Hooks Can Be Deceiving

by Betty Hechtman

  “It’s about Adele,” I said, and Dinah laughed.

  “Isn’t it always about Adele? What now?”

  I recounted my meeting with Rory and the situation, and Dinah sighed as she took out a ball of pale blue-green yarn and a large crochet hook. As we talked, she made a slip knot and began to make a long chain of stitches.

  “Get ready for fireworks.” I had stopped pacing now and was leaning against one of the chairs.

  “Fireworks?” Rhoda repeated as she joined us. “What’s going on?”

  I told both of them about Rory getting the job hosting Creating With Crochet. They didn’t understand the problem until I explained that Adele thought the job was going to be hers.

  “I get it now,” Rhoda said.

  Before I could explain there was more to the problem, Sheila and CeeCee came up to the table. Rhoda rushed to tell them her version of what she’d heard, which seemed to center on Adele throwing a hissy fit, though the reason why seemed to have gotten lost. I waited until Elise and Eduardo arrived before I told the whole group the story, rushing before Adele made an appearance.

  “Here comes Rory now,” Elise said, giving us all a concerned look as she pointed toward the entrance of the store. Rory had just come in and was passing the children’s department as Adele came out of it, and they headed to the yarn department together.

  “Oh, dear,” CeeCee said, “somebody better do something.” Making it clear the someone was me.

  I got out of my chair and rushed to join the two women, ready to intercede, but with no idea what I was going to do. I put on a bright smile and prepared for damage control. “I see you two have met,” I said brightly.

  “I was just telling Miss Adele that I came to join your group,” Rory said.

  “She goes by Queen Adele for story time,” I corrected. It was just a small point, but one less thing for Adele to be upset about. “And when it comes to crochet, Adele is the queen as well. We all think she’s a wonder. She made that jacket.”

  Rory turned to give Adele an appraising glance. The jacket was spectacular, as was everything Adele made. I was never sure if that was spectacular in a good way, though. Maybe showy was a better word. The actual jacket was all black, and she had crocheted sunflowers and attached them to it.

  I was trying to come up with a gentle way to break the news to Adele so she wouldn’t make a scene, but before I could say anything, Rory dropped the bomb on her.

  “Maybe you can show me how to make those flowers. It would be great if I could whip some up as I’m talking to the camera.” She seemed to pick up that Adele didn’t know what she was talking about. “I’m the host of Creating With Crochet,” she said in cheery voice before turning to me. “And thank you so much in advance for the lessons.” She let out a little giggle as she leaned closer to us. “It’ll be our little secret that I kind of oversold my skills to get the show.”

  I grabbed Adele’s arm and whispered in her ear not to make a scene. Rory walked on ahead as we neared the yarn department and began to introduce herself around, though she kept saying she probably didn’t need to since she was sure they all knew who she was.

  I managed to keep Adele from exploding by reminding her they were doing the premiere show in our yarn department and saying that surely when the powers that be saw how fabulous she was, they’d want her to be a regular on the show.

  “You mean like a sidekick?” she said, brightening.

  “Absolutely,” I agreed. Anything to keep the peace. “Once Rory sees what a great crocheter you are, she’ll want you at her side to take the heat off of her.”

  Adele went full steam ahead and made sure that Rory sat next to her. Before any of us could suggest it, she offered to teach Rory how to crochet. “We’ll be yarn sisters,” Adele said, grabbing a size J hook and some worsted-weight yarn.

  “Good job,” Dinah said, leaning next to me when I sat down. “I don’t know what you said, but it worked.”

  CeeCee looked around the table. “Should we get started?”

  Our core group was all there, but Marianne and Connie were still missing. I mentioned seeing Marianne the evening before and how she’d said she’d be there.

  “Who knows with that pair. I think we all thought they were a little strange,” Rhoda said.

  “Maybe they’re just late,” I offered.

