High Strung: A Glass Bead Mystery (The Glass Bead Mystery Series) Read online

  HIGH

  STRUNG

  A Glass Bead Mystery

  Janice Peacock

  Vetrai Press

  www.glassbeadmystery.com

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  HIGH STRUNG, A Glass Bead Mystery

  Copyright ©2014 by Janice Peacock

  ISBN: 978-0-9905705-1-6 (eBook)

  Cover art: Tina Curiel and Lindsey Moore

  Cover layout: The Printed Page

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the author and publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages.

  Printed in the United States of America by Vetrai Press

  For all the bead ladies I know and love

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ONE

  Great-Aunt Rita died two years ago on Miami’s hottest day of the year. You’d think the old woman had died of the heat, but she didn’t live with us in Miami. She lived in Seattle, Washington, in a house she’d split right down the middle.

  A month after my aunt died, a stiff white envelope arrived at the apartment I shared with my boyfriend Jerry. It contained a letter written by Great-Aunt Rita, and forwarded to me by the attorney settling her estate.

  That letter would change my life forever.

  Dear Jacqueline,

  I’ve always felt a connection to you, that you and I were much the same. I know inside of your tired heart is a woman waiting to start living. I’m going to help you break free. My attorney has my Last Will and Testament. In it, I have given you my house, as well as a savings account with a substantial sum of money.

  Mr. Prescott can fill you in on the details. My stipulation is only this: You must live in my house, and find your creative passion. I hope my gift helps you live a life you love.

  You are in my heart,

  Aunt Rita

  Mr. Prescott’s business card had fluttered to the floor.

  Dumbfounded, I sat in the dim kitchen for a long time, staring at the card, rubbing it between two fingers. I’d been sitting there so long I hadn’t realized it was dark outside. Jerry wasn’t home from work yet.

  Did I have the guts to call the attorney?

  It was now or never.

  “Yello?” said the voice on the other end of the phone.

  Who answers the phone by saying YELLO?

  “Uh, yes, Mr. Prescott. This is Jax—Jacqueline—O’Connell. I’m the great-niece of Rita…uh, uh….” I couldn’t remember her last name. I could barely remember my own last name right now.

  “Oh, yes, Ms. O’Connell. You are calling about the Rita Haglund property,” he said smoothly. He did this every day. I didn’t.

  “I’ve never been given anything in a will before. What happens now?”

  “Well, I suppose you come to Seattle, take ownership of the house, and live in it.”

  “But what if I don’t want to move there? What if I like it here?” As I said the words, I knew they were a lie. I was tired of being here in Miami, the land of pink flamingos and bugs the size of golf balls. I hated this apartment with its brown shag carpet and harvest gold appliances, still around from the 1970s.

  “Unfortunately, if you choose not to live in the house, I’m afraid I’ve been instructed to sell the property and donate the proceeds to charity.”

  Seriously, Aunt Rita put this stipulation on her house? I couldn’t believe it. I saw her once a year when she’d fly out to my parents’ house for a few weeks around Christmas. It was her chance to get away from the cold Seattle weather. I felt close to Aunt Rita, but close enough for her to give me a house? It was hard to come to grips with. Everyone in my family described my great-aunt as a “free spirit,” which was code for “an artist who never married and never had kids.”

  “Have you seen this house, Mr. Prescott?” I asked, hoping I could get some idea about whether this was a reasonable thing to consider.

  “Yes, as matter of fact, I helped your aunt complete her trust in her living room a few months before she passed away. She never had children and wanted her home to go to someone in her family who she thought could use it to change his or her life. She selected you.”

  I could use a life-changing experience. “Is it nice? If you were given this house, would you be happy?”

  “Oh yes, it is a wonderful house. But it does need some renovation. In her later years she’d let the house fall into some disrepair. Oh, and you might like to know it is, in fact,two houses. Your Aunt Rita was a savvy lady.She had a big house, and she was the only one living in it. She split it and made a rental unit out of one side.”

  “Who’s living there now?”

  “The property is vacant, and is ready for you.”

  “When do I need to give you my decision?”

  “Officially, you have until the end of the month.”

  “What? That’s the day after tomorrow!”

  “Why, yes it is. You’ve got some thinking to do, Ms. O’Connell.”

  I hung up the phone slowly, in a daze.

  Jerry came home later that evening and went straight for the TV.

  “What’s for dinner, babe?” He asked, not even looking my way.

  “Seattle…” I said, returning the letter to its envelope, and pressing it flat on the table.

  “Seattle? Is that a new restaurant or something?”

  “No, it’s a city. Seattle, Washington.” I stared out the window at the dark sky, the streetlights starting to blink on.

  “Well, babe, let’s order a pizza, I’m starving and the game’s about to start,” Jerry said, plopping himself into the vinyl recliner, as he clicked the remote. The announcer’s voice blasted from the TV.

