By Hook or by Crook cm-3

by Betty Hechtman

  I read her the list under the caretaker’s name. “Who does that sound like?” I asked.

  Dinah put down the kettle. “Who would look like her more than her sister, and Roseanne sounds like a flower to me.”

  I started figuring. “The diary entry was written the same year Samuel was born. The baby would be twenty-three now.” I flipped ahead in the book and found the notes from my dinner with Mason. Besides mentioning what a good time I’d had and how different he was from Barry and a few sentences about feeling strange and maybe a little like I was cheating on someone, I’d written down the facts he’d shared. Mason had said Mary Beth’s sister had two daughters, but they were only teenagers.

  Dinah and I carried the steaming cups of Earl Grey back into the living room. “What if Roseanne had a baby before she married Hal and gave it up and Mary Beth decided to tell him?”

  Dinah had zoned out. She was looking toward the bedroom where the kids had stayed. All this talk of babies and children had made her think about them. Suddenly she zoomed back in. “I have pictures.”

  “Pictures of what?” I asked, feeling a tinge of annoyance that she had missed my big aha about Roseanne.

  “I have pictures of the park, the day of the sale. I was taking pictures of Ashley-Angela and E. Conner before the babysitter took them home. Remember how serious they were about feeding the ducks and geese?” Dinah said before disappearing into the other room. She returned holding her digital camera. She flipped through the photos and then held out the camera so I could see the image display.

  I looked at the kids holding out their hands with food for the animals and was about to hand the camera back to Dinah. I was seriously going to try to find a love interest for Dinah. She was way too fixated on two kids that by all means she should resent.

  “Did you look at them?” Dinah asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, the kids are very cute.”

  Dinah rolled her eyes. “That wasn’t the point. You must really think I’ve lost it if I’m trying to show you photos of the kids when we’re talking about Mary Beth. This is too small anyway. Let me print a copy.”

  A few moments later, she handed me a piece of paper. This time I looked at everything except the kids. The angle wasn’t the best, and since Dinah had been focusing on the kids, she hadn’t paid attention to getting in the background. I saw the adobe house with the sale tables set up. CeeCee and I were behind our table, and Ali was handing someone a package. I moved my gaze to the adjacent benches. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the figure with long golden hair bent over something. The paper bag was on the bench next to her. It had to be Mary Beth. I felt a sudden wave of sadness. If only . . . Dinah noticed me hesitating and pointed beyond a giant cactus. I followed her finger. There were some other figures I couldn’t make out, but there was no mistaking Camille.

  “Camille sounds almost like Camellia,” Dinah said, looking at me with wide eyes.

  I scribbled some notes before drinking my tea in one gulp. There was no time to deal with it now. I had to get back to the bookstore for the evening program.

  BOB WAS BAKING MAN-SIZE COOKIES SINCE THAT was who we expected the audience to be. I was just hoping there would be any audience as it was mostly women who came to our events. I wondered if men would be open enough to admit they needed a fix-it book.

  I was relieved to see a crowd had already started to gather. My relief ended when the author arrived toiletless and explained there was nothing quite like demonstrating on the real thing, at which point he grabbed his bag of tools and took the group into the men’s room.

  I pushed to the front of the group standing around the stall and tried to stop him, but he insisted it was win-win. He’d do the demonstration, and the toilet he worked on would be like new. The audience turned to me expectantly.

  “C’mon, let him do it,” a man said. “I came all the way from Calabasas.”

  What was I to do? I gave him the go ahead, then left him to his work and went to get the signing table ready.

  I walked out of the men’s room, and when I glanced up, Barry was standing in front of me.

  “The men’s room?” he said, giving me an odd look.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, flashing an odd look back at him. He pointed to the sign for Unbreak My House. I knew Barry could fix anything. Like I was really going to buy that story.

  “Am I too late?” he asked, nodding toward the empty event area. I started to shake my head and was going to direct him to the men’s room, but I’d had something on my mind and wanted to discuss that first.

