Clock and Dagger Page 5

  “Does Caroline have any idea about the party yet? Between Nancy and Flo, it is hard to keep a secret like that,” Ben said.

  “So far she has no idea,” I said. “She probably wouldn’t come if she did. She thinks we’re gathering to unveil the new website. Which we are, sort of.”

  “I’m really looking forward to that,” Ben said. “I’m amazed at how much material you’ve all been working on for the new site. Makes my static page with directions and hours seem pitiful, and I haven’t even seen the finished product.”

  “Still not sure why you needed me to do those videos,” Pat said. “Can’t see how seeing my old face is going to help us sell clocks.”

  “Nadia thought they would help with some of our marketing efforts. I’ll admit, I was skeptical, but they are really terrific. Tuck did a great job with the editing. I wish Mark and Caroline would have agreed to do a couple of them.”

  “Some folks are camera shy,” Pat said.

  “So, what are these videos?” Ben asked.

  “Short videos on some of the clocks, or how to wind a grandfather, or naming the different parts of a clock. We’re going to rotate them out on the site, and I’m hoping it will be something to drive traffic.”

  “So no videos of Pat tap-dancing around the shop?” Ben said, nudging the older man with his elbow.

  “You heard Ruth. We’re trying to drive people to the shop, not away from it.” He turned toward me and smiled. “You sound like a marketing expert,” he said. “Nadia’s rubbing off on you.”

  “I’m becoming one. Being a small business owner is a huge learning curve for me. Sometimes I wish I could just fix clocks, but I really have to sell some of them too.”

  “Lots of them, actually, to pay for all of this,” Pat said, gesturing around the shop. It was hard to see with all of the curtains masking the back of the shop. I could easily have skipped the cosmetics down here, left the back closed off, the floors scuffed, and the woodwork worn down. But if not now, when? I needed to make the upstairs habitable, and doing all the work at once made sense. Sure, my bank account was pretty anemic. But it was all going to pay off. It had to.

  “Pat, if I didn’t have you, all of you, to help me, I never could have pulled this off. Look at what you did in a few weeks. It’s amazing. I can’t wait to show it off to the world.”

  • • •

  Pat and Ben left together, and I locked the door behind them. I grabbed the three bags of candy off the counter. I needed to hide them in plain sight and not in my apartment, or fifteen pounds of candy would be fourteen in no time. Chocolate was my downfall.

  I walked through the curtains to the back of the shop. This area was, perhaps, the least changed. My grandfather’s presence was still omnipresent, and I wouldn’t do a thing to change that. Not for anything. I stepped to the right, planning on putting the candy in one of the cubbies where we kept the work that was ready for customer pickup. I had a lot of choices for where to stash the stash. That had to change.

  As I turned the corner, I caught another glimpse of Mark Pine and Nadia Wint, still bent over a piece of paper, arms touching. They didn’t hear me come in, and I was tempted to back away rather than interrupt this intimate moment. Mark Pine personified shy, at least with me. Obviously, Nadia had a different effect on him. I couldn’t help but wonder what her boyfriend, Tuck, would think.

  A part of me would be fine with Nadia and Mark being a couple. Tuck and I didn’t really hit it off. His hipster disdain for me was palatable. It wasn’t only for me, though. He was too cool to show enthusiasm for much, including, in my opinion, Nadia. His work was good, and he was fairly reliable. Still, he made me feel like I was missing a joke. I didn’t like the feeling.

  As an employer looking at a week of business openings, this love triangle, if that’s what it was, would be way too much of a distraction. Adding drama to an already tense week—not good for my stress level. I had a lot riding on those three people. I hated that I was worried about Tuck being able to take photos tonight, about the website work Nadia still needed to finish before we went live, about Mark’s focus on the jobs he’d taken on. Hopefully, the romantic drama wouldn’t interfere.

  One of the bags of chocolate slipped from my arms and smacked onto the hardwood. Nadia and Mark jumped apart. Mark had the good grace to blush as he pushed the papers they were looking at back in the folder. Nadia looked annoyed, but she always looked a little annoyed. I wanted to wipe off Nadia’s dark eyeliner, pull her hair back from her face, and tell her to smile. But I held off.

