Hooking for Trouble

by Betty Hechtman

  “She’s not a problem,” Rhoda said. “Unless her sister makes one. Cheyenne seems to be the decision maker and the one to please.” Rhoda turned to me. “So what’s the big plan?”

  “I’m not sure it’s exactly a big plan, but you know how celebrities like to be coddled.”

  “Not all of them,” CeeCee said. “I have never asked for special treatment around here. The only time I made a fuss was when Mrs. Shedd seemed so anxious to hang pictures of Cheyenne, and even her entourage. It kind of made me feel taken for granted.”

  “Then it’s some celebrities who need coddling,” I said. “So, I thought that if Adele and I offered to go to her house and give her a private lesson, she might be more likely to stick with the group.”

  Dinah was sitting across the table. She knew that I probably had an ulterior motive, and she gave me a knowing smile. I gave just the slightest nod to acknowledge she was right.

  “What about that Susan? If she hears, she’ll probably expect an at-home lesson, too,” Rhoda said.

  “No. She doesn’t have to know about it,” Adele chimed in. “As for all her fussing, I’ll just have to cozy up to her during class.” There was a momentary pause, and then everyone but Adele laughed. She looked confused. Nobody had the guts to tell her that we were laughing at the idea of Adele cozying up to anyone, let alone someone like Susan.

  “Dear, I should accompany you, too. If anybody knows how to deal with celebrities, it’s me,” CeeCee said, giving her perfectly styled brown hair a pat. She’d figured out a long time ago that one way to appear not to age was to keep the same hairstyle. She’d had the bangs and a length just below her ears since she’d starred in The CeeCee Collins Show back in the seventies.

  “I’m coming, too,” Rhoda said. “No reason other than I’m nosy.”

  “You can’t leave me out,” Elise said. “I want to see the inside of the house. My Logan is in real estate, and he almost had the listing for it.”

  Dinah looked at me, and I tried to convey the message that she didn’t have to go. She seemed relieved. “I have a lot going on. I have to meet Commander about—” She stopped herself when she glanced at Adele. I was sure she was going to say it was about their wedding but then realized that word would send Adele into a wailing fit. “About something,” she added at last. “And I’m in the middle of a crisis in my freshman English class.” She shook her head in disbelief. “They keep topping themselves. I really thought it couldn’t get worse than some of them trying to text their papers. They’re handing them in printed now, but they are half words and half little icons they’re used to using in their social media communications. Some of them I get, like a happy face, but lots of the others I don’t. It’s like visual slang. I wonder if there’s one for unacceptable.”

  Sheila came into the bookstore just then, and when she heard what was going on, she was happy to let us go without her. “It would make me too nervous,” she said.

  “Well, then, that’s settled,” Rhoda said. “When does Cheyenne want the lesson?”

  Adele pointed to me. “We haven’t exactly spoken to her yet,” I said. “There’s one more thing—everyone please remember to keep your lips zipped about me being her neighbor.”

  The we became me when Adele urged me to contact Cheyenne right away, while the group was all there, so we could arrange the time.

  Mrs. Shedd had made sure I got all of Cheyenne’s contact information when she first talked about doing the event. I tried a variety of numbers before I reached a real person. Garrett answered, and when I explained who I was and what it was about, he handed over the phone to her.

  “A private lesson,” she gushed. “That would be wonderful.” I mentioned that a number of people were coming to assist, and she just said, “The more the merrier.”

  “Tell her I’m coming, too,” CeeCee said. I passed along the information, which made Cheyenne sound more enthused, and we agreed on a time the next afternoon. She said something cryptic about the light being better during the day, and then we said our good-byes.

  “I still can’t believe you want to be involved,” Rhoda said to CeeCee. “You seemed very negative about her and the way she behaves.”

  CeeCee took a deep breath. “First of all, I’m doing it to help Adele. And I’ve reconsidered my opinion of Cheyenne. I think she might be what’s happening now. Maybe that’s the way you have to do it. Keep yourself out there, no matter what it is. If you don’t move with the times, you get behind,” she said in her musical voice. “Though I do miss the old days when the publicity people controlled what got out about us actors. They’d go to great lengths to bury something like a photo of someone with spinach in their teeth. Everything was positive.”

  “You’re right about the old days,” I said, thinking of my late husband and his PR business. One of his favorite things to do had been creating Ten Best lists and sprinkling a couple of his clients in there. He would never put his clients at the top, and would fill in the rest with even more well-known people. The pieces were easy to place, and even though they were completely fictitious, none of the other people on it complained. Why would they? They were suddenly on lists of the top ten celebrities who had the brightest smile or cutest dog, or who were nicest to waiters or whatever else he could come up with. Who would argue that they didn’t belong on the list?

  “That wouldn’t work now,” CeeCee said after I had explained this tactic. “Maybe I could try to line up my own show. CeeCee Collins Uncensored, or Keeping Up with CeeCee,” she said. “I could let the public see me in the morning with no makeup before my coffee.” She paused to think it over. “Well, maybe just a little makeup, or expert lighting. And I’d have to have a little coffee or my eyes would droop. I’m sure there’s a way to make it look real, but still cover up some flaws. I’ll talk it over with Cheyenne when we go there.”

