Behind the Seams

by Betty Hechtman

  He didn’t want to let go of Nell as the prime suspect, but while the group continued on their project, I worked on him. I explained I’d been there when Robyn died and that I knew Nell and was sure she’d had nothing to do with it. “I have reason to believe that your sister had a plan for one of the shows she was working on. Do you know anything about it?”

  He took a moment to think. “I know Robyn was worried about someone she worked with. Another person had been up for the job as segment producer. Robyn thought the woman hadn’t taken it well when she got it. Maybe it had something to do with that.”

  I took a moment to absorb what he said. I had to admit that Talia hadn’t seemed very broken up about Robyn’s death. And it was impossible to ignore that Talia now had the job she’d been passed over for before. As I was thinking that she certainly could have sent the box of sweetener, Miles said something else.

  “Robyn said a bunch of things about her job. I can’t remember it all. Just that she was working on something that would either make Barbara Olive Overton look really good or get Robyn fired.”

  I asked him if he knew who the guests were on the shows Robyn was working on. I wasn’t really surprised when he claimed ignorance. No doubt telling him his star-couple parents were being featured would have been awkward for Robyn since the siblings’ feelings about their parents wasn’t the same.

  “I asked my sister if she was sure she knew what she was doing, taking a big chance like that.” He looked me right in the eye. “I tried to get her to tell Barbara Olive Overton about what she had planned.”

  “Did she?” I asked. His eyes burned with intensity and he made an uncertain shrug in response. Silence hung between us. Was it possible that the talk show host was involved in Robyn’s death? “Well, if you think of anything else.” I pointed to my cell number on the card. I started to move away, but he stopped me.

  “I forgot. The last time my sister came here, she gave me a weird framed photo of herself.”

  I asked if I could see it. He seemed a little hesitant at first but agreed to get it. He left and came back as Annie was winding things up with the crocheters.

  When he handed me the photo in a flowery silver frame, I almost choked. It was similar to the picture I’d seen in the box of Robyn’s things, as if it had been taken at the same time. She was in the funny hat, and there was a hole next to her. “She must have said something when she gave it to you,” I said. He thought for a moment and finally spoke.

  “She did, but I can’t remember exactly what. Something like she couldn’t tell me about it then, but she’d explain it later.” He hung his head. “That was the last time I saw her.” His voice trailed off, and the sadness in it touched my heart. No matter what Robyn had been to anyone else, her brother had definitely loved her.

  An hour later, Adele and I were trooping through the café on the way to the bookstore.

  “Pink, why were you hanging out with the guy with the clipboard? He wasn’t even crocheting,” Adele said. Apparently, Adele had been listening to her MP3 player on the drive in and missed Annie’s whole story. When I explained who Miles was, she got all huffy.

  “You should have told me you were investigating. I could have helped. You know, we could have played good cop, bad cop or something.”

  I said a silent prayer that she hadn’t known. “Thanks for the thought, but I doubt it would have gotten me any more than I got. He said something about his sister’s job, and then he showed me a photo similar to the one I saw before with Robyn’s ex-boyfriend cut out of it. I’m hoping he thinks of something else.”

  “Who’s the ex?” Adele asked. When I shrugged and said I didn’t have a name, she put her hand on her hip and looked toward Bob for agreement. “If I were Sherlock Pink, I’d be looking for Mr. Missing.”

  Bob seemed to ignore her comment. He was up to his elbows in brownies for Salute to Chocolate. D. J. was standing at the counter with his empty mug, and Bob stopped cutting the squares long enough to give him black coffee and make me my trademark drink.

  “Pink, you’re a caffeine addict,” Adele said with a snort before she rushed on to the bookstore.

