Killer Hooks, page 3
“Why don’t you just get to the point.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “I can’t afford to have any surprise disclosures about the people I’m working with. I’m still in the process of putting everything together. Miles Langford wants to invest in the project I’m working on. I really want to take his money, but after what happened, well, I need to be sure there aren’t going to be any skeletons popping out of his closet. I’ve done what I can to check into his background, but with all the nondisclosure agreements and quiet settlements, there’s a lot that gets kept under the radar. I was thinking that you could use your skills to nose around. I can’t afford to be bushwhacked again.” He sounded genuinely worried and didn’t have his usual confident demeanor.
I was surprised by his request since he had given me such a problem about my investigating in the past. “How am I supposed to nose around? I would need some sort of an entry.”
“That’s no problem,” he said. “For once Gabby is a help. She hooked herself up in an exclusive mommy group and Miles’s wife is in it. Gabby sent me the schedule and I’ll forward it to you. You can explain you’re taking Gabby’s place. But they can’t know who you are.”
“You mean you want me to go undercover,” I said, chuckling at his discomfort.
“You can’t give them your last name,” he said. “Go by your maiden name.”
“No problem. I’ll introduce myself as Molly Aronson and I won’t mention you. But are you sure that they don’t know who Marlowe’s father is?”
He let out a mirthless laugh. “Believe me, Gabby had erased me from the picture up until now. They know the baby as Marlowe Alter. She blames me for that last production deal falling apart and wants to distance herself from me as much as possible. The only reason she brought Marlowe here was she had no choice. Apparently, her mother is out of town. Gabby said there’s a dad in the group, so I’m sure a grandmother would be perfectly acceptable. They probably gossip about each other or you could make friends with his wife. You’re good at being nosy.” He shrugged as if it would be nothing for me to delve into people’s lives and find out their secrets.
“I’d have to work it around my schedule, but I’m sure I could manage it.” Suddenly taking care of Marlowe had become more interesting.
With it settled, Peter deflated and looked all in, explaining that he had flown in from London. I expected him to leave, but he hung around for a while, watching me bathe his daughter and put her into her sleepwear. He moved the portable crib thing into my bedroom and then I handed her to him while I cleared out the toys. I was still amazed at the differences in my sons. Samuel seemed at ease taking care of Marlowe even though he was inexperienced. Marlowe was Peter’s daughter, but he seemed so stiff and uncomfortable holding her and clearly could not wait to hand her off.
He tried to hide it, but it was obvious that he was relieved to go home, where he could forget about everything and just deal with himself.
Chapter Three
Marlowe had fallen asleep right after I put her in the moveable bed. Finally, I was going to get a taste of that deli food. My stomach rumbled in anticipation as I walked across the house, but then my cell phone rang. As soon as I saw it was my best friend Dinah Lyons, I clicked it on.
“Tell me you’ll come over,” she said. She didn’t have to go into detail for me to understand the urgent sound in her voice. She had recently married Commander Blaine, and while they definitely cared about each other, they were totally different. He owned the local Mail It store and led a very orderly life with an early bedtime.
Dinah taught freshman English at the local community college and made sure she never had a class before eleven. Before that she wasn’t ready to deal with students who tried to write papers in text talk and made-up words. At home, she had created what she called her she-cave to deal with their different schedules. That way when he went to sleep and required that the house be quiet, she could go into her space and entertain, or at least make noise.
Normally, I would have been on my way out the door at the offer, but I couldn’t now that Marlowe was a resident. I talked Dinah into coming to me, promising deli food and a surprise she would never guess in a million years. It hardly took much convincing. Just being able to make noise was a draw.
I was just finishing making up plates for both of us when she came to the kitchen door. She was still bristling with energy and swirled her trademark long scarf out of the way as she went to give me a hug, and then she went right to finding out the surprise.
“It’s actually two,” I said, taking her across the house to my room and showing her the sleeping baby. We tiptoed out and into the den.
“Wow, you’re right. I would never have guessed that. Who is she?” I gave her a quick rundown on Marlowe’s arrival.
“Gabby really did that? It sounds like she dropped her and ran.”
“Almost. She certainly gave me no choice.”
“What about Gabby’s mother? What does she call her, Mumsy?”
“Yes, and Mumsy is out of town. I was the only one she could find at the last minute and was her last resort.” I explained that my whole family was helping out and Peter was trying to arrange for childcare so I could work.
She gave me a look. “You’re still the one who has to keep it all together.” We kept moving back across the house.
“You’re right,” I said, letting out a sigh. “And the plot thickens. There’s something else.” I told her the assignment Peter had given me.
“Really?” Dinah said with a laugh. “After all of his fussing at you, claiming it was embarrassing that you kept getting involved in murder investigations.” We’d arrived in the kitchen and picked up the plates of food and I suggested we go to the dining room.
