One for the Hooks

by Betty Hechtman

  “It looked like the drone came from over there.” I pointed toward the top of the fence.

  I tried to orient myself as I looked along the length of the fence, which seemed to curve before it was lost in greenery. “I wonder what’s on the other side of it.” The fence was too tall for us to see over, and my fence-climbing days were long gone.

  “Maybe there’s a ladder in there,” Dinah said, noting that the door to the shed was ajar. “Since it’s open, it seems like it’s okay to look inside.

  “I’m not sure if Barry would agree, but he’s not here, so why not.” I felt an uptick in my heartbeat as I pushed the door open wider. Who knew what was in there?

  Dinah had her phone out and turned on the flashlight, moving it around to illuminate the small space. The light must have stunned something, because there was a rustling sound. A folded up stepstool was resting against the back wall of the shed.

  “If I can deal with those students of mine, I can certainly deal with a creepy shed. I’m going in.” She marched in quickly, grabbed the stepstool, and rushed back out with a nervous giggle. “Look at this. A step stool built for two,” she said as she unfolded it. There were steps on both sides of it. I moved it against the fence and we both climbed up to have a look. Instead of peeking into a neatly mowed yard, we were looking at a wild area filled with bushes and wild growth in a tangle of green. “It’s like a secret garden,” I said. “If no one tended it and it was left to grow as it pleased.” I surveyed the area as I tried to orient myself for the first time realizing that the backyards of the cul-de-sac were at the bottom of a greenery-covered slope that rose up into one of the finger-like ridges. I couldn’t see it, but I knew there was a street at the top. As l looked around the open area, I caught glimpses of fences that I assumed belonged to the other houses in the cul-de-sac. When I glanced the other way, there was some chain-link fencing covered in ivy.

  “I’ve seen areas like this before,” I said. “It looks like there’s a small ravine that probably floods when it rains and can’t be built on.” I surveyed it again. “I’d really like to go in there and look around. Maybe peek into the other yards.” We both looked over the fence and agreed there was no way to get over it.

  “I guess that’s it then,” Dinah said. Reluctantly I agreed, and we folded up the stepstool and replaced it in the shed before returning to the guesthouse.

  We packed up the yarn and I grabbed my purse. Instead of going through the house, we went through the yard to the street. We were just loading the bags in the car, when Elise came out.

  “Miami showed me how much was in the account. There’s not enough to even cover some mattresses. I wonder where all the money went?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I pulled the car into the driveway, glad to see no other cars. Peter and Gabby were still on their trip to Santa Barbara. I was already planning to shed my slacks and shirt and change into a light dress. Now that it was close to evening, the temperature had started to drop to comfortable levels. I would eat outside.

  I opened the gate, walked into my yard, and started across the stone patio. I was thinking about what I might cook, when I heard what sounded like a whine and sensed something moving. I looked at the ground and saw a toy SUV. “Toy” seemed the wrong word when I looked at it again. It was big enough to transport guinea pigs. The body was all black and kept making revving noises. With a final rev, it started to move toward me. It picked up speed and stopped short just before it reached me. When I tried to move away from it, it followed me. I made a run toward the two cement steps that went from the patio to the grassy part of the yard, sure the thing couldn’t drive up stairs. I thought I was home free, but the SUV rolled up the stairs with ease. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so creepy the way the SUV chased me around the yard. It would speed up and stop short just before it made contact. Then it started playing games. I took a step, and it didn’t move. Another step, and still there was nothing. I looked longingly at the kitchen door. Taking a chance, I sprinted to the door, but as I fumbled with the key I heard the SUV roar up behind me, and it tapped my ankle ever so slightly. I felt the metal of the bumper press against my skin. How was I going to get inside without the SUV coming in with me? And then I had an idea. I turned abruptly and ran back across the stone patio to the chain link gate that led to the driveway. I pulled it open, went through it and slammed it shut before the SUV could get through. I heard it hit the chain links with a loud noise.

