Wreath of Deception Read online

  “But you’ll have to have something for everyone, Jo,” she’d said, when Jo first wanted the store to concentrate on what she knew best—jewelry making.

  Good advice, but it required such a huge stretch for Jo. She had been involved in her specialty so long, she had to relearn, or in some cases discover anew, many of the other aspects of arts and crafts. Soon she would be expected to be the knowledgeable source of information for her customers on all corners. Could she handle it?

  “Jo, while you’re back there, can you grab the broom?” Carrie called out.

  Now that, at least, she could handle. “What’d you spill?” Jo called back.

  “Oh, nothing much. Uh, do we really need to have all the beads separated by color?”

  “What!” Jo shot out the door.

  “Just kidding.” Carrie stood near a revolving rack of craft magazines. “But you might want to pick up a mousetrap or two later on.”

  “Uh-oh.” Jo trotted over and looked down at a corner niche Carrie pointed to. Several black, disgusting mouse droppings lay there.

  “Ugh! Think I can get the landlord to take care of it?”

  “Well, probably not as quickly as you’ll need. You don’t want little mousies setting up nests in your lovely yarns, there. I can get Dan to do it.”

  “No, Dan’s done enough.” Carrie’s husband had pitched in to set up Jo’s fixtures and racks, running his tools for hours, saving Jo a bundle. “I’ll take care of it.” Jo said it bravely, adding emptying a mousetrap to her list of things that as a single woman she now needed to do, but would really, really rather not.

  Carrie lifted an eyebrow, but said, “Okay,” and proceeded to sweep up the little mess.

  “Oh! I just remembered,” Jo cried. “My wreath! I haven’t hung my autumn wreath on the front door yet!” She went to the back of the store to her office cubicle, where she had left the carefully wrought creation.

  “It’s beautiful,” Carrie commented as Jo carried it forward. “And the perfect thing to welcome your arts and crafts customers. It’s like having a sign that says, ‘You too can make this—come in and learn how.’”

  Jo smiled. “I thought it turned out rather well. I plan to have new ones for each season.” She took the wreath outside and hung it on the brass hook that Dan had already installed for her, then stepped back to look, pleased with the arrangement of dried flowers and berries, all in lovely autumn colors on a circle of graceful leaves. Her eyes roamed contentedly over the entire storefront. Her storefront, with her name on it: Jo’s Craft Corner. She let out a satisfied sigh. Until her brain registered the clock just inside the window.

  “Oh, Lord, look at the time!” Jo hurried back inside, dashing to the storeroom for the forgotten paints. “When did we tell the clown to show up?” she called out to Carrie.

  “Not until eleven.”

  “Good. Hopefully the Abbotsvillian slug-a-beds will start straggling in by then. At what I’m paying him per hour, I’d hate to waste too many of his minutes.”

  “Charlie would have been glad to do it.”

  Jo remembered the look on Carrie’s fifteen-year-old when his mother first suggested it: the flash of horror and panic quickly masked by his usual gloomy disdain. What an interesting clown he would have made.

  “Being a clown is hard, Carrie. It takes a lot of training,” Jo said, restating much of what she had said that first time to save Charlie from what he clearly considered a fate worse than death. “The guy the agency’s sending is a pro. He’ll be great.”

  “These shoes are killing me,” Cuddles the Clown moaned through his painted smile. “And the heat out there! Nobody told me you wouldn’t have an awning! These costumes don’t come air-conditioned, you know.”

  “Here, have some more cold punch.” Jo handed him what must have been his fifth cup, and he’d only been working an hour. At this rate she might have to run out in the middle of the day for more. Cuddles should have called himself SpongeBob. But at least he had the sense to limit his complaining to the lulls between customers.

  Shrill screeches sounded from the sidewalk as a family with twin toddlers made its way to the door. Jo handed Cuddles his basket of freebie handouts and flyers, and took back the empty punch cup.

  Cuddles’s shoulders drooped. “Great. Two of them. Wonder which one will kick me first.”

  “It’s happy time, Cuddles,” Carrie called out. “Just keep thinking of that paycheck at the end of the day.”

