Dead Men Don't Crochet
( Crochet Mysteries - 2 )
Betty Hechtman
When a member of Molly Pink's crochet group is suspected of murder, it's up to Molly and her pals to pick up the dropped stitches and catch a killer.
In Hot Water
A saleswoman stumbled out of the doorway, her eyes big with panic. She saw the crowd and screamed again and slumped against the wall. Dinah and I rushed into the room she had exited. A crowd of people came in behind us, and then there was a collective gasp. At a large desk in the center of the room, Drew Brooks was facedown in a bowl. Red stuff was splattered everywhere.
“Omigod, there’s so much blood,” I said, looking at the crimson marks on the rug, wall and desk.
Adele pushed through the crowd. She looked at the desk and surroundings and shook her head at me with disgust. “Pink, it’s not blood. It’s soup.”
“A delightful addition to the mystery genre.”
—Earlene Fowler,
author of Tumbling Blocks
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Betty Hechtman
HOOKED ON MURDER
DEAD MEN DON’T CROCHET
Copyright © 2008 by Betty Hechtman.
All rights reserved.
For my parents,
Helen and Jacob Jacobson.
You always believed in me.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Sandy Harding for all her help and for being so nice to work with.
This book wouldn’t have happened without Jessica Faust of BookEnds, LLC.
I would like to thank Leslie Henkel for all of her efforts on my behalf. And a special thank-you to David Brokaw and Sandy Brokaw of the Brokaw Company for their friendship and all their time and great ideas.
Sue Meyer of the Lace Museum in Sunnyvale, California, shared her knowledge and gave me the opportunity to see samples of Irish crochet up close and even touch the intricate stitches.
Paula Tesler remains my go-to person for crochet help and inspiration. The Crochet Partners online list has been a wonderful source of information and insight into the generous hearts of crocheters.
Jean Leinhauser and Rita Weiss are crochet goddesses whose books dazzle me with their possibilities.
Thanks to Homicide Detective Michel Carroll of the Fort Worth, Texas, Police Department for answering my questions. Forensic U put on by Sisters in Crime was fabulous. Where else would I see what a body that had been buried for three years looks like? A particular thank-you to Lee Lofland and Dr. D. P. Lyle for their great workshops.
Thank you, Roberta Martia, for all the support and crochet advice. Appellate Defender Judy Libby offered lots of cheers and explained a lot of legal stuff.
Betty Mehling and Diana Lang have been a constant source of good thoughts.
Thank you, Joe Sugarman, for making it possible for me to crochet in paradise.
And a giant thank-you to Burl and Max for always being ready and willing to join me on some wild adventure.
CHAPTER 1
“MY NAME IS MOLLY PINK AND I’M A YARNOHOLIC,” I announced to my crochet group, the Tarzana Hookers, as I put my stash on the table. Okay, maybe there wasn’t really any such organization as Yarnoholics Anonymous, and calling myself an addict was a bit of a stretch, but I was feeling a little guilty about the yarn I’d just bought. Even though I was new to crocheting, I couldn’t seem to leave a yarn store empty-handed. What was I to do this time? The recycled silk was beautiful, in limited quantity and at a special price. Besides, with the Tarzana Hookers meeting again, I was sure to find something fabulous to make with the three skeins. Well, six skeins if you counted the other three I needed to mix with the first three, because the woman at the yarn store said that recycled silk was too thin to go it alone.
The Tarzana part of our name referred to Tarzana, California. Technically the San Fernando Valley community was part of the city of Los Angeles, but the people on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains—or over the hill, as it’s commonly referred to—looked at us Valleites as at least one step behind them in the sophistication department.
Our weather was a step behind in the comfort department. It was hotter in the summer and colder in the winter, though this May morning it was cool and cloudy on both sides of the hill. I dealt with it by wearing a white shirt with a sweater over it and a hoodie on top of that. As the day progressed and the sun came out, I’d start peeling off layers, then load everything back on as it got dark and the temperature dropped. It was standard operating procedure for May in Southern California.
