Prime Crime Holiday Bundle

by Cleo Coyle; Emily Brightwell; Kenneth Blanchard

  We heard the “girls,” as she called her two Yorkies, before the door even opened. Once Talullah and Marlena got a whiff of the cookies, they ran over my feet and danced on their hind legs, looking up at the plate as I walked into the entrance hall. Two people were hanging more pine fronds on the archway that led into the living room. Even from the hall I could see the tree. It went up to the ceiling. Someone was on a ladder hanging the lights on it. For a moment I watched mesmerized. I knew celebrity-types hired people to decorate for the holidays, but it still seemed strange not to do it yourself.

  CeeCee led us into the dining room, which seemed our usual place to meet. She’d already taken the plate of cookies from me and lifted the wax paper off the top. “Molly, these smell delicious.” She had a cookie in her mouth before she set the plate on the table.

  The housekeeper came in from the kitchen with a silver tray set up for tea and coffee. She put it on the table. “Rosa, will you get that Neiman’s shopping bag on the service porch?” CeeCee said before taking another cookie and telling us to help ourselves to coffee and tea.

  A moment later the woman returned and set the department store bag next to CeeCee.

  The actress leaned toward us, not making a move toward the bag. “Okay, ladies, fess up. What’s the big deal about this afghan?”

  There was no point in lying, so I told her the truth. Or the reduced version. When I started at the beginning with Bradley disappearing and their argument about the crocheted piece, she waved her hand impatiently. “Too much information. Get to the point.”

  “I am sure there is something hidden in it.”

  “You know, dears, I played a guest spy in that TV show Retail Espionage. Of course, my character was only concerned about smuggling out the formula for a lipstick shade, but I learned a little about hiding things in plain sight.” She took out the afghan and spread it on the end of the table and the three of us began to look it over.

  Dinah fingered one of the white flowers that sat on top of the background. “I wonder how Madison did this?” She tugged at it to see if it had been sewn on, but it hadn’t. “Somehow she crocheted it up from the green squares.” I started to explain about surface crochet, but CeeCee interrupted me.

  “Who cares how it was made?” CeeCee said, flipping though the tassel on one corner. “If I was going to stick in some microfilm, it would be here.” She checked the two tassels hanging off another corner. When she came up empty she moved on to the next corner. “I think some of the tassels must have gotten knocked off in transit,” she said, noting that corner only had one tassel and the other corners had none.

  “Do you even know what microfilm looks like?” Dinah asked.

  CeeCee glanced at the table and flicked off a crumb. “The script didn’t exactly cover that,” she said.

  “Bradley isn’t a spy anyway,” I said.

  “You have a point,” CeeCee said. The three of us looked at the whole coverlet again, trying to figure out what could be hidden in it. Then we went over every inch and checked each flower, but in the end, we couldn’t find anything.

  “It really is pretty, but I think if I was making it, I’d drop the yellow flowers and just go with the violet, red and white ones,” Dinah said. “And I think I’d space them better. It’s kind of strange to have a bunch of flowers in one square and then none in the next one.”

  We stared at it until our eyes were blurry and all the cookies were gone.

  “Molly, dear, no offense to your abilities as a sleuth, but maybe since her husband is dead and even with all the trouble he’s caused, she really does want it for sentimental reasons.” CeeCee mentioned her confused feeling when her husband died and she found out the financial mess she was in. She rolled up the coverlet and put it back in the bag. “Well, I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure you have something you have to do,” CeeCee said, walking us toward the door.

  Dinah and I discussed the possibility of CeeCee being right about why Emily wanted the blanket as we drove to my house. The truth was we hadn’t actually seen Bradley and the elf had only said a man talked to him. It could have been some other man. But who?

  “Nicholas, maybe,” Dinah said, mentioning the Luxe shop owner. “Remember she went there the day she told you Bradley was missing. Kind of an interesting time to go shopping for tea. And she was there again around the time Sheila dropped off the blankets.”

