Behind the Seams cm-6

by Betty Hechtman

  I told her of course and she rushed off to tell Tony he could leave. He sent me a thank you wave.

  CeeCee had a field day with our try-before-you-buy policy, and by the time I was shutting off the lights, she had amassed a pile of yarn.

  It was after ten when we pulled out of the parking lot. “Do you mind if we take a short detour,” I asked. Then I explained I’d been driving by Robyn’s house almost every night, to see what was going on. So far it had been nothing.

  We drove onto the residential street and I had to dodge the trash cans that had been put into the street for pick up the next day as I pulled up to the curb across from the house. I was surprised to see lights on and a car in the driveway.

  “I’m getting out,” I said.

  “I’m coming, too.” She pulled off her seat belt and got out on the passenger side. I had to laugh when I looked over at her and she was crouched next to the car in some stealth mode straight out of a TV drama.

  Down the street, I heard the rattle of some kind of cart and I saw some shadowy figures. CeeCee straightened to see what I was looking at.

  “It’s nothing. Just some people out walking,” I said as we crossed. I slipped up to the living room window with CeeCee practically touching me. I was stunned by what I saw. The room was completely empty. A moment later, I heard the front door open and someone came out and walked around to the driveway and got in the car. As it backed down the driveway I got a look at it in the streetlight. The BMW things on the front reflected in the light, and I remembered that the neighbor had said that Robyn’s boyfriend drove a BMW. I locked my eyes on the license plate, trying to memorize the number while I struggled to find a pencil and scrap of paper in my purse.

  As I was scribbling in the dark, I stepped back and almost tripped over a trash can. It was so full, the lid was flipped back and stuff was sticking out. Since it was in front of Robyn’s, it wasn’t hard to figure that it must be her stuff from the house.

  “Is that one of the dolls you were talking about?” CeeCee said. The streetlight illuminated the crocheted girl doll lying on top of the overflowing garbage can.

  “It seems wrong somehow to throw away something like that,” she said. I agreed and pulled the doll out. I stuck it under my arm and started feeling around in the can for the other one. “I wonder what else is in here?” I pulled out the other doll and peered into the can.

  “Saving the dolls is as far as I go. I’m not going to start sifting through trash cans,” CeeCee said. I heard a noise and turned as someone flipped the lid of one of the cans down the street. I strained to see in the darkness and saw maybe five people in dark clothes were spreading across the street looking in the blue recyclables can. They were tossing the bottles and cans in a kid’s stroller that had been outfitted with a large plastic bag.

  It had barely registered what was going on when Miranda flew out of her front door and trained a powerful flashlight on the street. The people began to blink and back off. I was waiting for her to do her speech about having 911 on speed dial. Then I realized why she didn’t say it.

  Lights flashing, cop cars appeared out of nowhere from both directions and squealed to a stop, boxing all of us in the middle of the street. The thwack of the helicopter almost drowned out CeeCee’s squeal.

  “That’s them,” Miranda yelled, pointing at all of us. “I warned you scavengers,” she said. “But you wouldn’t listen.”

  Other neighbors came outside, and I heard her telling them how, thanks to her, the gang that was stealing the bottles and cans had been caught.

  “We better get out of here,” CeeCee said, grabbing my hand and heading across the street toward my car.

  “Freeze,” a voice called from behind us.

  “They don’t mean us, do they?” CeeCee’s face registered shock when I nodded.

  “But don’t worry. I’ve been in situations like this before. They’ll let us go as soon as I explain.” With that, I turned back to face the two male officers. I was surprised to see they had their guns drawn. “Isn’t that overkill for a bunch of bottles and cans?” I said. I made the mistake of pointing at them, which I realized too late was dangerous. In the dark it was hard to tell that my hands weren’t holding a gun. “On the ground, you two,” one of them yelled.

  “I don’t think your plan is working,” CeeCee said. We both laid down in the middle of the street, and the uniforms came up behind us and handcuffed us and patted us down.

