The Broken Teacup Read online

  THE BROKEN TEACUP

  By Lorraine Bartlett

  Copyright © 2017 by Lorraine Bartlett. All Rights Reserved

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 9781940801452

  Katie Bonner needs a pick-me-up one cold and gloomy fall day, and the US Mail delivers—literally. A mysterious package arrives at Artisans Alley with her name on it, but the return address is obscured and the treasure inside, a beautiful bone china teacup, is broken. Before Katie can open the accompanying card, she’s called away and one of the vendors mistakes the package for trash. Katie makes a quick rescue, but the card is gone. Who sent the cup? What is its significance? Can Katie solve this mini mystery?

  A Gloomy Day Brightens

  After a week of relentless cold, gloom, and miserable rain, Katie Bonner, owner and manager of Artisans Alley on Victoria Square, needed some kind of a pick-me-up. As she sat at her desk, looking out the window to the empty back parking lot beyond, she pondered what she could do, or buy, that could cheer her. She needed nothing—well, maybe a new roof for Artisans Alley, but that would only happen if her profit projection maintained its upward course, and she’d been assured it would probably last another three or four years, and she crossed her fingers in hopes she wasn’t being overly optimistic. But personally, she really didn’t need a thing. Did she want anything? Possibly, but she didn’t have an answer as to what that might be, either.

  The PA squawked. “Katie, the mail’s here.” The voice was that of her favorite vendor, Rose Nash. Rose was a fixture around Artisans Alley. Like the rest of the vendors renting a booth in the fifty-five thousand square foot retail establishment, she was required to “work” two days of the month. That she was willing to put in five or ten times that commitment was often a godsend—especially during the last two months of the year.

  Katie left her office and ambled to the front of Artisans Alley where, as usual, Rose stood behind Cash Desk 1. Since there was a lull in the action, the elderly woman was again reading one of her favorite historical romances.

  “The mail’s over there,” she called without looking up from her paperback.

  Sure enough, a pile of business-sized envelopes, circulars, and a square brown box sat on the counter for Cash Desk 2.

  Katie flipped through the envelopes, separating the bills from the junk mail, which she tossed into the waste basket under the counter. It was then she turned her attention to the box. Like the rest of the mail it, too, was rather soggy. As she took in the address on the box, it was miraculous that it had been delivered at all. The sticker must have been created on an inkjet printer, for the rain had made a ruin of the intended destination. Katie’s last name had survived, as had the nine-digit zip code, but the rest was virtually obliterated.

  “Can you please hand me that letter opener, Rose?”

  It took a moment before Rose tore her gaze from the printed page, reached for a letter opener in the chipped coffee mug that acted as a pen-and-pencil receptacle and handed it to Katie. “It’s kind of dull for opening a package, isn’t it?”

  “The tape is kind of mushy after getting wet. I’m betting this will work just fine.”

  And with that, she stabbed the two-inch piece of gummy tape that held the box’s top flaps together. It gave easily and Katie peeled back the flaps. Inside was a bubble wrapped object and a tiny envelope. She decided to deal with the bubble wrap first, and yanked at the tape until she could unwrap the object at its heart. “Oh no,” she said in disappointment as she pulled free one large piece of a pretty bone china teacup and a triangular-sized hunk that had broken off during transit.

  “What’s wrong?” Rose asked. Katie showed her the broken teacup. “That’s a shame.” Rose gave her a sympathetic nod, but then went back to her reading.

  Separately wrapped, and still in mint condition, was the cup’s saucer. Katie turned it over in her hand and looked at the hallmark: Black Magic, Queen Anne, Bone China, Made in England. It really was a very pretty pattern of pink roses with a band of black around the top edge of the cup and saucer. So pretty, and the cup was so very broken.

  The PA squawked once again. “Katie Bonner, please come to the mechanics room.”

  This time it was Vance Ingram, the man she thought of as second in command of Artisans Alley, who knew virtually all there was to know about the place. He’d been a vendor since the day the arts-and-crafts arcade had opened a decade or more ago and had acted in the same capacity for its former owner/manager.

  “I’ll be right back,” Katie told Rose, who merely waved a hand in acknowledgment.

  Katie hurried past the second cash desk, wondering what else could have gone wrong. The former applesauce factory was more than a hundred years old and sometimes it felt like she was holding it together with duct tape, rubber bands, and spit.

  The door to the mechanics room was ajar and Katie pushed through to find Vance standing near a puddle of water. “Please don’t tell me it’s the roof.”

  Vance always reminded Katie of a skinny Santa, what with his white hair, beard, and gold wire-rimmed glasses. The red suspenders helped to enforce that view, too. He was as industrious as one of Santa’s elves, in that he could fix just about anything.

  “Nope, not the roof. The water’s coming in via the vendors side entrance, pooling in the storeroom, and finding its way here. We don’t want it ruining the furnace or shorting out anything electrical should it leach up the walls.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’ll it cost?” Katie asked warily.

