Hooking for Trouble

by Betty Hechtman

  “So you think he helped with the cover-up?” Barry asked, and I nodded. Garrett seemed to be struggling to keep himself from talking.

  “It’s obvious now the plan was to stash the body. I heard there was a freezer in the garage. No wonder Garrett didn’t want the girls going out there and helping themselves to ice cream treats.” I glanced at Garrett, and he was looking at the ground.

  “He must have been worried about blood. That part of the story is true, only it wasn’t the girls who threw the cushion off the balcony to mark the spot—it was Lauren.” I mentioned my visit there later that night. “Now maybe you’ll acknowledge that the Blood Detector really does work.” He shook his head with a smile and he muttered something about confiscating the whole detective set.

  “The next part was very clever,” I said. “Lauren created a reason for Jennifer to disappear.”

  “Oh, please, she never would have come up with that. Lauren’s not that smart,” Garrett said.

  “That’s a terrible thing to say,” Lauren retorted. “I knew how to sound like Jennifer and how to arrange the hair on the blond wig so it fell forward to cover a lot of my face.”

  “But who got you the wig?” Garrett said. “I knew Cheyenne still had all of them from the Alice in Wonderland shoot.” He suddenly realized what he’d said and stopped talking.

  “Remember, you said the nanny seemed upset when you went over there that night,” I said to Barry. “I bet that wasn’t acting at all.” I spoke to Lauren. “You’d just killed somebody, and suddenly the cops were at the door.”

  I noticed that Barry seemed uncomfortable as he realized the mistakes he’d made, basically because he hadn’t believed what I said.

  “Lauren must have called the nanny service and said she had an emergency and had to leave so they would send over a replacement. She ordered the shuttle to pick her up and paid with Jennifer’s credit card. She did the same with the plane ticket and traveled as Jennifer, using the dead nanny’s driver’s license to check in and get through security. They probably just looked at the honey blond hair and eye color that matched the license and didn’t check her features that carefully, so they let her through. After she got to San Francisco, she probably ditched the wig and flew back as herself.”

  “You’re right, that was very clever.” Barry nodded toward Lauren.

  “You don’t really think she could have come up with all of that on her own—that is, if any of it’s true,” Garrett said. “What proof do you have, anyway?”

  “You’re wondering about proof? You just dumped a body down there,” I said.

  Garrett tried to pick up his hands, but they were held together. “I didn’t dump anything down there.”

  “Maybe not, but you told me to do it,” Lauren said.

  “Back to what I figured out,” I said. I told Barry with a certain amount of pride how when I’d listened again to the messages that were supposedly from Jennifer in San Francisco, I’d noticed something I’d missed the first time. “I could hear the television. It was the weather report. Not only did it say Los Angeles but I recognized the distinctive voice of the guy who does it on Channel 3.”

  Barry started to say something, but I stopped him. “There’s more. How do you think I figured out it was Lauren?”

  Barry sighed, but there was a sparkle in his eyes. “I haven’t the foggiest. Why don’t you fill me in.”

  When I brought up the detective set again, Barry chuckled. “I hope I don’t have to go to the district attorney and tell her our case is based on a kids’ set.”

  I told him about Adele’s bargain yarn and the fibers floating all over the place and how I’d taken samples of the pink fibers off my jacket. “Everybody at the first Tunisian class left with some of them sticking to their clothes.” I spared him the details of exactly how I’d come to examine the cushion after it had been replaced on the balcony and went right to the big reveal. “I found a tuft of the same fibers stuck to it,” I said. “The only way they could have gotten there was if someone who’d been there when Adele was working with that yarn had carried some away on their jacket and transferred it to the cushion when they held it against themselves.” I stopped. “Whew, that was a mouthful.” To further explain, I told him that Lauren had been wearing a fuzzy gray hoodie at the class and that Barry had mentioned the nanny wearing a hooded sweatshirt jacket when he saw her. “It was the same hoodie, and the fibers had stuck to it.”

  “Good work.” Barry gave me a pat on my shoulder. “But do I get some of the credit?” he said in a flirty way. “I’m assuming you learned some of your skills from me. You’ve told me that you learned answering a question with a question from me.”

  “Actually, I learned that from The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigation.” He feigned a wounded look.

  “Shall I finish this up?” he asked, not taking his eyes off me. I put my hands up and gave him the floor.

  “She or they would bury Jennifer, the pool would be poured and a body would never be found. There’d probably be a final phone call from ‘Jennifer’ quitting her job. If her family or friends came looking for her, Garrett would just say she’d gone to San Francisco and never come back. No body, no murder.”

  “It would have been a perfect crime,” I said. I left off the part where I deserved the credit for it not becoming the perfect crime, but I could tell Barry knew what I was thinking.

  “I’ll never doubt you again,” he said in a melodramatic voice.

  “Yes, you will,” I said.

  “Okay, maybe I will,” he teased. “But if you say there’s a body somewhere I’ll definitely come and check it out.” I heard Garrett groan.

  “It’s Nick and Nora Charles,” he said. “At least the flirting part—they had snappier dialogue.”

