The Face of Deceit

$8,000!!! Didn’t get them. Will talk to agent who did. See you tomorrow!! M

The paper fluttered, blurring the words, as her hands shook. “Eight thousand?” Her knees weakened and Karen sat hard in her office chair. Tears blurred her eyes. Two thousand apiece! She’d never gotten more than five hundred for one of her vases. Mason DuBroc had succeeded in almost quadrupling their value.

Velvety fur brushed her ankles, and Karen glanced down as Lacey circled around her bare feet again. Her hands still quivering, she clicked her tongue and, with a rattling purr and tinkling bell, the eight-pound fur ball landed in her lap. Karen scratched the cat beneath the chin and was rewarded with a swish of Lacey’s thick tail.

“Lacey.” The shudder in her voice did not surprise her. Karen felt as if she were shivering from head to toe. “I’d better get back to work.” She nodded, then reached for the phone. “First I have to call Jane.”

Jane insisted on taking Karen to Portsmouth to celebrate, buying her dinner in a cozy boutique restaurant near the water. When they returned, midnight had come and gone, but Karen still felt wired and restless. Wandering into the office, she found fourteen new orders for “face vases” waiting on the fax machine. She glanced through them, overwhelmed. “Oh, Mason. What have we done?”

Sleep helped. The next morning a much calmer Karen awoke early and this time let Lacey out before she even showered. Then she took her first coffee of the day out on the back deck of the house, raising it toward the heavens. “Thank You, Lord,” she said aloud. She settled in one of the deck chairs and sipped again, then set the cup on the deck rail and looked out over the yard, feeling blessed. The sun struggled to get above the tallest trees, barely illuminating the May morning with bands of gold shot through the mist. Karen’s hair, still darkened from its normal red-gold sheen by her morning shower, dried quickly in the early-morning breeze, and she fluffed it before picking up the mug again.

This was her time. Prayer time. The day never felt quite right without it. The sun now winked at Karen over the top of her tallest birch, and she closed her eyes for a moment. Taking a deep breath, she whispered, “Thank You, Lord. I know Your hand is in all this, all along. Thanks for bringing Mason to Jackson’s Retreat to write his book, and thank You for…”

Inside, her phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. She scowled, then looked upward, waiting for the answering machine to pick up. When it did, she returned to her prayer, moving from praise to requests, the last one for herself. “Help me understand all this and Your will in it, Lord.”

She sat for a few more moments, enjoying the coffee and the morning air, then headed back inside. She hoped Mason would come by early to talk about the auction, but she had not heard from him since yesterday’s fax. Karen left her cup on the bottom step of the staircase, then bounded up, her hair flapping against her neck. Fifteen minutes later, she’d scooted into a pair of jeans and a light sweater, plus her hiking boots in case Mason wanted to walk into Mercer. She’d gone light on the makeup and turned on the blow-dryer long enough that her hair wouldn’t completely frizz out as it finished air drying. A touch of mousse, and she was ready just about the time the doorbell rang.

“Coming!” Karen yelled, her boots clumping on the stairs. She kicked over the cup and fussed at herself as she picked it up, thankful it was empty but wishing with a fleeting thought that she had time for another cup of her Kona. She unlocked the front door, pulling it open.

Her cheerful “Good morning!” faded away as she stared at the two men on the front porch. Mason was there, but he looked as solemn as she’d ever seen him. Behind him, oversized hat in hand, stood Tyler Madison, the local police chief.

Mason cleared his throat, but Tyler spoke first. “I hate to bother you this early, Karen, but we’ve got to talk about your broken vases.” He cleared his throat. “Broken vases,” he repeated, “and a murder.”

TWO

Twice in twenty-four hours, Karen’s world flipped upside down. As the two men sat in her living room and laid out their story, she couldn’t keep from blurting out, “But who would kill over a vase?”

Luke Knowles, a well-known auction agent, had purchased Lot 21, Karen’s vases, bidding the winning $8,000 for an anonymous client. The vases had been delivered to Knowles’s hotel room. Late last night, when Luke’s wife hadn’t been able to reach him, a manager had gone to check, finding Knowles dead and the four vases destroyed.

Karen stared at the two men, a crime scene photo in one hand and empty coffee cup in her other. “Who?” she repeated.

Tyler and Mason shifted uncomfortably and glanced at each other, then Mason touched her arm gently. “We were hoping you could help with that.”

Blinking, Karen looked down at the photo in her hand again, the details registering sketchily on her mind. A hotel room in chaos; in the center, ceramic shards and clay dust—remnants of four destroyed vases—were smeared across a dresser. At the edge of the image, a man’s leg protruded into the scene. The victim, murdered because of vases she had created from her imagination and a bit of raw clay.

The photo quivered as her fingers trembled, and Karen sat hard on her sofa. Her pottery, her art, was her heart, her livelihood and her life. Her vases, beautiful and distinct, sometimes felt like extensions of her very soul.

But they weren’t worth dying over.

