The She La Las had just finished dinner and were looking over their costumes. I felt as though I were invisible since nobody seemed to notice me. It was pointless to try to cook. My mother had ordered in again, so I just helped myself to the Caesar salad and pasta and took it in my crochet room.
Barry stuck his head in the door and then stepped into the room. He did a double take at all the balls and bags of yarn and half-done projects.
“You’re really serious about this hook stuff.” He picked up a partially finished rust-colored afghan and then looked at me with a question in his eyes. “Weren’t you making that for me?”
“It’s almost finished. Just because we’re friends now doesn’t mean I won’t finish it. Friends make afghans for their friends all the time even if they leave out important elements of their lives.” That last part just slipped out.
“Your door is back in place,” he said, ignoring my remark. I noticed his black eye had begun to fade. I held up my plate and showed him the food and told him there was plenty in the kitchen. He didn’t move. “Molly, I can’t do the friends thing. Maybe you should just keep Cosmo for now, until I make some arrangements.” He put the key down on the arm of the chair. “You know where to find me,” he said as he left. A moment later I heard my new front door open and close.
I was still sitting there feeling a little stunned when Dinah called for an update.
“I think we broke up even as friends,” I said.
“You had a problem with Vincent?” she said, surprised.
“No. Barry.” I re-created the whole scenario for her, and she said she wasn’t surprised.
“Men don’t like to be friends, particularly when it’s a step down from what they’ve been. I was really calling about your confab with my student, who by the way tried to use his being helpful as a way to get to take the midterm test he missed.”
“Obviously, he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.” I repeated what he’d said about Mary Beth fighting with her sister and how I wished I knew what they fought about. “Vincent was no help. He said to talk to Matt Wells, which is exactly what I intend to do tomorrow.”
“Not a bad assignment. And who knows what else may come of it. Now that you’re single again,” Dinah said, “the world is your man buffet.”
“Single again. You make it sound like Barry and I were married. We were just seeing each other.”
“If you’re not seeing someone, you’re considered single in the current lingo,” Dinah said.
“What about Mason?” I said.
“I thought you wanted to keep it to a casual dinner now and then,” Dinah said.
“Well, yeah . . . It is, well, it was. It’s just that . . .”
“What did you leave out?” Dinah repeated, her voice lighting up with interest.
“Nothing. It’s about his good night kiss . . .”
“Cheek or lips? You never said,” she said with interest.
“Lips and everything else. It was definitely not a casual kiss. Believe me my only interest in meeting Matt Wells is for information.”
Dinah had to get back to grading papers and made me promise to report back to her if I found out anything new.
“I thought of something odd,” I said, just before hanging up. “Whoever killed Mary Beth had to know she really liked marzipan. If you’re going to lace something with poison, you want to be sure the person will eat it. I wouldn’t have eaten any of those almond paste apples sent to me even if I hadn’t thought they might be laced with something. Marzipan isn’t like chocolate. The killer had to know that she not only liked marzipan, but that she loved it enough to guarantee she would eat the candy apples.”
“Good thinking,” Dinah said. “It sounds like the kind of information a sister would have. By the way, I checked your box of marzipan yesterday and it was full of ants.”
“Dead or alive?” I said feeling my stomach tense.
“The little buggers were very much alive. Can I throw the package away now?”
“Then I was right. The gift was just for shock value. Someone wanted to scare me off the case. I’m glad I didn’t show it to Detective Heather.” I paused for a moment picturing the ants having a field day on the red candy apples. “You better hang onto it for now. Put it in your garage.”
CHAPTER 20
VINCENT HAD SAID MATT WELLS ATE BREAKFAST at Le Grande Fromage every morning, but only after I’d left did I realize he hadn’t mentioned a time. I had gone over several possible ways to meet him but had finally decided it would be best to let him arrive first. Then I could casually come up to him.
As a result, the next morning I found myself sitting in the parking lot that served the whole bank of stores, watching every car that drove in. The problem with my car, the greenmobile, was that it stood out. In my peripheral vision, I noticed a black Crown Victoria slide into the spot next to me. I slumped down lower in the seat, willing myself to become invisible. No such luck. There was a knock at the window.
I turned the key so I could open the window. Barry leaned in. A whiff of his cologne blew in with the breeze. His shirt was crisp and he was cleanly shaven. I did my best to ignore how good he looked.
“Loitering isn’t allowed,” he said, pointing to a sign on the wall of the building that warned cars could be towed for various reasons.
I started to protest that I’d just gotten there, but he tossed it off with a dismissive shake of his head. “This is the second time I’ve been by. I know you’ve been sitting here for a while. What are you up to now?”
