Ryder and I had just about finished conducting our business when Barry’s Tahoe pulled into the driveway and stopped near the street. Barry and his son, Jeffrey, got out. Barry zeroed in on me, and Jeffrey walked up to Ryder.
“Hey, weren’t you Curly in the junior production of Carousel ?” Ryder said.
Thanks to the floodlight on my garage that illuminated the end of the driveway, I saw Jeffrey’s surprised expression. When Jeffrey nodded with a confident toss of his head, Ryder held out a hand to high-five him. “Hey, man dude, you done good.”
“Man dude?” I said, looking at Ryder.
“I’m trying to start a new phrase. You like it? I want to include it in my next YouTube piece and maybe start a trend.”
“You put stuff on YouTube?” Jeffrey said, impressed.
“All the time, Columbia,” Ryder said. I heard Barry groan. He hated that Jeffrey wanted to be an actor and even more that he’d decided to go by Columbia. What Columbia /Jeffrey said next made Barry choke.
“I think Columbia is too long. I’m considering shortening it to Cgreen,” Jeffrey said. Ryder mulled it over and proclaimed it very contemporary.
“Or you can change it altogether and sound like one of those rappers and go by Ice Berg,” I said. Jeffrey, Ryder and Barry all glared at me.
“Sorry. I should have added an LOL at the end. I was just joking.”
The two boys stepped away and Barry stopped next to me. He was glaring at Ryder. “He’s the guy, isn’t he?”
I tried playing stupid, but that only convinced Barry more that Ryder was the one I thought was breaking into my house. “I think I’ll have a little talk with him.” Barry made a move toward Ryder, but I grabbed his arm.
“I already took care of it and he said it wasn’t him.”
“And you believe him? Wake up and smell the coffee, Molly. People lie. The people I see lie twenty-four, seven unless you know how to get at the truth.” He seemed disappointed when I wouldn’t let him interrogate Ryder. Barry said he’d stopped over to check that his temporary repair to my front door was still secure. There was a delay with getting the new door, he explained.
Samuel’s jeep stopped in front of the house. He got out and crossed the lawn. “Hey,” he said, nodding a greeting to Ryder and Jeffrey. The nod he gave to Barry was only marginally cordial. While Samuel wasn’t as bad as my other son, Peter, there was always a certain level of tension between him and Barry. Peter didn’t like Barry, but with Samuel, it was more about the problem he had with me dating. Dating? That was as out of place as calling Barry a boyfriend. Dating implied Saturday night movie dates followed by a hamburger somewhere. Barry showed up whenever. I usually cooked something, after which he fell asleep sitting on the couch while insisting he wasn’t tired.
Samuel moved on to me. “I’m just here long enough to change. I got a gig,” he said before giving the details. Samuel could play a bunch of instruments, but this job called for him to play piano at a hotel bar in Woodland Hills.
“How about I go with,” Ryder suggested. “I’ll video one of your songs. I’m a wiz at editing on my computer. By the time I post it on YouTube, it’ll look like a real music video.”
“As long as you don’t cause any problems,” Samuel said.
“I could go, too,” Jeffrey said, stepping next to Ryder. I saw Barry’s jaw clench and he put his hand on his son’s shoulder. He didn’t even have to say it, just the shake of Barry’s head got the message and Jeffrey slumped with disappointment.
A dark sedan pulled behind the jeep. It was too dark to make out what kind of car or who got out until he was halfway across the lawn. What was Mason doing here?
Barry apparently wondered the same thing and said as much.
“Don’t tell me you forgot again,” Mason said, taking his crochet project out of the bag.
Mason saw Samuel and they slapped hands. Samuel had no problem with Mason. Mason had helped him get his musical career going and I think he viewed him just as a family friend as opposed to someone I was involved with.
By now it was getting pretty chilly and Samuel and Jeffrey didn’t have jackets on. What could I do, but invite everyone inside?
