A Bead in the Hand (Glass Bead Mystery Series Book 2) (7 page)

“What do you think?” asked Tessa.

“Is this my bedspread?” I asked, fingering the fabric covering the tabletop.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is,” said Tessa.

“And, this is?” I asked, looking at the pretty white dish that held all my earrings.

“Stole it from our room service tray.”

“And this little platform?”

“Three Gideon Bibles wrapped in a pillowcase.” Tessa was proud of her creativity, standing a little taller than usual, and she wasn’t that tall to begin with.

“Tessa, you’re a genius. Thanks so much for this,” I said, bending over the table and giving her a big kiss on the cheek. It would never be as terrific as my original table display, but it certainly looked better than an undraped plastic table with some beads lying on it. Unfortunately, there were no lights to make everything shiny and sparkly. Unless someone miraculously had some spare lights, this was as good as it was going to get.

A grim-looking Miles shuffled toward me with a box of books. He was wearing his skinniest black jeans, a white shirt with a bolo tie, and a gray porkpie hat, another hipster fashion statement. I looked at Tessa to get some clue about why he was here.

“I told Miles he could share your table.”

“The cops won’t release Saundra’s beads for me to sell. But I’ve got all these books that were in her room. She had autographed them and everything.”

“Sure, Miles, you can sell them here,” I said.

“Thanks, it will help with the money situation.”

“What money situation?”

“Saundra hasn’t paid me in a long time. I can do really well selling my handmade wood carvings and felted iPhone cases, but it’s not really enough for me to live on, even in a house with three other guys. She said her money was all tied up in this book, and she’d pay me after this weekend. But now I guess I won’t get paid.”

“Let’s try and sell the books. Maybe you can hold onto the money you make from the sales,” I said. These books were, strictly speaking, not Miles’s to sell, but he’d been stiffed by the now-stiff Saundra, so selling them seemed like a good way to recoup some of the money she owed him.

Miles pulled out the books, set up a few of them on the table, and sank down into the chair next to me. I felt a little wiped out, and Miles looked like how I felt. Me, from my ordeal with Saundra, and Miles, he always looked a little spacey.

“I’m going to find some food for you. It would do you both some good,” said Tessa. “Coffee and a blueberry muffin for you, Jax?”

“Please.” Tessa knew me so well.

“Can I bring something for you too, Miles?” Tessa asked.

“That would be nice, thanks. A gluten-free muffin and a small dirty soy chai latte.”

“A what?” One of Tessa’s eyes twitched—she was trying not to roll her eyes. I knew what she was thinking—Miles was a high-maintenance kind of guy.

“A muffin, no gluten.”

“That’s not the part I was confused about.”

“I like to order things that aren’t on the menu. It’s a much more authentic experience that way,” said Miles.

“Small. Dirty. Soy. Chai. Latte.” Tessa was committing that drink to memory. I was sure she was regretting asking Miles if he wanted anything.

Tessa came back a while later and distributed breakfast snacks to Miles and me.

“You’re the best,” I told Tessa, giving her a big hug.

She looked over at Miles’s stack of books. “How much for the books?”

“They’re $25, and they have all been autographed by the now deceased author,” Miles said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

Tessa, always on the lookout to make a profit, said, “I’ll give you $200 for ten books.”

“Sold,” Miles said without blinking. He may have been a hipster, but he was also a capitalist.

I caught her attention with my are-you-crazy look.

“They’re signed by the author, and the author is dead. Everyone knows that when an artist dies, the price of their work skyrockets. I’m buying these, and I’m going to sell them in my store for a hefty profit,” Tessa said.

“Way to go, way to sell some books,” I said to Miles. He tried to give me a fist bump, which I bungled by thinking it was a high-five. In the end, it looked like rock-paper-scissors. I was the paper, he was the rock.

Tessa took a copy and handed it to me. “Here’s a gift for your heroic efforts.”

“Thanks, Tessa, I’ll treasure it always,” I lied. I was really going to donate it to Goodwill so I didn’t ever have to be reminded of this awful experience. I opened the cover, and sure enough, Saundra’s giant spidery signature was scrawled across the inside page. I swallowed hard, knowing I couldn’t look at this book today, or ever, and tossed it on the floor at my feet.

