If Hooks Could Kill (2 page)

“Kelly rented out her yard to the production company.” Nanci went on to explain that Kelly’s yard was directly behind one of the houses they were using on the other block. “Not only that, but she’s signed her house up with a location service.” Nanci gritted her teeth. “She’s got dollar signs in her eyes. This isn’t her first marriage, you know. And I think it won’t be her last. That woman will do anything to make a buck. And she didn’t even consult her husband. I want to take up a petition to stop her before our street becomes like that one.” She gestured toward the street behind us.

“Kelly just doesn’t get it about rules,” Adele interjected.

Nanci nodded in agreement. “Kelly doesn’t understand about being part of a group or neighborhood. It’s all about money with her.”

I knew what Nanci was talking about. Renting out your house to a production company could bring in a nice profit. Sometime back when Charlie was alive, someone had tried to hire him to do PR for their house. Yes, a house. It had become quite a star because it was Todd Jenkins house in the family saga
The Jenkins
. It had also been used as the home of the matriarch in
Our Family and Friends
. Though a family lived there when it wasn’t being used for a show, it had been built with the idea of renting it out to productions, so the interior was designed with an open plan, which made camera setups easy. Charlie had shown me the house and I had laughed when I saw the kitchen. It was designed for cameras not for cooking. I mean, you practically needed a golf cart to bring the dishes from the dining room to the sink.

After getting an assurance that Dinah wasn’t thinking of listing her house with the location service and being noncommittal about signing any sort of petition, Nanci let us go, but I noticed she followed us as we walked up to Kelly’s house. Kelly’s place had been given an overhaul since it was originally built. Someone had taken the basic stucco house and added a second story. To me, it looked like a cream-colored box with a red-tiled roof.

Kelly answered the door with a cordless phone to her ear. I guess she was used to people just showing up at her door because even though we hadn’t called ahead she didn’t seem surprised to see us. Whenever I saw her, I thought of the phrase
cute as a button
, though the saying didn’t really make much sense. How was a button cute? But Kelly definitely was. She smiled at us and the two dimples in her cheeks appeared and then quickly disappeared when she saw Nanci lurking in the background. Kelly put her hand over the phone as Nanci fussed about the truck in the driveway and insisted that it was ruining her view. Kelly listened with a tired sigh; clearly she’d heard this before. “It
is
my driveway,” Kelly reminded Nanci in a pointed tone.

Nanci made a huffing sound, turned abruptly and left. The cuteness came back into Kelly’s face, and while she apologized for the interruption to whoever she was talking to on the phone, she gestured for us to come in. Her chestnut brown ponytail swung from side to side as she led the way. The beige capri pants and loose ivory linen top were casual, but something in the fit and the texture of the fabric said expensive. Still listening to the phone call, she pointed to some small brightly colored blocks in a box and mouthed
watch out
.

Not only did Adele watch out, she picked up the box and examined the side. She pushed it on me with a knowing nod. The front had the words LUGO Blocks printed in big letters and showed some scary looking pictures of things you could build. Whoever had written the copy clearly wasn’t too good with English. Did anyone really say, “One thousand and one funs,” or “Let’s block”?

As Kelly hung up, she saw me reading the box and made a disparaging sound. “Sorry about the blocks. My kids were here last week and Dan brought the blocks home from the store for them. He doesn’t understand that kids care about brands. LUGO?” she said with a snort. The phone rang in her hand and she went to answer it. “Go on into my workroom. I’ll be in there in a minute.” She put the phone to her ear as the three of us went in the direction she’d pointed. Adele pressed ahead mumbling something about wanting to see if there were any crochet supplies.

Dinah pointed at the “No Kids Allowed” sign on the door and gave me a quizzical look. Dinah was all about teaching kids and young adults how to behave, not excluding them. We passed through the door into a large room at the back of the house. A sliding glass door looked out on the backyard, and there were the men we’d seen before, walking around the yard measuring things.

“Hmm, let’s just see what she’s got,” Adele said as her hat brim flopped in front of her face. She lifted it away from her eyes and quickly began to look around the room.

I was less concerned about finding proof that Kelly really crocheted than with checking out the whole room. We all loved seeing each other’s craft rooms, hoping they’d be as messy and yarn filled as our own.

