Ill-Gotten Panes (A Stained-Glass Mystery) (2 page)

“. . . need you coming in here and treating me like some country bumpkin. I’ve been in this business for forty-two years! Forty-two years! I was sorting two-penny nails before your parents even said ‘I do.’”

I edged along the perimeter of the store, scanning shelves for caulking guns and caulk. Nothing I spied as I peered up the dusty aisles inspired me with confidence that I would find anything I sought.

“I respect the experience you bring to the field—” This second voice sounded measurably calmer than the first, though easily as firm.

At the last aisle I resigned myself to the necessity of asking the hardware store owner for his assistance. It was impossible for the shop not to have a caulking gun. More than likely it was a behind-the-counter item. Still, I sensed this was not the best time to request help.

“
Respect?
You haven’t shown me an ounce of respect since you and the rest of your
associates
first came in here, trying to snow me with stories of revitalization and renewal. Those were your words:
revitalization
and
renewal
. And look how far you
haven’t
got since then.”

Turning back the way I came, I tiptoed for the door.

“Mr. Edgers, a project of this scale takes careful organization and timing. I assure you we are going forward with construction as planned—”

“Oh, you assure me, do you? Funny, I don’t seem to have any faith in your assurances anymore. I don’t need promises, Himmel. I need you to place that order, or else.”

“
Or else
, Mr. Edgers? That sounds almost like you’re working your way to an ultimatum.” The man’s voice went all smooth and shrewd at the same time. A shiver worked its way up my spine in response.

There followed a quiet that was almost as unnerving as the shouting had been. I stopped and stood as still as I could, unwilling to call attention to myself. I wanted to creep out quietly. But what with the bell and all, it was really too late for me to slip away unnoticed.

“And you. Whoever you are that’s creeping around my store,” Mr. Edgers called loudly, “I know you’re here to back up your boss. You not man enough to show yourself?”

Was I not man enough? Lord, I hoped not. But I was woman enough to show myself even though I’d rather make a quick getaway. I had bigger things to fear than some guy in a hardware store—I hoped.

I moved into the aisle that gave me a clear view of the register at the back of the store, and the owner had a clear view of me. He had both palms flat on the battered wood counter before him, his wrinkled face drawn in a scowl. Some long-ingrained conditioning made me expect to see his expression shift into surprise when he saw I was a female. When his expression turned to one of distaste instead, I was the one surprised.

“What do you want?” he practically growled.

His unconcealed animosity rendered me speechless.

The man who stood facing him, the man I presumed to be Mr. Himmel, turned in my direction. He folded his arms across his chest, the soft fabric of his pale gray suit not making a sound, and tipped his head slightly as he regarded me with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen outside of a Tiffany stained glass window.

“Well?” Edgers snapped.

I flinched and took one cautious step forward. Great. A surpassingly handsome man stood at the end of the aisle, probably the guy who owned the Jaguar, and I was dressed for a day of errands and caulking the bathtub. Plus, you know, Little Orphan Annie. “I can come back,” I said.

But Edgers’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, hell. You’re Georgia Kelly, aren’t you? You’re Pete’s family.”

I nodded, smiled a little. “Yeah, but that’s okay, I can come back. I see you’re busy.” And there was a great big chain store just over an hour away. Suddenly, the long drive didn’t seem like such an inconvenience.

“That’s not the best idea you could have,” Edgers snapped. “Didn’t your granddad tell you anything? Didn’t he tell you not to bother coming in here asking for my help?” He leaned closer over the counter, as though at any moment he might vault over it and make a mad grab for my throat.

I was in the twilight zone. And it was scary. Even Mr. Himmel looked all at once like he’d rather be elsewhere.

“I’m sorry,” I said somewhat defensively. “He never mentioned any—”

“Now whose fault is that?”

“Whoa.” I held up a hand. Mr. Himmel shifted his gaze to Edgers, lowered his brow in something that might have been thought. Or a migraine. “Enough already. I’m leaving. Happily.”

I turned my back on the men and stomped toward the door. Of course, the stupid curls bouncing on my head probably took a measure of dignity out of my exit.

