Chapter One
For a solid week I'd tried, but I still couldn't figure out how the water got in. It wasn't even raining this morning, but a steady drip from the living room ceiling fell into the pan I'd set on the coffee table below. Now I knew what water torture was all about.
The leak couldn't have come from a bad roof. It had been only two weeks since I moved out of my best friend Avery's house and into the Victorian home I'd bought, with my kite shop, Strings Attached, downstairs and my apartment upstairs. Of course, I'd had the place checked over. Other than pointing out a bit of dry rot, the inspector had given the building a thumbs-up. Yet, in the two weeks since I'd moved in, the leak had gone from a moist spot on the ceiling to a definite—and infuriating—drip.
I set my coffee mug on the counter, tightened the sash of my bathrobe, and pulled over my one and only chair. I lifted it to the table's center, then climbed up next to it. My socks slipped a bit on the table's wooden surface, but I'd be careful. Holding the chair's back, I slowly stepped up and straightened myself to standing.
This probably wasn't the recommended way to get to the ceiling, but I didn't have a ladder handy. Besides, I wasn't in another apartment rental where I could call the landlord to do the dirty work. I was the landlord. Gingerly, I stretched up a hand, then let out a sigh. Thanks to the peaked ceiling, the drip's source was still too far away to touch.
But what was one lousy leak? Other than that, I had no complaints. In the past few months, the pieces of my life had snapped into a pattern I hoped it would hold for the rest of my days. My first shipment of handmade kites had gone out to a chain of exclusive Caribbean resorts, and according to the sales manager, were selling well. Their sales were part of my plan to see me through the winter months, when the kite business slackened.
Plus, tonight I was meeting my boyfriend Jack's twin sister, aunt, and cousin for the first time. It was a sad occasion, since they were gathering due to Jack's uncle's death, but I couldn't help but anticipate our dinner together. And later this morning, a reporter would be coming by the shop to interview me for Sunrise magazine. Life could be worse.
Unbidden, my mother's voice whispered in my ear, Pride goeth before a fall. It wasn't strange to hear Mom's voice, even though I was two hours away in Rock Point with the ocean's roar outside my window, while she was in Portland. Years of her constant advice on upcoming lunar eclipses and the nutritional benefits of various herbs had made hearing her when she wasn't present practically an everyday occurrence. No, what was odd was that she wasn't quoting a Sufi mystic or, at the least, rehashing something that had come up for discussion in her croning circle.
Just then, two things happened. My right foot rocketed out from under me, sending me, the chair, and a pan full of water crashing to the ground.
And I heard a scream.
The scream vibrated through my body as if it had originated in my apartment. It wasn't a happy Oh, you shouldn't have bought that caramel apple for me shriek, either. It was the kind of scream that ratchets up the adrenaline level of the people within earshot and shuts down their thinking processes. At least, it did mine.
I scrambled to my feet and, hands on aching knees, hobbled to the French doors and scanned the street. Nothing. As I stood, unsure of what to do, I heard it again. This time, it shouted my name.
"Emmy!" Someone pounded on the interior door connection Strings Attached and my apartment. "Emmy, you have to get down here, quick!"
At last, my feet responded to my brain. Still in my robe and slippers, I ignored my throbbing shins and dashed down the steps, unlatched the door, and burst into the shop's kitchen-slash-workshop.
"What?" I said, catching my breath.
Stella, my part-time employee and full-time friend, stood rigid, her face blanched paler than her silver hair and her eyes wide. At least she was safe.
"What?" I repeated, this time more quietly.
She turned to the doorway separating the kitchen from the shop's floor. Beyond the closed door was the cashier's counter, and beyond that the house's old living room—now my shop—with its stained-glass windows, fireplace, carved moldings, and waves of beautiful, rippling kites.
"In there," Stella said, nodding toward the front of the house. She swallowed. "You'd better see for yourself."
I cast a curious glance at Stella, then pushed open the door. As I rounded the sales counter, I jumped back. There before me on the floor stretched a woman, faceup, hands at her sides, as if in a morgue. Her purse lay open, its contents spilled. I backed into the counter. A jar of pencils with kite-shaped erasers crashed to the floor behind me.