Kelly’s was neither a mess like mine, with bags of yarn all over the place threatening to trip anyone who walked in without watching their step, nor super perfect looking like the ones I’d seen that were set up like yarn stores. Kelly seemed to favor plastic bins over shelves or cubbies. There were piles of them along the wall and Adele rushed toward one to check the contents. She seemed disappointed when the first one she opened contained yarn. And not just any yarn. When Adele held up a handful of skeins, I recognized the labels as high-end expensive yarn.

The room had a different feeling than what I’d gotten in the rest of the house, where the furniture seemed modest and utilitarian. The living room couch and chairs were plain and could probably live up to the abuse of the assorted kids who stayed there. But Kelly’s crafting room was filled with nice things. There was artwork on the walls and all the furnishings were tasteful and eclectic. Her computer sat on a beautifully refinished library table and the Victorian dining chair pushed into it had a dusty rose cushion to soften the back. A Victorian-style love seat was covered in the same dusty rose material. An old trunk served as a table in front of the love seat and held a silver tray with a silver tea service. I guessed that the Mission-style easy chair was Kelly’s seat of choice judging by the facedown magazine on the small table next to it and the full-spectrum floor lamp arranged to illuminate it. I was admiring the doll-size figure of a knight next to a small silver bowl of dried rose petals when Kelly came in the room.

“You found my knight in shining armor,” she said with a smile. Adele let go of the lid of the plastic bin she was snooping in and turned quickly, no doubt to hide what she’d been doing. The brim of her hat flapped down over her face blocking her view, and Adele suddenly lost her balance and whirled across the room. The burst of wind from her movement flipped the brim back up and Adele reached out to steady herself and almost knocked over a lamp with a leaded glass shade sitting on the end of the computer table. I grabbed the brass base just in time to steady it and knocked a small book to the floor instead. I replaced the book, noting it was some kind of guide to coins.

“That glass shade wouldn’t have taken a tumble well,” I said. When I asked about the Tiffany-style lamp, Kelly laughed and said it was just a copy. “Just like everything else in here,” she said, making a sweeping gesture with her arm. “Is there a reason for your visit?”

I noticed that one of the men had set a potted feathery palm tree in front of the sliding glass door. The other man looked at it and shook his head. The first man pulled it away.

Before Adele could stick her foot in her mouth, I told Kelly we’d come to pick up anything she’d made for our booth at the Jungle Days Fair. Kelly’s phone rang, interrupting us. She answered it and listened for a moment before turning to the group.

“I have to go pick up my kids and take them to their father’s house. I still have a little finishing to do with the pieces I made. I’m really coming to the group meeting tomorrow. I’ll bring everything in then.” She ushered us toward the door. “I promise.”

When we got outside, Adele gave Dinah and me a knowing glance. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

C
HAPTER
2

“That was a waste of time,” Adele said as we walked into Shedd & Royal. The bookstore seemed abuzz with business and Mrs. Shedd was standing at the front near the cashier station watching the activity with a big smile. Dinah had left us when we passed her house. She was teaching summer school and had to get her things together.

“At least you believe Kelly crochets now,” I said.

Adele rolled her eyes with consternation. “Pink, I just saw some skeins of yarn, which doesn’t prove a thing. I still say she’s a crochet pretender. And she was sure in a rush to get rid of us.”

“She had to pick up her kids and we did arrive unannounced,” I said.

“Watch, if she does come to the meeting tomorrow, she’ll have another excuse.”

It was useless to argue with Adele. Crochet pretender? Adele was too much.

“I hope they stay forever,” Mrs. Shedd said, gesturing toward the crowd in the café and bookstore. I knew the
they
she was referring to was the
L.A. 911
production.

The production had set up shop a little over a week ago and was using the whole area. I’d heard they were filming a number of episodes and would be there for weeks. It looked like Mrs. Shedd was going to get her wish, for a while anyway.

“If it weren’t for my Eric,” Adele said. “Molly might have messed all that up for you. She almost got arrested.” Adele waited a beat before she added “Again.”

There was no use denying it. I did seem to walk into trouble a lot, though it was hardly intentional. Mrs. Shedd gave me a stern look.

“I already heard about the incident,” my boss said. “Molly, please don’t ruffle their feathers. We don’t want to chase their business away.” She watched two people as they headed for the cashier each holding several books. “In fact, we want to do the opposite. We want to make them feel at home.”

Adele mumbled something about spreading the word to the crew. “Everybody knows me, thanks to Eric,” she said before heading to her domain. I watched as she made her way across the bookstore to the kids’ department, greeting people from the production with nods and pointed fingers in what she seemed to think was some sort of hip gesture.

