By Hook or by Crook

by Hechtman, Betty

  I nodded. I had my pride and wasn’t about to let on that the whole case was a disaster anyway.

  Barry finished the noodle dish and moved on to the corned beef sandwich, potato salad and coleslaw I’d given him. I offered him something to drink. “I can help myself,” he replied, getting up. This was all too weird. So familiar and strange at the same time. He opened the refrigerator, and I saw him do a double take.

  “Who’s the beer for? Your new boyfriend.”

  “No, it’s for my father. He likes to drink a bottle at night. It helps him sleep. Feel free to have some.”

  “How’s it going with the dancer?” There was an edge to Barry’s voice as he came back to the table with the amber bottle. Cosmo was following his every move.

  “I’m not going out with the dancer,” I said, hoping to end it.

  “Who then?” Barry was looking directly at me. He was Mr. Detective now, interrogating and confrontational.

  “You don’t want to know,” I said, breaking eye contact and looking down.

  Barry put down the sandwich. He didn’t have to say the name for me to realize he knew it was Mason. When he had finished eating and drank most of the beer, he looked down at the black mutt and ruffled his fur. His face softened for a moment, but it was back to tough cop when he looked at me. “Do you have any idea who the caller was or who might have left the gift?”

  I groaned. There were so many possibilities.

  “Just spread the word that you gave up,” he said, rising to leave.

  There was an awkward moment while we stood facing each other and his gaze held mine. “I don’t know if it matters to you, but I contacted my daughter.”

  He thanked me for the food and went to the kitchen door. Cosmo tried to follow, but Barry stepped out quickly, closing the door before the dog could get out. Then Cosmo sat down in front of the glass door and whined.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE PHONE CALLS, THE FISH AND MY PARENTS concern had gotten to me. Maybe it was time to drop it. So I did as Barry suggested; I told everyone I was stumped by Mary Beth Wells’s secret and who killed her and I was giving up. Only Dinah asked me if I was sure. Nobody even mentioned the crochet piece the next time the group got together. For once all we did was work with yarn and make small talk.

  When I got home that evening, my mother was at the kitchen table drinking her hot water, lemon juice and honey. Her hair looked newly done and her nails manicured.

  “Sit, sit,” she said after I’d taken care of the dogs.

  I listened and the house was quiet.

  “No one’s here,” she said. “We’ve practiced as much as we can. We’re as good as we’re going to get. Now we need to rest our voices and our feet so we’ll be fresh for the audition.”

  I sat down on the bench across from her. She was nursing her drink and explained my father had gone out.

  “I know our visit has been a little disruptive to your house, and I wanted to thank you,” my mother said.

  I said the usual baloney about it not being any trouble, and she shocked me by telling me what a good daughter I was. I never knew she noticed.

  “So fill me in about these murders you’ve been involved with,” she said, setting her cup down.

  “You really want to know?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know,” she answered matter-of-factly. Apparently she had never noticed that we hadn’t had a lot of mother-daughter moments. I told her I’d been in the middle of a couple of murder investigations and solved both cases.

  My mother’s face brightened into a laugh. “Who’d ever figure you’d end up as an amateur detective?”

  I shrugged.

  “Did you ever get sent a dead fish before?”

  “No. This was a first.” I kept waiting for her to turn the conversation around to herself, but she seemed genuinely curious and asked for the details of what had led up to the special delivery. “Are you sure you really want to know?” I asked again. She rolled her eyes and nodded in response. I went into my work room and got the package with the crochet piece and the notes. I had stopped carrying it with me. What was the point? When I laid everything out on the table, she leaned closer for a better view.

  “Oh, I remember this thing. That’s the Casino Building.” She examined the first panel and then glanced over the rest of them. “What about the others? What are they supposed to be?”

  I started going over the filet crochet designs one by one. I pointed out the odd house with the cone-shaped roof and the three panels around it, all with cats. “I found this house a short distance from the Casino and there were cats everywhere.” I indicated what I’d first thought to be the Arc de Triomphe. “This fireplace is inside that house and now I’m pretty sure the mantelpiece has a secret compartment with something hidden in it.”

  My mother’s fascination was obvious as I continued on. I explained I thought the motif of the figure with the bow and arrow was meant to signify Sagittarius and referred to a baby’s birth sign. “And I know this vase appears to be filled with drooping tulips, but they are supposed to be Irises and are a clue to the baby’s mother’s name.”

  I turned the piece around so the wishing well in the adjacent panel was recognizable. “See the S hanging from the roof. If you add that onto well you get Wells, which is the last name of the person who made this.”

  My mother found the MB and nodded with enthusiasm. “I get it. This was like her signature. Very clever of you to figure that all out,” she said. Had my mother just given me a compliment? I told her the rest of it—how the baby turned out to be somebody in the crochet group.

  “And I thought your only problems had to do with dating,” my mother said when I had finished.

