I rushed back to the office and took out the crochet work. When I examined the fireplace motif, there in the midst of all those double crochet stitches that formed the picture was an open spot with no stitches. I had vaguely noticed it before but had thought it was a mistake. Now I saw it in a new light. Was it meant to mark the spot where the secret panel was?
“Why couldn’t you have put that in the note Mary Beth.”
What could I do with the information now? I couldn’t turn around and go back to the island without getting in trouble. I surveyed the crochet piece. I was going to have to rely on it for the rest of the puzzle.
Then I went back to the book on Lance Sr. and thumbed through the rest of it. I stopped when I got to a photo of Lance Sr. cutting a ribbon on his first Lance Wells Dance Studio. He was standing in a doorway, and I caught a glimpse of the address written in gold lettering. I realized it was the studio down the street. There was nothing on the crochet piece to indicate the dance studio, but I wanted to try again to check it out anyway.
I took a short break and went down the block. But when I went up the stairs, the sign stating they were closed due to a death in the family was still on the glass door. Defeated, I returned to the bookstore.
The rest of the day went by in a tired blur. By the time I drove my parents’ SUV home, all I could think about was barricading myself in my son’s room and crashing. After putting on clean clothes, I would put up my feet and crochet. Did I really think any of that was going to happen? Not likely.
I walked in through the kitchen and was greeted by the sound of banging coming from the front door. My mother swirled in with the deli delivery guy close behind carrying a bag of food. Samuel came out of his old bedroom, muttering something about all of my stuff in there. The dogs were barking and scratching from somewhere.
“I had to put them somewhere,” my mother said when I asked about the dogs’ noises. “We were practicing our dance steps and they kept getting in the way.” The deli guy went back for the rest of the food. I followed him to check out the damage to my front door.
Barry was on his knees and had a hammer in his hand. When he looked up at me, I was shocked to see one of his eyes was ringed in a sickly blackish green.
“Where did that come from?” I asked, stepping closer for a better look.
“Your father, remember? He said he’d been learning some kind of martial arts,” Barry said, setting down the tool. I did a double take. Who knew my peaceful father could do so much damage? Barry pointed at the spot where he’d been hammering a piece of plywood to the lower portion of my front door. “I just patched it until the new one I ordered arrives.”
He stood up and came over to me. His eyes flared with heat and he held his arms wide open, but the deli guy came through the doorway and interrupted the moment.
Barry let out a disappointed groan as the delivery guy passed between us and headed for the kitchen with a bag of bread and rolls. That’s when I noticed the living room.
“Mother,” I yelled, throwing my hands up. It looked as though I’d been robbed. All the furniture was gone. The only seating was a few folding chairs where the couch had been. Some kind of electronic music equipment had been set up in front of the fireplace. And some lights had been added to give the illusion of spotlights.
“The furniture is all in the den,” Barry said. “I checked.”
I rushed through the living room and on to the den. I could barely walk in as all the living room furniture had been pushed in there.
“We had to move everything out,” my mother said, coming up behind me. “There was no room to practice the She La Las trademark dance steps. Lana almost went over the couch. And our musical director needed someplace to set up his equipment.”
“You mean Samuel?” I said to my mother.
“Yes, but it sounds better to say our musical director than my grandson,” my mother said, finding her purse and handing a generous tip to the deli guy.
Barry stepped closer to me and dropped his voice. “Why don’t you come with me? We’ll get some dinner. My place is empty,” he said with a heavy touch of suggestion.
Being somewhere else sounded appealing, and I was about to accept and tell my mother I was leaving, but she beat me to the punch.
“You’re not thinking of going anywhere, are you, Molly? I thought it would be nice if we had a family dinner. Samuel’s here already and Peter’s coming by later.”
My mother had me and she knew it. Even with all the chaos, I was a sucker for a family gathering.
“Join us?” I said to Barry. I thought for sure he’d refuse. If I had been him, I sure would have. Either he didn’t know what he was in for or he liked awkward confrontations, because he accepted.
And he got it in spades.
The dining room was still intact, and once my father and I had put all the food on the table, we all sat down.
“I guess we all know each other,” I said, trying to ease the awkward moment. Barry and my parents exchanged uncomfortable glances. Samuel just took the platter of meat and put some corned beef on his plate. For a few moments we passed the food in silence, exchanging bowls of coleslaw and platters of cheeses and meats, along with a basket of rye bread and rolls.
As my father passed the mustard and pickles to Barry, his gaze stopped on Barry’s shiner. He apologized, but I detected a dash of pride in his voice that he could inflict so much damage.
And then the inquisition began.
“So, I understand you have a son,” my mother said. “What does he do?”
I wondered how the questioner felt about being the questioned. I was just waiting for her to use his line and say, “Do you want to tell me the whole story? I’m sure it will make you feel better.”
“He goes to school.”
“College?” my mother asked.
“No, middle school,” Barry answered. I had to admire how he looked her right in the eye when he answered.
“So you must have waited a long time to have children,” my mother the questioner continued.
