“Can we talk about this later?” I said gently. I was on the lookout for Poppy. She wasn’t there yet, and it always made me nervous when authors cut it close.
He moved so his face was in front of me. “Please just give me a minute. This is important. You’re important. I can’t begin to tell you what it does for me to see you. It’s like I rejoin a world where people are happy and dogs play ball, and people plant lettuce in their kitchen. I like what I do, but sometimes I just hit empty. When I see you, it’s like hitting the refill button.” He grinned. “You even help me not to be so upset about Jeffrey calling himself Columbia.”
It was hard not to be touched by what he said, particularly since I did care for him. But it was all about timing. Poppy Roeback was just coming in the door, pulling a wagon full of supplies. And there was someone else. Someone tall, bald and wearing a designer suit.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Was he the man from the Cottage Shoppe? The one who’d been so angry? True, bald seemed to be in these days, and frankly I can’t say I blamed men for going that way. If I had to choose between a bald spot surrounded by a fringe of hair that made you look insipid, or all-bald-by-choice that gave off a certain macho vibe, I’d go for the naked head. I strained to see better, which didn’t please Barry, particularly when he turned and realized I was looking at another man just as he had poured out his heart.
“He’s the one. I’m sure he’s the one,” I said, pulling away and moving toward the front.
“The one, who?” Barry said in close pursuit.
Poppy Roeback saw me and pulled her wagon in front of me. “Molly, I’m all set,” she said, pointing at the bags of dirt and stack of pots along with some flats of plants.
When I looked up again, the bald man was gone.
CHAPTER 8
I WAS STILL PICKING UP BALLS OF DIRT THE NEXT morning. No matter how much plastic I’d put down, the dirt had rolled farther. I was under the table trying to clean up as the crochet group began to arrive.
“Hey, there,” Dinah called, peeking under the table. “What are you doing?”
I explained that Poppy had gotten more enthusiastic during her book signing than she was on her PBS show. She had rolled the containers out into the crowd and demonstrated planting tomatoes with a trellis that could grow even in a sunny spot in a kitchen. She’d been using plants that already had fruit since she wanted the crowd to get the real idea, and some tomatoes had broken loose, and of course, somebody had stepped on them. She’d also used some special ball-shaped clumps of dirt that expanded when you added water, and some had fallen out of the pots.
“Sorry I missed it. Sounds like fun,” Dinah said, picking up a gigantic dirt ball. Now that she had unloaded about her ex, she wasn’t avoiding me anymore. What a relief!
“Jeremy called before I left. He’s going to be delayed coming back from San Diego. I want to see him get a good job, but his kids are wearing me out.” She did look tired around the eyes, and the spikes in her gelled hair seemed to be drooping again. “Those kids are out of control. Believe me, if they were staying longer, I’d have a thing or two to say.”
I could just imagine. Dinah was not sentimental and gushy about little kids. She’d been known to make caviar and cream cheese sandwiches for her own kids when she ran out of jelly. Even when they were small, Dinah’s children had manners and were nice to be around. They had interesting things to say and knew the world didn’t revolve around them. I was guessing E. Conner and Ashley-Angela thought it did.
“All I can say is thank heavens for Beasley’s child care. It’s really part of the preschool teacher program. They take in faculty kids to let the students practice on them.”
I filled her in on everything that was going on. She sparked on Barry and Jeffrey’s appearance.
“How can you fault the guy for showing up and saying all that sweet stuff?” she said, mystified. “All he wants is a serious relationship. Do you know how hard that is to find? I never had that with my ex even when we were married.” Dinah helped me up as I finished with the cleanup. “I know, you need your space,” she said, understanding even if she didn’t agree. That was the cool thing about best friends: You might not always agree but you backed each other anyway.
Morgan walked in the bookstore and I waved her over. As usual, she was wearing dance wear, this time with a skirt over it. She laid a bag from the craft store on the table.
