If Hooks Could Kill

by Betty Hechtman

  He was more than happy to help, but was on his way to court. He said he’d have his assistant call me and get me any information I needed. Within an hour I’d gotten it all, but I still needed the evidence—the evidence I’d seen in the storage unit.

  I really didn’t want to go alone. I tried calling Dinah, but got her voice mail and remembered she’d said there was an all day, into the evening faculty retreat at Beasley to prepare for the start of the fall semester. Then I caught sight of Adele, who was just taking a break and was back at the worktable in the yarn department.

  She was more dressed up than usual. She had on a tunic made of all black granny squares over a longer hot pink dress. Rows of ruffles peeked out from below the black. Her hair was held back from her ears with large pink crocheted flowers she’d attached to barrettes. She was humming to herself as she worked on a dark purple cowl.

  I couldn’t believe I was going to do what I was about to do, but I was out of options.

  I slid into the seat next to her. “You know how you’re always saying you like to be part of the action, that we’re like the three, well, in this case two musketeers?” I said. Adele looked up and listened as I told her there was a storage locker I wanted to check for evidence. “If I’m right, I’m just going to take pictures of everything and then show them to Detective Heather. Then she can get a search warrant and get the evidence she needs to solve Kelly’s murder. I’d like to have a witness.”

  Adele swallowed hard. “Pink, I can’t. I know I said I wouldn’t let anyone tell me what to do, but I have definitely given up my detective work.” She hung her head. “Eric said it was a deal breaker if I did any investigating. You’ve got to understand. Cutchykins gets who I am. I think he’s the one, my soul mate, the yin to my yang—”

  She was going to go on, but I cut her off. “I can’t believe you are going to let someone tell you what you can and can’t do,” I said.

  “Pink, I’m not letting him tell me what to do, it was my decision. All my decision. Besides, you’re not even sure about the storage locker.”

  “Could you at least ask Eric a question for me?” The words were barely out of my mouth when Adele shook her head in a definitive no. “Don’t you even want to know what I figured out?” I said. She started to weaken and then seemed to pull herself together and shook her head decisively.

  It looked like I was on my own.

  CHAPTER 34

  After all the time I’d missed at the bookstore lately, I didn’t dare ask for some time off. There was no choice, but to wait until the end of my shift. I was antsy to see if I was right about the stuff just being switched to another unit. If I was wrong, well, the information Mason had gotten me wouldn’t mean much.

  It was getting toward evening when I left the bookstore. I had brought a lantern with me and my tote bag purse. I wasn’t going to be caught short this time. I parked as close as possible to the unit in question and grabbed the lantern and my bag. My heart was thumping as I rushed down the aisle, using my light to find the reflective tape on the lock.

  My breath was a little choppy with anticipation as I pulled out the plastic bag with the key. I tried putting the key in the lock and it didn’t go. I sighed, thinking this might be the end. Not wanting to admit defeat, I retried the key and still it wouldn’t go. Maybe the other way? I turned it so the teeth went up and pushed it in the lock. It slid in and I turned until the lock fell open.

  I pulled open the door and stepped inside. Everything had been rearranged in the move, but I recognized the markings on one of the boxes. It was the same stuff. The first thing I did was to take a picture of the outside with the unit number showing. Then I moved inside, hoping between the lantern and the flash on the phone, I’d get good images. I used a pen to poke through the boxes. I was curious about the leaded glass lamp, but my first priority was finding the gun. I moved further into the unit.

  Suddenly I felt the hairs on my neck go up and I sensed I wasn’t alone. I turned my head slowly and my fear was confirmed.

  “What are you doing here?” I said with a squeak in my voice.

  “Your friend at the bookstore said I might find you here. The one with the colorful clothes. I think you have something of mine,” Stone said reaching toward my tote bag. “She was telling her boyfriend something about stepping down from investigating my sister’s case and that she’d put the crochet things connected to it in your bag.”

  He fumbled with the pocket on the front of my tote bag and I saw a tissue-wrapped packet. He ripped open the top and I saw the owl and one of the bullion stitch flowers.

  “Adele really told you that?” I said, getting agitated.

  “Told might be the wrong word. It was more like I overheard them in the bookstore café. It doesn’t really matter. I wanted to get these things before I left.”

  “You were the one who came to Kelly’s door. You were the one who shot her,” I said. The words tumbled out before I could stop them. Stone stood up and stared at me. He was wearing his usual khaki shorts, Hawaiian shirt and sandals, but his manner was different. The laid back surfer dude had been replaced by somebody with a cold stare.

  He responded with a dismissive laugh. “Don’t be silly. I was in Denver trying to close the deal for the energy drink. I showed the cops my boarding pass. It said departing Kahului arriving Denver.”

  “But with all the time changes, the detective didn’t notice that the flight took longer than it should have.” I had his rapt attention now. “Because the plane made a stop in Burbank before continuing on to Denver,” I said. There was no plane change and therefore no need for more than one boarding pass. Since it was more than a two hour stop, they gave you the option of getting off the plane, didn’t they?” I didn’t mention that the information had come courtesy of Mason’s travel agent.

