Ouch.

It’s a small nick, but that’s what I get for not paying attention and letting my mind wander.

Working with sharp objects—glass and knives, even X-acto knives—needs attention and this morning my mind was on the body of my neighbor.

After my husband, Winston, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles, where I’d built a respected and lucrative business of designing and making stained glass windows, I needed a change. I got out a map, played a version of pin-the-tail on the donkey and landed here, Hamilton, Oregon, a small town on the coast. It’s quiet and insular seven months of the year when the fog and storms sweep in from the Pacific and jammed with visitors and tourists the other five months.

And until now, peaceful and calm.

My stained glass business is primarily by commission, so I can work anywhere. I also have a smaller business, making kits for people to put together a stained glass window at home. All I needed was good cell service and WiFi. Hamilton fit the bill

I was cutting glass for a kit this morning when I nicked my finger. This one is a version of the Oregon coastal forest—massive trees with a foreground of salmonberry and blackberry bushes. Once it’s assembled it’s a wonderful souvenir with the orangey-red salmon berries making it pop.

I spent a couple of hours recently online looking for a glass supplier who could match the berry color and ordered some. I keep an inventory of about 20 colors of glass in my studio, a converted garage. When I bought the house, I tore out two walls and remodeled. Now the west side, backing against the beach and the ocean, is all glass and my testing ground for the finished windows. At sunset on a clear day, the studio comes alive with deep reds, blues, greens and I stand and let the colors seep into my soul.

Today I have to finish putting together the kit—glass, leading (cames that hold the window together), X-acto knife, soldering iron, small roll of solder and instructions. I’ve done it so often it’s a job that let’s my mind multi-task. And the multi-task today is wondering just who the murdered man across the street was.

And why was one of my knives at the murder scene? I saw it being carried out of the house, covered in blood.

That’s when I met two other neighbors, Liam and Patsy.

I’m having lunch today with Liam—and probably Patsy, Jules Café in downtown Hamilton is her second home and gossip central—and we’re comparing notes on the murder. I haven’t told them that I recognized the knife the cops carried out of the house.

There are a few things I haven’t told them, including Winston’s murder and the fact the L.A. cops thought I was a “Person of Interest.”

Since I already nicked my finger this morning, I’m going to call work done for now and take my dog, Tut, a rescue greyhound, for a run on the beach. The flat beach, the Pacific, the sandpipers and gulls and Tut, joyously running and running center me and give my soul peace.

It’s the time when I can let the demons—the possible reasons why men drop dead around me—rest and allow myself to just be.

You can read more about Roz in Stain on the Soul, the first book in the NEW “Stained Glass” cozy mystery series, released July 27, 2019.

Who murdered Winston Duke? Why?

His widow, Rosalind (Roz) had no answers but to put her life back together, the internationally known stained glass artist moved to a small town on the Oregon coast. Here, where she knew no one, she planned to use the beach, scoured by wind and water, to cleanse her soul and rebuild her creativity. That is, until one morning when her peace was smashed by the lights and sirens of emergency vehicles, and the sight of her neighbor’s bloody body being taken away. Meeting others from the town, Roz is pulled into a mystery of who the neighbor was and finds a circle of friends far removed the Los Angeles of her life with Winston.

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About the author
Michele Drier, born in Santa Cruz, is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and worked all over the state, calling both Southern and Northern California home. In journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for investigative series.

Her fifteen books include the Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries, The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, a series of paranormal romances, and The Stained Glass Murders.

She is the past president of the Sacramento chapter of Sisters in Crime and the co-chair of Bouchercon 2020. Reach out to Michele on Facebook or on her Amazon author page.

All comments are welcomed.