God, what a disaster! How long was it going to be a mess like this?
I mustered all the goodwill I could find. Joe was bare-chested and sweating from his hard work, and I could see he was on his last nerve, too.
He’d hung some plastic sheeting at the kitchen doorway to stop dust traveling throughout the rest of the house. Guess I should be grateful for small mercies.
Jasper was snuffling around, his paws and nose covered in sawdust, as he checked out the power tools lying on the floor.
Joe grabbed the sander. “You can see why I need you to keep him out of my hair.”
I deliberately kept my voice light. “Where’s Sarah this morning?”
“She’s gone with Debby to Philadelphia to see that famous violinist—what’s his name?”
“Robin Tague.”
“That’s right. I guess he’s performing at the Kimmel Center, and there’s some kind of private reception afterwards. Sarah pulled some strings to get them an invitation, so Debby’s over the moon.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” I clipped the leash on the dog. “Okay, come on, Jasper.”
It was all so very pleasant and polite. I wanted to cry.
The puppy trotted behind me, peeing on every tree from the house to the store. He peed on the geranium-filled cauldron on the porch for good luck.
What the hell was I supposed to do with a rambunctious dog inside a sewing notions store filled with valuable antiques and precious fabrics?
Calm down, Daisy.
If there was one thing I’d learned from being around Jasper, it was that he was hypersensitive to my moods. If I was happy, he was ecstatic. If I was down, he was miserable. He was like some kind of canine empath.
I brought him into the store, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and took a long, cooling swig.
As he casually sniffed at the dollhouse, I decided he needed some kind of toy. I stuffed an old sack with scraps of fabric and tied a tight double knot at the end. He grabbed it and happily lay down next to me as I went on-line and checked out the latest web orders. I updated the site by removing the sold items, and made a list of the new items I needed to photograph and upload.
On a whim, I typed Robin Tague into my browser. His official website popped up, a Wikipedia listing, several newspaper articles, a fan site, and an interview he’d done a couple of years ago with BBC Music magazine.
I took another deep swallow of my water and settled down to read. Mr. Tague was fairly cagey. He didn’t give the juicy uninhibited answers that celebrities usually did in these interviews. If he decided to change careers, he could be a politician.
I was skimming through toward the end when I found one answer that made me grip the water bottle and lean closer to the screen.
They’d asked about his creative process and how he set about composing some of the wonderful, haunting pieces for violin that were fast becoming classics.
First, he said he needed a room where there was no color. Everything had to be in shades of gray or black. Not even a red flower or a blue coffee mug.
I rolled my eyes. Sounded like a bit of a nut to me. Second, he had to have absolute quiet. He’d added soundproofing and a second interior wall to his home so no outside noise could penetrate. Third, he fasted for three days before working on a new piece.
And fourth, it turned out he was very superstitious and only ever used one particular type of writing instrument to compose—a rare Magical Black Widow fountain pen.
*
“Around 4 p.m., the weather reports were calling for another thunderstorm, and since I hadn’t had a customer in over an hour, I decided to close early.
Cyril’s words about going back to the scene of the crime still resonated inside my head. Knowing that Ramsbottom would not have been thorough in his search, to say the least, was it too much to hope I’d spot something the police had missed?
I gently pulled the soggy sack from Jasper’s mouth, took him outside, and let him water all the trees on Main Street between the store and the house.
“Jasper, you can come with me to Reenie’s, but I’m begging you, please don’t pee in the car?”
He looked up at me panting, his mouth split open in a wide grin.
I opened the passenger-side door to the Subaru and he hopped in. I walked around to the driver’s side, only to find him sitting in my seat.
“Come on, buddy, move over.” I opened the door a crack and slid in, not giving him room to escape, and nudged him over to the passenger side.
When I started the engine, I watched him carefully for any reaction to the unfamiliar noise, but he sat up, his ruffled chest held high, gazing out the window as I eased away from the curb.
When we got to the Kratz farm, Jimmy’s pickup truck was gone. The cornflower blue sky darkened as somber clouds swept in, passing over the sun. I’d need to make this fast.