  Cuddles muttered, and tramped over to the front door. “Hey, kids!” he cried, flinging it open and inducing frightened screams.

  Carrie rolled her eyes at Jo.

  “He’s better with the older ones,” Jo said, smiling weakly.

  “At least he hasn’t actually chased anyone down the street. Yet.”

  “It’s probably too hard to run in those floppy shoes.”

  “And he’d get sooo hot in that costume, too. Good morning!” Carrie greeted the latest arrivals. “Welcome to Jo’s Craft Corner.”

  The young mother, who showed a remarkable ability to tune out the screams of her children, looked around with delight and declared, “I’ve been just dying for you to finally open. There’s nothing like this around for miles. Do you have stuff for scrapbooking? I have piles of pictures of the twins, and I saw what my cousin Ali did with her photos and I want to try it too.”

  “We have a whole section over here,” Jo said, struggling not to flinch at the continuing shrieks.

  “And we’ll be starting classes on scrapbooking next week. Tuesdays, at seven,” Carrie added, as Jo led her customer to the scrapbooking area.

  “Oooh, that’d be terrific!” the woman chirped. “Honey,” she called to her husband, who had been left holding on to the wailing toddlers, “put my name on the list, will you?”

  As she browsed through the scrapbooking area, more people walked in, heads bobbing to the circus music that played outside, thanks to Dan’s sound-system setup. They glanced around the store with pleased oohs and ahs, and before long Jo was busier than she could have dreamed, showing customers around, explaining about various decorative items, ringing up sales.

  The ca-ching sound was music to her ears, but just as important was the steadily growing list of women interested in taking her various workshops. This wasn’t going to be a one-day wonder. She was actually drawing what might become regular customers. She caught Carrie’s eye at one point, as they crossed paths in mid-bustle, and Carrie gave her a thumbs-up sign.

  Things were going great—except, that is, for the miserable clown. He was in and out continuously with complaints: the music drove him nuts; the kids, the heat, the shoes drove him nuts; if his regular job paid him a decent wage he wouldn’t have to take these kinds of gigs. Carrie’s sullen teenager, Jo thought, would have been a regular David Letterman next to him.

  Amazingly, though, Cuddles didn’t seem to be having a negative effect—except on Jo’s patience. His presence alone in his colorful costume, combined with the cheery music, appeared to be enough for the brief time her customers came in contact with him. One woman, astonishingly, even asked her for his name, explaining she’d like to have him for her child’s next birthday party. Jo stared at the woman openmouthed, suspicions of child abuse leaping to mind. But wide eyes returned her gaze innocently, so Jo suggested she ask Cuddles himself for his card, and hoped the prospect of another job might lighten him up some.

  She continued to be busy enough to forget about this regrettable accessory to her grand opening, until, at two minutes to four, Cuddles came dragging in.

  “My time’s up,” he announced, leaning one weary elbow on the counter.

  “So it is,” Jo agreed in surprise after glancing up at the clock, whose hands, as far as she was concerned anyway, seemed to have spun around madly. She handed her latest customer her bagged purchase with thanks, and pulled open a drawer for her checkbook. “Who shall I make it out to?” The entertainment agency in Baltimore had never actually told her this ma
n’s real name, and she presumed he wouldn’t want “Cuddles” written on the check.

  “Kyle Sandborn.”

  Jo looked up. Somehow she’d never have picked him for a Kyle.

  He misread her expression, saying, “You might have heard the name. I’ve acted at the Abbotsville Playhouse a lot.”

  “Really? No, I’m new here, and haven’t been to the theater yet. But I’ll certainly look for you in future productions.”

  Kyle/Cuddles gave her his first genuine smile of the day, though it seemed to require his last reserve of energy, and reached for the check. “Mind if I change in your back room?” he asked, barely waiting for her answer before turning in that direction.

  “No, go right ahead.”

  He left the basket of handouts with her and flopped toward the stockroom in his big shoes. Jo’s attention was quickly moved to another customer—a woman who, joyfully, had filled the store’s hand-carry shopping basket to the brim with items, many of them foam balls and cones, and packets of sequins and ribbons in Christmas colors.

