CHAPTER THREE
When we turned the corner onto Main Street, a group of twenty people or so had gathered in front of Lupine Design. Phinney Hardison and Jamie were visible in the center of the crowd. Phinney was red in the face, his mouth opening and closing in rapid speech. Jamie was three feet away from him, gesturing for calm, getting nowhere.
“My parking spot is in the back,” Zoey said. I pulled into the driveway. When we got out of the SUV, I could hear Phinney yelling. We hurried around to the front.
Zoey pushed her way through the crowd. I followed in her wake.
“What ’er ya tryin’ to say?” Though well into his seventies, Phinney had the size to intimidate. He was over six feet with a broad chest and thick neck. The rest of his weight seemed to have left his extremities and gathered in his midsection, but he was still a bull of a man. His white hair was so short that his scalp, currently bright red, was visible through it. He held a paper coffee cup with a plastic lid in his right hand.
“Perhaps, Mr. Hardison, you’d prefer to discuss this inside your shop,” Jamie suggested.
“I got nothin’ to hide. Ask me right here, in front of these people.” Phinney gestured around the crowd with his coffee cup. Jamie’s partner, Pete Howland, stood in the front row, frowning, his arms crossed over his pudgy belly. Phinney caught sight of Zoey. “You!” he thundered. “What’s the drama queen cooked up this time?”
“Take a look for yourself.” Officer Howland cleared the way so Phinney could approach Lupine Design’s display window. Phinney put his face against the glass and peered inside. “Well, well. That’s a mess.” He turned back to face Jamie. “Ask me anything.” Phinney was calmer, his attention captured.
“What time did you leave this building last night?” Jamie asked.
“Six o’clock on the dot, same as always,” Phinney answered.
“And what time did you return this morning?”
Phinney gave the crowd an exaggerated look of disbelief. “Just now. Didn’t you stop me on my way in?”
“When I approached you ten minutes ago, that was the first time you’d come to your store today.”
“I was carrying my coffee, was I not?” Phinney challenged.
“That’s why I thought you might be returning from a coffee break,” Jamie responded, still calm.
“Well, I’m not.”
They had lowered their voices by this point, but Jamie was obviously uncomfortable with conducting an interview in front of the crowd. “Let’s go inside,” he suggested again.
“Am I under arrest?” Phinney demanded.
“Are you unwilling to help with a police investigation?” Jamie shot back.
“No.” Phinney shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m willing to help with it right here.” He pointed at the sidewalk with his left hand.
Jamie’s jaw clenched. He was angry, trying to remain calm. “In the last few days or weeks, did you hear or see anything unusual on the Lupine Design premises or around the property?”
“Aside from females chattering, machines banging and scraping, supplies getting dropped off by noisy delivery trucks, and other trucks getting loaded with that ugly stuff and hauling it away, aside from that?” Phinney looked hard at Jamie. “Nah. None of that’s unusual. I didn’t see or hear anything unusual.”
“Did you hear anyone make threats against Ms. Butterfield or her property?”
Phinney put his skinny arms out, palms up. “Why would anyone bother?”
“When was the last time you were inside Lupine Design’s side of the building?” Jamie asked.
“Now you’re accusing me.” Phinney dug the worn-down heels of his unlaced leather boots into the sidewalk.
“No. Eliminating you from our inquiries.”
“Our stores share a basement,” Phinney conceded. “I may have accidentally stepped into her side down there once in a blue moon. As to being in the store itself, I’ve never been in there. Why would I?”
“To sum up,” Jamie said, “you heard nothing, you saw nothing, you’ve never heard any threats against Ms. Butterfield, and you’ve never been in the shop.”
“You got it,” Phinney said. “I got a store to open if it’s all right with you.”
* * *
The crowd began to drift away and Jamie, Zoey, Howland, and I went through the double doors into Lupine Design. Livvie was in an office chair behind the checkout counter, looking miserable. There were no cops visible in the store, but I could hear heavy footsteps in the apartment above and from the studio behind the shop. Livvie joined us and we huddled in a circle.
Zoey’s head turned as she took in the shambles in her store, her eyes slightly glazed. Her lip quivered and she bit it hard. I could scarcely imagine the fear, rage, and worry she must be feeling, though she was fighting hard not to show us.
“Did you come into the store before you left this morning?” Jamie asked Zoey.
“I have to go through the shop to enter or leave my apartment.” Zoey pointed to the staircase on the side wall of the display room.
“And everything was fine, I assume,” Jamie said. “Or you would have called us.” Zoey nodded and Jamie continued. “What time did you leave?”
“A couple of minutes before six o’clock.” Zoey sounded confident, certain. “I noticed the time on my car dashboard and was pleased with myself for getting out before the deadline I’d set in my head.”
“Livvie found the mess when she arrived at nine.” Jamie reviewed the available information. “This happened between six and nine.”
It seemed like an odd time for vandalism. The sun would be fully out, and carpenters, plumbers, and electricians would be picking up supplies at Gleason’s Hardware, a few blocks away. People would be driving to Gus’s, the only restaurant open for breakfast in the off-season. On the other hand, the few shops operating at this time of year wouldn’t open until ten, and there were no tourists to walk by the store in search of a place to eat. So someone could have trashed Lupine Design in broad daylight in full view of the shop’s display window. They could and they had.
As if he’d been tracking with my thoughts, Jamie said, “We’ll put a call out on the police social media channels to ask witnesses to come forward.” He looked over at the front door to the shop. “We saw no signs of a break-in. How many people have keys?”
Zoey counted on her fingers. “Three of my employees, including Livvie. They take turns opening up.” She looked up at him and shrugged. “That’s it, I think, besides me.”
Jamie took the employees’ names. “No cleaners, repair people,” he confirmed.