Three times a week the Tarzana Hookers gathered at 10 a.m. in the event area of the neighborhood bookstore, Shedd & Royal Books and More. A long table was set up in an alcove with a large window facing Ventura Boulevard. We could look out at the street, and passersby could see there was something going on inside. This morning the light was flat and shadowless due to the silvery early-day clouds.
I glanced around the table to see the crochet group’s response to my yarnaholic comment, hoping for a smile. Adele Abrams looked up from her work.
“Pink, no matter how much yarn you have, I’m sure I have more.”
Some people would have said that to make me feel better, but Adele said it to irritate me; she called me by my last name for the same reason. We had a running rivalry that started when I got my job at Shedd & Royal Books and More after my husband Charlie died. Based on my experience putting on receptions and events for Charlie’s public relations firm, Mrs. Shedd, co-owner of the bookstore, had hired me as event coordinator-community relations person. Adele had hoped to get promoted to my job. Instead, she’d gotten story time in the kids’ department. She still hadn’t gotten over it, and it’d been way over a year.
“And if you thought it was funny, it wasn’t—or even original,” Adele said with an implied groan in her voice. Adele Abrams had an ample build and an interesting fashion sense. She liked to think she had flair. Today’s ensemble was something of a cowgirl look. She wore boots and a long denim skirt decorated with big sewn-on doily-type things. She topped it with a white western-style shirt and a leather vest. Her brown hair had some new highlights and was pulled into a minuscule ponytail, with a battalion of clips keeping up the sides. Even as she talked, she kept crocheting. Adele might be a little weird with her clothes, but she was top-notch with a crochet hook.
I had kind of backed into becoming a Tarzana Hooker. It started with too much caramel corn. It was homemade and totally delicious, if I say so myself, but also totally bad for the fit of my khaki slacks. I’d reasoned that if I could occupy my fingers with something besides ferrying caramel corn to my mouth it might help. The Hookers were already meeting at the bookstore, but I didn’t want to be totally green when I joined. Actually, I didn’t want Adele to be the one to teach me, so when she wasn’t looking I had bought a kids’ kit we had in the children’s department and taught myself the basics. I’d shared the kit with my best friend Dinah and gotten her to join, too.
I was still a newbie, but totally hooked on crochet. I loved watching a ball of yarn turn into something, even if I had to undo it a lot. It was soothing and relaxing, and somehow always left me feeling restored. And there was something wonderful about wrapping a pretty scarf around your neck and knowing you’d made it.
Adele had accepted that I was part of the group, but never missed a chance to remind me how good she was and how I was still struggling. I noticed she was working with what appeared to be a ball of thin string and a small silver-colored hook. I couldn’t see what she was making at first, but as it got bigger, I realized it was a doily similar to the ones on her skirt. Maybe she was planning to start a fashion trend.
“Sorr
y, dear, but Adele’s right about your yarnaholic comment not being original,” CeeCee Collins said. “We’ve all said something similar at one time or another. Let’s see what you’ve got.” She reached across the table and emptied my bag. The hanks of multicolored silk tumbled on the table followed by the three companion skeins. The silk ones were shades of reds and warm tones, and the other three were a soft mauve. All were from the Himalayas and promised to help impoverished villagers, which made me feel better about my purchase.
“It’s beautiful,” CeeCee said, fingering it. “You must give me details about where you got it.” Her real name was Connie Collins, but everybody knew her as CeeCee. She was the reason the Tarzana Hookers hadn’t been meeting for a while. CeeCee had recently become the host of a reality show called Making Amends. The point of the show was to give people a chance to confess to wrongs they’d done, and then the show helped the participants right them. There were a lot of tearful moments and a lot of embarrassing ones, too—a winning combo that had turned it into a hit. It had been too hard for CeeCee to commit to our usual three meetings a week when the show was taping, and though Adele had wanted to keep the meetings going without CeeCee, we had decided to wait until she was free. The production had recently finished making another block of shows and was now on hiatus so the Tarzana Hookers were back together.
