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  BE STILL MY BEADING HEART

  Janice Peacock

  Booktrope Editions

  Seattle WA 2016

  Copyright 2016 Janice Peacock

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

  Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

  Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

  No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

  Inquiries about additional permissions should be directed to: [email protected]

  Cover Design by Greg Simanson

  Edited by Ellen Margulies

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

  EPUB ISBN 978-1-5137-0834-8

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Preface

  Be Still My Beading Heart

  About the Author

  Connect with Janice Peacock

  Books in the Glass Bead Mystery Series

  Sample Chapters of High Strung, A Glass Bead Mystery

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Sample Chapters of A Bead in the Hand, Book Two in the Glass Bead Mystery Series

  One

  Two

  Three

  More Great Reads from Booktrope

  This short story takes place four months after A Bead in the Hand, Book Two in the Glass Bead Mystery Series.

  “HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY,” Val said, as she placed a small package with a bright pink bow in my hands with a flourish. She ushered me over to her sofa—the same color as the bow—sat down, and patted the cushion next to her. “Come on, you’ve got to open it.”

  I tore open the sparkly wrapping paper and found a chrome-colored bottle of Chanel No. 6 perfume.

  “Oh, Val, you shouldn’t have. You really, really shouldn’t have.” And it was true; she really should not have bought this for me, or anyone else. According to Val, or at least according to the street vendor she bought it from, Chanel No. 6 was better than Chanel No. 5. I’d smelled the stuff before, and I didn’t agree.

  “I thought you could use it when you go on your big Valentine’s date.”

  “I don’t have one,” I said.

  “What? That’s simply not possible. What about Zach?”

  “Zachary—remember, he doesn’t like to be called Zach.” The stern detective I met last year during a murder investigation turned out to be much nicer than I initially thought, though he was still stiff and serious most of the time.

  “He’s a hunk, no matter what you call him,” Val said with a wink.

  “I haven’t heard from Zachary. I’m not holding my breath,” I said.

  “And Ryan, what about him?”

  “He’s working all weekend. He gets all the worst shifts.” I usually didn’t get much attention from the opposite sex, other than from my attitudinal cat, Gumdrop, but I don’t think he counts, nor does Stanley the Bassett hound. The dog snuffled into the living room at that moment, sidled up to me, and gave me a slobbery kiss on the arm. That was probably the closest thing to romance I’d see this Valentine’s Day, as usual. I’d spent plenty of Valentine’s Days—and many nights as well—at home with Gumdrop, and with Ben and Jerry—their New York Super Fudge ice cream, that is.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I hope one of them comes to their senses and takes you out. You could use a little fun.”

  “I’ll probably work in my studio tonight. I’m fine, really.”

  As a glass beadmaker, I spend most of my days working at a two thousand degree torch melting glass. Lately I’d been making beads all day, every day to fill orders placed by galleries and bead shops. I love working with glass beads, and having such high demand for my jewelry was an added bonus. But it was exhausting working at the torch non-stop and assembling necklaces and earrings when I was too burnt out to continue melting glass.

  “What about you? You must have a hot date lined up for tonight,” I said. Val had had a string of questionable boyfriends ever since she moved in next door. I wondered who the next unsuitable man might be.

  “I’m going out with this hot new guy. Sort of a diamond in the rough.” I knew all too well that one of Val’s hobbies was to give a makeover to anyone who would sit still long enough for her to work her magic. “He said he’d pick me up in his Porsche. With a nice car like that, he must be respectable. Right?”

  “I’m sure you’ll have fun, you always do. I’ve got to dash. I’m going to drop off some new necklaces at a gallery downtown.” Heading toward my car, The Ladybug, I shoved the bottle of Chanel No. 6 in my purse. I’d figure out what to do with it later.

  The Ladybug is my red convertible VW bug—and I love her almost as much as Gumdrop. When I left my dreary life in Miami behind, I loaded the car with just a few possessions—and my cat, of course—and we drove all the way to Seattle together. I christened her “The Ladybug” with a bottle of Diet Coke at the side of the road during my move to the Pacific Northwest. The Ladybug was more than a set of wheels to me. She had helped me follow my dreams and finally live the creative and fulfilling life I yearned for.

  I headed toward the 7th Street Glass Gallery, an up-and-coming shop in Seattle’s Pioneer Square district. I circled the blocks nearest to the gallery before giving up and parking on the street, a little too close to a red curb to be, strictly speaking, legal. I admit it: My car was fully in a red zone. I knew my trip to the gallery would be fast. I popped the trunk and juggled a tray of loose beads while I pulled out the box of necklaces beneath it. In my rush, a few beads fell into the gutter at my feet. I grabbed them and tossed them back into the tray. I hoped that the beads hadn’t broken because I needed to take them to Rosie’s bead shop after I was done here. I closed the trunk and sprinted toward the gallery.

  The 7th Street Glass Gallery was stunning with its high ceilings and black walls. Vibrantly colored glass art shimmered on shelves and cases around the room.

