Behind the Seams

by Betty Hechtman

  “Did you make that?” the woman squealed touching the small purple purse CeeCee was holding. She had just attached a tiny white flower with an iridescent crystal in the middle.

  Eduardo came in from the bookstore. “Are we meeting here now?” he said, looking over the overflowing table.

  Adele stood up and grabbed her work. “No, c’mon, everyone, let’s go to the yarn department where we have some room.” CeeCee gave her an annoyed flick of her eyes. Even after all this time, Adele was still trying to take charge of the group.

  The coffee had done its job and I felt like myself again. Just as I prepared to get up, Mrs. Shedd came in and looked around.

  “There she is,” she said as Annie Hoover stepped from behind her. If I had looked awful, the nanny looked worse. The two kids I’d seen her with at the park trailed her.

  “It’s Miles,” Annie said. “He’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 30

  I HADN’T NOTICED AT FIRST THAT ANNIE HAD more with her than the kids. Then I saw the man and woman in dark suits. They flashed badges and I told the rest of the Hookers to go on without me. It turned out to be without Adele as well. The man glommed on to Adele, not that she seemed to mind. I watched as she puffed up with importance and wondered if he knew what he was in for. The woman introduced herself as Detective Henderson and explained she was an investigator with the sheriff’s department. She was all friendly as she led me outside and said she’d like to ask me a few questions to clarify things. She opened the passenger door of her sedan and gestured for me to get in. The door shut almost before I’d cleared it. She got in the driver’s seat and took out her pad. She asked me about the previous day.

  “I went to the halfway house with Annie to help teach a certain crochet technique,” I said. “What happened to Miles?” She ignored my question. Not a surprise, I knew by now that the law enforcement people tried to keep all the questioning in their hands.

  “Ms. Hoover said you were interested in talking to Miles. Why is that?”

  I dreaded telling her I was investigating Robyn’s death. Along with not wanting to answer questions, law enforcement people weren’t all that fond of amateur investigators. The detective just stared at me, waiting for an answer. Finally I just told her the truth. It didn’t go over very well, particularly when it was obvious I was investigating to try to prove the cops were wrong.

  She had her notebook open and was scribbling down notes. I asked again what had happened to Miles. She was getting impatient and must have realized she might have to give some information to get some.

  “He ODed,” she said curtly. “We’re trying to find out how he got the drugs. Ms. Hoover mentioned that you’d given him a crocheted doll. We found it in his room. The back was cut open as if something had been stashed inside.”

  “What?” I said in an incredulous tone. This wasn’t good. I suddenly felt vulnerable. Had I been set up? “I don’t know anything about anything,” I said. The detective gave me a disbelieving look and said nothing, and I knew she was using the dead-air technique. But two could play that game. I just sat there and let the silence hang like a stone in the air. She finally cracked.

  “Where’d you get the doll? Why did you give it to him? When did you put the drugs in?”

  “I don’t have anything else to say,” I said.

  “I’m just trying to clear things up,” she said in a friendly voice. When I held my ground, she excused herself and went back into the café. Through the window, I watched as she waved to the detective who was questioning Adele to confer with her.

  She doesn’t know who she’s dealing with, I thought. This was all a ploy and I knew exactly what she was going to say when she came back. She didn’t let me down, either. “You might as well just tell me the whole story. Your friend just gave you up,” she said with a triumphant air.

  For a split second, I wondered if it was true. But then when the detective claimed that Adele had said I’d put drugs in the doll and given Robyn the poisoned sweetener, I knew it was just a detective’s trick. Her partner probably said something similar to Adele. There was something wrong about them being able to lie like that, but I knew they did it.

  “You’re not going to deny that you were present when the victim’s sister was poisoned are you?” she said. I admitted to being there, but that was all. She tried to work me some more, but I just stonewalled her. I’d learned enough about how cops worked from Barry to know that saying nothing was my best defense, but I also knew that this wasn’t going to be the end of it.

  Finally Detective Henderson left. Annie was sitting in the café with her charges. She looked worried. Adele was sitting with her and gave me a suspicious look as I sat down.

  “Pink, I can’t believe you fingered me,” she said.

  “I didn’t. That’s just a detective’s trick to try to get confessions. I didn’t finger you any more than you fingered me,” I said. Adele suddenly avoided my eye and looked down at the table. “You did finger me, didn’t you?” I said incredulous.

  “I’m sorry, Pink, that detective got me in the corner. I might have mentioned that you were there when Robyn died. He said they were going to arrest me and there’d be no judge to set bail and I’d be stuck in a cell for days.”

  “Arrest you for what?” I threw up my hands. “Nobody gets it, the cops don’t have to tell the truth.”

  Adele threw herself across the table and almost tackled me with her hug. “Can you forgive me, Pink?” When I took a moment to answer, she got hysterical. “You have to, we’re like sisters.”

  Finally I let her off the hook and she left the café to go back to the yarn department. Annie said she had to get the two kids to some kind of event and gathered them up, along with their chocolate milk. I watched them go out the door as I pulled out my BlackBerry

  “Sunshine,” Mason said in a happy voice when he picked up the call. No delay this time, as soon as his assistant heard it was me, he put me through. “How are you doing? Do you need some consoling?” he said.