  I had his rapt attention now. “I know about the cab,” I said. “You took it to your sister’s and then back to the airport and got back on your plane.”

  Adele hadn’t been willing to ask Eric my question, so I’d talked to him during my break. Between being a motor cop and working the production, he was very aware of what vehicles for the production were parked on Kelly’s street. When I’d mentioned remembering seeing a cab, he’d been certain it had nothing to do with the filming.

  Stone listened with a stoic expression as I continued with my final piece of evidence. “I knew that somebody else had a key to the lock and that person must have contacted the storage company about moving to the new unit. Not only did I find out it was you, but that Kelly’s locker was originally rented to you. You left a credit card to be charged each month, but it expired. They tried to contact you and the phone number you’d left was Kelly’s. According to their records, she took over paying for it and put it in her name. I’m guessing you must have left the second key with her.” I knew all of that thanks to Mason’s contacts.

  * * *

  “Well, aren’t you the amateur sleuth,” Stone said. He went to take the packet from my tote bag and I made a rush toward the door. All those years of surfing had given him lightning reflexes, and he got there first and pulled down the unit’s door. Almost simultaneously he grabbed my arms, pulling them into a vicelike grip behind me. All the surfing had left him with muscles like steel and when I tried to move my arms, the pain was excruciating.

  “I didn’t plan to go to my sister’s house,” Stone began. “But I didn’t want to end up with just a royalty for the coconut water energy drink. I wanted to be a partner, and that meant I had to invest in the company. I was just going to go to the storage unit, get some collectible coins I’d left there and get back on the plane. I thought I’d sell them when I got to Denver and use the money to buy into the business.”

  He seemed quite comfortable holding onto my arms. I was not. “Imagine my shock when the coins and other things were gone. I had kept one key and left the other in a box of things I left at my sister’s when I moved to Hawaii. I knew that she must have taken the coins. I went to he
r house to ask for them. She said that she didn’t have them anymore, that she had sold them all. I didn’t believe her.” His lips were in a straight line as he relived the moment.

  He stopped and I thought he might have been finished, but his hold grew even tighter on my arms. “The way she kept looking around that room of hers, I was sure she’d hidden them somewhere. She argued that when my credit card expired and she’d taken over the payments for the locker, the contents really became hers. We argued some more and then she pulled out her trump card.” He gestured toward the leaded glass lamp sticking out of a box. “She’d taken it home with her, too, with the idea of selling it. When she was trying to gauge the value, she found out some information about the lamp that could have caused me a lot of problems. She wanted to make a deal. I stop hassling her about the coins and she’d put the lamp back in the locker and never say a word about it. But that would leave me vulnerable. Any time she wanted to she could blackmail me again.” There was a moment of silence as Stone collected himself.

  “I’d brought along a gun from the storage locker as a last resort. I thought it might encourage her to give up the coins if she balked.” He didn’t finish, but the obvious finale was that he’d shot his sister because she knew too much. He said he grabbed the lamp and left.

  Did he think I was going to be sympathetic when he complained that the cab hadn’t waited like it was supposed to and he’d had to walk to Ventura and find one parked in front of Le Grande Fromage? He grumbled that he’d searched the house over and over for the coins and not found them. Then he heard people in the bookstore talking about having a box of his sister’s crochet pieces. Stealing them was easy. Everyone was finding a seat waiting for him to speak. He just shoved everything in his backpack. The shoplifter kids had been a convenient distraction, including the mess they’d made in the yarn area.

  He let out an annoyed snort. “What a wasted effort. I don’t even know why my sister bothered hiding the coins behind those flowers. I got barely one thousand dollars for selling all of them. What had happened to the really valuable ones? I went through that house again. I looked on her computer and could tell she had never sold them or a Rolex watch I knew was missing from the storage locker. I’d almost given up, when I heard your friend talking.”

  We’d come full circle and it was making me uneasy. I had a whole list of questions like where the coins had come from and why keep them in a storage locker? What about the Rolex? Questions would stall him and give me time to think of an escape, but before I could ask the first question I heard a ripping sound as he tore a piece of duct tape off one of the boxes and slapped it across my mouth.

  He loosened the hold on my arms for an instant, but then I felt him wrapping some kind of rope around them all the way up to my elbows.

  This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

  My feet were still free and I made a move toward the door. He’d only pulled it down partway. Could I push it up with my foot and escape?

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. I saw the lantern light reflect off of something metal in his hand. “I was afraid you might not want to part with that packet of stuff, so I borrowed my brother-in-law’s gun. This could work out quite well. Dan’s fingerprints are all over his gun.” I could see that Stone had gloves on now. “So when I shoot you, that detective will finally have some hard evidence against Dan. And I can get on with my life.”

  Stone must have seen me glancing toward the boxes of stuff and figured what I was thinking. “The gun I shot my sister with is long gone. Once I realized someone had been in the locker, I knew it wasn’t safe to leave it there, so I gave it a watery send-off from my surfboard.”

  He looked around at the interior. “I think I’ve taken care of everything. Let’s see, where shall we do this?”

  I was frantically looking for some way to escape when I heard the door rumble up.