  Thankfully, most of the preparations for Salute to Chocolate had been taken care of, but still I knew once I walked into the bookstore I’d get snagged into doing last-minute stuff, so I let Adele go on ahead and I found a private corner and called Mason’s office. Adele’s comment had reminded me of what I still hadn’t been able to ask Mason. His assistant answered, and when I asked to speak to Mason, he hemmed and hawed and asked what I wanted. Mason had left instructions that he was to take care of anything I needed. I could feel my face falling. This was worse than when I’d called and he wasn’t alone. When I told the assistant I wanted the name connected to a license plate number, he sounded doubtful but took the information. If I couldn’t get one kind of information, I thought I’d try for another.

  “I guess a lot of stuff has changed now that Mason has met someone,” I said. “Do you know anything about her?” I asked.

  The assistant took a while to answer. “You mean like a girlfriend? Not that he shares that kind of information with me, but I don’t think he’s got one. He gave me his tickets to the U2 concert at Staples because he had no one to go with.”

  “Well, then, if he hasn’t met someone, why is he being so strange? Is he mad at me?”

  The assistant seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “He didn’t seem angry. He just said, if you called, I should take care of anything you needed.”

  I asked if I could speak to Mason directly to straighten things out. He hesitated and finally said he couldn’t put me through. When he said Mason had been specific about that, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. How could I straighten out whatever was wrong if he wouldn’t even talk to me?

  A bunch of thoughts went through my mind. Was Mason sick? Had I done something to offend him? I was definitely going to find out. Just not now.

  I ended the call and went on into the bookstore. Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal were waiting for me in the event area.

  “Look what Joshua made,” Mrs. Shedd said as he carried in a cardboard cocoa bean tree and set it up. Some of the vendors had already brought advertising materials and their chocolate offerings. The main table was clear except for a perfectly centered calligraphy placard with the bookstore name. There was no way the camera could miss it.

  D. J. wandered in from the café and checked out the preparations.

  “Nice,” he said, touching the cardboard tree. No matter how casual he was trying to appear, I knew he was trying to make sure all the arrangements for him were in place. “So what’s the plan?”

  “We start off with Eduardo reading from Hot, Hot Chocolate , since he was the cover model for the book, to loosen up the crowd. Then we’ll bring you up, and the crew from the Barbara Olive Overton show can film what they need. When you’re done, we’ll clear out your books, and Alain Des Plaines will do his chocolate-dipping demo,” I said.

  “Between a cover model and being dipped in chocolate,” he said with a grin. “Sounds good to me. By the way, thanks for doing this. I was afraid Robyn’s death was going to mess things up.” He caught himself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that as cold as it sounded. This bookstore and the café have become like home to me now, and I just wanted to say how much I appreciate everything.”

  Throughout the rest of the day, even as I finished the setup for the evening, my thoughts kept going back to Mason.

  As Mr. Royal and I set up extra folding chairs since free chocolate was likely to bring in a big crowd, I decided that I was going to get to the bottom of the thing with Mason when the evening was done. Making the decision made it a little easier to focus on the event in front of me. Just as I was roping off the event area to keep customers out until the appointed hour, a local food artist rushed in with a fudge sculpture of an open book, along with a brochure showing off centerpieces for everything from weddings to sweet sixteen parties.

  As usual, there w
as more to do than I’d expected, and I had worked straight through without even going home to change. I’d called Samuel to make sure he took care of the animals.

  There was a lull in the store around dinner hour, and I rejuvenated with a red-eye and checked out what Adele had done for the kids’ department. She wasn’t big on the idea of a bunch of kids running around with sticky fingers, so she’d set up games. Leave it to Adele to get something crocheted in it. She’d made a yarn checkerboard with milk chocolate and dark chocolate colored squares. Even the games pieces were yarn circles. She had a number of Candy Land games out, too, and a display of the Chocolate Cookie Man series.

  Talia and her crew came in and set up their lighting and put up the notification of filming signs.

  People began to filter in and fill up the seats. D. J. had changed into a corduroy sports jacket over his jeans and looked very much the writer. He hung around the front of the area, talking to everybody. Even though this was really just a run-through, I could see it was a big moment for him. People seemed to know who he was and were disappointed when he said they couldn’t buy his book yet, since it wasn’t officially out for another few weeks. He seemed personable and knew how to work the crowd. I was glad things had worked out.