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “We’re not part of that gang,” I said. “Do you know who she is?” I said, nodding my head toward CeeCee. “She’s probably going to get an Oscar nomination for her role in Caught By a Kiss.”

  CeeCee heard me. “Well, it’s not certain yet, but there is a lot of buzz going around about it,” she said.

  I heard the two talking among themselves. One of them had heard of the movie, one hadn’t. The one who had gave details and the other one groaned. “Oh yeah, the vampire movie.”

  Unfortunately being a celebrity was no guarantee of any special treatment these days. Once London Omni spent thirty days in jail, despite being a wealthy heiress and actress, all bets were off. CeeCee, sensing that they didn’t like vampire movies, brought up her reality show.

  “Yeah, yeah,” one of them said as he helped her up. “Making Amends. Looks like that’s what you two are going to be doing.” The uniform hanging on to me pushed my head down before he put me in the backseat of the cop car. CeeCee came in from the other side. No one could say she was silent about it, either.

  “I demand that you call my attorney immediately,” she said as the doors shut on either side of us.

  She kept saying it, but with the Plexiglas panel between us and them, I don’t think they heard.

  “How does my hair look?” she said to me. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting her to say. The passing lights of Ventura Boulevard illuminate the backseat, and I caught a glimpse of her. Laying down in the street isn’t good for your appearance. CeeCee’s hair was always perfectly coiffed. Thanks to her newfound place in the spotlight, she never went anywhere without considering that she was going to be noticed. Right now she had a smudge on her cheek and the officer must have smushed her hair when he helped her into the car. Lucky for her, she’d chosen to wear black pants and a black loose top, which hid all the dirt marks from the street.

  CeeCee read my silence. “That bad, huh?” She sighed a few more times. “And I was worried about being seen leaving a discount store with a case of toilet paper. You’ve seen what they do with celebrity mug shots. They post them on the Internet and put them on the news. They never die. Those awful photos keep showing up again and again.” CeeCee was trying to maneuver her shoulder to fix her hair. “I don’t suppose they’d let me put on some lipstick.”

  There was both good and bad about the short ride to the police station. Good because we got out of that awful backseat. Bad because they handcuffed us to a bench.

  CeeCee had given up on me handling things and she’d taken over. She kept up a rant about calling her attorney. “I’m not saying a word until my attorney is here,” she yelled every time anyone passed. Lucky for us, one of the officers who had seen her on the Barbara Olive Overton show was sympathetic to her comeback-kid story and agreed to call Mason.

  By now it was late, but who knew how late. With my hands in handcuffs, I couldn’t even check my watch. I figured Mason must have arrived and pulled some strings because out of nowhere, they uncuffed us and handed us back our stuff.

  Mason was just coming in as we came out into the lobby. He looked a little surprised when he saw us. “You’re out already?”

  “Thanks to you, Mr. Super Attorney,” I said, rubbing my wrist and doing shoulder rolls.

  “I wish I could take the credit. I just got here,” he said.

  Worried that they’d made a mistake in letting us go, the three of us hustled out of there in a hurry. Only later did I find out that the gang of can and bottle thieves thought we were up
to some kind of bigger crime, and the whole time they were dealing with the cops, they kept insisting they had nothing to do with us.

  “Thank heavens, no mug shot,” CeeCee said as we walked outside. She realized she’d spoken too soon; a bevy of photographers were hanging by the door. When they saw Mason, they started shooting. I don’t think they even knew who they were shooting at first, assuming if they were with him, they had to be somebody. I was surprised to see Pierce Sheraton in the crowd. You would think that as the host of an entertainment show, he’d be above hanging outside the police station in the middle of the night, but what set him apart from the others was that he got down and dirty to get a story.

  CeeCee immediately started finger combing her hair and trying to stay behind Mason. That is until she realized they weren’t after her. They had focused in on Mason and wanted to know if he was there because the starlet Valerie Vancouver had been picked up on her third DUI.

