A Bead in the Hand (Glass Bead Mystery Series Book 2) (18 page)

“Oh, I don’t need a badge, do I, honey?”

“You’re not a bendor, you got no bendor bahdge.”

“What do you mean, I’m ‘not a bender’? I’ll have you know that I am very bendable.”

I pulled Val aside. “Val, you can’t come in until the doors open and the public comes in. You’re not a
vendor
.”

“Well, that makes sense. It made absolutely no sense when he accused me of not being a bender. I’m very bendy, many of my boyfriends have said—“

“Why don’t you go get us some coffee?” Usually, I needed a second cup right around now. Actually, I constantly need cups of coffee, and especially after staying up so late last night.

“Good idea. Three coffees coming right up,” said Val, flouncing away. She had a lot of flounce for so early in the day.

Tessa and I pulled the sheet off the display, such as it was, decorated with things from the hotel room. It had served me well, judging from the terrific sales I’d racked up this weekend.

Looking down at the table, I said, “I hope we don’t get charged for all the items we stole—”

“Borrowed,” Tessa said. “We certainly would have put them back if we’d stayed in it.”

“It wasn’t our fault our room was vandalized.”

“Vandalized? Vandalized!” Tessa repeated. “Vance? You think Vance could have trashed our room?”

“He was at karaoke with us. How could he?”

“After you left for the Saturday Market, Adriana and I went to Arigato and ate before everyone else got there. He had plenty of time to get into our room.”

“I guess we better keep Vance on the list of suspects,” I said.

“Just because he trashed our room doesn’t mean he would kill a person—or two—”

“Oh, hi, Vance,” I said, cutting off Tessa before she revealed we were not only talking about him, we were accusing him of rifling through our belongings and being a killer.

“Here are those lamps you wanted to borrow,” Vance said, placing them on the table’s edge. “Hope you sell a lot of beads today.”

“Thanks. This is really going to help,” I said. He really was a nice guy. I had trouble reconciling his sweetness with the scary sex toys in his room.

I moved the lights into position at each end of my table, uncoiled their cords, and plugged them into the toaster-sized power box on the floor. I flicked the switch on one of the lights. Nothing happened. I tried the other one. Nothing.

Ernie the electrician was a few tables down, walking toward me.

“Excuse me. I’m not getting any power to these lights,” I told him.

Ernie crawled under the table, grabbed a roll of duct tape from his back pocket and wrapped a long piece of tape around the power box, securing a fist-sized connector to it.

“Sorry, some of these cords, they’re getting kind of old. These protective covers keep breaking off.” Ernie gave one last push on the power cord. There was a pop, and Vance’s lights were now glowing. Everything on my table looked great—shiny and transparent, like glass is supposed to be. “If you have any more trouble, track me down. You don’t want to mess with these power cables by yourself. They’ve got a lot of juice in them.”

“Thanks,” I said to Ernie as he scurried off to help the next vendor whose lights were on the blink.

• • •

Tiffany showed up at my table a few minutes after the show opened.

“Jax, I think we need to have another chat,” she said.

“Can this wait? I am trying to run a business here. I sell beads when I sit at this table. When I’m not at this table, I don’t sell as much.”

“Hey!” said Tessa, offended that I would make it sound like she was slacking off.

Tiffany leaned across my table, pressing her hands down on a tray of beads covered with spiky dots. It couldn’t have been comfortable.

“Did you know Carl Shulman?”

“Who?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. The security guard who was found dead in the stairwell.”

“No.”

“Did you kill him?” she asked.

“No.” Seriously, this woman needed lessons on how to ask good questions. Maybe she could learn something from watching Jeopardy. “I mean really, Tiffany. I have no idea who this guy was. I’ve never met him, and I don’t even know what he looks like. I don’t know why anyone would kill him.” I was getting pretty tired of these chats. I just wanted to get out of here—all the way out of here, like back to Seattle.

“You know, Jax, I think you’re hiding something from me. And you know what that means?”

“No idea.”

“It means I’ve got a new pair of bracelets for you. Ones with a nice silver chain,” the detective said, pressing her wrists together, miming what I’d look like with handcuffs on.

There was a woman with a baby stroller standing behind Tiffany, trying to get her hands on the earrings I was selling. The detective was blocking her way.