  “Not exactly, more like legal help.” I told him about Miles and my visit from the sheriff’s investigator. I could practically hear Mason sitting taller on the phone as he told me what to do. Basically, if the sheriff’s people came back, I was to say nothing and call him. I knew it wasn’t a matter if, it was more like when. Before he signed off, he suggested we get together to talk strategy, maybe over dinner.

  When I finally got back to the yarn department, the group had scattered and only Dinah was still there. “What happened?” she said, reading my expression.

  If only I’d been able to take Miles’ call. A thought went through my mind. What if somebody didn’t want me to hear what he had to say?

  CHAPTER 31

  AFTER THE WHOLE THING WITH BARRY AND NOW being almost accused of providing drugs to Miles, I did the only thing I could do, which was totally put it out of my mind and focus on work. I stayed late at the bookstore to make up for all the lost time. There was plenty to do. We were still cleaning up from Salute to Chocolate. The vanillites had turned out to be peaceful enough, but after they left, I’d begun to notice they’d left bits of vanilla beans everywhere. It was both good and bad. The good part was the bits of bean smelled better than any air freshener you could buy and added a gentle fragrance to the whole place, but the bad part was people had started complaining about being startled when they came across some little brown things they thought were bug parts.

  There were books to be put back as well. At least the evening had been a success. Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal were both still smiling about the money the store had taken in. If we kept these events happening, maybe we could pull the bookstore back from the brink of disaster. I was running on autopilot by then and was relieved when I got home.

  When I walked in, Samuel was in the kitchen grilling a cheese sandwich for himself. The scent of browning butter reminded me that I had forgotten all about eating again. Spatula in hand, he turned toward me.

  “I’m not planning
on staying here forever,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. I wanted to give his sandy hair a reassuring ruffle, but he was too big for that. “There’s no reason to move out until you find the right situation.”

  He flipped his sandwich on a plate and offered to make me a cup of coffee. He didn’t have to say it, but I knew what the offer meant—that I looked like a zombie. He was a professional barista, and making a cup of coffee was an art for him.

  I might have been coffeed out from the black-eye and subsequent red-eyes I’d had at work, but I knew if I said no, it would hurt his feelings. I sat down at the kitchen table and watched as he set up a cone filter over a mug and poured in freshly ground coffee and boiling water. The fragrance of the brewing drink overrode the buttery smell of his sandwich.

  “Barry came by,” he said. I could hear Samuel swallow from across the room, a sure sign he was uncomfortable about the subject. “He said he’d forgotten some stuff.” Samuel left the statement hanging as if to ask if it was okay that he’d let Barry go through the house. I told him it was fine. “He left that,” Samuel said when he brought the cup of coffee to me. I hadn’t noticed the key sitting on the table until Samuel pointed it out. It was all alone, no note. Somehow more than anything else, seeing the key meant the end. Tears clouded my vision.

  “I’m sorry,” Samuel said in a low voice, seeing how I was staring at the key. It was an odd feeling having him trying to console me. I’d always been the one offering sympathy when he’d had a setback.

  The doorbell interrupted us. Samuel went to answer it, and a moment later, he returned with Mason. He took one look at me and appeared concerned.

  “Don’t even say it. I know how bad I look.”

  Mason had a supportive smile. “You look fine, just a little tired. No worries. I’m here to take care of everything.” He appeared too refreshed, too happy. He eyed my coffee and Samuel offered to make him a cup. There was definitely something different in Mason’s vibe. He hugged me in greeting and then joined me at the table and started talking about dinner.

  I saw Samuel glance over from his coffee preparations. There was disapproval in his expression. I suppose it did look like one guy out and another one already taking his place. Samuel brought over Mason’s coffee and sat down with us. He began to eat his sandwich while Mason launched into how to handle the sheriff’s detective.

  “What happened now?” Samuel asked, clearly distressed. Mason answered for me and told Samuel what he needed to know—that there was nothing to worry about. “They’re just rattling cages, looking for someone to blame. I don’t know how that halfway house is run, but I’m pretty sure if he was a counselor, he wasn’t a prisoner of the place. If they were going to try to pin it on anybody, I’d think it would be the nanny.” He told me again that if they contacted me to refuse to say anything until I talked to him.

  I was too tired to mention my thought that someone might not have wanted me to hear what Miles had to say.

  In the midst of it, my other son arrived. Peter surprised me by giving me a hug. He was usually more standoffish. He was older than Samuel and so wrapped up in his career as a talent agent that I’d barely seen him lately. I realized Samuel must have called him. I noticed Peter hadn’t brought his girlfriend with. He’d brought her over once and I don’t think I made the best impression.

  “Sorry about the detective,” he said. His comment surprised me because Peter had been so open about not liking Barry. His somber expression disappeared when he held out his hand to Mason. If Peter had been rooting for me to be involved with anybody, it had always been Mason.

  The three of them began talking, and even with the coffee, their words began to swim in my tired mind. Somewhere in it all, I put my head down on the table and went to sleep on my folded arms.