  “Got you now,” I said. I’d barely taken a breath when a menacing laugh came out of the creepy toy, and I heard it revving up again. The top flipped open and it sprouted a helicopter rotor and flew straight up and over the gate. I tried to follow it with my eye, but it flew over my neighbors’ yard and disappeared. Sure that whoever was controlling it must be in the street that ran on the other side of my neighbor’s house, I took off down the driveway, determined to see who it was. I ran past my neighbors’ place and turned up the street. I kept going, looking for anything, anyone. And then I sensed someone running behind me.

  I suddenly regretted that I hadn’t been exercising much lately and I felt a stitch starting in my side. When it hurt too much, I stopped and bent over, trying to catch my breath and ease the pain as I felt someone grab me from behind.

  Stitch or not, I wasn’t going to go quietly, and I began doing what I could with my elbows and stepping backward, hoping to hit someone’s toes.

  “Hey,” a voice called out just as the someone lifted me off my feet and stopped my elbow action.

  “Barry?” I said, taking a look over my shoulder.

  “I’ll let you go if you promise to stop poking me.”

  I agreed and he released me. He noticed me holding my side.

  “Got a stitch, huh?” he said, and I nodded.

  “Take some deep breaths—walking should help.” He looked down at my hip. “Massaging it might help too.” I did all three things as we began the trek back down the street.

  “Why were you running after me?” I asked, beginning to feel the stitch subside.

  He took a moment to answer. “Who were you running after?”

  “I asked you first,” I said.

  His face broke the hint of a smile. “Here we go again. Can’t we just cut to the chase?”

  “Sure, you first,” I said.

  We had rounded the corner and reached the entrance to my driveway. “Fine,” he said with a disgruntled shake of his head. “I pulled up in front of your place and was going to call and ask if you had anything for me when I saw you come flying out of the driveway.” He stopped and smiled. “Maybe not flying—more like sprinting. You seemed like you were going after something, and I thought I could help.”

  I looked over at him, and I could tell by his expression that he meant it. “Then thank you,” I said. “And I do have some information for you.” I started walking up the driveway, and he followed.

  “And now how about you answer my question,” he said. “Who were you after?”

  We’d gotten to the chain-link gate that opened onto my yard. He followed me in, but then I stopped short when I saw a piece of paper with some drippings of what I hoped was red ink that said Stay out of it.

  “Do you want to explain?” Barry asked.

  “Why do they always use red ink?” I said, shaking my head. This wasn’t the first time I’d been left a threatening note. I answered my own question: “It’s supposed to look like blood.”

  Barry stopped when we got into the yard. “I’m assuming that has something to do with your sprint. Remember, you were going to tell me who you’d gone after.” His brow furrowed. “Is this about the case you’re helping me with? Have you been up to something?”

  “That’s a lot of questions to answer,” I said. “Any preference where I start?”

  Barry rolled his eyes in frustration. “Start anywhere you want.”

  “Aren’t you going to collect it for evidence?” I asked.

  “Of course.” He pulled
out a paper bag from his pocket, picked the paper up by the edge, and slipped it in the bag. He wrote something on the bag and followed me across the patio. “And now can we get back to you?” he said. The animals had heard all the ruckus and were looking out the kitchen door.

  “Maybe the first step is to go inside,” I said.

  Barry looked back to the door that led to the den and the shortcut to the master suite. “Is this going to be a repeat of me sneaking into your room?”

  “No, I have the house to myself for now. Peter and his lady went up to Santa Barbara.”

  “Oh,” he said, and I wondered if he sounded disappointed. “And you’re not worried about Mason showing up?”

  “He should be back in Kansas by now. He’s running himself ragged going between his regular clients and working on the Second Chance Project,” I said.

  Barry made a face. It had to do with the natural antagonism between cops and lawyers. “What is he trying to get someone out of now?” he said with an edge to his voice.

