To Bead or Not to Bead, Glass Bead Mystery Series, Book 4

by Janice Peacock

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I’ve been working on the event. But things have sort of fallen apart,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know?” I’d assumed someone had called and told her that her exquisite chandelier was destroyed. “Ah, geez, well, your chandelier fell…”

  “Fell? That’s not possible. I hung that chandelier myself. There is simply no way it could have fallen unless someone had tampered with it.”

  “I’m sorry to say that when it fell…”

  “Yes, right, I can imagine, it broke into a million pieces.” Vega grabbed a hand towel and wiped her face and bald head.

  “Yes, and when it fell, it killed someone.”

  “Ah, crap! No. That’s the worst. What happened? Who died? Do they know if it was an accident? Those cables wouldn’t spontaneously release. I designed that system, so there was no way for it to fail.” She threw the towel down on the table and started pacing maniacally in front of me.

  “The police are looking into what happened. But Austin—”

  “Austin? Austin Greer is dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Vega let loose a sickening high-pitched squeal of grief.

  “I’m so sorry I upset you. Did you know him well?”

  Her squeals turned into sobs, and she dropped into a nearby chair.

  “I was his daughter, that is, until he disowned me, and replaced me with that vile Nika girl. The last time I saw him, I told him I was looking forward to the day he died.”

  TWELVE

  “Why did you do that?” I asked, shocked on all sorts of levels.

  “We were arguing. He kicked me out.”

  “You’re Amanda and Austin’s daughter?”

  “I’m afraid so, though these days, I’m assuming they don’t really like to admit they have a daughter. Especially a daughter who looks like this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My body art. He’s never understood why I love tattoos and piercings so much. If he’d ever gotten one, maybe he’d understand.” Both of Vega’s arms were covered with tattoos from her wrists to the edge of her t-shirt. That was all I could see, but I expected there were many more. Combined with her shaved head and multiple nose, eyebrow, and large-gauge ear piercings, she was one of the edgiest looking people I’d ever seen.

  “I’m sure your dad loved you regardless,” I said.

  “Don’t call him my dad. He was never much of a father.”

  “Okay, Austin, then. He must’ve have cared about you. You two had a disagreement; he didn’t like some of the choices you made…”

  “You know, Austin offered to pay to get my tattoos removed. He was so generous,” she said with a sarcastic smirk, “he said he’d pay for removing them to make me beautiful again. He even tried to line up a cosmetic surgeon. He wanted to make me look socially acceptable—for the first time since I was a child. Of course, he could try to ‘fix’ me, but he couldn’t understand me.”

  “Maybe he just wanted you to be happy. Maybe he felt guilty about something that had happened between you two and was trying to make things better.”

  “Obviously, you didn’t know him well. I don’t think he ever felt guilt a single day in his life.”

  Could Vega have killed her father? I was starting to think so. She was at the theater the night Austin died, so it was possible she had been able to drop the chandelier on him. She certainly knew how to release its cable and safety chain. But why would she destroy her own artwork just to watch him die? Maybe there was some poetic justice in that—killing Austin with the work she loved. But her reaction right now, unless she was a superb actress, was real. She truly was upset to hear her father had been killed.

  “Believe me, between him and my mother, it was not what you’d call an ideal childhood.”

  “I met your mother. She seemed nice, maybe a little eccentric.”

  “‘A little eccentric?’ Try a lot. Anytime she felt threatened, and that was often, she’d retreat to the panic room, and I might not see her for hours. Austin wasn’t always the gentlest guy, to add to his list of unappealing characteristics. Luckily I had a responsible nanny to take care of me,” Vega said, pulling out plastic containers full of colored glass powders from the shelves as she prepared to blow another vase.

  “I’m truly sorry.” I couldn’t think of what else to say.

  “Don’t pity me. I’m actually doing fine. I love working by myself. I love being on my own, though sleeping in the loft above the furnace isn’t that pleasant. I never get cold, though.”

  “How about your mother? Do you see her?”

  “Not since Austin and I had our falling out. And she’d never come here to reach out to me. You must know she never leaves the house. The agoraphobia has gotten pretty severe in recent years, but she won’t seek treatment, so she makes the world come to her.”

  “I saw you at the theater the other night,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible, so she didn’t feel I was threatening or accusing her. “Why were you there?”

  “I stopped by to see if I could patch things up with my father, but he was too busy being Saint Austin to take much time out to talk with me. He felt so righteous with that chandelier hanging above our heads.”

  “Did you donate the chandelier to him?”

  “Donate? I didn’t donate it. He paid me for it. I was happy to sell it, and believe me, he didn’t get the friends and family discount.”

  “He paid you for the chandelier and then turned around and donated it to the auction?”

  “Look, I don’t know what he did with it after he bought it. Or why he would even do that. Sounds crazy to me. Of course, that would sum up my father.”

  I wondered if Austin buying expensive things and donating them to the theater, or to nonprofits like HAT, played into the money laundering scheme Bev Marley was trying to uncover. I didn’t know much about money laundering, except that it had something to do with moving cash around to make it look like it didn’t come from an illegal source. I still had no idea what the source could be.