  I awoke in the dark and for a moment didn’t know where I was. Then my room came into focus. I was still dressed, on top of the covers, with an afghan draped over me. Cosmo was cuddled next to me and the two cats were on the pillow next to my head. Blondie was in her chair. Vaguely, I remembered the three of them helping me across the house. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

  BY MORNING, I FELT ALL BETTER. NOW THAT MY mind was clear, all kinds of issues surfaced. I realized I had no idea what had happened to Miles beyond that he was dead. I kept thinking about his phone call to me and wondering if it was related to his death. I shuddered when I realized that when I’d called him back, he was probably already gone. Were Miles’ and Robyn’s deaths related? Since they were brother and sister, it seemed likely. It also seemed likely that if their deaths were related, there was a good chance their parents were involved. Hadn’t Annie said Miles was still hoping for a relationship with his parents, but it was a Pandora’s box they weren’t going to open. Maybe they or someone acting for them had decided to make sure that box never got opened.

  I was sure the nanny had more information and regretted that I hadn’t gotten a phone number from her. But then I knew where she would be that morning, I thought, getting up.

  After a quick shower and a fruit smoothie, I was out the door on the way to Tarzana Park. I left my car in the parking lot and headed for the playground, hoping she hadn’t varied her schedule. Sure enough, Annie was on the bench with her crocheting out and the two kids were busy in the sandbox with trucks and pails. As soon as she saw me, she started to apologize. She hadn’t meant to sic the sheriff’s detective on me. All she’d done was answer their questions about seeing Miles. As soon as they’d heard Adele and I were with her, they wanted to talk to us. I shrugged it off. Getting questioned was no longer a big deal for me. Now it was my turn to talk.

  “What happened to Miles?” I said as I sat on the bench next to her.

  She’d been keeping an upbeat demeanor, but she let it down as she began to talk. She’d gotten a call the morning after we’d been there. The director of the halfway house had been concerned when Miles didn’t show up for breakfast. They checked his room and found him unresponsive and called the paramedics. She said they’d found the crocheted doll I’d brought. Annie hesitated. “The doll’s body was cut open and there were some pills hidden inside it. The director wanted to know where the doll came from. . . .” She let it hang in the air.

  “You can’t think I put drugs in the doll.”

  “I don’t know what to think. I just told the detective what I knew—that you’d helped with the crochet group and had brought him the doll.”

  “I certainly didn’t put anything in the doll, and the Hookers checked out the doll to see how it was made. If it had been cut open and sewed up, one of us would have noticed,” I said. “I think someone tried to make it look like there were drugs in the doll. I wonder who else had access to his room.”

  “The director admitted that although they try to keep track of visitors, it’s possible for a counselor to bring somebody in without signing in.” Annie stopped to regroup, and it appeared she was having a hard time keeping it together. “I know he was upset about his sister, but he has been doing so well. I don’t believe he threw away all his hard work and went back to drugs, even though the detective told me they are treating it as a self-administered accidental overdose.”

  “Overdose of what?” I said and she shrugged.

  “They wouldn’t say. Maybe they don’t know until they do all their tests. They did say if they find the person who gave him the drugs, they’re going to charge them with something.”

  I sat down on the bench beside her. I didn’t know Miles other than seeing him during the crochet group, but I had to agree with her that he seemed to be doing okay. “He did seem to have a purpose helping the other residents. But if he didn’t backslide, what happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Oh, there was something else the director told me. He said he’d found a bunch of broken picture frames on the floor. The photographs seemed to have been removed and cut up in confetti.”

  I felt a shiver go through me and told her about the photograph h
e’d shown me. “Miles said Robyn was strange about it. Then he called me and left a message that he’d remembered something about the photograph.” My voice dropped as I said how sorry I was I had missed his call. I stared at her intently. “Do you know who was in the photos that got cut up?”

  Annie took a moment to think. “Miles was very sentimental. He kept thinking his parents would wake up one day and realize they wanted him in their life. He had some pictures with them from when he was small. Robyn was the one who really acted like family, so he had a number of pictures of her. Some alone and some with her boyfriend.” Annie stopped and swallowed. “And he had a picture of me.”

  “Why would he cut up the photos?” I said. “Unless—somebody else did. Was there something in those pictures somebody would want to hide?” Annie started to shrug as an answer, then her face lit up.

  “The director told me something else. One of the residents thought they saw a stranger in the hall.”

  “Did they give any description?” I asked, but Annie said she didn’t know. This time it was my face that lit up. “Maybe the stranger in the hall was the person who shredded the photographs and they did that because they were in the pictures but didn’t want anyone to be able to identify them.”

  I mentioned the picture Miles had shown me with the hole next to Robyn and said it was similar to one I’d seen in Robyn’s former office. “It seems the person cut out of the pictures was her boyfriend—or ex-boyfriend,” I said and then asked if she thought it was the same boyfriend who was actually in the other photos Miles had. She nodded, saying they’d been going together for a while.

  “Do you know who he is?” When she nodded again, I wanted to kick myself for not thinking to ask her about him before.

  I heard her suck in her breath. “You don’t think it was him?”

  I took a deep breath and asked for his name.

  “His name is Ty Holzer.”