CeeCee and Adele were still vying to be head of the group. So far, CeeCee seemed to be winning. As usual CeeCee’s hair was poufed into a stiff bubble. It was that reddish, blondish sort of acrylic-looking color that never occurs without help. She favored velour warm-up suits in jewel tones. Due to the morning chill, she wore a white turtleneck shirt under her jade-colored jacket. She had barely stopped working during the interchange. She was so good at crocheting, I almost believed she could do it in her sleep. But I couldn’t figure out what she was making. It was round and brown. I leaned closer and she held it up. It looked like a furry donut with pink icing.
CeeCee was known for her runaway sweet tooth and the battle of the bulge that went with it. “This is the only kind of donut I can deal with right now.” She seemed embarrassed as she admitted that she’d gained five pounds. “And I need to lose it starting this second,” she said. She gazed longingly at the yarn donut. “This looks so authentic I can almost smell the sugar.” She explained that it was going to be a pincushion when she finished it. She had been making them in her spare time on the set and called them zero-calorie donuts. “I’m donating them to the Not Exactly A Bake Sale at Wilbur Avenue Elementary.”
CeeCee was always making something for someone else. I’d discovered that crocheters had big hearts and gave away or donated most of what they produced. I wanted to do the same, and the toasty brown scarf I was working on was going to be donated to soldiers when it was finished. I began doing simple rows of double crochet stitches.
As I worked, I waited for some comment from the third person at the table, Sheila Altman, but she never glanced up from her work. I could tell by the hunch of her shoulders she was having a nervous moment, which was not uncommon for her. I had to give her credit. She never gave up trying to lessen her anxiety and had taken up crochet, thinking it might help. Her crocheting was fine as long as her mind was clear, but if something was bothering her it showed up in her stitches. Like now. I watched her trying to jam her hook into stitches so tight they looked like knots. Whatever was upsetting her this time had to be something big. Without missing a beat, Adele handed her a smaller-size hook. It might help her stitches but probably wouldn’t do anything for whatever she was thinking about.
“What’s up, ladies?” Dinah Lyons said as she came up to the table, tote bag in hand.
“Pink was just venting about her yarn habit,” Adele said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.
Dinah looked at me with surprise. “What’s the problem?” Dinah was a ball of energy. I pointed to the hank of yarn on the table. Dinah picked it up and ran her fingers through it while saying, “Sorry, I’m late,” before settling in. Dinah taught English at Walter Beasley Community College and claimed that teaching college freshmen had made her ready to deal with anything. She loved silk scarves and today had twined a long kelly green one with a purple one and wrapped them around her neck. As usual, she wore almost-to-the-shoulder dangle earrings and had her short salt-and-pepper hair bristling with gel-encased spikes. She took out a ball of yellow cotton yarn and a pattern book. She thumbed through the pages, then took out an F-size hook.
“What are you making?” Adele asked. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled the pattern book toward her and looked at the open page. “Not another washcloth.”
“Dinah, dear, you really should think of moving on to something bigger, say a baby blanket,” CeeCee said.
Dinah took back the pattern book and proceeded to make a slip knot and start doing a foundation chain. “Not yet.”
“Okay, so how many have you made now?” Adele said, leaning over to get a view inside Dinah’s bag, since she carried all of them with her.
“I’ll show you.” Dinah stopped with the yellow yarn and dumped out her tote bag, revealing a cornucopia of washcloths in varying colors and stitch styles. There must have been fifteen or so.
“These are lovely,” CeeCee said, picking up several. “But enough is enough.”
Dinah loosened her green and purple scarves. “How many partially finished projects do you have?” she said to Adele.