  The others agreed to meet Adele and me at the bookstore after work and then carpool. “Well, problem solved,” I said to Adele as everyone began to pack up. “We all know how much it means to Mrs. Shedd that Cheyenne is in the class.” I saw Mr. Royal coming in with some stock. “I think he’s the real reason it means so much. He’s the one so enamored with the music business. The music and video department is his baby, and Cheyenne’s presence is putting a spotlight on it.”

  “She’s not the only person from ChIlLa,” Rhoda said. “What about Lauren?”

  I suddenly felt embarrassed that I’d forgotten about her. “And her, too,” I said, trying to cover for my mistake.

  “Whatever,” Elise said, packing her mini vampire into her bag. “Until tomorrow, ladies.”

  “I guess you aren’t so worried about Susan,” I said to Adele.

  “I can handle her. I’ll just load on a little TLC next class. It was Cheyenne I was really worried about the most. And now I’ve solved the problem.” So the we had now become her. It figured.

  * * *

  “Okay, what’s going on?” Dinah asked. With Adele back in the children’s department and everyone else gone, my friend and I had gone to the café and taken a table in a quiet corner.

  “There’s so much to tell, I don’t know where to begin,” I said.

  “I have a lot to tell you, too,” Dinah said, getting up to get our drinks. We were coffeed out and had gotten what I called party drinks. They were frothy and sweet, and covered with a generous dollop of whipped cream. When she returned I took a long sip of my strawberry frappé before I told her about my mother using my living room for a rehearsal hall again and how Mason and I had ended up huddled around the fire pit in my yard. She started to offer her sympathy, but I stopped her.

  “I don’t really care about my mother’s rehearsing. By now I’m used to there being some kind of circus going on at my house all the time. It was when Mason and I were out there that I realized that I wanted to see that chaise cushion again.” I needed another mouthful of the strawberry s
weetness before I could continue. “But even Mason warned me about sneaking around in Cheyenne’s yard.” Dinah seemed confused, and I mentioned Barry’s dog care visit and him giving me a similar warning. “I don’t know why either of them was worried. It’s one thing to slip into the yard with the gate and check out the ground, but totally different to actually go into the house to get to the balcony.” I stopped and chuckled. “They can’t have thought I’d try to climb it?”

  Dinah joined in the laugh as we joked about how I would manage such a thing. “But if when we’re giving Cheyenne the lesson, I happen to find myself on that balcony with my bottle of Blood Detector . . .” I let Dinah fill in the rest.

  “Now I’m really sorry I won’t be there. It sounds like you could use a lookout.” She seemed deflated for a moment. “There’s the thing with my students, and then I’m meeting Commander about the wedding invitations. He’s taking care of everything, but he refuses to do it without my approval of his choice.”

  She changed the subject back to Cheyenne’s house. “The group still doesn’t know you saw a body in her yard, do they?” I shook my head in answer.

  “It’s hard enough to keep them from spilling that I’m her neighbor,” I said. Then I mentioned meeting the new nanny. “She implied that Cheyenne has some kind of secret, and she looked at me like I was nuts when I asked if she’d noticed Cheyenne dancing.”

  “And the plot thickens. Cheyenne seems to put everything out there for the public to see. It makes you wonder if that’s to camouflage what she wants to hide. Maybe I should just cancel everything and join the group,” Dinah said.

  Of course, I would have preferred to have her come along. She was right—a lookout would certainly come in handy. But she had her own things to take care of.

  “Promise you’ll let me know what happens,” she said as she sucked the last of her creamy drink through her straw with a slurping noise.

  CHAPTER 14

  Saturday morning, the group going to Cheyenne’s met outside the bookstore. I was glad to ride with someone else. I didn’t want to drive the greenmobile on the off chance Cheyenne or her husband might have caught a glimpse of it in the driveway. I didn’t know what kind of view they had of my place, and the color and age of the car made it stand out.

  It didn’t matter anyway. Adele insisted she was in charge, and she arranged who would ride with who. She chose me to ride shotgun in her Matrix.

  My heartbeat picked up when Adele steered her car onto Cheyenne’s street. Her house sat at the end of the cul-de-sac, and Adele pulled the car to the curb. When we got out, I looked in the direction of my place. From this angle I could just see the lone palm tree in my front yard that towered above the whole area.

  “They call this style California Cape Cod,” Elise said. “Logan told me that developers say they’re building a custom house, but they use standardized plans.” She glanced around at it. “This looks like the semi deluxe model.”

  The front of the house was more interesting than the side view I saw from my yard. It seemed an effort had been made not to have it look like a big white box. A balcony was hooked on in front of what was probably a bedroom, and a portion of the ground floor jutted out so the front of the house had a lot of angles. A driveway led to the garage that was attached to the side of the house.

  As we approached the front door, Adele started going on about how she wanted to handle the lesson. I barely listened, since I was busy trying to figure out how I could get out on the back balcony unnoticed. I had mixed a small amount of the Blood Detector powder in the spray bottle and had it in a plastic bag in my pocket.