  “I want to show you what I came up with for the Make-and-Take,” CeeCee said. “I suppose we could give them a little longer to show up.”

  The group proceeded to work on their own projects, while Adele and Rory stayed huddled together at the opposite end of the table. Finally, I looked at my watch and saw that half the time was already gone.

  “I don’t think they’re coming,” I said.

  “And look what I found under the table,” Sheila said. She held up a pale-blue scarf in progress, and we all recognized the wobbly edge. “She must have dropped it last time she was here.”

  Rory looked up as Sheila held the partial scarf, and I saw her wrinkle her nose. “That doesn’t look very good,” Rory said.

  Her criticism triggered something in me, and I felt the need to defend Marianne. “Crocheting isn’t just about the finished project. For some people, the act of doing it is very therapeutic.”

  “Absolutely,” Sheila said. She explained to the actress how the rhythmic quality of it had gotten her through a lot of anxiety attacks. She even showed off the ball of string and hook she carried in her pocket for emergencies. “If I start to feel panicky, I just take this out.”

  Rory had pulled out a piece of paper and was scribbling something down. “That’s something I should know for the show,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Adele said in a cloyingly sweet voice. “I know all about crochet and its benefits. You can always ask me anything you need to know. You probably saw me on What’s Up With Crafts when I was the guest. Us pros need to stick together.”

  Rory seemed to shrug off what Adele said, but I rolled my eyes, wondering if I’d made a mistake in giving Adele the idea of being Rory’s sidekick. It had been foolish of me not to realize that Adele would take the idea too seriously.

  “Let’s make use of the time we have left,” CeeCee said. She stood up and let her gaze move around the whole group. “As you all know, Creating With Crochet is going to tape their premier episode here, and we’re going to be hosting a Make-and-Take. Molly said they expect us to come up with the project.” She nodded toward me as she spoke. “I brought in something I thought we could use.” She produced a circle of stitches with a pompom on the end. A silver ring was attached to the stitches. “It’s a key chain,” she said, and then passed it around.

  Rory took it last, examined it, and wrinkled her nose. “A key chain, really?” she said. “Who would want to make that?”

  CeeCee seemed deflated and asked the rest of the group for their thoughts. Now that Rory had said it, they all kind of agreed that the key chain had no magic.

  “Maybe if we came up for a catchy name for it,” Elise said. She was very into marketing. “I’ve decided to call the afghans I’m making Color Squares. It sounds a lot more sophisticated than calling them what they really are—big granny squares.

  “What else could you call it but a key chain?” Rhoda said.

  Everyone started tossing around suggestions that kept getting more and more ridiculous. A key escort, really? Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but keep glancing toward the door for the missing pair of Hookers.

  “Let’s be honest,” Rhoda said at last. “We don’t like the key chain.”

  CeeCee seemed a little miffed, but she finally agreed that maybe it wasn’t very exciting and promised to find a better project. I hated to pressure her, but I reminded her that we didn’t have a lot of time.

  “I already have something else in mind. I’ll bring it in tomorrow,” CeeCee said.

  When the group broke up, Dinah stayed at the table with me. “Whatever you said to Adele certainly kept her from exploding. She’s practi
cally joined at the hip with Rory.” We watched Adele walk Rory to the front of the store arm in arm.

  I looked at Marianne’s scarf. “I think I’ll drop this off at her house,” I said.

  “Are you being considerate or nosy?” my friend asked, and I laughed.

  “Maybe both.”

  “I’d go with you, but Commander planned a family dinner at Cassandra’s favorite restaurant.” She squeezed my hand. “Promise me you’ll come over later. We can go in my lady cave and crochet and eat cookies.”

  Chapter Four

  When I got ready to leave Shedd & Royal, I checked the roster we kept of the Hookers. Adele had wanted to make it all complicated like she had with story time, with all of her membership cards and check-in lists, but I’d nixed that idea. We simply had a list of addresses and phone numbers. I tried Marianne’s phone number first, but it went right to voicemail. Then I decided to just take the scarf to her house.

