Ill-Gotten Panes (A Stained-Glass Mystery) (6 page)

“It’s no different.”

“Grandy, the man died. The police—”

“His death had nothing to do with me,” he ground out.

My phone rang at that moment, saving either me or Grandy or both of us from the conversation. I dug the device out from the bottom corner of my purse it always seemed to gravitate to and checked the identity of the caller. Unknown. I considered ignoring the call, reluctant to get trapped into a sales pitch. But of the friends I’d left back in the city, a few kept their numbers private. I tapped the green button to accept the call.

The moment I heard the voice on the other end of the connection, I regretted the decision.

“Georgia, why haven’t you returned any of my calls? Do you realize how late I’ve had to stay up just to be sure I’d get through to you?”

“Sorry, Mom.” This was a habit. I’d long ago learned not to argue the question of responsibility. Far easier to assume the guilt for whatever her grievance was and apologize directly so the conversation could move along. “How’s the trip going?”

“This is no simple trip, Georgia. This is my honeymoon. It’s not as straightforward as a weekend getaway.”

“Of course not. You’ve already been gone for a month. Where are you this week?”

Grandy harrumphed. “Your mother’s calling from her wedding trip?”

“We’re on the overnight train to Italy right now. Very romantic.”

I wanted only to nod to Grandy. I ended up making a sour face. On the one hand, yes, Italy equaled romantic. On the other . . . “Mom, I’d really rather not think about you and Ben in any romantic setting.” Eew.

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry dear. I forget how painful it must be for you not to have your own honeymoon to look forward to anymore.” Her voice dripped with pity, and I cringed inwardly at her mistaken assumption over what troubled me. Up to that point I’d been mostly successful at burying the heartache that came with knowing my mother kept finding Prince Charmings and I succeeded only in finding the two-faced villain.

Mom always said that my dad—my real dad—had been the love of her life. After losing him, she figured the best she could hope for was someone who made her toes tingle. Too bad she never seemed to learn that eventually the tingle would dwindle. Four husbands since my dad passed away and still she kept hoping that first blush of love would last.

I may have envied her a little bit. Or a lot. But I’d never admit it.

“What can I do for you, Mom?”

“Not a word to her,” Grandy put in, “about what’s happening here.”

I nodded again to show I’d heard him, even as Mom answered my question. “I just wanted to see how you were getting along in Wenwood. It can be a bit on the bland side after life in the city.”

Outside my window, the highway bustled along. Cars roamed the parking lot of the big do-it-yourself home store and clustered around a chain restaurant known for steak and beer. And back in downtown Wenwood, the question of who killed Andy Edgers was likely hot on every tongue.

“It’s . . . fine,” I said. “I’m enjoying the quiet.” This was true. The police station had a surprising hush that the city lacked.

Her sigh came across the phone in a tornado of static. “I wish you’d come to stay with Ben and I. You know the offer is still open.”

Tough choice. Stick around Wenwood, where there was a killer on the loose, or meet my mother and her latest spouse in Italy. “Thanks, Mom, but I’m good here.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.”

“How is your grandfather?” she asked.

I slid my gaze in his direction. He kept a loose grip on the steering wheel, his eyes shifting smoothly from the road ahead to each of his mirrors, back to the road ahead. But despite his protests about how he wouldn’t let the events of the morning slow him down, a vertical wrinkle bisected his brow, deep and stubborn and new. He didn’t want me to mention anything to Mom, though. Maybe he was right. She could do nothing from Italy, and heaven knows I didn’t want her and Ben descending on Grandy’s house.

“He’s fine,” I said. My statement caught his attention and he glanced sternly at me, a reminder to tell her nothing. I scowled back. “He has a stash of devil dogs he thinks I don’t know about. And a lifetime supply of butterscotch candies hidden inside the pressure cooker.”

Grandy signaled for a turn and mumbled something about never letting me in his house again.

“See what you can do about that, Georgia. He needs to be careful with his sugar intake, not to mention his cholesterol.”

“I know.”

“I’m counting on you to look after him,” she said.

Her words cut through me in a hot bolt of guilt. It was all I could do to assure her I’d keep an eye on him, without spilling the whole story of the Pace County PD. After that I rushed her off the phone. I shifted in my seat in an effort to look Grandy in the eye.

“We can’t not tell her what’s going on,” I said.

“She doesn’t need to know.”

“She’s your daughter. She worries about you.”

“She’s worried about me getting too fat for a coffin,” he snapped.

“Grandy!”

He gripped the steering wheel tightly, leaned forward in his seat. “There’s no need to tell her about what happened this morning, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Why not? You didn’t do anything. I don’t see why the whole thing has to be a secret.”

