At Wick's End (Book 1 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) (12 page)

“
I’ll definitely be back,”
I said, patting my stomach. I’d eaten entirely too much pizza, but
the combination of good beer, better pizza and excellent
conversation made me as hungry as a wolf in winter.

“
That’s all I need to
hear,” she said as she gathered up what was left of our meal. “See
you’all later,” April said as she whisked the empty platter and
mugs away.

Heather asked me if I was ready to go, and I
agreed. It had been a big day, even without the robbery. As we
walked out of the restaurant, Elvis was having a “Blue
Christmas.”

Back at River’s Edge, Heather stopped the
car and said, “Thanks Harrison. That was great fun.”

“
I should be the one
thanking you,” I said. “I really needed this tonight.”

As she started to get out too, I said, “Hey,
you don’t have to walk me to my door.”

Heather said with a smile, “Don’t you wish.
I want to go by my storage locker and get my gym bag. I’m going for
a run in the morning and I usually leave my stuff here, but it’s in
desperate need of washing. I’ve been absolutely glowing
lately.”

“
Glowing?” I asked, not
sure exactly what she meant.

Heather said, “Harrison, surely you know
that Southern women don’t sweat. But boy, do we ever glow.”

Instead of veering off to The New Age, she
followed me up the steps.

“
Okay, now you can’t deny
it. You’re stalking me,” I said.

“
Easy, big guy, the lockers
are upstairs. Didn’t anybody tell you about them?”

I shook my head. “If they did, I forgot all
about it. Why do you need a storage locker away from your
store?”

“
It was Belle’s idea.
There’s a shower that locks and a changing area too. This way we
all have a reason to say ‘hi’ in the mornings if we have one
central place to congregate. Just about everyone here uses a
locker. You need one of these to get in,” she said as she held a
key up.

“
I’ll have to get one from
Pearly,” I said.

“
Belle had spares in her
apartment. I lost mine three weeks ago and she replaced it with
this new one.”

Heather unlocked a door I’d ignored earlier
and said, “Come on, the lockers are all in here.”

She reached inside and flipped on the light
switch.

Someone had gotten there before us. Every
last locker had been broken into, the cleanly cut locks lying on
the floor amid all the personal items that had been stored in them.
The perpetrator had vandalized the contents of the lockers,
smashing perfume bottles, aftershave lotion and deodorant
containers among the clothes, leaving everything with a wretched
smell that would take dynamite to remove.

I wanted to call Sheriff Coburn before
Heather touched anything. “He may need to look for fingerprints,” I
said. “Don’t let anyone mess with this.”

I raced to Belle’s apartment, dialed the
sheriff’s number and got him on the fifth ring.

“
Coburn here,” he
said.

“
Sheriff, there’s been
another break-in at River’s Edge. We need you down
here.”

Morgan said, “Was a store hit this
time?”

“
It’s not a shop, it’s the
employee locker room. The locks have all been cut and the contents
thrown on the floor.”

“
Sounds like simple
vandalism to me,” the sheriff said calmly.

I said angrily, “You need a key to get in.
Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“
Harrison, Belle herself
complained to me that folks were losing their keys all the time.
Most likely some kid found one and thought he’d make a quick
score.”

“
Did this ‘kid’ also just
happen to have a set of bolt cutters on him? Those locks were
cleanly sheared off.”

“
You’d be surprised by the
kind of junk we pull off them. It’s likely a harmless stunt. I
can’t imagine anyone crazy enough to store valuables up
there.”

“
Does that mean you’re not
coming?” I couldn’t believe his unwillingness to
investigate.

“
Gee, Harrison, I’d love to
drop everything to come over there and pat your hand, but I just
had a hit-and-run on Elm, and I was kind of on my way over to
that.”

“
At least stop by on your
way back to the station,” I said, understanding his position a
little better.

“
Clean up the mess, post a
note about the keys and forget it, Harrison.”

When I walked back to the locker room,
Heather asked, “Is he coming?”

I shook my head. “No, he claims he’s too
busy.”

