On the Hook

by Betty Hechtman

  “I’m a Hooker and oh so proud. I say it often and I say it loud. Come crochet today; say yay crochet!”

  As expected, the Hooker line got a laugh, and as Adele kept repeating her “Say yay crochet,” she finally got the group to say “Yay!” along with her. Not satisfied, she yelled out, “Say it loud, say it proud: Yay crochet!”

  She kept that up until they were yelling back to her. She had the tote bag and pulled out a long red scarf and waved it like a banner. People going in and out of the hospital stopped to watch.

  “There’s single and double and half double, too. Good way to ease tension for you and you,” Adele rapped, pointing at different people in the group. “If you want to learn to crochet, just stop by the bookstore and say way-hey.” The reporter and his photographer had moved in close as Adele began rocking back and forth. “That’s Shedd & Royal Books and More. Just come down the street, then c’mon in the door.” She finished off by draping some of the scarves around the necks of the hospital employees before pointing to CeeCee. “Hey, say, we’re here today, to give you blankets; now say hooray!”

  CeeCee took her cue and stepped up to the hospital group. Inspired by Adele’s show, CeeCee’s spiel about the surrendered newborns and the transfer of love from the handmade blankets was longer and more emotional. At the end, the whole group applauded, barely noticing that Adele was retrieving the scarves as she’d done at the fire station.

  Adele was so juiced from being in front of a crowd and their reaction that, if I didn’t know her better, I would have thought she was on drugs. CeeCee was caught up in it now, too.

  “I’m not sure that I approve of your methods, dear, but it’s great that the newspeople are sticking with us. They’ll give us much more coverage now.” She turned to Adele as we were driving to the next stop. “It was genius to keep doing something new instead of repeating the same rap lines and using the same scarves.”

  If Adele was high from the performance before, CeeCee’s words pushed her to a new level. Her head was too far up in the clouds for her to drive, and CeeCee had taken over. I don’t think Adele even knew where we were anymore when we got to the last stop. The car had barely rolled into the parking lot of the West Valley Police Station when Adele grabbed the tote bag, preparing to get out.

  I heard her muttering, “I can’t keep me from the world,” as she took the lead.

  CeeCee had made the arrangements for the presentation and probably had just said we’d be coming by to give them some baby blankets. The desk sergeant looked stunned as the four of us along with our press contingent came into the lobby and approached the glassed-in area.

  CeeCee leaned close to the glass and introduced herself. She turned to us. “The officer is getting somebody for us to present the blankets to.” Then she turned to Adele and suggested we keep the presentation simple.

  But by now Adele was too fired up from the crowd’s approval for CeeCee’s words to register. As soon as the door to the secure area opened and some men and women in uniform came out, Adele began to rap. “We’re here to give blankets for babies wee. We crocheted them by hand and they’re something to see.” She looked at the assembled group. “It’s all about crochet. It’s not knitting as some people think. Working with those needles could drive you to drink.” Adele began to twirl and rock as she showed off her sweater. “See this beauty, I’ll show you some more. To you and you and you coming in the door.”

  The commotion must have reached back into the station, because I noticed more people had come into the lobby for a better look. Barry was among them, and I saw him roll his eyes and try to hold in a smile as Adele gyrated around. Detective Heather was with him and she seemed to be scowling, but then maybe she’d heard Adele’s dis of knitting, which was her yarn craft of choice.

  I returned my gaze to Adele, who had moved on to her “Hey, crochet, give a yay for crochet” line. She was practically in a frenzy as she began tossing out the scarves as if she were on a Mardi Gras float throwing out beads. Then she began hanging scarves around assorted people’s necks. All the while she played directly to Kimberly and her cameraman.

  “This is just a taste. I can do much better when it isn’t in haste. Oh, what the heck, call me, call me, you TV exec. That’s Adele at the bookstore; remember it’s called Shedd & Royal Books and More.” She stretched out the syllables so that more worked with bookstore, though I think at this point she was more focused on the message than the rhyme. I was probably the only one who realized that she was making a last-ditch pitch for that elusive meeting that was going to make her a star.

