Silent End by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page A

it—”
    “What’s in the oven, then?”
    “Nothing, I guess.”
    “I don’t like that smell,” the cop said. “How hot does that thing get?”
    “2300 degrees Fahrenheit. But I keep it at 1800. Why?”
    “Smells like a crematory in here. How hot is that thing right now?”
    “Room temp.” The computer display flashed the blood-red numerals 72.
    Keeping his eyes on the kiln as if it might pull a gun on him, the cop fumbled in a black leather pouch on his belt. He pulled out rubber gloves. He put them on. He took a few cautious steps forward, reached over and inserted his fingertips under the kiln’s heavy lid. He heaved it up.
    “Stay where you are,” he told Judith too late. She had followed, and she saw what he did. Ashes, yuck, a coating of reeking, greasy ashes in her kiln, and in the ashes a small blob of something that maybe used to be white, and some quarter-sized puddles with a metallic luster to them. And wallowing in one puddle, an oval, greenly glinting gem. And that was all, except some pallid stubs of—of bone?
    Judith caught just a single shocked glance before the police officer lowered the lid. “Get back,” he ordered.
    “It could be something else,” Judith blurted, starting to shake. “A—a big dog…”
    “Only if the big dog wore jewelry. Get back .”
    *
    By the end of the day, Judith was still in shock, so much so that she almost didn’t go to Scrabble Club. She had told the police officer she wanted detectives? Hoo boy, she got detectives. The coroner said yes, those were human bones, and Personal Pottery became a crime scene, closed to business—yet more income lost—and all day it had been questions, questions, questions, like Chinese water torture. The signs of forcible entry on the back door—when had she first noticed them? Never. Why? Because I always use the front door. There’s no parking in back, just a driveway for deliveries. (Idiots!) The smell, when had she first noticed that? Today. Tuesday. Not yesterday? No, the shop is closed on Monday. Because I fire the kiln on Sunday nights. Heat up and cool down takes 24 hours, makes the place awfully hot, you know? (Cretins!) But the pottery broken on the floor was never fired? Right. (Which means he did it Sunday night, shortly after I left. Finally, they’re starting to get it!) So, ma’am, Sunday night you left here at 9 p.m.? And what were your movements at that time?
    I went home! Did you see anyone, talk with anyone? No! Anyone who can verify your whereabouts?
    No, dammit.
    Babbling to herself in her car after the detectives finally let her go, Judith declared, “They think I did it! They really think I did it! Morons!” And she was still shaking, because obviously It had put the body in her kiln for some reason, and aside from making her life a living hell, what was It trying to tell her? That she would be next?
    She went to Scrabble Club because she didn’t want to face the empty house, alone. Even joining a group of pedantic misfits in a church basement seemed preferable.
    Why were all such Sunday School rooms bile green, with those heinous Masonite tables and mustard-colored bulletin boards and the self-same melanic upright piano with a plastic Jesus on top? As she walked in, an egg-shaped, balding man greeted her, “Hi, Judy.”
    “Judith,” she corrected him more frostily than was necessary. Poor Dick, he couldn’t help it that he was a hopeless nerd. Judith just enjoyed cruciverbalization, herself, but some of these people were total word freaks, obsessed with cryptograms, anagrams, acrostics, puns, palindromes, whatever. Utter word geeks. At least Dick had said hi, unlike the club’s other nerdy and obsessed male, Doug, who had achieved the Master level in regional Scrabble competition and was now going for national and Expert. Right this minute, while women members stood chatting all around him, Doug sat at one of the tables gazing in his usual baby-blue manner at a list of words he was