Snake in the Glass Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Sources

  Just Deserts . . .

  “Another one, huh?” The assistant at the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office slouched against the wall of the building, watching his colleague pull a body bag out of the back of the van. “Any details?”

  “Nope. Adult male, doesn’t look like he’s been out there long. No ID, nothing on him except some pebbles in his pocket.”

  “Hey, kid, if he’s been out in the desert, it’s hard to tell how long he’s been there. At least he’s not a mummy like some of ’em. How’d they find him?”

  “Border Patrol noticed the birds. He wasn’t on one of the usual routes. Looks like he didn’t want to be identified.”

  “Or someone didn’t want him to be.”

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Sarah Atwell

  THROUGH A GLASS, DEADLY

  PANE OF DEATH

  SNAKE IN THE GLASS

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  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.

  SNAKE IN THE GLASS

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

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / September 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  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 : 978-1-101-14000-0

  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.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my grandmother,

  Ruth Hamilton Floyd,

  who gave me my first peridot.

  Acknowledgments

  Gems have always fascinated people, so of course glassblower Em Dowell has to check them out when she’s looking for glass ideas. Besides, she lives in Tucson, home of the annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, the largest in the world, so she couldn’t ignore them completely.

  Less well known is the fact that the San Carlos Indian Reservation not far from Tucson is the world’s primary source for the gemstone peridot—a fact that Em learns quickly, but for the wrong reasons. However, the events and individuals associated with the reservation are purely my own invention.

  Thanks as always go to my agent, Jacky Sach of Book-Ends, and my tireless editor, Shannon Jamieson Vazquez of Berkley Prime Crime. The dealers at the International Gem and Jewelry Show in Marlborough, Massachusetts, taught me a lot about displaying and selling stones, and Gail Clark served as another set of eyes and ears at the show. And once again, the faithful members of Writers Plot, Sisters in Crime, and the Guppies were behind me all the way.

  My husband didn’t complain when I kept bringing home more gems “just for research!” My daughter still prefers the glassblowers of Cape Cod, who continue to provide me with both inspiration and practical information.

  Glass is more gentle, graceful, and noble than any metal and its use is more delightful, polite, and sightly than any other material at this day known to the world.

  —Antonio Neri, The Art of Glass

  Prologue

  If a glass article cools too quickly, internal stresses develop and can lead to spontaneous breakage.

  SUNDAY

  “Another one, huh?” The assistant at the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office slouched against the wall of the building, watching his colleague pull a body bag out of the back of the van. He tossed the half-smoked cigarette away and stepped forward to help wrestle the bag onto the waiting gurney. “Any details?”

  “Nope. Adult male, doesn’t look like he’s been out there long. No ID, nothing on him except some pebbles in his pocket.”

  “Hey, kid, if he’s been out in the desert, it’s hard to tell how long he’s been there. At least he’s not a mummy like some of ’em. How’d they find him?”

  “Border Patrol noticed the birds. He wasn’t on one of the usual routes. Looks like he didn’t want to be identified.”

  “Or someone didn’t want him to be. Most people who cross the border, they’ve got something on ’em— picture of family, religious medal maybe. Could be he was traveling with a pal who thought he had something worth taking.”

  “That’s lousy. You make it this far. . . . You think somebody killed him? I didn’t see any marks on the body.”

  “I’ll take a look, when I get a chance. It’s probably nothing to worry about. Maybe he got lost, or maybe someone gave him lousy directions. These guys who get ’em across the border—they don’t care squat about what happens to ’em next, as long as they’ve got their money. You got the paperwork?”

  “Sure do.” The younger man pulled a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to him. “All there,
by the book. What happens to him now?”

  “No ID? We tag him as John Doe number whatever—I think we’re up to thirteen already this year. We hold him until we can do an autopsy. Then, if nobody claims him after a few months, we’ll probably end up cremating him.”

  “Poor guy. Not a good way to go. Somebody ought to miss him.”

  “Yeah, somebody should, but they may be out of luck.”

  Chapter 1

  Waterford glass is known for prismatic cutting to create multirayed stars and sharply cut diamonds in wide fields or bands.