  “Whoops,” I said, plastering a smile on my face as I scooped up the bag. Nadia shot me a look that could fry ice, but I ignored it. “Hey, just so you both know, this chocolate is in case we run out of food tonight.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? We have, like, ten dozen clock cookies.”

  “I know.” Boy, did I know. Caroline and I had spent the last week rolling them out, frosting them, and then using a stencil to dust them with a shimmery clock face. Last night we’d had a bagging party—putting each cookie in a cellophane bag, tying it with ribbon, and attaching a Cog & Sprocket card to the bag. My fingers still ached from curling ribbon.

  “Do you really think we’ll have that many people come by tonight?” Mark asked.

  “I have no idea. I’d love to think so. Otherwise, we’ll be eating cookies for days.”

  “We’re all over social media,” Nadia said. “I posted a picture of the cookies. Having food will definitely help get folks to come by. Otherwise, and don’t take this the wrong way, getting people to party at a clock shop might be a hard sell. This is a great opportunity to get some fun video and pictures and let people know the party starts here. No need to freak out.”

  “Okay, I won’t panic. Until I’m eating clock cookies for the next month.”

  Nadia laughed and looked shocked at the sound. “We need to get a group shot tonight. Maybe at Caroline’s party afterward?”

  “Sounds like a plan. Now, I think I’m going to go up and get dressed. Unless you need me down here?”

  “As a matter of fact, I wondered if you had a couple of minutes to talk,” Mark asked.

  Nadia reached over and squeezed his arm. “I’m going to head out and find Tuck,” she said. She didn’t look at me when she walked out through the back of the shop.

  Just when everything was falling into place. Please don’t let this be bad news.

  chapter 5

  “Please don’t let this be bad news,” I said to Mark after the door closed behind Nadia.

  “It isn’t. At least, I hope it isn’t. Beckett Green offered me a job.”

  “What? Doing what?”

  “Fixing clocks.”

  “Fixing clocks?” Nancy had been right; he was trying to put me out of business.

  “He told me that he had an opportunity to buy some antique clocks and watches. He wanted to hire me to get them ready to go on sale. Part-time. He said I didn’t have to tell you.”

  “What a weasel,” I said.

  “Yeah, definitely uncool,” Mark said. He sounded so sincere, I had to smile. He wasn’t that much younger than I was, about five years. Part of his soul seemed so much older. But then there were these times, when he seemed like a kid.

  “What did you tell him?” I said.

  “I told him I was working for you and that meant I wasn’t working somewhere else.”

  “Thank you, Mark. That means a lot. You’re a valued member of the team, that’s for sure. Did you look at the clocks? I wonder . . .”

  “I saw some pictures, but only saw one in person. The clocks looked like some of your pieces. You know, the banjos.” Banjo clocks were invented by Simon Willard, right here in Massachusetts, around 1800. The wall clocks had a round face, an elongated neck, and then a rectangular box on the bottom. There were only four thousand or so true Simon Willards produced, but there have been hundreds of replicas made over the years by members of the Willard family, and other companies. There wa
sn’t a chiming mechanism built into original Willards, but they were still beautiful clocks. We had dozens of examples of banjo clocks, but I had yet to work on a Simon Willard. I went to the museum in Grafton a couple of times a year, trying to charm the director.

  “But you couldn’t tell the era?”

  “No, sorry. Yesterday, he showed me pictures of a couple of watches. Again, couldn’t tell the details, but they looked authentic. One looked like it could be a Patek Philippe. You know them: Patek was Polish, Philippe was French. They founded a company in 1851, one of the premier Swiss watchmakers. The Stern family has owned the company since 1932 and—

  “Slow down, Encyclopedia Brown! I remember them.” I almost hated to cut him off—his love of horology was so earnest and pure—but this chocolate was heavy.

  “Well, last year a Patek Philippe sold for twenty-four million dollars.”