  “It’s something stupid about a college croquet team and the district attorney being pissed that his kid didn’t get into Worthington U. And then he’s working on getting an innocent man out of jail in his pro bono work.”

  Barry made a disparaging noise. “So he’s playing the hero now.”

  “You could say that.” I finally opened the kitchen door, and Cosmo and Felix rushed out into the yard. I closed the door just in time to keep the cats from making an escape. Cosmo made a rush to Barry. The dog was a genius. Whenever Barry came over, the dog acted like he was seeing a long-lost friend, but as soon as Barry left, Cosmo reverted to his usual self and acted like I was his human companion.

  I brought Blondie and Princess from the other side of the house. Blondie held back, but Princess joined the other two dogs. Barry had found a ball on the ground and was playing fetch. Felix and Cosmo were into it. The ball was as big as Princess’s head and she went to join Blondie in a quiet corner of the yard.

  After they’d all had their outside time, we rounded the dogs up and went inside. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten all my questions,” Barry said as he closed the kitchen door behind us.

  “But first I have to take care of them,” I said. The cats and dogs were at my feet, waiting for their dinner. Once they were all eating, I turned back to him. “Okay, I’m all yours.”

  Something passed over his face, and I thought he was going to say something, but as quickly as the look had appeared, it vanished.

  “We could talk while we eat,” I offered. “I was going to make some dinner for myself. Are you hungry?”

  He laughed at the question. “You probably know better than I do, since you’re so sure I never feel anything,” he said.

  I opened the refrigerator to check out the contents. With Peter and Gabby living here, I never knew what I’d find. They were good at eating, but not so good at going to the store. The caterer had packed up the leftovers from their dinner party, and I decided to leave that for them.

  “How about scrambled eggs?” I asked, offering him the old standby. He nodded and I started to pull out the eggs, butter, and some leftover chopped salad.

  “I can help,” he said.

  “Really?” I examined his expression to see if he was being polite or if he meant it. He seemed genuine. “Okay, do you want an apron?”

  He made a face at the suggestion, though he did take off his suit jacket.

  I handed him a bag of potatoes that could be cooked in the bag. “You just clip off the corner and put them in the microwave for four minutes,” I said.

  “I can do more than that,” he said after taking the bag from me. “I’m seeing someone, and she likes to stay in and cook. We get those meal kits. You ought to try them. They’re really convenient.”

  I was glad I was watching the butter melt in the frying pan and he couldn’t see my face. I covered up my surprise, and maybe some displeasure, before getting out a benign, “Oh, I didn’t know.”

  He shut the microwave door and punched in the time. “It didn’t exactly come up in conversation before,” he said.

  I added a dollop of sour cream to the eggs and mixed it in as I waited for him to say more. He didn’t, forcing me to have to ask him about her.

  I had a million questions. Who was she? How did they meet? Were they serious? I knew he’d wanted to marry me. Did he want to marry her now? But I contained myself and stuck to the first question.

  “She’s an ER nurse, so she understands crazy schedules. She’s divorced with two kids. Jeffrey likes her and her kids.” He looked down at the floor. Cosmo was sitting next to his foot. “I told her about Cosmo, and”—he faltered—“she thought it would be nice for all the kids if he came home.” He avoided looking at me. “You do remember that Jeffrey and I were the ones who got him at that animal fair.” He glanced at the microwave timer. “Really, you should be glad to have one less animal to worry about when you go off crusading with Mason.” He seemed to be overstating his case for taking Cosmo, and I imagined that he knew it upset me.

  I managed to get out another, “Oh.” It was a bit much all at once, and so unexpected. There was no reason that Barry shouldn’t be seeing someone and thinking about marrying her. But to take Cosmo? I considered telling Barry about the black mutt’s trick of making up to him when he was there but decided to say nothing about it for now. “What does she think about you being here?” I asked.

