Hooking for Trouble

by Betty Hechtman

  Did he understand what I’d said? His tail wag did seem almost apologetic—before he sat down next to my leg and asked for some affection.

  I felt the plastic bag still in my pocket. “A lot of good you were,” I said to the spray bottle as I pulled the plastic bag out. I went into the dining room, where I’d left the detective set on the table. I was trying to be hypervigilant about keeping things in order. I had marked all the “evidence” I had collected. I laughed at what I was calling it. Evidence of what? There was my fingerprint collection, just in case one of the crocheters committed a crime, and the offending fibers that the group had accused of trying to choke them. I went to put the Blood Detector back in its slot in the box, but when I took it out of the bag, I noticed there was a small bit of caked dirt stuck to the bottom that must have gotten there when I set it on the chaise cushion. “Ah, more evidence,” I said, shaking it into the bag and writing where it had come from on the label.

  I heard music starting in the living room. Time for me to escape. I left the set and tried to slip through the living room unnoticed. My mother caught me just as I was about to walk into the den.

  “Molly, why don’t you join us?” She was holding a tambourine and gave it a shake. “We could use someone on the tambourine.” I was okay with them using the living room as their practice place, but being part of the group? No way. I had no interest in being in front of a crowd. The closest I came was introducing the authors at the bookstore events.

  “Pass,” I said. I heard the phone ringing in the den. “Saved by the bell,” I said in a voice that said I knew I was using a cliché. They were already back to singing by the time I grabbed the phone.

  It was Mason checking in. “They’re still practicing, huh?” he said, reacting to the noise in the background. “Why don’t you come here?” I knew that would mean dealing with his ex and Brooklyn, but it had to be more peaceful than here.

  “I have a lot to tell,” I said with a tease in my voice.

  “Then hurry on over, Sunshine,” he said.

  As I went back through the living room, my mother held up the tambourine and gave it another shake as she held it out toward me. I shook my head and quickened my pace.

  The traffic was light, but I took the back roads to Mason’s anyway. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled the greenmobile up in front of his house. He had the door open before I even reached it. It was certainly nice to feel so welcome.

  “I thought they were going out,” he said as we walked inside. Unlike Cheyenne’s, his living room was almost never in use unless he was having a party. The den was the center of the house and where we always gravitated—and was unfortunately where his ex-wife and daughter also seemed to spend their time. Their claims that he would not even know they were living there had never materialized.

  Brooklyn was sitting at the built-in desk poring over some books. Jaimee was on the couch watching a video on a computer tablet. They both looked up when we came into the room. Spike was running alongside Mason, and the toy fox terrier jumped on the sofa. He took one look at Jaimee and jumped back off. They didn’t get along.

  “What are we going to do about dinner?” Jaimee said, looking up.

  I knew the answer had nothing to do with her cooking it. Now that she was a permanent fixture on the Housewives of Mulholland Drive, she viewed herself as working and being too busy to do anything more than make a cup of coffee—and even that was instant.

  Brooklyn was going to law school and working part-time in her father’s office. I doubted there was space left in her brain to think about putting together a meal. Somehow it always came down to Mason, who, despite working long hours himself, seemed to be the only one who could arrange dinner. Arrange didn’t mean cook, though. He had a whole collection of menus from local restaurants that delivered.

  He gave his ex-wife a hopeless look and opened the drawer that held all the menus. “What will it be tonight? Indian, Thai, sushi, Italian, Mediterranean, Chinese, healthy American, Mexican, Cuban—or Alfredo pizza?” he added with a chuckle. Both his daughter and ex-wife reacted to the last one, complaining about the calories.

  “Don’t listen to them,” he said to me. “You pick.”

  The Alfredo pizza sounded heavenly, but I wasn’t up for dealing with Jaimee and Brooklyn making a fuss, ordering something else and then harassing Mason and me for eating the decadent pizza. “Mediterranean,” I said. He held up a handful of menus.

  “Israeli, Lebanese, Persian, or Greek?” he said with a laugh.

  “Greek,” I said, relieved to have made a choice. Mason took over the ordering and I did the set up when the array of food arrived.

  Brooklyn put her work aside long enough to make up a plate of Greek salad, stuffed grape leaves, spinach and feta cheese wrapped in phyllo dough, rice, and chicken. Jaimee took some salad and chicken, saying something about giving up carbs for beauty.

  She took her plate to the table in the big room that looked out onto the backyard. Mason and I grabbed spots on the couch and helped ourselves to the buffet I had set up on the coffee table.

  “Ignore them,” Mason whispered as his lips curved into a grin. “You were going to tell me something.”

  “The group went to Cheyenne Chambers’s house today,” I began. I was about to explain what we were doing there and what I’d hoped to find out, but Jaimee swooped in.

  “You went to Cheyenne Chambers’s house?” Jaimee put down her fork and turned her chair toward us. “She’s like the go-to celebrity on TV. Anything with Celebrity or Star in the title and she’s been on it.” Jaimee began to name them. “Celebrity Wife Exchange, Celebrity House Hunting, Cars of the Stars, Eating with the Stars, Celebrity Shopping Spree—and now she’s a judge on that show tune program.”