“If only I could have talked to the bald guy,” I said to Dinah as Morgan situated herself. “I would have liked to ask him why he was so angry at Drew and what he had in the shopping bag.”
“Did you find out who he was at least?” Dinah had taken out some cotton worsted yarn and was starting another of her washcloths. This one had a cluster pattern, and she was doing it in a sea foam green that would go with her bathroom.
“I asked Rayaad,” I said, refering to our main cashier. “She didn’t even know who I was talking about. It’s kind of hard to find him without knowing his name.”
“Oh well, maybe you’ll see him again somewhere.”
Morgan had laid out a selection of crochet hooks and some cream-colored bargain yarn.
“Maybe you could show me how to crochet before the others come.” She was as bummed out as ever. Another audition hadn’t gone as she had hoped, and she was even more convinced if she were five pounds lighter she would have gotten the part. I suspected she was impatient to learn how to crochet because she thought it would burn calories.
Dinah and I looked at each other and I shrugged. “I’m afraid it’s kind of like the blind leading the blind, but I can show you how to do the basics.” I did a slip knot in slow motion and made a bunch of loose chains as an example. Once Morgan had done the same, I showed her how to dip her hook under the two strands of yarn, then yarn over and pull it through. “Then you just put your hook through both loops, and voilà, you’ve done a single crochet.”
Morgan seemed to have a knack for it. Even more surprising, considering how hard it had been for me, she could do it while talking. “Does the bald guy have something to do with the murder at the Cottage Shoppe?”
When I nodded, she continued. “I was thinking about it. Whoever went up to Drew Brooks’s office last has to be the killer.” By now she had made a whole row of single stitches, and I showed her how to turn her work and begin another row.
“Good thinking, Morgan,” I said, noting that she had gotten right to the heart of the matter. She might look waifish and like her head was off in the clouds, but she was obviously smart, too. Not a surprise. My son Samuel had always gravitated toward girls with brains.
“So, who went up there?” Morgan said as she moved onto a third row. Her stitches were even and in the perfect place between too loose and knots.
I had to think for a minute. “Well, there’s the bald guy. I know he went up to Drew’s office the first time we were there, and I have a feeling he went upstairs the day Drew was murdered, but I don’t know when. The saleswoman went up there for sure. She’s the one who screamed. And Kevin Brooks probably did to bring up the soup. There were a lot of people shopping. Any one of them could have gone up there, too.”
“But certainly all those people didn’t want to kill him. Do you know anybody who had a reason?” Morgan asked.
“Shei—” Dinah said, but I put my hand over her mouth before she could get out the la. None of us had noticed that Sheila had come up to the table as we were talking. She was looking through her craft bag and thankfully didn’t seem to have heard us. As always she was wearing her business suit since she came during a break from work. It struck me as funny that the gym required its employees to wear dressy black suits while all the members came in wearing tee shirts and stretchy pants.
While I was getting the yarn for the shawls from the office, CeeCee and Adele had arrived. When I got back to the table, I introduced them to Morgan. Then CeeCee took the yarn I’d brought out and began to separate it by color.
“I talked to the di
rector of the Women’s Haven, and she’s very excited about the shawls,” CeeCee said. “She’d like to make some kind of an event when we give them out. I hesitated to give her an exact date since we really haven’t even started. I’m sure we’re all agreed we want to get them ready soon.”
I mentioned that now that we had a new member the work would go faster.
Adele looked at the practice swatch Morgan was making. “Who taught you how to crochet?”
When Morgan indicated me, Adele burst out with a sputtery laugh. “Pink taught you to crochet? She just learned herself and already she’s giving lessons.” Adele got in another laugh at the absurdity and then offered to give Morgan a real lesson since she was a pro. To prove her point, she held out her arms to show off the black-and-white-striped warmers she’d made for them. Actually, they seemed like a good idea for May weather, though they were at odds with the rest of her outfit. I’d begun naming her outfits, and this one I called Queen of the Pampas. She wore black leather boots with rust-colored gaucho pants and a black camisole. The arm warmers went from the base of her hand to slightly below her shoulders. She’d let her hair go back to light brown and had it in tiny pigtails. Adele didn’t know the meaning of the word subtle.