Was I the only one who saw that Adele got puzzled stares in return? “Mrs. Shedd, I promise I’ll be good,” I said before moving on. I know she’d told me I could call her Pamela and Mr. Royal, her partner, Joshua, but it felt too weird to change after all this time of calling them by their last names.

When I glanced toward the entrance of the café, I noticed the actor who’d played the homicide detective I’d tried to save had come in. He was carrying a cup with a fluff of white foam on top. Our eyes met as he got closer and his lips curved into a teasing smile.

“I suppose I should thank you,” he said. “I heard you were trying to save me from him.” He pointed toward the actor who’d had the gun. I barely recognized him now. He’d taken off the hooded sweatshirt and didn’t appear threatening at all as he laughed and talked to one of the extras. It must have been a relief to get out of the jacket. Summers in the Valley always sizzled, but lately it had been hovering around one hundred. It was dry heat, but still one hundred was hot however you looked at it. “I don’t think we’ve met. After what you did, it seems like I ought to know your name. North Adams,” he said, holding out his hand. He was still wearing his costume of a suit and dress shirt, but his demeanor had changed. Gone was the weary cop face, and now he seemed affable and relaxed.

“Molly Pink,” I said, with an embarrassed flutter of my eyes. Of course, I’d recognized him without the introduction. North Adams was a well-known actor who’d been in a number of successful series over the years. I liked the sprinkling of gray in his dark hair and I suspected it was planned by some stylist to make him look serious. When he was younger his features had been almost too even and too handsome. But time had put some character in his face. Still the azure blue eyes were startling in person. His head was slightly too big for the rest of his body, but that seemed common in actors. I guessed that abnormality made them appear better on camera. “I don’t usually go around tackling people. I am truly sorry and I hope it didn’t cause you a lot of delays.” I hadn’t realized that Adele had come out of the kids’ area and was standing directly behind me.

“It was because of what happened to her boyfriend,” Adele said. “Correct that to the person who was her boyfriend.”

I had taken offense at the “boyfriend” title the whole time Barry and I had been involved. It just sounded too sock hopish for a man in his fifties—the same way saying we were dating sounded silly. But now I just let it go. It was irrelevant. I heard Adele begin to tell the story of what happened. Dinah had just offered the broad strokes when she tried to smooth things over at the shoot, but Adele was going into every detail and I really didn’t want to stand there and hear it again.

Without a backward glance I escaped into the yarn department and started straightening the skeins that had been left all over. It was surprising that none of the Hookers were hanging out at the table, but I was just as glad for the peace. I noticed the crowd from the production company begin to thin out, so I was surprised when North Adams walked into the yarn area.

“Now I understand,” he said with sincerity in his voice. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“What exactly did Adele tell you?” I said as he turned to go.

“Everything. Maybe even too many personal details,” he said before he left.

C
HAPTER
3

I was surprised at what Mason Fields said when he called suggesting we get dinner. Well, I wasn’t surprised about the dinner part. We had been doing that a lot lately. But he said he had some kind of problem. Mason had always been the person who fixed problems. If he’d had any before, he’d never told me about them. But then our relationship was a little odd.

I liked to think of us as friends, though since I’d broken up with Barry, Mason had been trying to knock it up a notch—to what, friends with benefits? It was hard to tell exactly because Mason compartmentalized his life. Other than knowing he was divorced and had two kids, his family had always been off limits to me. In fact that had been the stumbling block to us having more than a friendship before. While we both agreed we weren’t looking to get married, I needed a little more than he seemed willing to offer. Mason was in the middle of my life, but I felt like he kept me on the sidelines of his.

When he wasn’t spending time with me, Mason was a top-flight attorney to the stars. He was the one naughty celebrities turned to to get out of trouble. Mason was very good at getting people out of trouble. He’d done it for me a number of times.

With the summer days still long, it wasn’t completely dark when I walked out of Shedd & Royal. The evening had cooled off only slightly and the air still felt balmy. I drove the greenmobile home. I was beginning to see my son’s point about the car. It was a 1993 190E Mercedes in a color I called teal green and while I thought of it as a classic car, it was beginning to show its age. I left it in the driveway and didn’t go in my house. To go in was to get sucked into a vortex of animals and things to take care of and never get out and I could see Mason had parked on the street and was leaning against his car, checking his BlackBerry. He put it away as soon as I got close, and his face broke out into a happy grin before he hugged me in greeting.