  “I know it’s only September,” the woman bubbled, “but I can’t wait to get started on Christmas projects. It’s always been my favorite holiday of the year.”

  “Mine too,” Jo said, smiling. “In fact, I’ll be giving a class on making Christmas wreaths if you’re interested.”

  No sooner had she packed the Christmas lady off than a crashing noise pulled her attention to the opposite side of the store.

  “Missy, I told you not to touch that!” A child’s wail rose up from the floor, and Jo hurried over to inspect the damage. A display Carrie had set up of handmade teddy bears dressed in the costumes of various movie characters had been pulled down and lay in shambles on the floor.

  “I’m so sorry,” the mother cried. She struggled to calm her sobbing three-year-old with one hand while reaching for fallen bears with the other.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jo assured her. “They’re not breakable.” She picked up Rhett Butler and brushed him off, then found Scarlett, uncharacteristically shy and hiding in her green velvet gown behind the needlecraft kits.

  “Jo, there’s someone here with a question about making beaded necklaces,” Carrie called out.

  “Be right there,” Jo responded, and plopped the bears as best she could back on their stands, starting to feel like she had not stopped moving since she’d arrived early that morning. Had she had lunch? She wasn’t quite sure. She vaguely remembered Carrie’s eleven-year-old, Amanda, showing up with a platter of edibles, but what they consisted of Jo couldn’t recall.

  “Bead necklaces, you say?” she said to the interesting-looking woman at the front of the store, who had long, unnaturally black hair, and ’70s, hippy-styled clothing despite a youthful, twentysomething face. An Abbotsvillian? Jo wondered. If so, she had much still to learn about her adopted town.

  That customer was replaced with another, and then another, and Jo could hear her voice beginning to crack in her dry throat from all the explaining, directing, responding, and thanking she had done over the hours. Finally, the dinner hour approached, and the crowd thinned.

  “Thank you, ma’am, and do come again,” Carrie said to their final customer, then followed her to the door, clicked off the circus music, and turned the lock. She spun around to face Jo and threw up her arms. “It’s over! You’re grand opening was a success. You did it!”

  “We did it,” Jo corrected. “My gosh, what a day! I can hardly believe it.” Jo ran her hands through her hair and plopped down on the stool. She picked up the stack of sign-up sheets from the counter and grinned. “Customers! Real, live customers who want to come back again and buy my wares.”

  “Well, of course! How could they not, with all the beautiful things they can make from what you have here?”

  “And the sales today! I could barely keep up with it.”

  “We were both running our legs off, and we deserve a reward. I’ve already talked to Dan. He’s taking us out to dinner to celebrate.”

  The idea sounded great to Jo, but as she watched Carrie turn off lights, and saw Dan’s black Chevy Blazer coming down the street, it occurred to her she had a lot of cash sitting in the drawer.

  “Just a minute.” Jo pulled bills from the drawer and began stuffing them into a canvas bank bag.

  “You’re not taking that along, are you?”

  “Uh-uh. I’m going to stash it where a burglar wouldn’t think to look. Right behind the needlepoint kits. What do you think? If you were a burglar, would you find it there?”

  “You really need a safe.”

  “You’re right. I guess I just never truly believed I’d have money to worry about. Until now.” Jo grinned, and grabbed her pocketbook.

  “Dinner at Alexander’s,” she said, “and it’ll be my treat.”

  The last light she saw Carrie flick off, before hustling up to the front door, was that of the storeroom.

  Chapter 2

  Alexander’s was a welcome change from the noise and bustle of the last several hours. Jo had chosen this out-of-the-way restaurant for that very reason, and glanced around blissfully at its muted decor of dark browns and greens. Soft music caressed her ears, which still buzzed from the endless calliope tunes.

  “This place is weird,” Amanda declared.

  “Amanda,” Carrie admonished her preteen, but Jo laughed.

  “Try to bear with it, honey. Your mom and I need to decompress.”

  “They have weird food, though,” Amanda persisted. “Stuff like Vitello allo, uh, Scalogno. I don’t even know how to say it.”