Samuel looked at the crowd moving into the backyard. “Mom, you ought to start having the Christmas Eve party again.” I was surprised at his comment. The party had been a yearly tradition until Charlie died. It wasn’t that any of us made a decision to stop having parties, it had just sort of happened. The fact that Samuel was suggesting it meant he was finally beginning to move on. I certainly wouldn’t have any trouble finding guests. The group followed me in, and all RSVPed on the spot.
I offered everyone dinner if they’d take potluck. I hadn’t managed to get to the grocery store lately and had resorted to eating whatever I could scrounge.
“Not a problem,” Mason said, taking out his cell phone. “Everybody likes Italian, right?” There was a chorus of yeses, except Barry, who didn’t appear pleased that Mason was handling the food again. In an effort to make up for it, Barry made a big deal about going to check on the door.
I said I’d make salad and Mason left to pick up the order. I reminded Samuel to take care of his cats and Jeffrey fed the dogs and took them out into the yard to play. Ryder made a video of me making salad. He was very interested in all the ingredients and interviewed me as I mixed a bag of herb salad with some wild rocket lettuce. I added grated carrots, kalamata olives, cucumber, fresh tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes. I made my own salad dressing. It was really just olive oil and balsamic vinegar, but it was the way I did it. I poured the olive oil on first and tossed the salad. Then I sprinkled on the garlic powder and seasoning salt before shaking on the vinegar. I never measured, but it always seemed to work out. I finished the salad by adding gorgonzola cheese and walnuts.
Dinner was a big success, though over quickly. Samuel had to get to his gig. Ryder tagged along with him. Jeffrey had some homework. Barry hesitated while Mason situated himself on the couch with the dog sweater. But finally he couldn’t stall any longer and left with a reminder to be sure to keep everything locked up.
I took a ball of iridescent-flecked white bedspread-weight thread and a steel hook into the living room along with the instructions for a snowflake Adele had given me. Hers were more elaborate, but she said she was doing me a favor by giving me something more basic to make. There was probably a slap at my skill in there somewhere but by now I’d learned to just let it go. Mason moved next to me, saying something about it was a better arrangement if he needed help. He watched as I struggled to make a slipknot with the fine thread and do the beginning circle. My hook slipped and the yarn was hard to see. It always took me a little while to adjust to working so small.
Mason took out the partially completed dog sweater and something else.
“Is that for me?” I said, looking at the gift-wrapped package.
Mason handed it to me and I commented that it was kind of early for a Christmas present.
“No, this just something I think you really need. I had something grander in mind for a holiday gift. Open it,” he said.
“Wow,” I said as the paper fell, revealing a box that said BlackBerry. Mason took it out and told me about all the features. He had even charged it up. He took out his own and called someone. After a few minutes of punching in some codes to the BlackBerry, he had activated it and it was now my phone.
He showed me the calendar and said if I put stuff in, it would pop up as a reminder. “So no more missing our crochet evenings,” he said with a grin before he demonstrated how to use the camera feature. I got in a mind muddle after that. The BlackBerry just did too many things to take in all at once. I hugged him a thank-you and when I looked up he was looking back at me. The usual smile in his eyes was replaced by something else. What was it? Longing maybe. I pulled away and he returned to his usual self.
I pointed to the dog sweater he’d laid beside him as I went back to my snowflake. “We better get crocheting.” He nodded in a
greement and picked up his hook.
“Too bad the detective hasn’t taken up crochet. It would do him good.” Mason worked a few stitches. “I suppose he doesn’t think it’s manly enough.” Mason paused a beat. “I’ve always thought real men don’t have to keep proving themselves.”
“Different strokes for different folks,” I said vaguely, not wanting to get sucked into their competition. I changed the subject and brought up Emily and the break-ins. Mason was always a good sounding board. This was the first chance I had to put together all the discordant pieces and try to make sense of them.
“If this kid wasn’t the one sneaking in your house, then who was?” Mason said. He seemed doubtful about someone going to so much trouble to find out the identity of an author.
“You don’t know how people are about the Anthony books. It would certainly take the thunder out of our launch party if somebody disclosed the real identity of A. J. Kowalski first,” I said.