“
Typical,” Heather snorted.
“We’re not all that high a priority for him, especially now that
Belle’s gone. They were friends, but since she died, I haven’t seen
him around River’s Edge.”

I admitted, “He came by to offer his
condolences, but everyone else was gone.”

“
Well, he gets a point for
that, I guess.” She scanned the mess and asked, “So what do we do
now?”

“
I guess I’ll clean it up,”
I said as I started shaking broken glass out of a shirt on the
floor.

As we worked side by side, Heather said with
disgust, “I just can’t imagine someone doing this. What were they
looking for?”

“
The same thing they were
hunting for in Belle’s apartment,” I said, forgetting for a moment
that Heather was still one of my suspects.

“
Harrison, I loved Belle
dearly, but I can’t imagine that she owned anything worth stealing,
can you?”

“
Something’s going on
around here,” I said, “and if the police aren’t going to do
anything about it, I’m going to have to find out
myself.”

Heather swept up the last of the glass, and
I finished putting the clothing in an empty box I’d found on top of
one of the lockers.

I said, “I’ll wash this mess and bring it
back tomorrow.”

She took the box from me and said, “You’re
not going to ruin your washer. I’ll stop off at the Laundromat on
the way home. I’ve got a load of my own to do, so it’s no
problem.”

“
Are you sure?” I said. “I
hate to ask you to do it.”

“
You didn’t ask. I
volunteered. Good night, Harrison. What can I say? It’s been
interesting.”

“
I can’t argue with that.
Thanks again. For everything.”

After Heather was gone, I wrote a note
explaining what had happened and taped it to the front door of the
locker room. At least that way no one would get a shock going in
unprepared.

Back in Belle’s apartment, finally settling
in for the night, I double-bolted the new locks on the door. The
place still didn’t feel all that safe to me until I lit Belle’s
candle. There was something about watching that flickering flame
that soothed my nerves and eased my spirit. It was almost as if I
could feel Belle’s very real presence there with me. The cinnamon
in the air made me long for one more batch of Snickerdoodles and a
quiet afternoon with my great-aunt. By the time the candle had
burned its allotted hour, I was no closer to solving the mystery of
the most recent break-in than I had been when I started.

But I did feel more at peace than I had in a
very long time. After I snuffed out the wick, I couldn’t keep
myself from wondering why someone had so methodically sheared the
locks off every locker, and then make such a horrible mess of the
contents. Was it out of frustration, much as Belle’s break-in had
been? The two incidents certainly looked like they were committed
by the same vandal. But was the carnage a true reaction from the
perpetrator, or was it just a clever cover-up to hide a more
calculated search? Either way, I couldn’t help wondering if the
thief had found what was being so diligently sought, or if we were
going to have more robberies at River’s Edge.

As a general rule, I always slept in on
Sundays; it was a bit of a ritual for me. So I was stunned to find
that it was barely past seven the next morning when I rolled out of
bed, fully and completely awake. I knew myself well enough to
realize that it wouldn’t do me a bit of good to try to go back to
sleep. We didn’t open At Wick’s End until two on Sunday afternoons,
so that gave me a lot of time on my hands. I thought about all the
things I might do, from renting a movie, playing tennis with my
friend Wayne, or curling up on the couch leisurely going through
the Sunday paper.

What I did was get dressed, grab a quick
bowl of cereal, and head down to the shop so I could get an early
jump on things at the candle shop. Running a business was quite a
bit different from working for one. Sure, it was great being my own
boss, but in many ways, I was turning out to be harder on myself
than any of my previous employers ever had been.

And I was determined to make up for my
mistake yesterday, even if it meant working every minute I was
awake until I found a way to repay the store the cost of my
carelessness.

“
Don’t you ever take any
time off,” Eve asked when she walked in later that day. I held up
one of the books I’d been studying most of the morning and into the
afternoon. “It’s the only way I’m going to be able to pitch in and
do my share of the work around here. There’s a lot to learn, but I
can’t keep running the cash register forever.”