“We clean ourselves. The goods are too delicate to let anyone else do it. And I live here. I can always let repair people in. So no one else.”
“Did you change the locks when you did your renovation?” Jamie asked. “We didn’t see a security system.”
“I wanted to change the locks, but Phinney wouldn’t hear of it. It seemed ridiculous to change only mine, since we share the basement, so I left them. As for a security system, who would want to steal my pottery? It’s not like you can fence the stuff.”
She had a point. Or she would have had, if we weren’t standing in a store littered with destroyed ceramics. “Does your landlord have keys?” I asked.
“I don’t know. All my dealings were with the agency that rented me the place.”
Jamie nodded. “Ms. Butterfield, I’d like you to walk Officer Howland and me around your entire space and tell us if you see anything missing. You’ll need to do a complete inventory later for your insurance company. I want your first impressions.”
Zoey nodded and the three of them walked toward the open door in the middle of the back wall of the shop. Livvie and I looked at one another and followed.
The doorway opened up to a large, light-filled studio. Lupine Design and Phinney’s shop divided the front half of the building, but the entire back half belonged to Zoey. The space looked more like a place for light industry than a craft studio. There were big presses for making the molded pieces and a large shipping area lined with stacks of cardboard boxes and rolls of bubble wrap and newsprint. Six big kilns, which looked like bank vaults from an old western movie, lined an outside wall. There was an area for the pottery wheels and a huge table speckled with paint and glaze. There was even a forklift in one corner. But then there would have to be to move twenty-five-hundred pounds of clay.
There was clay everywhere, long rolls wrapped in plastic. Hundreds of pottery items, white and dull, sat on the wooden shelves that lined the inside wall.
Livvie saw me looking at them. “Those are the pieces that have been in the kiln once to dry out the clay, but haven’t yet been glazed or had their second firing. Pieces at that stage are called bisque.”
Silent and still, the room felt abandoned, like the workers hadn’t gone home for the day, but had disappeared forever.
Zoey flitted around the space, her face puckered with concern, though even I could tell the studio hadn’t been vandalized.
“Anything missing or out of place?” Jamie asked.
“No, thank goodness.” Zoey was visibly relieved.
Jamie walked purposefully to the big barn door that took up almost half the back wall. “We don’t see any sign of forced entry.” He twisted the handle to unlock the door and pushed it open. It led to a concrete loading dock.
Zoey stepped forward and examined the door. “I don’t see anything either.”
“Let’s go to the basement.” Jamie led the way to the stairs. Zoey followed immediately behind him. Then came Livvie, then me, with a silent Pete Howland bringing up the rear.
“Thank goodness!” Zoey halted the minute she reached the doorway at the bottom of the enclosed staircase and the rest of us piled up behind her. She turned excitedly to Livvie, smiling broadly. “Everything is fine.”
The rest of us continued down the stairs as the damp basement smell wafted up to us. The space was lined with shelves and shelves of ceramics—stacks of finished plates, bowls, platters, vases, pitchers, and lamp bases all in Lupine Design’s distinctive ocean colors. Zoey took her forms from nature. The plates were shaped like tide pools. The platters mimicked the curve of a cresting wave. One shelf held bud vases shaped like sea urchins. I had always admired the work and had been proud that Livvie was a part of creating such beautiful things.
“We have enough inventory to fill our orders. We’re saved.” Zoey and Livvie hugged each other tight. Zoey turned to Jamie. “Most of this needs to be shipped out in the next couple of weeks.”
She pointed to three tall shelves in the corner laden with plates, mugs, and other tableware. “Those are all custom orders for wedding gifts. I was so worried.” She sounded like she might finally break down and cry.
From Livvie I knew that Lupine Design’s busiest time was in the spring when they shipped off the bulk of their goods to retail stores. That’s why Livvie could work at Lupine Design fall to spring and at the Snowden Family Clambake in the summer. She was available when Zoey needed her.
Jamie went to a basement door made of beadboard painted gray and rolled it aside. Concrete steps led up to angled metal doors to the outside, a common setup called a bulkhead in New England. Jamie climbed the concrete stairs and checked. The doors were bolted from the inside.
He came back down and walked over to a second staircase leading up on the other side of the space. “Where does this go?”
“Phinney’s shop,” Zoey answered. “He uses it to get to his storage area down here. It’s also the legally required second egress from his store.” A quarter of the basement was partitioned off by chicken wire tacked to wooden scaffolding. Peering into the dark space, I spotted an old mahogany dining table, and several massive bureaus, the kind of stuff nobody wanted anymore. Every surface was covered with ceramic figurines, mismatched teacups, heavy glass ashtrays, and all manner of flotsam and jetsam.
Jamie flipped on a light in the stairwell. “No lock on this side.”
“Wouldn’t be,” Howland said, “if it’s his legal egress. Couldn’t take the chance in case of fire.”
Jamie climbed the stairs and tried the door. “It’s locked from the other side.” He came back down and looked at Zoey. “Phinney has pretty much unfettered access to your space. Does that make you uneasy?”
“Never,” Zoey answered. “What would he want with my stuff? Or I with his, for that matter? I have a lock inside the door at the bottom of the stairs to my apartment, which I use at night. Phinney’s long gone by then anyway. I’ve never felt unsafe.” She paused. “For any reason.”
Jamie turned to Howland. “Can you check Phinney’s store for signs of a break-in?”
Howland gave a sharp, quick nod, unusual for him; in general he moved slowly, and went up the main stairs back into the studio. We heard him tramp across the floor, calling out to another officer. The rest of us followed.
Back in the store, Jamie turned to Zoey. “Ms. Butterfield, I’d like to accompany you upstairs to your apartment so you can check it out. Julia, Livvie, thanks for your help. Why don’t you stay down here?”