A Fatal Stain (2 page)

The two of them stopped talking for a moment and looked at me, for all the world as though they’d completely
forgotten I existed. Which, to be frank, they probably had. Then Mom reached over and patted my hand, absently, more like she was fluffing a cushion or something. “There, there,” she said. “Brides always get nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” I said. I realized my voice was louder than it should be. “This is not my first time getting married. I don’t want a dress. It’s not a church wedding. I don’t want a guest list. I don’t want a reception. I don’t want—”

Mom and Ben traded a look that implied they were the adults in the room and that I must be humored and cajoled into playing my part. Ben tapped the pen he was holding against his teeth. It was one of the most annoying habits in the world, and I’d told him so several times since sixth grade. “To be honest,” he said, “perhaps the mystery books as favors are a bit over the top. They’re damn hard to wrap in a tasteful way. Besides, we can’t know for sure what the guests will like to read or even if all of them read mysteries.”

Mom narrowed her eyes at the unlikelihood of someone
not
reading mysteries, then wavered. “Well,” she said, “my husband has said that perhaps tasteful bottles of fingerprint powder…”

And like some slumbering warrior awakened from long sleep, my father perked up behind the register, ten feet away, and beamed at us. “It would be handy, you know. Funerals and weddings often result in murder, and when someone kills Sherlockia on her wedding day, we’ll be all ready to take fingerprints.”

My name is not Sherlockia. Had my name been Sherlockia, I would have run away from home well before the age of three. In fact, probably before I’d learned to walk.
Mom and Dad had almost divorced over what to name me, with my dad wanting Sherlockia and my mom holding out for Agatha. They’d met to discuss reconciliation in the local candy shop, and Mom had gone into labor over the parfaits. Which might explain—but did not excuse—saddling me with the names of Candyce Chocolat. Dad had dealt with the defeat as he always dealt with such things: by pretending it had never happened.

Which meant the only way
I
could deal with this was by running away. I’d take my on-the-verge-of-dying third-hand Volvo station wagon; cosh my fianc, police officer Cas Wolfe, over the head and stuff him in the passenger seat; and then wait until my ex-husband—All-ex, who couldn’t be more ex if I’d killed him, something I often contemplated doing—returned my son, E, whose real name is Enoch (I’m trying to save on therapy bills by calling him E). I’d strap E in his car seat in the back, and we’d drive like bats out of hell to…maybe as far as Denver, before my car died.

I revised my plan. I’d cosh Cas
first
and steal the keys to his white Honda SUV. Then drag him to the passenger seat, move the car seat over, and…

I paused. I could see E sitting in the backseat, screaming all the way to Las Vegas because we’d left Pythagoras—whom he calls Peesgrass—at home in Goldport.

Right. I’d throw Pythagoras—a mangy and extremely neurotic black cat—in his cat carrier and strap him in next to E’s child seat. And then…

In my mind’s eye, I saw Ben—as opposed to the real Ben, who was sketching something on a paper pad and showing it to my mother—crossing his arms and giving me his
more in sorrow than in anger
look at being left
out of my elopement. After all, he’d been left out of my first wedding, mostly because All-ex was jealous of him, which ranked up there as extreme stupidity, even for All-ex. It probably wasn’t fair to leave him out of my second wedding as well. Besides, I’m superstitious. The first wedding had been Ben-less, and the marriage had ended up on the rocks. What if the lack of Ben also blighted the second marriage?

My mental self also coshed the image of Ben over the head, dragged him to the car—a monumental feat of strength since he probably weighs double what I do—and strapped him in next to E and Pythagoras. Only in time for me to realize that Ben’s significant other, Nick, would probably be very upset if I took his boyfriend away for a few days. And probably even more upset to miss Cas’s wedding. Nick and Cas were not only best friends and colleagues in the Goldport Police Department, but also cousins who had been raised almost as brothers. It would be unforgivable not to take Nick along to Las Vegas to see us married by an Elvis impersonator at the Little Chapel of Quick and Regrettable Unions.

Sighing, I coshed my mental image of Nick, too, and stuffed him in the car under Pythagoras’s carrier, which probably would keep Pythagoras calmer for the trip, too.