  I reminded her that she’d been returning things, trying to get cash. Dinah’s red scarf blew across her face and she peeled it back. “Or so he said,” she said as I pulled onto my street. “Until you see a living, breathing Bradley, you really can’t be sure.”

  I stopped in front of my garage and got the afghan out of the shopping bag. There was no point in stalling its return. Dinah came along as we walked across my lawn and moved onto the Perkins’ property. The Santa’s sled had been knocked on its side and the half-done string of lights hung from the roof. It looked depressing and I wished she’d finish putting them up or put them away.

  Emily ripped open the door before the bell even did its last chime. She glanced up and down the street and then at me. “Do you have it?” she said in a sharp whisper. In answer, I held out the Neiman’s bag, but she pushed it back at me abruptly. “Not here.”

  She glanced past us toward the street and her eyes darted nervously. We started to turn our heads to see what she was looking at. “Don’t turn around,” she barked. “They’re watching me.”

  “Who,” I said, wishing I could turn to see if there was someone there or she was being paranoid.

  “The FBI, the SEC, the state’s attorney people. People who invested money with Bradley. Didn’t you see the way they looked at me at the bookstore? Don’t they get it—I’m a victim like everybody else. I’m hanging by a thread here. Any money I had is frozen until everything gets settled. And then they’ll probably take it, saying it was ill-gotten gains. My credit cards are canceled. And everybody thinks I was part of Bradley’s scheme.”

  We stood there a moment and I didn’t know what to say since I’d sort of joined that last group. “Go home,” she said in a impatient whisper, “and throw it over the fence into the backyard.” She shut the door without waiting for a confirmation.

  At least now I could check out the street as we walked back past the sideways Santa. Under the circumstances, I could see how she might not care about the decorations. The only vehicles on the street at this time of day were usually gardeners, pool cleaners and cleaning women, with an occasional plumber or pest-control truck thrown in. The assorted cars and vans seemed to fit those parameters. But were they what they seemed?

  I watched a man sitting in one of the cars on the street. Was he eating his lunch or keeping an eye on Emily? I shuddered, thinking of being in her position.

  Dinah and I went into my backyard. I knew just where to throw it over the fence, thanks to my adventure with Mason. I stepped up on the bench and leaned through the bushes to the chain-link fence. I took the bag and tossed it over. It landed with a plop. There were some rustling noises and I heard something that might have been “thank you” before receding footsteps and finally the sound of a sliding glass door closing.

  “Now what?” Dinah said when I climbed down.

  “Let’s see what she does,” I offered. Really what I meant was let’s see if she goes anywhere. As if an answer, I heard the rumble of her garage door opening.

  “C’mon,” I said, running across the yard to the driveway. As soon as we got in the greenmobile, I backed down the driveway just far enough to see what was going on in hers. A moment later, Emily’s SUV roared backward toward the street. She stopped and checked both ways before backing out. A moment later she was zooming away.

  I didn’t bother to look if anyone had pulled away from the curb. I just made the same move she had and took off after her. I was disappointed when I realized she was headed toward the few blocks of stores considered downtown Tarzana. She parked the SUV on the street next to the back parking lot
behind the bookstore and the stores adjacent to it.

  “Looks like we rushed for nothing,” I said, pulling into the parking lot next to a car with a bike in a bike rack. Still, as soon as I’d stopped the motor, we jumped out and tried to catch up with her. “Geez,” I said, “it really was for nothing.” Ahead she’d just walked into the bookstore. We plastered ourselves against the wall and watched her through one of the big windows that faced the main street.

  “The snowflakes look really nice from the outside,” Dinah said. I stepped back to get a better view, then caught myself. We weren’t there to admire the windows. Emily kept walking around, appearing to be looking at books, but every time she picked one up, she fluttered through the pages and replaced it. She spent about five minutes with the books and walked toward the door quickly. We tried to wish ourselves invisible as she came out of the bookstore.

  If she saw us, she didn’t seem to care. Her pace slowed and she walked down to Luxe.