  Frightened by the sound, Gumdrop jumped into my lap, staring up at me with his big green eyes. My cat thought he had psychic powers. Or, more precisely, I thought he had psychic powers.

  “What do you think, Gumdrop?” I asked the fluffy gray cat.

  “Pepperoni,” yelled Jerry.

  Gumdrop stared at me, trying to send me a message,

  Jerry tossed the phone to me. “Thick crust.”

  I took the phone and dialed.

  “Hello, Mr. Prescott? My answer is YES.”

  I tossed the phone back to Jerry
. “I think you’re going to have to order your own pizza from now on. Maybe you want to get a small one, since you’ll be eating alone.”

  TWO

  I was working in the studio making a glass bead, the torch blazing, when the phone rang. I don’t usually answer the phone when I’m in the middle of manipulating a molten blob of glass just inches from me. To make things extra-challenging, I can’t stop twirling the hot glass because if I do, the whole thing will get saggy and out of balance. I was using both hands, and most of my brain, I’d cranked the volume of my eighties playlist up to eleven on the iPod, and a giant fan ran loudly in the ceiling.

  As the little calypso tune played over and over on my phone, I knew I needed to answer. It was Val, and the fact she was calling instead of barging in my front door meant trouble.

  “Oh! Jax! Ahhhhgggg! Help! FIRE!” I heard the sound of the phone clattering to the ground. I jammed the bead I was making into the kiln, hoping it would be salvageable, and flicked off the torch. Then I ran out of my studio, through the house, out the front door, and made a quick U turn into Val’s door. As I burst in, I was immediately hit with the smell of burnt chocolate.

  “Val, what happened?” I yelled as I ran toward the kitchen, a cloud of gray smoke lingering just above my head.

  “Oh, no! Jax, it’s awful! Awful!” Val said, stepping back from the smoldering oven.

  “You look terrible.” She was covered in chocolate from her elbows to the tips of her shiny red fingernails. Little bits of brown goo hung from her fluffy red bangs.

  “What did you do? Why did you call me in such a panic?”

  “I didn’t think an exploding cake was a reason to call 911, so I called you instead,” Val said.

  “Well, you could have at least told me you weren’t over here dying. I was worried one of your crazy boyfriends had come back to visit and was attacking you.”

  “Oh, only about half my boyfriends have been crazy. Still, I suppose that means there are a lot of crazy guys out there who are not particularly happy with me. Hmmmm…I’ll have to evaluate my choice in men sometime,” she said, attempting to wipe the chocolate cake batter off her face but instead just adding more across her cheek.

  “What were you trying to do here—make something new?” I said, grabbing a dishtowel so I could mop up some of the mess.

  “I was experimenting with a new recipe that had chocolate and chipotle peppers. I thought it would be a good combo, you know—chocolate and spice—it’s all the rage in the trendy new restaurants.”

  I looked at her doubtfully.

  “I don’t know what happened. I guess the peppers had something in them that caused a chemical reaction with another ingredient. I was getting ready to pull the cake out of the oven, and I looked in. All I could see was this molten lava pouring out of the top of the cake pan! Everything is cooler now, but wow, it was scary there. That’s why I called you. I thought you’d know what to do, since you work with fire and molten glass.”

  “I’m not sure what to do, other than get a hose and spray the place down, including you.”

  “Don’t you dare. You’ll ruin the new throw pillows,” she said indignantly.

  I glanced over at a pile of animal print pillows with pink fur trim. No great loss if those awful things got destroyed.

  “Let’s take a look in here,” I said tentatively, bending over and peeking inside the smoldering oven. “Actually, what’s left in here looks okay.” I jabbed my finger into the crust of the cake still in the pan.

  “Ow! That’s really hot.” My hands had become used to high temperatures from working with hot glass, but this was a little more than I could handle.

  I blew on the brown goop, and then tasted it. So far, so good. I grabbed a wooden spoon off the counter and plopped myself down on the floor. I gingerly pulled the pan out of the oven with a dishtowel, and scooped up some batter. “Yum. This is great. Have a spoonful.”

  With a not-so-graceful thump, Val sat down on the floor next to me, grabbed the spoon and had a taste. “You’re right,it’s really yummy! I’ll have to try to perfect the recipe and see if I can make it so it doesn’t explode.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “exploding desserts are not good. We should never, ever, waste chocolate.”

  Fortified with spicy half-cooked cake batter, we cleaned up the kitchen. Since I resisted using the hose to clean up, Val’s new zebra pillows were safe for now. Val still looked like a wreck and needed a shower.

  “Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up?” I said. “I’m heading over to Tessa’s to help get her studio ready for some beadmaking demos, plus I’ve got to give my necklace and beads to the JOWL lady for the exhibition at Aztec Beads.”

  “Jowl? I don’t think it’s nice to say that a woman has jowls. I hope you don’t say it to her face.”