“If you can please step aside, I have a customer who would like to buy something.” Tiffany was not going to take me to the police station on suspicion of murder. Not if I could help it.

“I’ll chat with you again soon,” said the detective as she squeezed her way past the stroller.

“These earrings are sooo fun. I want this pair. Ohhh, and this pair too. And maybe these,” said the woman with the baby.

“Wonderful, I’ll wrap those up.”

• • •

“Jax, I don’t like it when you’re so quiet,” said Tessa. “It usually means you’ve got plans to do something you shouldn’t be doing.”

I wanted to solve the mysteries of the dead bead diva
and
the dead security guard, if for no other reason than to stop the constant requests for chats with Tiffany.

“Sal said Saundra lived nearby. I’m thinking about going out to her house.”

“You’re just going to drive out to Saundra’s house?”

“Yes. Maybe I can find a clue.”

“No, Jax, don’t do it. There’s nothing you can learn there,” Tessa said.

“If I can find something,
anything
, that would keep Tiffany from booking me on suspicion of murder, I’d like to find it.”

“
Che casino
,” Tessa muttered, knowing it was too late to stop me.

“I need to see Saundra’s house and her studio, maybe talk with her brother. It might be that someone broke into Saundra’s studio and stole her beads. Maybe that’s why that young woman had them. I don’t know what I’ll find, but I’m hoping there’s something out there that can help us bring this whole mess to a close.”

“Then I’m coming with you. Maybe you’ll stay out of trouble if I come along,” Tessa said. Usually Tessa tagging along meant I still got in trouble, just less of it.

“Tessa, you need to stay here,” I told her. “Who will work at my booth? Val can come with me instead.”

“You’re going to take Val?”

“I can’t have her work in the booth. Val doesn’t know the first thing about beads,” I reminded Tessa. “And her math skills are pretty questionable. How would she be able to calculate sales tax?”

“There’s no sales tax in Oregon,” said Tessa, being annoyingly accurate and practical. “Val can work your table. I’m sure of it.”

“Tessa, please. Be my best friend and work at my table. I trust you, and I promise I’ll be careful. According to Sal, Saundra’s brother lives at her house, and maybe Val will be able to sweet talk him in some way so we can find out what we need to know.” I’d made up my mind. It was either take Val, or go alone.

Customers continued to stream into the bazaar and among them was Val, several inches taller than everyone else, thanks to her sky-high footwear. She bustled toward us with a cardboard tray holding three white and green Starbucks cups.

“One for each of us. A large latte for Jax and a small espresso for Tessa,” Val said. “And one for me.”

“What is that thing?” I asked, eyeing Val’s fancy whipped-cream-topped slushie with sprinkles on top.

“It’s a Venti caramel macchiato, with extra caramel, extra whipped cream, and extra sprinkles,” said Val, pulling her drink out of the tray, taking a sip, and leaving a smudge of red lipstick on the straw.

Val took a step toward us with the drink tray and stumbled as her high heel caught on the bedspread I’d used as a makeshift table covering.

The drinks toppled over sideways, their lids popping off as they did. I was hit with a dark brown tidal wave.

The coffee soaked my shirt, which had gone from white to brown, and almost as bad, there was none left for me to drink.

“I’m so sorry,” Val said. “We need to get you upstairs and changed.”

“Tessa, can you run the booth?” I asked.

“Yes.” Tessa looked at me with squinty eyes and arms crossed, and not from a lack of coffee. “
Che casino,”
she muttered again.

“You know Val and I are going to do more than just change my clothes, don’t you?”

“Yes.” There was a sigh behind that word. “Don’t take The Ladybug if you’re trying to be discreet.”

I agreed with Tessa. A bright red VW bug isn’t the best option when you’re flying under the radar.

“Come on, Val,” I said. “We have an adventure awaiting us.”

“Oh goodie!” Val said.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?
Some reconnaissance? Some honey trapping? Some kind of super-sleuthy thing?” asked Val. “Do we need a gun? Because I didn’t bring mine.”

Val has a gun?

“Don’t get so excited. We’re only going to Saundra’s house. We’ll check her studio to see if we can find anything out that will help us learn what happened to her, maybe talk with her brother, and find out who’s stealing either her beads or her designs.”

