by Sarah Atwell
After carrying them both downstairs—was there such thing as a doggie dumbwaiter, I wondered, and what would it cost?—I clipped on the leashes and we set off through the dark streets. I always enjoyed being out in the neighborhood at this time of night because I could check out the other shops on the street, something I seldom had time for during the day. When I had first moved to this neighborhood, I had felt like a pioneer among the empty, shabby buildings. Buying the old factory had been a big gamble for me, but it had paid off. Now the Warehouse District was renowned beyond Tucson city limits for its concentration of artists and galleries. I hoped that the local craftspeople could rein themselves in before the neighborhood spilled over into cutesy chic.
Fred and Gloria spent their usual time sniffing anything and everything, tangling their leashes, and wrapping them around my ankles. Why was it that every time one found some delightful new scent to follow, the other decided it was time to do the business? After several years I had yet to figure it out. I dutifully collected their deposits and convinced them to turn for home after fifteen minutes.
Back in the apartment, I let them loose again and went to take a shower. A session in front of the glory hole always left me sweaty, and I didn’t like to go to bed that way. Since I had designed the upstairs space myself, I had made sure to lay out a generous bathroom, with a truly princely—or maybe I should say “queenly”—shower enclosure, and I enjoyed every minute I stood under the flow of cool water. After several years I still wasn’t used to how dry the air was here—and the fact that rainfall was measured in fractions of an inch rather than inches.
Clean, moisturized, and clad in a loose cotton night-gown, I made my way to bed and pulled out the paperback novel I had been reading for weeks. I soon had to put it down again to pick up Gloria, who demanded five minutes of cuddle time each night. Then I put Gloria down and had to give Fred equal time. Duty done, I returned to my book, but I realized quickly that I had no idea what I was reading, so I made sure that my alarm was set and turned off the light.
Not five minutes later, I turned it on again. I had forgotten to check my phone messages. My brother, Cameron, had said something about coming to visit this weekend, and he seldom bothered to phone during the day, knowing I’d be somewhere else in the building. I punched in the code and was rewarded by his voice. “Hi, Sis. Looks like I can get away early on Friday, so I can beat the traffic and be there in time for a latish dinner. I’ve got this really cool new project—can’t wait to tell you about it. See you!”
I hung up and smiled at the dogs. “Uncle Cammy’s coming on Friday!” They wagged their respective tails. They had no clue what I was saying, but they could tell I was happy, and that was good enough for them. I turned off the light again and lay in the dark thinking about Cam. He was the only family I had left, and once every two or three months was just plain not often enough to see him. But his work kept him in San Diego, and it was a six-hour drive, and I never had the time for that, nor did he, generally. Anyway, I hated long drives. After I’d made the trek from the East Coast to Tucson, I had burrowed in and sworn never to drive more than two hours in any direction, and I’d more or less stuck to that for ten years now. Cam, on the other hand, loved to drive—he kept telling me it gave him time to think. He was a software engineer, and it mystified me how he could work out computer language in his head while driving, but he said it worked. It would be great to see him.
Allison drifted into my head as I stared at the darkness. Hmmm. Cam was unattached, having decided that the beach Barbies that swarmed to San Diego were uniformly vapid and shallow—not without good reason, as far as I could tell. Allison appeared to be unattached. And Allison needed friends. Cam, though shy, was very sweet, so he wouldn’t intimidate her. Wonder how they would get along . . . Of course, I didn’t know very much about Allison, but from what little I’d seen, I didn’t think she had a mean bone in her. But maybe it was a wee bit early for matchmaking—I’d just have to see how things went.
This pleasant train of thought was derailed by Fred’s surprisingly deep growl. I froze, listening. Sometimes Fred growled at phantoms, and I hadn’t heard anything. But then Gloria added her voice, and the two started prowling around in the darkness. This was not good. I knew their hearing was keener than mine, and if they were both upset, then something was going on.
