Free Death Waxed Over (Book 3 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) by Tim Myers Page A

finished.”
    “ I’ll be back as soon as I
can.” Plumbing was definitely not my favorite thing to do, but I’d
been a camp counselor during three summers in college and I’d
learned to take a stab at just about anything. If worse came to
worse and it was something I couldn’t fix, I’d call a plumber,
though I could ill afford the expense. As I followed Suzanne to her
shop, I found myself hoping that my handyman figured things out
quickly enough to get back to help keep River’s Edge
afloat.

Chapter 7

    I didn’t know you were a repairman, too,”
Suzanne Gladstone said as I searched under the sink for the cause
of her leak.
    “ I’m not making any claims,
but I’ll have to do until Pearly gets back.” The vanity in the
store’s bathroom had a bucket inside to capture the leak, and I was
glad that whoever had converted River’s Edge from a factory to
stores and shops had put individual water cutoffs in each space. At
least that way I wouldn’t have to shut everyone’s water off to fix
one leak. I peered under the sink before doing that, though. I
needed to see where the water was coming from before I could fix
it.
    “ So how do you like being at
River’s Edge?” I asked as I removed the bucket.
    “ It’s certainly different
from a stand-alone store. That’s what I’m used to. You’ve got quite
an unusual assortment of tenants, don’t you? No, that doesn’t sound
right. What I should have said was eclectic.”
    “ I’ll take either one,” I
said as I spotted the leak. Water was seeping through the
connection between the cold water supply line and the faucet.
Gladly, it was something I could fix. I took the adjustable wrench
I’d picked up on the way over to her shop and gave the nut a quick
quarter turn, making it snug again. The water stopped, and I
pronounced it fixed.
    “ My, that’s wonderful,” she
said. “Why do you need Pearly if you’re so good at
this?”
    “ Believe me, I got lucky
this time. I couldn’t run River’s Edge without Pearly
Gray.”
    I emptied the bucket into the drain, then
handed it back to her. “There you go. Good as new.”
    “ Harrison,” she said. “I
don’t mean to butt in, but what are you going to do about that
woman’s murder?”
    “ What can I do?” I asked.
“The police are looking into it.”
    “ Is that good enough?” she
asked, then quickly added, “I know it’s none of my business, but I
can’t help myself. You can’t just let your candleshop die. I had a
friend in Western Mississippi who was accused by her boss of
stealing, though she never took a dime. No charges were ever filed
and there was never a hint of proof, but she couldn’t get a job in
her field anywhere in town because of the rumors. First there were
whispers, and then folks were saying things out loud. She had to
move to Tupelo, where nobody knew her, and start over. Don’t let
that happen to you.”
    “ Thanks, Suzanne, I
appreciate your support.”
    “ That’s what friends are
for, Harrison. Think about what I said.”
    “ I will,” I promised. I
returned the wrench to Pearly’s small workroom and logged in the
repair in his ledger.
    Pearly was the most organized handyman I’d
ever come across in my life, keeping track of every call he made at
River’s Edge. I wrote down the date, time and nature of the repair,
proud to be able to add my own entry. I scanned the listings before
mine, wondering what Pearly had handled while I’d been holed up
licking my wounds.
    Something odd struck me as I saw Sanora’s
name listed; the times logged between the initial complaint and the
actual repair were spaced seven hours apart, though there were no
other problems that day. I glanced through the log and saw that
none of the other repairs had taken more than half an hour to get
to in the last month of the journal. The gap had been registered
the day before the fair, and I wondered where Pearly had slipped
off to for most of the day.
    Was I being paranoid, as Eve often