Then, just as I was about to get behind the wheel of my imaginary getaway car, I realized that though my parents had never exactly approved of me since I’d disappointed them by not becoming a private eye, I was still their only daughter, and they—alas—my only parents. They might be—and often were—the world’s most annoying people, but they probably deserved to be there when we told Elvis that we did…

I’d just finished strapping my mental image of Mom to the roof rack and Dad to the front bumper, like a very befuddled-looking deer, when I realized this wouldn’t do. I mentally untied Dad’s hands and put a mystery book in them. He wouldn’t even notice he was strapped to the front of the car, provided that the book was interesting enough.

And then I realized that Fluffy, Mom and Dad’s cat, would be left alone for the whole time. But I had to draw the line somewhere. And Fluffy hated me and had—twice—tried to eat Pythagoras.

“No,” I said. “I’m
not
taking Fluffy.” And, as Mom and Ben turned to look at me, I realized that eloping while taking all your nearest and dearest was probably not practical and got up. “I have had enough of this,” I said. “I’m going to work.”

As I rushed out of the store, I heard Mom ask Ben, “What was that all about?” and Ben answer, “She just realized that she couldn’t take us all along if she eloped with Cas.”

I hated the way the man read my mind. Which did not excuse what I did next.

You see, two years ago, I’d been left divorced, with a year-old child and a very bad case of never having decided what to be when I grew up. In despair, I’d turned to the only semi-marketable skill I’d learned in the course of my very brief marital life: refinishing and rehabilitating used and antique furniture.

Now, my own business, Daring Finds, allowed me to buy food for myself and E—sometimes it even wasn’t pancakes—and to keep a roof—in an unfashionable part of downtown—over both our heads. What was going to happen to the roof and how much each of us would
contribute to the pancakes were subjects still undecided between Cas and I. It was, however, mutually agreed—at least by me, leaving Cas to hum along with it or lump it—that I would not shut down Daring Finds or stop refinishing and selling furniture. This time, should it all go bad—no matter how much we hoped it wouldn’t—I was not going to be left with no experience in anything marketable. So it was likely I would have to rent someplace for a workshop—Cas’s garage being taken up with the cars he and Nick fixed and repainted on the weekends.

For now, my workshop was located in a little shed at the back of the place I rented—the bottom floor of a Victorian building near downtown Goldport.

I had it arranged with tall shelves—full of the various chemicals I used to strip old varnish, stain, and the inevitable three layers of metallic paint that covered any garage-sale-bought piece—all around the walls and in the center a worktable formed by using several kitchen cabinets as a base and topping them with a large, heavy plywood board. On that board I set up the smaller pieces I worked on.

But that day, I felt I needed to work on something big. Like…the heavy, rough-hewn pine kitchen table that I’d bought at a garage sale last weekend. I pulled it from where it had been standing against the wall of the shed. It was hard to pull, but that was good, because it allowed me to work off some of my frustration, but it wasn’t so heavy that it would be pressboard.

I always find it funny when furniture sellers or ads online go on about how this used furniture must be good because it’s “heavy.” In fact, most of the heavy furniture is made of pressboard. But this one didn’t feel quite that
heavy. More the weight of oak or maple. Which was weird, since I was fairly sure it was pine.

Not good pine. It looked like it was cheap pine that someone had half-assedly covered up with a darker pine stain—something like Ipswich pine—which had been mixed with a quantity of varnish. People do the stupidest things.

I stared at the lumpy dark-and-yellow mess on the table and sighed. I could spend several days stripping the vast flat surface by dint of turpentine and heat gun. Or…

I looked at my worktable. Sitting atop of it, still in its box, all shiny and new, was the belt sander that Cas had given me as a pre-wedding gift and, I think, to show me he still loved me, even if I insisted on continuing to play with old furniture and varnish.

I had yet to use it, since most of my projects were antique, frail, and definitely not the sort of thing on which to unleash a belt sander. I hadn’t had the nerve to tell Cas such a tool was more appropriate for, say, floor refinishing. He had been trying so hard.

