The Face of Deceit. Ramona Richards

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      That afternoon, Karen returned to the studio to get her mind off the auction. She soon lost herself in the work. The whirling pot on the wheel before her so captured her that Lacey finally resorted to using claws to get her attention. Karen jumped, an action that caused one finger to break through the wet clay on the wheel, turning a shimmering vase into a pile of mud.

      “Lacey!” Karen stopped the wheel, scolding the gray half-Persian at her feet. She cupped the distorted clay mound in both hands while glaring at Lacey. “Look at that!”

      The golden eyes of the annoyed feline didn’t relent, and the ferocious meow and sharp swish of tail that followed told Karen that she needed to forget about ruined art and open the back door now.

      “All right!” Karen glanced at a clock near the door and immediately felt a twinge of chagrin. “Four-fifty! No wonder you’re desperate.” She sighed and headed for the door, followed by the prancing cat. “Sorry about that. I should have let you out before I started. You know how I get.”

      Meow. Swish.

      Karen laughed and used the towel hanging at her waist to open the door to her basement studio. Lacey fled, her thick gray coat a quilt of light and dark shadows as she moved through the fading sunlight. Karen glanced down at the threshold again, but only a light shifting of clay dust remained from this morning. She closed the door again and returned to her wheel, sinking down on the stool behind it, her mouth twisted into a grimace as she gently touched the destroyed vase. It had been on its way to beauty, molded from a brownish lump of clay to an emerald-green work of art. “Sorry.”

      Karen molded the wet earth back into a ball but didn’t restart the wheel, suddenly aware of how tense her shoulders were and how much her back and arms ached. “Four-fifty,” she repeated. Almost four hours had passed since she’d sat down at the wheel. Not unusual, though. When the wheel began to turn, the moist clay changing shape beneath her hands, Karen lost track of time, space, even the air around her. Her aunt, Evie, not understanding how Karen could so completely lose herself in the artwork, called it “that thing with the clay.” When she worked, Karen’s world narrowed to the wheel and the clay, and the only sensations that she remained aware of were the musty smell of damp earth and the feel of the water and earth beneath her hands. She’d been known to work five hours straight as her art formed under her hands. As a result, she usually let Lacey out before she sat down at the wheel, but this afternoon she’d forgotten.

      Karen stood, rolling her shoulders, and went to the sink to wash her hands. Time for a break, more coffee, maybe check to see if there were new orders on her fax machine. Or e-mail from Mason. She pulled the towel from the waistband of her jeans and dried her hands.

      Karen paused, her hands wrapped in the worn towel, looking at a shelf holding nine vases similar to the ones Mason planned to bid on. Each stood about eighteen inches high, broad at the base, a bit narrower in the middle and flared at the top with the edges jagged and wild, points and curves going in all directions. “Face vases” were not unique in the world of ceramics, but what made Karen’s vases distinctive was the face itself. Neither male nor female, it was a horror mask, twisted and grotesque on some, leering and grinning realistically on others. The vase colors were a kaleidoscope nightmare, swirling around the face in stripes and curls. Although each vase featured different colors, the face remained the same, which was especially noticeable when they were lined up together. The same down-turned eyes, full lips and white streaks slicked back from the scalp. Of course they’re the same, she thought ruefully. They come from the same source.

      Tossing the towel over the edge of the sink, Karen headed upstairs, pausing to glance out the windows at the back of the studio at Lacey, now in the process of stalking a wayward butterfly. The metal of the stairs chilled her feet, so she scuffed them a bit on the carpet of the small dining area that separated the stairs from the kitchen. She poured the last cup from the lunchtime pot of Kona into a ceramic mug, and headed up the stairs near her front door.

      A polite scratching on the door stopped her, and she opened it. “Already?” she asked as Lacey strolled past her, tail held high. “I thought you were on a butterfly hunt out back.”

      No meow this time, just a thank-you figure eight around Karen’s ankles. Then both of them headed upstairs to Karen’s office, where an odd-looking sheet of paper slowly peeled its way through her fax. She pulled it off the machine and turned it around.

      The fax had rendered it black and white, but the sheet was clearly a page from an auction house catalog, and Karen grinned as she recognized the angular, dramatic handwriting of the phrase scrawled across the bottom.

      Lot 21 could be your salvation. Lot 21, which consisted of four unique vases of Karen’s own design.

      “Sorry, Mason,” she murmured, her eyes bright with amusement. “My salvation comes from a much higher source.”

      Yet she knew what he meant, and she glanced at the Felix the Cat clock on the wall behind her computer: 5:05. The auction must be over by now. The fax machine clicked and whirred again, and a second sheet emerged. This one was white, with only four lines scrawled across it.

      $8,000!!! Didn’t get them. Will talk to agent who did. See you tomorrow!! M

      The paper fluttered, blurring the words, as her hands shook. “Eight thousand?” Her knees weakened and Karen sat hard in her office chair. Tears blurred her eyes. Two thousand apiece! She’d never gotten more than five hundred for one of her vases. Mason DuBroc had succeeded in almost quadrupling their value.

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