  Tarzana was different from other San Fernando Valley communities. It had once all been a ranch and, when it was developed, had been sold off piecemeal. There were some streets with tract houses, but a lot of the area had been built up one house at a time. Because much of the community was draped across the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, there were a lot of strange little streets that meandered off the main one. I’d never heard of the street Marianne lived on, and it was only because I checked a map that I found it. Even still, as I drove along Wells Drive, I passed the turnoff once. The second time around, I saw the sign for the private road that went up a barren-looking hill.

  The road ended in a cul-de-sac, and I drove through an open gate into a paved area in front of a sprawling house. I couldn’t really make out the style in the dark, other than that it was a single story and I was pretty sure it was white stucco. Though I was less interested in what the house looked like than in the cars parked out front. Floodlights along the front of the property illuminated a pair of police cars. I was still getting used to their new vehicles. The old cruisers had seemed sleek and like they could roar through the streets with ease. The new ones were SUVs that somehow reminded me of high-top sneakers. They seemed cumbersome and like they must bounce the cops around a lot when they were involved in a pursuit.

  I got an ominous feeling when I saw the black Crown Victoria, which meant a detective was there along with the uniforms. I got out of my car and went to the door with my heart thudding. It was open, but a uniform blocked my entry with a curt, “You can’t go in there.”

  I was too stunned to think it through and just bluntly asked what happened. The cop looked at me as if I’d just asked the most ridiculous question and then told me he didn’t have that information. Did he really think I was going to buy that? He seemed intent on not letting me in, but not as concerned about getting me to leave. I hung by the open door, leaning this way and that, trying to get a view inside. When I leaned so far to one side that I almost fell backward, I was able to see past the entrance hall into the living room. A tall, dark-haired man dressed in a suit was standing in front of the couch with his back toward me. I didn’t need to see his face to recognize Homicide Detective Barry Greenberg. He was my ex, though I never knew quite what to say after that. Ex-boyfriend didn’t work for me. He was in his fifties and our relationship had hardly been the dinner-and-a-movie type. I’d given up trying to find the right title for him so just left it at ex.

  There was a woman standing next to him. I got only a side view of her, but I recognized her as one of his fellow detectives. Her name was Heather Gilmore, but to me she was simply Detective Heather. Not that I ever referred to her that way directly. I always said that if there were a Barbie doll homicide detective, she’d look like Detective Heather. She was impeccably dressed in a dark suit, and her long, champagne-blonde hair was upswept. I couldn’t see her face, but I was sure her lipstick was fresh. Instinctively, I patted my hair and realized that, unlike her, I showed signs of being at the end of a long day.

  I ignored any feeling stirred by seeing Barry and focused on the fact that his presence there could only mean one thing. All I wanted to know was who had died.

  It felt like my heart was in my throat. I was going to try some of my investigative tricks on the uniform to see if I could shake loose some information, but then Barry shifted his position and I finally got a view of the couch. My breath came out in a rush of relief as I saw Marianne sitting on the sofa with a bewildered expression. Her brother was standing behind the couch with another man I didn’t recognize.

  I looked down at the wobbly scarf and yarn in my hand. I didn’t know what was going on, but the poor woman looked like she could really use a dose of crochet. I got the cop’s attention and showed him Marianne’s work in progress and explained that I’d brought it for her.

  “She really needs it now,” I said. I gave him a short speech on the curative qualities of crochet and then urged him to look at her. “If ever there was a time she needed her crochet, it’s now.”

  As I said it, the metal hook came loose from her work and hit the ground with a loud ping. Barry suddenly looked in the direction of the door. He had his blank cop face on, but when he saw it was me, there was some sort of flicker in his eyes.

  He came to the door and stepped around the uniform, took my arm, and pulled me away from the open door.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in a stern voice.

  I explained that I’d brought the crochet project Marianne had left at the bookstore. Then I looked him in the eye. “So who’s dead?”

