Death Waxed Over (Book 3 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) (20 page)

“
Aisle 7, next to the fright
wigs,” he reluctantly admitted.

“
Thanks, you’ve been a great
help.”

“
No problem,” he said,
missing my sarcasm completely and turning his attention back to his
comely coworker. I hated that expression more than his behavior.
When did “no problem” enter the common vernacular, and where had I
been when they’d taken the vote? It was dismissive and
disrespectful, and I didn’t care for it.

I headed off to the fright wigs and clown
makeup, hoping that the tube I’d held was a special-order item,
something they could trace.

There were three dozen tubes on the shelf
just like the one I’d found under Pearly’s workbench. So much for
following that lead. It was time to head back to the candleshop. No
doubt Eve was ready to put out an all-points bulletin on me, I’d
been gone so long.

I got back to the shop, ready with a dozen
apologies for my employee, but one look at her face told me that
something bigger than my absenteeism was going on.

She said, “Thank goodness you’re here. You
need to get to the hospital as quickly as you can. Your friend
Becka’s been attacked.”

Chapter 15

“
What happened to her?” I
asked.

“
She was jogging by the
river near here and some maniac mugged her. She tumbled down the
bank and fell into the water.”

“
Is it serious?”

Eve said, “They wouldn’t say, but she’s been
asking for you. Go, Harrison, I can stay here as long as you need
me to.”

I tore off toward the hospital, fighting to
keep myself from driving too far over the speed limit. Wrecking on
the way over there wasn’t going to do either one of us any
good.

I found the nurses’ station and was directed
to Becka’s room. It was semiprivate, so at least she wasn’t in
Intensive Care. One side of her face was scraped, and her right arm
was in a cast. Her room was an explosion of color and scent;
someone had already gone out of their way to make her feel cared
for.

“
Hey there. Are you
okay?”

She nodded as she offered me a slight smile.
“I think so. They just gave me something for the pain. I don’t feel
like there’s really any reason for me to stay here overnight, but
they want to keep an eye on me. Evidently I blacked out at some
point.”

“
So what happened?” I asked
as I stood beside her bed.

“
It was the craziest thing.
I was jogging by the Gunpowder like I always do, when somebody came
out of nowhere, shoved me, and I twisted my ankle and fell. I had
my headphones on. I didn’t even hear them coming up behind me. The
next thing I knew I was being pulled out of the river.” She rubbed
her scalp with her free hand and added, “They tell me it’s not
unusual to forget parts of what happened when there’s a head
injury.”

Trying to lighten the mood, I pointed to the
flowers and said, “What’s all this? I didn’t know you had so many
admirers.”

She looked troubled. ‘They were just
delivered a few minutes ago. You mean they’re not from you?”

“
Becka, we’re just friends.
This is a little extravagant for my budget even if we were
engaged.” Becka and I had had a rocky time together, and there was
no way I’d ever date her again, though I was happy to be her
friend. There was just always too much pressure when I was in a
relationship with her. Nothing was ever good enough, and I never
lived up to my potential, at least as far as she was
concerned.

She looked crestfallen. “I just
thought...you know...”

I pulled out the card on the closest
arrangement and asked, “Is it okay if I read this?”

“
Go right ahead,” she
said.

The card was inscribed, ‘From someone who
loves you’. I said, “So you really don’t know who this is
from.”

“
Not a clue. Like I said, I
was kind of hoping it was you.”

I reached for the telephone, then dialed the
number off the florist on the card. After a brief conversation, I
hung up and explained, “They said it was a cash transaction from a
messenger service. No way to trace it, I’m afraid.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you think they’re from
him? Why would he try to kill me, and then shower me with
flowers?”

“
Who are you talking
about?”

Urgently, she said, “My stalker. I know
they’re from him. Get them out of here, Harrison, they’re creeping
me out.”

“
Take it easy,” I said. “We
don’t know they’re from him.”