In an old building like this, which heated and cooled every day, there were always mysterious creaks and thumps, and it was hard to sort out which were coming from the building—and which weren’t. Then there was a thud that definitely was more than old wood complaining. Fred and Gloria growled in unison. All right, Em, time to check it out. But not before calling the police. They knew me well enough to recognize that I wasn’t a hysterical female, scared of spooky noises.
I punched 911 on my cell phone, and when someone answered, I gave my name and address. “I live over my studio, and I think there’s a prowler downstairs.”
“All right, ma’am. I’m sending a patrol car over right now. Please stay on the line.”
“Of course. Thank you.” I knew that the police would follow through quickly, thank goodness. Reassured, I decided it couldn’t hurt to check things out downstairs—at least in the front, where the cash register was—and where there were lights on. And I could take the dogs along. They might be short, but they could bite ankles as well as any pitbull I knew.
I slid out of bed, my bare feet making no sound on the wood floors (though it didn’t matter, because the scritch of the dogs’ claws made more noise on the bare wood floor than I did). I fumbled around in the dim light coming through the windows, finding a pair of jeans and an old sweatshirt. I slipped my feet into rubber-soled shoes, grabbed up my keys, a flashlight, and the cell phone, tiptoed over to the door, and shot the bolts on the lock.
At which point both dogs charged past my feet and danced around the landing, yipping madly. Whoever was downstairs (Whoever, Em? When did you decide it was human?) couldn’t fail to hear them now. Suddenly, I heard the back door slam against the wall and the sound of retreating footsteps. More than one set? But they were gone, thank goodness. Now the only thing that remained was to go down and see if I could figure out what they had been doing, while I waited for the police to arrive.
I stuffed the phone and the flashlight into the front pocket of my sweatshirt and the keys in my jeans pocket. Then I reached down to pick up my faithful protectors slash doggie alarm system and carried them downstairs. I knew they were as curious as I was, but they regarded protecting me as their primary responsibility, so they weren’t about to run off. At the bottom of the stairs I set them down and considered: back or front? The cash register was in the front, but the footsteps had been in the back. Cash register seemed a more likely target—who would break in to steal art glass objects? Front it was, then.
“Come on, guys.” With more confidence than I felt, I marched around the corner to the front door, with my minions close on my heels. I peered in through the front window. Everything looked peaceful, undisturbed. I unlocked the door and stepped in: nothing. The cash register was untouched. Maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing. But what about the dogs . . . and the footsteps? I knew I had heard those.
That left the studio. The door was still closed, and when I opened it, the lights were off, just as they had been several hours earlier. I stepped into the dark space, groping for the light switch beside the door. I could see light filtering in from the back door, now standing open—the door I knew I had locked earlier. I found the switch; the lights came on in a flood, and I blinked for a moment. Nothing moved. Everything looked just as I had left it.
Except for the body draped against the nearer furnace, its head stuffed in the opening.
My legs turned to rubber, and I slid down against the wall until I was sitting on the floor. The two dogs stayed beside me, on the alert, although I’m sure they were more than eager to investigate the interesting new addition to my work space. Briefly, I considered checking to see if
the man—from his size I could tell it was, or had been, a male—was still alive, but some small corner of my rational mind told me that anybody whose head had been stuffed into a furnace would have survived, oh, about three seconds, tops. One breath and his lungs would have fried. I didn’t even want to think about what the heat had done to his head. No way I was going to find out personally—I didn’t want to get any closer. I thought briefly about crossing the room to turn off the furnace, but it wouldn’t do the dead man much good, and wouldn’t that constitute tampering with evidence? Nope, I was going to stay right where I was and wait for the police to show up.
Now that the first shock had subsided, I sneaked another glance at the body. Yes, male. Wearing a well-worn brown leather jacket (smoking around the edges), blue jeans, heavy construction boots. There wasn’t much more I could tell from where I sat.