But this table was just what the doctor ordered for using the sander. I mean, pine is pretty resilient. As thick as this table was, I could easily slough off one-half inch and no one would notice. Heck, judging by the jam-like look of the top of the varnish, it had probably been applied on top of paint and shellac and silver metallic paint and God alone knew what. It was highly unlikely I’d hit wood in half an inch.

So I got the sander, put the finest paper belt on it—no use getting cavalier—attached the little bag to collect shavings to the back of it, not that I’d ever actually seen
one work—usually sawdust escapes all around the edges anyway, but this one might be the miracle—and put on my ear protection, goggles, and dust mask.

Then I plugged the sander in and let her rip.

Which it did, biting a gauge one-eighth of an inch thick across the table, and dragging me along by sheer force of its overactive motor to the other side.

I let go as I ran out of table, and it stopped, as its dead-man-switch safety activated.

I barely noticed as it hit the floor with a thud, and I reeled back, to put both hands on either side of the table and stare at the gash.

The first thing I thought was that using that sander on this piece was probably not the brightest thing I’d ever done. Contrary to my expectations, there was no thick layer of finish on finish atop this table. Just a thin, gummed-up layer of two colors of stain mixed with varnish.

The second thing that occurred to me was that this was a very strange table. Look, it’s not as if people don’t apply different sorts of stains than the wood beneath. Heck, it is almost the rule that people will disguise cheap woods as more expensive ones.

If I had a dime for every time I thought I was buying cherry or walnut and bought pine instead, I’d have…a lot of dimes. It happened less frequently now, because I was better at discerning fake grain from true grain and also judging the weight of the piece.

But never, in the whole time I’d been doing this—never, even, in the time I’d heard of someone doing this—had I come across oak disguised as pine.

Yeah, I know that both oak and pine are relatively light in color. They can be worth similar amounts, too,
if the pine is much older than the oak. However, it would not occur to even the craftiest of counterfeiters to disguise old oak as young pine. And the person who had jammed up the top of this table was not an expert in wood, refinishing, or anything related to the business.

So…

I went to my shelf and selected mineral spirits and denatured alcohol. I mixed equal portions of them with a bit of cornstarch.

No, the denatured alcohol and the mineral spirits do not react to each other, but when you’re dealing with an unknown mixture such as I had found atop this table, one or the other was bound to react with it. Applying them together just saved time for now, though probably later I’d just test and use the one that worked. For now, I just wanted to see more of the table without taking off the top layer of it. The cornstarch didn’t do anything except delay the liquids drying out long enough to give them time to react.

I applied the mixture to the edge in a long strip next to the furrow I’d carved and waited for it to react before scraping it away with the flat edge of a five-way painter’s tool.

The wood thus revealed was not only definitely oak, but it was sanded to perfect smoothness. Any roughness on the top of the table had been the weird refinishing mix some idiot had applied. Before that mix—and my not-so-bright attack with a sander—the table had been sanded to a smooth, fine evenness and probably oil rubbed. I suspected, like my own kitchen table—inherited from my grandmother—this was antique and good quality.

Which meant what I’d done to it with the sander was
criminally insane. But not as criminally insane as what someone had done to it with the mix of stain and varnish. Which had caused it to sell at a garage sale for twenty dollars, which meant I had never expected a piece of this quality.

Yeah, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Yeah, I should have gone slower and been more careful. I probably would have done it, too, if I hadn’t allowed my mom and Ben to drive me to near insanity. Now I would have to sand the top level, which, let’s face it, would subtract markedly from the value of the piece. It also meant a slow and patient rubbing with oil to return the top to something close to its original finish. And I didn’t like slow and patient!

I applied a coat of my finish remover to another strip of the table, picked up the sander, wound the cord, put the whole thing back in its box, and set it on a shelf, feeling that perhaps it should stay there, unless I got, say, a hundred square feet of floorboards to refinish. Or a barn door.

Then I scraped away the layer of finish from the table, and then the next one. It didn’t take long to remove the finish, probably because mixing the varnish with the stain meant neither of them had taken properly. Also, because the layer was thin and set atop of oil.