  “It’s about the other night. I realized we can’t exactly make a clean break. There’s Cosmo, and we’re going to run into each other like this.”

  There was just a hint of smile on Barry’s lips, which I did my best to ignore.

  “I think I’ve figured out a solution,” I said.

  Barry stepped closer, apparently assuming it was something about not breaking up after all. “I knew you’d reconsider once you thought about it. One of the things I like best about you is how understanding and forgiving you are.” He went to touch my chin, but I stopped his hand.

  “Not exactly. I was thinking we could be friends.” Barry froze, then dropped his hand to his side. The smile faded to his blank cop face and his jaw clenched a few times. He didn’t seem happy with my suggestion.

  “Friends?” he said in a low voice between gritted teeth.

  “Yes. It’s the perfect solution. Cosmo can continue living at my house, and you can come over and take care of him. And if we run into each other like this, we can be cordial. No problems, no expectations, no commitment.”

  “And no sex,” Barry said, looking disgruntled to say the least.

  “Well, yeah, that is sort of the line drawn between friends and something more.”

  “It’s because of the other guy your mother mentioned, isn’t it?” Barry said. His eyes had gotten that piercing look.

  I felt a woosh of air as Dinah rushed up, holding some papers. “There you are. I found some more pictures.” As an afterthought she noticed Barry and the fact that we were standing adjacent to the men’s room.

  She looked at Barry and at me. “Is this a bad time?” He said yes, and I said no. I noticed he didn’t make a move to leave as I examined the prints she’d brought.

  “See, there’s Camille. Doesn’t it look like she’s staring at Mary Beth?” Dinah said, pointing at the trajectory of Camille’s gaze.

  Barry’s head shot up at Mary Beth’s name. “Molly, what are you doing? Heather told me you were in custody on Catalina, but she seemed to think you had learned your lesson and dropped your detective game.”

  “It’s not a game. I’m telling you this crochet piece is definitely . . .” Then I stopped. I didn’t want him to take it from me.

  “There’s a problem in there,” a man said, coming out of the men’s room. Just then, I noticed water seeping out from under the door and the rest of the group made a hasty exit. The author came out last and with his head down in embarrassment mumbled something about how I should have told him we had faulty toilets and he’d changed his mind about the signing.

  I looked at Barry. “There’s another thing about friends. They fix things.”

  CHAPTER 19

  I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT CAMILLE. She had admitted to knowing Mary Beth only in relation to the dance lessons. Yet there she was not ten feet away as Mary Beth wrote her note. Maybe Mary Beth had sensed she was being watched—that whole thing about feeling eyes looking at you. Maybe Mary Beth had looked up and seen her and panicked and stopped writing. In any case, there was definitely more to the relationship than Camille had said.

  Still grumbling about his new designation as friend, Barry had stopped the flood in the men’s room and fixed the author’s error. Dinah had helped me mop up and had reminded me that the caretaker of the Catalina house had said the woman with Mary Beth had resembled her.

  “Camille doesn’t look like the picture of
Mary Beth I saw in the newspaper,” Dinah said as we put away the cleaning supplies.

  “True, but Purdue was talking about over twenty years ago, and he said something about long dark hair and loose sweats. And he’s a man. If we both had long hair and sweats on now he’d probably think we looked alike,” I said, standing almost a head taller than my friend.

  “What are you going to do?” Dinah asked.

  “I can’t lock Camille in an interview room and interrogate her like the detectives do. I’m going to have to find another way to get information. In the meantime, I’d like to find out what all the discord at the dance studio was about. I have an idea, but I need your okay.”

  “YOU HAVE MY BLESSING, BUT I DON’T KNOW IF it will help,” Dinah said the next morning as we walked through the Beasley campus to the bungalow where Dinah’s class was held. Vincent stood out from the clump of people waiting outside the prefabricated building.

