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  What others say about WREATH OF DECEPTION

  "Hughes launches her series with a feisty, likable heroine and a savvy group of craft hounds. Readers will want to fire up their glue guns and join the goings-on at Jo's Craft Corner." - Romantic Times

  "A quintessential cozy. The writing is top-notch, the plot well-paced…an altogether satisfying story readers will just love."

  - Cozy Library

  "An absorbing whodunit, small-town life, the joys and trials of family and friends, and some useful crafting tips all combine to make this series debut a good read."

  - Myshelf.com

  WREATH OF DECEPTION

  Mary Ellen Hughes

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2012 Mary Ellen Hughes

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  CHAPTER 1

  The first shaft of sunlight pierced through the hole in her bedroom shade, and Jo, who had been awake and watching for it, jumped out of bed. Wrapping herself against the mid-September chill in her raggedy but cozy terry robe, she padded into her small kitchen, wondering if she’d actually slept at all. She had memories of a jumble of thoughts as she tossed during the night, but couldn’t clearly separate persistent worries from those same fears morphed into dreams. What she was sure of was, sleep or not, she didn’t truly need the coffee that she automatically began to fix. Adrenaline pumped through her veins, and she was already running, internally, on all cylinders.

  This was it – the day she had been planning and working toward for weeks. The make-or-break day. If it went well, Jo would be able to stay on in Abbotsville, Maryland, pay her rent, eat. If it didn’t, well, she might be losing those last five pounds quicker than she’d expected.

  She watched the coffee drip into the carafe, breathing in its fragrance until the final drops. When the machine finished its routine of gasps and sputters, she slipped out the carafe and poured herself a mugful. Wrapping her hands around the mug for warmth, Jo carried it to her back door and gazed through the glass at the tiny yard. The scrubby grass sparkled with dew, and the leaves of the spindly dogwood already showed tinges of red. The sun, higher now, filtered through her neighbors’ towering trees and made the scene nearly pretty. It was far different, though, from the steel and brick view through the loft’s windows in New York.

  Jo winced as the thought brought a stab of pain. In some ways, it seemed a lifetime ago, although it was only months. She, crafting her jewelry, and Mike making his wonderful metal sculptures, pieces he molded and shaped with his acetylene torch, the very torch that one day malfunctioned and exploded, annihilating the loft, Mike, and her entire life as she knew it.

  Mike was her life, her love, and losing him, as well as all they had built together, was devastating. But she had somehow managed to pull herself together – the need to survive truly works wonders – gather Mike’s small life insurance money and invest in a shaky future for herself. Every penny she had, along with loans that would likely keep her in servitude to the First Maryland Bank until dementia set in, had been sunk into Jo’s Craft Corner, whose grand opening was less than three hours away.

  Jo shivered at the thought – from excitement or fear? she wondered. Likely both. The countless steps leading to this day ran through her mind: first and foremost, tracking down the store in an affordable rent district of Abbotsville with the help of her amazing friend, Carrie. Then the necessary wares, including boxes and boxes of supplies for every craft imaginable –beads, flowers, yarn, paper, stamps, paint – all painstakingly arranged in what she hoped was a customer-friendly manner. Plans for workshops she and Carrie would conduct, ads taken out for the grand opening, the clown hired to pass out freebies and balloons and hopefully attract families with craft-loving moms and dads, refreshments, music. Had she thought of everything? If not, it was too late now. Another shiver-producing thought, but she banished it.

  At least the weather, the one thing over which she had no control, was promising. A cloudless sky would let the sun shine brightly, and the temperature, if the last couple days were a predictor, should warm up comfortably, bringing people out of their homes. It might even be hot by afternoon, which would be just fine with Jo, because it would draw more thirsty people to her free punch and cookies, which were situated deep inside the store and required strolls past her beautiful, extremely purchasable wares.

