Hooking for Trouble

by Betty Hechtman

  I let out a sigh and went inside. I was feeling the wall for the kitchen light when something touched my hand. I automatically recoiled and made a move toward the back door, but the lights came on and there was a burst of noise.

  “Surprise!” a chorus of voices said. I was sprinkled with confetti and streamers and saw that a bunch of Mylar balloons that said “Happy Birthday” were stuck to the ceiling.

  Samuel came out of the crowd with a grin. “Fooled you, didn’t we?” Mason Fields was just behind him. He gave me a big hug and handed me a glass of champagne.

  I was mumbling something about his flowers and his being out of town. I was more than a little stunned. Dinah came in through the back door.

  “Now you understand why I shushed you when you were going to grumble about your birthday,” she said.

  “Thank you for keeping me from making a fool of myself,” I said, seeing that Adele and her fiancé were part of the crowd.

  My mother pushed through. She started to wish me a happy fiftieth, but stopped herself. “If you’re that old, what will people think I am?”

  The Hookers were there, along with Mrs. Shedd and her partner, Mr. Royal. My older son, Peter, was in the group, too, giving his usual look of disapproval.

  Mason and Samuel high-fived each other as they told me they’d planned the whole thing, then led me into the dining room. The table was laden with deli platters, and there was a triple berry cake from my favorite bakery. It was all a bit of a blur as I greeted everybody and accepted their good wishes.

  Boy, did I ever feel guilty for all my bad thoughts that everyone had forgotten my birthday.

  My mother pulled me aside in the kitchen, her armload of silver bracelets jangling. “I have another surprise for you,” she said. “Your father and I have decided to move back to the Valley. Samuel said we could stay here tonight, and then tomorrow we’ll move into a furnished place until we find something permanent. This way the girls and I can rehearse more easily before we go on tour again. And there are more opportunities here.”

  I was only half listening, thinking back to my mother’s last visit, when she’d turned my living room into a rehearsal hall for her singing group. I never would have guessed that my mother would have a resurgence of her career at this time of her life. She and the girls, aka Bunny and Lana, had a group called the She La Las. They had basically one hit, “My Guy Bill,” which turned out to have become a classic of sorts. They were back touring, doing nostalgia shows, and since they were in better shape than some of their contemporaries, they were doing other groups’ hits as well.

  I saw her looking around the kitchen. “You’re not planning to use my living room again, are you?” I asked.

  “No, we’re going to get a real place this time. I was just looking out your kitchen window. What are those lights coming through the trees? I don’t remember those from before.”

  I had been doing my best to ignore what was going on in the yard behind mine, but now that she’d brought it up, I gave her the lowdown.

  Previously there had been a small house at the front of the property, with enough trees and bushes around it that it was invisible and my yard was completely private. There had never been any reason to put coverings on the large kitchen windows, the French doors in the dining room, or the row of windows in the den, all of which looked out on my backyard.

  Recently, though, the small house had sold and a developer had knocked it down. A gigantic two-story house had been built in its place. The way the property was situated, the side of that yard ran along the back of mine. Even worse, the developer had raised the whole yard up so that the house sat on a small hill, making it loom even larger over mine. All that was between us were the redwood trees in my yard and the ancient chain-link fence with some ivy growing on it.

  “Lately, I noticed there were lights on in the house and the building noises seemed to have stopped, which makes me believe somebody moved in, even though it doesn’t seem quite finished.”

  “There goes my plan for nude sunbathing,” my mother said with a laugh.

  “Time for presents,” Mason announced as he swept me toward the dining room.

  “Presents?” I said, amazed there could be more. The Hookers had all made me something. Elise presented me with a black-and-white beanie with red trim, explaining it was made from her latest vampire style kit. We all knew that Elise was obsessed with Anthony, the vampire from Caught by a Kiss, who crocheted to control his blood lust. Everything she made was what she called vampire style which meant that she used half double crochet stitches, which resembled fangs, and made everything in black, white and red. The black was for Anthony’s color choice for clothes, white for his pale skin and red—well, that was obvious.

  Rhoda was heavily into felting now and had made me a crossbody bag. The felting process made the crochet stitches disappear into a solid-looking fabric. Sheila gave me the project from the class she’d taught. It was called a hug and was done in hazy blues. Our one male member, Eduardo, presented me with a lacy scarf done in his specialty—Irish crochet. Adele’s present was a surprise. She had crocheted a black tote bag that had samples of all the different crochet stitches in bright colors attached to the front. Dinah’s gift was a long skinny scarf like the ones she wore, done in rainbow colors.

  Samuel had written me a song, which he performed with my mother. Then Peter handed me his gift. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him, since mostly what he seemed to want was for me to keep a low profile and not do anything to embarrass him. He was an uptight and very ambitious television agent. I think he was still angry at me about his name. Honestly, when he was born, I never thought about initials. I just thought of Peter the Great, not Peter Pink. I would have named him something else if I’d realized his initials would be PP.

