At Wick's End (Book 1 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) (15 page)

I crumpled the paper up and tossed it into
my now empty lunch bag, wondering what could drive someone to
commit murder.

Then I started thinking about Belle, and I
was more confused than ever. Certainly she wasn’t the easiest woman
in the world to get along with at times, there was too much salt
and vinegar in her, but could someone have possibly been driven to
murder her? Could it have been another theft gone bad, like the
jewelry store? One look at the meager till of At Wick’s End would
cancel that notion, unless someone thought a candlemaking shop took
in a great deal more than it did. That started me thinking about
the break-in of the truck. Was there any way the theft of the cash
from my Saturday deposit was tied into Belle’s death? No, it was
probably just my boneheadedness that had led to that particular
crime. So if Belle hadn’t been killed for money or passion, why had
she been murdered? Did she know something she shouldn’t have? What
in the world could that crusty old lady know that might get her
killed?

I was no closer to an answer when I finished
my meal than I had been from the start. A quick glance at my watch
showed that I’d overstayed my lunch hour by ten minutes. As I
gathered up my trash and headed back, I smiled when I realized no
one would be able to dock my wages but me.

Lucas Young was there waiting for me at the
candle shop when I got back.

“
What brings you to At
Wick’s End?” I asked.

“
This isn’t a business
call. I just wanted to see how you were settling in. Are there any
problems with the store, or the building itself, for that
matter?”

I wasn’t about to admit the cash theft, not
directly, at any rate. There was no need to mention the additional
break-ins, either. Frankly, I didn’t want the word getting around
Micah’s Ridge that bad things were happening at River’s Edge.
“We’ve had a few bumps in the road, but things are settling down
now.”

“
Good to know. Well, if you
need an ear to bend, I’m available.”

I shook his hand. “Thanks, I appreciate
that.”

Belle certainly did have a way with people.
I didn’t know many lawyers willing to make house calls just to
check in like that. It was more a testament to her life than any
eulogy could have been.

The rest of the day was fairly quiet, with a
steady stream of customers interspersed with lulls that allowed me
to clean up the classroom. Mrs. Jorgenson had left quite a wake of
discarded wax from her lesson. Worse yet, some of it had hit the
floor and had been stepped on, making it a pain to remove. I was
suddenly happy with the high rates I’d charged her as I scraped
fragments off the floor with a putty knife.

Eve left a few minutes early to go by the
bank in order to cash her paycheck, and I decided to close the
store myself and join her.

“
Where are you going?” she
asked me as I followed her to the door.

“
I thought I’d go by the
bank too.”

Eve said, “Harrison, we are open till six.
Our customers rely on that.”

“
Come on, nobody’s going to
have a candlemaking emergency,” I said. “What chance is there that
a few minutes is really going to matter?”

“
If you insist, I’ll stay
and you can go.”

She was worse than my mother when it came to
guilt. “No, I had plenty of time to go at lunch. I’ll go tomorrow.
I still think we’d be safe shutting down early.”

Before the last word was out of my mouth,
the door chimed and an older woman with the most marvelous silver
hair hurried in. “I’m making a centerpiece for my party and I ran
out of wax,” she said, nearly out of breath. “Thank goodness you’re
still here.”

Eve buried her gloating enough to wave
good-bye as I waited on our last customer of the day. I should have
gone to the bank earlier, but I’d forgotten all about it. That
meant canned soup and another sandwich for dinner.

Tomorrow, I promised myself, I’d make it a
point to cash my check so I could stock my larder upstairs. As much
as I enjoyed Millie’s food, eating at The Crocked Pot would
bankrupt me before long.

I finished the deposit slip after ringing up
the centerpiece emergency and did a quick check of the inventory
levels. We were going to have to order soon, and I didn’t have a
clue how to go about it. I made a note to ask Eve about the process
in the morning, my list of questions for her growing instead of
shrinking. I didn’t have the slightest idea how I’d manage without
her once she went back to her regular hours.

