By Hook or by Crook cm-3

by Betty Hechtman

  I broke down and told him the rest. “How can you trust somebody who would do that?”

  Mason gave my shoulder a comforting squeeze. “For perfectly selfish reasons I’m glad it happened. I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”

  Mason’s cell phone went off just as dessert arrived. The waiter was very serious as he set down a small plate of fingernail-size chocolates, and a big plate with a shot glass in the middle. The glass held a tiny hot fudge sundae next to which were two doll-size sugar cookies. I automatically stiffened at the sound of the phone and prepared for Mason to have to leave. Instead, without what appeared to be a second thought, he shut it off. As we tried not to laugh at our dessert, Mason asked if Camille was still in the crochet group. He seemed surprised when I said yes.

  “She and my ex are friends of a sort. They always work on the Crystal Ball committee,” he said, referring to one of the top yearly charity events.

  I explained Camille seemed committed to doing a down-to-earth kind of activity.

  Mason found that amusing. “She’s spent her whole life with wealth, privilege and every advantage that money could buy. People always think the grass is greener on the other side.”

  After dinner Mason drove me home and walked me to the door. He had suggested a detour to his place, but I said no and he didn’t argue. There was a comfortable feeling about being with him—maybe because he wasn’t always pushing the envelope, trying to talk me into more of a relationship than I wanted.

  Through the window we could see the She La Las. They were doing their dance moves, which were showing improvement. I invited Mason in, but he took another look at the dancing trio and passed.

  Who could blame him?

  I went in quietly through the front door, but the dogs heard me and followed me to the kitchen door. Then they charged off into the dark while I checked the phone for messages. There were three from Barry. He wanted to tell me he was coming to feed Cosmo. The next message was after he’d left, saying since I wasn’t home he’d fed Blondie, too. The third call was just to say hello and tell me the new door was being delivered tomorrow.

  “Barry was here while you were gone,” my mother said, coming into the kitchen to get some drinks for the group. “He’s pretty handy. We were having trouble with our microphones,” she said, showing me her headset. He knew just how to fix them. Then he stayed and listened and said we sounded great.”

  Omigod, Barry was trying to soften up my mother.

  And me.

  When I went out into the yard to round up the dogs, I saw a vase of flowers on the umbrella table. The note said, “I know I’m sorry doesn’t cover it, but believe me I am.” And he signed it, “Love, B.” I came back inside just as my father was walking into the kitchen. “The doorbell just rang and I found this on the front porch,” he said, holding out a package to me.

  I unwrapped the paper and saw it was a box of marzipan apples, with a note that said simply, “Enjoy!”

  CHAPTER 17

  “WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE CANDY APPLES?” Dinah asked. We were sitting around the event table waiting for the rest of the crochet group to arrive.

  “I brought them with me,” I said, pulling the plastic box out of my bag to show her. “I couldn’t leave them home. Suppose my mother or father decided to try one. No matter where I hide stuff, she always finds it. Can you believe she found the bottle of love oil I hid in the back of the linen closet?”

  “Love oil?” Dinah said with a chuckle.

  “Never mind. Back to the apples. Obviously, I’m not going to eat them, but beyond that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. Even if I didn’t think they might be poisoned—marzipan, yuck,” I said with a shudder.

  “You can leave them at my house,” Dinah offered. “Now that the kids are gone, I don’t have to worry.” She examined the box of almond paste candies. “Maybe you should get them tested.”

  “I think someone gave them to me for the shock value. Besides who would I take the candy to?” I said. “I’m not contacting Detective Heather. If I showed her the candy apples, it would be like waving a red flag that I’m investigating. And I’m not calling Barry about anything.”

  “I see your point. Nobody will bother the candy at my place,” Dinah said, tucking the package in her tote. She put her hand on my arm. “First the phone call, now the candy. Maybe you should think about dropping the investigation.

  You never even met the woman, so why should you feel so obligated to take care of her business?”