  I shook the box, trying to figure out what it was. I assumed it would be something practical, something to remind me how old I was. A heating pad, perhaps?

  “Oh,” I said, surprised when I saw the words “Junior Detective Game” on the box.

  Peter chuckled. “I know how you like to get involved in mysteries. I thought this game would keep you away from the real thing.”

  Of course—a present with a message. I began to go through the contents. There did seem to be some kind of game, but along with it was a whole slew of equipment. I put on the Sherlock Holmes–style deerslayer hat and continued to look through everything.

  “Wow,” I said, holding up a container of fingerprint powder and a brush. There were tweezers, containers for evidence, a booklet on fingerprints, an ink pad and some paper. I found a booklet on forensics, along with a pair of binoculars and a magnifying glass. “What’s this?” I said, picking up a bottle and reading the label. “It says it’s used for finding traces of blood. This is quite a set,” I said to Peter. “Thank you.”

  “This is the real stuff,” Mason said, sorting through the supplies. Mason was an attorney whose clients were mostly naughty celebrities who no doubt had a lot of knowledge about evidence-gathering.

  When I looked over to Peter, his smile had faded. “Really?” he said, sounding surprised. “I had no idea. Why don’t I get you something else?” He had started gathering up all the jars and things, but I stopped him and insisted it was the perfect present.

  The party ended early since it was a weeknight and everyone had an early day tomorrow. In the end, Mason and I were the only ones left. I put on the deerslayer hat and looked through the detective set again. I flipped through the pages on fingerprints and then looked at the booklet on forensics. I read a section about people always leaving something behind at a crime scene and taking something with them. “I certainly took something from the Hookers gathering.” I plucked some of the pink fibers off my sweater and put them into a plastic bag from the set.

  Mason chuckled and took a photo of me with the hat on. “I’m making that the background of my phone,
” he said, and fiddled with his phone before showing me the screen. There I was, wearing the hat and holding the bag of “evidence.”

  “Your son looked horrified when you started playing with the set.”

  “I’m sure he meant it as a joke gift, but it’s great. Now all I need is a crime to solve,” I said with a grin. I looked around guiltily. “Good, no one heard me.”

  “Let me help you clean up,” Mason said, standing up and starting to gather the plates sitting on the table.

  “You did enough putting on the party. I’ll clear up.” Mason had told me he had to go out of town and that was why he wasn’t going to be there on my birthday. I had a feeling there was some truth in what he’d said, like the way people used their real initials when they gave a fake name. “And I’m betting you are really going out of town, probably tomorrow and very early.”

  “You got me,” he said, putting up his hands in capitulation. “You’re right on all counts, including a six a.m. flight.” He went on to give me the rest of the details. One of his bad-boy clients who kept having scrapes with the law was having a movie release party for himself in New York and had commanded Mason’s presence. Mason put his arm around me affectionately. “That kid is my retirement fund. He gets in trouble like other people get a paper cut. He’s just too young with too much money and too much fame and no sense.” Mason still wanted to stay behind and help clean up, but I insisted he leave and get at least a little bit of sleep before he had to go.

  “Thank you for the best birthday surprise ever,” I said.

  “There will be more celebrating when I get back,” he said as I walked him to his car. Mason chuckled. “I think the biggest surprise was for Peter when he saw what was in the game he got for you.” He put his arms around me and I moved into the hug.

  “I don’t suppose you want to come home with me,” he said when neither of us made a move to break the embrace. He couldn’t see it, but my eyes went skyward. With both his daughter, who didn’t like me, and his ex-wife living at his place right now, there was no way I was going there.

  He read my thoughts. “Brooklyn is going to be there for a while,” he said, referring to his daughter, who had decided to follow in his footsteps and go to law school. “But Jaimee’s days are numbered.”

  “What?” I said. “That sounds like you really have plans to get rid of her permanently.”

  He laughed at my comment. “No, I haven’t put out a hit on her—I’m trying to match her up with somebody. Somebody who will marry her, and then I won’t have to feel responsible for her anymore.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said.

  “I could stay here,” he said, looking back to my place.

  “Not going to work.” I told him about my parents staying over and that Samuel had already put their things in my room. “I’ll be sleeping in the tiny spare room on a single bed with a bunch of dogs and cats.” I stopped. “Oh no, the cats.” I hadn’t seen them since I’d been home.

  “They’re okay,” Mason said. “Samuel put them in your crochet room to keep them out of trouble.”

  “Keep them out of trouble? How about put them in a room with nothing but trouble,” I said, picturing two cats in a room full of yarn. “I better go inspect the damage.”

  Mason rocked his head. “So many complications in a relationship. All the family baggage and animal baggage. Remember when the biggest issue was what movie to see?”

  We both laughed, and then, after a long, sweet kiss, he got in his car. I stood in the driveway until he pulled away.

  When I got back inside, Samuel was on his way out the front door. He waved and wished me another happy birthday. He added that he was going to catch up with some musician friends at a bar. My parents had retired to my room. I bypassed everything and went to let the cats out. My son had brought them with him on one of his moves back home. I suppose they were technically his, but I felt responsible for them. The big black-and-white male was named Holstein because of his coloring, but somehow that had morphed into Mr. Kitty because of his affectionate nature. The calico came with the name Cat Woman, but it had been shortened to just Cat.

