One for the Hooks

by Betty Hechtman

  Chapter Eight

  My plan was to grab the dog and bring the keys back before anyone noticed they were gone. Sloan’s house was a few block from Dinah’s. The houses were mostly two bedrooms and one bath and had been built as tract housing tucked south of Ventura Boulevard. But only a few of the houses still looked the same. Most had been remodeled, rebuilt, or replaced. It seemed like Sloan had waved a magic wand over hers and turned it into a cottage out of a fairy tale. But then Sloan’s main profession had been as a set designer. The house had a steeply pitched roof and diamond-paned windows. The chimney and fireplace were made of stone. It was adorable and whimsical. The only reminder of reality was the garbage cans waiting for pickup at the curb.

  I felt uneasy unlocking the door, as if I was an intruder walking into her private world. The dog, a little white puffball, raced to greet me with excited barks. It broke my heart to think she was a little orphan dog now. I did a brief tour of the place to make sure nothing was running. If I felt like an intruder when I walked in, now I felt like a voyeur. Sloan’s decoration choices were eclectic, and all I could think of was that everything seemed unique. The red velvet divan was occupied by a teddy bear, a purple rabbit, and a soft-bodied doll in a knitted pair of overalls that looked as though they’d been loved and discarded when their owner outgrew them. The dining area had a small round table surrounded by mismatched chairs. One of them had lost a leg that had been replaced with one from a totally different style of chair.

  The kitchen was old school, with yellow tiled counters over white cabinets. There was a mug in the sink with the remains of Sloan’s morning coffee. So strange to think that when she put it there, she never guessed she wouldn’t be coming back. I checked the backyard through the window over the sink. It was small, but with the right placement of trees and a spread of lawn, it looked like a park. The dog followed me as I checked the two bedrooms. One had a bed covered with a quilt made out of remnants of old jeans. The other appeared to be an office. The desk was an old weathered door covered with a pane of glass. I looked through the papers, remembering that Sloan had mentioned a sister and hoping to find a way to contact her about the dog. I hit pay dirt when I saw a phone bill. One number had been called much more than any other. I wrote it down and gathered up the dog’s things. She had on a collar that said her name was Princess. She seemed to understand I was there to take care of her, or maybe she smelled all the other animals and decided I was a friend. I clipped on her leash and led her outside.

  She got right in the car and settled on the passenger seat and stayed put as I drove to my house. Peter was in the kitchen when I walked in, holding the dog in my arms.

  “You didn’t. Not another one,” he said, eyeing the dog.

  “I can’t explain now,” I said. “But I need to keep her separate from the others for the time being.” I heard the rumble of animals crossing the wood floor in the living room. I quickly moved out of the kitchen to the smallest bedroom off the laundry area. I put Princess in there along with some water and dog treats.

  Peter was still in the kitchen when I returned. “Could you check on her a few times until I get home?”

  He looked like he was going to object, but then he softened. “Sure.”

  “I have go,” I said, rushing to the door. I went back to Miami’s. A cop hanging around the front door tried to stop me from going in, but I had a story ready about having left something. I mentioned that I knew Detective Greenberg and suggested he check with him to see if it was all right. I knew he wouldn’t bother, and the cop let me in, though he did trail me. Sloan’s things were where they’d been, and I feigned having to tie my shoe when I was next to her tote bag and slipped the keys back in. I was getting entirely too good at sneaking around. I walked around the main room a few times as if I was looking for something, and then turned to the cop. “I guess it isn’t here.” He escorted me to the door and I was home free.

  Or almost. Kimberly Wang Diaz, the reporter from Channel 3, was setting up at the end of the cul-de-sac. I had parked around the corner and was trying to slip away without her seeing me, but her cameraman pointed me out, and she came toward me with her microphone outstretched. “Molly Pink, what a surprise to see you at a crime scene,” she said facetiously. “You must know all the details. I heard someone say you were like the Sherlock Holmes of Tarzana.”

  “No comment,” I said, but then I felt compelled to add something. “You can joke if you want to, but I have a pretty good record of figuring out whodunnit.” I rushed off before she could think of a comeback.

  Everything was still rolling around in my mind as I went back to the bookstore. What was supposed to have been a short time away while I gave the yarn another look had turned into being gone the whole afternoon. Mrs. Shedd stopped me with a worried look as I came in.

  “What happened? Was it something with the yarn? What took so long?” Mrs. Shedd asked. She looked around. “Adele’s not with you?”

  “Everything is still on with the yarn. Adele should be here soon,” I said. “Something happened,” I said, letting out my breath. I took a moment to collect my thoughts and figure out how to explain. Long or short, detailed or blurb? I decided blurb was best. “Sloan was hit by a drone carrying something that smelled terrible, in the yard of the house with the yarn, and she died.” Mrs. Shedd was speechless. It wasn’t the first time I’d been delayed because of a crime, but this one was pretty high on the weirdness meter.

  I finally made my way back to the yarn department. It was nestled in the back of the store and always felt like a comforting enclave. The back wall had cubbies filled with skeins of yarn in a rainbow of colors. I hadn’t realized how late it was until I saw the Hookers already gathered around the dark wood table and busy working on their projects. Dinah looked up with relief when she saw me.