  “I know, but I keep thinking if I had been quicker on the uptake and found her faster, she might not have died.”

  Dinah didn’t buy that as enough of a reason, nor did she think that either the She La Las practicing practically twenty-four hours a day at my house or my father’s martial arts skills were much protection. But best friend that she was, she was staying in it if I was. “It’s much harder to kill two people than one,” she said.

  “So you made it back.” CeeCee pulled her wheeled craft carrier up to the table and then took the bag off her arm and laid it down. “You really left us in the lurch. It wasn’t until we got on the boat that we remembered you drove. I offered to call a car service, but Adele insisted her boyfriend would pick us up.” CeeCee appeared perturbed. “I don’t know what he does, but he has some weird stuff in his car. I had to ride next to a pair of giant red shoes.”

  Adele arrived as CeeCee made her comment. She glared at Dinah and me and then her look changed to pleading. Adele always described William as being a serious author of important nonfiction topics when she mentioned him to the group. The way I looked at it, just because Adele was always trying to give me a hard time was no reason to do the same to her, so I said nothing.

  Adele appeared relieved when she realized I wasn’t going to out her boyfriend. “William was wondering if the subject of Making Amends had to be a bookstore employee. He thought it might be an author—perhaps him.” Adele continued on about how William’s spirit had almost been crushed by his third-grade teacher and he was sure that now that he was a well-known author, she’d like to apologize and give him the grades he truly deserved on his workbook.

  Once Sheila got close to the table, she rushed over and hugged me. “I’m so glad you’re all right. When I heard you got arrested—”

  “Arrested? Who got arrested?” Camille stood at the head of the table, looking over all of us.

  “Pink did,” Adele said.

  CeeCee addressed Camille. “Maybe you want to rethink being in this group. I’m sure you don’t want to associate with jailbirds.”

  “Wait a second,” I said, interrupting. “First of all, I wasn’t arrested, just detained. It was a misunderstanding.”

  “What kind of misunderstanding?” Adele said with her hands on her hips.

  I was going to try to talk around what had happened, but Dinah’s words about it being harder to kill two people suddenly rang in my ears. It would be even harder to go after a group. I decided my best defense was to keep them all in the loop.

  There was a collective “ooh.”

  I stepped next to Camille. “Did you know Mary Beth Wells?” I asked.

  Camille swallowed hard. “I heard about her murder. I was shocked.”

  “But did you know her?” I asked while Adele rolled her eyes.

  “Here goes Nancy Jessica Drew Fletcher Marple.”

  Camille ignored Adele and looked at me. “I’m not sure if this counts as knowing her. I contacted her a few years ago for donations for the silent auction for my children’s school—Welton Preparatory. They’re off on their own now. And not following in the family business, I might add,” she said. Her daughter was in med school with plans to work in a third-world country, and her son was a park ranger on the big island in Hawaii. “They won’t even come back for the party I’m throwing for Hunnie next week. My life coach said my children should be an inspiration to me. Like them I should branch out and try new things with new kinds of people. She particula
rly mentioned ordinary people, like you.” Camille gestured toward the whole group.

  CeeCee blanched. I’m sure she didn’t like being referred to as ordinary. She hardly seemed ordinary to me. She’d had her own sitcom for years and was hosting Making Amends. It was CeeCee’s choice to act like a regular person and do things like run the crochet group. I watched CeeCee swallow her annoyance. As long as her future on the show was undecided, she wasn’t about to ruffle Camille’s rich feathers.

  “Hi, everybody,” Ali said as she sprinted up to the table and pulled out a chair. She might as well have made a recording of her apology for being late; then she could just hit the play button whenever she arrived anywhere. She could have included the part about having to leave early, too. The funny part was for once she was on time.

  I didn’t care if she had time-management issues; she always made me smile. Something about Ali’s bright eyes, impish smile and interesting assortment of clothes made me think of a tall pixie. It was funny how styles had changed. In the days when I was her age, if I’d mixed all those patterns and worn all those layers, someone would have stamped me as weird with no taste. She came across as cute and original.

