To avoid the lecture I knew was coming, I changed the subject and told her I’d gotten Mason to agree to help Sheila and it turned out he was on the board of directors of the Women’s Haven.
“That man is on the board of directors of everything,” Dinah said. When I started to say something she said it for me. “I know—he has to make up for being a lawyer. What did you have for dessert?”
I told her I’d thrown together something last minute. “I sliced up some apples and mixed them with a little cinnamon sugar, then I’d covered them with a mixture of flour, brown sugar and butter and baked it for a while.”
“Sounds good,” she said.
“It was even better when I added the vanilla bean ice cream. It was the only time there was any peace. Barry and Mason had their mouths full and couldn’t spar.”
Adele arrived as I was finishing the story. She gave us a hurt look as she put down her things. “Why didn’t you come get me?” she demanded.
“You seemed busy,” I said by way of an excuse. It was true. When I’d gone past the children’s department, she seemed to be poring over something.
“I was working on the plans for the Milton Mindell author program.”
My jaw dropped. I wasn’t even used to the idea that she’d be working with me, and she was already trying to take over. She pulled out a file and started going over her plans. They began with the idea that the program should take place in her section of the store and we should do it differently this time. I put up my hand to stop her. “It’s all about what Milton wants. Not what you want or I want. He has his own plans and we just implement them.” I wondered if Mrs. Shedd knew what she was unleashing when she said Adele could work on the event.
Just then Patricia walked in with CeeCee. I had to give Patricia credit; she was persistent. She was still working on CeeCee, trying to convince her to appear in one of Benjamin’s campaign ads.
As everyone settled in, I could see that none of us had done as much on our own as we’d hope to, and CeeCee clucked her tongue in slight disapproval. CeeCee laid a finished one on the table. It was beautifully made, so perfect it looked almost machine made. I picked it up and examined the sides. They were straight, unlike mine, which kept getting wiggly.
Patricia had an impressive bag for her supplies. She showed us how she had taken a plain tote bag and attached pockets on the inside and outside. She had one for hooks and needles, and another for supplies like scissors and a tape measure, and she had made a special section to hold a skein of yarn. “I’m considering putting this in the next version of Patricia’s Perfect Hints, though once Benjamin gets elected, I’ll probably be so busy with my duties that I won’t have time to think about new editions.”
I rolled my eyes. He was running for city council, not president. Did she think she was going to be first lady of Tarzana? Patricia started to take out knitting needles, but Adele gave her the evil eye, so instead she placed an unopened packet of crochet hooks on the table. “Which one do I use?” she asked.
Adele put down her own work and pulled out a K hook from the package. Then she helped Patricia with the slip knot and showed her how to keep track of her chain stitches by making a mark on paper every time she made ten. Adele was a little condescending in her tone until Patricia reminded her that casting on for knitting was similar and she knew how to keep track of her stitches.
I glanced toward the entrance. “Where’s Sheila?”
All I got were head shakes and shrugs as answers. It wasn’t like Sheila not to show or call, and I started to worry. It distracted me from my crocheting, and when I counted my stitches, I found I had lost a bunch and the shawl was again taking on an arrow shape.
“Good work, Pink,” Adele said sarcastically as she fingered it. She turned to CeeCee. “Didn’t you show her how to keep from losing stitches?”
“Dear, why don’t you handle it?” CeeCee said in a cheery voice. Not the answer I wanted to hear. But at the same time I wanted to learn how. “Show her how to handle her stitches of despair,” CeeCee added.
“Stitches of despair?” I said, looking at my work.
“That’s what I call them. They are the stitches causing you despair,” CeeCee said, glancing up from the cream-colored shawl she was working on.
Adele grumbled to herself and told me to begin the pattern row. I was supposed to chain four, which would count as the first double crochet and a chain. Adele stopped me when I’d only chained three and told me to mark the top chain with something that looked like a plastic safety pin. Then she let me make the forth chain.
“Pink, that’s your problem. Now when you do the next row, you’ll be able to see where the last stitch goes and hopefully you won’t mess up anymore.”
Adele waited while I finished the pattern row and then told me to do the next row. She stood so close over me that the beaded fringe on the scarf she had around her head kept smacking my face. Who wouldn’t get nervous when watched like that? I ended up getting the yarn twisted in my hook and dropping it with a loud ping. Adele threw up her hands as though I were beyond help and went back to her seat.
Without her hovering, I did fine and best of all realized what I’d been doing wrong so I wouldn’t keep doing it.
And still I kept checking for Sheila.
“Here she comes,” CeeCee said. Sheila came up to the table, looking pale as skim milk.
“This is so terrible,” she said, sinking into a chair. She explained Detective Heather had been hanging around the gym asking questions about her. Her boss was upset with her, and she was worried about losing her job.
“Did Detective Heather talk to you?” I asked.
