A Bead in the Hand (Glass Bead Mystery Series Book 2) (6 page)

“Do you think it’s going to rain?”

“Yes.”

Instead, I asked, “Do you like being a security guard?”

“I like working the night shift. I come on duty at midnight and I get done every morning at 9:00 when another guard comes on duty to relieve me. I read a lot during my shift—there’s not much else to do.”

“What do you like to read?” I asked. I would rather talk about reading than being a security guard any day.

“The study guides for the police academy final exams.”

“You want to be a cop?” Why would anyone choose law enforcement as a career? I certainly wouldn’t. Of course, I played with fire for a living, so I wasn’t the best judge of good career choices.

“It’s better than being a rent-a-cop,” he replied. And I agreed with him. If you’re going to look like a cop and act like one too, you might as well be a cop. “Besides, my acting career was going nowhere.”

I couldn’t tell if he was serious. He sure was handsome enough to be a leading man.

“Jax O’Connell,” I said, wiping any remaining chocolate from my hand before extending it. I definitely needed to read the handbook on interacting with people of the opposite sex, but Val didn’t need to tell me it was not good form to shake hands when you had melted chocolate on them.

“I’m Ry—,” he said. “You already know my name. Nice to meet you,” Ryan said, shaking my hand and bowing slightly. Chivalry was not dead. “Looks like it’s eight o’clock.” And with that, Ryan opened the door to the ballroom and wished me a nice day.

“Thanks, Ryan. Catch you later,” I said, lugging my bag of beads into the room.

I was the first one in the ballroom. Clearly, Ryan had done an excellent job of keeping the bad guys out. Harnessing the power of positive thinking, I was determined that this would be a successful sale. People were going to buy all my stuff. And, I was going to ignore Saundra.

I headed down the aisle toward my table. Something was wrong—my table was out of alignment. I was extra-sensitive about the location of each table, since Saundra and I had argued about it. The black velvet I had laid on the table had been pulled tight on one side, with an avalanche of earrings across it. Had I accidentally yanked my table covering when I was leaving in the dark? I hoped no one had helped themselves to items on my table during the chaos. Thankfully, my beads were in the room with me last night, but there was plenty left that could have been stolen.

Saundra’s table was a complete mess, too. Her display racks were tipped on their sides, and brochures were scattered across the floor. I slipped around to the back of the tables. Beads were strewn everywhere. A silky burgundy table covering spilled off the back of Saundra’s table and onto the floor. The bead diva was going to explode when she arrived. Poor Miles would receive the brunt of her anger over the messy table.

To avoid tripping on Saundra’s tablecloth, I folded it over the top of her table. As I pulled back the fabric, I saw them: purple high-heeled ankle boots. Saundra had been wearing boots like this the last time I had seen her.

SEVEN

“SAUNDRA! SAUNDRA!”
I yelled as I dove under the table, bringing the rest of the table covering and the contents of her table down with me. Saundra was lying flat on her back, staring upward. The mirror that had been between my table and hers was beneath her, shattered and bloody. I grabbed her hands and squeezed them.

“Saundra!” I shouted as I shook her shoulders. “Wake up!” But I knew she wasn’t asleep. I pulled her onto my lap, holding her close, and checking for a pulse.

“Help!” I yelled. Someone must have come into the ballroom after I did. They could help me. No one responded.

“I’m going to give you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation now. Okay?” It seemed like I should ask for permission before clamping my lips onto someone else’s.

How do I do this?

I pinched her nose shut. I took a big breath, and exhaled into her mouth. It was cold and dry. I scrambled backward. There was no chance she was still alive.

“HELP!” I screamed, hoping the security guard would hear me.

Finally, Ryan came running.

“Here!” I yelled. No matter how quickly he came, I knew there was nothing he could do to save her.

Ryan finally found us and, in an extremely manly move, picked up the table that Saundra was under and threw it out of the way.

“I haven’t taken a class in CPR, so I am not authorized to perform any lifesaving techniques,” Ryan said.

“I think it’s too late for that,” I said, out of breath.

Ryan was already on his radio, asking for help from the hotel staff.