“
Who else would send them?
Get rid of them. Now.” Her voice was loud and shrill. At least
there was no one sharing her room at the moment.

A nurse popped her head in. “Is there a
problem here?”

With as much dignity as I could muster, I
said, “The lady has decided she doesn’t care for the flowers.”

The woman said, “Man, I’d love to get this
kind of attention. Are you sure?”

Becka said, “You can have them.”

“
I can’t, it’s against
hospital policy.”

“
Then throw them out. I
don’t want them.” There was no way to misinterpret her resolve. The
nurse shrugged, then said, “Okay, I’ll find something to do with
them.”

I helped her carry the
bouquets out of the room, telling
Becka
I’d be right back. As I walked to one of the nurses’ stations, the
woman said, “She seemed so happy to get them before. What’s the
matter, did you two have a fight?’”

I wasn’t about to correct her. “They’re not
from me.”

The nurse nodded knowingly. “From another
guy, huh? So you’re making her throw them out.”

“
I’m not making her do
anything,” I said. “And if you knew Becka Lane at all, you’d
realize that.”

After we’d collected all the flowers and
removed them, I said, “It looks kind of bare in here now, doesn’t
it?”

Becka said, “I prefer it to having those
things around me.”

I moved to a chair near her bed and asked,
“So you don’t have any idea who was behind you?”

“
I felt a shove between my
shoulder blades, then I twisted my ankle and I fell. That’s all I
know.”

She was getting hysterical. I patted her
hand and said, “Listen, you’re okay now. That’s all that
counts.”

“
Harrison, I’m getting
scared, really scared, now.”

“
We can call the sheriff
again,” I said. “This is a little more concrete than what we’ve had
before.”

“
Oh please, he’s not going
to give this any credence. I don’t need that.”

“
Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll
talk to him myself.”

“
I wish you wouldn’t. It’s
not going to do any good.”

“
I think you’re wrong,” I
pressed. “He needs to know what happened.”

“
Fine, tell him anything you
want then. Harrison, I think the pain medication is kicking in.
Thanks for coming by, but I really don’t feel up to talking right
now.”

“
I’ll come back later,” I
said, “with flowers of my own next time.”

She shivered, despite the blanket pulled up
around her. “Thank you for the thought, but I’d rather have
balloons or some magazines. Anything but flowers. Ugh.”

“
No flowers,” I promised and
left her room. As I walked toward the elevator, I noticed that one
of the arrangements Becka had discarded was sitting at the nurses’
station. I wasn’t sure how she’d react when she saw that. I also
wasn’t all that sure I wanted to replace the offerings she’d gotten
with anything else. It occurred to me that Becka was using the
stalking incidents to get closer to me, and I honestly wasn’t
interested in reopening that relationship with her. Even if I
didn’t have my hands full with the candleshop and the entire
River’s Edge complex, Becka and I had broken up for some very good
reasons, and none of them had changed.

It was time to stop being her guardian and
turn the job over to the police.

I bumped into Vince in the lobby, a vase of
flowers in his hand. I said, “If I were you, I’d swap those out for
a stuffed animal or something.”

Vince said, “Why, did you already give her
flowers?”

“
Me? No way, but somebody
did, and she thinks they’re from the guy who was stalking
her.”

Vince shook his head. “This guy just doesn’t
give up, does he? What do the cops have to say about it?”

“
She doesn’t want to call
them. I tried to convince her they needed to know, but she won’t
listen to me. Maybe you’ll have more luck than I did.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, Becka kind of
has a mind of her own.”

“
You don’t have to tell me
that; we dated, remember? Vince, don’t let her go back to her
apartment. Make her go to her sister’s place if you can. She’s got
to stop being a target or something a whole lot worse may happen to
her.”

“
I’ll try.”

I felt better with Vince there watching over
her. I just hoped he’d have more luck with her than I had.

Back at the candleshop, I found Eve waiting
on a pair of customers in the sheet wax section. She nodded toward
me, but I wanted to wait until our customers were gone before I
brought up all that had happened. After Eve rang up the sales, she
said, “How’s Becka doing?”

