A Murderous Glaze Read Free

knew that name wasn’t going to make folks happy about living in Maple Ridge. So they’d changed it with an alacrity that must have stunned even them. It was one improvement I would have heartily embraced myself. Whispering Brook evoked much nicer images than Pig Snout Creek.
    In no time at all, I was standing in front of Fire at Will. There were some pottery pieces for sale in the front plate-glass window display: a lovely set of hand-thrown dishes with a deep green glaze that Robert Owens had created, a unique face jug David had made, a vase with rippling sides thrown on one of my pottery wheels by Martha Knotts—a young mother of five and a member of the Firing Squad—and a set of glazed, hand-cut outdoor ornaments that I had made myself. On the exterior, there was a forest green awning over the tumbled red brick building that sported the shop’s name, and a black front door painted the color of midnight. I loved the shop, and hated the fact that someone had used it for a murder.
    I started to unlock the front door when I realized it was already unlocked. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and walked inside. “Hello? Is anyone here?” I searched for a weapon—anything I could use against an intruder—but there was nothing within reach except a forgotten umbrella in the stand by the door. It was better than nothing, I supposed, so I grabbed it.
    “Hello?” I called again. What was I doing? Someone had been murdered in my shop last night, and here I was, armed only with an umbrella, preparing to confront a prowler. What an idiot I could be sometimes. I started to back out of the shop so I could call the sheriff when a familiar face popped out of the back room.
    “Is it raining, Carolyn?”
    My assistant, David, had never looked so handsome to me in his life. Twenty years old, David was slim like his mother, but instead of brunette hair, he was blond—just like his dad—though David’s ponytail was at least twelve inches longer than Richard Atkins’s hair had ever been. The shade of David’s hair was the only thing—besides his last name—that he had inherited from his father. Hannah told me once that Richard had been mysterious and a little dangerous when they’d first met; that had been her initial attraction. She had wanted to tame the bad boy in him, to reform him, until she realized he was perfectly happy being the way he was. Still, she’d been willing to stick with him, but the day Richard found out she was pregnant with David, he left town without saying a word.
    “I asked you if it was raining,” David repeated.
    “What? No, of course not. There’s not a cloud in the sky.”
    “Then why the umbrella?”
    I’d honestly forgotten I was holding it. “Well, just because it’s not raining now doesn’t mean it won’t later.”
    I hoped that statement made more sense to him than it did to me, but I wasn’t about to admit that I’d been using it for protection.
    “I guess,” he said. “I came in early to clean up, but everything looks just like it did when I left it.”
    “You didn’t think they’d leave the body here, did you? Looking for a chalk outline, perhaps?”
    He was clearly appalled by my comment, and I realized it probably had sounded a little harsh. “Sorry, I guess I’m still a little on edge.”
    David smiled in relief. “Me, too, but I wasn’t going to be the first one to admit it. Do they have any idea who might have done it?”
    “Besides me, you mean? No, but I’m hoping our esteemed sheriff is out tracking down clues even as we speak.”
    I wasn’t ready to open the shop yet, so David and I kept the door locked and the overhead lights off. We managed well enough with the sunlight coming in through the windows. I wasn’t sure if we’d be deserted or jammed with customers today. It was hard to tell what was going to happen on a good day, and I had a feeling in my gut that this was going to be anything but one of those. I studied the laden shelves that