A Fatal Slip (4 page)

“It’s absolutely tragic, isn’t it?”

Rose had a tendency to state the obvious, but I had to agree with her. “I’ve always felt bad for Nate.”

Rose finished dabbing her cheeks. “Kendra just made things worse, didn’t she?”

“That’s what she does,” I said, rather uncharitably.

“Do you think it’s a lost cause?”

“No, I just think we need to take a different approach.”

Rose looked me in the eye. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to talk to Nate alone and see if I can help him make his decision.”

“Don’t push him too hard.”

“Don’t worry,” I said as I walked to the door. “I’ll push just enough.”

Nate was back at the coffee shop standing behind the counter as if nothing had happened when I walked in. When I approached him, I said, “Sorry about that.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Nate replied, with more than a touch of frost in his voice.

“I’m asking for forgiveness collectively, since I doubt Kendra’s going to do it.”

That broke a slight crack in his dour expression. “It would be eventful, wouldn’t it?”

“I’d say practically apocalyptic, wouldn’t you?”

“That works.” He frowned, then added, “I’m sorry about the way I reacted out there. Is Rose all right?”

“She’s fine now. We should have given you some privacy,” I said. “I’m sorry we ganged up on you like that.”

“Not a problem. Would you like some coffee?”

I’d just had one cup and was going to have another one with Hannah soon, but I couldn’t exactly turn him down. “Sure, why not? Is there any chance you’d join me?”

I didn’t think I had a prayer of succeeding, but to my surprise, he agreed. “I could use a little warming up myself. Find us a table and I’ll be right there.”

He joined me a minute later and put a giant mug in front of me. “I figured you could use a bigger jolt than you’re used to.”

“Sounds great,” I said as I took a sip. After a moment, I asked, “Would you like to talk about it?”

“What, the weather, or the chances the Red Socks have this year?”

I shook my head. “You’re as bad as Bill. You know exactly what I mean.”

He shrugged. “There are worse things than being compared to your husband. He’s a good guy.”

“I think so, too, but sometimes I wonder. Answer me, Nate, and stop avoiding the topic.”

“I wasn’t exactly sure we’d settled on one yet.” He took a sip of his own coffee, and a slight smile slipped out.

“You’re a big fan of your product, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t you?”

I nodded. “I guess all of our businesses start out of a love for what we do.”

He smiled softly as he stared into his cup. “Not me.” He glanced around the shop, then said wistfully, “This place was always Winnie’s dream, not mine.”

I had to choose my next words carefully. “And yet you’ve kept it going all these years.”

“Silly, isn’t it? I guess I believe as long as the business stays open, a little of my wife will still be around.”

I patted his hand. “I don’t think that’s silly at all. Tell me how you got started. I didn’t have my pottery shop back then, so I wasn’t as tied to the River Walk as I am now.”

“We met in college,” Nate said. “It was love at first sight, at least for me. It took Winnie some time to come around, but I finally wore her down. She wanted a coffee shop more than anything else in the world.”

“How about you?”

“I wanted her to be happy. We could have had a flower shop or a bowling alley for that matter. All I cared about was being with her.”

“You must miss her terribly,” I said.

“Every day.” He looked around In the Grounds, then said, “It’s a horrid name, but she was dead set on it, and I didn’t put up much of a fight. Carolyn, maybe it’s time I let go.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. Sure, it would sting if I lost Fire at Will, but Nate had a lot more at stake than I did.

He looked surprised by my agreement. “You wouldn’t hate me if I decided not to buy this place?”

“Of course not,” I said, meaning every word of it. “I’ll respect whatever decision you make. No matter what you decide, though, you should get on with your life. If that means shutting this place down and doing something else, I’m sure Winnie would have approved.”

“She wanted me to be happy,” he said. The poor man appeared to be on the brink of tears. Was it something I was doing? First Rose, and now Nate.

There was only one piece of advice I could give him. “Then you should follow your heart.”

