Free Silent End by Nancy Springer

Silent End
    Nancy Springer
    “Phew, what’s that?” Unlocking the front door of her very own beloved shop, Judith smelled something that made her think her ex-husband had played one of his nasty tricks. Had broken in and left her a rotting dead rat, perhaps. Stepping inside, she glanced at crisp white bisque arranged on shiny black shelving; except for the stink, all seemed well. Out of habit, she flipped the ceramic door sign that declared “Personal Pottery is OPEN!” before she headed past the plastic-covered studio tables into the back room to hang up her jacket—
    “Oh my God!”
    She froze by the coat rack, gawking at shards of glazed bisque piled around the kiln like cyanotic casualties of war: shattered butterfly plaques, smashed fish platters, beheaded bunnies and puppies and kittens, pony figurines in pieces, decorator plates and miniature teapots and fallen knickknacks of all kinds strewn amid the insect-like multi-legged stilts that had supported them—an entire kiln load of crafts lay in dismembered ruins on the linoleum. The expensive ceramic shelves that went in the kiln had been thrown aside, lying in monolithic, fissured slabs, crushing the bluish bodies. It was, in miniature, like the aftermath of a terrorist strike. Judith screamed, backed away, and stumbled to the phone.
    By the time the cop cruiser pulled up, she had recovered from her shock and segued into anger. “I want you to get the detectives in here,” she told the township police officer walking toward her as she propped the shop’s front door open to air out the place. “I’ve had enough of this.” Though actually, It had never sabotaged her shop before, just stalked her, slashed her tires, left venomous messages, that sort of thing.
    “‘Had enough of this?’” the cop echoed.
    “It’s my ex. Because I got a restraining order. I know it’s him.”
    The cop gave her a long, almost bovine look. Without inflection he asked, “What’s the problem? The smell?”
    “No. Well, I mean, I hadn’t thought…” Judith straightened her spine, annoyed by her own failure to connect the devastation in her back room with the stench until this moment. That lapse showed how unnerved she was, and she hated to be less than poised. Crisp as bisque, she said, “Maybe there’s some rotting garbage involved. I don’t know. This way.” She led him to the inner doorway.
    “Everything I loaded into the kiln Sunday night,” she told him as he took in the carnage. “A week’s worth of business. Several hundred dollars I’m going to have to refund. God knows how many ticked-off customers.”
    “That stuff used to be, uh, merchandise belonging to you?”
    “It was already sold. Glazed, paid for. And overglazed. All I had to do was fire it.” Watching the cop, she saw his placid face rumple; like many people, he didn’t understand what her business was about. Effortlessly, Judith shifted gears into her spiel. “Personal Pottery is unique to this area, a shop where you can creatively color your own ceramics. Select your inexpensive bisque item, and for a nominal studio fee we supply the brushes, the glazes, studio space, everything you need to paint your own one-of-a-kind ceramic artwork. When your—”
    Starting to get it, the cop pointed at the kiln. “That’s an oven for pottery?”
    “A kiln , yes.” Quite a good kiln, actually. An expensive kiln. A Cadillac among kilns. A brick-and-metal cylinder a yard wide and four feet high, automated, computerized, and complete with adjustable ceramic shelving, large enough to hold dozens of fancy-handle coffee mugs and ruffle-edged pie plates and teddy-bear tissue covers and personalized piggy banks, Judith’s kiln was the white-hot heart of her paint-your-own-pottery business.
    “That broken stuff, was it baked yet?”
    “No.” It lay with the greeny-blue overglaze still on it. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, somebody pulled it out of the kiln and smashed