Adele took Morgan to the end of the table, promising to teach her the right way to crochet. The rest of us started choosing yarn for our first shawl. At that moment Patricia rushed up out of breath, apologizing for being late. She took out a completed aqua shawl. It appeared to be made of mohair yarn, but she insisted it was synthetic and machine washable.
Sheila looked at it. “What a beautiful shade of blue-green. But it looks almost—” CeeCee made a shush move with her fingers and angled her head toward Adele. Sheila didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she was going to say. Knitted. The shawl looked knitted.
Patricia kept her voice low. “I know how you feel about you-know-what, but I’m so much more comfortable with a pair of needles and it is going to be hard for me to commit to being here all the time. And it is such an important project.”
“Of course, dear. All that really matters is that we get enough shawls done,” CeeCee said, doing a double take as Patricia pushed away from the table. “You aren’t leaving already. You just got here.”
“Sorry, but I have to do a demonstration of some of my hints at my daughter’s school.” Patricia was already halfway to the door by the time she got to the end of the sentence.
“Well, ladies, lets get going on the shawls,” CeeCee said with a sigh of resignation.
We all started making our foundation chains. I glanced CeeCee’s way and she seemed to be working a much bigger clump. At first I thought she’d gotten ahead of us since she was such a skilled crocheter, but even working faster didn’t explain it.
Adele finished playing teacher, and she and Morgan rejoined the group. Adele told Morgan to make a practice swatch and then she’d help Morgan start a shawl. Adele saw the clump of worked yarn coming off CeeCee’s hook and wanted to know what it was.
“Just the next big advance in crochet,” CeeCee said. “They are called extended stitches; you do the foundation and the first row at the same time. No more pesky trying to force your hook into a twisty chain stitch.”
“That’s just the rabble-rousers spreading rumors. It’s nonsense to think of giving up the foundation chain. It’s . . . its historic,” Adele sputtered. “And I’m a purist. I say the old way is the best way.”
I added not opened minded onto my description of Adele. Luckily CeeCee had already put away Patricia’s contribution or Adele would have gone ballistic, probably yelling something about us not being needle heads and keeping our group pure. Adele always went nuts when confronted with anything about knitting. I suppose there was some dark secret in her past. Maybe a bad experience with a sweater knit by her grandmother or something. As if calling yourself a hooker all the time was some kind of step up.
With all the commotion, nobody was paying any attention to Sheila. She had positioned herself at the end of the table, and her head was bent over her work. I was the first one to check out what she was doing. She had the directions for a shawl and six skeins of dark navy yarn. But she seemed to be stuck on making the foundation chain. From my vantage point her stitches looked like knots. I didn’t have to ask to know she was upset.
CeeCee noticed next. She put a hand on Sheila’s arm to stop her struggle, then suggested she unravel, do her foundation with a bigger hook and then go back to the K-size hook on the next row.
Sheila stopped her work and took the larger hook, then she began to tap it on the table, another sure sign she was upset. CeeCee reached over and put her hand on the hook, making it impossible for Sheila to continue tapping it. Undaunted, Sheila began drumming her fingers.
“Just tell us what’s wrong,” Adele said impatiently.
“You’re all very nice to me and I hate to be a crybaby, but I’m worried about losing the place where I live.” She looked at me and I shook my head, indicating I’d done as she asked and not told anyone about her living arrangements. “You might as well all know. I rent a room in a house in Reseda, and I babysit on the weekends to pay part of the rent. The woman who owns it said she’s uncomfortable with me being there since Detective Gilmore asked her a bunch of questions about me. I talked her into letting me stay for now, but she said if I get arrested, I’m out.” Sheila tried to take a deep breath. “The detective has decided I’m a person of interest. She said she overheard me threaten Drew Brooks.” By the end, Sheila’s voice was cracking.
