Sharp Edges (29 page)

Eugenia was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes were huge in the shadows. She did not so much as glance at the jacket he carried.

"Cyrus?"

Something in the tone of her voice made him go very still inside. "Yeah?"

"Promise me you'll be careful."

He grinned slowly. It was nice to have someone worry about you, he decided. "Count on it."

There were no lights in the windows of Jacob's cabin, but the faint glow from the attached workshop caught Cyrus's attention as he turned into the drive.

There was no phone in the workshop. Jacob must have called from the cabin. He had said nothing about going back to work at his furnace. In fact his conversation indicated he had not been working at all that evening. He claimed he had talked to Rhonda for a long time on the phone and then gone to her cottage to pack her things.

Cyrus brought the car to a halt and hit the horn once, briefly. There was no response.

He sat behind the wheel for a moment, studying the scene in front of him. A frisson of electricity ruffled the hair on the back of his arms. After a while he reached inside his jacket and took out the .38.

Gun in hand, he got out of the car and moved into the shadows of the nearby trees. The rain had stopped, but water still dripped from the heavy branches. He winced when several cold drops splashed on the back of his neck. There were times when the detective business was not the glamorous, thrill-filled career it was cracked up to be, he thought.

The glow from the glassmaking furnace beckoned through the windows of the workshop. Fire always got your attention, Cyrus thought. He studied the scene for a long moment, but saw no movement inside the workshop.

He turned to the darkened cabin. Jacob had said that he would be waiting inside the cabin, not in his workshop.

He drifted through the wet trees, circling around to the back of the small house. When he could see the rear door, he moved out from the cover of the branches and flattened himself against the log wall.

Keeping his back pressed to the logs, he reached out and tried the doorknob. It twisted easily in his hand.

He took a deep breath, let it out halfway, positioned himself so that the logs provided some protection, and pushed the door wide. It slammed open, revealing the shadowed interior of the single room.

"Houston? You in there?"

When no answer came, Cyrus groped around the edge of the door, found a switch.

Light from the dingy overhead fixture flooded the one-room cabin. Cyrus examined the scene through the doorway.

The interior of the small house looked like a gutted fish. Every drawer stood open. A heap of well-worn flannel shirts lay on the floor where they had been tossed after being ripped from the closet. Even the refrigerator had been emptied of its contents.

There was no sign of Jacob.

A whisper of sound directly behind him was the only warning Cyrus had that he was not alone in the dark.

He reacted instinctively, dropping flat to the damp earth.

The whisper became a harsh rush of air. A split second later something very heavy struck the side of the log cabin. It thudded into the wood at the point where Cyrus knew his head would have been had he not moved.

A man hissed in the darkness. "Goddamn it."

"You missed him, you idiot." The second voice came from the trees. "Hit him. Hurry. Shit, he's moving."

Cyrus saw a pair of snakeskin boots out of the corner of his eye. He rolled toward them, striking them with the full weight of his body.

"
Bastard
." The man in the boots staggered back under the impact, but managed to stay on his feet. He swung again, wildly this time.

The long length of metal whizzed over Cyrus's head. He caught a glimpse of a face sheathed in a dark ski mask as he flung himself to the side.

He levered himself off the ground and brought the gun up in the same motion. Light spilling from the cabin glinted on the barrel.

"Two strikes and you're out," Cyrus said softly.

"Jesus." Ski mask froze.

"He's got a gun," the man in the trees yelled. "Run."

"I didn't sign on for this." Ski mask dropped the length of metal he had been wielding, spun around, and fled three steps into the trees.

Cyrus slowly lowered the gun.

The sound of scurrying to the left told him that the second man had also decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

He waited in the shadows of the cabin wall until the receding footsteps indicated his assailants had made good their departure.

He glanced down at the long metal object on the ground. It was the blowpipe Jacob had used earlier that afternoon. He picked it up and went swiftly toward the workshop.

At the doorway he paused. The night was chilly, but the fiery furnace had heated the workshop to an uncomfortable temperature. The smell of whiskey was strong in the air. Cyrus saw an open bottle standing on a nearby shelf. He was almost certain it had not been there earlier in the day.