  THE PREVIOUS FRIDAY . . .

  On a good day it takes eighteen hours to fly from Dublin to Tucson. Thanks to the vagaries of February weather and customer-unfriendly airlines, it turned out to be closer to twenty-four, and I was ecstatic to arrive at the Tucson airport on Friday. At least, I thought it was Friday, but then, I thought it had been Friday when I left Ireland. I could have kissed the cacti in the parking lot, I was so giddy. Jet-lagged or not, I figured I could handle the few miles to my downtown shop and the apartment I lived in above it. Luckily I remembered where I had left the car.

  As I drove carefully home, relishing the intense sunshine and the sandy terrain dotted with saguaros and ringed by mountains (Arizona brown! Not Irish green!), I tried to sort through what I had to do. My brother Cam’s plans had been vague when I left.

  My brother Cameron is a high-end computer geek. He’s a sweet, somewhat shy man with a genius for manipulating code. No, he’s not one of those nerdy guys who loves to talk gibberish and tinker with the wire guts of computers, and he doesn’t create animated games for teenage boys where things blow up loudly and spatter the screen with body parts, thank goodness. Instead, before he’d committed himself to the cyberworld, he had taken some biology and ecology classes, and now he specialized in modeling environmental systems, calculating things like the long-term impact of increased housing on dwindling aquifers. At least, that’s what I thought he did. If there is a computer gene, it missed me. And luckily in my line of work—creating artisanal glassware—computers don’t figure much. But I was eight years older than he was, forty-something to his thirty-something, and the world had changed rapidly in those years, when we were younger. It was enough for me that he liked what he did and apparently he was good at it.

  Normally I was thrilled when Cameron came to Tucson, but this time I had to admit I had mixed feelings. Only a couple of months earlier, Cam had fallen madly in love with my sales assistant Allison McBride, who had dropped into our lives as a woman on the run, immediately awakening a chivalrous side of Cam that I hadn’t known he possessed—and I don’t think he had either.

  Falling in love with Allison had thrown a monkey wrench into Cam’s neatly organized life, and now he was in the process of relocating to Tucson to be closer to Allison. Once the way was clear for Cam’s romantic intentions, he’d acted with what for him amounted to lightning speed. For the past several years he had been living and working in San Diego, although he could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had actually spent time on a beach. It was near enough to Tucson that he could make the six-hour drive to visit me several times a year, and since he was the only close relative I had, that made a difference. We had been muddling along quite well for years now.

  But the advent of Allison in his life had made him impatient, and suddenly San Diego seemed a lot farther away from Tucson. So he had resigned from his job and found one here, at what he described to me as a start-up company supporting desert ecology and sustainable development. I think. It sounded right up his alley when he described it, and I applauded his effort to preserve the fragile deserts I had come to love.

  In any case, he was in the midst of a move, leaving one job and packing up before starting his new one. He had allowed himself a couple of weeks between the end of his old job and the start of the other, and he had intended to use the time to find a place to live in Tucson—and to hang out with Allison.

  The bottom line was I wasn’t sure where Cam was at the moment: in San Diego, in Tucson, or somewhere in between. And much as I adored my brother, I really didn’t want to see him right away—because while I had left for Ireland with Allison, I wasn’t coming back with her. That should teach me to try to be nice to people: I’d made what I thought was a friendly offer to take Allison on an impromptu trip to Ireland, the country of her birth, which she hadn’t seen since she’d eloped as a teenager over twenty years ago. Allison had decided she wanted to stay on for a bit (length of time unspecified), and could I please tell my lovelorn brother that she might not be coming back? Allison’s decision to get to know the relatives she had left behind decades ago certainly muddied things. Not that I didn’t understand her need to reconnect, but I did resent her asking me to do her dirty work rather than telling Cam herself.

  But right now I just wanted to go home and get re-acquainted with my pups Fred and Gloria (had I ever been separated from them for this long?), take a long shower, and sleep for a week. Maybe then I’d be ready to sit down and talk to him. Otherwise, in my befuddled, jet-lagged state, I was sure to say the wrong thing.