“Of course. She talked to me first. She made it seem casual, but it was like she had a script. She said one of the salespeople at the Cottage Shoppe had said I’d been coming to the store for quite a while fussing with Drew over some money I thought he owed me.” Sheila sounded distraught. “I didn’t think he owed it to me, I knew he did. But I only went there once before you all came with me. I wasn’t stalking him, like she said.” Sheila swallowed a few times. “The detective kept saying, ‘It must have really made you angry, didn’t it?’ over and over. The trouble is her saying it over and over was making me nervous, and looking nervous is like looking guilty.” Sheila put her face in her hands. “I know she thinks I did it.”
I gave Sheila Mason’s card and told her to keep it with her. I didn’t want to freak her out by telling her to call him if she got arrested. I just said he had suggested the less she say the better.
“It’s hard. That detective knows how to ask questions so you’re saying things before you even realize it.”
“What did you say?” I asked, feeling a sense of doom.
Sheila swallowed hard. “I said I might have handled the paperweight that hit him on the head.”
“Oh dear.”
CHAPTER 13
IT WAS YET ANOTHER OF THOSE COOL AND GRAY mornings so typical for this time of year as I let Blondie and Cosmo out into the backyard. I took my coffee and crochet bag and sat down at the glass table while they ran around. The forest green umbrella was folded down. There was no need for shade. This weather made both the flowers and me feel refreshed.
Peter kept suggesting I sell the house and move to a condo. I wondered if he realized that selling this house would mean he would have to keep his golf clubs, tennis rackets, skis, bicycle and sports trophies at his apartment. It was a moot point anyway, as I had no plans to take his advice. I loved my yard and house.
The gate clanged shut, and I sat up to see who’d come in. Dinah seemed agitated and was winding two scarves around her neck as she walked across the patio. Cosmo ran over and started to bark at her. Blondie merely looked at Dinah. Cosmo seemed to be teaching Blondie a lot of stuff, and I wondered if it would include barking.
“Coffee?” I said as Dinah slid into the chair next to me. She nodded with a grateful smile and took out a pair of her long earrings and began to put them on. Apparently kid-proofing her clot
hes was only for when Jeremy’s kids were present, which made me wonder where they were.
“Do you have something to go with it? Preferably something sweet and decadent.”
I mentioned I still had some dessert left over from the dinner party the night before last.
“I bet it would taste better with some of that vanilla bean ice cream.”
I laughed as I headed inside.
“Where are the kids?” I asked when I returned with a tray of coffee and the baked apple dessert topped with a generous scoop of ice cream.
Dinah sat back, stretched her legs out and sighed with a definite sense of relief. “The babysitter, again. Jeremy promised he’d be back tonight. I can’t believe I let him stick me with them this long.” She took out her crochet bag and laid it on the table next to mine.
I set the mug of coffee and plate of food in front of Dinah. “I thought you were kind of getting attached to them.”
Before she could answer Morgan came out the door. She was dressed in a creamy yellow leotard and matching tights with some kind of loose short dress over everything. She stopped by the table.
“I’m so sorry I missed the crochet group yesterday,” she said with a tinge of guilt. I saw her eyes stop on the dish in front of Dinah and offered her some. She put up her hand in an extreme “no” motion. “I’m off to the studio for a morning class.”
“You should eat something,” I said, then regretted interfering. She was a grown-up, and besides, there wasn’t a chance in the world she was going to listen to me. But I couldn’t stop myself and threw in a few more lines of how breakfast was the most important meal of the day.
She headed off, giving me the slightest of hopeless head shakes.
“If she wasn’t staying here I wouldn’t know about all this.” I leaned against the back of my chair, feeling frustrated.
“Welcome to my world. If those kids weren’t staying with me I wouldn’t know a lot of things I’d rather not know, too. Like somebody never taught them the basics—pick up your toys, go to bed when I say so, and at least try the spinach souffle.”
“I knew you were getting attached to them.”
“Don’t even say that. It is too upsetting to care and then know that Jeremy is going to be the one responsible for them. Did I tell you Mrs. About To Be Ex took off and isn’t coming back.”
She had already told me that gem, and we looked at each other with understanding. No matter what either one of us said about not getting involved and not caring, we couldn’t help it. I asked her if she’d given them any of her famous cream cheese and caviar sandwiches. It took her a moment to remember that gourmet treat she’d made for her own kids. Then she laughed.
Since there was no group meeting this morning and Dinah didn’t have a class and I didn’t have to be at the bookstore until evening for Romance Night, we were having our own little crochet gathering. I took out my shawl in progress. Now that I wasn’t dropping stitches as often and needed to unravel less, the dusty rose rectangle was beginning to resemble a shawl.
Dinah took out her forest green project. I was amazed how much she’d gotten done, especially with small children in the house.
As soon as we started crocheting, Dinah brought up Sheila and the growing case against her.