O
n the sidewalk I glared at the Jag. I thought about kicking the car. Probably the thing was alarmed. I shifted my focus to the tires. Tires weren’t usually alarmed, were they? Seemed like I should have done something to show my displeasure at Himmel just standing there, watching Mr. Edgers spit vitriol at me, without so much as pretending he might step in and do something gentlemanly like defend my honor or my innocence or my right to unimpeded retail indulgence.

Jerks, the both of them.

I reined in my anger enough to retrieve the lamp from Aggie’s Gifts and Antiques and stock up on fresh produce—and some ice cream—without lashing out at any of the
nice
people of Wenwood. Unfortunately, being alone in the car on the drive back to Grandy’s allowed me to work up a good head of steam. By the time I pulled into the driveway and climbed out of the Jeep, I was seething.

Seriously, who talked like that to a customer? Who turned away potential business with insults? And what’s more, who stood there and took that treatment and meekly ran away?

That last one would be me. And it was me I was most angry with. And disappointed. I was made of tougher stuff—or at least I had been. If this new mild me was an effect of having my life turned upside down, I was going to have some adjusting to do. Better yet, I was going to have to get over myself.

Grocery bag in hand, I slammed the back hatch on the Jeep. All things made of glass were best left untouched while rage was in the blood, so I left the damaged stained glass beauty for a calmer moment. Still, Grandy was at the threshold of the house, holding open the screen door and peering at me with concern.

“Go easy on the car, Georgia. It’s only made of steel,” he said. Grandy liked understatement. And sarcasm.

“Sorry, Grandy.”

I slipped past him into the house, straight through the living room and on to the kitchen, where I had the presence of mind to rest the bag of produce on the worn Formica counter
gently
. I had deep-seated issues with bruised fruit.

“Want to tell me what happened?” Grandy leaned against the entryway to the kitchen, arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other. It was the pose of a younger man, not a man pushing eighty. But that’s Grandy for you—always defying expectation and convention.

“You know your bathtub needs caulking,” I said.

He nodded and hmm-ed as if he’d done career time as a therapist. “And what am I to infer from that? That you’re angry with me?”

I wrenched open the door to the fridge and grabbed a pitcher of cold tea before meeting his eyes. “I was idiot enough to think you hadn’t done it because you—” I didn’t finish the thought, preferring instead to busy myself with pulling a cup from the age-stained maple cabinet and pouring the tea, buying time.

But Grandy unfolded his arms and stood straight. “Because you think I’m too old to maintain my own home?”

“Because your eyeglasses . . . because all the bending . . . all right, yes, because of your age.” I closed my eyes for a second and let the guilt wash over me.

“You could have just said you thought I hadn’t gotten around to it, you know,” Grandy grumbled.

I didn’t want to look at him. The idea of him being hurt because of something I said was bad enough. To have a visual to go along with it bordered on unbearable.

Still, I could hear the suspicion in his voice when he asked, “So you thought you would do it for me and not tell me? Say, on a night I’d be at the office?”

“Yes, okay? That’s exactly what I thought.” I didn’t mention that I thought calling the movie theater “the office” was somewhat exaggerated. It was still work; he did own the place. And there was a room that functioned as an office. Still . . . “So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, how about you tell me why the cranky pants at the hardware store believes you should have warned me not to go in there?”

His expression blanked. “To the hardware store? Why shouldn’t
you
go there?”

“You tell me.” I took a breath, not wanting to sound argumentative. “I stopped in for a caulking gun.”

“I have a caulking gun.”

“Missing the point, Grandy. That guy took one look at me and knew exactly who I was and showed me the door.” The anger bubbled up again. I grabbed a cantaloupe from the shopping bag, pulled a knife from the woodblock beneath the window slanting sunshine into the room. “Apparently Pete Keene’s granddaughter is not welcome.”

“He said that?”

“Not in those exact words, but the heartless intent was there.”

Grandy remained quiet while I stabbed the cantaloupe and sliced open the sweet fruit. Tugging at a stubborn drawer with one hand and reaching for a paper towel with the other, I glanced his way.