  They scampered out as soon as I cracked the door. I was afraid to look in the room, but found just one ball of yarn unraveled. I followed them into the kitchen, expecting they’d want some cat food, but Mr. Kitty was already at the back door, which I realized I’d forgotten to lock. Before I could cross the room, he had used his claws to pull open the door and the two of them had taken off into the dark yard.

  The spots of darkness reminded me that several of the floodlights had burned out. When it was daytime, I forgot, and when it was dark I didn’t want to get up on a ladder to change them. I wasn’t even counting the two-bulb fixture attached to the top of the garage. Changing those would require me to get on the top step of the ladder, which I didn’t want to do even in the daylight.

  The cats seemed to have disappeared. The binoculars from the detective set were still around my neck, and I lifted them to see if they would help me locate the errant felines. Too bad they weren’t night vision scopes. I laughed, thinking of what Peter’s face would have looked like if there’d been one of those included in the set. It was a lot more sophisticated than I would have expected, but then again, I’d noted earlier that it had been put together by a university’s forensics department.

  I went to the back of the yard. It was wider than it was deep and stretched along almost the whole side of the property behind mine. The developer had stripped the ivy off their side of the old fence when they’d first started working on the property. I’d heard the plan was to put up a white vinyl fence, but so far the only barrier between the yards was the old chain-link. I was certainly grateful now that we’d planted the redwoods along the back of the yard. They at least blocked part of the view.

  As I searched for the cats, I had to trample through the ivy that grew along the ground below the trees. It was springy and crunched under my feet. A long vine almost tripped me as I tried to get through it. Cat made a brief appearance and seemed to be chasing something. I didn’t want to know what and hoped it would get away. Mr. Kitty was nowhere to be seen. I pressed through the vines and trees and got right up next to the fence. I saw a flash of something moving and realized the worst had happened. He’d gone over the fence into the other house’s yard.

  I had found an ancient gate in the fence a while back and realized this was the time to make use of the entrance. It hadn’t been used in years, and dead vines ran through the openings. I finally managed to push it open just enough so I could squeeze through.

  I started whispering Mr. Kitty’s name. I could barely see the yard, except to note that it was all just piles of dirt. He must have heard me, because I saw he’d stopped in the middle of the yard. I whispered his name a few more times, hoping he’d run toward me. He was usually so good at coming when he was called that we referred to him as a cat-dog. Not tonight. He seemed to have remembered he was all feline, and if anything, he started to move in the opposite direction. I was considering sneaking across the open space to grab him when I heard voices. I froze and slipped back into the shadows. I glanced around, looking for the source of the sound, struggling to come up with a good reason for being in their yard.

  It turned out not to matter. When I followed the sounds and saw that there were two figures on the second-floor balcony that was tacked on to the back of the house, they didn’t seem concerned with what was going on in the yard.

  I’d had a few conversations with the contractor regarding my concern about the drainage of the yard. Mostly I was worried that with the hill they’d created, the water and maybe the house would come pouring down into my yard when it rained. The contractor had blown me off, telling me it was all under control. He had offered a computer image of what the house was going to look like. The style was pseudo Cape Cod. He’d included images of the interior, too, so I knew the balcony ca
me off an upstairs den.

  If these were the owners, they certainly weren’t a happy couple. They were moving oddly around the balcony, and it seemed as if they were struggling. I stayed hidden, hoping they’d go back inside so I could grab the cat.

  I couldn’t make out any words, but their tones sounded angry. Then I heard scuffling as they neared the edge of the balcony. One of them leaned over the railing and seemed about to fall. I took out the binoculars and got a better view of what was going on. The light from inside illuminated them enough for me to see it was a woman and a man. Was he trying to push her off the balcony? She seemed to be fighting him, and their voices rose. They moved away from the edge and then back again. Suddenly, the woman fell against the railing and leaned back so far, I was sure she was going to fall backward over it. The man seemed to be very close to her. Was he pushing her or trying to save her? I was about to cry out, but there was more scuffling. The man got ahold of the woman and seemed to be dragging her. I heard the distinct sound of a slap and crying as they headed inside.

  I was stunned by what I’d just witnessed and was trying to figure out what to do. I could still hear them yelling. Apparently all the racket had scared Mr. Kitty, since he ran past me and got over the fence before I could squeeze through the gate. I saw that Cat was already back in the kitchen when I got there, and thankfully there was nothing with her. What should I do? I took out my cell phone and looked at it. The 911 I had punched in before the party was still there.

  But what was I going to say, that I’d been creeping around my neighbor’s yard and heard them fighting? But what if I did nothing and he killed her?

  There was one person I could call. We had been broken up for a long time and I hadn’t seen him in months, but his number was still listed under my favorites. I hit the call button and the phone began to ring.

  CHAPTER 2