1 Through a Glass, Deadly Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chaper 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  History of Glassmaking

  Recipes

  In the studio, after dark . . .

  I found the light switch. The lights came on in a flood, and I blinked for a moment. Nothing moved. Everything looked just as I had left it.

  Except for the body draped against the furnace, its head stuffed in the opening. My legs turned to rubber, and I slid down against the wall until I was sitting on the floor. The two dogs stayed beside me, on the alert, although I’m sure they were more than eager to investigate the interesting new addition to my work space. Briefly, I considered checking to see if the man—from his size I could tell it was, or had been, a male—was still alive, but some small corner of my rational mind told me that anybody whose head had been stuffed into a furnace would have survived, oh, about three seconds, tops.

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  THROUGH A GLASS, DEADLY

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / March 2008

  Copyright © 2008 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-4406-3877-0

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks

  belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Acknowledgments

  This book would never have happened without the efforts of agent extraordinaire Jacky Sach of BookEnds, and editor Katie Day of Berkley Prime Crime. But I wouldn’t have been anywhere near ready to write this book without the support of a lot of people: Carol Kersbergen, who has been cheering me on from the beginning; Elise Stone and the rest of my Guppy critique group; Barbara Monajem; Lorraine Bartlett and the gang at Writers Plot; and all the wonderful members of the Guppies, AgentQuest, Sisters in Crime, NEC-RWA, and RWA Kiss of Death.

  Many thanks to the expert glassblowers at Pairpoint, who started me on my way, and to David McDermott and Yukimi Matsumoto of the McDermott Glass Studio, who let me play with hot glass.

  And, of course, I have to thank my husband, who paid the bills with minor grumbling, and my daughter, who had only to raise one eyebrow to tell me that my ideas or my language were over the top.

  My apologies to any Tucsonans for any errors I might have made in the details. No character is based on any real person, although many of the places in Tucson do exist.

  Chapter 1

  ice glass: (verre craquelé, broc à glaces): decorative glassware with a rough outer surface (Phoebe Phillips, ed., The Encyclopedia of Glass)

  “Nessa? It’s pretty quiet, so I think I’m going to work on that new frit technique. You can close up when you’re ready to go.” Running a shop and giving glassblowing classes several days a week left precious little time for me to make anything of my own, and I had to snatch it whenever I could. And I was itching to work on a new technique I had been experimenting with recently.

  “You go right ahead, Em. I’ve got it under control.” Nessa winked at me as she looked around the gallery with a practiced eye: only two people this late in the afternoon, and they were likely browsers, not buyers. “I’ll lock up when I leave.”

  “Thanks, Nessa. See you in the morning.” Before anything could distract me, I slipped through the door that led to the studio, shutting it carefully. Inside, the heat hit me like a freight train. We kept the gallery cool for the public, but in the studio, cool air would only mess up the glass, so the temperature was close to a hundred degrees. I took a deep breath, savoring the aroma of wax and wood. This was my domain, and blessedly empty right now. I did a quick visual check: The big ventilator fans high on the walls were humming along; the furnaces crouched against the far wall, their doors closed, were nursing their crucibles of molten glass; and one glory hole glowed, just waiting for me. Sometimes I felt as though the glory hole was the glowing heart of the studio—more so than the boxy, secretive furnace. The glory hole was truly where fire and glass met and danced, as the glassworker kept the embryonic glass piece at just the right temperature to work. Its yellow glow, alive in the drab room, beckoned to me.

  Quickly I reviewed what I would need for the technique I had been struggling with lately. I loved the basic glass techniques, playing with colors and layers, but I had seen some wonderful examples of late Victorian overshot glass in a museum a while ago, their outer surfaces encrusted with clear frit—chunks of unmelted glass. I was still trying to work out the delicate balance between embedding the frit in the surface of the piec
e without melting it completely. But I liked to push myself, and this was definitely challenging. For now, I was using clear glass frit, which was the easiest to work with. I could dabble with colors later, once I figured out the basics. My favorite tools—the fruitwood blocks, the well-worn jacks, tweezers, and shears—were laid out on the bench next to the glory hole, and I made sure there was an ample supply of coarse frit in its half-cylinder trough. Until I was comfortable with the process, I’d be sticking to small items. Then I would try some more ambitious pieces. But I knew my strengths and my limitations. Take it one step at a time, Em.