  Adele was so lost in her pitch, she had no sense of what was going on around her, and she didn’t notice that someone was pushing through the crowd. It was hard to miss Eric Humphries with his tall stature and barrel chest. He was in his motor officer uniform and holding his helmet. He was wearing reflective sunglasses that hid his eyes, but there was no doubt where they were looking. Adele repeated the pitch and began a third time, but suddenly a loud authoritative voice cut through her chant like a knife.

  “What’s going on?”

  Adele froze midstep just as she saw her husband approach. She turned to the crowd and did a quick curtsy before running off.

  CeeCee, being the professional she was, had been responding to Adele’s “additions” to the original plans for the blanket handoffs seamlessly, and she did it here once again, stepping into the spotlight as if nothing had happened and going right into her story about surrendered infants.

  While she was talking, I moved through the group, retrieving the scarves. And then a female officer handed me one that made me stop in my tracks. I recognized the orange color and the simple design with the yellow flowers attached to it. It was the twin of the one I’d dropped at Clark’s house and that the cops had. I hadn’t considered where Adele had gotten all the scarves until that moment. She had borrowed the stash we’d been collecting for an upcoming charity sale. I’d liked the one I had made for myself so much, I’d made another one to donate.

  I shoved it to the bottom of the stack on my arm and looked around at the assembled group. Barry and Heather seemed to be watching CeeCee. In all the commotion, they probably hadn’t even noticed the scarf. I hoped.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “He wasn’t supposed to be there,” Adele wailed. “He’s supposed to be riding around giving tickets and saving people on the street.” Her voice changed to pride. “You know motor officers are often the first responders.” The uptick only lasted for one sentence, though, and then her storm-cloud face returned. “Cutchykins said things are different now that I’m a police wife and I have a responsibility to not do anything that would embarrass him.”

  She began to cry, and all I could think was that if Eric was so worried about someone making a ruckus, he had picked the wrong person to marry.

  We had driven back to the bookstore parking lot and were sitting in the Matrix letting Adele collect herself before we all went our separate ways. So far it wasn’t going well.

  “So, then, he wasn’t specifically upset about what you said?” I asked, trying to be vague, since I was the only one who knew what she had been trying to do and that Eric was clueless about her acting classes. I hoped he didn’t have any aspirations to become a detective. Adele, taking a yoga class? He should have seen right through that.

  Adele understood my question. “I covered that up. I said I hadn’t gotten to the end of my rap and that it was about me doing story time.”

  And he bought that? I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud, as it could have led to questions from CeeCee and Elise. I was the only one in the car who knew everybody’s secrets, and the responsibility of keeping them all from everybody else was starting to wear on me. And now I had my own secrets as well. If I told them about the scarf, Adele and Elise would freak out. It was better to leave them in the dark. I was glad that I had set the plan I’d come up with in the bathtub into motion. It made me feel as if I was at least doing something instead
of waiting for the mystery to solve itself.

  It had occurred to me that if they didn’t get along, Deana and Alexandra would be glad to dish dirt on each other, possibly pointing to one of them as the murderer. I had decided to start with Alexandra, since she wanted something from me and it would be easy to get her to come in.

  Mason had given me the card she had handed him in the restaurant, and I had used it to contact her before we left for our big presentation. As soon as Alexandra had heard that I wanted to talk to her about possibly letting the workshop meet at the bookstore, she had wanted to come over right away. I’d had to push her off until the afternoon.

  I was thinking about how I could direct the conversation while CeeCee continued trying to smooth things over with Adele. “Look at the upside,” CeeCee said. “We got a lot of attention for our project and for the bookstore. I can’t wait to see the footage on Channel 3 news. I think Kimberly is going to make quite a story out of it. You gave her a lot of color,” CeeCee said, patting Adele’s arm.