“Thanks,” Nate said as he squeezed my hand. Wiping an errant tear from his cheek, he said with false heartiness, “Now I’ve dawdled too long. It’s time to get back to work.”

After he was back at the counter, I took one more sip of coffee, then I headed for the door, nearly knocking Hannah down as I did so.

“Were you giving up on me already?” she said. Hannah glanced at her watch. “I’m only three minutes late.”

“Come on,” I said as I reversed direction. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

“It’s my turn to treat, remember?” she said. Hannah, a slim brunette barely over forty, was an English professor at Travers College.

“Fine, but I think I’d like a hot chocolate instead.”

“No coffee? Are you sure?” She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “You always need an early morning pick-me-up.”

“A woman can change her mind occasionally, can’t she?” I wasn’t in the mood to admit that I was already nearing a caffeine overdose.

“Hot chocolate it is. In fact, it’s so chilly out today, I think I’ll join you.”

As we sipped our hot cocoas, Hannah asked, “Is there something wrong?”

“You mean besides the usual sea of troubles that seems to surround me?”

“Don’t be flip,” she said. “I’m here, if you need someone to talk to.”

I nodded. “Thanks, I appreciate that.” I glanced back at Nate, who was studiously cleaning the counter between orders. “It’s nothing I can talk about. At least not here,” I said as I lowered my voice.

Hannah looked around. “You can whisper if you’d like. Is it about someone in here?” She glanced around the room. “I know. It’s about Dawn’s new perm, isn’t it? Normally I don’t like to gossip, but what was that woman thinking?”

I looked at Dawn Houser, a woman who had been friends with my mother, and marveled at her new hairstyle. There wasn’t a name for the color of her frosted tresses, but the closest I could come to it was a light purple with tinges of burgundy. “It’s amazing what they can do with chemicals these days. But no, that’s not it. Do you have time to walk me to my shop?”

She looked at her watch. “I’ve got an early class, but I could always call my TA and let her get things started.”

Hannah would do it, I knew that, but she’d be committing a serious dereliction of duty if she foisted off work on her assistant when she was capable of teaching herself. “I know you better than that. Go on. We’ll catch up later.”

As we walked outside, she said, “I mean it. I want a rain check.”

“You’ve got it.”

As I walked toward Fire at Will, I dreaded the prospect of running into either Kendra or Rose, but for once, luck was with me and I got to my place unscathed.

David, my twenty-year-old, ponytailed assistant, was standing inside the shop when I walked in.

“Good morning,” I said as I hung up my jacket on one of the pegs in back and reached for an apron.

“I’ve just heard the news,” he said. “You’re not buying the shop, are you? Carolyn, how can you do this to me?”

As I tied my apron around my waist, I said, “I didn’t realize I was doing anything to you. It’s my shop and my decision.” To placate his scowl, I added, “Besides, you’ve gotten your facts mixed up. I’m making an offer as soon as we’re finished with this inane conversation.”

“I just heard . . . Someone at Shelly’s say that you were holding out from the rest of the group.”

“Do you happen to remember who you heard it from?” Honestly, it was bad enough taking the hits around town for the things I actually did, but that wasn’t good enough for the local rumor mill. It seemed that if there wasn’t anything worth talking about, they’d just started making things up.

“I didn’t really hear who said you weren’t buying the place,” he admitted. “So it’s not true?”

“If you don’t believe me, you can listen in on the phone conversation.”

I dialed the number I’d been given. “I need to speak with Melody Train, please.”

“One moment, please.” I was quickly connected, then identified myself. “I’m interested in purchasing the building where my shop, Fire at Will, is located,” I said, my voice quivering a little.

“Wonderful, Ms. Emerson. Now, you should know that this offer is conditional on all shop owners buying their respective buildings?”

“Yes, I had heard that. I understand. I’m curious about one thing, though.”

“Why are you getting such a great price?” I could almost hear the smile in her voice.

“That’s it exactly. I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth and all of that, but I couldn’t help wondering.”