The sight of the flames in the glory hole made Cyrus uneasy. He pondered the interesting question of how one went about shutting down a glassmaking furnace. It occurred to him that Eugenia might know the answer. He could call her from the cabin.

He saw Jacob just as he turned to leave. The big man was sprawled facedown in the shadows beneath a workbench. A pair of heavy metal tongs lay beside him.

Cyrus set down the blowpipe and moved quickly into the room. "Houston."

Jacob groaned at the sound of his name. "Huh?"

Relief shot through Cyrus. He went down on one knee beside the big man. "What happened?"

"Dunno." Jacob twisted awkwardly, raised his head, and peered up at Cyrus with bleary eyes. His broad face contorted with pain. "Colfax. What are you doing here?"

"You called me, remember?" Cyrus probed Jacob's skull gently.

"Ouch." Jacob flinched and gingerly touched his head. "Shit, that hurts."

"Sorry. Looks like someone hit you with those tongs."

Jacob blinked rapidly. "I sort of remember. I think there were two of 'em. Came up behind me inside the cabin. Right after I called you."

"They were still hanging around when I got here."

"Guess they didn't hit me as hard as they thought. I was dazed, but I remember 'em talking. They complained about how heavy I was when they dragged me in here." Jacob sniffed. "What's that smell?"

"Whiskey. Wouldn't have thought you'd want to drink while you work around this sucker." He gestured toward the nearby inferno.

"I never drink when I'm working glass." Jacob struggled to get to his feet. "Hot in here. What the hell? Damn, the
furnace
."

"I take it you didn't fire it up?"

"Hell, no. I quit for the night right after you and Ms. Swift left." Jacob lurched forward with an awkward but purposeful motion. "Got to shut it down."

"Good idea." Cyrus eyed the whiskey bottle again. "Any idea why someone would want to set fire to this place?"

Jacob turned to scowl anxiously over his shoulder. "Set fire to it? Are you crazy?"

"That's what it looks like to me. I'd say the whiskey was window dressing. I can see the headlines in the local paper:
Drunken glassmaker accidentally burns down workshop and cabin
."

Fear flared in Jacob's eyes. "And himself while he was at it. Goddamn it, Colfax, they meant me to die in the fire, didn't they?"

Cyrus hesitated and then decided there was no point trying to put a delicate spin on the situation. "Sort of looks that way."

"I knew I shouldn't have let you go off by yourself tonight." Eugenia set the teakettle on the glass-topped halogen stove and opened a cupboard to take down several mugs. "My God, Cyrus, you could have been killed."

"Hush." Cyrus, sprawled in a kitchen chair, raised his eyes meaningfully toward the ceiling. Jacob was upstairs, moving a hastily packed bag into one of the spare bedrooms. "Houston is already agitated enough as it is. No point making him any more twitchy."

"What about me?" She poured tea water into the pot. "I'm plenty twitchy."

He grinned briefly. "No, you're not. You're as cool as an iced latte." It was no lie. When he had arrived at Glass House ten minutes ago with Jacob in tow, she had hardly blinked. It was nice to have a woman around who was prepared for any contingency.

It was nice to have Eugenia around, period.

"What is Deputy Peaceful going to do about this?" Eugenia demanded.

"Not much he can do. Neither Jacob nor I could identify those two men who attacked us. He's going on the assumption that some really nasty vandals came over from the mainland. He says it's happened once or twice in the past. Kids get drunk, steal a boat, and go looking for trouble."

She studied him closely. "You didn't tell Peaceful about any of the rest of it? That Daventry and Nellie may have been murdered and Rhonda may be in danger?"

"What do you think?"

She sighed. "I think Peaceful would have thought you were nuts if you told him two or three people had been murdered here in recent weeks and he never even realized it."

"Yeah, that's sort of the conclusion I came to, too. In all fairness to Deputy Peaceful, I have to admit that I didn't believe anyone had been murdered around here recently, either. What's more, I'm still not sure anyone was. There is no hard evidence of foul play."

"Jacob is terrified," Eugenia noted.

"I know. Not just for himself. He's worried about Rhonda. One thing's for certain."

