Hooks Can Be Deceiving

by Betty Hechtman

  “I was instructed not to let anyone in,” the woman said, keeping her eye on me as if I might try to sneak in.

  “It’s okay to let Molly in,” Marianne said.

  “But your brother said—” the uniformed woman began before Marianne interrupted.

  “This is my house, and I said it’s okay to let her in.” I was surprised at the strength in Marianne’s tone, but she seemed to pay a price for it, because as the uniformed woman finally stepped out of the way and I went in, I noticed that Marianne was leaning against the wall.

  Hilda stepped closer and offered Marianne her arm while admonishing her. “Don’t get yourself all worked up, or I’ll have to give you another injection.”

  Marianne pulled away from the woman and found her balance. “No, no more injections.” She turned to me. “Let’s go in the den.”

  * * *

  “Do you think that’s such a good idea?” Hilda asked. “Your brother asked me to keep you out of there. He thought it might be disturbing.”

  “Fine, then we’ll go into the living room,” Marianne said, and she led the way to a comfortable-looking room that I noticed was an eclectic mixture of styles. A ball-shaped lamp with a paper shade hung over the seating area, and an old grandfather clock sat against the wall. Marianne offered me a seat on a buttery-soft leather couch and sat down next to me.

  I wondered why the den would be disturbing to Marianne, but there wasn’t an opening to bring it up.

  “Could you bring us some sparkling water?” Marianne said to the woman as I put my tote bag on the coffee table in front of us.

  “I’m not supposed to leave you alone,” Hilda said, but Marianne told her to get the drinks. The woman looked at me. “Don’t say anything to upset her while I’m gone.” Reluctantly, she left the room.

  “My brother found her from some service and left her a bunch of ridiculous instructions. I would have been fine by myself,” Marianne said, shaking her head mechanically. “Errol doesn’t think I can manage on my own. He worries about me driving, doing anything, like making coffee, or even eating a sandwich. It’s the meds. They mess with everything, and sometimes I do have days where I can barely move.”

  I wondered if I should bring up Connie now that we had a moment alone, but before I could think it through, the uniformed woman had returned with a tray holding two bottles of lemon-flavored sparkling water and two glasses with ice. She set it down on the coffee table and started to fuss with the caps, but Marianne shooed her away and said, “Why don’t you take a break?”

  The woman held her ground and repeated that she’d been told not to leave Marianne alone.

  “I’ll be fine,” Marianne said to the woman. But when Hilda suggested discussing the situation with her brother, Marianne told her she could stay. “I’m not going to trouble Errol any more after all that he’s done.”

  The woman took a seat in the corner and tried to pretend not to be watching us.

  Marianne took the top off her water and began to drink right from the bottle. “I drink and drink and my mouth is still dry.”

  “This is nice,” I said. “We’ve never really had a chance to talk before.”

  She put the bottle on the table. “It’s hard for me in a group.” She attempted to smile.

  If it weren’t for the drugs keeping her expression so flat, she’d have been a pretty woman. Her dark wavy hair softened the square shape of her face. It seemed to me that her clothing choice was out of sync with her age. The adjective that best described her clothing was “simple to put on.” The black pants probably had an elastic waistband, and the long royal-blue shirt she wore over it fit loosely. She noticed me checking out her outfit.

  “Not very stylish, is it? But at least it’s something I can manage myself.” She held up her hands and moved her fingers awkwardly. “They don’t work like they’re supposed to. That’s why the scarf looks the way it does. I try and try, but my fingers won’t obey.”

  I handed her the scarf, and she eagerly started to crochet. I watched her struggle and wished there was a way to help her. I had liked Marianne right away and felt terrible that she was living her life in such a fog. I wondered what the problem was.

  I pulled out the project I always carried with me and began to crochet with her. It was a nice moment, but the uniformed woman looked at her watch and intervened.

  “It’s time for your meds,” Hilda said, dropping her voice as if she was trying to keep me from hearing.