  Adele’s tears stopped and she sat up. “Yes, the news story.” She turned toward the back seat and gave me a knowing look. “I’m sure that’s going to get some results.”

  CeeCee opened the door to get out. “You seem better now, dear,” she said to Adele, “and I have a meeting I have to get to. We’re discussing a reboot of The CeeCee Collins Show.”

  CeeCee didn’t see it, but at the word meeting, Adele began to pout again and got out of the car in a hurry. Elise got out of the back seat and took off, saying she was meeting Logan.

  In her huff, Adele had left the tote bag of scarves, and I grabbed them as I got out of the car just before Adele turned back and beeped the lock.

  Mrs. Shedd snagged me as I came into the bookstore. “You were gone longer than expected,” she said. She looked toward the kids’ department. “Adele rushed by without a word. Is everything okay?”

  “You know Adele; she’s always got a surprise up her sleeve. The good news is that she managed to get in a plug for the bookstore on the news.”

  “I’m glad you’re both back. It seemed a bit much to leave Lara-Ann on her own. Joshua and I are going out for a long lunch. He said he has a surprise for me. He always thinks of the most exciting things I would never do on my own.”

  As she said it, Mr. Royal appeared from their office. They were an inspiration. Of the three couples that had gotten married in the triple ceremony at the bookstore, so far they seemed to have had the least difficulty adjusting to each other.

  I had the tote bag hidden behind my back as if the whole world knew the orange scarf was in it.

  “Mason Fields called for you,” she added hastily before heading toward the door with Mr. Royal. “Well, we’re off.” She let out an excited giggle.

  I knew I was being silly, but I wanted to distance myself from the scarves as quickly as possible. I’d stick them in the cabinet and then call Mason back. I was on my way back to the yarn department when, as I passed the information cubicle, the phone rang. I kept the tote bag sheltered from view as I reached over the counter and grabbed the phone.

  “Molly, at last,” Mason said after I’d done my official Shedd & Royal Books and More greeting. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were avoiding me,” he said before telling me that he’d left two messages with Mrs. Shedd.

  “I just got to the bookstore and got your messages,” I said.

  “I tried your cell,” he said. Given all the commotion, it was no wonder I’d missed it, even with the vibrations on my wrist.

  “I tried your house,” he said with a question in his tone.

  “I wasn’t home. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Ah, that’s just what I was calling about—later,” he said brightly. “I found the place for our second first date. I thought we could do it tonight.” Though it was a statement, his tone made it sound like a question.

  “How about some details?” I said, and he chuckled.

  “I’m not telling. It’s more exciting to keep it a surprise.”

  I felt myself smiling. The idea of a fun evening with Mason seemed like just what I needed. “It sounds good to me. What’s the dress code?”

  “Anything you like.”

  We arranged a time for him to pick me up and signed off. I held the phone for a moment with a goofy smile, thinking of the evening ahead.

  “Here she is,” Lara-Ann said. I looked up and saw that she had Alexandra with her. I stood up straighter and prepared to deal with the scriptwriter/workshop leader.

  I glanced down and saw the tote bag resting against my leg. The sooner those scarves were stashed, the better.

  “We can talk in the yarn department,” I said to Alexandra. I thanked Lara-Ann for bringing her to me, and she walked away.

  Alexandra glanced around the area in the back of the store as if it were already hers to use. I began to put the scarves away and went into my planned speech. “Before we make a decision about letting the workshop meet here, I need some more information.”

  “Sure. Ask away,” Alexandra said. She had pulled out a chair and begun poking through a container of assorted hooks and knitting needles we kept on the table for anyone who wanted to try out a yarn before they bought it. When I got to the orange scarf, I reconsidered what to do with it, remembering something I’d read in The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigations. The section had talked about not leaving things to chance. I decided not to leave the scarf in the bookstore and instead stuffed it in my purse.