“Got it. We’re looking for clues.”

“Yes, we’re looking for clues.” I was already beginning to regret bringing Val with me.

“We’ll take Firefly,” Val said.

“I’ve always wondered, why is your car called Firefly?”

“It’s a space ship. Oh, and also the name of a TV show. Actually, the name of the ship is Serenity, but I like Firefly better. It’s such a shame they cancelled the series…” She trailed off, seeing my confusion. I shouldn’t have asked.

Val’s car, unlike her, was subtle. She owned a 2005 gray Honda Civic, which reminded me of the old car I’d traded in a few years back when I left Miami behind, along with Jerry and my dead-end job. Val folded herself into the car. It was far too small for a woman of her stature, especially when she fluffed up her hair to full height. She pulled off her high heels and flung them into the back seat. There were a dozen other pairs that had met with the same fate back there.

We turned up Skyline Boulevard, while I used the GPS on my now fully-charged cell phone to give us directions. As we headed off into the hills, the road narrowed and went from two lanes to one lane, and then to gravel.

“Stop the car,” I said.

“Here? This can’t be right,” Val said, confused. “I thought Saundra was supposed to be some famous bead artist.” A small shingled house sat at the end of a dirt path, edged by a rickety split-rail fence.

“This is the address I saw on her contract,” I said, double-checking the GPS route to make sure it hadn’t sent us to the wrong location. “This is the place. Let’s go check it out.”

Val pulled herself out of the car and stretched her legs. She really did need a bigger vehicle. She fished out a pair of heels from the back seat and was ready to go. We headed down the path toward the house. Off in the distance, brown and white cows ambled around in a fenced hilltop field.

Val picked her way down the unpaved trail in her tall shoes, leaving pockmarks in the dirt as she walked. “It’s just plain spooky around here.”

“Sal said Saundra had a brother who lives with her. I’m not sure if we’ll find him home or not.”

“I don’t like it here, I don’t like it at all,” Val said, pulling a bottle of perfume out of her purse. From a tree branch above us, three crows cawed as we continued walking toward the house.

“Don’t spray any more of this,” I said, grabbing the bottle from her. “Why does the label say Chanel No. 6?”

“It’s better than Chanel No. 5. The guy I met on the sidewalk—”

“You bought perfume on the street?”

“It was a good deal. I’m just a working girl—” She grabbed the bottle from me and tucked it back in her purse.

“You don’t even know what’s in that—”

I heard the click of metal on metal and fell silent. I glanced at Val. She heard it, too. The crows took flight, sweeping low before heading toward the hills.

“Do not move,” I mouthed to her.

“What?” Val said, far too loudly.

“Put your hands up,” a man said.

I put my hands above my head and turned slowly.

He looked exactly like Saundra. Except he was a man wearing a green John Deere hat. And he was alive. And he was holding a twelve-gauge shotgun, pointed right at us.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“THE COPS HAVE ALREADY
BEEN
here to tell me about my sister,” the man said. “So what are you two doing here?”

“I was a friend of Saundra’s,” I said. “I wanted to come out and make sure you were okay.” This was a fib, but I didn’t want him to think we were random strangers who were trying to break into his sister’s house.

“Can I turn around?” Val asked.

“Just keep your hands up,” he shouted.

Val turned slowly. Doing as she was told, she kept her hands in the air.

“Hi there,” Val said, once she was turned toward the man. “My name’s Val. What’s yours, honey?”

The man looked at Val, his eyes blinking rapidly. Who was this woman who was introducing herself to him, as if there was no gun between them? He pushed back his cap to get a good look at us.

“And this is Jax,” Val continued. “Say ‘hi,’ Jax.”

The man looked from Val to me.

“Hi,” I said, showing him my biggest smile. “Can we put our hands down? Please?”

“Please, honey, we aren’t going to cause any trouble, we promise,” Val said.

“Okay, okay. But no sudden moves,” the man replied.

“Now, I still didn’t get your name,” said Val as she took her hands from above her head and put them on her ample hips.

“It’s Bruce. Now listen, just because I let you put your hands down, that doesn’t mean we can be all buddy-buddy, you know?”