  Barry ignored the comment and continued to speak to me. “I suppose you have the motive all figured out, too.”

  I nodded my head with a smile. “I think it was all about a song. That song they played tonight.” Barry bobbed his head in recognition, and I continued. “If you noticed, Cheyenne said that Lauren wrote it. I think Jennifer really wrote it.” I mentioned seeing her playing guitar with the kids and the CDs and forms in her room. Barry laughed when he heard that I’d realized they were to register the lyrics and a sound performance of the song through our trip to the Parisian Banquet Hall. It turned out he was a fan of Jack Hunter, too, and knew all about the place.

  “I saw the CDs and the forms in the nanny’s room, but I have a feeling they aren’t there anymore.” I told him Ursula had complained to me that someone had gone through her room.

  “So this was all about stealing a song,” he said.

  Lauren snorted in annoyance. “I did not steal the song. It was all a mistake. I had this song in my head and I started playing it on the guitar. The lyrics just seemed to come to me. There is no way I realized it was in my head because I heard Jennifer playing it. Cheyenne heard me playing and encouraged me to finish it. She said it was the hit we needed for the next album.”

  “Shut up,” Garrett said. “Why are you telling them anything?”

  Lauren ignored him and went on, saying there hadn’t been a problem until the nanny heard Cheyenne singing it and raving over how Lauren had written it and it was going to be on their next album. “She said she wanted all the credit for the song,” Lauren said. “I thought we could make a deal. That’s what we were arguing about.”

  She turned to Garrett. “He talked me into covering it all up. She’d already copyrighted the whole thing. The stuff in her room was just copies. With her gone there would be no one to bring it up, and no one would dispute that I wrote it. All the money is in the publishing, and he manages all of us, which means he would get a big cut of the money I made.” She slumped forward. “It was going to be my chance to shine. I’m tired of being the poor sister.”

  “You took your ti
me showing up,” Barry said as a bunch of uniforms came through the yard. Two of them helped Garrett and Lauren up and escorted them to the street. Barry talked to someone in charge and pointed toward the bottom of the pool. I looked away, not even wanting to think about Jennifer’s body probably beginning to thaw.

  Barry came back to me, seeming very chipper. “That worked well,” he said with a pleased smile. “And they said they weren’t going to talk.”

  “That was a setup?” I said. He nodded and showed me a device that had gotten it all on tape.

  He offered to walk me back to my yard, but I said I’d be fine. “Well, then, I guess it’s good night.” He started to walk away, and then turned. “We make a good team.”

  It was a relief to get back in my yard, and as I opened my door, the phone was ringing.

  I was surprised it was Mason. “What time is it where you are?”

  “It’s getting-up time here. I’m catching an early flight. I just wanted to say I saw the L.A. news on my phone. I had no idea you were such an accomplished tambourine player.” He punctuated it with a chuckle. He sounded upbeat and cheerful, despite the hour. “It looks like it was quite an evening. Did anything else happen?”

  I let out a tired laugh. “More than you can imagine. It’s too much to tell you on the phone. We’ll talk about everything when you get back.”

  Wasn’t that the truth.

  CHAPTER 28

  I was surprised to see Cheyenne and her girls at the yarn table when I came in the next morning. I wasn’t sure what kind of reception I was going to get now that she must know that I was not only the nosy neighbor from before but also the person who was responsible for her husband and sister being arrested.

  When I got closer, I saw there was a franticness to the way she was moving her hook. Merci and Venus seemed confused. “Just do what Mommy is doing,” Cheyenne said to them.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She looked up and saw me. First there was anger in her eyes, but then her expression collapsed in helplessness. “I didn’t know where else to go. What am I going to do?” I sat down with her, and she continued to crochet. “I’m trying to keep it together for them.” She looked to the two girls, who were clumsily moving their hooks through a row of stitches. “This is the only thing that helps.” And then she told me that she’d been in rehab for pretty much every problem, from undereating to overeating to drugs and alcohol. “The only thing I never did was cut myself. And rehab’s where I learned how to crochet. It saved my life. The rehab stays have been a big secret,” she said. “I’ve been clean, sober and eating right for almost a year.” She sighed. “And I made it through last night and today without anything but a crochet hook.”

  She looked at me, seeming to need to talk. Her big personality seemed deflated at the moment. “Never again,” she muttered. “I was so overwrought with trying to get everything together, and then when Ilona started on me, saying she was sure Jennifer had something going with Matt—” She let out a big breath. “I should never have let her talk me into going through Jennifer’s room on her day off for evidence that they were having an affair. My sister is paranoid when it comes to her husband. There was nothing—but that’s when I found the allergy meds. I just needed something to let me relax for a while.” She looked over at her girls and had a fierce look. “If I hadn’t been so desperate myself, I would have killed her for drugging them. Instead I just drank half the bottle.” She hung her head, and her long hair fell forward. “It wasn’t a dance number that night. I’d lost it, and Garrett was trying to get me back inside before I fell off the balcony. I had to pull myself together when the police showed up.”

  “So then you didn’t know anything about who really wrote the song?” I said.