He was still dressed in his work clothes. The light color of the taupe suit made it seem summery. All of his suits were custom tailored and made out of a fine wool that draped perfectly. His blue dress shirt had the collar opened. As usual a lock of his dark hair had fallen across his forehead. I always thought it made him look earnest and hardworking. And I thought the sprinkling of gray made him look distinguished.

“What’s up?” I said as I got in the car. “You said you had a problem.” I might have seemed a little too eager, but it was the first time he was letting me into his life.

“It can wait,” he said as he steered the car onto the street. “Tell me about your day. I could use a little diversion.”

I made a face. Was he backing down? But then I fell for the bait. I mean, who doesn’t want to talk about their day?

We ended up at a neighborhood Italian restaurant. Tarzanians had been eating there for decades thanks to the good food and friendly atmosphere. We took a table by the window and picked up our menus. I didn’t know why I bothered looking at mine. Mason always did the ordering. He knew what I liked better than I did.

When the waiter came by, Mason ordered a Caesar salad for two. They made their own dressing and it was delicious. When Mason ordered several appetizers for us to share, it was like he’d read my mind. With the hot weather and late hour, I didn’t feel like anything too heavy.

The waiter had just brought us a basket of hot homemade bread and I was pouring some olive oil on my bread plate, when I noticed someone come in from the back. Kelly walked through the tables, up to the counter, obviously there for food to go. I started to wave, but she didn’t see me and I let it go.

“You know her?” Mason said.

“Not exactly,” I answered. I started to explain about going to her house, but then realized it was better to start at the beginning of the whole thing. Mason’s eyes widened when he heard about me trying to tackle the actor. Then he laughed.

“I wish I’d been there for that. Anybody I know in the scene?” The Caesar salad had come, and he divided it up on our plates, and asked for fresh pepper.

“I don’t know the name of the actor I tackled, but North Adams was the guy I was trying to save.”

Mason nodded. “He’s a client of the law firm. I know him from charity events and such, but he’s never needed my services. At least, not so far.”

I mentioned our real destination had been Kelly’s. “There’s something weird there,” I said. Mason’s grin widened.

“Great. I love it when you play detective.” I rolled my eyes in response. But after being involved in solving a number of murders, I’d developed some skills. I had started to notice things more and infer things from them. I did it at the grocery store all the time and tried to figure out what the people were shopping for by what they were buying. Like the time I figured out someone was having a barbecue and one of the guests was a vegetarian because they had a bag of charcoal brickets, six Spencer steaks, and one frozen vegetarian entree. I’d actually asked the man and he’d told me I was right.

Mason laughed when I told him about the LUGOs. “I saw the store,” he said vaguely gesturing toward the street. “How’s it doing?”

“I think they’re struggling. The neighbor mentioned Kelly would do anything to make some money.”

“So tell me Sherlock what did you notice about the Hollar for a Dollar people’s house?”

It had gotten to be kind of a game with us. I told him about Kelly’s room and how it seemed like a haven. “It was different from the rest of the house and had nicer furniture and doodads.” I described the refinished library table she had her computer on. I mentioned that I’d seen a chair like her Mission-styled one in a store for a couple of thousand. “Adele knocked into a leaded glass lamp. Even the modern copies of those aren’t cheap. I wouldn’t think much of it if the rest of the house, or what I saw of it, went with the things in her room.” I stopped for a moment and in my mind’s eye, I was seeing it again. “And it wasn’t just the furniture. It was the yarn, too.”

Mason knew what a mess my craft room was. More than once he’d almost skidded across the floor after getting his fancy shoes caught in a grocery bag full of yarn. “No bags of any kind,” I said. Her stuff was all in plastic bins stacked neatly against the wall. I pictured Adele opening one of them and visualized the yarn she’d held up. “I recognized the brands. It was all pricey stuff.” Mason still looked a little puzzled.

“The point is, instead of a hodgepodge of stuff like the rest of us have, Kelly’s looked like stock. She had a whole container of the same kind of yarn.” Mason kind of shrugged and urged me on.

“So what do you think it means?’

“I don’t know. We don’t even know if she really crochets or is a crochet pretender as Adele called her. Either way, it seems odd she would invest so much money in yarn. It was funny, too, that she didn’t have any samples of her work sitting in the room.”

“So maybe Adele is right and she’s a fake. A fake with fancy taste,” Mason said.

