You Better Knot Die
Page 22
It seemed like I was leaving the bookstore in the middle of working, but Mrs. Shedd was agreeable when I explained there were more scarf kits involved. She’d seen them fly off the table and recognized a good source of revenue when she saw one.
“Molly, thank you for coming to help me,” Elise said. For the first time since everything had started with Bradley, there was a light in her eyes. She led the way to her car.
The Belmont’s house was in a development called Braemar and the houses were built on the lower part of the Santa Monica Mountains. Elise was chatting a mile a minute. Making the kits had made her feel a part of the whole Anthony phenomena. “I should present a finished scarf to the author at the launch party,” she said, almost in a swoon. “You know what they say about writers writing about what they know,” she said with a wink.
She went on and on and I had a nervous stomach. I felt terrible using Elise, but I couldn’t ignore what I knew. I had to see if Logan’s bike tire matched my picture. I felt around in my purse to make sure the print of the photo was there.
Elise hit a button on the sun visor and the garage door lifted and she drove in. Between thanking me and telling me how this was a new start for her, she hadn’t stopped talking since we’d gotten in the car.
I had formulated a plan. It wasn’t very sophisticated, but I thought it would work. Elise got out of the car and led me through the door into the house. The garage door rumbled shut behind us. Like most tracts, the houses in Braemar all had similar designs when they were first built. But over time people had remodeled and added on. I noted that the exterior of the Belmont’s still had its original look and, as expected, the door in the garage went to the service porch. Elise led me in through the kitchen. This was the room Logan had raved about redoing with the first money he’d made from Bradley’s supposed investments. When Bradley handed over a large profit in a short amount of time, Logan had believed Bradley really did have some special method of buying and selling securities. It was the old proof-was-in-the-pudding thing. Who could blame him for believing in Bradley?
I had a hard time not shaking my head at how things had turned out as we passed the industrial-size built-in stainless-steel refrigerator and restaurant-quality stove. The counters were all rosy-toned granite and there was a center island with its own small sink. The rosy tone was picked up in the tiled floor. A greenhouse window featured glass shelves with an herb garden. Elise barely looked at the room.
I was doing my best to appear calm, but the farther into the house we went, the more tense I got. In my mind, I kept practicing the lines I’d come up with, hoping they would sound natural.
The house was quiet and I was relieved that Logan didn’t seem to be there. After the encounter in Le Grande Fromage, who knew how he would react to seeing me. Particularly if he had killed Bradley. Once somebody had killed one person, would it be so hard to kill another?
Elise took me upstairs to their second den. She’d taken the chance that the kits would sell and had gotten enough supplies to make more. She showed me the long table laid out with black, white and crimson yarn, hooks, plastic bags and directions. At the end she had sheets of labels printed with Vampire Scarf Kit.
“How many do you think we should make?” she said, pulling another chair up to the table. Here was my dilemma. I really did want to help her make up some kits, but I wanted to check on the bike and get it over with. I made a quick decision and as I pretended to be getting ready to sit down, I felt my shoulder and acted as though something was missing.
“My purse,” I said as if chiding myself for my forgetfulness. “I must have left it in the car.” I let go of the chair. “I’ll just go get it.”
“You can leave it there. The garage door is shut. Nobody’s going to bother it.” Elise said. She pushed the chair out for me. “Maybe we can make an assembly line.”
I hesitated. “My cell phone,” I said in a voice that was a little too excited. “That’s it. I need my phone. I’m expecting a call. It’ll just take a minute.” I was out the doorway and to the stairs before she had time to stop me. I backtracked across the house and pulled open the door on the service porch and went into the garage. With the garage door shut, it was completely dark. I felt along the wall until I located a switch and, hoping it was a light, flipped it.
An overhead light came on and illuminated the interior. My first move was to get my purse and the sheet with the print of the photo. The garage was perfectly organized. Elise had parked on her side of the line painted in the floor, leaving space for another car. Unlike my garage that had stuff all over, this one had a wall of cabinets and closets. I began opening the larger doors. This was taking too long and I was afraid Elise would come in at any second and wonder what I was doing. The third door I opened was the charm. The bike was hanging on the wall. The front tire was easy to see. I unfolded the photograph and was holding it up to compare to the tire when I heard a rumble as the garage door began to open.
CHAPTER 25
“OH MY GOD,” DINAH SAID. THEN SHE SAID IT again. “Molly, are you okay? Logan didn’t hurt you, did he?” Dinah had been my first call when I got back to the bookstore.
“All I can say is I’m glad they put all their money into a fancy kitchen instead of replacing their slow-moving garage door. I had managed to shut the closet door while the door was still going up. Logan started to pull in, then hit the brakes. Even through the windshield, I could see he was glaring at me. When he got out of the car, he eyed me suspiciously and glanced around the inside of the garage as if he was looking for something amiss.”
“I’d have made a run for it,” Dinah said.
“That would have been the worst thing to do. It would be like admitting you were doing something you weren’t supposed to,” I said.
“Yeah, but I’d be safe,” Dinah offered and I said I saw her point.