  “We all wondered what had happened to you when Mrs. Shedd said you’d gone to make a deal about the yarn and hadn’t returned. I’m glad you weren’t kidnapped,” my friend said in a light tone. She checked the area around me. “I see Adele isn’t with you, so what happened? They decided to keep her?”

  I glanced over the table littered with yarn while I considered what to say. I decided it was better to get right to the point instead of softening it with a lead-up.

  “No kidnapping. Adele ought to be along any minute. We’re okay,” I said, “but the woman who was showing me the yarn, Sloan Renner, is—well, there’s no soft way to put it. She’s dead.”

  “What happened?” Elise said to me. She turned back to the group. “I met her yesterday when I went with Molly.”

  “Dear, that’s terrible. That’s right. She was involved with selling houses now. She sent me a postcard about her real estate business,” CeeCee said. “I thought about using her last year when I was considering selling my house.”

  “What?” Elise said. “I could have listed your house.”

  “I know, dear, and if I decide to sell it, I’ll give you the listing,” CeeCee said, trying to placate Elise. “You see, she offered to do so much more, like helping clear the place and then stage it. I understood her magic was that she staged it so it had perfectly arranged furniture, but with touches to make it seem like it wasn’t staged. I can’t remember what else she said she did, just that it wasn’t something useful to me. She seemed like a lovely person, What happened? Did she have a heart attack?”

  “When I tell you, you won’t believe it,” I said. I gave them the details that I had, and unlike Barry, I added my thoughts about what I thought had happened. Someone had used the drone to drop the stinky payload just like they’d put up notices and knocked over the sign in front of the house, to annoy Miami in the hopes she’d give up her plan. Or maybe it was a threat of what they’d do if she did go through with her plans.

  “That’s true,” Dinah said to the group. “I saw the protest posters on the street signs.

  “It’s seems like a pretty open-and-shut case,” Rhoda said in her matter-of-fact voice tinged with a
New York accent. “Whoever flew that drone is responsible.”

  “But it wasn’t deliberate, was it?” Sheila asked. She almost swallowed the last few words, and I knew, with her anxiety issues, that everything worried her.

  “Deliberate in that someone wanted to cause a nuisance,” I said.

  “Not being in real estate, I don’t know if Molly understood what the owner of the place was planning to do. I’m pretty sure she intends to rent out rooms like it’s a hotel. You know, with one of those short-term rental apps. It’s a cute little cul-de-sac that is suddenly going to have a bunch of strangers showing up who will probably park along the street, make noise, and leave trash. There are rules about how often you can rent, but there’s no saying this woman is going to follow them. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of oversight,” Elise said.

  “Maybe she was using that app called Tempstay,” Eduardo offered. “They hook up people looking for accommodations in private homes.

  “I thought I heard her say she was going to rent out four of the bedrooms and the guesthouse. There’s a large room on the other side of the house for her to use,” I said.

  “That’s a lot of rooms to rent out,” Rhoda said. “And on a cul-de-sac probably surrounded by families—” She shook her head. “I can see where the neighbors might be unhappy about the plan.

  “Just imagine if the neighbors dropped a stink bomb when she had guests,” Dinah said.

  “Then the owner would get a bad review,” Eduardo said. “Those kind of rentals are all about reviews. So, whoever did it probably meant it as a warning of what they’d do when the rooms were rented, hoping it would make her change her mind. By the way, who is the ‘she’ we keep talking about? Is that Sloan?”

  “Miami Wintergarten is the owner of the place. Sloan was just helping out.”

  “How tragic,” CeeCee said. “That poor woman was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Adele came in just in time to hear CeeCee’s comment. She let out a frustrated harrumph, realizing the whole story had already been told without her input.

  I had deliberately not mentioned going to get Princess. I didn’t know how illegal what I’d done was, and I didn’t want to make anyone an accessory after the fact. It was better if no one knew—not even Dinah when she stayed behind to hang out for a few minutes after the group dispersed.

  “How awful for you,” Dinah said. “You go there for yarn and end up at another crime scene.”

  “Have you been talking to Kimberly Wang Diaz?” I asked with a smile, then told Dinah about her trying to get a comment from me. “It was pretty awful.” I shuddered at the remembrance of the smell. “I don’t know what got dumped. I saw some red stuff.”

  “I’m assuming the police were called,” Dinah said. “And if there was a death, probably a detective.”

  “I know where you’re headed. Yes, Barry showed up and he ended up talking to me.”

  “It figures,” she said, smiling.

  “No, it was pure chance. Nobody had even taken my name. He could have just as easily gotten Adele.”

  “Poor him if he had,” she said. “So, how was it? How’d he look?” No matter what I said, Dinah didn’t believe that Barry and I were finished. It didn’t even matter to her that Mason had suggested we get married.

  “I didn’t notice,” I said, and she laughed.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Okay, he looked good, uh, I mean not too tired—healthy,” I said, hoping she’d drop it. Barry had the tall, dark, and handsome thing going for him. “Handsome” was really the wrong word. To me that conjured up boring, even features. Barry’s face had character. It was all about the expression in his eyes, that is, when he let it show.