  “No,” she said regretfully. “I absolutely believed my sister wrote it.” She looked at her daughters. “They don’t have to worry. I’ll never fall off the wagon again. I have to be strong for them.”

  I left to get a cup of coffee, and when I came back the three of them were gone. Justice might have been served, but it still made me sad at how everything had turned out.

  The mood changed abruptly. With the success of the previous evening, Mr. Royal wanted to make musical performances a regular event. My mother came by when the crochet group gathered. Now that she was going to be living in the area, she thought she might join us.

  * * *

  Lauren was eventually charged with manslaughter, fraud, false impersonation and a bunch of lesser charges. Garrett was charged with being an accessory after the fact and withholding evidence, which in this case meant hiding a body. Both of them faced a long time in prison.

  The album came out a month later, and with the whole story connected with “Another Day, Another Chance,” it went platinum. Jennifer’s family got all the money from the publishing. Cheyenne moved out of the house, and the developer was left to try to sell it. Logan Belmont got the listing, but since they had to disclose that a murder had taken place there, it languished on the market, though in the meantime the yard had been finished and a tall white fence was put up, making my gate useless.

  Mrs. Shedd realized that between music nights and crochet classes, she’d held just about everything else at the bookstore, and she offered to host a double wedding for Adele and Dinah, since the place had meaning for both of them. And when it was time for the actual event, what everybody said about things coming in threes had proved true.

  Adele came down the aisle created in the event area first. She was wearing a silk dress with a crocheted overlay and beamed with happiness. After a moment’s pause, Dinah followed her, wearing the elegant dress we’d picked out. She smiled, though she still seemed nervous. She reached the front and the music played on. I swallowed hard as it came time for the third bride to walk down the aisle and join them.

  ADELE’S TUNISIAN CROCHET SCARF

  Easy to make.

  Supplies

  5 skeins Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice, medium weight, 100% acrylic (170 yd, 156 m, 3.5 oz, 100 g) in different colors

  Size K-10½ (6.5mm) crochet hook with 4" cable and stopper

  Tapestry needle

  Dimensions: Approximately 8½ inches by 72 inches before fringe

  Technique: Tunisian crochet

  Abbreviations: ch (chain), yo (yarn over)

  Tunisian Stitches

  Foundation: Starting with 2nd ch from hook, *insert hook under horizontal bar at back of the ch, yo and draw up loop. Repeat from *for remaining chs, keeping the loops on the hook. When done, there will be same number of loops on hook as chs.

  Afghan Stitch

  Part 1 (return pass): Yo and draw through 1st loop on hook, *yo and draw through 2 loops on hook. Repeat from * until there is only 1 loop remaining on hook.

  Part 2 (forward pass): Starting with 2nd vertical bar on hook, *insert hook under vertical bar in the previous row, yo and pull through bar, keeping loop on the hook. Continuing to keep loops on the hook, repeat from * across for each vertical bar in the previous row up to the last vertical bar at the edge of the scarf. Insert hook through both vertical strands at edge, yo and pull through both strands. There will be same number of loops on hook as in foundation row.

  Note: Change colors of yarn at end of part 1 (return pass) when there are 2 loops on hook. Varying the numbers of rows in each color creates an interesting pattern.

  Bind Off: Starting with 2nd vertical bar from hook, *insert hook under vertical bar in the previous row, yo and pull through the bar and the loop on hook. (There will be only 1 loop on the hook.) Repeat from * across for each vertical bar in previous row up to last vertical bar at edge of the scarf. Insert hook through both vertical strands at edge, yo and pull through both strands and loop on hook. Fasten off.

  Ch 30 with color A

  Make foundation row. 30 loops on hook.

  Work afghan stitch (parts 1 and 2) unt
il ready to change color. To make a clean transition between colors, change colors at end of part 1 (return pass) by drawing the new color through the last 2 loops on the hook. When the scarf is approximately 72 inches long, bind off after completing a part 1 (return pass) row. Fasten off and weave in ends. Add fringe.

  LIZA’S GRANOLA

  3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

  1 cup raw almonds

  ⅓ cup pure maple syrup

  ½ cup melted coconut oil

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1 cup sunflower seeds

  2 teaspoons cinnamon

  1 cup dried cherries

  Mix ingredients in bowl and spread on baking sheet lined with parchment. Bake at 300 degrees for approximately 50 minutes or until toasty in color. Cool in pan and store in airtight container. Makes 8 cups.

  MOLLY’S DOUBLE CHOCOLATE COOKIE BARS

  2¼ cups all-purpose unbleached flour

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  1 teaspoon salt

  1 cup butter, softened

  ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

  ¾ cup granulated sugar

  ¾ cup dark-brown sugar, packed

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  2 large eggs

  4.5-ounce dark chocolate bar broken into small pieces

  1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

  Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Combine sugars and cocoa powder in a small bowl. Using electric mixer, cream butter, gradually add the sugar and cocoa mixture. Add vanilla extract. Beat until blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate pieces and nuts.

  Preheat oven to 375ºF. Line 15 x 10-inch jelly roll pan with parchment paper. Spread batter in pan and bake for approximately 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars. Makes 48 cookie bars.