“Actually, no.”
“Then you waited a long time to get married. You must have been what, about thirty-six or thirty-seven? Being a bachelor all those years must have made it hard to get used to a family.”
For the first time ever, Barry appeared uncomfortable. He was looking down at the table.
“My job made it . . .” Barry began. Then he cleared his throat and looked directly at my mother. “Okay, I wasn’t single all that time.”
My mother leaned closer to the table, her eyes locked on him. “What exactly does that mean?”
Barry turned toward me. “This isn’t how I planned to tell you, but I was married twice before.”
The news hit me like a boulder in the chest. I could feel everyone staring at me. At that moment Peter walked in. My older son looked around the table and quickly assessed that something was going on. As he pulled out a chair and sat down, I pushed mine back and went outside.
Barry followed.
I walked far out into the yard and flopped on a bench in the corner.
He stopped in front of the bench and stood over me. “I always planned to tell you. But when I didn’t mention it at first, it became awkward.”
“Kids?” I said in a low voice.
I heard him blow his breath out. “A daughter, but she stayed with her mother and I’ve had virtually no contact.”
My head swirled with all this new information. “Do you think that makes it okay not to mention her?”
“No,” Barry said with regret. “I didn’t mention it at first because being divorced twice makes me sound like a relationship washout.”
“Is that why you’re so intent on getting married again? Do you think three times is the charm?”
He pulled me up to face him. “No, I think you’re the charm.”
My stomach was doing flip-flops. I had been wondering about a relationship with someone who always had one foot out the door and who disappeared fo
r days. I wanted something casual, but with someone who was there. And now this news. How could he have just left out a wife and daughter?
I heard the back door open and turned away from Barry. My father walked across the yard.
“There was someone on the phone just now. They asked for you and when I said I’d get you, they said just to give you this message.” He held out a piece of paper. “I wrote it down to make sure I got it right. The person wouldn’t leave a name. They said to stop meddling or else. Molly, are you in some kind of trouble?”
I could feel Barry’s eyes boring in my back.
“What did I tell you?” he said in a low voice.
I ignored him and laughed, saying I was sure it was just my friend Dinah’s idea of a joke.
My father appeared relieved and patted my arm reassuringly. Then after a quick glance at Barry, he walked back to the house.
I’d had a moment to think, and I turned back to Barry.
“I can’t do this anymore. You’re gone all the time, and now I find out you left out a big hunk of your life. A whole wife and daughter.”
“Molly, we can work it out. I promise that’s the only wife and daughter I didn’t mention,” he said in a vain attempt to lighten the moment.
The back door opened again and the dogs came flying out. Cosmo ran up and sat between Barry and me.
“I’m sorry. The reason—” His cell phone interrupted him. His eyes held mine with a pleading look while the phone continued to go off. For a moment I thought he was going to ignore it—that this moment between us trumped everything, even his job. But then his features evened out and the emotion disappeared in his expression as he flipped open the phone.
“Greenberg,” he said, all business again. He pulled out his notebook and wrote something down before hanging up. “I have to go, but we’re not done. Okay?” He didn’t wait for an answer, probably because he was afraid of what it would be.
Cosmo followed behind him and then sat at the gate watching as Barry walked down the driveway. I called the dogs and went back inside to the table, trying to act as if nothing had happened. As my mother focused on my face, she began a speech about how sometimes bad things happened for good reasons. It was some spiritual mumbo jumbo and my back started to go up, but then I realized she meant it. She got up from the table and hugged me. “I’m sorry, honey. I was just trying to make conversation. It’s for the best,” she said finally. “Anyway, I liked the other one better.”
That’s when I heard a rustle behind me. When I looked, Barry had come back and was picking up his toolbox. All the emotion was back in his eyes and his jaw was clenched.
“Other guy?” he said in a voice so low only I heard it.
WHEN I FINALLY WENT TO BED, I HAD A HARD time sleeping. The combination of Samuel’s small bed, Cosmo taking up too much space and the events of the evening made it impossible for me to get comfortable and turn off my mind. Instead, I got up and tried crocheting. I took out the chart for the bookmark and a ball of number 10 thread. But instead of calming me, working with the steel hooks and fine thread only made me more tense. The work was too intricate, and I had trouble getting the hook into the tiny loops.
I wondered how Mary Beth had managed to make all those filet pieces. I gave up and reached for some comfort crochet. Working on the purple worsted scarf with its repetitive rows of single and double crochet stitches was easy and soothing. I would have relaxed completely, but a dark thought kept wandering around the back of my mind. What if the warning call was real?
CHAPTER 15
“WHAT?” I SAID, TRYING TO KEEP THE SQUEAL out of my voice. It was the next morning, and Dinah had just returned my call and told me she hadn’t left me any message, joking or otherwise.
“Is there something you’re leaving out?” Dinah said, reacting to my anxious tone.