  I put on my safety glasses, extricated a blowpipe from the warmer, and plunged it into the furnace crucible for my first gather of glass. I rolled the pipe around and around, collecting molten glass like sticky honey on the end. Then I backed away toward my bench, rotating the pipe all the while. I shaped it, then blew in a bit of air to open it up, watching the color of the glass change as it cooled, continuously turning the pipe to maintain the symmetry. Focus— that was what was important, and why it was a rare treat to work without other people around. Watch the glass, let it speak to you. What did this gather want to be? A small vase, I decided—or maybe it did. I concentrated on technique and consistency, rolling the pipe steadily, swelling the shape gradually.

  The piece glowed, a living, moving thing. I went back and forth to the glory hole, inserting and extracting the pipe, keeping the glass at the right temperature. Come on, baby—tell me what you want. The form at the end of the pipe bellied out, rounding; the color faded gradually, from sun-bright yellow to warm red. Without stopping my regular motions, I studied it. Are you ready? Not yet: I plunged it back into the glory hole, still rotating, until it was red-hot again. Then back to the bench. I blew in a little air, then clamped off the end of the pipe, letting the shaft of the pipe heat the air and do the work for me. Good. I grabbed a wooden paddle from the water bucket and coaxed the glass into a slender shape. Yes. Now.

  Next came the tricky part: transferring it to a punty. I had to pick up just a little hot glass on the punty, to act as glue when it came into contact with the bottom of my glass piece. Only then could I detach the blowpipe, reversing the top and the bottom of the piece, and open up the top with my tweezers. It was a lot easier to do if someone else held the punty, but I wasn’t worried about making this perfect, since it would never be offered for sale. I grabbed a paddle out of the bucket so I could flatten the base, then quickly heated the glass on the end of the punty. I juggled the transfer awkwardly, but after ten years, I knew how to manage it. I sheared the piece from my pipe and thrust it back into the glory hole for a brief minute, so I could trim what was now the neck of the vase. Now the final step: I put it back into the glowing glory hole to heat, then I plunged it into the frit, rolling the piece to cover the still-pliable surface evenly. Looking good, Em!

  Now came the part I wasn’t so sure about. If I put the vase back into the glory hole for too long, the frit would melt and flow, melding with the surface. But I wanted something different: I wanted the frit to retain some of its own identity, to create a more textured surface. Timing was crucial.

  Back in, quickly; out, and I checked it with a practiced eye; in and out again. Enough.

  I trimmed off the punty, then set the piece carefully on the wooden bench. The little vase stood on its own for the first time. I stepped back and eyed it critically. The surface was pebbled, irregular. The frit had melted unevenly, as I had hoped, and the surface resembled a translucent reptilian skin. But there was one more test. I went to the wall and switched on the halogen spots. I couldn’t use them while I worked, because I needed to “read” the color of the molten glass, but the intense spotlights brought a finished piece to life.

  I turned to see what I had done. Yes! In the pure, clean light, the little vase sparkled with a life of its own. Maybe I had finally gotten it right—the materials, the temperatures, the timing. I crept up on it, looking for any flaw, any irregularity, but the vase shone flawlessly. I couldn’t help myself from grinning. “Aren’t you beautiful, baby?” But I couldn’t admire it long: It had to go into the annealer quickly to cool or it would crack. I pulled on my gloves, picked it up carefully, and quickly transferred it to the shelf in the annealer, closing the doors.

  “Wow!”

  The voice came from the other side of the room, and I turned to see who it belonged to. A woman stood with her back against the gallery door, her eyes wide. For a moment I wondered if she was real: Silhouetted against the door’s glass panel, she looked like a John LaFarge angel—riots of red gold hair billowing around her face, clear gray eyes set in an unmistakably Irish face, complete with reddish freckles. She moved forward uncertainly, poised for flight, yet drawn irresistibly to the gleaming glass pieces in the room.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I agree, even if I do say so myself.”

  The woman stepped back, as if realizing she was trespassing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. But the woman behind the counter had to leave—something about getting to the bank—and she said it would be all right if I just watched for a bit.”