  My mother fingered the stitches on the piece. “This is really crochet? I thought crochet was just used to make those multicolored squares and shawls.”

  She picked up the diary entry and read it over: The island is decorated for Christmas. All the colorful lights brighten up the short cold days, but it doesn’t help me feel any less sad. I hate to have to say good-bye even for a short time. I know things will work out and we will be back together again for keeps. Tomorrow I go back as if nothing has changed. I know I am doing the right thing.

  “This is about heartbreak and hope,” she said. I must have given her an odd look. “Molly, it’s like when somebody gives me lyrics to a song. I read over the whole thing to see what it’s about before I worry about each line. Then when I go back it’s easier to get the meaning. The person writing this is sad about having to say good-bye to someone.” My mother flipped the page and read the line on the back. “Oh, she’s saying she’s going to miss the baby.”

  “What?” I said, and my mother pointed to the line on the back: Catalina, I’m going to miss you.

  Dinah and I had taken that line to mean the island. “You said that’s what the baby’s name was, didn’t you? But she has hope they’ll be reunited,” my mother said and then appeared confused. “If it’s her baby, why is she having to say good-bye anyway?” Before I could tell her that Mary Beth wasn’t the mother, my mother looked at the crochet piece again.

  “What about these other panels?” Her hand brushed the square with the plain ring and then the divided circle before moving on to the double-sized panel with the aqua rectangle. Her finger traced the open area in the middle.

  I raised my hands, palms upward, in the universal I-don’t-know sign.

  My mother continued to study the panels and then scrunched her face in disapproval. “Why would somebody put a switch in with all this other stuff?”

  Just as I got out a “huh?” my mother held the panel up next to the light switch in the kitchen. It took a moment of my eye going back and forth, but then I saw that the panel image and the light switch were an exact match. How could I have missed it? “Mother, you’re a genius,” I said, kissing her cheek.

  “I have my moments,” she said with a pleased smile. “As long as we’re playing de
tective—I think your father is having an affair with Belle Gladner.” When she got through laying out the facts, they were so ridiculous, I had a hard time not laughing. Her evidence: My father had gone shopping for a shirt without her and mentioned running into their former neighbor at the drugstore and noticing that her skin looked very good. My mother was back to thinking the world revolved around her.

  DINAH MET ME AT CAITLIN’S CUPCAKES IN THE morning. “Think about it,” I said, discussing the crochet panel. “Switch. Like maybe switch Iris and Mary Beth and—”

  “Ali’s mother is really Mary Beth,” Dinah said, finishing my thought. We were sitting at the counter that ran along the window.

  “I think that’s Mary Beth’s secret,” I said.

  “But there’s no way to prove it,” Dinah said. I looked out the window and down the street. I saw Ali and Iris heading toward the bookstore.

  “Maybe there isn’t a way to prove it, but there is a way to prove Iris isn’t her mother.” I got off my stool. “I have a plan.”

  “I guess that means you’re back on the case,” Dinah said, rushing after me.

  It took some fast action, but when we got to the café at the bookstore I got Bob to make up a tray of iced tea samples. Then I got our head cashier, Rayaad, to carry the tray around the bookstore.

  Ali and Iris were in the nature section, and I slipped behind a bookcase. As Rayaad headed in their direction, she glanced over her shoulder at me. I gave her the nod. I watched from my hiding place as our cashier stopped next to them and offered the samples. Other people came out of nowhere and took some of the small cups, but Ali and Iris shook their head. Rayaad looked back at me and I waved her back at them. She offered again, and persisted. They finally each took a cup and then walked away.

  Dinah was right behind me as we shadowed them from the other side of the row of bookcases. We kept catching glimpses of them whenever we passed an aisle. They were drinking. Finally, they appeared to drain the contents and be looking around for someplace to discard the cups.

  Before I could get Rayaad to swing by and pick them up, Iris found a trash can. Oh no. There went my plan. I’d never be able to pick out their cups from all the other trash. Iris pushed on the small metal door, but it didn’t move.

  Hallelujah, somebody had forgotten to empty the can. With a shrug, Iris set her cup on top and then Ali did the same. I forced myself to count to ten before I made my move to get the cups.

  But ten wasn’t enough. Iris turned back just as I snatched them.

  “Sorry,” she said in a pleasant voice, and then she realized who I was. “Give them to me and I’ll throw them somewhere else,” she said, walking back to me. Her face had settled into concern.

  “I have it covered,” I said, putting my hands behind my back and hoping there was enough saliva on them to do a DNA test. I even knew where to send them thanks to the dog DNA author’s event we’d held.

  “But I insist,” she said. All pretense of pleasantness had drained from her voice. Our eyes locked and I knew she knew there was more than garbage at stake.

  “Give them to me or I’ll make a scene. I’ll say you stole them from me.” She sounded shrill and panicky.

  “I’ll call the cops for you,” I said. “When you throw something away, it’s no longer yours. And I have a witness.” At that, Dinah stepped out from behind the bookcase and waved.