I was going to make some excuse, but just then I saw a black Jaguar pull in and Matt Wells get out.
“I’ve got to go. I’m meeting someone,” I said. Barry followed my gaze.
“The dancer?” he said with a combination of surprise and irritation.
A few minutes later I walked in the front door of Le Grande Fromage. I had taken my time shutting the window and getting out of the car to give Matt time to get inside the café. Barry had stood next to his car watching me. He started to say something several times but then finally got back in his car, muttering something about poor judgement.
Inside the restaurant most of the tables were empty and Matt had taken one in the back corner. I had been thinking about how to start up a conversation with him. I couldn’t very well just sit down and start asking questions about Mary Beth. I needed an icebreaker, and nothing was coming to mind. I did okay when it came to climbing in windows and scoping out places, as I had done at the house in Catalina, but actually going up to someone and starting a conversation—let’s just say I didn’t have my mother’s gifts.
I sucked in a big breath of air, forced my lips to curve upward and moved toward his table. He was looking at what appeared to be the layout for a newspaper ad.
“Hi, you might not remember me.” I launched into who I was, how I’d taken a complimentary lesson a few days earlier and that I worked at the bookstore. Then I hit dead air. He looked at me, waiting for me to say more, and I looked at him, hoping he’d pick up the slack. Just when I thought I was going to have to slink out of there in embarrassment, inspiration struck. “I have a proposition,” I said quickly, pulling out a chair. “I hope you don’t mind if I join you.”
Matt regarded me with an amused smile, and I realized I had probably come on a bit too strong.
The waitress brought him his fine herb omelette, warm baguette with sweet butter and fresh marmalade and a glass pot of French-press coffee. She handed me a menu, but I said I just wanted a café au lait with a shot of espresso.
Matt pressed the plunger down in the coffeepot and poured the fresh brew in his cup. “What kind of proposition are we talking about?” There was just a hint of suggestiveness to his voice, and I cringed remembering the hair twirling from the other day.
Between the sparkling gray eyes that seemed to carry a warm smile, the angular chin with the unshaven look and the lithe but definitely masculine build, he probably got lots of propositions from potential
dance students.
“A business proposition,” I said in what I hoped was a cool professional tone. “Having the dance studio closed and being connected to a murder probably hurt your business. I was thinking maybe we could work something out with a book event we have coming up.”
Matt’s expression sharpened and he sat up. “That’s a great idea. What did you have in mind?”
The ball was back in my court. I had to come up with something fast. “We’re having an author in who’s written a dance-related book. We could include a drawing for some lessons, maybe even a dance demonstration or something.”
“I like it,” he said before I had a chance to finish. “The drawing for dance lessons is a great idea. And a little dance demonstration to remind everyone we’re open and down the street. Could we do something in the next couple of days? Other than you and your friend there hasn’t been any walk-in business, and we’ve had a lot of refund requests from current students. I know it must seem callous to be concerned with business under the circumstances, but we have to keep on going, don’t we?” he said.
It was a rhetorical question, and he went back to pressing me for a date until I said I would check my calendar. I reached in my bag and when I pulled out my notebook, Mary Beth’s crochet work came out with it. I tried to snatch the plastic bag back, but Matt got it first.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded. He opened the bag, took out the crochet piece and laid it on the table, staring at it. I heard him swallow a few times. “Mary Beth made this. I’ve seen enough of her work to recognize it.” He ran his finger along the image of the Casino. “Catalina,” he muttered.
“Do you know what all this means?” I said, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. He moved his gaze over each image slowly, and I held my breath in anticipation. It turned out he only recognized the ones I’d already deciphered and had no idea what the rest of them were or what the whole piece might mean.
“How did you get this? Did you know Mary Beth?”
“Sort of,” I answered.
“Then you must know she loved doing this kind of work. I could never understand why Lance hated it so much. He said watching the movement of the hook made him nervous.” Matt let out a sigh. “The habit of working on it only at Catalina was so ingrained that even when he died, she still didn’t keep any of her supplies or finished work at the Tarzana house.”
The waitress returned with my coffee, and I regretted the interruption.
“Did we come up with a day yet?” Matt said, pointing toward my notebook. I subtly tried to push it to the side while I picked up my coffee cup.
“Does Roseanne crochet?” I said in an effort to turn the conversation toward the information I was after.
Matt shook his head. “She’s too busy trying to run everything and everybody.” Finally I had my opportunity. I asked him if the sisters got along.
“I thought you said you knew Mary Beth.”