  “You were saying how you knew Mary Beth Wells,” I said to Camille, trying to pick up the thread of conversation.

  Camille took a moment to collect herself, then continued. “I got a donation of a dance lesson with Matt Wells himself.” She looked sheepish. “I remember it so well because my husband bought them for me at the auction. The school was starting a tango club and I wanted to join. Mary Beth is the one I contacted for the donation.”

  “So she worked in the dance studio business?”

  Camille shrugged. “I guess so because I called their corporate office and she was there. I never saw the office or the actual dance studio. Matt came to my home gym and did the lessons there.” She paused and appeared to be making some mental calculations. A flicker of realization suddenly crossed her face. “Does Mary Beth Wells have a house on Catalina? Is that the house you broke into?”

  “Break in is such a strong term. I climbed in through an open window.”

  Camille seemed fascinated. I guessed her elite friends didn’t do stuff like that.

  “Yeah, Pink. And how far along are you with unraveling the code?” Adele said with a snort.

  “Molly’s doing great,” Dinah interjected, glancing sharply at Adele. “She’s already figured out what several more of the panels mean.”

  “Well, Pink, and what great clues did you find in the house?” Adele asked snidely.

  “For one thing,” I said, trying to be evasive, “Mary Beth Wells was certainly very fond of filet crochet.”

  “What kind of crochet?” Camille asked. Eduardo had just joined us, and CeeCee told him to do the honors of answering her question since he was such an expert at it. While Eduardo talked to Camille, Ali showed us her latest creation. She’d made a crocheted cactus and stuck it in a terracotta pot filled with a hunk of green florist’s foam. Then of course, she had to leave.

  AN HOUR LATER, THE GROUP WAS GONE AND I was putting away the table and setting up for the night’s program—a book called Unbreak My House. It was a guide to home repairs, and I wondered if it would attract much of an audience. Author Felix Lyndstrom was planning to demonstrate how to repair the inside of a toilet. He hadn’t exactly explained how he was going to do the demonstration. I certainly hoped water wasn’t involved, but I rolled out plastic under the demonstration table just in case.

  “Mrs. Pink,” a voice said from somewhere in the vicinity of the chairs. I peeked out from under the table and saw Detective Heather. Today she was wearing another one of her suits, black with white pinstripes. She had on heels that made my feet hurt just looking at them and her makeup job was so perfect she seemed not to be wearing any at all. Her white blond hair almost touched her shoulders.

  “I think you can call me Molly,” I said, getting up. “Is this about the dance lesson? It’s a public place, and I had every right to be there getting my complimentary lesson.”

  Detective Heather put up her hand to stop me. “It’s not about the dance lesson.” I waited to see if what she was going to say would make it obvious Barry had told her about our breakup. But her attitude and tone were still just short of hostile, so apparently he hadn’t.

  “I’m here to pick up the blankets your group made. Tell your group thank you,” she said in a gruff voice. She stopped a moment and her face softened. “They really help.” She went on to tell me that a man had been brought in for questioning about the death of his wife and he’d had his eleven-year-old son with him. She knew the man was going to end up being arrested and the boy would have to go to social services. They tried to give him some game to play with while the father was in the interview room, but the boy had withdrawn completely, no doubt over what had happened. “On a chance, I handed him one of the blankets. At first, he pushed it away. But I left it on the bench next to him. When I looked back, he’d picked it up and was holding it next to his face.”

  I was stunned. This was the closest thing Detective Heather and I had ever had to a real conversation. I’d never seen her let down the hard exterior before, and I almost wanted to hug her. Almost.

  Instead, I walked her up to the front counter and got the large plastic bag that held the next batch of blankets. As she turned to go, she paused and said, “I heard you were a visitor at the Catalina sheriff’s station because you were found inside the Wells house.” Detective Heather gave me an exasperated groan. “If I hear you do anything like that here, there’s going to be trouble. And I won’t let you off with a warning.”

