“Whatever it takes for you to want to hold my hand,” he said, giving mine a squeeze.
“You’re hopeless. I should just jump in with both feet and then decide to leave and break your heart,” I countered.
“Go ahead. Jump. I’ll risk the broken heart. Besides, I know if you do finally give yourself over to me you’ll never want to leave.”
“Aren’t you the cocky one,” I said, shaking my head.
“Maybe I just see what you won’t admit.” The grin was gone and I knew he was serious, which immediately made me nervous. Was it because I knew there might be truth in what he said?
Julius was waiting by the kitchen door. He welcomed both of us with some swirls around our legs followed by a plaintive meow before he went to the refrigerator.
“I’ll do the honors,” Dane said.
“Then you are my hero to brave the stench of stink fish.” I did a flourish and a mock bow. He rolled his eyes as he took out the multi-wrapped can.
“I don’t know why you make such a fuss about it.” He pulled off the first layer and suddenly gagged. “Whoa, this stuff does stink. I am your hero,” he said, looking at me and then at the cat. “How about a thank-you meow.”
“I guess you don’t know cats. They think we work for them,” I said, watching as Dane held the can as far away as possible as he unwrapped the rest of the can.
Julius attacked his bowl with fervor when the precious pink blob had been put in it.
“Now, where were we?” Dane said. “Weren’t you about to fall into my arms and vow your undying love?” His tone made it clear he was back to teasing, but underneath it there was a kernel of hope.
“I did agree to go to the movies in Cadbury,” I said. “It’s a small step, but still a step closer to your fantasy.” I had wanted to keep our relationship on the down low, not wanting to be caught up in small-town gossip, but it was a waste of time. It seemed like everybody already knew anyway, so instead of having to go to Monterey on a date, I’d agreed to going local.
“I don’t know why you put up with me,” I said. “There have to be lots of single women in Cadbury who would love your attention.”
“Really? You don’t know why?” He rolled his eyes. “Is this a play for me to give you a list of what I lo, uh, like about you?”
“No,” I said quickly, afraid of what he’d say and how I’d react. Okay, I was afraid I’d get all mushy and start crying. I wanted to keep things light.
When the stink fish had been rewrapped and put away, I went to the refrigerator and took out some rolls of cookie dough. I always kept the rich butter cookie dough ready to bake up for my retreaters. Dane pulled out a chair while I turned on the oven and sliced up the dough.
“There are fresh cookies in your future,” I said, fluttering my eyes, which was my pathetic effort at being flirty. As usual it got me laughter in return. “And while you wait I’ll tell you about the something more.”
“I love it when you let me be the cop. Fire away.”
While the air filled with the buttery sweetness of the baking cookies, I told him about my adventure with Lieutenant Borgnine the night before. Dane was shaking his head in disbelief by the end of the story. “I wish there was a video of that,” he said. “Was he wearing his usual sport jacket?” Dane shook his head again. “You and the lieutenant climbing around rocks in the darkness with your luminol.” He stopped for a moment. “Now it makes sense. He sent a detail to the beach this morning. I heard something about something pink and a rock you could fit in your hand. They were there a long time.”
“Then there were cops on the beach,” I said, half to myself. That meant Aileen had to have been lying about her morning walk. There was no way she could have missed a bunch of uniforms clamoring around the rocks.
“I thought Lieutenant B. agreed with me, that someone had brought the rock there and used it to bash Tim’s head. Or at least that there was the possibility that happened. Would he look the other way because it’s expedient to Kevin St. John to call what happened an accident?”
“Borgnine and I have our differences, but I’ve never doubted that he’s a good cop. The manner of death isn’t official yet anyway, so maybe he was just humoring the Vista Del Mar manager while he investigates with an open mind.”
“Okay, I can buy that coming from you since you’re on the inside.”
Dane smiled and took on his cop stance. “Glad I could be of service, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Officer,” I said to counter his formal ma’am. I’d been slicing the logs of cookie dough during our back-and-forth and sliding the sheets into the oven.
“Uh, Officer, there’s something else you might be able to help me with.”
“At your service,” Dane said, doing a grand bow.
“I heard that the nine-one-one call came from a pay phone at Vista Del Mar. But any idea who made the call? The dispatcher must have had something—a name, or at least an idea if it was a man or woman.”
Dane broke a smile. “The cop gossip mill had a good time with that one when it came out that Mr. Top Cop had assumed you’d made the call and he didn’t check. And then he did. What I heard was that the dispatcher just had J. Smith listed and had no memory if it was a male or female.”
“Thanks, but it doesn’t help.” As I was saying it something stirred in my mind and I realized it was the vague thought that had flitted in and out when I was talking to Audrey. I tried to get it to flit into my mind and stay there. I must have had my eyes scrunched up and been gritting my teeth because Dane waved his hand in front of my face.
“What is going on in that head of yours?”
“When I tell you, you’ll laugh,” I said, letting my jaw relax. I explained trying to will a memory to come forward in my mind.
“Did it work?” he asked and I nodded.
“And the memory is,” he prodded. “You’re not making this easy.”