  “What did Mason have to say?” she asked.

  “You mean about Barry?” I asked.

  “No, about what happened. You texted him, didn’t you?”

  “I was going to wait for our nightly phone call, but you’re right,” I said, pulling out my phone and beginning to type with one finger. There was no immediate return text from him, and when I finally got an answer, it was a phone call and I was sitting in my car, about to drive home.

  “I needed to hear your voice to know that you were okay,” he said. There was no teasing in his voice this time. It was filled with concern.

  I assured him that I was fine. “I wasn’t even close to the action.”

  “That’s what I was hoping to hear. I guess you’re done with it. The cops will go after the drone owner and try to get a charge of involuntary manslaughter.”

  There was silence on my end as I considered what to tell Mason. He was an animal lover. He took Spike on the road with him, so I thought he would understand, and I’d barely done anything wrong.

  I told him about Princess and the rest of it. “I could have been your cover,” he said with a chuckle. “But that’s all you’re going to do, right? You’re not going to do your own investigating.”

  I let out a sigh. I hadn’t had a chance to collect my thoughts until he brought it up. Would I try to investigate it? Mason figured out what the silence meant.

  “I wish I was there to be Nick to your Nora Charles,” he said.

  Chapter Nine

  I was snapped back to reality as soon as I got home. There were more boxes of stuff on the patio, and Peter was talking to a man with a clipboard, who seemed to be evaluating the garage for some kind of makeover.

  “How about including me in the plans for my house?” I said.

  “Sorry. I’m trying to make it easier for you. You have a lot going on …” He left the thought hanging, but I knew in his mind he was thinking at your advanced age. Did he really think I was ready to wrap myself in a shawl and rock away the rest of my life in a chair on the porch? There wasn’t even room on the small porch by the front door. It was really more of a stoop.

  “I’m looking into making the garage into a guesthouse,” he said. I was afraid to ask who he thought would be living there.

  “By the way,” my son said, “do you suppose you could make yourself scarce this evening? I put together a meeting with some people about a new project, and I can’t have them thinking I moved home with mom.”

  “So, you want them to think this is your house?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “I can’t look desperate. It’s important that I seem like I’m doing okay.” It didn’t seem like he was asking for so much, and I certainly wanted to help him get back on his feet, so I agreed.

  “Great. They’re going to be here soon. The animals are already in your room. All the animals. I let them out first. And put their food and water in your bathroom.”

  “Peter, you didn’t. You can’t just put a new dog in with a bunch of other dogs and cats. What were you thinking?” I started toward the kitchen door, which was my usual way of entrance, but he stopped me and pointed to the door that went into the den.

  “Why don’t you go this way. It’s so much closer.”

  He was right about that. I walked in the glass door and was literally next to the door leading to the master suite. I rushed in, worried about the little puff ball. As soon as I pulled open the door to the hall that led to dressing area, bathroom, and bedroom, I heard my greeting committee. Cosmo and Felix were in the front, and the two cats trailed them. It wasn’t until I got in the bedroom that I found the third dog, Blondie.

  If ever there was a dog that was different, it was Blondie. She was the only one of the animals that I’d actually adopted. It was after Charlie had died, and I was feeling very alone. Blondie had been living in a private shelter. She’d been adopted once and returned, probably because they thought they were getting a feisty terrier mix and instead got a dog who I really should have been named Greta Garbo.

  As usual she was in the orange wing chair that was her spot of choice. But then I saw that she wasn’t alone. Princess was nestled next to her. As soon as the relief that no fur had been flying settled in, I realized there was a new problem.

  Peter
had thought of everything—except that I had intended to come home and make my dinner. I considered my options. I thought about ordering food. The windows in my bedroom faced the driveway. Maybe I could arrange to have the delivery driver hand it through the window.

  My cell phone rang, startling me out of my reverie.

  “Molly, you answered. Good.”

  “Barry?” I said tentatively. It wasn’t that I wasn’t sure it was him—more that I was surprised.

  “I tried your landline,” he said.

  “I didn’t hear it ring.” I looked around the bedroom and saw that the cradle for the cordless was empty. I must have left the phone in another room. I waited for an explanation for the call.

  “We need to talk about what happened today,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said getting a sinking feeling. He must have found out what I’d done.

  “I’d like to take care of it now,” he said in a serious voice. Great, now I was starving and in trouble. I could not handle being grilled on an empty stomach.

  “Okay,” I said. “On one condition.”

  “Oh no,” he said. “What is it?”

  “There’s a lot going on here right now. I’m stuck in my room with no dinner. Unlike you, I can’t just ignore a growling stomach. Do you think you could pick something up for me?”

  It sounded like he laughed. “That’s a switch. Maybe I should give you a lesson in hunger suppression.”

  “I doubt the lessons would work,” I said. “When I’m hungry, I’m hungry.”

  “Have it your way. I’ll pick up something for you. What do you want?”

  “How about Chinese? And bring a lot,” I said. He’d deny it if I said anything, but I was sure that once Barry smelled the food, all his hunger suppression would go out the window.