  As soon as she thought she wasn’t in the spotlight, she wanted it, and CeeCee stepped from behind Mason and started talking to the photographers about her false arrest.

  It was a lot nicer getting into Mason’s Mercedes than it had been the cop car. It smelled much better, too. CeeCee took the backseat and sighed as she slipped in. “It’s so good to be free again.” She leaned toward the front seat. “Molly, do you have any of those chocolate samples in your purse? I’m feeling a little weak from our ordeal.”

  “Don’t worry, ladies, I have it under control.” The streets were as close to empty as they got in the Valley, and after a fast ride on the 101, he pulled into Du-par’s parking lot. “I always say the best thing to have when you get out of jail are pancakes.”

  There was just one other table of customers in the landmark coffee shop. Their pancakes were legendary and came soaked in a puddle of melted butter.

  Insisting she was just trying to keep herself from fainting at the memory of our evening, CeeCee polished off a short stack with barely a crumb left over. Personally, I was too unnerved to eat. I kept wiggling my hands to make sure they weren’t restrained. Mason thought it was all too funny.

  He dropped CeeCee off at her place first. The lights were on at my house as he drove up. He pulled into the driveway and his headlights illuminated Barry’s taupe Tahoe parked in front of the garage.

  Uh-oh. Not again.

  CHAPTER 20

  “I MISS ALL THE EXCITEMENT,” DINAH SAID AS WE walked into the bookstore café.

  “I’m not sure that CeeCee would qualify it as excitement,” I said, thinking back on how she’d looked when we finally exited the police station.

  There was a low din of conversations and the air had a strong enough scent of coffee. Just breathing it in made me more alert, which I sorely needed after everything that had happened the night before.

  Bob started drinks for us—a red-eye for me and a café au lait for Dinah—while we found a table. Most of them were full. Interspersed with the people hovering over their computers, there were a few people actually talking to each other. I noticed that D.J. Florian was one of the computer hoverers. No doubt writing his blog. When we were situated, I opened my tote and took out the girl doll that had started the whole fiasco with the cops. The cops had taken both dolls, along with my purse, and then, since they weren’t bottles or cans hoisted from somebody’s trash, had given them back when we were released. I didn’t even want to consider what they must have thought about me carrying around a couple of dolls.

  Lying across the table, she looked like a doll corpse, with her rosebud mouth and embroidered eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling.

  “Okay, so what happened when you got home?” Dinah said. I’d told her everything up to finding Barry’s Tahoe parked in my driveway when Mason brought me home. I was glad when Bob brought over the drinks. I fortified myself with a sip of the strong coffee drink before I recounted what happened when I got home.

  “My front door opened before I could get out of the car. Barry sure keeps in shape. He was across my lawn in a flash.” I took another long drink of coffee before continuing how Barry had reached the car just as I was opening the passenger door. To say he looked unhappy was an understatement. Why hadn’t I answered my cell phone? The phone got e-mails, did I ever look? What was my story this time?

  I was the first to admit I didn’t have a very good record with my cell phone. Something always seemed to happen. I forgot to charge the battery and the phone was dead, or it somehow set itself to silent, or I just didn’t hear it ring. Though with Mason’s custom “ring,” I didn’t think that was going to happen. How could you not hear a voice crying get me out of here coming from your purse? As for the other stuff the phone did, I wasn’t much for squinting at the small screen and pretty much ignored it.

  “I didn’t exactly have it,” I said.

  “You lost it?” Barry asked.

  “Not exactly. More like it was confiscated.”

  I guess Mason was used to speaking for his clients because he took over and explained my trip to the cop shop. He did a much better job than I would have done. He made it sound like CeeCee and I were just crossing the street and suddenly had been surrounded by the gang of bottle thieves.

  Barry ranted on about being worried. I was sympathetic to a point. I guess it didn’t occur to him that when he was off chasing suspects, disappearing and reappearing without a word, that I might feel the same. Mason must have realized his presence wasn’t helping and, with a wave, left.