  I pulled the car into the alley behind my glass shop, Shards. The building had formerly housed a small machine shop, and I had taken over the whole thing, fitting out a glass studio and sales area downstairs, and my living space upstairs. A tiny bit of guilt nagged at me: I really should check in with Nessa, my long-term shop assistant and friend, in the shop, to make sure I still had a business. But since the building was still standing and the windows were intact, I decided to assume the best, and instead I tiptoed up my exterior stairs and, inserting my key in the lock, braced myself for a rapturous welcome from Fred and Gloria.

  I was not disappointed. Fred, a wire-haired dachshund with a Napoleon complex, made dashes at my feet, barking all the while. Gloria, a more substantial and dignified English bulldog, maintained a cool demeanor until Fred had worn himself out. Me, I dropped my bags and sat on the floor and wallowed in doggy love for several minutes. When we had all had our fill, at least temporarily, I struggled back to my feet and looked around. No sign of human occupation, which meant Cam was still somewhere else. I will admit to a small sigh of relief. But the dog’s dishes had been filled recently, so someone—probably Nessa, in whose care I’d left the doggies—had been here recently.

  I spotted not one but two notes on the table in the kitchen area, weighted down with jars of salsa, which immediately started my mouth watering. Irish food was bland, and airline food was not food at all. But first things first: I picked up the notes. One was from Cam:

  Went back to SD to pick up the last of my stuff—the rest is in Bedroom #2. Back Friday for good. Love, C.

  PS Can’t wait to hear about your trip.

  I sighed, relieved: I had a reprieve, even if it was only for twenty-four hours. I could gather my wits before I had to confront Cam. The second note was from Nessa:

  Stop by when you get back. All is well, or at least quiet. Nessa.

  I guessed I owed it to Nessa to tell her I was back, which put a damper on my plan to fall directly into bed. But food first. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten, but it was definitely in some other time zone, or country, or both. The fridge held reasonably fresh bread and some nonmoldy cheese, so I threw together a sandwich, adding a bit of salsa to give it flavor. The dogs stayed no more than a foot from my feet. Was it love or the cheese?

  Buoyed by my gourmet feast, I headed for the door, reassuring the dogs that I would be back very soon and then I wouldn’t leave them again for, oh, maybe twelve hours. They didn’t look as though they believed me. I clattered down the stairs and went around to the corner of the building and into my shop.

  Nessa looked up from the catalog she had been reading and pulled off her reading glasses, breaking into a smile. “Em, welcome home! How was your trip?”

  “I can say with assurance that Ireland is indeed very green.”

  “So I’ve been told,�
�� Nessa said wryly. “Did Allison enjoy the trip?” Nessa had worked with me for years and knew me well, and she must have seen something in my face. “What is it?”

  The kindness of her expression made me want to throw myself on her and bawl. Definitely not my usual style. I must have been more jet-lagged than I thought. “Oh, Nessa . . .” I said weakly.

  Nessa looked around the empty shop and then back at me. “I think we can take this upstairs, if you want to talk about it.”

  “I guess.” I wasn’t sure if I really did, but I wanted an ally and a sounding board before I had to break the news to Cam. I watched as Nessa shut down the cash register, turned off the lights, and locked up. Then I led the way back up the stairs, and the dogs and I went through the whole welcome thing again, compounded now by Nessa’s arrival.

  Inside, Nessa made a beeline for the stove. “You look like you could use a cup of tea.”

  I’m not wild about tea, but I appreciated the gesture. What I really wanted was the mothering that Nessa so happily offered. “Sure. Hey, thanks for taking care of the dogs. I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient.”

  “Not at all. You know I love them.” Nessa had filled the teakettle and set in on the stove, and was now rummaging around for mugs.

  I tried to remember whether I even had tea bags. Apparently I did. I sat in a funk until Nessa had assembled the basics and set a mug of tea in front of me.

  “All right. Tell me what’s going on.”

  I decided I might as well jump straight into it. “Allison didn’t come back with me.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. Ah.” The bitterness of my tone surprised me. “And she didn’t have the guts to tell Cam herself. She wants me to do it.”