Both large windows facing the street read VILLAGE CERAMICS SHOPPE in Old English lettering, the rain hitting their surfaces and blurring the multicolored pieces on display behind them. It was a three-story renovated building tucked between two newer, higher ones, faced with stucco and stained timbers like an old London townhouse. A pair of young housewife types, heads tucked under those silly mushroom umbrellas, ducked around me, went inside, and I followed them in.
The interior was bare brick walls and a hardwood floor with aisles of pine shelving displaying glazed pottery, mostly in shades of green and brown but with the occasional more colorful item. The feeling was of spare simplicity and, for a few minutes, I just went up and down the aisles, looking at the finished pieces with price tags that landed somewhere between reasonable and outrageous. A few aisles were devoted to the practical—vases and bowls, plates and cups and other dinnerware—but the majority were decorative pieces, cats and leopards and female nudes as well as abstractions.
Eventually the heavyset woman at the counter waiting on a customer noticed me, hit a hand bell, and the curtains to the rear section flipped open and a lovely blonde in a paint-stained smock stood there filling the archway. She was in her mid-twenties, maybe five five, with the kind of curves even a loose-fitting outfit like that couldn't hide, her eyes big and brown and generously lashed.
She used those remarkable orbs to look around until she found the unattended customer, then smiled and happy-hipped over, trying to wipe the stains from her hands on a paper towel. A little smear of green highlighted one cheek, but that only made her prettier, and then she asked, "May I help you, sir?"
It was in a voice that fit the rest of her perfectly—smooth, rounded, and velvety.
I shook the rain off my hat and said, "Maybe. But I'm not exactly a customer."
She gazed up at me, still smiling. Nice dimples. "I didn't think you were," she said, vaguely amused. "You don't, uh ... look like the kind of person who makes or buys ceramics. Of course, you never know about people."
"No argument there." I shifted on my feet. "It's about Russell Frazer. Any place we can talk privately?"
The smile faded—not into irritation, but sadness. "A terrible thing. Terrible." She paused, then nodded toward the archway. "You're another investigator?"
"That's right."
She nodded, businesslike. "Then we can speak back in the studio."
I followed her through the curtains and across to a large table loaded with partially painted figurines, and surrounded by a half-dozen beat-up wooden chairs. The rest of the room was a maze of shelves and bins packed with chalky molds, raw bisque, and greenware. It wasn't anywhere near the season yet, but holiday items seemed to predominate, little Santas and reindeer and elves that didn't quite fit with the artier junk out front.
She noticed me eyeing that stuff and said, "Christmas underwrites the rest of our year."
"You and about every other shop in town."
When I had pulled out a chair for her and sat down myself, I said, "I take it you just found out about what happened to Mr. Frazer?"
She shuddered. "Not thirty minutes ago. There was a call from police headquarters, then a squad car stopped by, and right now, Mr. Elmain—he's the manager—is on his way to identify the body. But then you must know that."
"Pretty standard procedure," I said evasively.
She frowned just a little. She had smooth skin and, at her age, such frowns had only delivered glancing blows. "Mr., uh..."
"Hammer," I said. I hadn't bothered to introduce myself. I'd wanted to connect with her before we got around to the ugly reality of who I was in this.
But she was no fool. When I said "Hammer," she must have caught the lack of rank before my name. Because now she was cocking her head, looking at me peculiarly. "You are a policeman...?"
"I'm a private investigator, Miss..." And this time I let it hang, because she hadn't introduced herself, either.
"Shirley Vought." She may have been suspicious, but her manner remained direct and essentially positive.
"Miss Vought," I said, and gave her a serious smile, "I was involved in helping the police identify Mr. Frazer. There's an odd set of circumstances at play here, which might make Mr. Frazer's death relate to a problem of mine."
"Oh?"
"You might be able to help me."
Again, she remained direct and positive: "Certainly, if I can."
"Do you know any of Mr. Frazer's friends?"
For a moment she looked puzzled. Then she answered, "Well, there was a young woman, just a girl really ... Susie something ... who met Russell a few times, after work...."
"Know where she lives?"
"No, but she works in the market on the corner. I can point you there." She gave me directions, briefly.
"Thank you. Any men Mr. Frazer hung around with?"
She thought again before shaking her head. "Outside the shop, I can't say I know any of Russell's friends."
"What exactly did he do here?"
"Pickup and deliveries. In between, he poured slip in the molds, loaded the kilns, waited on customers."
"Well paid?"
She nodded, chin crinkled. "I'd have to say, yes. Mr. Elmain is an exceptionally generous employer. Russ made over a hundred a week for what you'd have to say was menial work."
I nodded, remembering that tailored mod suit, and the wallet in his pocket, thick with big-number bills. Whoever had rolled the late Mr. Frazer was walking around fat and happy. But even at a generous hundred bucks a week for unskilled labor, how had my buddy Russell rated In Crowd threads and a wad of dough like that?
Somehow she picked the thought out of my mind and said, "Russ lived by himself, Mr. Hammer. He did have rather expensive tastes in clothes, but he didn't have much else to spend it on."
"No family?"
"He originally came from Chicago, I believe." She thought harder, then said, "I can't say I ever heard him specifically mention anybody back home, either family or close friends."
"Where did he live?"
"Let's see—I think on Peck Street. That's one block from the new housing development this side of Saxony Hospital. But I'd better check it."
She got up and went to a counter; she had black slacks on under the dusty smock and, where it tied, a glimpse of nicely rounded rear peeked out and said hello.
She riffled through a card file a moment and came back to the table and sat. "Peck Street, all right," she said. "Number 1405. Before that he lived on the Boulevard."
"Miss Vought—have you ever heard the names Herman Felton, Norman Brix, Timothy Haver, or William Blue?"
Those lovely dark eyes angled into mine a second and twin narrow lines formed a brief furrow between her brows. "Yes."
That perked me up. "You did?"
She nodded. "I read about them in the papers. And, of course, I knew Billy Blue."
"You knew him?"
"Know him. We deliver a quantity of greenware pieces to the hospital for their therapeutic program ... in the children's ward? Billy often came by here to pick up some incidental supplies—brushes, paints, that sort of thing."
I waited, thinking.
"And Mr. Hammer—I remember reading about you now, too." There was a wise glint in her eyes.
I gave up half a grin. "I've been around too long to bother trying to con anybody, Miss Vought. I never misrepresented myself."
"Yes, I know," she said. "I pay attention to such things." She gave me a small smile.