  “Just the price of some new flashing. If it ever stops raining, I’ll look to make sure our gutters are clean. If they’re backing up, that’s another problem. That you might need to pay someone to do. I’m not as steady on a ladder as I used to be.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to do anything like that. Can the flashing be fixed today?”

  “Sure. I’ll get my jacket and head on over to the hardware store. They’ve got everything I need. I’ll bring back the receipt and you can reimburse me.”

  “Okay.” That was one problem solved.

  Vance followed Katie out of the mechanics room, switching off the light and locking the door behind him. They parted company, with Katie returning to the front of the store and Vance heading to the back and the Vendors’ Lounge to retrieve his coat. But when Katie returned to Cash Desk 2, she found it had been cleared of the mail—and her package.

  “What happened to the mail?” she asked Rose.

  Rose hesitated again before tearing her attention from her book. “What?”

  “The mail. It’s missing. Did you move it?”

  “What? No, sorry.”

  Katie let out an exasperated breath. “Did anyone else come through while I was gone?”

  Rose looked blank for a moment. “Oh, yeah. Ida stopped by to pick up the sales tags.”

  Ida Mitchell didn’t even break the top thirty on Katie’s favorite vendor list. It was hard to look at the older woman, thanks to the remarkably large wart on her left cheek that acted like a beacon. Beyond that, Ida simply didn’t relate well with others. Until Katie had intervened the summer before, she’d been a lonely individual who’d shown up for work at Artisans Alley on almost a daily basis. She seemed to have some kind of developmental disability—eit
her that, or was just incredibly passive-aggressive. She didn’t seem capable of playing nice with others, and insisted that it was her way or the highway. She hadn’t paid rent to sell her handmade lace in goodness knew how long, but now that the bulk of her week was dedicated to being a Meals On Wheels driver, she had little time to dedicate to Artisans Alley, for which just about everybody had heaved a sigh of relief. That she was at the Alley on a weekday was unusual in and of itself.

  “Did Ida take the mail?”

  Rose shrugged. “Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “There aren’t many places she can go. I’m sure I’ll find her in no time flat.” And with that, Katie headed for the tag room. The room held a long wooden box with fifty or sixty pigeon holes. That was where, on a weekly basis, Katie returned the sales tags that Ida or some other vendor attached to small sheets of paper, and the checks for sales made during the previous week.

  Ida sat on one of the metal folding chairs, with a large pillow atop it, carefully sorting the tags by vendor number.

  “Ida, did you move the mail that was on Cash Desk 2?”

  “Yes,” she answered simply and continued her work.

  “Where did you put it?”

  “In your office.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Ida had never once made eye contact, not that Katie expected her to.

  Katie turned and left the tag room, heading for her office, but when she got there all that sat on her office chair was the pile of bills. No box in sight.

  She returned to the tag room.

  “Ida, what happened to the box that was on Cash Desk 2?”

  “I threw it away.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “It was trash.”

  “No it wasn’t.”

  Ida finally turned to face Katie. “There was a broken cup inside, along with a lot of packing material. That’s trash. I threw it away.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Dumpster out back. Where else do you throw trash?”

  Katie sighed, knowing from experience how exasperating arguing with Ida could be. Back to her office she went, retrieved her coat, an old baseball cap, and an umbrella, and went outside to the Dumpster.

  Ida had not closed the receptacle’s side door, and as it faced west, and that’s where the wind and rain came from, the garbage on top of the pile, including the already soggy box, was saturated.

  Once back inside, Katie retrieved a day-old section of the newspaper from the recycle box and spread it across the table in the Vendors’ Lounge before she set the broken cup and its saucer on it. She pawed through the packing, but the little envelope that had accompanied the cup was nowhere to be found.

  Ida!

  Katie grabbed a wad of paper towel, dried the china, and took it into her office, setting it on the desk. Next she returned the wet umbrella to the corner near the heater to dry, and hung up her coat. Back in the lounge, she tossed the newspaper back in the recycle bin before going back to the tag room, but when she got there, it was empty.

  Katie approached Cash Desk 1, where Rose was ringing up a purchase. She slipped in beside her to wrap the heavy ceramic pottery mugs in brown paper, before handing them to the customer. “Thanks for shopping with us today.”

  The woman offered a toothy smile, nodded, and headed for the exit.

  “Where’s Ida?” Katie asked.

  Rose shrugged, reaching for her novel from under the counter. “She left.”

  “Left?” Katie looked at the clock. It was barely ten-thirty. “But she practically just got here.”

  “It’s not her day to work,” Rose pointed out, and reached for the work roster that lived under the counter. Sure enough, Ida hadn’t been scheduled to work for another four days. “What was she doing here if she wasn’t working?”

  Rose shrugged. “Maybe she came in to pick up her check.”

  Since she’d collected the tags and had been sorting them, Katie had assumed Ida was working.

  “What’s wrong?” Rose asked.

  “Ida threw away my cup, which I rescued from the Dumpster, but the envelope that came with it wasn’t in the box.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Katie nodded.