The snowflake began to come together quite quickly, though the limp white stitches were hardly impressive looking. Starching them was what did the magic.
Mason asked the obvious question. Did I know the vampire author’s real identity? And I gave him the same answer I’d given everybody else. No. No matter what I’d seen with Adele, the jury was still out on whether it was William.
“Maybe you know, but you don’t know that you know,” Mason said, chuckling at his own tongue twister. He gestured toward the tote bag I’d been carrying back and forth. A file stuck out that had Holiday Events written on it. “What’s in there?”
I pulled it out and showed him. Everything was about our multicultural holiday party. “See, there’s nothing in here.”
He suggested maybe it was something I’d brought home a while ago. We looked over my desk and there was nothing there. I took him in the crochet room and I heard him chuckling behind me. “Someone ransacked this room, right?” He bent down and pulled a plastic grocery bag off his foot that had caught there. I explained I’d cleaned it up since then. This was normal.
“You’re into crochet now, so you should understand this is how we roll.” I picked up the bag, looked inside, and pulled out a half-finished pale green shrug made out of some bamboo mix yarn. I put it with the pile of need-to-be-finished items while I explained he could look at them two ways, either as UFOs—unfinished objects—or as WIPs—works-in-progress.
As we were leaving the room, Mason saw me glance out the window toward the Perkins’ house and asked what the latest was with my neighbor. I told Mason about Emily needing money, which didn’t surprise him. He was surprised when I mentioned her picking up the watch, particularly when he heard how she could have turned it into cash. I also mentioned the disappearing motorcycle. However I didn’t mention the situation with Mrs. Shedd’s money and the fragile financial state the bookstore was in, partly because I’d given Mrs. Shedd my word to keep it quiet and partly because it was too upsetting to think about.
“Maybe the watch has some kind of sentimental value. She wants it to remember Bradley by,” Mason said.
“I don’t buy that. I’ve been thinking about it all day. I remembered something Emily had said when she thought Bradley was just missing. He’d been upset with her about a lot of things and one of them was that she hadn’t picked up his watch. It’s some kind of James Bond Rolex. What if Bradley isn’t really dead and he wants his watch?”
I mentioned what the SEC guy had said about them being tipped off before Bradley disappeared. “Bradley must have known he was going to get caught.” I told Mason about the money left in the checking account and that was what made the SEC guy believe Bradley was dead. “He thought Bradley would have cleaned out everything if he was planning to disappear. But maybe he deliberately left the money in the account because he knew that was what it would look like.”
I thought back to how oddly Emily had acted the night I saw the disappearing motorcycle in her driveway. “And maybe Emily knows he’s not dead.”
Mason and I went back into the living room and started to brainstorm with the facts. We came up with scenarios that had Bradley dead or alive. The dead scenario had Bradley mailing the suicide note on the way to Long Beach, leaving his car in the terminal parking lot where it wouldn’t be noticed because people often left cars there for a number of days, then getting on the boat with his one-way ticket and, somewhere in the middle of the journey, leaving his cell phone and wallet on a seat before jumping off the boat.
We also came up with a faked-death scenario. In that one Bradley leaves his car but has some other mode of transportation. His Suburban was big enough to fit a motorcycle in the back. He gets on the boat with his one-way ticket. Somewhere during the trip, he leaves his wallet and cell phone on a bench. He gets off the boat in Catalina and then buys a ticket with cash and goes back to Long Beach. He takes the motorcycle and leaves the car. By the time Emily gets the suicide note, he’s long gone.
I mentioned my parking-ticket issue. It worked with the not-dead scenario. He would have used the parking ticket to get out of the lot when he left on the motorcycle. I brought up Emily viewing the tape and not seeing him disembarking. That was an easy obstacle to overcome. He could have disguised himself or she could be his accomplice and merely said she didn’t see him. Mason asked me if I’d been watching the tape.
“Yeah, but not that closely. I was looking for a guy in dress clothes. Suppose he brought along a change of clothes? If he put on jeans and a puffy jacket and a hat, I wouldn’t have recognized his form.