And then as I watched, the body slid out of the furnace and slumped on the floor. I shut my eyes quickly, swallowed hard, and swallowed again. I was not going to get sick. No way. Although the odor wafting across the room made my stomach churn. Let the police deal with the body—that’s what our tax dollars were for.
I thanked the gods when I heard a police car pull up outside the front door. By the time someone banged on the door, I had managed to stand up, and I went to meet them, the dogs anxiously winding around my feet. The two young officers came through the front door and stopped at the sight of the dogs, looking worried. “Relax, guys—they’re harmless,” I told them.
Gloria produced her most menacing growl, and I don’t think they were convinced. The taller one said, politely, “What seems to be the problem, ma’am? You said something about a prowler?”
I looked at him. He was young enough to be my son, if I had reproduced at the tender age of twenty or so, which I had declined to do. I sighed. “Well, it’s a little more complicated now. There was a prowler, and I heard someone, or maybe two someones, leaving, but he left something behind. . . .”
“And what would that be?”
I couldn’t begin to explain, so I just waved a hand toward the open door to the studio. “You’d better see for yourself.”
The two young officers exchanged a look, then the taller one walked over to the door and peered in. For several seconds he didn’t move. I stayed rooted to my spot, thanking the stars that he, rather than me, would have to deal with what promised to be a rather unpleasant body. Finally he turned back, his face an interesting color of pale green. “I think we need some backup here. Mendoza, call Homicide, and the Crime Lab, and maybe the medical examiner.” Junior Officer Mendoza retreated to his squad car with alacrity, having shown no curiosity about the body.
Then the other officer turned back to me. “Ma’am? I’m going to need some information from you.”
I squinted to read the name on his pocket. “Of course, Officer Johnson. My name is Emmeline Dowell. I own this building, I operate my glassblowing business and my sales gallery, Shards, here, and I live in the apartment above.” This part I could do on autopilot, as I waited for my hands to stop shaking.
“Uh, hang on, Ms. Dowell.” Johnson had pulled a small pad out of his pocket and was writing as fast as he could. I waited patiently while he caught up. After all, where else did I have to be? “You live here alone?”
“Yup, just me and the dogs.”
Another note. “Now, what can you tell me about the body?”
“Not a heck of a lot. I went to bed just after midnight. Before I fell asleep, the dogs heard something downstairs, so I called you guys. Then the dogs got excited and I heard somebody running away, so I figured it was safe to come down and investigate. I came through the front door, because that’s where the cash register is, and didn’t see anything wrong. Then I opened the door to the studio. The first thing I noticed was that the back door was open.”
“Did you leave it open, ma’am?”
I wished he would stop with the “ma’am” stuff—it made me feel old. “No, I checked it earlier this evening, about ten, and it was locked then.”
“And what did you do next, ma’am?”
“I turned on the lights. That’s when I saw the body. Oh, but the head was originally in the furnace, but . . . then the body fell down.” We regarded each other bleakly for a few seconds, neither of us willing to say the unthinkable.
“Uh, what is this place again?”
“Officer, I’m a glassblower. I make art glass objects, which I sell here.” I made an effort to speak slowly and clearly, but I was getting annoyed—which felt a lot better than getting sick about Mr. No Head in the next room.
“And what do you call that room there?” Officer Johnson nodded toward the studio, without looking at it.
“That’s my studio, where I do my work and give classes. I held a class there tonight—or yesterday, I guess. It ended about nine o’clock. After all the people from the class left, I turned off the glory holes and cleaned up. Oh, and there was a shipment of supplies around nine thirty, so I stowed that away. Then I went out to have a late supper with . . . a friend.”
“And you were with that friend until you came back here?”
I nodded. “Yes, we had dinner at a restaurant down the street—Elena’s—you can ask Elena, because we talked to her—and then I gave my friend a ride to her home. I came straight back here about eleven, but I went directly upstairs to my apartment—there’s an outside staircase. I didn’t notice any lights on inside. I parked in the back, and I would have seen if there had been a light on in the studio.”