  “Jax, so nice of you to come down,” Susan, the gallery owner, said. Her dress was the same color as the walls—pitch black. She had matching sleek black hair.

  “Sure, no problem. Here’s the box of new necklaces you requested,” I said, placing the tray on an onyx countertop.

  “And here’s the necklace that I’m returning to you. I’m sorry it didn’t work for us,” Susan said, handing me a small bag with my rejected jewelry inside. “Let me show you some of the newest work in the gallery.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got to run. I’d love to see it another time,” I said as I sailed out the door. I trotted down the street. Turning the corner, I expected to see my car but instead had a sickening realization:

  The Ladybug was gone.

  Maybe this wasn’t where I parked her. In my rush to get to the gallery I hadn’t paid much attention to where I was. I turned in a circle to get my bearings. The City Hall Park was across the street from where I’d left the car, I remembered that. And it was right across the street from where I was standing now. I looked down and spotted a red heart-shaped bead—one of mine—sparkling in the gutter at my feet. It must have fallen out of the bead tray and somehow I missed
it when I picked up the others from the ground. This bead was proof that I hadn’t forgotten where I’d parked. I pocketed the bead, hoping it would be my lucky charm and guide me to my car.

  There were a couple of homeless men sitting on a park bench across the street. Other than that, the block was deserted.

  “Excuse me, did you happen to see the red VW bug that was parked over there?” I asked as I crossed the street toward them.

  “We didn’t see nothing. At least not for free,” said one of the men.

  “We might remember something if we weren’t so hungry,” said the other.

  “Right. I get it. Here’s a twenty,” I said, pulling a bill out of my purse. I placed the twenty in one man’s hand and it disappeared into his pocket.

  “Hey! Don’t rip me off, man!” said the other man.

  I pulled out another twenty and gave it to him. “Okay guys, fair and square. Now, what can you tell me?”

  “Sorry, lady. We just got here a minute ago. So what we saw the whole time we were here was that empty spot there on the street.”

  “You said you’d tell me what happened to my car!” But it was more than my car that was missing. There was a tray of handmade beads—made by these hands—that were in the trunk. They were the beads I was taking to Rosie’s shop, worth upwards of seven hundred dollars. They had taken me days to make. The thought of losing them, as well as The Ladybug, left a lump in my throat.

  “We told you we might have seen something. We’re telling you what we saw: Nothing.”

  I stomped off. I was out forty bucks and no closer to figuring out what had happened. I pressed the number for Tessa on my cell phone.

  “Unless this is a crisis of epic proportions, I can’t talk now,” Tessa said, shouting, the sound of her teenage daughters’ argument in the background nearly drowning her out.

  “It is a crisis of epic proportions. Someone has stolen The Ladybug.”

  “Dio Mio,” Tessa said. She always lapsed into Italian anytime there was a crisis—which this clearly was—or when she was drunk. “How can I help?”

  “Can you come and get me?” I gave her the address and she promised to be there in a flash.

  The homeless men had moved from their park bench, likely having gone off to spend their windfall. I hoped they’d spend some of it on a decent meal. They certainly looked like they could use one. I needed to call the police department to report my stolen car. Taking a seat on the bench, I found a listing for Seattle’s stolen vehicle hotline on my phone and dialed the number.

  I glanced up from my telephone as I waited for someone to answer the hotline and spotted a tall, broad-shouldered police officer walking down the street. A tow truck was driving slowly next to him. It was Ryan Shaw, Seattle’s newest police officer, and one of the most handsome men who’d ever been interested in me. As the lowest man on the totem pole in the police department, he’d been given the thankless job of working in parking and traffic, responsible for towing illegally parked cars, among other things. I watched him from a distance. He was too far away to get his attention without making a fool of myself. Ryan shouted into the cab of the truck, but I couldn’t hear what he said. He continued walking down the street, away from me, clipboard in one hand, looking as hunky (as Val would say) as ever in his neatly pressed uniform. Oh, how I loved a man in a uniform.

  I watched as the tow truck driver hooked a car’s front bumper to his rig, yanked it out of its spot, and dragged it down the street. I shuddered at the thought of that happening to The Ladybug.

  “Hello, Seattle stolen vehicle hotline,” chirped the woman who had answered my call. “Hello?”

  “Oh, crap.” My car hadn’t been stolen; she’d been towed away—by Ryan, no less.

  “I beg your pardon?” the woman said.

  “Sorry. I don’t think I need to report a stolen vehicle after all,” I said, hanging up the phone.

  Tessa pulled up to the curb and I climbed into her van. It was messy as usual. She grabbed me in a warm hug that only a best friend can give.

  “Don’t worry, Jax, we’ll find The Ladybug. Here, I stopped and bought you a coffee,” she said, releasing her grip on me and handing me a cup. Tessa knew that I could cope much better if I was well caffeinated. “I can’t believe someone stole your car.”