I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn't come.
"I'll call Sheriff Koppen," Stella said.
I nodded, still staring at the body. The woman was dressed in a stylish take on the classic navy blue suit: asymmetrical cut to the jacket, pegged skirt, and hot pink blouse. Chic, yet professional. I wasn't a fashion maven, but those were no discount-store pumps.
I didn't bother to check her pulse. She was dead, no doubt about it. Her lips were a curious combination of iridescent pink lipstick over bleached flesh, but the backs of her hands and neck that showed were purple with blood pooled beneath the skin. Bruises ringed her throat. My hands flattened behind me against the counter's front.
In the background, Stella's voice, in automatic retired-schoolteacher mode, greeted central dispatch. "No, it's an emergency. No, I will not speak to the Astoria PD. Call the sheriff at home. Now. Tell him to come to Strings Attached." A pause. "That's what I said. He'll know where it is."
Mission apparently accomplished, she hung up and joined me but stayed on the other side of the counter, as if the wooden barrier would protect her. I worked on regaining my breath. My heart still beat double time.
"Well?" she said, looking at the woman on the floor.
"I've never seen her before. Ever."
"Me, neither," Stella said. "I don't think she lives in Rock Point. She looks big-city to me. We could check her wallet."
"Let's wait until the sheriff gets here." A stranger. Dead in my store. Then a thought occurred to me. "Was the door locked?"
Stella's keys were still jumbled on the counter. "I think so."
"How did she get in?" I unglued myself from my spot and passed back into the studio to try the back door. Locked.
Stella and I looked at each other. There was a dead stranger in the shop, but no way she could have gotten here.
Stella sank into a chair. "This is impossible."
"My thoughts exactly."
Chapter Two
I went up the inside stairs in a daze, tossed on some jeans and the first sweater I found—a comfortable old robin's-egg blue cashmere sweater with a hole at the elbow and the smell of last night's campfire clinging to it—and rejoined Stella at the studio's kitchen table. She'd shut the door firmly between us and the dead woman.
Last night, as I'd sat around the fire pit on the beach outside Avery's house with Avery, Jack, and my younger sister, Sunny, a scene like this was the last thing I'd have imagined. Sunny had made a pot of vegetable soup, and we'd all brought mugs of it to the campfire. With winter coming, this might have been the last day for months that we could sit on the big rocks around the fire pit and listen to the ocean and poke at the driftwood fire's hot coals. Something about a fire brought out longer laughs and deeper confessions. I'd miss them.
Jack had sat next to me on a sea-smoothed log. He was unusually quiet, probably because of his uncle's death a few days earlier and the upcoming funeral—tomorrow, in fact. Members of his family were meeting in Rock Point today before traveling together to his uncle's hazelnut orchard in McMinnville for the service. As Sunny handed out wool blankets to keep late October's cold at bay, Jack told me he was sorry for his silence. He didn't need to apologize. I'd glowed with warmth that he'd chosen to spend this time with me. To me, it had been more proof that our relationship was deeper than the go-to-the-movies type of dates I'd had with other men.
But now this. At the knock at Strings Attached's front door, I told Stella, "You stay here. I'll get it."
I averted my gaze from the body and kept to the room's perimeter as I made my way to the door. Sheriff Koppen had to be able to see part of the body from where he stood. His dark ponytail—a nod to his mother's Clatsop Indian heritage—brushed a shoulder as he raised a hand to indicate I shouldn't touch the doorknob.
"Come in," I said through the glass. "It's unlocked."
After a quick glance at the body, he was on his phone summoning help. He crouched, and one hand grasped the dead woman's wrist. He held it a moment, then set it near her body and released it.
Stella pushed open the door between the shop and the kitchen/studio and stood in the doorway while I watched as far back from the body as I could, my arms folded in front of my chest as a shield against the ugliness.
"The crime scene team has to drive down from Astoria. They won't be here for another forty-five minutes, at least," he said and pulled a small pad from his shirt pocket.
