Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [8]
Amanda punched in Derek’s number on her cell phone.
“Derek, you are so dead,” she hissed through clenched teeth at the Record Message prompt. “If you have any sense at all, you’ll stay in Italy, because the minute I see you, I am going to kill you.”
“Excuse me?” a startled voice from behind her asked.
“Oh.” Amanda turned, equally startled. She hit the End Call button and slipped her phone into her pocket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.”
The well-dressed middle-aged blond woman smiled absently, her eyes scanning the shop’s offerings.
“Was there something in particular you were looking for?” Amanda moved the wooden box holding the goblet to a shelf under the counter.
“I was wondering if you had any Weller pottery,” the woman said. “My friend bought a vase here a week or so ago and she said you might have some others.”
“A tall green vase? Raised dogwood blossoms?”
“Yes.”
“Justine Rhodes?”
“Yes, Justine.” The woman nodded. “She was showing me just yesterday what she’d bought from you.”
“This is such a coincidence.” Amanda forced a bright note in her voice. “I was planning on calling Justine in the morning, because I know she has the beginnings of a lovely collection, and I have some new items that just came in. I haven’t even unwrapped them yet, and I thought I’d give her first look. But since you’re already here, perhaps you’d like to see . . . ?”
The woman beamed.
It was a sure sale, Amanda knew. She’d sized up her customer well. There was no way this woman would leave the shop without purchasing most—if not all—of the new lot, if for no other reason than to be able to tell Justine about her fabulous find.
Amanda opened the first of the boxes she’d brought in from her car just hours earlier and began unwrapping the pottery. While not the most expensive of the potteries she carried, the Weller would bring a good price—maybe even a great price. American art pottery had become increasingly popular over the years, and the pieces she’d managed to get her hands on were far from run-of-the-mill. But there’d still be a long way to go to make up for what Derek’s latest lapse of judgment had cost them.
Well, she sighed as she carefully sat a tall pale green vase on the counter, she’d deal with Derek later. Right now she was going to do her best to start making up the deficit. One sale at a time.
“This vase is really spectacular.” She slid her glasses on as she slipped into her best sales mode. “It’s signed by J. Green, one of Weller’s most sought after artists. Now, note the lovely details . . .”
CHAPTER
TWO
The road wound through the night, following the curve of the river. Headlights illuminated no farther than the next slow twist. Amanda hated this dark stretch of road between her home in Broeder, the town that just skirted St. Mark’s Village, and the local college, where she had given a lecture that night: How a Stalker Changed My Life—and How to Make Certain It Doesn’t Happen to You.
She could never drive this road without remembering those nights more than a year ago when headlights would appear out of nowhere to blind her in the rearview mirror, making the drive home a nightmarish ride into hell.
Her eyes flickered from one mirror to the other, checking behind her. Always checking behind her, even though she knew for a fact that the man who had stalked her for those six terrible weeks last year was safely behind bars. She’d been there on the first day of his trial, fully prepared to testify against him in open court, but at the last minute, his