“My heart was in overdrive, but I tried to put on a care-free smile. Before he could ask me what I was doing there, I held up my purse and said I’d left it in Elise’s car. I said wasn’t it wonderful about the scarves. I ignored his blank expression and went on and on about what a big success they were at the bookstore. By now it was pretty obvious he didn’t know what I was talking about and the scarf enterprise was solely Elise’s idea. A moment later Elise joined us, wondering what had happened to me.” I stopped like it was the end of the story.
“And then ...” Dinah prompted.
“I went back and helped her make up some more kits and she drove me back to Shedd and Royal.”
“So then you never got a chance to compare his bike tires to the photo of the imprint,” Dinah said with a sigh.
“Oh, but I did.”
“Well?” Dinah said.
“He’s not the guy. His tires were narrower than the photo.” I added that I had talked to Mr. Royal and that he had admitted to having a mountain bike and he offered to bring it in to show me.
“I thought you were going to wait for me and we’d check out the tire-picture connection together.” Dinah sounded disappointed, but I explained I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
“I promise—you’re in on the next bike that gets checked,” I said, trying to soothe her. “The only other mountain-bike owner slash person cheated by Bradley we know of is Nicholas,” I said. Dinah mentioned the obvious problem. We didn’t know Nicholas very well, so how we could we invite ourselves over to check out his bike. We agreed we’d both try to come up with a solution and meet later at Dinah’s house to discuss.
I called the woman who put the hold on the three kits and she came in within a half an hour and bought them. She said she’d definitely be joining the Hookers. In the midst of the cheerful holiday shoppers, Adele came in out of sorts. Her eyes bulged when she saw the action with the vampire scarves. “I could have done that,” she said. “I could have made the exact same pattern.”
“But you didn’t,” I said. “Be happy for Elise; with all the downs she’s had lately, she finally has a bright spot. Sh
e’s already thinking of coming up with other vampire-related crochet kits.”
“She’s not the only one with a down,” Adele grumbled. She really didn’t seem to be her usual self. Even her clothes weren’t normal. I’d never seen Adele look so plain. The only holiday decoration that adorned the white turtleneck she wore over blue jeans was a little crocheted wreath with two red balls hanging down.
Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and asked what the problem was, hoping she wouldn’t give me too much information. “I’m afraid William might not be the author of the Anthony books,” she said.
I couldn’t help myself and asked what had changed her mind. “He told me he has to go out of town in a couple of days. The launch party is just around the corner. The author wouldn’t be going on a trip right before the biggest night of his life.”
“Where’s he going?” I asked, hoping I could find something reassuring in his destination. Adele was always difficult, but a depressed Adele was even worse. She tended to walk around making very loud plaintive sighs.
“It’s research for his next book. He said something about there being only a small window of time to see an exhibit in Miami. He said he wanted me to come with, but he knew I couldn’t take the time off because of the holidays and all.”
“He could still be A. J. Kowalski,” I said. “He’s going to be back by the launch party, isn’t he?” Adele nodded. “Well, there you go.” Adele suddenly brightened at my words and hugged me a little too tight.
“Pink, thanks. That’s what best friends are for.” She instantly straightened and took some more holiday decorations out of her pocket and began pinning them on her top.
Sheila must have been on a break from her job as receptionist at the gym. She was at the back working on something. Even from a distance I could see she was working in a different palette. Everything she’d made to sell before was in blues combined with greens and lavenders. Whatever she was working on today was all about red. I had a few finished swatches that needed to be hung and I went back there.
I fingered the ball of rusty red fuzzy yarn in front of her. “What’s up with the new colors?” It looked like she was working on a shawl and I could see where she’d mixed in some fun fur yarn that was red flecked with gold.
“Nicholas suggested I do something in warmer colors,” she said, continuing to crochet. “I think it’s turning out nicely.” She held it up and draped it over her shoulder.
“I think he’s onto something. At this time of year it’s nice to have bright and warm colors.” I glanced out the window. The colors of the shawl did seem to cheer up the cold gray day. Because we usually had so much sun, the dark days seemed even more dreary.
It was a pleasure to see how Sheila’s confidence had surged. She still had plenty of tense moments, but she seemed to handle them much better.
I didn’t think talking to Sheila about Nicholas interfered with my promise to Dinah to include her in my next caper. This was just about getting background.
I realized I really knew very little about him. Sure, I’d seen him a lot and had snippets of conversations, but I didn’t even know if he lived in Tarzana. It wasn’t hard to get Sheila to talk about him. After the experience she’d had selling her creations by consignment at another store, she appreciated Nicholas.
“He’s a gentleman in every sense of the word,” Sheila said. It wasn’t just that he’d been complimentary of her work and very fair about what he paid her—it was his whole manner. “Did you ever notice how he really listens to people?” she asked.
“It sounds like you have a thing for him,” I said. I’d never heard her say as much about anybody before. I regretted the comment almost as soon as I’d said it. Sheila stiffened and the color rose in her face. Her breath changed, too, and I recognized she’d gone into anxiety mode.