"Do you know the victim?"
We shook our heads, me vigorously, and Stella with slow determination.
"Tell me what happened."
"Why don't you start?" I asked Stella.
Stella took a deep breath. "I came to open the shop today, and I found—her." Like me, she steadfastly avoided looking at the body.
"What time was that?"
"A little before nine, I guess. I left my house at quarter to."
"Is this your regular schedule? You normally work today?"
"No," Stella said. She wore jeans and a long raspberry-colored tunic that normally would have echoed the blush in her cheeks. Today, her cheeks were milk white. "Not usually. But Emmy had an interview with a reporter this morning."
"I did—do," I said. Shoot. The reporter was scheduled to show up at ten. By then, Strings Attached would be filled with police taking pictures and dusting for fingerprints and doing who knew what else. And the body. That poor woman. I reached for my phone to call the reporter, but the sheriff raised a hand.
"That can wait. Tell me what you saw and did from the moment you reached the street below Strings Attached," the sheriff said.
"Can we go to the kitchen?" Stella said. She let her gaze drop a split second to the body, then lifted it with a plea to Sheriff Koppen.
His voice softened. "I'm sorry, Ms. Hart. We need to stay here until the crime scene team arrives. Close your eyes, if you'd like."
Stella obeyed. She held the doorframe to steady herself. "It was misty on my walk here"—Stella lived on the bluff above Rock Point—"so I kept my head down for most of the trip. When I got to Strings Attached, I looked up and saw Emmy moving around in her apartment. She was near the front window."
"My roof was leaking. I was checking it out." Had it really been only half an hour ago?
"What next?" Sheriff Koppen said.
"I walked up the steps to the shop, thinking I'd put the kettle on before I set out the sidewalk sign."
"What did you see when you looked at the shop? Think carefully."
Stella shook her head. "Nothing unusual. The windows were dark, like always."
Stella would have come up the porch's wooden stairs to the old front door with its beveled-glass window. It wasn't unusual that she wouldn't have looked in. She knew what she'd see—or so she'd thought.
"Any noise?" the sheriff asked.
"No. Nothing." She opened her eyes and met the sheriff's gaze.
"Go on. Think back. You're on the porch."
Stella bit her lip and released it. "The shop's front door has a bolt. That's all."
I hadn't installed a burglar alarm. Despite the fact that I'd gotten myself involved in two murder cases since opening my shop, Rock Point was fairly quiet, crime-wise.
"And?" the sheriff prompted.
She closed her eyes again. "I unlocked the door and pushed it open. Emmy had hung a row of kites near the window that we're waiting to ship out, so it was darker than usual. When my eyes adjusted, I saw the body."
I'd been holding my breath. I forced myself to let it out. The sheriff was silent, letting Stella continue.
"At first I thought maybe Emmy had dropped a bolt of nylon from the kites she was working on, but then I saw it was a woman, and she clearly was—I mean, she wasn't—you know." Stella clasped her hands. "I screamed."
"She did," I said. "I heard it and ran downstairs."
"Stop there a moment," Sheriff Koppen said. "The door was locked when you came in?"
"I think so." She shot me a glance. "I tried to remember earlier. I'm sure I put the key in the lock, and the tumbler turned, but I'm not sure the bolt pulled back."
The sheriff turned to the shop's windows. They were original to the house. Each clasped shut with a simple latch, and all the latches were closed. He pushed back the kites Stella had mentioned earlier, which covered one window, and they fluttered pastel as they scooted down the rod that held them. That window also latched shut.
"Pardon me," he said and passed by Stella to the kitchen. Pulling a glove from his jacket pocket and putting it on, he tested the back door. The knob didn't move. It, too, was locked. "The bolt?"
On the back door, I normally used both the doorknob's lock and the bolt. Since there was a window in the kitchen door and someone could break the glass, reach through, and flip the bolt open, I kept a key on a string hanging out of reach.
"The key is on that bit of kite line below the cupboard," I told the sheriff.
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