  “I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time, and I’m sorry to be the one to deliver such tragic news.” I pulled my credit card out and offered it to her. “Do you want a deposit for the light fixture you’re making me?”

  “No, it’s okay. But, when it’s ready, you should know I only accept cash. Yeah, I even made Austin pay cash. Of course, that’s how he prefers it.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me asking—how much does a chandelier like the one Austin bought cost?”

  “A cool twenty grand.” Vega grabbed her blow pipe from a bucket of water and gave it a little puff of air to clear the water from it.

  “Wow. Congratulations on that. Wouldn’t that give you enough money to live somewhere other than here?” I looked around at her studio, it was pretty rustic, to put it mildly.

  “When you consider the number of months it took to make that chandelier, it’s really not that much.” She adjusted the tools on her work bench, putting them in a specific place so she could automatically grab them without searching when she needed them.

  I could relate. After I paid my bills, all the money I’d made on my art never seemed to add up to much. But I understood why she did it. The desire to make art was powerful.

  • • •

  As I walked back to my car, I got a call from Bev. I put her on speaker phone as I drove away from Vega’s studio.

  “Where were you? I couldn’t hear a thing,” she said.

  “I was in a glassblowing studio. It was pretty loud in there. I didn’t have any control over that.” Between the music, the exhaust system humming above our heads, and the roar of the glory hole, I could understand why all that noise would interfere with the microphone.

  “Did you learn anything of interest?” Bev a
sked.

  “Turns out the glassblower I was visiting is Austin Greer’s daughter,” I said.

  “We’ve done a little background check and had discovered he had a daughter—Vivian Greer, but we hadn’t been able to locate her. How’d you find her?”

  “I showed up at her studio, but I didn’t know she was his daughter until she told me. She goes by the name Vega now, just Vega—no last name, so I didn’t know she was related. She didn’t know her father had been killed, and she was pretty freaked out to hear the news.”

  “Good work, hon. I’ll make sure to follow up on her. She doesn’t seem to have been part of the picture with the family’s finances, so that may be a dead end, but we’ll check it out,” Bev said.

  “I’m not sure how this fits in, but it sounds like Austin spent a lot of money on the chandelier and then turned around and donated it to HAT. And get this, he paid for it in cash. According to his daughter, he paid for everything in cash.”

  “Interesting. I’m not sure how that fits into the larger scheme we’re looking at, but it’s certainly odd behavior. Who’d he buy it from?”

  “What’s weird is he bought it from his daughter, who, from what I understand, had been disowned by her father,” I said.

  “Other than the fact he had just bought an outrageously expensive chandelier from her,” Bev said.

  “Right, except for that.” I turned on to I-5, heading north. “Maybe she’s not involved in the money laundering, but she still could be the killer, right?”

  “When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you get a sixth sense about this stuff. I think Austin Greer died because of his financial dealings, and whoever killed him had a lot to gain.”

  “But she’s his daughter, wouldn’t she gain something from the inheritance?” I asked.

  “Not necessarily. First, Mrs. Greer is still alive so any estate funds would go to her. Second, if he disowned her—or vice versa—she may have been cut out of whatever estate plans he’d made.”

  Vega certainly was on my list of suspects. Whether she was on anyone else’s remained to be seen.

  “Now, what we really need is for you to get into the theater and see if you can get into the filing cabinet, or get onto the computer in the office to see what you can find in the way of bank statements, or if there is a safe, see what’s inside. You’re looking for large quantities of cash or contraband.”

  “Right, I’ll just find the safe hanging open if I’m lucky,” I said, feeling like this was going to be fruitless and could get me in big trouble if I were caught.

  “It’s a long shot, I know, but I have faith you’ll be able to find something.”

  “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “I’ll be listening,” Bev said.

  I hung up with Bev and called Zachary.

  “Grant,” he said, picking up the phone. He always sounded so stern until he realized it was me.

  “Is everything okay? You sound...”

  “Tired? Yes. I’m going through some recent toxicology reports. I am tired—sick and tired—of getting results like this. Another drug overdose. Hold on. This is the toxicology report for Austin Greer. Wow—he had enough narcotics in his system to kill a horse—or a dinosaur,” Zachary said.

  “Dinosaurs are already dead—” I said, trying my best to lighten the mood. Zachary ignored my comment.

  “It looks like Austin had high levels of opioids in his system when he died. He might have had some chronic pain, or maybe he’d had some surgery that required painkillers that he’d never been able to get off of.”

  “Were they prescription drugs? Could he have been using drugs he bought on the street? Knowing that could point us—I mean you—to the killer.”

  “The medical examiner, when she’s doing these quick tests, can only check opioid levels. For more specific tests that can identify the more refined types of chemicals, she has to send them out to the state lab. Those results can take weeks, even if she requests for them to be processed quickly.”

  “So all we know was he was high on something when the chandelier crushed him. We don’t know what, and we don’t know why.” Was it possible someone was trying to kill Mr. Greer with drugs, got tired of waiting, and simply took a faster, and more gruesome, route that led to his demise?