"What's that?"

"There were two men at Jacob's house tonight. Which seriously damages my earlier theory that the killer, if there is one, is a local person."

She frowned. "Why?"

"Because it's pushing things into the realm of fantasy to imagine that two thugs like the ones I ran into tonight have lived undetected here on Frog Cove Island for any length of time."

"It is a little improbable, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Not impossible, mind you, just improbable." Cyrus sipped his tea. It was hot and oddly soothing. It struck him that he was enjoying Eugenia's fussing tonight.
Don't get too accustomed to it
, he warned himself. "And if we assume that they aren't local folks, then it's a good bet that Peaceful was right when he suggested that they had a boat waiting somewhere to take them off the island."

Eugenia drummed her fingers on her mug. "I suppose it's unlikely that a couple of murderers would use the ferry to come and go from the scene of the crime."

"Very unlikely."

"Especially when it meant that they would have to sit around until tomorrow morning to catch the eight o'clock ferry in order to make good their escape."

Cyrus considered that. "Again, unlikely, but not impossible. The ferry will be much busier than usual tomorrow because of the tourists who will be arriving to attend the first day of the Daventry Workshops Festival. It would be easy for two people to blend in with the crowd."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Ah, but I did." Cyrus grinned briefly. "That's why I get the big bucks. And just to be on the safe side, I'm going to make arrangements to cover the ferry angle, on the off chance that those two might try to slip aboard."

"What arrangements?"

"I've got a plan."

"Somehow that does nothing to calm my nerves."

"Funny. It does wonders for mine. I always feel better when I know I've got a plan. I'm a real methodical kind of guy."

She wrinkled her nose. "All right, tell me about your plan."

"I'll give you all the details as soon as Rick gets down here."

"I'm here," Rick said from the kitchen door. He yawned as he finished buttoning his shirt. "What's this about a plan?"

Cyrus eyed him thoughtfully. "How would you like to experience one of the more boring aspects of the investigation business?"

Rick's mouth snapped shut in the middle of the yawn. His eyes lit with enthusiasm. "Sure. What do I do?"

"It's called a stakeout. Here's how it works." Cyrus leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. He clasped his fingers loosely together as he concentrated. "You and I are going to escort Jacob Houston off the island on the ten o'clock ferry. One of my people, guy named Paul Stredley, will be waiting for us on the mainland."

"Go on," Rick said.

"Stredley will take Houston off our hands, and then he'll go collect Rhonda Price in Seattle. He'll see to it that the two of them are kept safe until this is over."

"That's all I get to do?" Rick's disappointment was obvious. "Take the ferry with you and Jacob?"

"No, that's not quite all." Cyrus smiled. "I'll return on the next ferry. But you'll stay behind. You're going to do surveillance on every boat that arrives from this island for the rest of the day. Get the license numbers of every car carrying one or two males. Also, keep a special eye out for a pair of walk-ons."

"I thought you didn't get any descriptions," Eugenia said.

He shrugged. "I haven't got much, but I've got something. Two men of medium build, one of whom may be wearing a pair of snakeskin boots, a flannel shirt, and jeans." He looked at Rick. "Got that?"

Rick glowed with excitement. "Sure."

"Try to look inconspicuous while you're hanging around the ferry terminal. Spend some time in the coffee shop or pretend to fish off the pier."

"I've got an idea," Eugenia said. "He could take some brushes and paper from the studio upstairs and pose as a watercolor artist. People are always sketching the ferries."

Cyrus raised one brow. "Not a bad idea."

Rick grinned. "Think those two dudes will actually be dumb enough to take the ferry?"

"You never know."

"What about the house measurements?" Rick asked. "We didn't get a chance to finish the basement."

"They'll have to wait. I'll finish them up later."

Eugenia glanced at him. "I'll help you."

"Thanks," Cyrus said.

"What about you, Eugenia?" Rick looked at her. "What are you going to do while we're gone?"

Eugenia fixed Cyrus with a determined expression. "I'm going to do exactly what I planned to do all along. I'll attend the arts festival. It will give me the perfect opportunity to have some casual conversations about Nellie with several of the local artists."