  “Twenty-four million dollars?”

  “It was a Supercomplication pocket watch. Nine hundred and twenty components. Man, I’d love to take a look at that baby.”

  I had to smile, since I recognized the look on Mark’s face. I wore it myself when I thought that one of the grandfather clocks in the shop was a rare find a few weeks back when I was unpacking. It wasn’t, but it was still a thrill to work on.

  “The watch Beckett showed you was a Patek Philippe?”

  “Looked like one, at least. Like I said, he said he’d gotten his hands on a huge shipment of clocks and watches at a good price. He needed someone to help him look over the collection. A good quality watch, like the one he showed me, could be worth thousands, maybe more.”

  “Why does Beckett Green have watches worth thousands of dollars?”

  “He said he had a friend who stumbled across them at an auction and gave them to Beckett to put in his shop, sort of like decorations.”

  “Did Beckett say why he wanted to decorate with clocks?”

  “No. Honest, Ruth, I have no idea. He was showing me one of the clocks, so I showed him how to wind it up, talked him through it, explaining a little bit how it worked. He was fascinated. But I guess you understand that.”

  “I do. All too well. I wonder why he didn’t bring one by the shop? I’d have been happy to give him an estimate.”

  “I suggested that, but he acted kind of squirrelly. Today, he upped the pressure. He told me he needed to hire me to get the clocks ready for sale, but like I told you, I turned him down.”

  “Even though you were itching to look at those watches. It’s okay. I know you love them. Listen, as I said, I really appreciate your loyalty. You know I have more than enough work to keep you busy, but I can’t stop you from taking on other jobs,” I said half smiling. I didn’t want him feeling pressure from me too.

  “Thanks, Ruth, but I’ve decided I want to work for you right now. If that’s all right?”

  “Of course it is.” I studied Mark, who was specifically not looking at me. I added Get to know the staff better to my internal list of New Year’s resolutions. Mark was holding something back, but I didn’t have time to pry it from him now. “Tell you what. My grandfather had several pocket watches he always meant to get to, but he never did. How about if I bring them in for you to work on? They’d be a good challenge for you, I think. Especially since they haven’t worked in years.”

  “Did your grandfather work on watches as well?”

  “He did, or he meant to. Whenever he bought an estate, he’d hold on to the watches, promising himself, and me, that we’d work on them.”

  “Why?” he said, looking up.

  “He thought I should know a bit about watches, in case business slowed down. Old habits passed on by his father. During the Depression, the Cog & Sprocket couldn’t make it as just a clock shop, so they brought in other craftsmen to work on watches. My grandfather was young, and he learned how to do repairs from some of the people in the shop. He preferred clocks. To each his own, I guess.”

  “To each his own. I’d love to take a look at those watches. Don’t worry too much about Beckett Green. He’s worked himself up to a tizzy. Rina tries to talk him down, but it is going to get worse the closer they get to opening. At this rate, he’s never going to open if he keeps getting distracted by other people and crazy ideas. He isn’t anyone to worry about.”

  I hoped Mark was right. In fact, I was banking on it.

  chapter 6

  I loved my new bathroom. It was the biggest indulgence of the entire renovation. The old clawfoot tub was perfect for baths. When I moved in, there was a contraption that turned it into a shower as well, but it was always a nightmare trying to keep the circle of shower curtains from attacking me. At five foot ten inches, the five-foot-tall showerhead was also way too short for me to get my curly red hair really washed, never mind rinsed. Adding a shower stall, one that I could stand up in, and move around in if so inclined, was a luxury. A luxury made affordable by the fact that the shower bed didn’t match the color of the tiles, and the glass door had a scratch. The scratch-and-dent reject section of every store was more than adequate for me, and perfect for my budget.

  Much as I wanted to linger, my shower was quick. I did wash my very curly hair. I knew it was never going to dry in time for the open house, but since I planned to wear it up, the only hope of taming it was starting all over with the conditioner-and-product balancing act that kept my curls controlled for very limited periods of time. Wintertime was the worst. Hat head combined with static equaled a very scary hairstyle.