“There’s still more. I have to be incognito so the wife of the man he’s considering as an investor won’t see my connection to Peter. So, I’ll be Molly Aronson to them. Peter is confident that Gabby hasn’t talked about him to the group.” I shook my head, thinking of how sad it was the way things had turned out with them.
Dinah brightened. “I love the idea of going undercover and sneaking around. Let me know if you need a sidekick or you want to play our Sherlock Holmes game.” I promised I would do both. We’d created the Sherlock Holmes game trying to see what we could infer from information we had. It was fun and we actually had figured things out that way. “Do you think Peter has an inkling about what they could be hiding.”
I shook my head. “He thinks there’s nothing there. He just wants to be sure.” We had been talking so much we’d neglected the food and finally dug in. I offered Dinah seconds but she refused, but not to the chocolate cake I’d noticed in the refrigerator. I put on a pot of coffee, which brewed while I served up the cake.
“Yum,” my friend said when I returned with the cake and coffee.
“And that isn’t even all of it,” I said as I sat back down. “I had to tell an author we were changing her event and Adele played a mystery game with me, saying she needed my help on something and left me hanging about the details.” I decided the cake needed whipped cream and went to the kitchen to get it.
“I’m sure we will hear all about it at the Hooker gathering,” Dinah said. I gave both pieces of cake a squirt and then added some to our cups of coffee.
“I’m kind of glad to have all this on my plate,” I said. “It’s been kind of dull and quiet at my place. No surprise—my mother didn’t miss the opportunity to remind me how I had ruined things.”
“Have you ever thought about calling him?” my friend said.
“Him, who?” I said.
“Mason,” Dinah said and looked at me to read my expression.
I probably appeared panicked at the thought. “Are you kidding. What would I say? I’m sorry I called it off with you the night before we were to fly off to a new life together so I could stay with Barry Greenberg, who I’d had an on and mostly off relationship with, because he claimed I was the love of his life.”
“When you put it like that,” Dinah said. “But does he even know how things turned out?”
“Mason would probably think I’d gotten my just rewards. And I probably did.” An image of him flitted through my mind. I saw his smile and the warmth in his eyes. He was wearing his favorite Hawaiian shirt and jeans and holding his toy fox terrier, Spike. He was a successful attorney, was charming and fun. He had attempted to redeem himself after all the years of getting off celebrity clients who probably had done the misdeeds, by spending time working pro bono getting new trials for the wrongfully convicted. He was divorced and at first had only been interested in a casual relationship, but eventually he realized that wasn’t enough and wanted us to get married.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure he has moved on and probably found a whole line of women who want what he has to offer. Peter developed a sort of business friendship with him and I think they still speak.
Dinah was the only one I’d told exactly what had happened with Barry. All my mother seemed concerned about was that I had messed things up with Mason. He fit in with my family and she had always liked him and disliked Barry. I was never sure if it was because Barry was a homicide detective or if it was personal. Now I wondered if her disapproval had been a reason I had gone with Barry. Could I really have been that immature?
I thought over what had happened for the umpteenth time. How Barry and I had run off to Hawaii. We’d stayed at a resort on the Big Island and it had just been the two of us for the first time. He didn’t get called away on a homicide or disappear to follow up on some evidence. We had breakfast on the balcony of our room, lounged on the beach and did tourist things like going to a coffee plantation in the cloud forest. It was two weeks of pure fantasy.
But as soon as we got home the bubble burst and it was back to real life. Barry got a homicide the first night and disappeared for days. The only difference was that he remembered to text me a few times. When he was off on a case, he forgot about everything and everyone else. When he finally resurfaced, we had a long talk. Despite the feelings we had for each other, it wasn’t going to work out. He couldn’t change and I couldn’t live with the way he was.
“I have my job, you, my other friends,” I said, smiling at Dinah. “The Hookers and even Adele with all her craziness. Now I have Marlowe and a mystery to solve, too. I wouldn’t have time for anyone anyway.”
“There you go then,” Dinah said, even though I doubted she really agreed.
Chapter Four
When I left for the bookstore the next morning, the She La Las were making space in the living room to practice their new dance routine. Peter had gotten a playpen delivered and it was in the corner of the living room, where Marlowe could watch the dance moves. Samuel’s coworker from the coffee place, Beth, was there to audition as a babysitter. My father had brought fresh bagels along with an assortment of cream cheeses and some treats for Marlowe. There were more boxes of diapers, formula and baby bottles. Samuel had gone off to his shift at the coffee place but said he would come back in the late afternoon. Peter couldn’t promise a time, but he agreed to stop over and see his daughter sometime during the day. I went off to work feeling comfortable that Marlowe would be fine.
I made up for the time I’d lost the previous day. The signs were out for Daisy’s author event, and now it was described as Daisy Cochran in conversation with Academy Award–nominated actress and crocheter CeeCee Collins. There was a description of Daisy’s book and that she was going to be talking about her new project of podcasts that delved into some old Hollywood deaths.