“Okay, I’m going to shop. That’s why I came, after all,” Tessa said.

“If you see Ryan, tell him I’d like to talk with him,” I said.

“Who’s Ryan?”

“He’s a security guard. You can’t miss him, he reminds me of a tree, but I mean, in a good way. Sort of big and solid.” Today’s events had seriously scrambled my brain.

“Dark green branches for hair and roots for feet?” Tessa asked with a grin, miming what branches looked like.

“About six feet tall. He’s got sexy brown eyes with glints of amber,” I said.

“Oh, I saw him. He looks young. I mean, younger than you—”

“Ladies, can we stop with the fantasizing about the man-tree? You’re freaking me out,” said Miles.

“I’m going to go drop my books up in the room, and then I’ve got hours of important shopping to do,” Tessa said. She grabbed her stack of books, and teetering from their weight, pushed her way out of the ballroom doors.

My new table location was much better than where I’d been located originally. Even so, this was the last place I wanted to be. I wanted to be upstairs in my hotel room, or better yet, at home, indulging in what I like to call Double Bubbles—a bubble bath and a bottle of champagne. Instead, I was going to sit here and sell my beads, and try to recoup my expenses from this trip, and try not to think about dead bodies.

I had many questions from customers.

“Are these made from clay from the craft store?” “No, they’re glass,” I responded.

“Are these made in China?” “No, I made them myself,” I answered.

“What kinds of molds do you use?” “I don’t use molds, each bead is sculpted individually,” I told them.

“I’ll give you a buck for it.” “Sorry, this is not a swap meet or a garage sale,” I said, disappointed that a handmade item could be worth so little to some people.

I did it all with a smile on my face, and was glad I had the opportunity to teach people who stopped by about handmade glass beads. Mine were lampworked, sometimes called flameworked beads. I’d made each one by melting glass in a torch, and then wrapping and sculpting different colors of glass around a long thin metal rod, called a mandrel. After completing a bead, I cooled it overnight in a kiln. The next day when I removed the mandrel from the middle of the glass, a hole remained. The bead was now ready to be used in jewelry.

Minnie waved at me from across the aisle. She was about four booths down from my new location. She got up and scurried over to me, since she didn’t have any customers at her booth.

“I’ve got to go tinkle. Can you watch my table?” Minnie asked.

“Don’t forget to come back,” I said, remembering that just a few hours ago, I had had a hard time extracting her from the bathroom. “Miles, why don’t you go and ‘man’ Minnie’s table,” I suggested.

“You want me to go over there?”

“Seriously, Miles, if you’re going to hang out with me all day, you might as well be useful.” I could see why this guy had gotten on Saundra’s nerves—he was not the shiniest bead on the strand. “Maybe you’ll make a new friend.”

Miles got up and moved to Minnie’s table, taking a seat behind it. He still looked distraught over Saundra’s death. He was limp—limper than usual—and his unfocused gaze seemed to be keeping customers away.

Minnie was back a few minutes later and sat down next to Miles. They talked for a little while, and he started to perk up. She pulled out her Muppets lunchbox, and he smiled with appreciation. Minnie had been looking despondent about Saundra’s demise as well, but she seemed to be feeling better as she continued talking with Miles. She had a constant stream of customers at her table, not just looking, but making large purchases. Minnie helped customers make selections and wrote up receipts. Then Miles collected payments and wrapped the purchases.

Minnie made hipster beads. There was no other way to describe them. She covered all of the basic hipster motifs: owls, hedgehogs, handlebar mustaches, candy-colored skulls, and anything else that was retro, funky, cute, or odd. They were not my style, but boy oh boy, there were a lot of people out there who were crazy about her beads.

She had a lull in business around noon and scampered over to my table.

“Miles is going watch my booth while I get some lunch for us over at the snack bar. You want me to get you something, too?”

“What do they have?”

“Hot dogs and some sort of salad thing wrapped up in a tortilla. At least I think it’s a salad—it’s green. Whatever it is, I guess it might just be moldy.”

“Geez, such great choices. I guess I’ll have the hot dog.” If it was cooked, maybe the micro-organisms would be dead, at least. I popped ten bucks into her hand. “And a Coke and chips, too.” It was not a day to diet.

I wondered how Miles was going to be able to eat at the snack bar. There wasn’t going to be much that was edible, let alone gluten-free.