  One of Talia’s people brought in a box of D. J.’s books. I’d seen the advance copies, but these were the first with the actual covers. Back from Hell was written in jagged letters, and the artwork was dark and murky on the bottom and then it changed to a bright scene above.

  Talia still wasn’t happy about the staged book signing being patched onto a real event. I was hoping to keep her discontent from spreading to D. J. “Don’t worry, it will be fine,” I said to both of them.

  “Whatever,” Talia said with an impatient groan. “Let’s get started.”

  I didn’t like her pushiness, but I wanted to get D. J.’s part done with. I was about to step to the front of the crowd when Rayaad, our cashier, threaded through the people and got my attention.

  “There’s a phone call for you. Someone named Miles said something about a photograph,” Rayaad said over the din of conversation. When I made a move to follow Rayaad, Talia put her hand on my arm.

  “You’re kidding, right? You can’t seriously be taking a call now,” Talia said, gesturing toward the film crew.

  “It’s important,” I said, but Talia rolled her eyes in disbelief. It didn’t make any difference even when I explained who Miles was and what information he might have. I had no choice but to tell Rayaad to give him my cell number and tell him to call back in an hour.

  I moved in front of the table we’d set up and started things off by welcoming everyone and introducing Eduardo. He warmed up the crowd with his reading. When he was done, I introduced D. J. and explained the filming. The only thing more appealing than free chocolate was the chance to be on TV. The whole audience began smoothing their hair and sitting up straighter. I stepped aside and let Talia take over. She positioned D. J. and a stack of books before giving directions to the audience. Once she was satisfied, the actual filming began.

  D. J. started to do his spiel and I was only half listening, planning how we’d move the books out and Alain Des Plaines things in. I could tell D. J. had gotten to the dramatic part by the way his voice dropped. Just as he was saying something about stealing from a blind musician, there was a rush of noise from the front of the store.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a crowd come in, but there was something odd about them. When I turned to get a full view, I saw that they had some kind of antennas on their heads and they were all wearing cream-colored shirts with brown speckles. They ploughed through the bookstore toward the chairs. Now I could see they were spraying something and hear that they were chanting.

  Everybody turned around in their seats toward them and even the camera crew stopped filming D. J.

  “Vanilla, vanilla,” the head guy said. “We demand a voice in the flavor world.”

  I realized what I thought were antennas were actually v’s and they were spraying vanilla scent.

  The vanilla people marched to the front of the group and stood right in front of D. J., holding up their fists and chanting, “Vanilla power, the other bean.” Now I got all the scribbling on the signs. It had been a bad rendition of a v and a fist. Everybody but me and my bosses thought the vanilla-chocolate standoff was planned, and the audience began taking up sides. I saw a bunch of hands go up with their fingers in a v.

  I should have noticed that Adele was being too quiet in all this. All of a sudden, she came out of the kids’ department. She’d wrapped herself in a red shawl and pulled on the Strawberry Patch hat. “Don’t forget strawberry,” she said. The kids were following her, chanting, “We love strawberry, we love vanilla, we love chocolate.”

  “Can’t we all just get along and make Neapolitan,” Adele said, waving the little flashlight around that projected the word love on the carpet and then on my shirt.

  Mr. Royal rushed up to the front. He took Adele by the arm and waved to the kids around him. “Let’s give it up for the strawberry-ice-cream dancers and the vanilla fans.” He gestured toward me to get them out of there.

  Talia gave us all a dirty look and said she hoped they’d gotten what they needed. I tried to apologize to D. J., but he was following Talia, trying to talk her into waiting until things calmed down and doing the whole thing over again. She shook her head and said something about no overtime in the budget.