  “We can do it later,” Marianne said.

  The woman had already produced a little cup with a number of pills and was making her way across the room. “You have to take them now,” she said.

  Marianne hung her head and tried to protest, but the woman prevailed, and Marianne swallowed the cocktail of drugs. Hilda finally returned to her seat.

  Marianne leaned back with a thud, and her shoulders dropped almost instantly. Her facial features seemed to droop. “Sorry, they’re kicking in. It makes it hard for me to feel anything.” She made an effort to face me. “It’s probably hard for you to believe, but people used to think I was funny. I was really good at telling jokes.” There was a dreamy sound to her voice. She held on to the crochet project. “Thank you for bringing it by. I really liked being in the group.”

  “You should come back,” I said.

  “I’ll have to see what I can do.” Her words were getting slurry. “Not sure what Hilda’s duties cover.”

  Our time together was clearly ending, and I hadn’t even brought up the tent in the yard. It was now or never.

  “What about Connie?” I blurted out.

  Marianne looked at Hilda and then at me. “Can’t talk now,” she said in a woozy voice. The next thing I knew, Hilda was showing me the door.

  My first day on duty, and I’d struck out.

  Chapter Seven

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Mrs. Shedd said as I came into the bookstore after leaving Marianne’s. “Someone from the Craftee Channel called and said to let you know they’d be coming by on Monday and needed to see the Make-and-Take project. And”—my boss indicated a formal-looking woman sitting in one of the easy chairs spread around the bookstore—“she’s here to see you about the upcoming author event.”

  It took a moment, and then it all came back to me. With the show taping to deal with and then the business with Marianne, I had forgotten about the signing we had coming up. A local author writing under the name Missy Z had contacted me some months back just as her self-published book, The Hot Zone, was coming out and wanted to arrange a signing at Shedd & Royal. To be honest, I hadn’t expected her book to draw much of a crowd, so I had offered her a chance to take part in an event we put on every few months for local authors to talk about their books.

  But something had happened between then and now that had changed everything. It had started when a columnist for The Huffington Post wrote a piece about books that had the same titles but very different content. She had a lot of fun comparing The Hot Zone, which was about Ebola and scientists garbed in protective gear, with Missy Z’s book, an erotic romantic comedy about an unlikely couple who got stuck alone on an island for a month. He was a stuffy sex therapist and she a woman who’d been dumped by her boyfriend and was down on men.

  The perky host of a national morning talk show then picked up on the column and ended up reading Missy Z’s book. The host raved about it, saying that it made her both blush and laugh. The book suddenly took off, and we offered Missy Z her own event. As I said, things had changed, and Missy Z’s representative had called me the previous week and said she’d be coming in to talk over the arrangements.

  “You’re Frances Allen, the publicity person for Missy Z, I take it?” I said, holding out my hand to the woman. I’d dealt with publicity people before, but it was usually on the phone and concerning things like whether the author wanted ice in their water. I sat down in the chair adjacent to her and asked what I could do for her.

  “Missy Z hired me to handle h
er appearances now that her book has become a best seller. I’m afraid she has some very specific demands,” she began. I felt very underdressed in my khaki pants and sweater next to the publicity woman’s black pantsuit and heels.

  “Could you show me where her signing is going to take place?” the woman asked, and I led her to our regular event area. For now, it was empty, but I told her we would set up chairs, and I stepped to the front of it and showed her where the author usually stood and talked to the crowd.

  “And we have a table and a chair for the actual signing.”

  “That all seems fine, but she wrote the book under a pseudonym and is adamant about keeping her identity unknown.”

  I nodded in agreement, and she continued. “There must be a staging area set up for her with complete privacy. She’ll arrive alone and anonymously and will slip into the backstage area, where she will put on her covering. She’d like the lights in the whole bookstore lowered during her appearance. It will be up to the bookstore employees to keep the signing line moving. When the signing is over, she will return to the backstage area, remove her disguise, and blend in with the crowd to leave.” She looked to me for my approval.