“I don’t blame you a bit. The owners want to liquidate as quickly as possible, and they’re not exactly hurting for a cash influx at the moment. To be honest with you, I’ve been surprised you all haven’t acted quicker, before they change their minds.”

“There’s no danger of that, is there?” Suddenly the thought of losing Fire at Will was more than I could take.

“No, as long as you all agree. We have one more party to sign, and then we’ll be able to act quickly. I’ll send the paperwork around to your shop by the end of the day, if that’s all right.”

I remembered Nate’s reluctance earlier and wondered if I was wasting my time, but he hadn’t definitely said no yet, and if he did decide to buy In the Grounds, I wanted to be ready for it. “That would be great.”

“Thanks for calling,” she said.

As I hung up, David’s smile broadened.

“Don’t get too excited,” I warned him. “We still need Nate Walker at In the Grounds.”

“He’ll sign up for sure,” David said.

“There’s nothing sure about it. Now let’s get a little work done before a mad horde of customers rushes in here.”

“Are you expecting anybody in particular to come in today?”

“No, but I can hope, can’t I? What’s next on your dream list of things to try?” My assistant, as well as being a part-time student at Travers, also had the most outlandish wish list of pottery projects I’d ever seen.

“Medusa masks,” he said with a gleam in his eye.

“Do I even want to know?”

“Come on, it will be fun.”

As we wedged fresh clay side by side, working out the air bubbles and smoothing it, I said, “You seem to be building more pieces by hand lately. Have you sworn off throwing on the wheel?”

“No, I still like to throw, but I’m enjoying this process. You know how I got interested in it?”

“Let me guess. You saw a Rodin exhibit?”

“No, I saw a face jug from North Carolina. Robert Owens has been making them at the school, and they looked intriguing.”

Owens was a part-time pottery instructor at the shop, though he was becoming less and less a presence at Fire at Will. Between his regular classes at Travers and his extracurricular student activities—and by that I meant running after coeds—he didn’t have much time for my little pottery shop anymore.

“I’ve seen them.” Face jugs were regular thrown pots, with the addition of eyes, teeth, ears, and a nose.

He nodded. “I know, they can be an acquired taste, but they are folk art at its best. I was making noses and eyes, and I started thinking of the other possibilities.”

“So, let’s make a few face jugs instead.”

“We can later, but I want to do these masks first.”

My clay was ready. “That suits me. Should we make the first one together, or should we work separately?”

“Let’s do the first one together. I’ll work on the mask, and you start on some snaky hair.”

We worked our balls of clay down to sheets a quarter of an inch thick. French rolling pins were the best for that job, and David and I had each done enough that we didn’t need spacers to tell us when we got down to the right thickness.

“That’s easy enough.” As David cut the basic shape of the mask from his rolled sheet of clay, I started cutting mine into inch-wide strips. After I’d fashioned a series of pencil-thick strands, I sculpted snake heads at each end, including the addition of hissing tongues.

David looked at one. “Wow, you’re really good at this.”

“What can I say, I’ve met more than my share of snakes in my life. I just did these from memory.”

By the time I had a few dozen snakes formed, David was ready with the mask head. “May I?”

“Be my guest.”

I watched as he scored the forehead of the mask with several crisscross lines, then did the same on the ends of the snake bodies. After dabbing a brush into some liquid clay slip and coating both surfaces, David worked the first snake into position. He moved quickly, and soon the head of snake hair was in place.

“Now for the eyes,” he said as he took an X-Acto knife and cut out the openings. In twenty minutes, he’d added a nose and full lips to the mask.

“She’s great, isn’t she?” he asked.

“I’d hate to be her beautician,” I said.

David set it aside. “Are you ready to do your own?”

“Why not? It might add a little flair to our display window.” Or it might drive folks off. I’d wait to see how the masks turned out glazed before I made any decisions.

We were just about to tackle our solo masks when the front door chimed. I was surprised to see that it was Nate Walker.

“Carolyn, do you have a second?”

“Sure. Just let me wash up.” As I was drying my hands, I told David, “I’ll be up front if you need me.”