“
She scraped her face and
broke one arm. Other than that, she’s going to be fine. She had
quite a scare, though. Somebody shoved her from behind, and she
tumbled into the river.”

“
Did they find out who
pushed her?”

“
That’s the thing. Nobody
else was around.” I decided to keep my suspicions to myself about
Becka’s renewed interest in me. I was sure Eve would have something
to say, most likely a crack I didn’t need to hear.

I followed Eve to our office, and she
grabbed her sweater off the hook on the door. “Well, you’ve
certainly had quite a day, haven’t you?”

“
I’m sorry I wasn’t here to
help you with the shop. I’ve been an absentee owner
lately.”

She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, you’ll
have plenty of time to work this evening. You do remember you’re
closing by yourself tonight, right?” We’d worked out a new schedule
that reduced Eve’s hours until we could get back on our feet again.
Naturally I’d forgotten all about it rushing around Micah’s
Ridge.

“
Absolutely. Have a nice
evening.”

“
You, too,” she said. “See
you tomorrow afternoon, Harrison.”

“
Good night.” After she was
gone, I ran a report to see what kind of day she’d had without me.
The numbers were better than I had any right to expect. Maybe folks
were starting to forget that scathing article in the newspaper
about me. It was amazing how much dirt they’d thrown at me based on
one hysterical woman’s delusions. I guessed it all depended on who
the hysterical woman was, or more importantly in this case, who she
was married to.

I got a phone call as I was helping a
customer with a candlemaking kit for her mother’s birthday. I hated
to answer the telephone when I was with someone, because I figured
if a customer took the trouble to come to the shop, they deserved
preferential treatment over someone who just called.

“
At Wick’s End, can you
hold, please?”

“
Harrison, it’s Jubal Grant
at the candleshop. Call me when you get free.”

“
Good enough,” I said and
hung up. After the sale, I returned Jubal’s call.

“
Sorry about that,” I said.
“I was with a customer.”

“
I applaud you for putting
them first,” Jubal said. “Working retail is certainly more taxing
than I thought it would be.”

“
I know exactly what you
mean. I think everybody should have to spend a month of their lives
waiting on other people. I don’t care if they sell clothes, candles
or wait tables; I bet it would improve most folks’
manners.”

“
No doubt. I was calling
about Pearly. That was a rather scathing hatchet job the newspaper
did, wasn’t it?”

“
They did everything but
flat-out accuse him of shooting her,” I agreed.

“
Has he been
arrested?”

“
No, the sheriff doesn’t
have enough on him yet, but he is looking pretty hard for
him.”

“
You mean he’s
gone?”

I took the chance to straighten the displays
on the counter as we talked. “He took some long-due vacation time.
Losing your cousin was quite a blow to him.”

“
Of course, I
understand.”

I couldn’t let him think that Pearly was a
murderer. “I know how thorough a job the newspaper did hanging this
on him, but I promise you, Pearly didn’t kill Gretel any more than
I did.”

Jubal paused, then said, “I wish I could be
as certain as you are. They left things rather badly between
them.”

“
I’ve got me eye on someone
else,” I said rashly. I didn’t really, but I couldn’t let Jubal
think Pearly could have done such a cold-blooded thing. I nodded to
a customer who walked in and told Jubal, “Listen, I’ve got to
go”

“
Whom do you suspect?” Jubal
asked.

I’d been holding the phone against my cheek
and shoulder as I’d been straightening things up, and before I
could answer him, it slipped out of my grip. By the time I grabbed
it to explain, he was already gone.

I’d have to call him back later and tell him
I hadn’t just hung up on him, but at the moment I had a customer to
wait on. It didn’t do either of us any good to speculate further
about what was going to happen to Pearly. I was frankly glad for
the distraction my customers brought me. In the end, I’d much
rather focus on candlemaking than crime, no matter how worried I
was about my friend.