Eve nodded. “I must say, I’m impressed with
your diligence in learning about candles.”

I swallowed, then said, “Don’t be too
impressed yet. There’s something I have to confess to you. I did
something really stupid yesterday, Eve.” I proceeded to tell her
what had happened with the deposits, and her lips pursed into a
pair of grim lines.

“
The checks were lost as
well,” she asked.

“
No, they were still in the
truck, scattered all over the floor, but they were fine. I made out
a new deposit slip and dropped off what was left at the bank. Eve,
it was a mistake that won’t happen again.”

She nodded. “Sometimes the only way we learn
is the hard way.” If there was any scolding in her voice, she did
her best to hide it.

I felt a burden lift as we moved on to a
discussion about the best way to pour candles, a technique I was
very eager to learn. If I was being honest with myself, I was more
concerned about telling Eve what I’d done than losing all that
cash.

Eve said, “Well, why don’t we straighten up
the store and get ready for our customers?”

“
I’m all for that,” I
said.

As we put away the books and supplies that
I’d pulled out from our inventory to study, I said in passing, “By
the way, somebody broke into the lockers upstairs last night and
wrecked the whole communal room.”

Eye dropped the tin candle mold she was
holding, and it clattered to the floor. “Oh, no,” she said, looking
paler than I’d ever seen her.

“
There’s nothing that you
can do now,” I said. “Heather and I cleaned everything up after we
discovered what had happened. She even washed the soiled clothes.
I’m afraid some of the spilled perfume and aftershave got on them
during the break-in. They’re all sitting on the table, neat and
pressed and ready to claim, if you had any clothes in your locker.”
We had placed the other miscellaneous items we’d been able to
salvage on the table as well. A couple of

things had to be thrown away, but there were
surprisingly few items that were totally lost.

Eve nearly knocked me into a shelf as she
brushed past me heading for the front door. I understood why she
was so upset. It’s a violation when someone paws through your
things, an offense much more serious than a few broken bottles and
a pile of soiled clothes. The thief takes your sense of security
from you, and that’s a much more terrible crime than mere property
loss.

When she returned ten minutes later, Eve had
a frightened look about her.

“
What is it,” I asked,
concerned that something else may have happened to her.

“
Harrison, this used to be
such a safe place,” she said.

“
And it will be again,” I
said, trying to soothe her. “The sheriff believes that what
happened upstairs was just a random act of violence.” I didn’t add
that I was of a different opinion entirely, since I was trying to
ease her mind, not add to her worries.

Eve said, “Harrison, I’m sorry, but I don’t
think I’ll be able to work today,” as she grabbed her coat.

“
I can’t do this without
you,” I said. Surely she was overreacting, but what could I do? I
couldn’t very well chain her to the cash register to make her
stay.

“
Close up then. I can’t
stay here, not today.”

As she reached for the door, I said, “You’re
coming back tomorrow, aren’t you?”

She didn’t answer as she bolted out,
slamming the door behind her.

I couldn’t help wondering if the break-in
had truly thrown her into such a panic, or if someone might have
found something in her particular locker that she hadn’t wanted
discovered.

I went so far as to make up a closed sign
for the front door when I decided to try running At Wick’s End by
myself. What was the worst thing that could happen; I wouldn’t be
able to help a customer? So, they could come back another day and
Eve could help them, if she showed up. It was my store, blast it
all, and I wasn’t about to let anything stand between me and my
customers. If they went to all the trouble of coming down to
River’s Edge, then the least I could do was keep my store open for
them. I knew how complicated candlemaking could be, I’d read just
enough to realize how much I didn’t know about the operation, but
I’d do my best and above all, I’d be honest with whoever walked
through my door. I hadn’t overtly lied to Mrs. Jorgenson, but I
hadn’t done anything to correct her mistaken belief that I was some
kind of candlemaking wizard, either. I wish I could have believed
somewhere in my heart that the threat to the candle shop’s bottom
line had nothing to do with the decision to keep my novice status
to myself, but I couldn’t begin to justify that stand.