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Chapter 8
“I’ve actually spruced up the place a bit since you were last here,” Tanith insisted, eyes fixed to her computer screen as she hastily punched in the opening money count for the day. “Why don’t I give you the tour of the downstairs? Some of the artists are painting a mural.”
“Can’t wait.” She glanced up to find Blake leaning on the doorframe, taking up most of the space and nursing his steaming hot cup of coffee with a wry grin. “So many tours of this place…makes me feel like a VIP.”
“Well, I don’t show my deepest, darkest gallery secrets to just anyone,” she fired back. A few more clicks around the screen, numbers submitted, and she was officially done with her opening duties.
Much to her surprise, when she and Blake had arrived at the gallery, there was an elderly couple peering into the windows and grumbling around it not being open. When they realized Tanith had finally arrived, they launched into a big spiel about how they were there to purchase one of her exclusive collections and were worried someone else might have gotten to it.
Mystified, Tanith unlocked the doors, welcomed them in, then assigned Blake to canvas wrapping duties—nothing breakable, so she didn’t mind him handling the trio of expressionist landscapes—while she charged the sale.
Things were looking up: a potential new part-time job on the horizon, she’d kissed and made up, metaphorically speaking, with the guy she was crushing on, and she had made a hefty sale before her day had even begun. Not too shabby for a Friday morning.
After Blake had helped the elderly couple—George and Martha, local to Angel Fire—load their new purchases into the car, Tanith had welcomed him back into the once again quiet studio with a cup of coffee and a smile. From there, he sort of just followed her around during her daily opening procedures, the two of them casually chatting about nothing in particular. Nothing serious, anyway. Today wasn’t the day for that kind of talk.
“Okay, let’s go on that tour,” Tanith said, pushing back from her computer triumphantly, pleased to be done with that infernal contraption for the time being. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the ease technology added to one’s day-to-day life, it was just that tech took the natural magic out of this world. Still, at least she didn’t have to do all the numbers by hand.
Grabbing the shawl hanging over the back of her office chair, she wrapped the bright orange wool around her shoulders, feeling a slight chill in the air anytime she was more than five feet from Blake, and then sauntered toward the door. Blake, smirking, slowly eased out of the way to let her pass, and she suddenly felt a flush of warmth take over her as she sidled by. In her experience, men tended to be more hot-blooded than women, but that man was quite the furnace.
Hayley would like that about him; the poor girl was perpetually cold, even in the New Mexico climate. She frowned slightly. Was she seriously already considering introducing Blake and Hayley? Way too soon.
“They asked me shortly before the gallery reopened if they could have some space to make the studios their own,” Tanith explained as they descended the wide-set stairs into the basement studio space. “I wasn’t too sure, because most of them are rentals and not long-term artists here, but I really think they’re doing…”
She trailed off after stepping away from the bottom step. Something was wrong. It was a feeling, a prickle on the back of her neck, that something was different. Tanith could almost smell it in the air—and then she realized that what she was smelling was a lit kiln.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, staggering forward, only to stop suddenly again when she got a good look at the place.
Someone had been here. Since she locked up last night to when Tanith had returned this morning, someone had been here—and they had ransacked the place. Her eyes swam with tears before she could stop them, and she brought a hand to her mouth, gawking at the overturned tables, the shattered pottery, and the vandalized paintings in progress.
Someone had ripped open all the pillows and couch cushions from the lounge in the studio’s common area. The plum purple curtains, chosen to compliment the pastel wall etchings, had been yanked off their hooks. And the mural…someone had found black paint and scribbled all over it. The far wall had been where local artists were working on a very lifelike version of the Angel Fire mountain range, complete with glittering lake and sprawling forests. It had been beautiful, given they’d only been at it a few weeks. Whoever had broken in—there was no shattered glass, no signs of forced entry—had ruined it.
Her hands started to shake. Her mouth was too dry, like sandpaper scratching down her throat every time she swallowed.
“Tanith…”
She jumped, having totally forgotten Blake was even there, and stepped out of his reach when she saw his hand going for her shoulder. Biting down hard on her lower lip, she tried to pull forth the rational part of her brain, the one that would keep her from having a complete and utter meltdown. Someone had put their hands on her baby. The gallery was like a second child to her, and someone had defiled it.
Another whiff of kiln sent her stumbling for the private studio rooms, going straight for Alani’s usual haunt. Sure enough, her kiln was still running, as if she was ready to use it now. It wasn’t set to the cooling or setting temperatures. It burned searing hot, and Tanith hastily pressed buttons, turned knobs, and got the thing off before she even realized she had done it. There it was—the rational side of her, pulling through and ensuring she eliminated the threat before her whole damn gallery burned to the ground.
“Tanith?” Blake appeared in the doorway as she stood there, hands shaking and mind totally unfocused. “Should I call the police?”
What was happening? Normally, she was so good in a crisis, calm and collected, always the one to keep everyone else from losing their heads. Being a single mom to a chronically ill kid kind of prepared you for just about anything—anything but this.
She tried to swallow, but her throat was still too dry, too sandpapery, so she just shook her head rapidly at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, and then dug her cell phone out of her dress pocket, the depths of which were unfathomable for women’s fashion.
“I…I don’t know,” was the best answer she could give. Should she call the police? Yes. She’d been…robbed? Vandalized. She hadn’t even taken stock yet to see if anything was missing, but upstairs all had seemed in order. Hell, all the money was still there. Who ransacked a business but didn’t steal the safe or cash box?
Idiot criminals, that’s who—the kind that Angel Fire sometimes attracted.
So, rather than punching in the three-digit number to contact the local sheriff’s department, Tanith hastily scrolled through her phone and started calling all the local artists who rented space from her. She managed to get ahold of everyone, asking if they were okay, if they had been to the gallery after hours.
As she suspected, all confessed to not having been there, and Tanith believed them. She trusted them. She opened up a piece of her heart to them—why shouldn’t she trust them?
When she got to Alani, the most forgetful of all her renters, she went straight for the jugular.
“Did you leave your kiln running last night?” she demanded, hating the way she sounded, like she actually suspected Alani of foul play. Of course she didn’t, but Tanith’s emotions were quickly getting the better of it, something that had been happening more times than she was comfortable with lately.
“Tanith, no,” Alani told her in that dreamy voice of hers. “I always triple check before I leave. When I closed up my room last night, the kiln was off and cool. I ended up not even needing it. Is everything okay?”