  “Molly, are you in there?” a voice called. In the split second it took me to turn, Stone was next to me and had the gun against my temple. As the door lifted all the way, Barry started to walk into the unit. “I saw your car,” he began, and then his eyes got accustomed to low light and he saw the situation. His hand made a slight move.

  “Don’t even think about going for your gun or she gets it,” Stone said. He was standing so close to me now, the sweet smell of his coconut sun lotion was making me sick to my stomach.

  The color had drained from Barry’s face and he seemed frozen just the way he’d been when I had been struggling with the shoplifter kids. Stone pushed me in front of him and we took a step toward the open door. I could feel the metal of the gun touching my skin. It was a terrible feeling.

  I was afraid to breathe for fear it would make Stone pull the trigger, but I kept looking around, hoping to see something, anything that could help me out of this situation. Stone said something about us getting out of there. A bad sign. Once we got out of there, it seemed unlikely he was going to keep me as a travel companion.

  That was when I noticed them. At first they didn’t show up in the dim light, but the lantern reflected off one of their shiny black bodies. The big bugs I’d seen a few days before were moving around the floor. I tracked their movement and saw that they were headed toward Stone. It must have been the cloying coconut fragrance that was attracting them. Stone was too busy staring at Barry to notice.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Stone said, giving me a push.

  “Wait,” Barry commanded. “Don’t rush into anything. Let’s think this out.” Barry had made eye contact with me and I tried to direct my gaze to show him the parade of bugs headed toward Stone’s exposed feet and legs, hoping he’d realize that once the insect army walked onto Stone’s skin, he’d be distracted. But Barry’s face was impassive and I couldn’t tell if he’d gotten it. And even if Barry had understood my signal, when the moment for action came, would he freeze? Any hesitation on his part and the tiny window of opportunity would be lost.

  Barry tried to calm Stone and asked him what it was that he really wanted. Meanwhile I watched the bugs get to the base of Stone’s sandal and begin to walk up the strap. They were big and ungainly as they moved across the thin strip of leather that ran across his toes. One bug fell off and landed on his foot, then another. At the same time another contingent of insects had started walking up his bare legs. Even with all the adrenaline flowing, Stone felt something and looked down. He might have been a champion surfer with nerves of steel when it came to waves, but not bugs. He started kicking his feet out, trying to shake the insects off. The gun was wavering, and I felt it move away from my temple.

  It had to be now. I threw Barry my most imploring look, but he seemed frozen. At any second, Stone would push the gun against my temple again. Just when I thought all was lost, Barry’s expression sharpened as if something had kicked in. With precise timing, he rushed Stone and knocked the gun out of his hand before the surfer had a chance to react. At the same moment I elbowed Stone in his six-pack abs.

  Our joint actions knocked Stone off his feet and Barry made him lie down spread eagle on the pavement, while he took out his handcuffs. Stone took an eye-level look at the congregation of shiny bugs and protested, but Barry ordered him to stay on the ground.

  As he clipped the handcuffs on, Barry read Stone his rights, then checked him for more weapons and called it in.

  When I looked over at Barry, he had turned away and was pumping his fist in a victory move. His mojo was back. I would have said something like congratulations, but I didn’t think he wanted anyone to know that he’d ever lost it. A moment later, he hugged me.

  “That was close. Thank God, you’re all right.”

  “Thanks to you and your fast reflexes,” I said. “How did you happen by?”

  He gestured toward Stone. “I was following him, hoping he’d throw something away with his DNA on it, but I lost him when he came to this place. Then I saw your car.” I was confused and asked why he’d been following Stone.

  “I don’t
know if you were paying any attention when I told you about the two cold cases I was working on.” I guiltily admitted that all I remembered was the murder book, but as he described the wealthy Northridge man they thought had been killed by his maid, who’d been stealing from him but who had never been charged due to lack of evidence, it started to come back to me. The second case involved the death of a liquor store employee in what they thought was a robbery gone bad. There was no suspect in the second case. “In the beginning I was just hoping to find some new evidence on the maid, but then I noticed a lamp had been taken in both cases. The first case had come with an insurance company description of it. It was an original Tiffany lamp and worth big bucks. In the second case the girlfriend knew a lamp with a leaded glass shade was gone, but didn’t know much about it. Could it have been the same lamp? A bunch of collectibles had been taken from the first case, including a valuable coin collection. As far as they could tell neither the most valuable coins in the collection nor the lamp had ever surfaced.” At first when I heard you talking about lamps and coins, I thought it was just coincidence, but then I began to wonder. I knew the wealthy guy liked to hang out with athletes. On a hunch, I took a photo of Stone with my phone and showed it to the maid. The maid recognized him as being one of the regulars at the wealthy guy’s endless parties. It turned out the victim of the other crime had a connection to the wealthy guy. The maid recognized his photo and said he’d delivered food and liquor for the parties. She was pretty sure the delivery guy sometimes ended up staying and joining the party.

  “When I heard what was inscribed on the watch you found in the crochet stuff—the rich guy’s nickname was Squiggie—I started keeping an eye on Stone.”