  I finished up my ablutions, including layers of lotion and a lot more makeup than I normally wear. The natural look took a lot of effort. Layers of powders, blending, outlining, and smudging. Lipstick came last, once my dress was safely over my head. I wrapped myself in my robe and went to get dressed.

  I walked back to my bedroom area and closed the curtain that gave me a semblance of privacy. Even though I’d locked the door to my apartment, I was well aware of the other people who worked in the shop, and had keys. Better safe than sorry was my motto about privacy. The living area had needed the most work when I decided to move in, mostly because it had been a hodgepodge of half-torn-down walls that had morphed a small apartment into a storage area that had been filling up ever since my grandfather had moved into the house Caroline still lived in. We’d taken down all of the walls and then used shelving and cabinets to divide up the space. I hung a curtain between the two cabinets that created the doorway into the bedroom area so that I could close it for privacy, but Bezel, my roommate, could move about freely.

  Bezel was the shop cat my grandfather had adopted last spring. She was a mixed breed, but looked and acted a lot like a Russian Blue. Her headbutts were a force. The only way to stop them from breaking my nose was to kiss her head as she moved in. She’d look at me with disgust, turn, and walk away. But she’d always look back, as if to wink, before she settled down on the nearest soft, flat surface. I could hear her purring from across the room.

  Even though I’d made the design choices upstairs, Bezel had been part of the plan. She needed windowsills, safe places for her food, privacy for her litter box, and plenty of space to roam. After a break-in last fall, I also needed to make sure I could lock us both in the apartment. That said, I recognized that living above your shop meant people would come in and out more often than usual, hence the curtain.

  I looked down at the black knit dress I’d laid out earlier, and sighed. Gray hair. I was always wearing gray cat hair. I took out the lint roller and did what I could to remove traces of Bezel. Caroline was terribly allergic to her, so de-Bezeling had become part of my routine. I put on my undergarments and pulled up my tights. Last step: I needed to get the dress on without ruining my hair or makeup. I unzipped the back and stepped into it, pulling it up carefully. Navigating it over my hips took a moment, but the give of the fabric worked with me. The dress was a simple shift with a sweetheart neckline. Flattering, but not too dressy. Bezel jumped up on the bed and blinked her eyes at me. I blinked back and she smil
ed.

  “What do you think?”

  “Meow,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said. I looked at myself in the mirror I’d hung up on the back of the wardrobe. Aside from at my grandfather’s funeral, I don’t think anyone in Orchard had seen me this dressed up. No wonder. I’d given it up the day my divorce papers had dried, leaving my faculty-wife costumes in my rearview mirror, along with my ex-husband.

  I futzed with my hair, pulling damp auburn spirals out of my bun to frame my face, and took a deep, shaky breath. I was nervous. But not only about the open house. As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, I was nervous about seeing Ben while I was dressed up, and what his reaction would be. I wanted it to be positive. Not too positive. I wasn’t ready to start dating. But I was ready to start thinking about it, and Ben was an interesting prospect.

  I struggled to reach the back zipper. I should have paid more attention in yoga class—I couldn’t reach it.

  “Bezel, can you help?”

  She sighed, and I joined her. This was the hard part about being single. No zipper help. A rare need, and one for which there surely had to be a modern work-around. There is a fortune to be made on personal zipper-pulling inventions. I reached around by my waist and tried to get the zipper inched up. A couple of inches. Still couldn’t reach it over my shoulder, so I twisted again. A couple more inches. I could almost grab the zipper, and somehow thought jumping up and down would help. Bezel meowed and moved to the other side of the bed. I finally got the dress zipped, but now my hair needed fixing. But when didn’t it?

  I was mid curl wrangling when I heard the shop phone ring in the kitchen. I was glad I’d had an extension installed up here, and even gladder that I could turn off the ringer if I wanted to. I was tempted to let it go to voice mail, but decided against it at the last minute. Maybe Nancy needed something, or Caroline was running late?

  “Hello. Cog & Sprocket. How can I help?” I said.