  Unlike his fellow students, who looked as though they picked their clothes from the dirty laundry, he had a sense of style. He was all in black with a red bandana tied over his wavy dark hair. Men sure had a lot of head options these days. When I was Vincent’s age, everyone just had long, often straggly hair. Now men’s heads ran the gamut from dreadlocks or tiny little braids to the intentionally bald look. Then they covered it all up with all kinds of caps, hats and scarves. I wondered if their goal was the same as that of male birds with bright plumage.

  Vincent straightened when he saw Dinah and made a little dance move. He snickered when she dismissed it with a wave. I stayed behind as Dinah unlocked the door and went into the classroom. This was one time she was glad to be left out. I was still hearing about how much her teacher advantage had been ruined by taking the dance lesson with Vincent.

  I snagged him as he was starting toward the stairs to the bungalow. He gave me a puzzled look as I pulled him off to the side.

  “What? You want a dance lesson now?” He had an amused smile.

  “No. I’m more interested in information. It looked like there was some disagreement between the managers of the studio and Matt Wells. Do you know what it was about?”

  “Is this because of the dead chick?” He regarded me with new interest. “Are you some kind of cop?”

  “No, just an interested party. So, what were they arguing about?”

  Vincent shrugged. “I’m just a hired hand. I try to stay out of stuff. Just like I never really listened when the dead chick came to the studio and started arguing with Roseanne. Hard to believe those two are sisters. Mary Beth Wells was sure hot, for an older babe.”

  “Arguing? About what?” I tried not to sound too eager.

  He shrugged. “Look, Mary Beth Wells was an owner, but Roseanne Klinger was my boss. I didn’t want to get in the middle, if you know what I mean.” He glanced toward the door to the classroom. “I gotta go. Ms. Lyons won’t cut me any slack, even for talking to you. If you want information, talk to Matt Wells. He knows more than I do anyway. He always has breakfast at Le Grande Fromage. Just don’t tell him I told you.”

  It was already too late for this morning. Besides, I had to get to the bookstore. Someone was coming from the production company to figure if they were going to need to bring in plants and extra power, and since Mrs. Shedd considered the TV shoot an event, it had become my baby.

  When I walked into the bookstore, the people from the production company were already moving around, checking light levels and angles. I introduced myself and offered my services, but they seemed almost annoyed by my presence. Finally, I excused myself and said I’d be in the event area if they needed me. Between Barry’s surprise arrival and the disaster in the bathroom, I hadn’t had time to clean up things from the aborted signing.

  As I walked by the children’s area, I saw Adele. Story time had ended and the kids were gone. She was sitting at one of the tables working on a filet bookmark. Even if I hadn’t known the morning’s book was Being with the Bee Family, I could have guessed by her outfit. Yellow had become her color of choice lately. She looked like a beehive with the golden yellow cropped pants and long tunic, topped with an oddly shaped hat. I watched the rhythmic motion of her hook for a moment, recalling how I’d tried working on a bookmark at home.

  I had finally gotten the hang of working with the tiny hook and fine thread and actually done a couple of rows of filet. It had taken me some time to adjust to working on so small a scale, but once I had gotten going I really liked it. And when I saw what I had done, I was impressed. The fact that the work went so slowly made me appreciate how much time Mary Beth had put into making the panel piece.

  I had taken to carrying Mary Beth’s panel piece with me all the time. When I’d put away all the unsold books, I pulled it out of my tote bag and laid it on the table. I skipped over the panels I’d already deciphered and went over the rest. The vase of flowers was at least a recognizable motif, though I didn’t know what it was supposed to mean. But some of the other pictures just seemed like odd shapes. I tried stepping back as sometimes the images in this kind of crochet work were hard to make out. But even halfway across the event area, they still made no sense. The panel piece reminded me of one of those puzzles where you have to unscramble the letters and figure out a phrase. When I succeeded at those puzzles, the answer always seemed to come in a flash of inspiration. It just wasn’t happening here.

  I wondered if I would ever be able to figure it out without knowing what was hidden in the fireplace.