  Adele and the kids went back to their area, and Mr. Royal and I quickly changed the table over to the cooking demo. Once Alain Des Plaines came up and started doing his chocolate-dipping demonstration, nobody paid any more attention to the vanilla protestors. I noticed some of them ended up finding seats and hanging around for the samples.

  The rest of the event was a big success, and when Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal checked the sales at the end of the night, they were both smiling as we all closed the store together.

  But as soon as I got into the greenmobile, I started thinking about Mason again.

  CHAPTER 27

  OKAY, I COULD UNDERSTAND HIM BEING DISTANT if he had a girlfriend. I might not like it, but I could understand it. But if he hadn’t met someone, why was he cutting me out of his life? I couldn’t let it be. I knew I might end up really embarrassed, but I was willing to risk it to find out what was going on. He could dodge me on the phone, but not in person.

  It was after ten and Ventura Boulevard was quiet as I drove to Encino and turned on his street. I parked in front of his large ranch-style house and looked past the low fence and lights that showed off the soft hills in the front yard beautifully landscaped with pungent rosemary, white-barked beech trees, and rosy-flowered azaleas. The lights were on in the house and I was sure he was home.

  It’s Mason, I told myself as nerves made my heart thud against my chest. Mason who’d come through for me countless times. Again I wondered if he was sick or that something terrible had happened. Whatever, I wanted to know. I marched up the walk and rang the bell. From deep in the house, I heard Spike go into a barking frenzy. I stood there for a moment and suddenly had a fear that Mason would see it was me and simply not answer the door.

  The barking got louder, and as I heard the handle turn, I choked as I tried to swallow. And then there I was, face-to-face with Mason. He was wearing gray sweats and his face looked flushed.

  His lips began to curve into a smile, but he seemed to force them back into a straight line, and he narrowed his eyes. Not a good sign. “Hello,” he said finally in a flat tone.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” I said. When he hesitated, I lost it. “Tell me what’s wrong.” I tried unsuccessfully to keep the panic out of my voice. “I thought you met someone. I could understand that. I really could, but your assistant said you hadn’t. Are you sick? Why won’t you talk to me? What is it? Just tell me what’s wrong and I’ll leave.” I hadn’t meant to, but by now I was crying.

  Mason’s head dropped back in exasper
ation and he took my arm. “C’mon in,” he said, pulling me inside. Spike wasn’t sure what the story was and yipped behind me as Mason walked me back to the den. “Sit,” he said, pointing at the soft leather couch. He went out and came back with two glasses of red wine. “I was on the elliptical,” he said by way of explanation for the sweats. “But I guess that’s done for now.” He handed me one of the glasses of wine and took a sip from the other. He sat down on a chair across from me. “You better drink some of that,” he said, nodding toward my glass.

  “That bad?” I followed his orders and took a sip of the wine. I have no tolerance for alcohol and the mouthful went right to my head. “Well . . .” I said

  There was a long silence. “You’re not going to like this,” Mason said at last.

  “I don’t care. Tell me,” I demanded.

  Mason sighed. “Barry talked to me. He said if I cared about your happiness, I’d get out of your life. He’s convinced the reason you won’t commit to him is because of our friendship and because Samuel moved back home. I’m just guessing, but I bet he had a similar conversation with your son.”

  For a moment, I was speechless. Now I understood the moving boxes Samuel had brought in from the garage. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, still processing the information.

  “Barry made me promise to say nothing. He said if I told you, it would just make problems.”

  “For who?” I asked.

  Mason shrugged. “Probably for him.”

  I got up and started pacing. “I can’t believe you listened to him. I can’t believe he said that.” I was half talking to Mason and half mumbling to myself.

  “I only did it because he said it was about your happiness, which I’m all for, even if I don’t think being a cop’s wife living in a condo in Simi Valley is exactly the key to it.” Mason paused. “You can’t blame him. If you and I were engaged, I wouldn’t want you hanging around with him.”

  “He told you about the condo in Simi Valley?” I said. “We’re not engaged.” I waved my bare hand and Mason shook his head.