“We better hurry up with the other suspects,” Dinah said. “Sheila’s her own worst enemy. Now that they know to look for her fingerprints on the paperweight, they’ll probably try to get her to confess. I’ve seen what the cops do when they get you locked up in an interviewing room. They pretend to be your friend, like they’re going to help you if you just tell them what happened. Then they keep pushing, saying things like they know you were at the murder scene and they know you’re not telling them the whole story and maybe it was just an accident anyway. And the next thing you know, the person starts saying they did it.”
“Where did you see that?” I said, surprised.
“On TV, but it was a reality show,” Dinah said. “I’m just worried that Sheila could end up confessing to something she didn’t do.”
“You’re right. I need to find somebody else for Detective Heather to fixate on.” The dogs ran in the house, and I shivered. “It’s kind of chilly out here.”
Dinah agreed, and she gathered up her stuff, saying we were Southern California wimps. “What is it, maybe a bone-chilling sixty-seven degrees?”
Inside, Dinah sat down at the kitchen table. I left my crocheting next to her and went to get a load of laundry, so it could be washing while I worked on my shawl. That was about as close as I got to multitasking.
I carried the load to the laundry room that was just off the kitchen and dropped the pile of clothes on the floor in front of the washing machine. We continued to talk, and I started to load the things in the washer, stopping to check pockets. I picked up a pair of khakis and pulled out one of the pockets. Two balled-up no-show socks tumbled out. When I did the same to the other pocket a white crumbled ball of fabric popped out and landed on the floor.
“I recognize the socks,” I said, picking them up and putting them off to the side to be included in a load of whites. “But what’s this?” I leaned down to get a better look.
Dinah got up from the table and came next to me.
We both stared at the crumpled ball of fabric, and I got an ominous feeling.
“Why don’t you pick it up?” she said, bending a little closer.
Why don’t you pick it up?” I countered.
“It was in your pocket, so you should pick it up.” She backed away and put her hands up.
“All right,” I said finally and reached for it. I started to smooth it out, examining it as I did. There seemed to be a soft cotton center with a lot of lacy trim, but when I saw the red splotches on it, I dropped it like it was scalding.
“Is that blood?” I said, making a face.
Dinah bent over the half-crumpled ball. “There’s this stuff, phena something or other, that can tell you if it is.”
“That’s great information, but unless you happen to have some in your purse, it’s not much help,” I said.
“Sorry, I’m fresh out,” she said with a chuckle. “We could get a better look at it if it was completely flattened out.”
“This must be what I picked up in Kevin’s office.” I explained how I’d seen something white under the desk and thought it was one of my no-show socks.
“Didn’t you say you saw something white and lacy hanging off the drawer in Drew’s office when we found him in the soup?” Dinah pointed at the lacy edge. “Maybe it was this.”
“Omigod!” I shrieked. “You could be right.” Then I thought for a second. “If it was, it wasn’t the whole thing. What I saw looked like a small part of something, as if it had caught on the drawer pull and ripped.” I knelt next to the white ball. “Let me see if part of this is missing.” I went to put my hand on it but pulled back. While I needed to spread it out, I didn’t want to touch it anymore.
I got up and searched Samuel’s room for something he had as a kid. Thank heavens Samuel believed in hanging on to his stuff. The pinchy-winchy was stuck in the corner of his closet next to some old robot toys. It was a plastic claw from some cartoon show that came in handy for reaching things on high shelves. It also was perfect for picking up things you didn’t want to touch.
I grabbed an edge of the white ball of fabric with the pinchy-winchy and shook it until it opened enough to be recognizable.
“It’s a hanky,” Dinah said. She reached out to touch it and then reconsidered when her finger got near the red spots. “Though there doesn’t seem to be much space for nose blowing.”
I laid it on the kitchen counter. The center was small and appeared to be made of thin, white cotton. Most of the handkerchief was comprised of the lacy edging. I checked for missing pieces in the edging, but found it was intact.
“I guess that isn’t what you saw.”
“No, but I bet it’s somehow connected. It seems too coincidental that there wa
s a piece of something similar to it hanging off a drawer handle and this shows up under Mr. Ke—” I rolled my eyes. “Calling him Mr. Kevin sounds way too pretentious—under Kevin’s desk.”
Dinah agreed. We both studied the edging, and I said I thought it was done with crochet like the doilies on Adele’s skirt.
“It certainly looks different than the things we’ve been making with yarn.” Dinah took the pinchy-winchy and picked the hanky up by the corner, eyeing the filigree-like trim. “I can’t even see the stitches.”
I told her about the steel hooks and thin thread I’d bought when I’d gone shopping with CeeCee for the material for the shawls. When Dinah set the hanky back on the counter, I examined the cotton center where the red splotches were. That’s I when I noticed there were some flecks of red stuff on the spots. “I don’t think it’s blood,” I said, pointing. “The flecks look like tomato skin. I bet it’s tomato bisque soup.”
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