  Eventually the people from Making Amends finished and gave me a schedule of setup and shooting time. We’d actually have to close the bookstore for two days, but having our name in front of millions of viewers was priceless.

  I knew the subject of the show was supposed to be a surprise, but I thought that maybe asking straight out, as if of course I was supposed to know, would make them tell. I pulled over the person who seemed in charge. “I wonder if you’d tell me who the subject of the show is?”

  He regarded me with a self-satisfied smile. “Sorry. Nobody but a few insiders know who it is. Who knows, it could even be you.”

  Me? It had never occurred to me that I was even a possibility.

  BARRY WAS AT MY HOUSE WHEN I WENT HOME. He was working with a contractor for the police department installing my new door. The dogs had been fed, and Barry had fixed the light that wouldn’t turn off. He’d been missing in action for days, but now that we were just friends, he seemed to be crossing my path constantly. Things must be slow homicidewise in the west Valley.

  The She La Las had just finished dinner and were looking over their costumes. I felt as though I were invisible since nobody seemed to notice me. It was pointless to try to cook. My mother had ordered in again, so I just helped myself to the Caesar salad and pasta and took it in my crochet room.

  Barry stuck his head in the door and then stepped into the room. He did a double take at all the balls and bags of yarn and half-done projects.

  “You’re really serious about this hook stuff.” He picked up a partially finished rust-colored afghan and then looked at me with a question in his eyes. “Weren’t you making that for me?”

  “It’s almost finished. Just because we’re friends now doesn’t mean I won’t finish it. Friends make afghans for their friends all the time even if they leave out important elements of their lives.” That last part just slipped out.

  “Your door is back in place,” he said, ignoring my remark. I noticed his black eye had begun to fade. I held up my plate and showed him the food and told him there was plenty in the kitchen. He didn’t move. “Molly, I can’t do the friends thing. Maybe you should just keep Cosmo for now, until I make some arrangements.” He put the key down on the arm of the chair. “You know where to find me,” he said as he left. A moment later I heard my new front door open and close.

  I was still sitting there feeling a little stunned when Dinah called for an update.

  “I think we broke up even as friends,” I said.

  “You ha
d a problem with Vincent?” she said, surprised.

  “No. Barry.” I re-created the whole scenario for her, and she said she wasn’t surprised.

  “Men don’t like to be friends, particularly when it’s a step down from what they’ve been. I was really calling about your confab with my student, who by the way tried to use his being helpful as a way to get to take the midterm test he missed.”

  “Obviously, he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.” I repeated what he’d said about Mary Beth fighting with her sister and how I wished I knew what they fought about. “Vincent was no help. He said to talk to Matt Wells, which is exactly what I intend to do tomorrow.”

  “Not a bad assignment. And who knows what else may come of it. Now that you’re single again,” Dinah said, “the world is your man buffet.”

  “Single again. You make it sound like Barry and I were married. We were just seeing each other.”

  “If you’re not seeing someone, you’re considered single in the current lingo,” Dinah said.

  “What about Mason?” I said.

  “I thought you wanted to keep it to a casual dinner now and then,” Dinah said.

  “Well, yeah . . . It is, well, it was. It’s just that . . .”

  “What did you leave out?” Dinah repeated, her voice lighting up with interest.

  “Nothing. It’s about his good night kiss . . .”

  “Cheek or lips? You never said,” she said with interest.

  “Lips and everything else. It was definitely not a casual kiss. Believe me my only interest in meeting Matt Wells is for information.”

  Dinah had to get back to grading papers and made me promise to report back to her if I found out anything new.

  “I thought of something odd,” I said, just before hanging up. “Whoever killed Mary Beth had to know she really liked marzipan. If you’re going to lace something with poison, you want to be sure the person will eat it. I wouldn’t have eaten any of those almond paste apples sent to me even if I hadn’t thought they might be laced with something. Marzipan isn’t like chocolate. The killer had to know that she not only liked marzipan, but that she loved it enough to guarantee she would eat the candy apples.”