I’d sent out an email blast about the event and made sure the display tables were all in order. The Tarzana Hookers were having a happy hour gathering. We all agreed that spending the late afternoon with yarn and conversation had the same mellowing effect that wine did without any of the downside. I was so looking forward to it. I was overflowing with things to talk about. That was what I loved about the group. It was about so much more than what we could create with our hooks. We had become friends, confidantes. We listened to each other and most of all cared. It was a little iffy about how much Adele cared about anything other than her own woes, but I knew she did value the companionship.
Most of the Hookers were already at the table in the yarn department when I went back there for the gathering. It had been Mrs. Shedd’s idea to add the section at the back of the store. She was always looking for ways to attract more customers by making the store a destination. It was an inviting area filled with color from the cubbies filled with yarn. There were several easy chairs for anyone who wanted to stop and knit or crochet. But the main fixture was the wood table surrounded by straight-back chairs.
CeeCee Collins had taken her seat at one end of the table and was already working on something. Her hook moved through the rosy pink yarn with only an occasional look from her. I had come a long way from when I started but still couldn’t imagine being able to crochet without paying attention.
The actress seemed to be in the midst of a disagreement with Elise Belmont. Elise’s looks were at odds with her personality. She had a bird-like voice and had what I could best describe as a vague expression. She was slender and it seemed like a gust of wind could blow her over. But she had an iron core and was aggressive and maybe a little obsessive about whatever she did. For now, it was mostly real estate. “I don’t see why I’m not part of the evening with Daisy,” Elise said with an edge to her voice. “After all, I am the one who created the kits for vampire scarves.” Elise had been fixated on the Anthony character and all things vampire. She used half double crochet stitches in the kits because she thought they looked like fangs.
“I could come up with another kit. Maybe something your character would wear,” Elise said, looking at CeeCee. “What about a little black shawl for Ophelia?”
“Dear, you really need to check with Molly about that. I’m just part of the evening, not arranging it.” She had caught sight of me in her peripheral vision and held out her arm as she turned to face me. “You must have heard what Elise said. She thinks she should be part of the evening and offered to make a kit with something for my character.”
Before I could answer, Adele chimed in. “If anyone should be part of the evening representing crochet, it should be me.” She stood up and turned model-style to show off the shawl she had wound around her shoulders. It was made in free form stitches, which meant it was like jazz crochet. Totally improvised, it went from a bunch of double crochet stitches in the back loop to treble stitches with spaces in between. The yarn changed from a bright red worsted to a thick silvery textured yarn with sequins and then to a royal blue and finally a variegated yarn that went from pale to dark green.
“The sign said Daisy is going to talk about some podcasts she’s doing,” Rhoda Klein said. She had a thick New York accent and a blunt personality. She dressed for comfort, which meant all her pants had elastic in the waistband and her footwear was mostly Crocs. “I think people are going to want to hear about that more than vampire movie crochet kits. I know I’d be more interested in what Daisy has to say. I wonder who the subjects of the podcast are.”
“She’s trying to move with the times,” CeeCee said. “When she was a columnist, it was all about interesting stories about celebrities. She never ruffled any feathers. But times have changed and they’re reporting terrible things like that some handsome actor was a cannibal.” CeeCee shuddered at the thought. She was dressed in a garnet-colored velour tracksuit with her blondish hair in the same simple chin-length style she’d always worn. “Without her column, Daisy has gotten kind of pushed to the wayside and I’m sure she misses being in the middle of things and she’s trying to be contemporary. She probably knows a lot of dirt. I heard her talking and it seems like she is planning to go over some old deaths with new information,” CeeCee said.
“I wonder if she’s worried about stirring up trouble for herself. It sounds like some people might have gotten away with murder, and they might not be so happy to have it brought up again,” Sheila Altman said in her soft voice. She was the youngest in the group and suffered from bouts of anxiety. She’d found that doing the most basic of crochet stitches helped relieve it and she always carried her emergency kit, as she called it. It was really just a small hank of cotton string and a J-sized hook. When she started to feel everything tightening up, she’d take out her kit, do a line of chain stitches and then single crochets back over the chains. The rhythm and repetition of movements always calmed her. She was capable of much more complex crochet and was an accomplished knitter as well. She had developed her own style of mixing blues, greens and lavender yarns and creating pieces that had the look of an impressionist painting. She sold them at the lifestyle store located down the street where she worked. This time her nerves seemed in check and she was actually working on one of the hazy-colored throws. It was crocheted, of course. There was no knitting allowed by Adele’s decree.
“I should talk to Daisy about something I’m working on,” Adele said. “She’d be perfect to hook me up with the right people.”
Just then Dinah came in with Eduardo Linnares. To say he stood out from the rest of us was an understatement. It wasn’t just that he was a man, but was also very tall with the kind of good looks you’d expect a former cover model to have. He’d cut his flowing dark hair and wore it short, but all it did was show off more of his angular face. He seemed to have an interesting relationship with his hero-like handsomeness. It was as if he recognized it, but then forgot about it and got on with his life.
