened her voice. “This place was Chad’s dream, as well as Ezra’s. I don’t want see it fail just because they’re both gone. Will you help me save it?”

  Vance turned away, his jaw twitching in repressed anger. Katie badly needed an ally, and if she’d just blown it—

  Finally, Vance exhaled loudly and turned back to face her. “It’ll be a hard sell. The artists don’t want to share space with low-end crafters.”

  Katie didn’t back down. “If they’re the only ones interested in renting space here, then there’s really no choice.”