  “See, I told you,” Dinah said, nudging me in the ribs. “She’s got something going with him.” We crept down the street, staying close to the buildings. When we got near Luxe’s display window, we moved just far enough to look in. Emily was sitting by the waterfall, drinking a cup of tea. Every so often, she looked toward the counter where Nicholas was waiting on a customer. It was pretty clear after a couple of minutes that she wasn’t going anywhere.

  We slunk back to the bookstore. “There you are,” Adele said, stopping us near the entrance. “Pink, someone wanted to buy some yarn as a gift. A knitter,” Adele said, practically spitting out the word. “She wanted to see a knitted swatch, but there was nothing hanging on the bin. What’s up with the swatches?”

  I was impressed that Adele had actually waited on a knitter. I was always afraid if any came in while I wasn’t there, Adele would ignore them until they left.

  I explained that I wasn’t really back to work, that I’d just stopped in. Adele’s eye’s narrowed. “What are you two up to? Some detective thing, Jessica Nancy Fletcher Holmes?” I didn’t answer and she went on. “More about your neighbor?”

  I said nothing and Adele stayed planted, saying she wanted to come with. She didn’t even ask where we were going, she just wanted to be part of the action.

  “Remember, we’re musketeers,” she said, referring again to a title she’d come up with during our last adventure. She started to pout but then saw that William had joined us and we were suddenly old news. I don’t know what was harder to deal with, Adele trying to get in the middle of stuff or acting flirty with William as she explained to him the musketeer reference.

  I told Adele there were some swatches in my tote bag in the office, hoping she heard among all the eye batting and touching the lapel of his sports jacket. “I’ll be back this evening,” I said as Dinah and I headed for the door. Dinah’s house was barely a block from the bookstore parking lot, and instead of going home, she’d suggested I come over. The area was called Walnut Acres because at one time it had been a walnut farm. One of the nutty trees still stood in Dinah’s yard.

  We walked around the corner off Ventura onto the side street. Emily’s SUV was still parked where she’d left it. “Maybe I was wrong about everything,” I said as we walked down the block almost completely past the parking lot. “Besides, what am I going to do—I can’t keep trailing her.” Instinctively I looked back toward the parking lot and the greenmobile, but something else caught my attention. Something moving. I elbowed Dinah and she watched with me. The back door of Luxe had opened and someone’s head was sticking out and checking over the area.

  “What the . . . My God, it’s her,” I said. Emily pulled the door shut behind her and sprinted across the parking lot. You didn’t have to be a Mensa member to figure out she was headed for her Element.

  “Where’s your car?” I said. Dinah was already getting her keys out as we speed-walked across the small street toward her house.

  Emily jumped in her SUV and made a sharp U-turn back toward us. Dinah’s car was parked in the direction Emily was now going and a moment later we were inside the Honda with the motor running. Emily was already down the block when we took off after her. Even with the commonness of the car, we kept our distance so as not to be made, as the PIs called “being seen.” I looked over at my friend as she hovered over the wheel, keeping the SUV in sight. Her smile was unmistakable. She was having a good time. I had to admit I was, too. Was it wrong to get caught up in the thrill of the chase when someone might be dead and lots of people had lost their money? I hoped not. We were on the side of good, I reminded myself.

  The stop in the bookstore and Luxe must have been just to shake off anyone on her tail. I looked around to see if anyone was following us. There was just one car in the distance behind us that I figured was just traffic.

  She had to be taking the crocheted piece to Bradley. I thought she would double back toward the freeway, thinking that she must have arranged to meet him in some crowded place again. Instead she zigzagged on side streets. When she got to the stop sign at Vanalden, I looked for her right turn signal to go on. Instead no turn signal flashed, but she turned anyway—onto Vanalden going left. She stayed on the street as it wound around and then began to go uphill. Ahead I could see the greenery on the side of the Santa Monica Mountains. The telephone poles marked the unpaved section of Mulholland that ran along the top.

  She turned onto a side street that paralleled the mountain and zipped onto another steeper street. We stayed a safe distance behind her. The street was almost vertical and the houses were built on pads cut into the side of the hill. I knew where we were now.