  Charlie slouched in his chair sullenly. “Can I send out for a cheeseburger and fries?”

  “No, you can’t.” Dan scowled at his son. “And sit up straight. Miss Jo is celebrating tonight, and the least you can do—”

  “How about we all stop at Baskin-Robbins for ice cream on the way home?” Carrie jumped in, calming the waters as Jo had seen her do more than once, lately. Charlie, at fifteen, seemed bent on alienating all around him. Jo remembered her godson as a bright and engaging child, but it seemed hormones had sent most of his charm packing and put him at odds with both parents—particularly his father.

  Dan had enthusiastically coached Charlie’s early soccer games and elementary basketball efforts. At thirteen, though, Charlie dug in and flatly refused to participate anymore. Carrie confided that Dan was not happy, especially since he saw Charlie putting energy into very little else, least of all his schoolwork. Carrie was growing very worried about him, Jo could tell, though she tried her best to be upbeat.

  Jo regretted choosing this teen-unfriendly restaurant, but it was too late now. “They do have spaghetti and meat-balls,” she suggested. “They call it Pasta Alexander here.”

  Amanda brightened up, and Jo thought she saw in Charlie’s eyes a flicker of interest, which he quickly covered with gloomy resignation.

  “Well,” Jo said, closing her menu, “it looks like Jo’s Craft Corner just might be around for a few more weeks.”

  “Not just around, Jo, you have a hit!” Carrie cried. “It was like Abbotsville has been just drooling for you to show up and open that store.”

  Dan nodded. “Looked like a pretty good opening.”

  “My friend Lindsey and I are going to make matching friendship bracelets,” Amanda announced. “Mom’s going to show us how. I think they’re neat, and maybe everyone else—the girls, I mean—at middle school will come in to buy your beads and stuff, Aunt Jo.”

  “Amanda, that would be so great.” Jo beamed at this girl who seemed to be following in her mother’s footsteps, taking pleasure in cooking and home crafts. But, she had yet to enter the scary teens. With that thought, Jo glanced once more at Charlie, who now stared at the ceiling, possibly hoping for an out-of-body experience to survive his current ordeal. The arrival of the food, however, livened him up enough to joke around with his sister over slurping up the spaghetti, which Carrie wisely ignored as long as no one at the table—or
nearby tables—was getting splashed with red sauce.

  Jo, Carrie, and Dan launched into ideas for the future of the craft store, and Jo allowed herself to start feeling optimistic, something she had resisted for weeks. Too much confidence, she was convinced, almost guaranteed failure. Look, after all, what had happened in New York. She and Mike were doing great. Mike was getting gallery shows for his sculptures, and orders were increasing for her jewelry. Jo was convinced their future was set. Then boom, it all went up—literally—in smoke. Jo swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. It was much safer, she reminded herself, not to tempt the gods, so to speak, with high expectations. But from today’s results, things did look promising.

  By the time she sipped her coffee, Jo’s mood was mellow. The glass of excellent merlot earlier hadn’t hurt. The check came and Jo snatched it before Dan could, saying, “This is my treat. A very small way of saying thank you to you guys, for all the help you’ve been giving me.”

  A chorus of “We were glad to, it was nothing, don’t be silly” rained down, and Jo ignored it all with a grin, scribbling her signature on the dotted line.

  They squeezed back into Dan’s car and headed to the store where Jo’s Toyota waited, all thoughts of Baskin-Robbins forgotten after Alexander’s excellent dessert cart had appeared. She hugged everyone—even a stiffly resisting Charlie—before waving good night from beside her car, whose door remained shut. Jo planned to take a final look inside her store, and had avoided mentioning that to Carrie, instead implying she was driving straight home. If Carrie suspected Jo wanted to go back in the store, she and Dan would have insisted on coming in as well, for safety’s sake, dragging the kids along too. And it would have been totally unnecessary. Besides, Jo wanted—perhaps selfishly—this quiet moment to herself. She wanted to bask in the golden memory of her store flooded with customers, of people thrilled with her beautiful craft supplies, and many enthusiastically buying.