  “It stands for ‘Jewelry-makers of Washington League.’ Someone thought that was better than Beaders of Washington League. Apparently they were worried people would called them ‘Bowel,’ rather than ‘Bowl’”

  “Someone decided JOWL was the best choice?” asked Val, examining the chocolate gunk wedged under her long fingernails. “Whoever that was didn’t understand that jowls are not something anyone should ever want to be associated with. I personally plan to never have jowls, or date anyone who has them.”

  Time to leave before I heard any more of Val’s diatribe about jowls or other signs (heaven forbid!) of aging. I glanced at my phone.

  “I’ve got to get out of here, Tessa hates it when I’m late.” Tessa Ricci had been my best friend since kindergarten. She was punctual, bossy, and petite. In other words, she was the opposite of me in almost every way.

  I popped my head back into Val’s doorway. “Oh, if the painter comes by, let him into my side of the house, so he can give me a bid on painting the kitchen.”

  I went out Val’s front door and made the usual U turn back into my side of the house. I nearly stepped on Gumdrop, who was standing in the open doorway.

  “Oh, Gumdrop, you are a good kitty for not running away. You do such a great job as my guard-cat.”

  I had left the front door open when I went to rescue Val, and he could have easily made a break for it. Gummie was an inside cat. He loved the idea of an adventure, but he never had actually been brave enough to go outside.

  “Come on, big fella, I’ll get a nice treat for you.”

  I picked him up around his fat gray belly, brought him out to the kitchen, and set him down on the white tile counter. He probably shouldn’t have been on the kitchen counter. But, I wash the counters, and they were old and funky like the rest of the kitchen, so he wasn’t going to damage them. And I didn’t really cook much. And I lived alone, so no one complained. It wasn’t really that bad he was on the counter. Really.

  I pulled out a green ice cube from the cute pink plastic tray in the freezer and popped it into the cat’s empty food bowl. As soon as Gumdrop saw the frozen cube of catnip, he went wild, jumping down from the counter, landing on the bowl, and skidding across the hardwood floor into the hallway. He started writhing around, licking the frozen lump, pawing at it, and pressing his furry head into it. “Gummie, you are a little drug addict,” I said, leaving him to his vice and heading to my bedroom to get changed.

  I walked down the long hall of my skinny house, with all of the rooms set in a straight line. The kitchen was up front by the entry, followed by a comfy living room full of “vintage” furniture—if vintage was a good spin on the phrase “used items from my dead aunt and cast-offs from friends.”

  I had an office that doubled as a guest room, and it had become the overflow room for my studio. Tessa called this room the “Bead Lair,” but I’d been trying to break her of that habit.

  Next was my bedroom. It was tiny but cozy, and smack in the middle of it was a beautiful cherrywood sleigh bed I’d inherited from Aunt Rita along with the house itself.

  All the way in the back was my bead studio.

  Val’s side of the duplex w
as a mirror image of mine except at the back, where she had one less room than I did. My side of the duplex had a room that ran the full back width of the house, giving me a doublewide space for the bead and jewelry work I did. Working with beads full time wasn’t exactly what I thought I’d be doing with my life, but here I was, and I was happy.

  In the bedroom, I looked in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. What was I going to do with myself? I was a mess. I’d been working in the studio all morning, making a few last-minute beads for the big events planned for this weekend—a bead sale, plus beadmaking and jewelry classes. My usual outfit was jeans and a t-shirt, long sleeves in the winter and short sleeves in the summer. I’d promised myself I’d try and look my best for this important weekend.

  The t-shirt I was wearing was speckled with chocolate, thanks to Val’s culinary catastrophe. I changed into a clean top and decided jeans and clogs were going to have to be good enough for today. I ran my hands through my light brown hair—my version of combing since I’d cut it short.

  No one should ever arrive at a bead event without wearing beads. I found some fun earrings, each with a purple cone-shaped bead dangling from the ear wire. I knew I’d have to try and dress better tomorrow. Val was forever after me to look nice and act pretty. Or was it look pretty and act nice? I could never remember. I wasn’t particularly good at either—at least not at the same time.

  I went back to the studio to get ready to go. Stacks of beads in boxes and trays were in every corner and on every shelf. When I created jewelry, I used all sorts of beads to complement the ones I made. My stash had everything from the tiniest seed beads to large silver pendants from Thailand. It was my creative zone, the place I was happiest—a place I could work and play, and most of the time there was no difference between the two.

  This week the chaos wasn’t too bad. Since I’d had a group of Girl Scouts over last week for a jewelry-making demonstration, I had had to clean up a little, well, a lot, before they arrived. I’d put the bits and pieces of necklaces in progress into small ceramic bowls to try and corral everything from each project into the same place: sets of glass beads, along with all the components to complete a necklace, silver beads, other small beads I’d purchased, and a clasp. Since making jewelry was less intense than working at a torch that spewed a foot-long flame, I’d work on necklaces and earrings each night to relax.