Reservations for Murder by Tim Myers Page A

few paces away from his
door, where he pretended to go over the register receipts as he
listened in.
    The voices were suddenly much clearer now.
Jenny Harris was in the office with Sheriff Armstrong, and from the
sound of it, there was quite a battle going on.
    Alex saw the knob on his door spin. It gave
him just enough time to bury his nose in the register before the
door opened.
    “You know where to find me,” Jenny snapped at
the sheriff as she stormed past Alex without even a nod.
    Armstrong walked over to Alex, shaking his
head. “She always was a little high-strung, wasn’t she?”
    Alex knew that better than Armstrong ever
would. “I take it she objected to your line of questioning,” he
said with a slight grin.
    It defused the tension in Armstrong’s face.
“You might say that. She’s got to realize I know she was dating
Jefferson Lee as recently as a few months ago. Of course she’s
going to be a suspect on my list.”
    Alex had known about Jenny and Jefferson; the
two had struck him as an odd pairing, but love was sometimes
indiscriminate in the couples it brought together.
    Armstrong said, “Alex, I wouldn’t say no to a
soda. You have any in your fridge?”
    Alex nodded. “Help yourself. In fact, I think
I’ll join you.” He retrieved two drinks, thought about offering
Evans one, but realized the man would never consume anything but
his special blend of tea.
    Besides, Alex wanted some time alone to pump
the sheriff.
    As they drank their sodas in his office, Alex
asked, “So how do things look?”
    “There are just too many people who had a
reason to hate that man! I never cared for Lee myself, but I look
like one of his biggest fans compared to what I’ve heard these last
few days. I don’t care if he was a real slug; he didn’t deserve to
die the way he did.”
    “Nobody does,” Alex agreed. “So, the
husband-and- wife potters are next, right?”
    Armstrong nodded. “I think I want to tackle
them one at a time. Would you do me a favor, Alex? Would you go get
one of them, I don’t care which one, and tell them I want to see
them? I need to make a phone call while you’re doing that.”
    “Sure thing,” Alex said. It would give him a
chance to talk with the potters, and perhaps that would even help
in his own investigation.
    Marilynn Baxter was working on the potter’s
wheel, forming the clay gracefully into a bowl right before Alex’s
eyes. The spinning motion of the shifting clay was mesmerizing. How
did she do it? He watched another minute before approaching Craig
Monroe.
    Instead of the summons he’d been ordered to
give, Alex said, “She’s really good, isn’t she?”
    Craig nodded absently. “One of the best I’ve
ever seen, including me. I just wish ...”
    “What,” Alex prodded.
    “Nothing,” Craig said abruptly as he moved
back to a drying rack starting to fill up with gray-shaded pieces.
There were all kinds of items displayed there, from pitchers to
bowls to plates to whimsical little pinched figures, all made of
clay.
    Craig was just moving a bowl when Alex said,
“By the way, the sheriff sent me out to get you.”
    “That’s right,” Craig said as he nearly
dropped the bowl. “He said he wanted to talk to us.”
    “One at a time,” Alex added.
    That brought a burnish to Craig’s cheeks. “We
talk to him together, or we don’t talk to him at all!”
    Alex said, “Hey, don’t take it out on me, I’m
just the messenger.”
    Craig walked over to Marilynn and said
something Alex couldn’t hear. Her hands faltered for a moment, and
the delicate structure collapsed.
    She tried to make a joke of it as the
onlookers gasped. “Earth to earth, and all that,” she said as she
peeled the remnants of the clay off the wheel. “That’s all for now,
folks. We’re going to take a little break. Don’t forget, everything
you see behind me is for sale.”
    As Marilynn cleaned her hands in a bucket of
water, she said, “I’ll get Shantara to watch the booth while