  He was caught off guard by my direct question, but he recovered fast. “I won’t confirm or deny anything.” Then he told me I had to leave. He stood watching me until I went to my car.

  I was still shaken up when I pulled my up in front of Dinah’s. Before I could walk into the small yard, the door opened and a dark-haired woman came out and walked down the steps. She had the same shape as Commander Blaine, but her expression had none of his warmth. I watched her walk to the street and get into what I assumed was an Uber.

  I gave it a few moments, then knocked at the door. By Dinah’s unhappy expression, I was pretty sure she thought Commander’s daughter had come back. When she realized it was me, she grabbed me in a bear hug. “Am I glad to see you.”

  She brought me inside, and we crossed through the small living room. Commander Blaine was headed down the short hall toward the bedrooms. He turned and flashed a warm smile when he saw me.

  “Have fun with your girl time,” he said.

  Dinah pulled open the sliding glass doors that at one time had led outside and now opened into an added-on den. Dinah had never used it much when she lived in the house alone, but since marrying Commander and discovering that they had very different body clocks, she’d turned it into her lady cave and late-night haven.

  Though late night was a relative term. To Commander Blaine, it had already stretched into that time zone, though it was barely after eight o’clock. As the heavy sliding door clicked shut, my friend let out her breath and turned to me. “What an evening.” Then she caught sight of my face. “What happened? You look stunned.”

  We both flopped onto the chartreuse couch and, before she even made tea or got the cookies, I told her about my stop at Marianne’s house.

  “I know just where you mean, but I thought there was nothing on top of that hill,” Dinah said. “Did Barry tell you what happened?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Are you kidding? He just hustled me out of there.”

  “What about Marianne? How was she?”

  “I only got a glimpse of her, and she looked the way she always does when she comes to happy hour, only more so.”

  When I asked about Dinah’s evening, she waved it off as nothing compared to mine and went to make tea and get cookies. We often played what we called the Sherlock Holmes game, which amounted to seeing what we could deduce about something. Without even mentioning it, we began a game of deduction as we drank our tea. We started with the obvious.

 
; “It was definitely some kind of crime scene,” I said, remembering that I’d seen some yellow tape stretched along the side of the house.

  “The fact that Barry was there and he’s a homicide detective makes it pretty certain that someone died. Since you saw Marianne, we know it wasn’t her.”

  “Whatever happened must have happened outside.” I mentioned the location of the yellow tape.

  “And since you didn’t see Connie and the two seemed inseparable, it seems likely that it might have been her,” Dinah said.

  “And I think we know now why they were no-shows at happy hour,” I said with a sigh. I drank some of the orange pekoe tea and let it work its soothing magic. The warm drink seemed to fill my insides with a peaceful feeling, and I began to relax.

  Dinah topped off my cup and paused to think. “None of us said much about the two, and they certainly didn’t say much about themselves.”

  “But I bet if we think about it, we know more than we realize,” I said. “Like, even before I saw the big house, I figured she was well off.” I brought up the designer purse I’d seen Marianne carrying and admitted that I’d checked out the price online. “It was crazy. Who pays a thousand dollars for a purse?”

  “Obviously, Marianne,” Dinah said with a smile. She guessed Marianne was around forty. Then I mentioned seeing her in the restaurant with her brother. “So we know she has a brother. I never noticed a wedding band, so I’m guessing she’s not currently married. And she was obviously medicated. She always had a look about her eyes as if it was a struggle for her to stay focused.”

  “That’s absolutely true,” I said. “I saw the drugs.” I mentioned the pill container on the table and that her brother seemed to want to hide them and she didn’t seem to want to take them.

  “My two cents is that the drugs were for something emotional instead of physical,” Dinah said, and I agreed. Then we both admitted to feeling bad that we’d taken the easy way out and just let her sit there during the gatherings instead of making more of an effort to talk to her.