  I held my breath, waiting to see if she was going to ask for the filet crochet piece, the diary entry and the note, but either she’d forgotten about them or completely discounted their importance.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” I said under my breath as she left. I was glad I hadn’t followed through with the hug.

  CHAPTER 18

  I HAD SOME TIME BEFORE THE EVENING PROGRAM, and I didn’t want to go home to watch the She La Las do their number again. Though they had gotten the lyrics down and were singing together, the dance steps were still an issue. My mother kept insisting it was like riding a bicycle and the synchronization would come back to them if they kept practicing. But they were getting panicky since the day of the audition was fast approaching.

  Instead of heading home, I called Dinah. She loved having her house back to herself, but she still missed the kids, particularly in the late afternoon. We decided to go to Los Encinos State Park. It was a dual mission. Neither of us had to deal with what we were avoiding, and we got to look over the place where we’d first found Mary Beth’s package.

  We met inside the gate near a low building by the natural warm spring that fed the guitar-shaped lake. The late afternoon sun glistened off the water as the ducks swam toward the fence where two women and three kids stood with bags of feed.

  “Maybe she stopped writing so abruptly because she saw someone,” Dinah said, referring to the note accompanying the filet crochet in Mary Beth’s bag.

  “If that was the reason, I bet that someone knew what the crochet piece meant.” I stopped for a moment as the full impact of what I’d just said sunk in. “And that someone didn’t want her to disclose the secret.” I choked on my breath. “And was probably right in front of us at the sale.”

  A goose came chasing behind us, thinking we had food, as we walked down the long porch of the adobe house where the sale tables had been set up. I noticed a bench nearby. “I bet that is where she was sitting when she wrote the note,” I said, picturing her scribbling quickly while she looked around. “Whoever it was must have been nearby.”

  Dinah looked wistfully over at the kids feeding the ducks. “Isn’t it amazing how they can have a good time doing the simplest of things?”

  “Focus,” I said to her. “We’re trying to figure out a mystery here.”

  “Well, it’s no m
ystery that I’m cold,” Dinah said, pulling her jacket around her. By now the sun was almost down and the sky was orange near the horizon. She suggested we continue our discussion at her house. I guessed it didn’t seem as lonely with me there. It was a good stop for me anyway since I had to go back to the bookstore, which was just down the street from Dinah’s place.

  Dinah went to put on the kettle as soon as we walked in. I noticed the house was back to normal with all the knickknacks returned to their rightful place. I sat on the chartreuse couch, which no longer had a protective sheet over it.

  “Maybe we should go over what we know,” I called out to Dinah. I took out the notebook and flipped back almost to the beginning. The fact that I’d found Mary Beth through the color of the thread didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  I’d written down poison is women’s weapon, and I had some notes about what Mary Beth’s maid had said at the house. She’d been off for the two days prior to the death. Given the way she’d acted, I didn’t think she was involved.

  I flipped past the section of notes about the filet piece. And as I’d realized my mistakes, I’d written in the correction over the images with some notes. I’d crossed out Arc de Triomphe and written in fireplace that must have a secret panel. In frustration I’d scribbled If only I’d known! I also regretted not paying more attention to all the filet crochet pieces hanging in the house. I had a feeling that kind of crochet was Mary Beth’s means of expression.

  Next I read over the notes I’d written when we were in the hotel room in Catalina. There were a lot of whews and that was a close call and boy, am I glad to be out of the sheriff’s station. Then, below Purdue Silvers’ name there was a list:

  woman who looked like Mary Beth

  name like a flower

  baby

  “Dinah,” I called as I got up and went looking for her in the kitchen. Her kitchen was really more like a hallway, probably designed by some man. No woman would ever make a kitchen so small. I waved the notebook, and Dinah looked up as she poured hot water in a teapot.