If it were truly possible for a face to fill with storm clouds, Grandy’s face would have shown a tornado forming. His lightly tanned, lightly wrinkled skin turned a blotchy red from his chin all the way up into his drastically receded hairline. He clenched his jaw to the point that his cheeks bulged, and I worried about the durability of his dentures. It was enough to snap me out of my own anger.

Abandoning the drawer, I wiped my hands on the paper towel and hurried over to him. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Really, it’s no big deal.”

“Of course it’s a big deal,” he growled out. “Andrew Edgers has no right to talk to you or any of my family like that.”

“Grandy, it’s all right.” I took hold of his elbow and squeezed gently, as though that action might loosen and expel the anger building in him. “I’m overreacting. It’s . . . I haven’t been sleeping well. It’s so darn quiet here, who can sleep?” I joked. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” he grumbled. “You deserve to be treated with respect.”

Oh, gosh. Where was Grandy when my engagement was falling apart? “I’ve had worse, believe me. I never should have said anything. Let it go, okay? I’m sorry I brought it up.”

Though the tension relaxed out of the arm I held, his jaw remained tight. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “You can tell me anything. I’m a tough old man. I didn’t get to be this old by being weak.”

That made me smile—a genuine, unforced smile. The idea of Grandy ever being weak was laughable. “All right. From now on you get all the humiliating, embarrassing details of my life, how’s that?”

Shrewd brown eyes peered down at me, their color faded but no less arresting. “I don’t want to hear about shoes or nail polish. I only want to hear the good stuff.”

Turning back to the split cantaloupe awaiting me on the counter, I laughed, thinking Grandy was back to his calm, jovial self. Though a part of me was still curious about the issue between Grandy and Andrew Edgers, I figured if Grandy could let it go, so could I.

Yup. Sometimes I can be a complete fool.

*   *   *

T
he basement room in Grandy’s house had once served as my grandmother’s art studio. Being that the house was a split-level, the “basement” wasn’t underground but at ground level. The two walls cornering into the yard had windows that caught the northern and eastern light. Grandma had kept her easel and paints against the wall shared with the garage. This allowed her to place her still life arrangements opposite, between the two full-size double-hung windows that filled the room with all-day sunshine.

It was there, in the corner between the windows, that I had dragged a battered old table and set upon it the mock-Tiffany lamp. Glass work benefited from every bit of available sunlight. I had spent the day before trimming back the vegetation outside the windows so that once again Grandma’s corner delivered sunlight with rays to spare.

With a microfiber cloth, warm distilled water, and a little mild dish soap, I carefully wiped the dust and grime and—
ew!
—spiderwebs from the lamp. Each careful stroke of the cloth allowed a little more light to shine through, until the shade of the lamp was exposed as a tumult of blues and greens. Cornflower, azure, periwinkle, and robin’s egg mingled and tangled with moss, sage, emerald, and forest. The pattern was a classic Tiffany design, creating the illusion that the lamp shade itself had been formed by nature, dripping with leaves and blossoms, filled with beauty and life.

Of course, nature didn’t have threads of lead separating leaf from petal. Even if it did, the lead wouldn’t be dusty with oxidization. After tugging on one of the several pairs of disposable cotton gloves I kept in my work box, I broke into my trusty reserve of cotton swabs, and began the meticulous work of cleaning the dust from the lead.

Caught in the hypnotic effect of the work, I lost track of time. Only the setting of the sun and the loss of light clued me in to the late hour. Grandy had long since headed out to work; I vaguely remembered mumbling a good-bye when he called down the stairs. I still had full daylight then. He liked to get to the dine-in theater he owned a solid hour before the box office opened for the seven o’clock show. As much as he swore he trusted his management staff, several times a week he would review the establishment like a general inspecting his troops.

Since I was already on a roll, and Grandy was safely out of my hair, I made myself a quick dinner that didn’t center on meat and potatoes, turned the radio up loud, and went to work cleaning the neglected portions of the house—the baseboards and ceilings, under the stove, behind the fridge . . . all the icky places.

