Free A Fatal Stain by Elise Hyatt Page B

with Ben, I told Ben the entire story of the table and the stains.
    “But,” Ben said, “isn’t it kind of normal for one wood to be disguised as another wood?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “But not for oak to be disguised as pine. And not for a bad, jammed stain to be piled atop a fine oil finish.”
    He frowned. “But then you also say there’s never any reason for metallic finishes and people—”
    “There’s never any reason now. In the sixties and seventies, I’d guess the reason was widespread cannabis use,” I said.
    “Maybe this was—”
    “Maybe,” I said. “But it looks more recent to me.”
    “Oh.”
    “At any rate, I thought I’d go out and talk to Jason Ashton and see if anything rings any bells,” I said.
    “Oh, yeah,” Ben said. “Because we don’t have nearly enough trouble already.”
    “Exactly. So are you coming with me?”
    “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

CHAPTER 7
Playing Happy Families

    Jason Ashton lived in an area of Jefferson that was just starting to gentrify. This caused near-lethal whiplash, as one tried to figure out the character of the neighborhood.
    Elaborately painted and restored Victorian houses, in the midst of immaculate lawns, sat right next to crumbling, shacklike piles surrounded by barbed wire.
    In between the two, in spirit—though often not physically—were Victorians painted white and converted into apartments, usually surrounded by dead lawns or front yards covered in pebbles in a vain attempt to look water conscious but really just looking cheap. More often than not, too, the landlords had let the yard go bad, anyway, so that there was grass growing in between the pebbles.
    There was one of those on the left side of the Ashton residence. On the other side was an elaborate house inpainted-lady style. Ben glanced at it and frowned and looked like he was going to say something, then didn’t. He pulled up in front of the house, looking dubious. I wasn’t sure why he’d look so worried. There were other new cars on the street, interspersed with rust buckets that might have been abandoned there by the receding waters of the Flood.
    “So this is the house…” I said.
    He just looked at me.
    “Are you going to go and ring the doorbell?” I asked. “See what they look like?”
    He looked at me again. “Dyce…we are in our thirties. We don’t ring strangers’ doorbells.”
    I opened my mouth to tell him we didn’t need to stay there after we rang the doorbell. But his eyes told me this would be a really bad idea.
    “Dyce, we are not ringing strangers’ doorbells and running away. And if we did, what in thunder would it gain us?”
    “Uh…we’d know if the missing woman answered the door,” I said. Which was, in a nutshell, the problem. I mean, sure, I read cozies, too. There are all these stories about how people investigating other people and possible crimes they have no business looking into can dress as electric company workers or social workers or poll takers. The problem—I looked over at Ben’s impeccable attire and his look of just having stepped out of a magazine on fashion for the discerning businessman. The problem was that no one would believe Ben was a survey taker or worked for any utilities. At least not until fashion sense became a metered public utility.
Hello, ma’am, we’ve noticed you’ve been expending rather too much fashion sense lately. No? Ah, I see. You’ve beenadvising yo
ur husband. Well, we know how it is, but it will cost you.
    As for me, I might pass as a woman collecting for charity. At least if the charity were for single mothers with disturbingly imaginative children, I thought as E said, “Ccelly can ring the doorbell.”
    But who would give to such an unorthodox charity?
    Ben was drumming his fingers on the wheel. He made a face and expelled his breath, with every look of a small explosion. “Okay,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was just next door. There’s an off chance that Peter saw