Karen stared into her empty coffee cup as the two men sat and Tyler finished telling her about the death of Luke Knowles. She relished the security of the hard, cool ceramic under her fingertips as her eyelids stung and her vision blurred. Tyler sat across from her, his bulky frame wedged into one of her grandmother’s ancient, cane-bottom rockers, his hat clutched in one fist and a file folder in the other. Mason perched next to her on the edge of her fading rose-print sofa, his jeans a stark contrast to the feminine blossoms splayed under his thighs.

The morning sun had broken free of the tall trees of her backyard and now cast bright yellow streaks through the windows. The room seemed to glow, despite the somber mood of the three people clustered there.

“What about his family?” Karen’s voice was a strained whisper. “Did he have a family?” She peered at Mason, then Tyler. Her stomach felt tight, her chest constricted, but she wasn’t sure if she felt fear or grief. Or both. Hot tears leaked from each eye, and she wiped them away quickly.

The young police chief nodded. “A wife and a grown son.”

“I don’t understand.” Her soft voice cracked, and she swallowed again. “Why would anyone do this because of me?”

Tyler shifted in the chair, causing the cane to creak ominously. “Just like there was a note with your broken vases, there was a note at the crime scene.” He pulled a slip of paper from a file folder and held it out toward her. Mason stood quickly and helped the paper make the cross to Karen. He slipped the photo from her fingers and returned it to Tyler.

“That’s a copy they faxed,” Tyler explained. “The detective in New York thought you might recognize the handwriting.”

Karen wiped her eyes again and sat the cup on the floor near her feet. She unfolded the note, her fingers trembling a bit. As if scrawled and smeared with a pen too large for the writer’s hand, the letters swirled in an almost unreadable script in the middle of the page. She studied the note, her shoulders bowing slightly as a tight chill settled at the base of her spine. She recognized the handwriting…but not from anyone she knew. The clumsy block letters were the same as in the notes that had simply said, Stop! This one, however, was more specific.

Evil corrupts mind and soul.

Evil must be stopped.

All that is evil will be destroyed.

Her head snapped toward Mason, then Tyler. “So the killer thinks my vases are evil? Or me?”

Tyler shrugged. “New York thinks it could go either way. He could be a nutcase who has a fixation on your work, or maybe he has a problem with you personally. Or it could be a jealous—”

“But…evil?”

Mason cleared his throat. “Work or personal, this is about you.”

Tyler shifted in the rocker, his mouth pursed around a word that never made it out.

“But why?” Karen stood up and took the cup into the kitchen. Tyler caught the note as she passed by, slipping it from her fingers and returning it to the folder. She continued into the kitchen, her energy surging. She set the cup down with a solid thump on the counter that divided the two rooms. “They’re just vases.” She tapped her temple. “They just came out of my imagination and whatever I’ve learned about pots through the years.” She held her hand out toward Mason. “You know that. We talked about this!”

“I know.” He followed her into the kitchen. “But you’re trying to make sense of something that may exist only in this guy’s head. He killed because of something that makes sense only to him.”

Karen grabbed a dishcloth off the sink and began to wipe off an already spotless counter. “But if he thinks the vases are evil, then he thinks I’m evil.”

“Which is why we’re here.”

“Because evil must be destroyed.”

Tyler’s gaze bounced between the two, and he finally intervened. “Well, it’s clear neither of you is a cop.” He joined them at the counter. “Calm down.” He perched on one of the three bar stools that stood guard on the living room side of the counter. “First of all, New York does not expect you to figure out what’s going on with this murderer. That’s their job. Second, no one really thinks you are in danger. If whoever this is wanted to hurt you…” Tyler paused and shifted on the stool. “After all, he’s already proven he knows where you live.”

“But—”

“Which is why she needs protection!”

Tyler held up his hand to both of them. “And this is a small town. Everyone around knows the first thing you do every morning is make a pot of that fancy Hawaiian coffee you have shipped in and go out on your deck to talk to God. If the killer wanted you, he wouldn’t be wasting time and money buying up vases to shoot. Even a perfect stranger could sit at Laurie’s café for a couple of days and figure out what your schedule is.” Tyler shook his head. “We’ll add extra drive-bys on patrol, but the truth is, even a 24/7 guard probably wouldn’t help. Whatever his problem is, he wants to get rid of the vases, not you.”

Karen felt the heat slowly rise from her throat to her cheeks. “Every one?”

Tyler grinned. “My mom thinks it’s cute that you have a different robe for every season.” He stood, his mood somber again. “I do want you to take extra precautions. Make sure you lock the doors and set the alarm. Don’t wander around alone too much. And call me if you see anything strange—” he looked down at Lacey, who had suddenly started climbing his pants leg “—other than this cat—about the house.” He plucked Lacey off and put her on the stool. “In the meantime, I think you two should go for breakfast.”

Karen’s eyes widened. Food? “You don’t think I can eat now, do you?”

Tyler wandered toward the door, his eyes glancing casually around the room. “I certainly think you should eat. Mason has agreed to talk to you about the vases, see if you remember anything unusual about them. Maybe something about those particular vases strikes a chord with you.”

“But—”