My hands were shaking and balled into fists. My right hand was covered in blood. As I turned it over and opened my fingers, I saw a perfect round bead, glistening with blood. It was one of Saundra’s beautiful Cosmos beads. And then I passed out.

• • •

Ryan’s face was swimming in and out of view.

“Jax? Are you all right?” he said as he crouched above me. I felt like throwing up. Ryan must have moved me, since I wasn’t near my table. I was lying next to the wall at the back of the ballroom with a wet paper towel on my forehead. An emergency technician was kneeling next to me, checking my pulse.

I sat bolt upright.

“You’re okay,” Ryan said, gently settling me more comfortably with my back against the wall for support. He removed the soggy paper towel and brushed the hair off my face.

Down the aisle from where I was sitting, a handful of cops were stringing crime scene tape around Saundra’s and my tables. Tessa was talking with a surly-looking police officer. As soon as she saw me, she broke away from him.

“Jax!
Dio Mio!”
Tessa shouted as she ran toward me, stopping just short of knocking Ryan over.

One of the cops approached Ryan and called him away, and Tessa took his place at my side. The EMT continued to check my vital signs, taking hold of my arm and sliding a blood pressure cuff on it.

“What happened? Where’s Saundra?” I asked a blurry Tessa, as the blood pressure cuff squeezed my arm, then released.

“The coroner’s team took her away. She’s dead, Jax.” Tessa hugged me tight. I closed my eyes and stopped breathing while I focused on Tessa’s arms around me. Those words,
she’s dead
, hit me hard. Dead. I already knew Saundra had died, but hearing it said out loud made it all the more real.

“I just, I tried to save her—”

“Shhhh, there was nothing you could have done—that any of us could have done—to save her,” Tessa said. She seemed so calm. Maybe that’s what happens when you become a parent—you get all sorts of super-powers, like remaining calm during emergencies. With her teen girls, I’m sure she got lots of practice at being calm during a crisis.

“Excuse me,” the EMT said, wedging himself between me and Tessa and removing the blood pressure cuff. “Just trying to finish up here.” He took a pen light out of his kit and flashed it across my eyes. The bright light stung, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I was not a good patient. The technician must have seen enough to know I was not injured. He clicked off the light and tossed it back into his bag.

“You’re not feeling dizzy?” asked the EMT.

I shook my head.

“Well then, you check out okay. If you get a headache or have any vision trouble, you get over to Providence Medical Center.” He got up, grabbed his kit, and was gone in a flash.

Sal paced back and forth in front of the tables that were now ringed in yellow tape. He had to be concerned about how he was going to explain what had happened to the dozens of customers now crowded around the doors, ready to come in and shop.

“What happened to my table?” I asked.

“The police aren’t going to let you into that area until they finish their investigation,” Tessa said. “But Sal set up another table for you.”

“Another table?”

“Sal said he had a no-show by the front door. The police won’t let you take your displays or other show gear. But I’ve got your beads. Let’s go look at the new table.”

“But, why—how—can they even continue with the bazaar? That’s crazy.”

“I know, but Sal said the show must go on,” Tessa said, shaking her head. It was outrageous that Sal would want to continue as if nothing had happened. It’s not like this was
Hello Dolly
. Tessa helped me up and supported me as we walked slowly past a maintenance crew that was setting up temporary room dividers to block the gruesome scene from the view of passersby. We found my new table—my new, completely barren table.

“Tessa, can you go up to the room and get anything that’s not nailed down? We’re going to need to improvise a new table display.”

“I’m on it,” Tessa said, giving me a hug and heading toward the lobby. The surly officer, who I’d seen talking to Tessa just a few minutes before, caught up with me at my new table.

“Ms. O’Connell?”

“Jax,” I said, running a hand through my hair, and trying to seem at least a little presentable.

“I’m glad to see you up and about,” the officer said. “We’ll need to get a statement from you, seeing as you found the deceased.”

“When? Now?”

“Right now.”

“I need to splash some water on my face. You want to walk with me?” The officer escorted me to the ladies’ room, and I was glad he was next to me, since I was still feeling wobbly. As we walked, I told him how I’d found Saundra, and he took notes in a small black book as he listened to me recount what had happened.