Long past midnight I blindly threw all the rags and cleaning towels and clothes I’d been wearing into the washer but held off switching the machine on. I wanted to shower the grime off myself, scrub it out from underneath my fingernails, and otherwise wash away the day.

While the dirt and tension slid down the drain, I opened the door to the basement, where the wash waited, and made a critical error. I paused. I took a breath. And on the exhale I felt every muscle, every tendon go limp. I was tired and ready for bed and in no mood to trudge down the stairs. The washer held nothing I would need immediately. I decided the laundry could wait.

The next day followed the same path—stained glass work while the light was strong and housework while it wasn’t. Grandy stayed well out of my way and left for the theater without a word. I kept going, not resting until the house was dust-free and every inch of wood polished to a gleam.

After two days of scrubbing, sleep claimed me quickly. Sometimes I thought I was catching up on the sleep I’d lost during years in a high-pressure job, juggling the books for Washington Heritage Financial, trying to keep a handle on the flow of billions of dollars. Sometimes I thought sleep was putting the final touches on the healing of my broken heart. Sometimes I was just tired.

But never had I woken up to a pounding on the door quite like the pounding that woke me in midmorning. Panic gripped my gut. Something was wrong. What could be wrong? Grandy. Something had happened to Grandy.

I flew out of bed and down the stairs, heedless of the faded T-shirt and gym shorts I wore in lieu of pajamas. Worse, heedless of the state my hair might be in after falling asleep with it wet. This was perhaps something I should have heeded. When I ripped open the door, the first thing I noticed was the look of utter horror on the face of the man standing on the porch. The second was the shiny gold badge he held at eye level. The third, a uniformed officer standing at his side.

The twisting in my gut got a little tighter. “Yes?” was all I could manage.

The man with the badge shook his head slightly as though calling himself back to the moment. “We’re looking for Peter James Keene. Is he here?”

My mouth went dry. The police were looking for Grandy? Specifically? No way that could indicate a social call. I nodded and stepped back, gesturing for the gentlemen to come inside. “He should be—”

“What the blazes is going on here?” Grandy’s voice boomed from the stairway.

I looked over my shoulder then scampered out of the way. Grandy stomped down the stairs, turning for the front door while cinching the belt on his old-fashioned dressing gown and glaring at the policemen.

The one in the suit brandished his badge again. “Detective Nolan, Pace County PD. Are you Peter James Keene?” he asked.

Grandy reached the threshold and stood toe-to-toe with the detective, glaring down at him. “And if I am?”

“I need to ask you to come with us, Mr. Keene. I have some questions I’d like to ask you.”

“So ask.” He folded his arms, straightened his spine. Amazing. Eighty years old, in plaid pajamas and a dressing gown, wearing slippers straight out of the fifties and still he was a tower of intimidation. Even the uniformed officer shifted nervously.

Detective Nolan kept it together. I guessed the gray peppering his dark hair and the faint wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were testament to his years of experience. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come along with us down to the precinct.”

“What’s wrong with here?” Grandy asked.

Sweat prickled my scalp. I finally broke my silence. “What’s going on? Grandy, did something happen at the theater?”

“I’m afraid your . . .” Detective Nolan hesitated, looking between Grandy and me.

“Grandfather,” I supplied.

Nolan nodded. “. . . needs to answer some questions for us. And it would be best if he came along willingly and quietly.”

A whole new knot made its presence known in my belly. This was worse than bad, even though I didn’t know what worse than bad was called. Terrible? Horrible? Disastrous?

One question squeaked out. “Grandy?”

He looked to me, his expression softening as his posture relaxed. “I’m sure it’s nothing, Georgia. Just some sort of, er, formality.”

“Formality for what? What’s going on?” I tried to move closer to Grandy, but Detective Nolan reached out a hand to stop me. “Hey.”

Grandy turned to me with a slight smile. “It’s all right, Georgia.” He meant to reassure me, but the unease was clear in the pucker of his forehead, in the narrowing of his eyes. That only intensified my worry. “Why don’t you give us a few minutes’ head start and then follow? I’m sure we won’t be long and I’ll need you to drive me home.”

This was even weirder than the police presence. “Are you actually going to leave the house in your dressing gown?”