  Barry shrugged it off. “She gets that you’re just someone helping me out on a case.”

  I don’t know why, but that made me even more upset. I suppose it was because of everything Dinah had said about Barry and me not being finished and the twinge that I felt when I saw him. A twinge he obviously didn’t feel when he saw me.

  I kept it all to myself and swirled the eggs in the pan; when they were fluffy, I poured them onto a couple of plates. The microwave chimed and Barry opened the door. I rushed to hand him an insulated mitt to take the potatoes out.

  “What now?” he asked. “The meal kits come with directions and seasonings.”

  I took the bag and tore it open, pouring the tiny potatoes into a dish. I let some butter melt over the top of them before I poured on a sprinkle of seasoning. I added some capers and a generous blob of sour cream. I made up two plates of food. Some people don’t need a meal kit to make an interesting supper.

  We took our plates into the dining room. I didn’t want to talk about any more personal business, so I brought up the case. “Now I can answer all your questions,” I said. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “How about we work backward. You tell me about that note and who you were chasing.”

  “The piece of paper was left by a black SUV.” He gave me a funny look, and I realized he thought I meant a full-sized one. “Not a big one, a radio-controlled toy.”

  I told him how it had sprouted wings and that I’d thought it had flown to the street around the corner.”

  “Why would somebody be trying to scare you? Have you been sneaking around? Our deal was that you were just to pass along what you heard. Have you been made?” I knew from his cop lingo that he meant had someone figured out that I was collecting information.

  I told him about Bitsy and that she’d more or less come to me. “She seemed angry at me for even going to Miami’s house,” I said. He listened with interest as I described my encounter with her at the bookstore, leaving out what I’d gone through to find out her name.

  “Hmm, that sounds almost like a threat,” he said. “You think she was behind the SUV and note?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You really attract a lot of strange stuff.”

  I couldn’t really argue with that. In the past I’d been left a rat trap with a toy rat in it, a dead fish, and a threatening milkshake. Actually a note left by a toy SUV seemed rather mild in comparison. I was annoyed that he implied I’d given away that I was collecting information. “I wasn’t made. Nobody has a clue I’m feeding information to you,” I said. “Bitsy se
emed upset that I had a connection with Miami, and maybe another neighbor saw me go to her place too. There’s a good chance they could have recognized me from the bookstore. Somebody could even have followed me home when I left there.”

  “But the note said, ‘Stay out of it,’” he countered. “Stay out of what?”

  “Like I said, she seemed angry that I went to Miami’s. She could think I was helping her with the short-term rentals and wanted me to stay out of it.”

  Barry seemed unmoved. “That seems like a stretch. More likely it’s someone connected to the drone drop.”

  “I might have taken a look over Miami’s back fence to see if I could see into any of the neighbors’ yards. Maybe someone saw me.”

  “Well, don’t do that again,” he said, as if his words could make it so.

  “There’s something else,” I said.

  “Oh?” he said, giving me all of his attention.

  “I think we need to consider that it might not have been a random accident. That Sloan might have been the target.”

  Barry let out his breath, and I could practically read his thoughts. He thought I was wrong and had gone off the deep end with my illusion of being a detective. His superior detective gut told him it was just what it seemed: something that had been meant to be a mean-spirited prank to get Miami to give up her plan. But even before Adele’s video, I had mentioned to Dinah that I had a feeling it might have deliberately been aimed at Sloan. It was what my gut told me. But Barry would argue that his gut was superior to my gut.

  He gave me a funny look. “What are you thinking? Your eyes are moving every which way, as if you’re having a conversation with someone.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, I do. Is it something about me? I hope I didn’t upset you when I told you about Carol’s cooking.”

  “Why would I be upset about her cooking?” I said, trying my best to sound like I couldn’t care less. I wasn’t sure what to tell him and figured, what the heck, I’d go for the truth. “I was thinking that you’d say that your gut was superior to mine.”