“I guess this is as far as you can go,” I said, arriving at the women’s bathroom. I didn’t think he’d follow me in, and besides, I’d told him all that I could.

“I’ve got all that I need for now. Thank you. You’ll be hearing from one of our detectives within the next twenty-four hours so that we can collect any other pertinent information.”

In the ladies’ room, I stood looking in the mirror—I was pale. I splashed cold water on my face and rubbed it vigorously, trying to get the dead-person cooties off my lips. I pulled some water through my hair, too. That helped tame it and revitalize me. I took a sip of water from the tap. I felt a little better, and that was a step in the right direction.

As I was drying my hands and face with a paper towel, a whimper came from the stall behind me. I stood still and listened. Maybe it wasn’t a whimper, maybe it was just my stomach growling. Then I heard it again, the tiniest, sad sound, just a few feet away. I looked down to see whose feet might belong to those pathetic sounds. No feet. What was I to surmise from this? That the person crying in the stall was a double amputee? I didn’t think so.

“Hello,” I said softly. “Hello? Can I help you in some way?”

The whimpering stopped.

“I know you’re in there. I heard your sniffles.”

Still silent.

I peeked in the gap between the stall door and its frame. Minnie was sitting on the toilet seat with her legs pulled up to her chest, her eyes red and teary. In true hipster style, she was wearing a pink checked square-dancing dress with leggings that made her look like she was eight years old.

“Minnie? What are you doing in here?”

“Hiding. I don’t want anyone to see me crying.”

“Oh, I know, Saundra—”

“Saundra, she’s, just, uh, such a treasure. I read all her books, she was so talented, and to lose her now…”

“I know, it’s hard,” I said, trying to comfort her through the door. Maybe Minnie had never known anyone who had died.

“You found her. What do you think happened?” Minnie asked with a sniffle.

“She must have tripped and fallen on a cord during the blackout. I guess she cracked her head open. There was blood—”

“Right, right, right. You’re right,” said Minnie, hyperventilating, still inside the stall.

“Come on, Minnie, let’s go. The doors will open any minute. Pretty soon this place will be filled with customers.”

“Can’t I just stay in here a little while longer?

“You don’t want to miss out on sales, do you?”

“I just can’t face people right now.”

“Get your butt out of that bathroom stall before I slide under the door and pull you out. It will not be pleasant,” I said with what was probably too much force. I was channeling my inner-Tessa.

And with that, poor Minnie slid the lock open, peeked out through a crack in the door, and made a dash for it.

I followed Minnie out of the ladies’ room, and looked across two aisles to where my table used to be.

Passing by the room dividers that masked the crime scene, now decorated with festive posters about upcoming sales in Tucson and Santa Fe, I decided to take a peek. A piece of yellow crime scene tape was wrapped around two tables—mine and Saundra’s—and there was a thin dusting of powder—fingerprint powder, I assumed—all over everything on the tables and even the floor. Saundra’s body was gone. A crime scene investigator, in her white protective suit, was using tweezers to pick up bloody fragments of mirror from the concrete floor and placing them in a plastic evidence collection bag.

Sal came around the end of one of the room dividers and found me looking at the scene. He ran a hand over his unnaturally inky-black hair and looked me up and down, giving me a full body scan. A woman died on this very spot and he could still stand there looking at me lasciviously.

“You doing okay? Sorry you lost all the things in your booth, but glad you still got your beads.” He was standing just a little too close. The remains of his breakfast toast still clung to his black goatee. “Oh, yeah, we found you this nice place by the front door. So don’t come asking me for a refund or anything.”

“Thanks, Sal.” I was feeling stronger now, and ready to get to work and sell some beads. I needed to set aside what had happened and focus on work. I could fall apart later.

“You need anything, you know where to find me. If you need to rest, I got a bed in my RV out in the back parking lot, you know. I could even give you a little massage, if you wanted.”

Sal was scum through and through.

EIGHT

TESSA WAS STANDING
in front of my new table, giving it some final adjustments.

“You read my mind,” I said, admiring the display that Tessa had created from things she had found in our room.