  Her wares. Jo suddenly pictured the store as she had last seen it at eleven o’clock the previous night, before stumbling home for a couple bites of cold pizza and collapsing into bed. Should she have put more Halloween items near the front? Yesterday she’d worried over making Jo’s Craft Corner look too much like a Halloween-only store. But that holiday, she began to think, was a big seller. She should probably capitalize on it while she had the crowd there, and move the pumpkins and ghosts to the front. Quickly.

  Jo plopped her coffee mug in the sink and whisked off her sleep shirt on her way to the shower. She still had to pick up ice, and set up the huge punch bowl she’d rented. She should double check the stamping section – had Carrie unpacked the box that arrived late yesterday afternoon? How about the racks of scrapbooking papers? Had they been filled enough? How, where, what ...?

  Jo’s mind ran as fast as her legs, which propelled her from shower, to closet and out to the car in double time. Out on the road she had to brake suddenly to keep from running a red light, and she glanced around with relief that traffic was light this early on a Saturday morning – not that it was ever truly heavy in Abbotsville.

  Once inside the store, she took a few deep, calming breaths. “Don’t let yourself turn into a crazy,” she commanded, smoothing down her short, dark hair, and carefully realigning the fringed paisley scarf she had added to brighten her white silky blouse and black slacks. Then she promptly turned into a crazy, zigzagging up and down the aisles, filling her arms with pumpkins and branches of autumn leaves and ghouls. Only the rattle of keys in the door brought her to a stop.

  “My gosh, have you been here all night?” A plump woman in a navy jumper, holding several white paper bakery bags, stood in the doorway, backlit by the morning sun.

  “Carrie!” Jo hurried over with her load, shedding leaves as she did. “We have to move the Halloween things before anyone comes!”

  Carrie smiled, letting the door swing closed behind her. “Jo, take it easy. It’s at least an hour before we open for business. Plus no one in their right mind’s going to show up until an hour after that. Trust me, Abbotsvillians are not early risers on weekends. Sit down and have a bagel. I bet you haven’t had a bit of solid food.”

  “You mean today, or this week?”

  Carrie tsked disapprovingly, then moved behind the check-out counter and began spreading out the goodies she’d brought. “You won’t impress customers, you know, if you pass out face first into the punch. Take a breather. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Jo set down the autumn leaves and pumpkins and sank onto a tall stool beside the cash register.

  “Guaranteed?”

  “There’s no guarantees in life, sweetie. You should know that by now.”

  Jo sighed. “Yes, I do.” She grabbed one of Carrie’s breakfast treats and breathed in its delicious freshness. “But at least there’s blueberry bagels. Thanks, Carrie.”

  Carrie shrugged, her way of accepting g
ratitude for as long as Jo had known her, which was years – since her first day at Thomas Jefferson High, to be exact, when they encountered each other in the girls’ bathroom. The meeting was not one she would have expected to produce a lasting friendship – Carrie had walked in to the sound of Jo retching prodigiously in one of the stalls. But instead of a hasty retreat, Carrie had called over the door, “Scared out of your gourd, huh?”

  Jo, startled enough to pause in mid-heave, had managed a shaky, “Uh-huh.”

  What followed, once she splashed enough cold water on her face to risk frostbite, was Jo spilling out her fears to a sympathetic Carrie about not knowing a soul in this terrifyingly huge school which Jo’s parents had enrolled her in after transplanting them all to Maryland not one week before. Carrie had proceeded to take her in hand, earning Jo’s undying gratitude and friendship.

  Interestingly, in the years following, it was Jo who was the more adventurous one, going out for cheerleading and drama, activities largely dominated by “cool” cliques to which she never belonged, then signing up for challenging art courses, followed by art school, and eventually off to New York to begin life as a starving artist.

  Carrie made quieter choices, playing second piccolo in the band, signing up for Home Ec courses, and later marrying her high school sweetheart and moving with him to Abbotsville, not far from, nor much different from the town they grew up in, to begin her chosen career as wife and mother.