“It’s not like that,” she stammered. She took a deep breath and let her stomach balloon out before she expelled the breath slowly. She reached in her purse and took out a sandwich-size plastic bag she always carried with her emergency crochet kit. It held a size J hook and some cotton yarn that had been crocheted and ripped a bunch of times. She made a slipknot and began a chain. She made the loops big and loose and went back over them with single crochet stitches.
“I didn’t realize I was coming across that way,” she said with a worried look. “I hope Nicholas doesn’t think I’m coming on to him.” She kept crocheting and her stitches were all over the place, but since it didn’t matter, it began to have a calming effect. “I don’t want to mess things up with him. He’s really paying me well for my pieces.” She took some more deep breaths and moved on to another row. “I don’t think Nicholas would ever think of me that way. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, or at least he’s never mentioned one to me. I don’t know if there’s room for anything besides that store in his life. He’s there practically all the time.”
I asked her if she knew where he lived. By now she’d stopped crocheting with the cotton and ripped out all the stitches and put it away. She answered without hesitation. “He has a small apartment, but I think he barely spends any time there. He’s always at the store. I called his cell the other night about bringing over some more pieces and he had me bring them to the store. It was hours after it had closed.”
“Really?” I said. The bookstore was always open later than Luxe and I’d gone past the store lots of time after its closing and it always looked dark and deserted. When I mentioned that, she said he’d told her to knock on the glass door. She’d seen him come from the back.
“Did you ever see what was back there?” I asked, remembering how Dinah and I had wondered about the walled-off area. She shook her head.
Eduardo stepped up to the table. “Ladies,” he said in his rich deep voice. He took out several plain wool scarves to leave for the collection we were making. CeeCee and her companion, Tony, were going to bring them to a shelter on Christmas Eve. A vampire scarf in progress had gotten twisted with one of the scarves and landed on the table.
He picked it up quickly and put it back in his leather tote. “It’s for my girlfriend. She’s a big Anthony fan,” he said. “A vampire who crochets,” he said with a low laugh.
Even in jeans and a black sweater Eduardo looked like he’d stepped off the cover of some romance novel with a title like Kiss Me, Touch Me, Thrill Me. It occurred to me he probably knew more about Nicholas than I did, too. I recalled the way Nicholas had greeted him when Eduardo came into Luxe. They seemed to be friends.
I commented that we’d just been talking about Nicholas. Eduardo was generally quiet during the Hookers’ meetings. So I was surprised at how much he opened up about Nicholas. Apparently after years in advertising, Nicholas had left it behind and opened the store. It had cost him all his friends and his wife, who thought he was crazy to give up a big job to take a chance on a long shot. “The guy’s had some hard times. It’s not easy when you take a chance on something.”
“Is the store doing okay?” I asked, thinking Eduardo might know.
“It’s more about his passion than profit,” Eduardo said. “He’s always upbeat when there are customers around, but I’ve seen him when he was pretty dark.”
Mrs. Shedd interrupted and seemed frantic about me helping in the front with customers. I didn’t have a chance to think about Nicholas again until I’d left the store and gone to Dinah’s. The girl across the street was going to stay with the kids while we did some holiday shopping. I had hoped to crochet presents for everyone, but I’d finally accepted time was running out. Maybe next year. Lucky for us the mall was staying open until midnight.
On the way there, I told her about the whole discussion about Nicholas.
“I think Emily does have something going on with Nicholas,” Dinah said. She reminded me that when Bradley had first gone missing, Emily’s first stop had been at Luxe. “Remember the tea she offered us?”
“Right, and she went to the store to return things when she needed money,” I said.
“And when she was trying to avoid being followed, she slipped out through the back door of Luxe.” I stopped as another thought surfaced. “Suppose she told Nicholas she was going to meet Bradley? She could have even told him where she was meeting him,” I said.
“He had motive. There’s the money he lost, and if there was something going on between him and Emily—” I stopped myself and shrugged hopelessly. “But none of it means anything if we can’t tie him to the murder. Sheila said he practically lives at the store, so I’m guessing the mountain bike is there. Maybe the afghan and knife, too.”
We’d gotten to the mall and the only investigating we did for the next couple of hours was to find a store that hadn’t sold out of the electronic juggling bear the kids wanted. Several hours and a lot of packages later, Dinah drove into the back parking lot that serviced the bookstore and the other strip of stores along Ventura. She had pulled next to the greenmobile and I started to gather my packages. I glanced up at the back of the building. It was easy to figure out what windows went with Luxe.
It was late enough that everything was closed and I wondered if Nicholas was in the back section of his shop. I pointed toward the window next to the door we’d seen Emily come out of. There seemed to be some light coming from it. Dinah turned off the motor. Our minds were so in tune, we didn’t even have to discuss it.
We got out and approached the back of the building and moved along the wall until we got to the edge of the deep-set window. My heart was pounding in anticipation as I leaned in just enough to get a peek. I leaned back quickly and Dinah nudged me.
“What did you see?” she whispered.
“Nothing. The window’s frosted.” We stepped straight back and looked up at the window. The bottom might be frosted, but it looked like the top part was clear glass. Again, no discussion was needed. Without a word, we both started looking for something in the parking lot to climb on.