“I only knew her a little bit,” I said. He nodded and then started spilling information as though he was glad to have somebody to listen.
Mostly he complained about how difficult Roseanne and Hal were. He said Mary Beth had gotten them the job managing the studio, given them lavish gifts and spoiled their children.
“But it was never enough to please Roseanne. I don’t think Roseanne could ever get past being jealous that her sister had the money, status and everything else that went along with being Mrs. Lance Wells Jr.,” Matt said. He confirmed what Mason had said about Mary Beth working for a caterer. “She worked all the fancy parties. That’s where she met my cousin. He specialized in parties.”
I mentioned they’d been married a long time. “They never had any children?”
“I don’t think that was the plan. But Lance got the mumps shortly after they were married. I think finding himself sterile was just one more reason for him to drink. They talked about adopting once, but when it came down to it, he backed out.”
He ate some of his food, and I waited, hoping he would go back to talking. Instead, he picked up the crochet piece and examined it again. “This reminds me of something I found in the office the other day.”
“Is it like this with panels and pictures of things?” I asked. He glanced at the piece again and said it was similar.
“I’d really like to see it,” I said.
“Sure. I’ll bring it when we do the event. How is Thursday?”
I pretended to check my notebook. It wasn’t really a calendar, but I knew Thursday was free. We’d finished all the scheduled events, and Mrs. Shedd had instructed me not to schedule any more until after the Making Amends taping. So, I agreed to Thursday and suggested maybe I could stop by sooner and have a look at the crochet piece he had mentioned.
He shook his head. Had he picked up on my plan to cancel once I’d seen it? I drained the last of my coffee and got ready to leave. As an afterthought, I turned back.
“I was trying to remember what Mary Beth’s favorite candy was. Do you remember?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Marzipan. Personally, I think it’s like eating a pillow, but she adored it.”
CHAPTER 21
“PINK, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” ADELE ASKED, walking into the bookstore office.
“I’m looking for a book about dancing by a local author,” I said as I typed key words into the computer.
“I have one.” Adele went into the break room off the office. She came back holding a copy of Margaret and the Dancer. It looked well read.
“Can I look at it?” I said, reaching for it.
“Not unless you tell me why,” Adele said, not letting go. Sometimes I thought working in the children’s department brought out the child in her. I had decided not to mention the dance event to Mrs. Shedd, but there was no way to avoid telling Adele.
Her face brightened when she heard the plan for the evening. “Pink, you’ve finally gotten a good idea.”
I tried to be offhand in my remark about not mentioning the evening to Mrs. Shedd.
“Why exactly is it that we’re having it then?” she persisted.
Knowing it was probably a mistake, I told her about the crochet piece Matt had said he was going to bring me.
“So it’s Nancy Jessica Drew Fletcher Marple in action again.” Adele paused for a moment. “You know, I’m taking Marple off of that. She was a knitter.”
“Here’s another dance-related book,” I said, reading the computer screen. “It’s a diet book called Dance Your Way to Size Zero. That’s even better.”
Unfortunately, Adele recognized a chip when she had one and basically said if I wanted her silence, I’d have to let her be partners with me on the evening. But this time I was actually glad for the help. It took us both until closing time to get everything set up. Grey Fairchild seemed a little confused about why it had taken us two years to call her about a book signing, but she was excited about doing it nonetheless.
When I finally walked outside, I saw Mason standing in front of the bookstore.
“Burning the midnight oil, aren’t you, sunshine?” He stepped toward me and hugged me hello. “I called your house and your father said you were working late.”
Adele came out behind me and after locking the door, looked at Mason. “Pink, did you and the cop break up?”
I hardly wanted to start discussing my personal life in the parking lot or with Adele, so I did what politicians do. I didn’t answer and instead I said good night to her. She harrumphed and then went to her car.
“I thought I’d bring this to you here,” Mason said, holding out a shopping bag. “I told one of my associates about the blankets you’re making for traumatized children and she was so touched by it, she wanted to donate some yarn.”
I took the bag and examined the skeins on top. They were the same kind of soft yarn we were using. I was impressed that he had paid that close attention when I’d been talking about the project. “You could have just dropped it off at my house.”
“I’m more
of an in-person sort of guy,” he said with a friendly smile. He brushed a strand of hair the wind had blown across my face. “So, tell me, has my status changed?”
Adele zoomed past us in her Honda and with a warning beep to the traffic on the side street, zipped out of the parking lot. I knew Mason was wondering if he had moved from an occasional dinner companion into the boyfriend slot. I’d given up fighting the title as nothing else seemed any better.
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