  “I need to talk to you,” Iris said, finally relenting. Ali had been watching the whole interchange and regarded her mother with concern. Iris told her it was okay and then urged her to go on to another department and said she’d catch up with her in a few minutes.

  I took Iris to the bookstore office so we’d have some privacy. “Mary Beth is her mother, isn’t she?”

  Iris sat down and put her face in her hands. I borrowed one of Barry’s interrogation lines. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  Iris looked up; the color had drained from her face. “You have to promise you won’t tell Ali.”

  I nodded in agreement. It took her a few moments to collect herself, but then she took a couple of deep breaths and started to talk. “It was not supposed to turn out this way. . . . I was Mary Beth’s assistant. I did whatever she needed whether it was handling an RSVP for a party or going with her to Catalina. If I had known—” She glanced out toward the bookstore. Ali was standing by the magazines. “No matter what, I love that girl as if she were mine. And as far as I’m concerned, she is my daughter.”

  The story went that Mary Beth hadn’t told Iris she was pregnant until she was in her seventh month. “She was one of those women who barely show. She wore loose clothes, and not even her husband figured it out. She never gave me details, but I think she planned to leave Lance and go off with the baby’s father, and then something happened with him. She got panicky. Her husband couldn’t have kids, so there was no way she could pass the baby off as his. She came up with this plan. We’d spend her last month on Catalina and she’d have the baby there, only she would tell the doctor that she was me.”

  Iris examined her hands. “You have to understand, I was broke. Just out of college with student loans and I wanted to start a business.” Her breath caught. “I’m so embarrassed I did it for the money.

  “It wasn’t that hard to pull off. Mary Beth had dark hair in those days, and we both wore ours long and loose. We both wore baggy clothes and were always together. The local doctor delivered the baby. He didn’t know either of us, so he didn’t question it when Mary Beth gave him my name.” Iris had to stop for a moment, then went on.

  “She had already gotten Lance to agree to adopting. I was going to take Ali home with me, and then we’d arrange a private adoption. But Lance flew into some kind of rage and said he’d changed his mind. At first Mary Beth thought she’d get him to change his mind back, but he completely refused. She stayed involved with us, but then we had this big blowup. She wanted to run things, but by then I’d fallen in love with the baby. For better or worse she was mine.” Iris had been staring at some spot on the floor as she talked. Finally she looked at me directly; her face was wet with tears.

  “There was no reason ever to tell Ali. My name is on her birth certificate. And then out of nowhere Mary Beth contacted me. She told me it had been bothering her all these years and now that her husband was dead, she wanted to come clean and claim her daughter.”

  “And you killed her to keep it quiet,” I said. Iris’s expression went from distraught to angry.

  “Killed her? Don’t be ridiculous.” Iris got up to leave. She turned back at the door. “If you want to know who killed her, why don’t you look for Ali’s father? Mary Beth said she wanted Ali to know who both of her parents were.” She glared at me. “And no, I don’t know who he is.”

  “I HAVE TO GO BACK TO CATALINA,” I SAID TO Dinah when I found her in the bookstore. My comment didn’t sit well with her even when I repeated Iris’s story.

  “Molly, you can’t go back there. You’ll get arrested. That deputy will nab you as soon as you set one foot off the boat.”

  “I have to see what’s hidden in the fireplace. I bet it points to Ali’s father,” I said.

  “Who probably killed Mary Beth,” Dinah said softly. “And once someone has killed someone it’s not that hard to kill someone else, if you get my meaning.”

  I didn’t say anything and Dinah nudged me impatiently. “Did you hear what I said? You go back there and you’ll be in double jeopardy—from the deputy and from Ali’s father.”

  “Will you come with?” I asked.

  Dinah said yes, then changed her answer when I told her I planned to go the next day. She had an in-class essay and had to be there. Then Dinah surprised me by suggesting I talk to Detective Heather.

  “Is your scarf pulled too tight?” I said, looking at the pale pink and burnt orange combo of scarves she had wound around her neck. “I want you to stop for a minute and consider the details. She already laughed off the crochet piece. If I start telling her about
people switching identities and secret fathers—”

  “I see your point. It might sound a little like a soap opera plot,” Dinah conceded.

  “My plan is simple. I’ll wear a hat, dark glasses and a hoodie over some jeans. I’ll blend right in with everybody else. The deputy won’t recognize me, and there’s no way for whoever Ali’s father is to know what I’m doing. I’m not going to tell anybody else about the trip.”

  “But Molly, if you get caught breaking and entering, you won’t get off with a warning,” Dinah cautioned.

  “No breaking and entering. There might be a key.” Dinah gave me a quizzical look and I explained. “Before Iris left the bookstore I asked her if she knew anything about a secret compartment in the fireplace. She said the only hiding place she knew about was the flower pot on the front porch where a key was buried.”