That evening, I had just finished eating my
soup and sandwich in my apartment when there was a knock at my
door. I peered through the peephole and found Heather on the other
side.

“
It’s too late to invite me
out,” I said with a grin as I opened the door, “I just finished
eating.”

The levity left me the second I saw the
expression on her face. “What’s wrong, Heather?”

She held fiercely to a tabby cat as she
said, “My mom’s in the hospital, and I’ve got to go be with her.
Harrison, I need a huge favor.”

“
Anything,” I said before I
noticed the litter box and carrier off to one side.

“
Can you watch Esmeralda
for me while I’m gone? My dad can’t tolerate cats. I don’t know
what I’m going to do. Mrs. Quimby can’t take her, her husband’s
deathly allergic. You aren’t, are you? My friend Sally was going to
watch her for me, but she’s out of town on a photo
shoot.”

“
Is she a model,” I asked,
trying to buy some time to deal with Heather’s request.

“
No, she’s a photographer,
one of the best around here. I know I’m babbling, but I’m worried
about my mother. So could you? Please?” Heather looked as if she
was on the brink of breaking into tears.

What was one night? “Okay, I’ll do it.”

The relief on her face was instantaneous.
“What a relief. Thank you, Harrison, I don’t know what I would have
done if you hadn’t said yes. I don’t know when I’ll be back,” she
added as she thrust Esmeralda into my arms. The cat had other
ideas, executing a remarkable spin that would have done an Olympic
diver proud, then scampered into my apartment.

“
She feels at home here.
Belle used to keep her for me now and then.” Heather added, “She
won’t be any trouble at all, I promise. I fed her a few minutes
ago. Oh, dear, do you know about litter boxes?”

“
Don’t worry about
Esmeralda, my girlfriend in college had a cat, so I know what to
do.” I didn’t add the fact that Janie’s cat Mr. Fluffy had hated me
from the beginning, jealous of my presence and the attention I
diverted from him. I had known better than to give her an
ultimatum. We were clearly through, but before I could break it
off, she dumped me. It appeared that Mr. Fluffy was the only male
in her life, and I wasn’t even in the running for second
place.

“
This is so wonderful of
you,” Heather said.

A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Who’s
going to run your store while you’re gone?”

“
Mrs. Quimby’s going to do
it. Don’t worry, she’s got all of that covered. I’ll be back as
soon as I can.” Heather reached up and kissed me on the cheek, then
hurried away before I had a chance to change my mind.

It took me ten minutes to find Esmeralda
once Heather was gone. I finally found her on the bookshelf, curled
up in front of Belle’s Agatha Christie collection. I spoke with her
a few minutes, offered my hand, then tried to stroke her, but she
was in no mood to be social. That suited me fine. I’d feed her,
even change her litter box, but that was going to be the extent of
it.

After rinsing my bowl, I picked my book up
and started back in on it. Dame Agatha was as mesmerizing as ever,
and I wanted to get back to her tale.

Fifteen minutes later I heard a soft thump
on the hardwood floor. I pretended to ignore the sound, watching
Esmeralda out of the corner of my eye as she slowly stalked toward
me. After sniffing the air, she pounced on the couch beside me,
then somehow managed to slide up under my book without the
slightest bit of noticeable effort. It was almost as if my
temporary roommate had been born without bones.

I started to stroke her fur, but she moved
away before I could manage it. This relationship wasn’t going to be
any easier than the one I’d had with Mr. Fluffy.

Reading wasn’t possible with the cat on my
chest, and Esmeralda was in no mood to just hang out with me. I was
tired anyway. It had been a big day. Heather had supplied a cat
bed, so I laid it out in the living room, then went into the
bedroom and closed the door. Two minutes after I shut the door,
there was the most pitiful mewling outside.

“
Go to sleep,” I said
through the wood, but the noise just grew louder.