Guiding the car into the parking lot, dine-in dead ahead, Grandy said, “Let’s make a bargain.”

“A bargain?”

“You do your best to find the owner of that fleabag you brought home today. And if you can’t find the owner, you can keep it,
provided
you say nothing to your mother.”

There was a trick in there somewhere, I was certain. Keeping the kitten couldn’t be as easy as keeping my mouth shut, could it? Okay, it could be, but it was wrong.

“Here’s my counteroffer,” I said. “I’ll keep quiet, keep the kitten, but you have to tell Mom next time she calls.”

He shook his head, slow and deliberate. “This is not a negotiation, Georgia.”

“Of course it is.” I waved my cell phone at him. “I can just hit
Dial last caller
and explain everything to your daughter right now. She’ll be thrilled that I called her.”

Huffing at me and not the effort of steering the Jeep, Grandy turned into a parking space behind the dine-in and switched off the engine. “You would so easily ruin your mother’s honeymoon?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest she’d have another honeymoon someday to make up for the one I ruined, but that was a pessimistic reflex. It would be nice if she had found her happily ever after, after all.

“Besides,” Grandy said, “there’s no sense bringing up the story until we know how it ends.”

“What if we never know how it ends? What if Detective Nolan and his entourage never figure out who killed Andy Edgers?”

“Then your mother never has to know.”

“I have a better idea,” I said as I climbed out of the SUV. “Their trip is over in two and a half weeks. You can explain the whole thing when they come back from Europe, whether we know the perp’s name or not. Deal?”

“Perp?”

“Deal?” I repeated.

Grandy let his chest puff out when he took a deep breath. “Deal.” He took a step toward the back door of the dine-in but stopped and spun to face me. “But don’t forget your end of this bargain. You have to find out who belongs to that cat.”

N
early twenty years ago, the Downtown Dine-In theater opened for business. A refurbished traditional movie house, in which the interior of the theater, the rows upon rows of seats, had been torn out, the dine-in’s screening space now held rows of three-foot round tables, with swiveling club chairs tucked two by two at each table. Gray and burgundy dominated the theater interior, while the lobby featured a gray and navy patterned carpet and gray walls with burgundy accents painted like racing stripes erroneously applied to a stationary object.

Walking back into the dine-in sent me back to my childhood in a way walking into Grandy’s house had failed to do. One sniff of the mix of faux-pine industrial cleanser and last night’s French fry oil and I was sixteen years old again, wishing my grandfather ran the multiplex off the interstate so I could invite friends there—so I could
make
friends by inviting them to free movies—instead of the funky-fragranced single-screen dinosaur playing third-run movies and overcharging for chicken fingers. A lot of years separated me from the sixteen-year-old pariah I was, still the echo of my loneliness vibrated in my bones, bouncing off the high ceiling, circling the open space and reflecting from the blank screen. The emptiness sliced straight through me.

“Are you all right?” Grandy asked, doubling back to where I had stopped mid-lobby. His trim, salt and pepper brows pulled together; his frown announced his concern.

Hand over my heart, I managed a weak smile. “It takes me back, being here.”

Unaware of the thoughts rolling through my head, not sensing the restimulation of heartache from sixteen-year-old me to six-month-ago me, Grandy grinned. He gazed around the lobby, pride squaring his shoulders, joy lightening his eyes. “Gets inside of you, doesn’t it?”

“You could say that.”

He continued scanning the space, a smile lifting the corners of his lips. “I thought when the brickworks finally closed, that would be the end of me. This place kept me going.”

Following his gaze, I tried to see what he saw, tried to spy the salvation in the dark cloud gray of the walls. Seeing as how it was Grandy who was keeping
me
going, I wanted to understand what kept him getting out of bed every morning. That comprehension eluded me.

A metallic crash sounded from behind the closed doors of the kitchen. As I turned toward the noise, I caught the shift in Grandy’s gaze, from pride to aggravation, with a surprising dip of sadness in between.

I trailed behind Grandy across the lobby and through two sets of swinging doors set a sufficient distance apart to prevent the light from the kitchen from encroaching too much into the theater during showtime. Behind the second set of doors, a cluster of white-clad cooks stood over an impressive spill of baking sheets, arguing with one another and threatening to report the shortest among them to Mr. Keene.

Grandy’s voice boomed out in response, “Whatever it is you want to tell me, you’d better do it fast.”

Two of the three cooks jumped, turning to face Grandy with worry widening their eyes and softening their jaws. The third huffed loudly, the edges of his mustache ruffling. He shook his head, smoothed his short beard, and turned away. “Would anybody care to explain what happened?” Grandy asked.