  But, whereas Jo’s life was full of drama, spiked with highs and lows, Carrie’s seemed a calm sea of contentment, managed with a quiet strength which showed itself only when needed. It was never needed more by Jo than after Mike’s horrible accident. When Jo, dragging herself out of the ashes of her life, had searched for a way to go on, knowing she couldn’t manage on what her jewelry making alone had been bringing in, Carrie suggested a craft store in Abbotsville.

  The idea slowly took root, its attractiveness, Jo realized, owing much to the distance it would put between her and the painful memories of her loss. Jo’s mom, now living out her widowhood in a retirement community in Florida, had urged her to come there. But setting up anew near her old friend, who also volunteered to give up time from her comfortable life and add her considerable skills at needlework to the store’s offerings, carried the most weight.

  “Eat!” Carrie ordered, breaking into Jo’s reverie, and Jo realized she had been staring into space.

  She hastily bit into the chewy treat. When she could again speak, she asked, “Why did you come in so early? I thought we agreed you’d get here at ten.”

  Carrie grinned and fiddled with the end of her long blond braid. “I woke up early and started thinking you should have a bigger Halloween display near the door.”

  Jo grinned back. “Great minds, huh?”

  “For sure.”

  Carrie got to work setting up a rack for the display, and Jo, nibbling at her bagel, joined in, bringing straw to nestle around the plastic pumpkins and gourds, and draping orange and black material behind a grinning scarecrow. As Carrie sprayed canned cobwebs around the edges, Jo went back to the storeroom to look for more acrylic paints which could be used for decorating costumes and masks.

  The storeroom was jammed with boxes, some stacked on shelves six feet high. All this stock, she thought, gazing at it with amazement. Would she ever sell it? Who would have guessed that she would ever be running a business? She, who had always scorned the more practical things in life to flourish in what she did best – art. Now she would be keeping books on inventory and toting up sales, and grateful to have sales to tote up. She ran her finger down the rows of boxes, checking labels for acrylic paint, and worried: would this town have enough interest in arts and crafts to keep her in business? Carrie seemed convinced of it, and Carrie certainly knew the local market better than she did.

  “But you’ll have to have something for everyone, Jo,” she’d said, when Jo first wanted the store to concentrate on what she knew best - jewelry making.

  Good advice, but it required such a huge stretch for Jo. She had been involved in her specialty so long, she had to re-learn, or in some cases discover anew, many of the other aspects of arts and crafts. Soon she would be expected to be the knowledgeable source of information for her customers on all corners. Could she handle it?

  “Jo, while you’re back there, can you grab the broom?” Carrie called out.

  Now that, at least, she could handle. “What’d you spill?” Jo called back

  “Oh, nothing much. Uh, do we really need to have all the beads separated by color?”

  “What!” Jo shot out the door.

  “Just kidding.” Carrie stood near a revolving rack of craft magazines. “But you might want to pick up a mousetrap or two later on.”

  “Oh-oh.” Jo trotted over and looked down at a corner niche Carrie pointed to. Several black, disgusting mouse droppings lay there.

  “Ugh! Think I can get the landlord to take care of it?”

  “Well, probably not as quickly as you’ll need. You don’t want little mousies setting up nests in your lovely yarns, there. I can get Dan to do it.”

  “No, Dan’s done enough.” Carrie’s husband had pitched in to set up Jo’s fixtures and racks, running his tools for hours, saving Jo a bundle. “I’ll take care of it.” Jo said it bravely, adding emptying a mousetrap to her list of things that as a single woman she now needed to do, but would really, really rather not.

  Carrie lifted an eyebrow, but said, “Okay,” and proceeded to sweep up the little mess.

  “Oh! I just remembered,” Jo cried. “My wreath! I haven’t hung my autumn wreath on the front door yet!” She went to the back of the store to her office cubicle, where she had left the carefully-wrought creation.