  “That’s more than I realized,” I said, amazed at the selection of shows.

  “She’s become a personality beyond being in that group,” Jaimee added.

  “What about dancing?” I said. So far nobody had come up with a reason why Cheyenne would have been practicing on the balcony, but Jaimee seemed to know all the reality shows.

  “Dancing? I don’t think so. For someone so musical she seems to have two left feet. Her ‘husband’ on Celebrity Wife Exchange took her out dancing, and it wasn’t pretty.”

  “You seem to know a lot about her,” I said. “Do you think she has any secrets?”

  Jaimee leaned into the conversation. “I have my suspicions,” she said. “She has such a big personality, and she’s always so up. She comes across as so well-adjusted that even if she flops at something, she’s okay with it. There’s never a chink in her armor. It makes you wonder if it’s real.”

  Jaimee was still talking when Mason and I started on the rice pudding. Her dessert was two strawberries that she sliced into paper-thin pieces. I heard Mason sighing. I understood—I really wanted to talk to him, too. There was something I had thought of after I left Dinah.

  At least Jaimee wasn’t being hostile. Mason and I cleared up the food, and when we were alone in the kitchen he grumbled, “I wanted to spend an evening with you, hearing about all your mysterious exploits.”

  “There’s still time,” I said, making us some Turkish coffee. We stood in the kitchen drinking the muddy brew and discussing our options.

  “We could go to my room,” he said. “There’s a fireplace and places to sit.”

  I shook my head. “That makes me feel really uncomfortable. Have you seen your daughter’s expression when we head down the hall?” When he didn’t answer right away, I came up with a way I thought he would understand. “Think about if the positions were reversed and she and her boyfriend were going to her room.”

  “I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”

  “There’s always the backyard,” I said.

  He rolled his head from side to side. “We both have big houses, and we keep ending up outsid
e.”

  His yard was set up better than mine. He had outdoor heat lamps that warmed the whole area around our chairs, and there was a pool with a fountain cascading into it that gave off a soothing sound.

  “Alone at last,” he said, taking my hand. “Now what were you going to tell me?”

  After all this time I decided to keep it simple and say it in a few words. “I think the body I saw was the nanny, Jennifer Clarkson.”

  Mason sat upright as I continued.

  “I talked to someone on the phone. All I could really say is that it was a woman with sort of a Southern accent.”

  “But we checked. She was on the flight to San Francisco. She had to have gone through security, and they would have checked her ID,” he said. I brought up what Ursula had said about Jennifer’s mother being dead, and how Jennifer had told me on the phone that she had to give medicine to her sick mother.

  “I hate to bust your bubble,” he began, “but people lie about all kinds of stuff. There’s probably another reason why she really left.” He turned to me. “No body has turned up, has it?” he asked, and I knew why he was asking. It was impossible to say it was a murder without finding a victim.

  “No,” I said, feeling cross.

  Mason picked up on it. “I’m not doubting you. We just have to find out who it is and where they went.” He looked ahead. “I have an idea. The pool is heated. We can come up with a plan while we swim.”

  When we finally did go down the hall to his room, no one was watching.

  * * *

  Sunday was a quiet day at the bookstore. There were no events or groups meeting. Our customers seemed to be at a relaxed speed as they browsed the shelves. It was just Mr. Royal, our cashier and me. He waved me over to the event area.

  “We’ve never had an event like this before and we need to be ready to handle a big crowd. I’ve decided we should give out tickets, and then when people come in, we give them a wristband that will let them in the area we’ve set aside.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. I was beginning to worry how we were going to handle the crowd.”

  He seemed pleased that I agreed and went off to see about getting the supplies we needed and to alter the signage to urge people to get their tickets early.

  * * *

  Tuesday afternoon we had a full house for the Hookers’ happy hour gathering. I was refreshed after my day off. Though I had spent the entire day doing everything I’d neglected all week. Even super sleuths like me had to do laundry and go to the grocery store. And for one night there was no singing in my living room.

  Elise and Rhoda couldn’t stop talking about being all over social media because of Cheyenne and her sisters. “They even picked it up on the news, saying instead of whistle while you work it’s sing while you crochet,” Rhoda said. “My daughter was even impressed.”

  “Cheyenne was very gracious and said she’d be glad to give me some tips to get myself out there more,” CeeCee said.

  “And who do you have to thank for it? Whose idea was the private lesson?” Adele was standing next to the table. She was dressed to be noticed—as if she ever wasn’t. Black leggings and a turtleneck served as a backdrop for the long vest in eye-popping shades of orange, purple, turquoise, green and fuchsia. It was done in Tunisian crochet and, knowing Adele, she was using it as an advertisement of the class. She pointed to herself and took a little bow.

  “But I thought Molly came up with the idea,” Sheila said. Adele gave her a stricken look.

  “Molly may have helped with the implementation of it,” Adele said. “But the germ of the idea was all mine. I am the teacher of the class, aren’t I?”

  CeeCee turned to me. “And to think I almost spilled the beans and said that was your house. It’s lucky you stopped me. That would have ruined things.” She spoke to the group. “Cheyenne could drop in to a Hookers gathering. Remember everyone, not a word about where Molly lives.”