  “Actually, no. I think it was towed,” I said, feeling foolish that I had parked the way I did and my car had been unceremoniously dragged away to an impound lot. I took a swig of my extra-large non-fat latte, which brightened my mood a tiny bit.

  “What? I’m sure that was totally uncalled for! I mean, they’re just randomly towing cars now?” Tessa asked. “It’s not like you were parked illegally or something.”

  “I hate to admit this, but my car was partially—okay, mostly—in a red zone.”

  Tessa sighed and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, a sure sign of her disapproval. She drove in silence while I plugged the address for the towing office into her GPS. A few minutes later we arrived at a stark cinder block building, Seattle’s towing office.

  “This must be the place,” Tessa said. As usual, there was nowhere to park.

  “Why don’t you circle the block, and I can call you or wave you down once I’ve got my car.” I jumped out of the van and headed into the building. When it was my turn to be helped, I stepped up to the counter—a sheet of bulletproof glass between the customer service representative and me.

  “Hi, I’m Jax—oh, that’s Jacqueline—O’Connell. I think my car was towed. It’s a red VW Beetle.” The woman behind the glass typed something on her keyboard, looking intently at the computer screen. She pulled her reading glasses down her long nose and looked at me.

  “What’s the VIN?” she asked.

  “The what? Can’t you look up the car by my name? My driver’s license?”

  “No, we really need the car’s VIN—that’s the Vehicle ID Number.” She pulled her readers so far down that they were at risk of falling off the tip of her nose and read what was on the screen in front of her. “I do see here that a red VW was towed this morning. It might be your car. Without the VIN I can’t be sure.”

  “Can I go see it? It’s got to be my car,” I said.

  “Sure, go around the back and wait at the chain-link fence. One of our storage staff members will bring it out for you. Once you identify your car, come back in with the registration and you can settle up your bill.”

  I shuddered at the thought of what I’d owe for this mess I’d gotten myself into.

  “How much is it?”

  “You’ve got to pay the citation, plus the cost of the towing and storage. The woman pushed her glasses all the way back up her long greasy nose. “Looks like it’ll be two hundred eighty-nine dollars.”

  “Two eighty-nine? That’s ridiculous!”

  “Sorry, miss. You break the law, you’ve got to pay.”

  Grumbling to myself, I headed out the door. As long as I got The Ladybug back, the hassle and the cost would be worth it. I had learned my lesson—there’d be no more questionable parking for me. As I stood at the chain-link fence, a light drizzle started to fall, getting harder and harder until it was a steady downpour. The Seattle weather really gets on my nerves at times, although not enough to give up my life here and move back to Miami. I did what every other Seattleite does: I flipped up the hood on my jacket.

  There was a gated entry marked CSI Evidence Storage, Automotive Unit, at the end of a breezeway between two low-slung buildings past the chain-link fence where I was standing. I was surprised to see Detective Zachary Grant exiting from one of the buildings and locking the door behind him. He must have been working on a homicide case that involved a car.

  Zachary spotted me standing in the rain. He pulled an umbrella out of his briefcase and popped it open as he rushed toward me.

  “Here, share my umbrella with me.” H
e stepped close to me so the umbrella covered my head as well as his, then he pulled off his water-streaked glasses and put them in his shirt pocket. Every time that man took off his glasses he went from being Clark Kent to being Superman.

  “Now, tell me, what are you doing here?” he asked, stepping a little closer to me. Oh my, I certainly could get used to this.

  “My car was towed,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that if we were any closer we’d be standing in each other’s shoes.

  “Tsk, tsk, our Seattle PD is really on top of parking violators,” he said in mock accusation. The stern detective was not so stern today.

  “My little violation is about to cost me nearly three hundred dollars,” I said. “And it looks like the PD’s new officer, Ryan Shaw, is the one responsible for towing my car.”

  “He has been quite an asset to the department, even with only a couple of weeks on the job. He takes his duties very seriously. In fact, I bet he’d tow your car even if he knew it was yours,” Zachary said.

  Would Ryan have had my car towed, even if he’d known The Ladybug was mine? He had seen my car when I first met him at a bead show in Portland Oregon, but he hadn’t seen her since he’d arrived in Seattle. It was possible he wouldn’t recognize, or even remember, my car. The Ladybug did have an I Love Beads bumper sticker plastered on the back. If Ryan had been paying attention, he might have realized that she was my car and he could have called to warn me that it was about to be towed. Ryan was slowly dropping to the bottom of my favorite person list, especially if he had done something as heartless as dragging away my car.

  Having Zachary stand so close to me under his umbrella was making me sizzle. I felt like I’d been working at a hot torch for hours on a sweltering summer day. I needed to step back, but I couldn’t seem to do it. It was such a romantic moment, even with the din of forklifts moving cars on the other side of the chain-link fence.

  “Hm. Ah…hem,” Zachary cleared his throat, a sure sign he was nervous. “I suppose you already have plans for tonight.”