“Sorry,” I said. “As I was about to walk on the beach yesterday before I saw Tim or had any idea something had happened, I saw something go by out of the corners my eye. All I remember is a flash of something black. And then it disappeared. I went back on the street and looked but there was nothing there.”
“Maybe it was J. Smith,” Dane said. “The person who called nine-one-one.”
I thought about it for a moment. “It seems like it could have been J., but if it was, where’d they go? And the timing seems off.”
The oven timer pinged and I went to pull the cookie sheets out of the oven. I pushed the round discs out onto a rack to cool. Dane knew better than to try to snag one when they were just out of the oven. I had to admire his patience.
“It couldn’t have been more than a minute or so later that I noticed Tim on the rocks. I barely had time to get to him and check for a pulse when the paramedics arrived.”
Dane wasn’t quite as patient as I thought and he took one of the not completely cooled cookies and popped it in his mouth. He pressed his fingers together and seemed to throw a kiss in the air. “My compliments to the chef.” He went for a second cookie. “Most likely your memory of the timing is off. It might have taken longer than you think. Or maybe it was a crow—though to be honest, I haven’t seen any around here lately.”
“I was thinking maybe we could reenact the situation,” I said. “You know, to see how the timing works.” He grabbed another cookie and got up.
“Sure. Let’s do it. I’m cooking for the karate kids, but I’ve got time.”
• • •
The fog was almost gone when we went outside. There was just a subtle shroud of mist around the tops of the lanky Monterey pines that grew along the driveway to Vista Del Mar. I suggested we walk through the grounds separately in case Lieutenant Borgnine was hanging around. He frowned upon Dane getting involved with my investigations and punished him by giving him the worst shifts.
I passed by a group of the birders. It was easy to pick them out with their khaki vests and binoculars around their necks. They w
ere just exiting the boardwalk that meandered through the dunes toward the beach.
I thought to ask them if they’d noticed any crows, but decided against it and simply nodded a greeting as I passed them before starting on the created pathway. The boardwalk looked like it was made of wood slats, but actually the “wood” didn’t come from trees, but was fashioned out of recycled soda bottles.
I passed through the archway with a Vista Del Mar sign at the end of it. I was about to cross the street when Dane rejoined me. “Where did you come from?” I asked, surprised to see him.
“We cops have our ways,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
He made sure we looked both ways before we crossed the street after chiding me about my inattention before. The streets were all sleepy there, but I got his point.
I looked at the warning signs on the rocky pile thinking back to the previous day. I retraced my steps to the zigzagging pathway that led through the protected planted area to the beach. “This is where I was when I saw the flash of black.”
From there we walked onto the sand along the side of the rocky surface. “I looked over there, and that’s when I saw something that turned out to be Tim.” We climbed on the rocks and I took him to the spot, which was easy to find because my yarn and needles were still stuck in the crevice. “Pink marks the spot,” I said, pointing it out.
“I leaned down and felt for a pulse. The next moment I heard the paramedics pulling up.” I looked across the rocky surface to the street and pointed. “Then they were coming toward me.”
“So, your question is how’d they get here so fast?” Dane said. He’d crouched down but I’d stayed standing. “I’d like to say our services are that quick, but they would have had to be mind readers to have arrived that fast.”
“So then it must have been somebody else,” I said.
“Hey, what are you two doing up there?” a voice yelled. I saw Lieutenant Borgnine standing up to his ankles in sand. His bulldog face appeared angrier than usual. I stepped to block his view of Dane and waved my hand frantically, telling him to go. I didn’t want it on my conscience that Dane would get another bad shift or duty. Dane hesitated. It was not his way to walk away from trouble, but he finally slipped over the rocks and went down on the other side before Lieutenant Borgnine realized I wasn’t alone.
I leaned down and grabbed my knitting and held it up. “I just came back for this,” I said. He shook his head with dismay and waited until I’d climbed down and then walked me back to the Vista Del Mar grounds.
Chapter 18
Lieutenant Borgnine rushed me through the boardwalk and abandoned me as soon as we were back on the grounds. I think his swift departure was deliberate because he was afraid I might start asking him questions. After what Dane had said about Borgnine being a good cop, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt and believed he had just been trying to pacify Kevin St. John.
Your loss, I said to myself as I watched the rumpled jacket disappear in the distance. Had he not been in such a rush, I might have offered him some information. I doubted that Audrey Moffat had told him half of what she told me. And wouldn’t he have liked to know that it seemed there had been a mystery person on the beach. Someone dressed in black.
Dane was waiting by my kitchen door when I came back to pick up the cookies.
“I could have stayed,” he said. “What more could Borgnine do to me? I get the graveyard shift a lot, and dog cleanup duty.”
“Sorry,” I said, knowing it was my fault.
“I definitely don’t like the dog-do duty, but the graveyard shift isn’t all bad. I get to stop by the Blue Door when you’re baking.”
“You could come by the Blue Door even if you aren’t working,” I said.
He brightened and I expected some teasing remark about how I was finally succumbing to his charms, but his smile was just sweet. “Good to know,” he said. He followed me inside my kitchen and I packed a tin with the cooled cookies and made up a bag for him. We walked back outside together.