The shortest one spoke up. “Just a little accident, boss. We’ll get it cleaned up.”

“How many times have we talked about the need to be careful in the kitchen?” Grandy asked.

I wished I had the means to close my ears, wished I hadn’t followed him into the kitchen. Witnessing the cooks receive a dressing-down wasn’t on the top of my must-do list. The best I could do was look away, back slowly out the door. In keeping my gaze averted from the two cooks trying to explain themselves to Grandy, it was the third cook whose face I spotted—his jaw clenched, mouth pinched, nostrils flared. I reached the doors before I could judge whether his anger centered on Grandy or the two cooks. Wimp that I am, I escaped before things got worse, retreating to the lobby, continuing on to Grandy’s office—luckily, unlocked.

A dusty stack of papers sat atop the computer keyboard, testament to Grandy’s distrust of computers. He didn’t avoid them as much as he ignored them. Tolerated more than accepted. Despite my and my mother’s efforts over the years, he couldn’t quite adapt. Now and again he would try—even going so far as updating the hardware—but I doubted he would ever embrace the technology.

With the papers cleared, I switched on the machine and waited for it to run through the boot-up. Though in reality only long minutes had passed, it seemed like hours before the computer displayed the factory-default desktop. Thus, it felt like days before I had a word processing program open and the draft of a flyer for the missing/found kitten to which I secretly hoped no one would respond.

I tilted my head and considered the text on the computer screen. Found: white kitten. Where: behind Aggie’s Antiques. When: Wednesday morning.

Well, that wouldn’t do. All it needed to read like a party invitation was an RSVP date.

I wiped out the
Where
and
When
, turned the
Found
into a title, and added a
Call
with my cell number. A quick clip art search allowed me to paste in a basic line drawing of a cat. Maybe an actual photograph of the kitten would have been more accurate. But she was a white kitten and I was printing black and white notices to put up around town. She would be nothing more than a white blob center page. The line drawing would show more detail.

Shrinking the word processor window, I leaned back in the chair in Grandy’s office and indulged in a stretch. The alluring aroma of burgers grilling and chicken frying snuck beneath the office door and wrapped around me like an embrace of temptation. To eat the food they were cooking up downstairs in the dine-in’s kitchen would wreak havoc with my digestion, but mercy, it smelled divine.

Part of me wanted to be downstairs with Grandy, making sure none of the arriving patrons were looking sideways at him, or whispering about him. The bigger part of me knew he hadn’t lived as long as he had without weathering some uncomfortable times, but feared he wouldn’t want me to witness such treatment if it occurred.

Who was I kidding? I didn’t want to witness anyone talking trash about Grandy. He was still bigger than life to me, invincible, infallible.

I wasn’t ready yet to see him any other way.

*   *   *

G
oing to work with Grandy at night meant inadvertently adopting his waking time in the morning. Though my internal clock nudged me awake at its customary time of shortly past six, I successfully groaned, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Somewhere past nine I found awareness again, when the formerly adorable ball of white fluff ceased being adorable by gnawing on my chin and digging her claws into my neck. And she had appeared so innocent while she slept.

Setting the kitten aside, I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower. Dressed and finally awake enough to function—I hoped—I made my way downstairs and to the kitchen. There was no sign of Grandy. I peered out the window; his Jeep sat undisturbed in the driveway.

In the process of making coffee, I urged my memory to cough up information from the night before. Had Grandy mentioned any plans? I didn’t think so. I had spoken to him about borrowing his SUV, an idea he was fully in favor of since I needed the vehicle to drive up to the office store and pick up the flyers advertising a found kitten. If he had mentioned anything about meeting the boys in town for coffee or fishing or something equally rustic, I had clearly blanked it out.

With coffee prepared in a thermal travel mug and the address of the office supply store plugged into the GPS on my phone, I checked once more on the kitten and headed out to pick up the flyers.

While I followed the mechanical voice on my phone telling me when to turn and onto which street, my mind took up the unavoidable question of who might have told the police about Grandy’s argument with Andy Edgers. I couldn’t shake the idea that the answer to that question would help determine who had actually killed Edgers. Trouble was, I knew precious few people in town to begin with. Even if I had a name, how much good would it do me?

The GPS voice on the phone directed me to take a left and head north on Riverview. I recognized at once the picturesque road Carrie had driven on our way to the police station. The sun still glinted off the soft swells of the river that the road ran parallel to, though thick clouds were gathering in increasing numbers. Squinting at the sky, I tried to determine if there was rain on the way; driving someplace new was bad enough. Driving someplace new in the pouring rain was a whole other cause for stress.