  “Were you listening a little while ago? Did you hear what I said about Vega being the Greers’ daughter?”

  “I heard you tell Bev, but couldn’t hear a thing wherever you were before that.”

  “I was in a glassblowing studio. It was kind of loud in there. Don’t you think the fact she’s Austin’s daughter makes her a prime suspect in his murder? She knew how to disable the safety system on the chandelier, she was in the theater the night Austin died, and she had a reason to kill him,” I said.

  “Yes, I’ll need to look into her. She certainly seems like she’s got some issues that need explaining. Good job, Jax.”

  My phone beeped in my ear. I had another call coming in. “Oh, sorry! I’ve got another call. Gotta run.” I hung up on Zachary and picked up for Tessa.

  “So, did we get approval to continue? I’m at the theater, and I’m not sure if I should turn everyone away. We’ve already got a crowd here wondering whether we should even bother to rehearse.”

  “Amanda told me we could go ahead with the event.”

  “That’s a relief! Now the girls can stop sulking and start worrying about whether they’re going to get dragged off to the police station to be questioned about Austin’s murder, or worse,” Tessa said.

  “Look, we know the girls are innocent. We just have to make sure the police are looking at other suspects—and I’m finding plenty. On top of that, Zachary just told me Austin had drugs in his system when he died.”

  “I thought he died from the chandelier—”

  “He did, but the drugs could mean he was killed for reasons other than being mean to a few high school girls.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Meanwhile, you better get over here. The cast of Hamlet just arrived, and I don’t think they’re supposed to be here. Austin told us weeks ago we could use the stage right now.”

  “But Austin’s not around anymore to confirm that.”

  Tessa muttered something in Italian and hung up.

  As I drove to the theater, I thought about the opioids in Austin’s system. If he’d had an accident or physical ailment that required drugs, that might be a clue to what happened to him. If street drugs were involved, perhaps Zachary would need to look at a wider circle of suspects or accomplices. If we weren’t going to be able to find out more about the opioids for several weeks, though, I’d have to resort to other sources of information. And I just happened to know someone who could help me.

  “Hey you two,” I said to Bev and Zachary who were no doubt listening. “I’m going to switch off my mic to make a personal call.” Then I pressed the power button on the tiny mic on my jacket. I wasn’t sure how they might react to my not-strictly-speaking legal methods of obtaining information.

  I called my brother Andy.

  “Hey there,” Andy said when he answered my call. “Let me guess. You need a little digital undercover work to find something out.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because you never call me except for that.”

  “Sorry.” I made a silent promise to myself to call my brother more often.

  “I’m just messing with you. It’s really my pleasure. Way more interesting than fixing bugs, which is my task for this afternoon.” My brother lived in San Francisco and was the founder of an Internet security start-up called Pook. While he was paid well, and his apartment was lavish, most of his job involved a lot of sitting and staring at a computer screen. I couldn’t think of anything I would like less than sitting at a desk day after day. That’s why I’d left my corporate job a few years
back and became a full-time artist.

  “I’m wondering if you can find out about a man who had a lot of drugs in his system at the time of his death.”

  “Did he die of an overdose?”

  “No, that’s the weird thing. He died when a chandelier fell on him.”

  “How awful! What a way to go,” Andy said.

  “I think it’s important to find out whether the drugs were street drugs or prescription. I think it will help us narrow down the potential suspects. For instance—if he was injecting himself with heroin he bought on the street, we might need to look at a drug dealer as a suspect. Or, he could have been getting prescription drugs from any number of illegal sources.”

  “I don’t know, Jax, you’re asking for a lot. Look, it used to be pretty easy to hack into medical records—lots of systems were breached. But these days, the hospitals and doctors have been really locking things down. I’ll see what I can do, but no promises.”

  “Hey, I appreciate anything you can find out, little bro.”

  “I live to serve,” Andy said with a chuckle. “Besides, I could use a break from staring at all of this programming code. What am I looking for?”

  “We’re looking for some evidence that Austin Greer took painkillers—you know, any of the opium-based drugs. See if you can find out if he’s had any recent surgeries or seen any pain management doctors,” I said.

  “Okay, but I wouldn’t plan on any miracles. Give me a day or two.”

  Pulling into the parking lot at the Chanticleer Theater, I said goodbye to my brother. The police had finally cleared away the crime scene tape and packed up, I was relieved to see as I entered the backstage area.

  I wandered to the center of the stage and realized I was standing on the very spot where Austin had died. A shiver ran down my spine. I looked up to the grid where the chandelier had once hung. What a shame it had been destroyed, but even more so that a life had been lost.

  I looked down at the stage floor. It was nicked and dented. It was likely many of those flaws had occurred over time, and not all at once with the drop of an art glass lighting fixture, but it still gave me the creeps. The stage was newly repainted, covering up the scrapes and bloodstains from when the chandelier had crashed down on Austin. I noticed there were still some deep gashes a few feet from where I stood. Bending down, I examined them. The gashes formed the letters: MO. They’d been painted over but were still visible. Austin’s incomplete message was as puzzling as ever. It gave me a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, thinking about how he struggled to write those letters during his final moments.