  I pointed to an open area near where we’d put the table and chair. “I’m sure we can rig up some sort of private area for her. You can tell her where it will be,” I said. We went over a few other minor details, and when everything was settled, we walked toward the front of the store together. She continued on to the door, and I headed to the information booth.

  I felt a hand on my arm just as I got inside the cubicle. “Am I glad to see you,” I said as I looked up and saw Dinah.

  “The feeling is mutual,” my friend said as she reached over and gave me a hug. “I thought we could get some coffee. I couldn’t drink mine at home.” I thought she was going to explain, but she got distracted by the cover of a book sitting on the information booth counter. “You’re reading this?”

  I laughed and told her it was just a mock-up of The Hot Zone. The cover had a photo that appeared to have been blacked out and had the word CENSORED written in yellow across it. All that was visible were the heads of a man and woman seemingly lost in ecstasy.

  “I just met with a publicity person about the book signing.” I showed Dinah that the inside was empty, explaining that it was a new edition and we wouldn’t have the actual books until the event. “I don’t think Mrs. Shedd even realizes what kind of book it is. She just knows that it’s become a best seller.” I told Dinah the story line and read her the cover copy:

  There’s a sizzle in the tropics when a mismatched couple work out their differences by finding exotic erotic ways to pleasure each other. No details spared.

  “Whew, sounds pretty hot,” Dinah said. “What’s the author like?” She pointed out the name below the title.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met Missy Z and will probably never get to know her. She’s doing the signing in a disguise and is insisting on complete anonymity. Mrs. Shedd is sure we’ll sell a boatload of copies, so all the fuss will be worth it.” I let out a sigh. “And if that wasn’t enough, Mrs. Shedd said someone from the Craftee Channel called to let me know they’ll be coming by and would like to see the Make-and-Take project.”

  “I get it. And we don’t even have the project figured out yet. It definitely sounds like coffee time to me.” Dinah waited for me to exit the information desk. It was nice having our two new hires. All I had to do was tell them I’d be in the café if they needed me.

  Bob, our barista, started making our order as soon as we got near the counter. “Ladies,” he said pushing a red eye toward me and a café au lait toward Dinah. “Any treats?” He made a broad gesture toward the glass counter. Along with making great coffee drinks, he baked fresh cookie bars. I’d skipped breakfast, and the Linzer bars looked fantastic.

  “This is definitely a cookie bar day,” Dinah said, ordering two for each of us. We carried our goodies to a table by the window where we could talk without being overheard.

  Dinah took a sip of her half coffee/half milk and held the cup up in a toast to Bob. “Perfect as usual,” she called out before turning back to me. “So what happened after you left my place? Barry came over, didn’t he?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. He hadn’t forbidden me to mention that he’d come over, just the part about why.

  “He doesn’t think you’re a suspect, does he?”

  “No. But he wanted to know what I was doing at Marianne’s.” I drank some of my red eye and took a bite of the cookie bar hungrily, glad that Dinah had ordered two for each of us.

  “Did he tell you what happened, or did you have one of your usual dueling matches where you both ask each other questions and try not to give out any information?”

  “No. He just refused to tell me anything.”

  “But I bet you fed him,” she said, shaking her head with a laugh that sent the spikes in her salt-and-pepper hair rocking. “I don’t care what you say, you still have feelings for him.”

  “When we broke up, he said he couldn’t do the friend thing, but that doesn’t mean I can’t. I’m feeding him as a friend.” I really wished I could tell her the whole story and add co-investigator to friend. That’s how I was describing it, even if Barry never would.

  Dinah rolled her eyes. No matter what I said, she kept insisting there were still something going on between Barry and me.

  “I admit, I always feel a tug when I see him, but there’s no point. It would never work out. He’s married to his job, and he has to be in charge all the time. I can’t deal with the way he controls all his emotions.”

  “Yes, but when the dam breaks and all those feelings pour out”—Dinah pretended to fan herself—“now that would make some steamy novel. Maybe you should talk to Missy Z about it.”