I’d just about decided the clouds were of the nonthreatening variety when the old brickworks loomed into view. Hundreds of people had worked there at its peak, Grandy included, but the numbers steadily dwindled until the building was shuttered. Now a new business was moving in, one promising a renewed vigor for the towns along the river, Wenwood—the closest—chief among them. But again, the construction equipment within the fenced-in perimeter stood idle, and not a soul stirred. The only difference between the view I saw that day and the view the day before was that this time Anton Himmel’s fancy car was parked beside a trailer inside the fence . . .

And the gates were open.

Even as I steered the Jeep through the open gates, the little voice in the back of my head declared me unreasonable and bordering on insane, while the little voice emanating from the GPS on my cell phone told me repeatedly to turn left. I ignored both and pulled the SUV parallel to the sports car, guilt and triumph warring within me at the sight of the clouds of dirt and dust the SUV kicked into the air around the Jaguar.

I shifted the vehicle into park and took hold of the ignition key. Doubt took hold of me. I was in the grips of a crazy idea, wondering what talking to Himmel would accomplish, wondering if I should back up the Jeep and return to the road.

I was reaching for the gear shift when Himmel stepped through the door of the trailer, eyes on me. Or eyes on the dust now settling over his Jag. Either way, he didn’t look pleased.

Taking a breath for courage, I cut the ignition at last.

Feet clad in classic workman’s boots, and knees stretching threadbare jeans, Himmel jogged down the few steps, came straight for the SUV, and pulled open my door before I’d even exhaled my courage.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked in a voice that indicated he was something other than pleased.

Shifting in my seat to face him, I said, “You know it wasn’t me who told the police you were arguing with Andy Edgers, right? So why the animosity?”

“Why the visit?”

“Why the rushing out the door?”

“To keep you from getting out of the car.”

“Then why did you open my door?”

Seeming as though the question caught him short, he straightened, but tipped his head slightly to the side. “Habit.”

“You mean, as in opening a door for a lady kind of habit?” In my mind, the idea of Himmel as a gentleman contradicted the idea of Himmel as a jerk the way opposite poles of magnets repelled each other. Two such different ideas simply could not occupy the same space. “What brings you to my construction site, Miss Kelly?”

A zillion lame excuses occurred to me in one jumble. In the end, I went with the truth. “I was wondering if you would tell me why you were arguing with Andy the other day. What was that all about?”

He huffed and released the door. Turning away from the Jeep, he said, “I went all through this with the police.”

Moving slowly, so as not to spook him, I lowered both feet to the ground and eased myself out of the SUV. “What did you tell them?”

He pushed a hand through his hair, and I mentally kicked myself for admiring the sureness of his motion, the way the blond strands brushed his collar, the definitive set of his jaw. “I explained to them about the project,” he said.

I edged closer to him, conscious all the while of his potential to turn on me and order me off the property. And conscious, fleetingly, of the knowledge that the police had questioned Himmel in relation to Edgers’s murder. Like Grandy, he was a person of interest. Unlike Grandy, I had no past experience with him to tell me whether he was innocent or guilty. “What about the project? What’s that got to do with . . .”

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “This project.” He waved an arm, the motion intended to encompass the construction site. “The rebuilt, revitalized waterfront.”

“Umm . . .” To call the location
rebuilt
was some serious cart before the horse business. The grounds were crisscrossed with excavators and bulldozers, all idle, while gaps remained in the walls of the massive brickwork factory. Window frames lacked glass panes, and what was once the employee parking area was now a field of flowering weeds broken by patches of asphalt. In the deep recesses of my memory, snapshots from Grandma Keene’s photo albums created my impression of the venerable brickworks where Grandy had spent his days. Neatly trimmed hedges had framed the main entrance, pallets of bricks peppered the side lot, waiting to be shipped out, and shiny cars filled the parking area. Now, only the shadow the building cast and the view of the river matched my recollections. Like Grandma Keene, the glory days of the brickworks had long ago been laid to rest.

“You have to picture it,” Himmel said as he strode away from me, crossing the packed dirt expanse dividing the construction trailer from the water’s edge. “We’re starting with two small piers rather than long. That will give the impression right away of a well-trafficked location, and we can extend both piers or add more when the time comes.”

Out on the water, rotting pilings jutted from the riverbed. I tried to picture piers stretching over the water where now there was only spoiled wood, tried to picture boats at dock—pleasure craft with families and fishermen. I had to admit it was a pleasing vision.

“The main building,” he continued, shifting his stance to face the brickworks, “will have two floors, a marine shop below and restaurant above. We’ll be cutting back the roofline to allow outdoor dining in milder weather.”