“Do you recognize the victim, ma’am?”
I stared at poor Officer Johnson, who was just trying to do his duty, and fought an irrational impulse to laugh. “No, Officer. But I didn’t see his face, and I don’t think he has one anymore.”
“Oh. Right.” He looked at his notes, trying hard to come up with another question. After all, anything was better than going back into the studio. “What is that piece of equipment that he was . . . stuck in?”
“That’s a glassblowing furnace, used to melt the glass. There’s a crucible inside, where the glass goes. It stays on all the time, to keep the glass at the right temperature.”
“You used the furnace earlier tonight?”
“I did.” No, Officer, I didn’t see a man stuffed in it. I think I might have noticed. I clamped down hard on my wayward mind: When I’m stressed, I get sarcastic.
“Can you tell me how hot it gets?”
I had to hand it to the man—he was trying his best. “Twenty-two, maybe twenty-four hundred degrees Fahrenheit.”
“Huh,” said the officer. When Officer Johnson swallowed hard, I took pity on him and added, “You should know—he wouldn’t have cooked. That’s not what killed him. One breath of that superheated air and his lungs would have been gone.” As well as a few other useful parts, like . . . Stop it, Em. “If he was alive when he went in, anyway,” I ended dubiously. For all I knew, the man had been dead first. But why would anyone have stuffed a dead man in the furnace? Unless . . . Was somebody trying to hide his identity? That was food for thought. And why my furnace?
We contemplated that information silently for several seconds, during which time Officer Mendoza returned. “Got ’em. Detective Sanchez will be here in ten, and the ME’s coming. Sanchez is going to call the forensic guys.”
“Good. Ma’am, did you touch anything in that room?”
“No, Officer, I didn’t get past the door—well, the wall next to the door. But of course my fingerprints will be all over the place, not to mention fingerprints from dozens of other people. I teach a lot of classes here.”
“Uh-huh.” He wrote something else on his little pad. “And you didn’t hear anything?”
I shook my head. “When I built the apartment upstairs, I insulated the floor. When the exhaust fans are on down here, they can get pretty loud. I told you—the dogs heard something. I did hear one big thump, and I heard the back door hit the wall, and somebody running away.”
“
One person? More than one person?”
I searched my memory. “Sorry, I really can’t say. I’d guess it was two. But the dogs were making noise by then, so it wasn’t very clear.”
We both ran out of conversation about that point. Officer Mendoza was no more eager to check out the body than he had been before, so he wandered over to take a look at the cash register, turned his gaze to the glass pieces on the shelves, and then to the ceiling—anywhere but the studio. I didn’t blame him. Luckily it was only a few minutes until Detective Sanchez arrived, followed immediately by the city’s forensic unit. Thank heavens the detective was a few years older than the young officers, and he looked remarkably sharp for someone who had been dragged out in the middle of the night.
The gallery was getting a bit crowded, and I began to worry about somebody knocking the fragile glass pieces on the shelves. Detective Sanchez solved the problem by ordering his team into the studio to check things—including the body—out. Then he conferred briefly with Officer Mendoza, and started asking me all the same questions, all over again. I answered with what I thought was admirable patience. The hands of the clock crept past one, neared two . . . I was running out of steam when Sanchez nodded toward the studio and headed for the door. I followed obediently.
Inside, Sanchez asked, “Tell me if you see anything that’s been disturbed here.”
A body wasn’t enough? Shut up, Em. I steeled myself against what I knew was there, but I was relieved to see that the dead man now lay on a clean dropcloth, thanks to the forensic investigator. Part of the cloth was discreetly draped over the corpse’s north end.
“Damn hot in here,” someone said. The medical examiner?
“Have to keep the glass at the right temperature,” I said absently, then pulled myself together. “I can turn that furnace off, if you want. But it’s going to take a while to cool.”
“Won’t be anything left to find,” the man grumbled. I knew he was right.