“
All right, you win. You
can have your bed in here.” It appeared that it was the only way I
was going to get any sleep. Esmeralda seemed pitifully grateful
when I opened the door. She circled the room while I brought her
bed in and put it at the foot of mine. As she settled in for the
night, I turned off the light and tried to put aside the thoughts
scrambling through my mind. The same time last week I’d been in an
entirely different job and apartment, my great-aunt Belle was still
alive, and I hadn’t been around a cat for a dozen years. It was
ironic that I’d been looking for a change in my life not all that
long ago.

It was a perfect example of being careful
what you wished for; it just might come true.

Chapter 11

I woke up the next morning with an anvil on
my chest. At least that’s what it felt like to me. It took me a few
seconds to realize that sometime during the night Esmeralda had
moved from her bed to mine. Evidently the mattress had been too
soft for her.

“
Okay, rise and shine,” I
said as I gently lifted her off me. There are ways to hold a cat,
and then there are ways to lose a hand. Janie had taught me how to
hold Mr. Fluffy, though he’d been indignant about the whole
procedure. Sometime during the night Esmeralda had accepted me as a
surrogate, so she appeared to put up with my clumsy movements. Any
port in the storm, I guessed, even for a cat.

Esmeralda studied me as I got dressed and
ate breakfast. I tried to offer her food, but she insisted on
observing me instead of eating. I couldn’t imagine what she found
all that fascinating.

I was still wondering what to do with her,
whether to banish her to the bathroom or try to take her to the
candle shop with me when there was a knock at my door. I opened it
to find a sprightly little woman who immediately identified herself
as Mrs. Quimby. She scooped Esmeralda up as the cat trotted over to
her.

“
Hello, princess,” she said
to the cat before she had another word for me. “Heather asked me to
collect her majesty, I hope you don’t mind. Esmeralda here is a
fierce watch-cat for The New Age.” She made eye contact with me as
she added, “My Herbert is deathly allergic, else the princess would
have spent the night with me. Did you two get along all
right?”

“
We did fine,” I said.
“Have you spoken to Heather this morning?”

“
Oh my, yes. She knows I
keep an insomniac’s hours, late to bed and early to rise. Honestly,
I just don’t seem to sleep much anymore. Be happy for the hours of
peaceful slumber you get, young man, they are a true gift from
above.”

“
How is her mother doing,”
I asked.

“
Much better. Heather’s
hoping to be back here by tomorrow night.”

It appeared Esmeralda and I would be roomies
for at least one more night then. “Good enough. Do you want to drop
her off here after you close the shop? I’ve got some errands to
run, but I should be back by seven.” The New Age ran odder hours
than At Wick’s End, open on a schedule I couldn’t figure out even
after studying the posted times on the door.

“
That would be lovely,”
Mrs. Quimby said. “It will give the princess and me time to
commune.”

“
Don’t let me keep you,” I
said as I led them out the door. “Do you need the litter
box?”

“
Gracious no, the shop’s
got duplicates of everything. Haven’t you been in yet?”

I admitted I hadn’t had the opportunity.
“Things have been kind of hectic lately.”

“
Oh, you owe yourself a
visit. Heather has the most remarkable stock in her
inventory.”

“
I don’t doubt that for a
minute.”

As we split and went in different
directions, Esmeralda looked back at me, almost as if to say, ‘so
this is how it’s going to be.’ I offered a shrug and a wave. If she
was upset about my informal farewell, I couldn’t tell. But then I’d
never been able to decipher the motives of any cat I’d known in my
entire life.

Cragg, the attorney from upstairs, was in
The Crocked Pot when I stopped in to grab a cup of coffee from
Millie before heading over to the candle shop.

Cragg said grimly, “Harrison, I’d like a
word with you.”

“
I need to get to my shop,”
I said as I gratefully took the cup Millie offered. She’d already
learned my preferences and catered to them without being asked. It
felt good being one of her regulars.

“
I’ll make it brief,” he
said, “but it is important.”

Blast it all, I couldn’t avoid the man, I
was his landlord. “What can I do for you?” I asked as politely as I
could manage, taking a sip of my coffee.

“
I want to apologize for
the way I acted before. I can be too aggressive for my own good
sometimes, I realize that about myself. I shouldn’t have pushed you
like I did.”