“What’s the difference if she is or isn’t, anyway,” I said. We’d started on the thick slices of fresh mozzarella with tomatoes and basil, along with the stuffed mushrooms and grilled asparagus done in garlic and olive oil. “Now you tell me
your
problem.”

Mason’s face changed. The grin faded and he set down his fork. He took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. “You know my daughter is getting married and you know the wedding invitations have gone out.” He watched as I nodded.

As I was agreeing, I was thinking that I didn’t even know either of his daughters’ names. He just called them my youngest and my oldest. And about those invitations— I hadn’t gotten one. I had dropped enough hints, but he’d shrugged them all off. As far as I was concerned not getting invited to the wedding was a definite sign our relationship shouldn’t be moving to the next level.

“I just found out the wedding planner declared bankruptcy. It seems her assistant was embezzling money and never paid the deposit on the ballroom at the Belle Vista hotel, which is listed on the wedding invitations. No deposits were paid for flowers, food, the cake, the band . . .” His voice trailed off and I waited for him to say more. He looked at me intently. “Do you know what that means?”

I had a pretty good idea, but I let him say it. “It means we have no location for the wedding. It means two hundred or so guests are going to show up and find somebody else having a birthday party in that ballroom. The food and the rest of it, is fixable. But finding a location at the last minute”—Mason threw up his hands. “And here is the worst part—my ex has known this for weeks. She was going to take care of it and then tell me. Take care of it?” His voice started to rise. “Jaimee took care of it all right,” he said sarcastically. “If she’d told me when she first found out, we might have found another place. But now? It’s just about impossible.”

I’d never seen Mason so upset. Instinctively, I put my hand on his as a sign of sympathy. He squeezed it and sighed. “Sunshine, I knew you would understand.” So now I at least knew his ex-wife’s name. And I began to wonder about all the stuff he’d told me about them having an amicable divorce.

“I could get buses to take the guest somewhere, if we had a somewhere to take them.” He picked up his fork, then dropped it in frustration. “I could just kill my wife.”

He said it rather loudly and several diners looked toward us with surprise.

Then Mason pulled himself together and asked if I wanted cheesecake. When I nodded, he ordered us coffees and a piece of cheesecake with extra strawberries to share. “I’m sorry for venting this on you. I suppose you’ve figured this isn’t the first time my ex has made a mess of things and dropped them in my lap to fix.”

“So your wife’s name is Jaimee,” I said with a teasing smile. “My first peek behind the curtain. How about telling me your daughters’ names instead of calling them the youngest and oldest.” I’d gotten through to Mason and his mouth slipped into a grin as his anger dissipated.

“Thursday is the one getting married and her sister’s name is Brooklyn.”

“Thursday?” I said.

“It was Jaimee’s idea to give her a unique name.” He rolled his eyes. “And Thursday is happy with her name. Go figure that.”

“See, it isn’t so hard to let me into your life.”

Mason was back to his usual self and chuckled. “I have been keeping my family separate for so long—it takes time to change. I have to take baby steps,” he said. “I suppose you want to know why we got a divorce.”

From what he’d just said about Jaimee, it wasn’t too hard to figure, but I let him explain anyway. It was another baby step and I was glad he was taking it.

“For a long time I was all work, work, work and we barely spent any time together,” he said. “Then, when my daughters went off to college and I finally had younger lawyers working for me to handle of lot of the grunt work, I started spending more time with Jaimee.” He shook his head with disbelief. “I’m not sure if she changed or if I just didn’t know her in the first place, but I started not wanting to go home.” He beamed a big smile my way. “She wasn’t any fun like you are.”

After he paid the check, we walked down Ventura Boulevard holding hands. All the stores on the main street were closed and we looked in at the illuminated display windows as we headed back to the bookstore parking lot where Mason had left his car. Traffic had thinned out and the air had gotten the typical evening chill that made the summer weather so tolerable. You always needed a blanket at night and could turn off the air-conditioning and throw open the windows.

Mason pulled the car in front of my house and cut the motor. “Shall I come in?”

He’d been asking me that same question every time he brought me home and the answer had always been the same. We both stared at the front of my house and I said something about it not being a good idea.

“When?” he said, which surprised me. He’d never pushed before. I made a helpless shrug.

“When he’s gone,” I said. “I know what you’re thinking. I should have my head examined.” I looked toward the front window and just then I saw a familiar form standing in front of it, peering out.