  “Park,” I said to Dinah. I knew from coming up here before that the street dead-ended ahead. We waited a moment to see if the SUV would make an abrupt U-turn and head down the hill, but a few moments passed and it didn’t drive by us. Dinah turned off the car and we got out and hid behind a bush. It was eerily quiet up here. For just a moment I looked back at the panoramic view of the Valley.

  We peeked from behind the bush. The black SUV was parked with its wheel curbed and Emily was just getting out. She pulled out a backpack, and as she slipped it on, I saw something green sticking out. She pushed the door shut and I heard the chirp of the lock as she was already walking toward the metal bumper and closed gate that marked the end of the street. She walked around the barrier and started up the sandy road.

  I grabbed Dinah and we followed in Emily’s footsteps. When my boys were young we came up here to walk and I was familiar with the area. The road Emily was on intersected with Dirt Mulholland, the name of the unpaved section of the road that ran from Encino to Woodland Hills. I knew once Emily reached Mulholland she could go left or right. The dirt road wound around the top of the mountains, and whichever way she chose, she’d disappear around a bend in moments and we’d have no idea which direction she’d gone.

  The sky was overcast and the afternoon light was already beginning to fade. Damp cold air rose off the sandy road as we went up the hill. Emily neared the top and must have been confident she had eluded anyone following her because she never looked back. We’d stayed to the side of the road where we were less visible in case she turned around. Our clothes choices helped us blend in, too. We looked like the khaki twins in our slacks and similar-colored hoodies.

  Emily paused a moment, probably to catch her breath after the steep walk.

  “She went left,” I whispered. Dinah was bent over, breathing heavily and swatting at a swarm of black flies. I worried that this might be too much for her, but she straightened and followed along up the rest of the way to Mulholland. We followed in the direction she’d gone even though the dip in the road had obscured her. She came back into view when we got a short way down the road.

  We stayed back, hoping if she looked back she’d just think we were two walkers. It was never crowded up here, but today it seemed absolutely desolate.

  There was a meadow on one side of us, though thanks to the winter rain, the grass had grown
so tall it blocked any view of the Valley. On the other side of the road there was a large concrete pad. The ground around it had a scattering of green and then big stone boulders. I’d seen a helicopter land there once. I thought it was probably a staging area for fire trucks in the event of a forest fire. Either way, it seemed out of place in this area where everything else had been left to go natural. Ahead the ground rose on either side of the road and was covered with tall grasses, reedy bushes and low trees with thick foliage. Emily’s footprints stood out in the damp sandy road.

  When I looked around at all the wild growth, it was hard to imagine we were just minutes away from the traffic-clogged Ventura Boulevard. I heard a crunch behind us just before a mountain biker flew past.

  “Usually, they at least call out some kind of warning, like ‘on your right,’”Isaid, looking ahead at the figure on the bike as it whizzed toward Emily. The biker flew past her without even slowing and she was startled just as we’d been. She stopped and looked around.

  I took Dinah’s hand and pulled her into the growth on the side of the road before Emily saw us. When she started walking again, we went back on the road. My BlackBerry strained against my pocket and I took it out. It slithered from my hand and I made a fast save to grab it. There were so many gizmos on it, I knew I hit something by mistake.

  When I looked up, Emily had turned off the road. We rushed ahead, trying to catch up.

  We got to the spot where she’d disappeared, and an expanse of blacktop road ran up a steep hill next to a barbed-wire fence. Beyond it there was a huge water tank surrounded by a green lawn. The road looked like someone must have made plans that were long since forgotten. It ended abruptly at the edge of a cliff. Looking down, all you could see were mounds of green scrub and bushes that extended into the valley below. Beyond there were just more mountains. A white-tailed rabbit ran in front of us and disappeared in the brush. Where had Emily gone?

  Some branches crackled and I turned toward the sound. In the distance, I saw that Emily had taken a path paralleling the cliff. We kept low as we followed her. The path was narrow and ran between bushes as tall as we were. She had picked up speed and we struggled to keep her in sight but not get too close.