  “Hey, no problem. I’m always happy when someone enjoys what I do. I’m just really psyched because I’ve been working on this technique for a while, and I think I’ve finally got it right. Pretty, isn’t it? By the way, I’m the owner, Emmeline Dowell. But people call me Em.”

  The woman inched forward hesitantly. “I’m Allison McBride.”

  “Well, Allison McBride, come on in and look around while I clean up.”

  She advanced to the middle of the floor, but still looked ready to bolt. I wasn’t that scary, was I? I headed for the little fridge tucked into a corner of the studio and pulled out a bottle of water. “Want one?” I held it toward her.

  “Oh, no, thank you.”

  I twisted the cap off the bottle and swallowed most of it in under thirty seconds. Glassblowing is hot work, and in the dry Tucson air, a glassworker who forgets to hydrate regularly risks getting lightheaded, which can lead to disastrous results. The last of the bottle I poured over my head, scrubbing my hands through my short hair until it stood up in spikes. But it felt good. In the hot studio, I sweat so much that there’s no point to trying to look stylish, so I had long ago settled for functional and easy to cool.

  Allison was looking at me, eyes wide. She probably thought she was locked in with a crazy lady, and I almost laughed at her expression. “This is hot work. Hey, did you have a chance to look around the gallery?”

  “Just a bit. I’d only just come in when the other woman said she had to leave. I’ve never been here before. Well, I haven’t been much of anywhere in Tucson yet. But I was walking by, and the sun caught the pieces in the window, and it just looked like magic!”

  “I know what you mean. When I bought this place, I had no idea what the light would be like, so it was a real bonus when I found out that the sun hits those big windows in front. Not all the time, but certain times of the year, when the sun’s in the right place. And you’re right— the whole thing just catches fire. Really lures people in, right?”

  “That it does.” Allison continued to hover, unsure of her welcome. “Am I keeping you? I know you’re supposed to be closed.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it. It’s my shop, and I can do what I want. Take a look around.” I waved at the wooden shelves that lined the walls of the studio, holding a wealth of pieces, both mine and those of various students. “Anything you like?”

  Allison drifted closer to them. “Everything’s so beautiful,” she said wistfully, reaching out a reverent finger to touch an elegant blue bowl. “But I could never afford anything like this.”

  “So make your own,” I answered promptly. “I teach classes here too. In fact, there’s a beginner’s class on Wednesday. Why don’t you come?” I scrambled to find her one of our printed brochures.

  Her face clouded. “I don’t know. . . .”

  “Well, think about it. Six o’clock. There’
ll be other people around—the classes have been getting more and more popular. Which is great, but the more I teach, the less time I have for my own work. Vicious cycle, eh?”

  Allison was twisting the pamphlet between her hands, until she looked down and saw what she was doing. Then she carefully put it in her bag. “Maybe. And thank you for letting me watch. I didn’t know women did things like this.”

  “Of course we do. It doesn’t take strength, just skill, and you can learn that. Give it a try. Come on, I’ll let you out.”

  We passed through the empty gallery, and I unlocked the front door so she could leave. As she slipped out, she turned back to me. “Thanks—Em. Maybe I’ll be back. Bye.” And she fled into the twilight.

  I watched her disappear down the street. She reminded me of a cat I had once known, who flinched at any loud sound—and some that weren’t so loud. But I had a feeling that Allison’s nervousness was more complicated than that. I wondered how likely it was that she would come back, as I returned to the studio to check the controls on the annealer—it would cool overnight, and the pieces could come out in the morning. I shut down the glory hole and slid closed the door of the furnace I had been using. Then I cleaned off my pipes, straightened up my tools, and turned off the lights, shutting the studio door behind me. I walked through the gallery—I kept a dim light on there, both for security purposes and because the rich glow of the colored glass pieces was as good as paid advertising at attracting any evening strollers. Then I left by the front door, checking the lock behind me, and made my way around to the side stairs, which led to my apartment above.

  Gloria and Fred were, as usual, thrilled to see me. Gloria is my English bulldog, but she reminds me of Miss Marple as played by Margaret Rutherford in the old movies—stocky and unflappable. Fred is a wire-haired dachshund who refuses to recognize that he weighs half of what Gloria weighs and can walk right under her, bowed legs and all. Worse, he is undeniably a male chauvinist. Gloria lets him get away with it, and mothers him when she can.