  “Maybe it’s still in the Dumpster.”

  Crawling around in garbage hadn’t been on Katie’s list of things to do for the day, but it looked like it had just been added.

  But before she could leave to do that, another customer arrived and Rose snapped to attention, ready for duty. Again Katie wrapped the purchases while her anger toward Ida simmered. Why had the woman interfered? Why couldn’t she have just minded her own business?

  Because she was Ida—with no sense of how to deal with people or think outside the box. And even though Katie pitied the woman, and cut her more slack than any other vendor at Artisans Alley, she still found the woman to be infuriating on a regular basis.

  A voice from the past echoed in Katie’s mind; her great Aunt Lizzie. Be a little patient.

  But how?

  That was a good question.

  A Little Sleuthing

  Dumpster diving for the missing envelope had proved futile and Katie felt ten shades of icky. So nasty, she ended up back at her apartment to shower and change before the noon hour.

  Katie and her pizza-making boyfriend, Andy Rush, owner of Angelo’s Pizzeria, had made time during the day to see one another—at least once every other day, that is. That’s when they met at Del’s Diner, a few blocks from Victoria Square, to have lunch and some meaningful conversation. That day wasn’t the day, but as Katie examined the pattern on the saucer—which mirrored the Black Magic cup—she couldn’t help wonder about the object’s provenance. Somebody had sent it to her for a reason. Since the label on the box couldn’t help her—and since Ida had not returned her calls—there was only one thing to do: consult an expert. And she knew where she needed to go: Afternoon Tea, the shop across the Square.

  The tea shop didn’t stop serving until two o’clock, and Katie’s stomach was protesting loudly by the time she wrapped up the cup, donned her jacket and cap once more, and grabbed her umbrella, which by that time was only slightly damp.

  The rain still came down in buckets as she bypassed the lake-sized puddles on the asphalt parking lot. It was one fifty when she stepped through the shop’s door to find that there were no more customers, and nobody else in sight. But the bell that had tinkled upon her arrival had alerted someone in the kitchen. “Be right there.” Katie recognized that voice: Francine Barnett.

  Katie shrugged out of her coat, draping it across the back of the chair, took her cap and set it on an empty chair at a table set for four, and sat down.

  Francine entered the dining room through the swinging doors that separated it from the kitchen. “Katie. Good to see you. What can I get you?”

  “How about a couple of raisin scones and a pot of English breakfast tea.”

  “Coming right up.”

  Francine returned to the kitchen, and it was precisely at two that she returned with a tray. She set down the plate of scones, along with small bowls of cream and jam, along with the pot of tea and a cup and saucer.

  “Do you have a few minutes to talk? You could join me in a cup of tea.”

  Francine hesitated, seeming to think it over, and then shrugged. “Why not?”

  She retrieved a cup and saucer for herself, and sat at the table across from Katie, pouring for both of them.

  Katie added milk to her tea and stirred, while Francine took hers plain.

  “I’m surprised to find you alone here. Where’s Vonne?”

  Vonne was Francine’s daughter and partner in the business. She shrugged. “Goodness knows where or with whom. She hightailed out of here as soon as our last customer—that is, before you dropped in—left. I’ve got a sink full of dishes to wash and a ton of paperwork to catch up on.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “No
sorrier than me,” Francine said bitterly. She eyed the bag on the table next to Katie. “What have you got there?”

  Katie ignored her scones and reached for the plastic bag, taking out the package and unwrapping it.

  Francine took in the broken cup. “Oh, that’s a shame. What happened?”

  “I guess it wasn’t packed securely enough, although it had bubble wrap around it.”

  “Was there anything stuffed in the cup to help keep it rigid?”

  “No.”

  Francine nodded. “We learned early on that when customers wanted to buy some of our cups and have us ship them, that we needed to stuff them with a load of tissue paper, as well as surround them in bubble wrap.”

  “It came in today’s mail, but one of the vendors misplaced the envelope that came with it, so I have no idea who sent it or why. I was hoping you might know something about the pattern.”

  Francine reached for the saucer and turned it over, squinting to take in the hallmark. “I’m afraid not. All I know about bone china is that it’s pretty and useful.”

  “But what about this pattern?” Katie insisted.

  “There are literally thousands of patterns. Lots of manufacturers made beautiful floral cups and saucers but not full sets of china to go with them.”

  “Then they’re just for pretty?”

  “That’s about right.”

  Katie picked up her knife and gouged some jam from the bowl, spreading it on the first of her scones. “I’m disappointed to hear that.”

  “I doubt that researching the pattern will give you anything other than trivia—that is if you could even find anything pertinent.”

  Darn. Why hadn’t Katie thought to consult the Internet? Probably because she was stressed about the leaky door, Ida’s obstinance, and her own sense of ennui—that is before the cup arrived. Now she was terribly curious and the first thing she’d do upon returning to Artisans Alley would be to go online and start her research.

  But for now, her most important goal was sustenance. While her scones were still warm, research could wait.