Adele looked slightly uncomfortable while she calculated in her head. “Just a few, maybe ten or a few more.”
“And you?” she said to CeeCee.
“What’s your point?” CeeCee said defensively.
I noticed Dinah didn’t bother asking me. She knew the answer. I had turned one of my sons’ rooms into a crochet room in which there were now at least three partially done scarves, a half-done afghan, an almost-finished hat, and two squares for a baby blanket.
“My point is, I don’t want to have a pile of half-done things. If you notice, all the washcloths are complete.” Dinah went back to her chain stitches while Adele and CeeCee traded glances. Still Sheila didn’t say a word. It was beginning to make me tense.
“Ladies, remember we’re supposed to be hooking for charity,” CeeCee said, obviously dropping the washcloth issue. “We need to come up with a new project. Anybody have any ideas?”
The mission of the Tarzana Hookers was to make projects to either give directly to those in need or to help raise money at a charity sale. It was because of the mission that Mrs. Shedd had invited the group to meet at the bookstore. And it was why she paid for the yarn for all the projects.
We all looked up from our work, except Sheila. She had managed to dig into the stitches with the smaller hook. CeeCee had reminded her to keep the next row of her stitches loose, and Sheila seemed to be mouthing the words as she worked. It appeared to be a kind of meditation for her, enabling her to put whatever was bothering her on the shelf.
“Is this some kind of meeting?” a woman’s voice asked, distracting us from CeeCee’s question. The speaker was dressed in what I’d call country-club casual: taupe slacks and white polo shirt with a navy sweater tied around her shoulders. I recognized the not-a-hair-out-of-place look that always made me pat my hair hoping to eliminate the usual flyaways.
“Hi, Patricia,” I said with a welcoming smile. “We’re the Tarzana Hookers.” I held up my hook and scarf as a visual aid. “Want to join?” I thought since it was a bookstore event and I was in charge of such things it was okay for me to do the inviting. “This is Patricia Orrington,” I said before introducing everyone at the table. I explained that she was the author of Patricia’s Perfect Hints, which was a big hit at the bookstore. I didn’t mention that it was self-published and the main reason Mrs. Shedd was so happy to stock it and host book signings was because Patricia had gotten a wine stain out of Mrs. Shedd’s designed-in-Paris white blouse.
“It’s Bradford now, Molly. You keep forgetting. As in Benjamin Bradford who is runnin
g for city council.” At that, she put a campaign button down for each of us. Everyone looked at theirs, except Sheila. She hadn’t even glanced up in acknowledgment when I told Patricia her name. Was I the only one noticing she wasn’t participating?
“So, you’re the Tarzana Hookers.” She walked around the table, examining our work. When she passed Sheila, she gave us all a raised-eyebrow look before moving on. “I would like to join you. This is just the sort of thing I need. You know, involving myself in some neighborhood thing.”
“Do you crochet?” Adele asked.
“No,” Patricia answered, turning her attention to CeeCee and asking more about the group.
When CeeCee explained we made things for charity, Patricia seemed even more interested. “Even better. What are you working on?” She checked out our varied projects, giving CeeCee’s donut a particularly puzzled look. Adele explained these were our own projects and that we were looking for a group project.
“Well, I have the charity,” Patricia said, sitting down. She opened up her large purse and took out some yarn. That seemed a little odd, as if maybe she knew all about us and had planned to join before she even got here. “The Women’s Haven. It’s a shelter for abused and homeless women and their children. It’s Benjamin’s pet charity. Bradford Industries donated the building they’re housed in.”
Adele’s eyes bugged out at what Patricia did next. She took out circular knitting needles on which hung the beginning of something sunny yellow. “This will be fun.”
“That’s not crochet. And this is a crochet group. A crochet-only group,” Adele said, looking like she was going to blow. “If we were a knit-and-crochet group we would be called the Tarzana Hookers and Needle Heads.”
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