  “It’s beautiful,” Carrie commented, as Jo carried it forward. “And the perfect thing to welcome your arts and crafts customers. It’s like having a sign that says, ‘you too can make this – come in and learn how’.”

  Jo smiled. “I thought it turned out rather well. I plan to have new ones for each season.” She took the wreath outside and hung it on the brass hook that Dan had already installed for her, then stepped back to look, pleased with the arrangement of dried flowers and berries, all in lovely autumn colors on a circle of graceful leaves. Her eyes roamed contentedly over the entire storefront. Her storefront, with her name on it: Jo’s Craft Corner. She let out a satisfied sigh. Until her brain registered the clock just inside the window.

  “Oh, Lord, look at the time!” Jo hurried back inside, dashing to the storeroom for the forgotten paints. “When did we tell the clown to show up,” she called out to Carrie.

  “Not until eleven.”

  “Good. Hopefully the Abbotsvillian slug-a-beds will start straggling in by then. At what I’m paying him per hour, I’d hate to waste too many of his minutes.”

  “Charlie would have been glad to do it.”

  Jo remembered the look on Carrie’s fifteen year-old when his mother first suggested it: the flash of horror and panic quickly masked by his usual gloomy disdain. What an interesting clown he would have made.

  “Being a clown is hard, Carrie. It takes a lot of training,” Jo said, restating much of what she had said that first time to save Charlie from what he clearly considered a fate worse than death. “The guy the agency’s sending is a pro. He’ll be great.”

  <><><>

  “These shoes are killing me,” Cuddles the Clown moaned through his painted smile. “And the heat out there! Nobody told me you wouldn’t have an awning! These costumes don’t come air conditioned, you know.”

  “Here, have some more cold punch.” Jo handed him what must have been his fifth cup, and he’d only been working an hour. At this rate she might have to run out in the middle of the day for more. Cuddles should have called himself Sponge Bob. But at least he had the sense to keep his complaining to the lulls between customers.

  Shrill screeches sounded from the sidewalk as a family with twin toddlers made its way
to the door. Jo handed Cuddles his basket of freebie handouts and flyers and took back the empty punch cup.

  Cuddles’ shoulders drooped. “Great. Two of them. Wonder which one will kick me first?”

  “It’s happy time, Cuddles,” Carrie called out. “Just keep thinking of that paycheck at the end of the day.”

  Cuddles muttered, and tramped over to the front door. “Hey, kids!” he cried, flinging it open and inducing frightened screams.

  Carrie rolled her eyes at Jo.

  “He’s better with the older ones,” Jo said, smiling weakly.

  “At least he hasn’t actually chased anyone down the street. Yet.”

  “It’s probably too hard to run in those floppy shoes.”

  “And he’d get sooo hot in that costume, too. Good morning!” Carrie greeted the latest arrivals. “Welcome to Jo’s Craft Corner.”

  The young mother, who showed a remarkable ability to tune out the screams of her children, looked around with delight and declared, “I’ve been just dying for you to finally open. There’s nothing like this around for miles. Do you have stuff for scrapbooking? I have piles of pictures of the twins, and I saw what my cousin Ali did with her photos and I want to try it too.”

  “We have a whole section over here,” Jo said, struggling not to flinch at the continuing shrieks.

  “And we’ll be starting classes on scrapbooking next week. Tuesdays, at 7:00.” Carrie added, as Jo led her customer to the scrapbook area.

  “Oooh, that’d be terrific!” the woman chirped. “Honey,” she called to her husband, who had been left holding on to the wailing toddlers, “put my name on the list, will you?”

  As she browsed through the scrapbook area, more people walked in, heads bobbing to the circus music that played outside, thanks to Dan’s sound-system setup. They glanced around the store with pleased oohs and ahs, and before long Jo was busier than she could have dreamed, showing customers around, explaining about various decorative items, ringing up sales.