  Garrett opened the door. He looked a little scruffy in his T-shirt and jeans with a couple of days’ worth of beard. But that and the shaggy hair were all part of the music business look. He smiled as he greeted us, but there was a slight furrow to his brow, which I gathered meant he had things on his mind.

  We all looked around the entrance hall as he brought us inside, so my curiosity didn’t stand out. I quickly noted the entrance to the living room to the left of us. Matt Meadowbrook was in there with a bunch of small children. He looked out at us and tipped his ever-present cowboy hat and gave us a dimpled smile. I was as bad as the rest of them, getting all gushy and giggly at the way he seemed to give each of us a personal greeting.

  It took me a moment before I realized this was the room I’d seen from my yard. I’d only gotten a sliver of a view, just enough to see Jennifer with the kids. Matt had been there then, too.

  “Nanny’s time off,” he said, gesturing toward the kids, who were rolling around on the off-white couches. He turned to them. “Hey, guys, let’s go get some ice cream.”

  “I know where it is,” a little girl in a dress with a feather boa and cowboy boots said, running toward the door. Garrett stopped her. “Off-limits. Uncle Matt means from the store.” The kids got more excited at the prospect of an adventure, and Garrett gave his brother-in-law an encouraging pat. “Are you sure you want to take all of them?”

  Apparently Matt’s charm worked with kids, too. He gave Garrett a nod and then told the kids they were going to play a game called helping him find the ice-cream store. Instantly, all four of them calmed down and lined up next to him. The little girl with the feather boa looked up at him and assured him she knew the way.

  I noticed the stairway leading to the second floor as Garrett took us toward the back of the house. The hallway ended in a large den. The whole back was made up of mullioned, windowed French doors, and I could see the patio beyond. Or what would be the patio, when it was finished. Cheyenne was draped across a soft gray suede couch that faced into the room. Another, similar couch was adjacent. My immediate perception was that the house was more about living in than being for show. It didn’t have that interior decorator signature of having the color of the throw pillows on the couch be picked up in a bowl on the coffee table.

  There were neither throw pillows nor a bowl on the coffee table anyway. Some magazines were scattered among some coloring books and sheet music. It seemed odd that the house had a new smell but the furniture clearly wasn’t new.

  I was surprised when Lauren came into the room and sat down next to her sister. “Hi, girls,” she said, seeming more animated than she’d ever been at the bookstore, almost like a switch had been turned on. Even her appearance was different. I guessed it was the makeup and the leather pants. She glanced toward the front of the house at the door. “Lucky for Matt, my kids are with their dad.”

  Cheyenne had on a graphic T-shirt and a pair of jeans with shredding at one of the knees. There was a time when that would have appeared pathetic, but now it was the style, and you actually paid extra to get them that way. She glanced toward her husband. “Will you go get Ilona?”

  Cheyenne turned back to the group and thanked us for coming, going on about how nice it was that we cared so much.

  “I should be next to you,” Adele said, taking the spot to her right. “They can sit over there,” she said, pointing to the other couch. Elise and Rhoda took the suggestion, but CeeCee seemed reluctant. I could read her expression and could tell that she didn’t like being relegated to what amounted to the “children’s table.”

  Ilona came in with Garrett and perched herself on the sofa’s other end. There was something catlike and languid about the way she stretched herself out. She was the only blond of the sisters, which made me suspect the color wasn’t natural. She had a long face, and her hair was cut into a pixieish style. Her outfit was all-black stretchy stuff, with knee-high boots that had silver buckles.

  “Nobody is going to believe I’m doing this,” Ilona said, holding out a crochet hook and yarn. Lauren reached over and turned the hook right side up and put it in her sister’s hand correctly.

  I edged my way to the corner of the room, where I had a view out the glass doors. It was my first close-up daytime view of the patio, and I saw the material th
at had been under the cushion was irregular slabs of grayish stone, just like I had on my patio. The balcony was directly above it and was my goal. I surreptitiously looked to see if perhaps there was an outdoor stairway, but there wasn’t. From here I could see my yard, but since the ground was higher and on an angle, I just got a view of my roof and enough of the kitchen window to see that my gray terrier mix Felix was on the kitchen table sleeping in a spot of sunlight.

  Cheyenne saw CeeCee about to take a seat on the other couch. “No, no, you should be here.” She turned to Lauren and told her to take the other armrest and patted the spot Lauren had vacated. CeeCee instantly perked up.

  “Okay, Garrett, we’re ready,” she said. He came back in with a video camera. Just as I was figuring it out, Cheyenne started to explain. “We’re always looking for something to post on social media. What better than the three of us crocheting with our friends and veteran actress CeeCee Collins?”

  With all the activity, no one noticed as I moved along the back of the room and out the door on the other side. It led to a hall that paralleled the one we’d come in. I barely saw the large kitchen and formal dining room as I went back toward the front of the house and the stairway.

  As much as I tried to stay calm, my heart was thudding and my mouth had gone dry. I had a cover story ready—the usual, that I was looking for the bathroom, but with a two-story house it was harder to pull off. There obviously was at least a powder room on the ground floor. I hoped it wasn’t going to be an issue.