“Okay, that works,” Minnie said, as she headed off across the show floor, swinging her hips (maybe that’s why she was a hipster), her square-dancing dress swishing side to side as she walked. Minnie strolled down the center of the aisle, waving to her friends in their booths. This was her way of saying that she wasn’t going to stop and chat, or shop, because if she did, it would’ve taken hours for her to get to the snack bar.

After Minnie left, a woman who clearly had been shopping up a storm, judging by the number of bags in her hands, stopped by and bought one of my beads. It was a pretty bead with a bi-cone shape—a slender cylinder tapering to a point at each end. At its core, there was layer of silver foil with colorful twists of purple and aqua on the surface. This was my first sale of the day, and I realized I had no receipt books, no bags, no tissue paper, no calculator—they were all off-limits behind the crime scene tape.

“Can you wait one second?” I asked. “I need to grab some supplies.”

I ran to Minnie’s table. “Miles—help! I need a receipt book…Oh, and maybe a small zip-lock bag.”

“No problem. I’ve got Minnie’s supplies here. I’ve been processing payments for her all morning.”

“Glad about that,” I said, trying to hurry Miles along while my customer waited.

“Yeah, so I organized everything, since she had so many duplicates,” he continued, not getting the hint that I was in a hurry.

“Whatever you have, Miles, I really need it now. I’ve got a customer waiting,” I hissed, as I looked back at her and smiled sheepishly, holding up my index finger. Just one more minute, and I’d be right back. I thought about giving Miles a finger as well—the middle one.

“Oh, sure. Sorry. Here’s an envelope of things that were duplicates. I don’t think Minnie would mind if you used them,” Miles said, handing me a manila envelope stuffed with papers and receipt books.

I hurried in a half-run back to my table.

“I am so, so, so sorry,” I said, dumping the contents of the envelope on the table and searching through them.

“Ah, here it is. A receipt book,” I said, trying to act positive and professional.

I wrote the receipt, found a small zip-lock bag, and some tissue paper. My customer was staring at me impatiently, as I hurriedly wrapped the bead. She had more shopping to do, and I was slowing her down.

“Thanks for your purchase. And thanks for your patience,” I said with one final smile.

Wordlessly, the woman took her bead and vanished into the fray of people spending, spending, spending.

Minnie came by a few minutes later with lunch. “Here’s your hot dog,” she said, placing it on the table. “And heeeere’s your mustard and ketchup packets.”

What? No relish?

“Here’s your Coke. And your chips,” she continued, dropping them next to the hot dog. “Oh, and here’s your change.”

“Eighty-four cents?”

“Sorry, the snack bar is expensive.”

“Thanks, Minnie. At least I won’t starve.” Actually, lunch wasn’t bad. I put every bit of ketchup and mustard on the hot dog and that definitely helped. A few hundred calories can turn my world around.

I looked down the aisle at Minnie and Miles. They were sitting at Minnie’s table, smiling and eating fries and drinking shakes. Shakes! Fries! Nobody told me those yummy options were available. And Miles—he was eating them, too. So much for his gluten-free, non-dairy existence. He was breaking all his food rules today.

I looked through the papers and supplies Miles had given me. Price tags, pens, a calculator, and a few receipt books. Among the things were a half-dozen pages with drawings of beads and notes. I shoved them back into the envelope.

By two o’clock, sales were finally picking up, and I made several large sales in the last hour that the bazaar was open. I knew I’d at least paid my expenses for the weekend. I felt good about that—even if I didn’t sell anything else, I was in the black. What would my sales have been like if I wasn’t using a comforter as a table covering and had an actual lighting system? I would never know. Tessa arrived a few minutes before five o’clock, when the show was about to close.

“Dinner?” Tessa asked.

“I only had a hot dog for lunch. I could use some real food.”

“I’m going to meet up with Adriana and find out where we’re going for dinner,” Tessa said. Adriana was tall and thin with puffy white hair. She reminded me of a Q-Tip. She was a bead shop owner from San Francisco, who often came to sales to buy inventory for her store. Tessa and Adriana were old friends, although they only saw each other a few times a year at bead bazaars like this one. Adriana always knew the latest beading techniques, and Tessa loved to learn them from her.