  When Barry and I went inside, Samuel came out of his room. “You were out kind of late. Everything okay?” he had said.

  “It was a weird feeling being on the other side of a comment on what time somebody got home,” I said to Dinah. She wanted to know what I’d said and I told her I did just what he and his brother had done when I said something similar about their late arrival. I just nodded and gave no details.

  “And?” she prodded.

  “Samuel went back into his room and then Barry wanted to hear all the details. He did a lot of head shaking and finally laughed when I described CeeCee’s disreputable appearance when she met the photographers hanging outside. After he took me to pick up my car, he left; he had to drive carpool.”

  “So you never found out who was driving the BMW,” she said. I started to nod my head in dismay and then began scrounging in my purse.

  “How could I have forgotten? I wrote down the license plate number.” I found the scrap and waved it around.

  “Are you going to ask Barry to find out the name that goes with it?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Are you kidding? He said he accepted my sleuthing activity, not that he would help with it. You have no idea how upset he was when he heard about our almost arrest. Well, upset, until he started to laugh. He might have said something about when you stick your hand in the beehive you shouldn’t be surprised when you get stung.” Besides, I figured with all Mason’s connections, he could probably find out and be willing to do it.

  Dinah looked at the doll and lifted its crocheted skirt to see how it was made. “Oh, look, she’s wearing undies,” Dinah said. Not only did she have underpants, they had a little pink rosebud sewn on them.

  Just then, CeeCee came in, or more correctly, made an entrance. She couldn’t help it, really; she seemed to automatically make a stir. She was wearing sunglasses and looked like she had a hangover.

  She sank into one of the chairs with a loud sigh. “Going out with you is quite an adventure. I hope Nell appreciates what I did for her,” CeeCee said, looking over the top of her sunglasses at me. She made a weak gesture toward the counter as if she didn’t have the strength to get up and go place her order. One of Bob’s gifts as a barista was he knew how to cater to our clientele. He didn’t wait for CeeCee to even say anything before he was on the way to our table with a lemon bar.

  “You’re a dear,” she said, extracting it from his hand. She savored the scent and took a big bite. She sighed with delight at the flavor. “There, better already.”
r />   “You’re usual nonfat double cappuccino?” Bob said before he went back to the counter.

  “I think you better use whole milk today,” she said. She turned to us and assured us it was for medicinal purposes.

  I started to apologize for the previous night, but she held up her hand to stop me. “If you want to know the truth, I haven’t done anything nearly as exciting for a long time. Of course, when it wasn’t clear what was going to happen, I wasn’t quite so sure.”

  I mentioned the press people hanging by the door when we left. She took off the sunglasses, and I could see her eyes had lit up. “It turns out that was a good thing. I talked to my publicist about trying to kill the story, but she was thrilled when she heard I got photographed leaving jail.” CeeCee appeared sheepish. “Maybe I embellished a bit. I had us in a cell with all sorts of lowlifes. Anyway, my publicist said that she’d already been getting all kinds of requests for my story. I kind of hate to have to say it was all a mistake. I’d get better street cred if I’d said I was researching a part and had been part of the bottles and cans gang.”

  Bob brought her the foamy coffee drink. When he set it on the table, she noticed the girl doll for the first time. “You’re why we almost went to the pokey?” she said, picking it up. She lifted the skirt and there was a small burst of her musical laugh when she saw the underpants. “Look at all the details,” she said, indicating the tiny pink flowers crocheted out of fine thread along the hem of the moss green full skirt. She showed us how it was made and commented on the high quality of the workmanship. All the while, she looked like she was thinking of something but couldn’t quite grasp it. She finally set the doll down.

  “I’ve seen a doll like this before. Not exactly, but the flowers, the underpants with the rosebud.”

  I lifted the bottom of one of the doll’s black Mary Jane–style shoes and showed CeeCee the scribbles on the bottom done in surface crochet.