“It’s been fun,” he said when we reached the end of my driveway. He glanced up and down the street, which was deserted. “I know you’re not into public displays of affection, but who’s here to see.” He swept me into his arms and kissed me. He sensed that I was having a hard time pulling away.
Now he had the teasing smile. “I knew you’d come around. Just remember there’s plenty more where that came from.”
I’d never let on to him, but he was right. He was winning me over. I still felt a little giddy and weak-kneed when I got to the meeting room in the Cypress building. The door to the other room was open and I saw the Silicon Valley group was in there with Sky. It looked like they were working with coloring books.
I put the tin of cookies on the counter and was glad to see that Cloris had left the coffee and tea service. I was afraid she might have decided to use her own judgment about the birthday group’s drinks as she had with the other bunch. She’d laid a fresh fire and lit it. It was already taking the chill off the room and adding a nice glow.
Now that I knew Madison was annoyed that I’d put on the mindful workshop, I wanted to make sure any hints of it were gone. I went over the table again to make sure there were no scraps of yarn from their knitting project. I was going to distribute the red tote bags when I realized a snag in my plan. I’d done enough retreats that I should have remembered that people tended to return to the same seats all weekend. Yes, the bags had names on them, but I didn’t remember who had been sitting where.
Crystal walked in just as I was staring at the five tote bags and I told her my dilemma.
She shrugged it off and arbitrarily put a bag in front of each of the five chairs. “They’re not in kindergarten. They’ll work it out.”
“I was hoping to make it seem like everything was as they’d left it. It turns out at least some of our group knows the other group and I know for sure that Madison wasn’t happy we put on the workshop for them.”
“That’s ridiculous. They didn’t rent us for the entire weekend.”
“I think it’s more about Madison’s relationship with Elex and his group than her being upset with us.” I explained the shared office space and that she was the manager and Elex and his crew were tenants. “I guess they’re a real pain to deal with.”
“Well, there’s one less of them now,” Crystal said. Then she realized how cold that sounded. “Sorry. I’m sure everyone is upset about the loss of the guy with light blond hair.”
“Tim. His name was Tim and I think one person might not be so sorry he’s gone.”
Crystal was all ears now, which I noted had an interesting mixture of hoops and dangle earrings that made her head seem a little lopsided. I didn’t give her all the details of how I knew what I knew, but just that there was reason to believe, at least to me, that someone might have killed Tim.
“I knew you’d end up sleuthing. Anything I can do to help.” She started to go over their group. I was about to tell her about Audrey. Crystal was divorced herself and probably knew a lot more about the emotions connected to it than I did. But this was not the time for it.
“We need to concentrate on what’s in front of us. I don’t want the birthday group to feel neglected. We can’t do the other workshop for the Silicon Valley people in here. I was hoping we could do it at the yarn shop?”
“That would be great. It’s easier for me and maybe we can sell them a boatload of yarn. Since it doesn’t look like the Delacorte sisters are going to welcome us with open arms, we need to keep the yarn store bringing in the bucks.”
“About the sisters,” I began. “I ran into Madeleine. She’d just finished up a meeting with Kevin St. John and Lieutenant Borgnine about the so-called accident,” I said. “I think she’s softening. Kevin in his usual jerkdom said something to her about not worrying her pretty little head about the situation. Madeleine—”
Before I could finish, Crystal interrupted. “He didn’t really say that. Let him say it to her w
hen I’m there and I’ll let him know that kind of comment doesn’t fly.”
“That’s sort of what Madeleine said. She seemed to like the idea of having some help dealing with everything.”
“All she has to do is say the word and I’ll tell Kevin he can’t talk to her that way. Imagine him saying such a demeaning thing.”
Inside I was feeling a little more hopeful that the situation between the sisters and their new family members could be worked out. They all really needed each other. Maybe my meddling would turn out to have been a good thing.
I heard voices coming up the path and threw Crystal a shush. She nodded with understanding and we got ready to welcome back my retreaters.
I guess their noise bothered the mindful coloring going on next door because I heard their door shut with a sharp slap just as my group came in the room.
I counted four of them and was surprised to see that the missing person wasn’t Aileen this time. “PJ will be along any minute. She left her jacket somewhere,” Madison said. They went right for the drinks and cookies and brought them to the table. As I’d expected, they went back to the same seats they’d had for the first workshop. They didn’t seem bothered that the bags were at the wrong seats and merely moved them around until they got to the right people.
When they’d settled in, Crystal started to stand up, but I moved to the head of the table before she could. I’d decided to deal with Madison head-on and clear the air.
I did a few minutes of greeting and said that I’d hoped they were enjoying themselves and then I got to it. “It’s come to my attention that some of you were upset that Crystal and I held a workshop for the group next door in this room last night.” I looked around the four of them as I spoke.
“I realize it was a mistake to have held it here and I want to apologize. I certainly didn’t want to upset any of you. Just to let you know, the other workshop with them won’t be here. It’ll be off-site and won’t interfere with any of your activities.” I sounded so formal and businesslike I surprised myself. I looked to Madison and she nodded.
Knot on Your Life Page 14