  “I’m concerned about how much noise your workshop would make,” I said. “Your group seems rather emotional, but then I suppose it’s connected to the death of Timothy Clark. Everyone seems really worked up over it—well, except for the woman in the straw hat. I think her name is Deana. She stopped in here the other day, and I overheard her talking to Lydia. Something about not wanting the police to know she had a personal relationship with Clark. She seemed surprisingly unemotional considering that her lover had just been murdered.”

  I noticed Alexandra’s eyes light up. “Deana put herself on a pedestal, and she was as cold as a statue standing on one. I don’t know if she honestly cared about anyone. She looked down on the rest of the group as if she was the only real actor.” I hoped Alexandra would say more about Deana, but she must have thought about her own behavior and how it might look. “I personally handled my grief by channeling it into a scene I was writing. Since I’m acting as the new leader of the group, it wouldn’t do for me to be seen falling apart over what happened, but of course I’m devastated.” She pulled out a set of silver double-pointed knitting needles from the container and began to examine them, testing the sharpness against her finger. “These things could be lethal.” She reached for a ball of red yarn and tried stabbing it with one of the silver needles. I tried to explain that wasn’t how they were used, but she looked at me with a glint in her eyes and said, “Who cares? This is so much fun.”

  She was probably going to ruin the yarn, but I didn’t want to try to take it away.

  “We writers are always working,” she said with delight. “I just got a great idea for a horror flick. Some maniac uses these needles to make a human voodoo doll.” She looked at me a little too long as she stabbed the ball of yarn a few more times.

  I instantly saw a fault in her story line: if the human was the voodoo doll, who got the effect of the voodoo? I wasn’t about to bring it up, though. I tried to steer her back to talking about Deana, but she seemed obsessed with her horror movie idea. All her gleeful stabbing was really starting to creep me out.

  I was relieved when Lara-Ann interrupted and said somebody’s credit card had been rejected and they were making a scene. Alexandra seemed perturbed at the interruption and said she couldn’t wait around. She took the whole set of double-pointed needles and stabbed them in the ball of yarn all at once before she got up to leave. As she walked past me, she was muttering on about her horror movie plot. “Yes, the maniac gets
upset when some nosy Natasha butts in where she shouldn’t. The maniac could attack her in a parking lot late at night or maybe in her driveway.”

  Was it some kind of veiled threat?

  By the time I got to the front of the store, the customer with the bad credit card had fled without their merchandise or the card, which had probably been stolen. It took me two red eyes to get through the rest of the afternoon. Since I had the evening off, I skipped happy hour and went home to get ready for “the date.”

  Judging by the cars in front of my house, my mother and the girls were having another rehearsal. Samuel was in the kitchen when I walked in the back door. “We’re taking a dinner break,” he said as he held up a plate of salads. “They decided to eat light.”

  “Liza could start a bakery,” I said, noting that my mother had brought over a tray of her lemon bars as well.

  Samuel gave me a look of surprise when I referred to my mother by her name.

  “You call her Liza, so why shouldn’t I?” I was edging out of the room as I spoke, anxious to get the orange scarf out of my bag before it fell out. I called out that I’d be going out again shortly as I left the kitchen.

  The obvious place to put the scarf was in the room where I kept all my yarn. I looked around at all the bins that held my yarn and various partially done projects and the chest of drawers, but then I thought of something else. Why not hide it in plain sight? I had gotten a scarf holder at Ikea, and all the round openings were filled with scarves I’d made. I stuck the orange scarf through a hole that already held two others. With a sigh of relief, I followed the noise coming from my living room.

  Everyone looked up and greeted me. They all seemed to be having a good time. Having this second chance at a career was a boon to all of them. And the bonus of having everyone there all the time was that I didn’t have to worry about the animals. Cosmo and Felix barely looked up as I passed through the large room. They were hanging around my mother, who was a real softy when it came to pets. I knew she was slipping them food off her plate. The two cats liked my father and were cuddled next to him. Blondie even made an appearance before following me back to her spot in the bedroom.