Ill-Gotten Panes (A Stained-Glass Mystery) by Jennifer McAndrews

printing black and white notices to put up around town. She would be nothing more than a white blob center page. The line drawing would show more detail.
    Shrinking the word processor window, I leaned back in the chair in Grandy’s office and indulged in a stretch. The alluring aroma of burgers grilling and chicken frying snuck beneath the office door and wrapped around me like an embrace of temptation. To eat the food they were cooking up downstairs in the dine-in’s kitchen would wreak havoc with my digestion, but mercy, it smelled divine.
    Part of me wanted to be downstairs with Grandy, making sure none of the arriving patrons were looking sideways at him, or whispering about him. The bigger part of me knew he hadn’t lived as long as he had without weathering some uncomfortable times, but feared he wouldn’t want me to witness such treatment if it occurred.
    Who was I kidding? I didn’t want to witness anyone talking trash about Grandy. He was still bigger than life to me, invincible, infallible.
    I wasn’t ready yet to see him any other way.
    *   *   *
    G oing to work with Grandy at night meant inadvertently adopting his waking time in the morning. Though my internal clock nudged me awake at its customary time of shortly past six, I successfully groaned, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
    Somewhere past nine I found awareness again, when the formerly adorable ball of white fluff ceased being adorable by gnawing on my chin and digging her claws into my neck. And she had appeared so innocent while she slept.
    Setting the kitten aside, I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower. Dressed and finally awake enough to function—I hoped—I made my way downstairs and to the kitchen. There was no sign of Grandy. I peered out the window; his Jeep sat undisturbed in the driveway.
    In the process of making coffee, I urged my memory to cough up information from the night before. Had Grandy mentioned any plans? I didn’t think so. I had spoken to him about borrowing his SUV, an idea he was fully in favor of since I needed the vehicle to drive up to the office store and pick up the flyers advertising a found kitten. If he had mentioned anything about meeting the boys in town for coffee or fishing or something equally rustic, I had clearly blanked it out.
    With coffee prepared in a thermal travel mug and the address of the office supply store plugged into the GPS on my phone, I checked once more on the kitten and headed out to pick up the flyers.
    While I followed the mechanical voice on my phone telling me when to turn and onto which street, my mind took up the unavoidable question of who might have told the police about Grandy’s argument with Andy Edgers. I couldn’t shake the idea that the answer to that question would help determine who had actually killed Edgers. Trouble was, I knew precious few people in town to begin with. Even if I had a name, how much good would it do me?
    The GPS voice on the phone directed me to take a left and head north on Riverview. I recognized at once the picturesque road Carrie had driven on our way to the police station. The sun still glinted off the soft swells of the river that the road ran parallel to, though thick clouds were gathering in increasing numbers. Squinting at the sky, I tried to determine if there was rain on the way; driving someplace new was bad enough. Driving someplace new in the pouring rain was a whole other cause for stress.
    I’d just about decided the clouds were of the nonthreatening variety when the old brickworks loomed into view. Hundreds of people had worked there at its peak, Grandy included, but the numbers steadily dwindled until the building was shuttered. Now a new business was moving in, one promising a renewed vigor for the towns along the river, Wenwood—the closest—chief among them. But again, the construction equipment within the fenced-in perimeter stood idle, and not a soul stirred. The only difference between the view I saw that day