“This is what I love about you, Sunshine, never dull conversation.” He sat forward, his eyes bright as he considered what I’d said. “Emily could have been an accomplice from the start. All of her talk about not really knowing much about her husband’s business might be a cover-up.”
I was doubtful and he read my expression. “Or not.”
It was fun being able to shoot ideas back and forth with Mason. Whenever I tried with Barry, I got the same response. “Stay out of it.” He wasn’t even interested in conjecture. I told Mason that Emily had seemed too convincing in her reaction to Bradley being missing for it to be fake. “Her emotions seemed to be on a roller coaster. First she was worried, then angry. I think if it were an act, she would have stuck with worried.”
“But what if she didn’t know from the start, but found out later when he contacted her about the watch?” Mason offered.
I slumped back on the couch. “But would he take the chance of hanging around for a watch, even if it was a collector-quality Rolex?” I glanced in the direction of my neighbor’s house. “Do you think he’s there now?”
Mason grinned. “As your lawyer, I’m suggesting you don’t do anything illegal.”
“But as my friend?” I said, matching his grin.
“Probably the same,” he said, getting up. He put the dog sweater and yarn back in his bag. He’d done maybe two rows. At this rate, it wouldn’t be ready until summer. I walked him to the back door and was concerned to find it open. No break-ins this time, break-outs. The dogs had let themselves and the cats out. Cosmo and Blondie came in without problem. Cat Woman came in with the promise of some beef jerky, but Holstein was nowhere to be found.
I explained that we only let the cats out during the day and kept them in the yard. There were raccoons, skunks, rabbits and other critters in the yard at night that we worried the cats would mess with and be the worse for it. I heard a meow coming from somewhere.
“There he is,” Mason said, trying to reassure me.
“Yes, but where?” I said, turning around to see where the sound was coming from. Both Mason and I got it at the same time. It sounded like it was coming from the Perkins’ yard.
I was going to go alone, but Mason insisted on coming with. I thought if we stood on the bench near the fence to their yard, we might be able to see the cat and maybe get him to come to us. It was easy to forget Mason was in his fifties and a high-powered attorney when he got a Tom Sawyer kind of expression o
n his broad face. He pushed the lock of gray-flecked hair that had fallen across his forehead and seemed unconcerned that he was wearing wool slacks and a cashmere pullover. I led him to the white bench that was almost against the ivy-covered fence between our properties. He climbed on it first and gave me a hand. Neither of us saw the cat, but we did notice there was a low shed just on the other side of the fence.
“What’s your advice now?” I whispered. Mason let out a low chuckle.
“You’re just trying to get your cat. As your lawyer, I think I should go along.” He reached toward the roof of the shed and used it to balance himself as he stood on the fence. He looked down into the Perkins’ yard and stepped on something a little lower than the fence. He waited until I got on the fence and saw where he’d stepped before leaving his perch. It turned out to be a hose holder and I held on to the fence as I jumped off it.
It felt strange to be inside my neighbor’s yard. I heard another meow and we thought the sound was coming from across the yard. The lights were on in the house. I knew the den faced the backyard and had a sliding glass door. It was obvious by the amount of light shining on the patio that the curtains were open.
We stayed low and checked the driveway. No motorcycle tonight. We moved on and peeked in the window of the garage. Mason conveniently had an LED light hooked to his key chain. The bluish light didn’t illuminate very well, but it was enough to see Emily’s black Element and Bradley’s Suburban she’d driven home in the garage.
I made a move back toward the fence, but then I heard muffled voices coming from inside.
We kept to the back of the yard, hoping to blend in with the ivy growing along the fence. When we got in line with the sliding glass door, we stopped and looked. Emily was pacing across the paver tile floor and another woman sat on the rust-colored couch. Her hands were moving, and when I looked closer, I saw that she seemed to be crocheting. The shopping bag from the jewelers was sitting on the bleached-wood side table. I waited a moment to see if anyone else would come into view, but it was clear it was just the two of them.
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