  I wanted to get the conversation off of Barry and told Dinah about the online news story I’d seen. “There were no names given, but I bet it was Connie,” I said.

  “How creepy that she was electrocuted,” Dinah said with a shiver. “I wonder how that happened.”

  “I don’t know—well, except I think I saw where it happened.” I described the white van and the tent over the open area at Marianne’s and then explained that I’d gone back there before coming to the bookstore.

  “So the story didn’t say if it was murder, just suspicious circumstances?” Dinah said. “What do you think?”

  “Okay, Dr. Watson,” I said with a smile. “I don’t know enough about the circumstances yet. But I do know that we were right when we figured that Connie worked for Marianne, and we know her title now—companion. Whatever that means.” I thought of Hilda, who was obviously Connie’s replacement, though she seemed more like a warden. “I’m going to tell you about my visit and see what we can figure out.” I went on to describe my whole time there while Dinah listened with rapt attention.

  We discussed it afterward and came to a number of conclusions: Marianne had more spunk than we’d realized. She seemed to be more self-aware than we’d thought. She didn’t like having a companion, and she certainly didn’t like taking her medicine.

  “You know, if somebody killed Connie, the most obvious suspect is Marianne,” Dinah said.

  “It’s too soon to say that. We don’t know all the details.” I thought of what Barry had said about Detective Heather jumping to that conclusion. “Let’s talk about something else, like why you couldn’t have your coffee at home,” I said.

  “Okay, fine. Dr. Watson just closed up shop.” She took a deep breath. “It seems rather petty now, but I couldn’t have my coffee or do anything at my house thanks to Cassandra. Did I mention that she’s a yoga teacher? She invited some of her old friends over and was giving an impromptu class in my living room. I tried stepping over all the bodies sprawled on yoga mats to get to the kitchen but ended up grabbing my stuff and going out the front door instead.”

  “Poor you,” I said.

  Dinah let out a sigh and drained her cup. “Maybe it�
��s not so bad. The coffee is better here, anyway. Now, I’m off to face my students.”

  * * *

  It felt like déjà vu when Mrs. Shedd snagged me as soon as I headed back into the bookstore. “Is everything okay with Missy Z’s event?” She said it a little fast, which made her sound a little frantic. I assured her I had it under control.

  “Good, but what about the crochet project for the taping? It’s all set up, right?” Before I could say anything reassuring, she continued, “This is such an opportunity for the bookstore. The Craftee people didn’t say anything exactly, but I’m sure if they’re happy using us as a location, they’ll tape more of the shows here. It isn’t about the money they’d pay us. It’s the exposure for the bookstore.” Her voice trilled as she began to describe the excitement of seeing our shop on TV. “Please, Molly, do whatever you can to make the taping a success.” She did something she’d never done before—she reached out and hugged me, and I thought I saw tears welling in her eyes.

  All I could think was, Thank heavens she doesn’t know we don’t have the Make-and-Take project yet. I waited until she went back to her office, then rushed back to the yarn department and started pulling out crochet books, looking for anything marked quick.

  At four thirty I was still at the table, only now it was littered with hooks and half-finished projects and a lot of open books.

  “Back from the student wars for a dose of crochet. I’m early, which shows how much I need it,” Dinah said, arriving at the table. She looked over the mess as she put down her tote bag. “What’s going on?”

  “Mrs. Shedd is pinning so much on the success of this taping. I just can’t let her down. I was trying to find a project for the Make-and-Take.” I showed her a pattern for a tiny crocheted bag meant to hold a sachet. “What do you think of this?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, but there’s no magic.” She pulled out her chair and sat down. “Don’t worry, I’m sure CeeCee will come up with something.”

  I saw our resident celebrity Hooker coming. She went right to the head of the table and set a large green Whole Foods bag on the table before coming over to us. “What are you doing, dear?” she asked, looking over my shoulder at the book.