“Don’t worry, dear,” CeeCee began. “Molly will take care of it. She’ll find out who killed that nasty man and get you off the hook.”
“What?” I said as Sheila rushed over to hug me in gratitude.
CHAPTER 9
“I CAN’T BELIEVE CEECEE SAID THAT. SHE MADE it sound like a done deal. What if I can’t find out who killed Drew Brooks?” Dinah and I both had the morning off, and I was pacing around her living room. Several days had gone by since CeeCee had made her pronouncement that I’d get Sheila off the hook, and I just didn’t know if I’d be able to do it. The kids were playing in the other room, and Dinah seemed angry.
“He said he’d be back last night for sure,” she said seeming totally unaware of what I had been talking about. “I’ve called and called his cell phone, and I’m just getting his voice mail.” She ran her fingers through her short hair. She might not be listening to me, but I knew she was talking about Jeremy and his so far failed promise to return from his big job hunt. Dinah didn’t look like her usual self. Not only had she kid-proofed her house, she’d kid-proofed her appearance. No long scarves, because the kids tended to step on them and almost choke her whenever she bent down to their level. Gone were the long earrings, too, since E. Conner started playing with them when she took the kids out for lunch. All she had left was her gelled salt-and-pepper hair and her attitude. Poor Dinah. She was used to her house and life being orderly.
“C’mon kids, you’re going to see Miss Trudy,” Dinah said in an upbeat tone.
“We don’t want to,” E. Conner said, dragging his feet as he walked through the living room. It made an awful noise and probably left scuff marks. Ashley-Angela followed him, hanging on to a beat-up stuffed elephant.
“We want to stay here. They won’t let me talk to Wonkie,” she said, hugging her elephant.
Dinah had been pretty easygoing with them, but between their father not showing up and their poor behavior, she’d reached the end of her patience. Dinah was an expert at shaping up immature freshmen. She did it by being direct and leaving no wiggle room. It was her way or the highway. I had a feeling the kids were about to get a taste of this technique.
“No discussion. We’re leaving in five minutes,” Dinah announced. “Wonkie’s not going.” She started to snatch it from Ashley-Angela’s arm, but the little girl’s face crumbled. Dinah was tough but not mean. “Okay, he can go, but you both have to do what Miss Trudy says.” E. Conner tri
ed dragging his feet again. Dinah told him to stop it or else. Her tone was strong enough that even I didn’t want to ask what the or else was.
She got them in the car, making sure they were belted in, and we headed off for Beasley. Dinah didn’t have a class until late in the day, and she kept muttering something about how she hoped no one checked her schedule since child care was supposed to be used only during office hours and class. I hoped they didn’t, too, because it wasn’t a day to mess with Dinah.
As we walked them in, Ashley-Angela ran back to hug Dinah and give her Wonkie.
“He said he wants to go with you,” she said in a serious voice.
“Freedom,” Dinah said, sticking the elephant under her arm before doing a little dance as we walked away. “I need coffee.”
“Me, too. Then maybe we can come up with a plan,” I said, relieved to have my friend all to myself.
“Plan? Plan about what?” Dinah asked, and I realized she hadn’t been paying any attention to what I’d been saying. After I reminded Dinah of why I needed a plan, we discussed where to go for coffee. Dinah didn’t think I’d want to go to the bookstore café since I didn’t have to be at the bookstore this morning. However, the coffee was the best and I got a discount.
It was hard to find a table. Two men were using tables as offices. They had their laptops, phones and BlackBerries spread out, and looked as though they might be there all day. Another table was taken up by two women from the building next door, who were talking about someone named Lannie who apparently had messed up something. Several student types occupied a big table. Their textbooks were propped open and they were discussing an upcoming exam.
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