I glanced over my shoulder. My mother had just come in the kitchen and was making a breakfast drink for herself and my father. This was the closest she got to cooking. The mixture in the blender resembled pond scum. She’d been making it every day, and each time she offered to make enough for me, too. Even though both my parents looked great and seemed to have lots of energy, I always politely passed.
She seemed intent on pulsing the blender on and off, but I knew my mother well enough to know it might be a cover for eavesdropping. She didn’t know anything about my sleuthing activities, and I thought it best to keep it that way. If she was concerned about my mental health from the state of the crochet room, I could just imagine what she’d say if she found out I was in the middle of a murder investigation and might have gotten a threatening phone call.
“Let’s get coffee,” I suggested. I didn’t want to discuss the Barry situation in front of my mother, either. The hug and sympathy had been the extent of her understanding. Later she’d said she couldn’t understand what I’d want with somebody in such a dangerous line of work. She did think he was sexy, and when I blushed, she put her hand on her hip and gave me one of her famous Liza looks.
“I know an attractive man when I see one,” she had said, laughing at my embarrassment.
A few minutes later I was at Dinah’s door. She grabbed her coat and we took the short walk to Ventura Boulevard and the heart of Tarzana. Although the sun was out, the air still had a cold sting.
“Okay, tell me everything,” Dinah said, winding a deep rose-colored scarf around her neck and pulling her gray sweater coat tighter.
I started with the threatening phone call, and her jaw dropped in response. “What made you think it was me?”
“Maybe wishful thinking,” I said as the impact of the call began to sink in.
“Did you ask your father about the caller’s voice?”
I nodded and said I’d tried to be nonchalant about it. He’d said the voice was whispery and he hadn’t been able to tell if it was a man or a woman. I swallowed hard. “If it was for real, you know who it had to be?” It was more or less a rhetorical question, but I answered it anyway. “Whoever didn’t want Mary Beth’s secret to come out.” I hesitated before I said the rest. “And probably the person who killed her.”
“Have you considered dropping the whole thing?” Dinah said.
I shook my head. “I haven’t had a chance to think about it.”
Dinah’s sixth sense kicked in. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
My shoulders sagged, and I told her the Barry story as we walked down the main street. At this time of day the foot traffic was limited to people in sweats or stretchy pants out for an exercise walk while clutching the necessary accessories: a coffee drink in one hand and a cell phone in the other.
“He left out a wife and kid. Wow,” Dinah said. She’d never really understood my hesitation for not taking our relationship to a more permanent level, but she certainly understood why I was upset this time.
“Well, there is always Mason,” she said. “You always said he seems to want the kind of relationship you do. He’s nice looking, has a job, et cetera.”
“There’s just one problem,” I said when we’d reached Le Grande Fromage. I threw in a nice pause before I finished the thought. “My mother likes Mason.”
Dinah and I both laughed. It felt good after all the grim news.
Dinah opened the door and was about to go in when I looked up the street. A man walked out from the stairwell leading to the Lance Wells Dance Studio. Excited, I detoured and headed down the street. I heard the Le Grande Fromage door woosh shut and Dinah’s footsteps as she followed me.
“What’s going on?” Dinah asked. “It must be important if you chose it over French-press coffee.”
“I think the dance studio is open again,” I said, walking faster. “Maybe we can get some answers about Mary Beth there.”
“What are you going to say?” Dinah said, keeping up with me. Then she shrugged it off. “You think well on your feet.”
After walking through the arched entryway, we went up the exterior stairs. I pulled open the stud
io’s glass door, and we walked into a large room. A small reception area was formed by a counter with a screen behind it. The front wall was one big window with a view of the north mountains peeking above the low building across the street. The reception desk was empty, and Dinah and I walked to the side of it and looked into the lesson area.
Considering the early hour, I was surprised to see two couples on the floor dancing to tango music. It was easy to tell teachers from students. Both male teachers wore black bowling-style shirts with “Lance Wells Dance Instructor” embroidered in white across the back.
When I looked over at Dinah, I saw that her eyes were practically bulging out of their sockets. She pointed at the back of one of the instructors. “It’s Vincent, my student. The one who had the problem with his test.” I watched him for a moment. Whatever problems he had with English, he had the tango down.
Dinah wanted to leave, but just as I stopped her, a door opened on the side wall and a man and woman came in. As soon as they saw us, they became very animated and moved quickly toward us. She started her pitch as soon as she was within earshot. The man was barely a step behind her. “Welcome, welcome ladies. Here about lessons?” She didn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “Everybody wants to dance like the stars now. The first lesson is complimentary. We can do that right now if you’ll just wait until our fabulous instructors finish with their current clients.” The couple went behind the reception counter and before I could blink, they were handing us clipboards with questionnaires attached.
Now that I was closer to the counter, I saw the row of photographs of Lance Wells Sr. on the temporary wall. Below them a banner read, “Dancing is the Footwork of the Gods.”
When I didn’t take the clipboard, the woman explained the questionnaire had to be filled out before we could take our complimentary lesson.
“It’s for insurance purposes,” the man said, stepping out from behind her.
By Hook or by Crook cm-3 Page 13