  Sheila seemed confused. “Why can’t we say anything?” She asked the question of CeeCee, but CeeCee pointed Sheila toward me.

  “I made a mistake and sent the police to her house twice and she thinks she has a crazy neighbor.” I reluctantly pointed toward myself.

  “Why did you send the police there?” Sheila asked.

  “Yes, why did you?” Adele said.

  Dinah was crocheting across the table. She looked up and gave me a nod, which I knew meant she thought I ought to tell them the whole story.

  I described seeing the couple, who I now knew were Cheyenne and her husband, on the balcony. “To me it looked like they were arguing, and the person I now know was Cheyenne was almost pushed over the side of the balcony.” I heard them all suck in their breath.

  “So you sent the cops there, and what happened?” Sheila seemed really concerned.

  “They claimed they were practicing a dance number. They said it was a dramatic tango that only looked like arguing.”

  “Oh,” Sheila said. “So then that’s what it was?”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but it doesn’t make sense for so many reasons. There was no music playing. I’ve asked around and nobody knows any dance show she’s going to be on. And I just heard recently that she has basically two left feet.” They were all listening intently. “There’s more. I also heard that Cheyenne has some kind of secret. It might even be that she’s deliberately trying to appear like she’s so open about everything so that nobody looks any further.”

  They had all put down their projects now and I had their full attention. Even Eduardo was listening intently. “You said you called them twice,” he said. “Was there more of the arguing?”

  This was where it got tricky. It was an involved story with too many hanging details. While I was wondering how exactly to begin, CeeCee said that all this intrigue made her want some chocolate, and she offered to bring something back for everybody from the café.

  “Don’t say anything until I get back,” she said. Everybody started up their own conversations while we waited. Dinah came around the table and pulled me aside.

  “It will be better if they know what’s going on,” she said.

  I laughed. “I wish I knew what was going on.” I mentioned what Mason had said when I told him I thought the body I’d seen was Jennifer Clarkson. Dinah seemed surprised.

  “When you said you thought she hadn’t left, I didn’t realize that was what you meant.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Mason blew the theory away by reminding me that we had checked and she was on the flight to San Francisco, which was after I saw someone on the ground.”

  CeeCee returned with a whole tray of Bob’s double chocolate cookie bars. They were the best, because instead of chocolate chips, he added hunks of dark chocolate. She passed them around, and then they all turned to me again.

  “We’re waiting,” CeeCee said between bites of the deeply chocolate treats.

  “Here goes,” I began. “I saw a body on the ground in her yard. I’m sure it was a body.”

  They had actually stopped chewing now, waiting for the rest.

  “So I sent the police there again.”

  “Was it Barry Greenberg?” Rhoda asked.

  “Well, yes,” I said reluctantly.

  “That man is still in your life, whether you like it or not,” Elise said.

  “That’s all beside the point, but he really isn’t in my life anymore, except for emergencies. That and we sort of have a dog together.”

  They all laughed, but urged me to finish the story. “So, did Barry find the person?” Sheila asked, seeming a little apprehensive.

  “Here’s the thing. When he went there, Cheyenne and her husband weren’t home. Just the nanny was there. She showed Barry the yard, and there was a chaise cushion in the spot where I’d seen the body.”

  “So there wasn’t a body after all,” Sheila said,
sounding relieved.

  “I’m sure there was someone on the ground. I just don’t know what happened to the body.”

  CeeCee reached for another cookie bar. “Dear, that is a mess. If it was dark, your eyes could have played a trick on you. Maybe it was like the other thing. They were practicing for something and it was a mannequin or an inflatable doll, and they were too embarrassed to admit what it was.”

  “What if I tell you I found some blood?” They all sucked in their breath again, but then let it out when they heard it was only something I’d seen and couldn’t show anyone.

  “Pink, you have to let it go. If you start investigating, you’ll ruin it,” Adele said. “Why not just assume what CeeCee said is right?”

  Little did Adele know it was too late not to start. Not that I had gotten very far. But I wasn’t about to give up. Somewhere, there was someone who deserved justice. I’m not sure how I had expected my friends to react when I told them the disappearing body story, but I hadn’t expected them to want to sweep it under the rug. I almost would have preferred if they didn’t believe me.

  “Forget about everything I said,” I said, seeing that Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal were headed in our direction.

  The group was glad to agree, and they were silent as Mrs. Shedd stopped next to me. “We had a phone call. They asked for you, but when I heard who it was and what it was about, Mr. Royal handled it.” She gave her partner a nudge. “You tell her.”

  Mr. Royal seemed to have a glow of excitement. “It was Garrett Mackenzie, and he said the group would like to do a run-through here before the event. Of course I said yes. They’re going to come here when the bookstore closes tomorrow night.” His eyes were dancing. “This is just so exciting. You don’t know how much I love the music world.” As if to demonstrate, he played air guitar to the piped-in music.

  I looked over at CeeCee, who made a gesture in front of her mouth of locking a key and throwing it away. Dinah just rolled her eyes.