If Hooks Could Kill

by Betty Hechtman

  We ended up at a neighborhood Italian restaurant. Tarzanians had been eating there for decades thanks to the good food and friendly atmosphere. We took a table by the window and picked up our menus. I didn’t know why I bothered looking at mine. Mason always did the ordering. He knew what I liked better than I did.

  When the waiter came by, Mason ordered a Caesar salad for two. They made their own dressing and it was delicious. When Mason ordered several appetizers for us to share, it was like he’d read my mind. With the hot weather and late hour, I didn’t feel like anything too heavy.

  The waiter had just brought us a basket of hot homemade bread and I was pouring some olive oil on my bread plate, when I noticed someone come in from the back. Kelly walked through the tables, up to the counter, obviously there for food to go. I started to wave, but she didn’t see me and I let it go.

  “You know her?” Mason said.

  “Not exactly,” I answered. I started to explain about going to her house, but then realized it was better to start at the beginning of the whole thing. Mason’s eyes widened when he heard about me trying to tackle the actor. Then he laughed.

  “I wish I’d been there for that. Anybody I know in the scene?” The Caesar salad had come, and he divided it up on our plates, and asked for fresh pepper.

  “I don’t know the name of the actor I tackled, but North Adams was the guy I was trying to save.”

  Mason nodded. “He’s a client of the law firm. I know him from charity events and such, but he’s never needed my services. At least, not so far.”

  I mentioned our real destination had been Kelly’s. “There’s something weird there,” I said. Mason’s grin widened.

  “Great. I love it when you play detective.” I rolled my eyes in response. But after being involved in solving a number of murders, I’d developed some skills. I had started to notice things more and infer things from them. I did it at the grocery store all the time and tried to figure out what the people were shopping for by what they were buying. Like the time I figured out someone was having a barbecue and one of the guests was a vegetarian because they had a bag of charcoal brickets, six Spencer steaks, and one frozen vegetarian entree. I’d actually asked the man and he’d told me I was right.

  Mason laughed when I told him about the LUGOs. “I saw the store,” he said vaguely gesturing toward the street. “How’s it doing?”

  “I think they’re struggling. The neighbor mentioned Kelly would do anything to make some money.”

  “So tell me Sherlock what did you notice about the Hollar for a Dollar people’s house?”

  It had gotten to be kind of a game with us. I told him about Kelly’s room and how it seemed like a haven. “It was different from the rest of the house and had nicer furniture and doodads.” I described the refinished library table she had her computer on. I mentioned that I’d seen a chair like her Mission-styled one in a store for a couple of thousand. “Adele knocked into a leaded glass lamp. Even the modern copies of those aren’t cheap. I wouldn’t think much of it if the rest of the house, or what I saw of it, went with the things in her room.” I stopped for a moment and in my mind’s eye, I was seeing it again. “And it wasn’t just the furniture. It was the yarn, too.”

  Mason knew what a mess my craft room was. More than once he’d almost skidded across the floor after getting his fancy shoes caught in a grocery bag full of yarn. “No bags of any kind,” I said. Her stuff was all in plastic bins stacked neatly against the wall. I pictured Adele opening one of them and visualized the yarn she’d held up. “I recognized the brands. It was all pricey stuff.” Mason still looked a little puzzled.

  “The point is, instead of a hodgepodge of stuff like the rest of us have, Kelly’s looked like stock. She had a whole container of the same kind of yarn.” Mason kind of shrugged and urged me on.

  “So what do you think it means?’

  “I don’t know. We don’t even know if she really crochets or is a crochet pretender as Adele called her. Either way, it seems odd she would invest so much money in yarn. It was funny, too, that she didn’t have any samples of her work sitting in the room.”

  “So maybe Adele is right and she’s a fake. A fake with fancy taste,” Mason said.

  “What’s the difference if she is or isn’t, anyway,” I said. We’d started on the thick slices of fresh mozzarella with tomatoes and basil, along with the stuffed mushrooms and grilled asparagus done in garlic and olive oil. “Now you tell me your problem.”

  Mason’s face changed. The grin faded and he set down his fork. He took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. “You know my daughter is getting married and you know the wedding invitations have gone out.” He watched as I nodded.

  As I was agreeing, I was thinking that I didn’t even know either of his daughters’ names. He just called them my youngest and my oldest. And about those invitations— I hadn’t gotten one. I had dropped enough hints, but he’d shrugged them all off. As far as I was concerned not getting invited to the wedding was a definite sign our relationship shouldn’t be moving to the next level.

  “I just found out the wedding planner declared bankruptcy. It seems her assistant was embezzling money and never paid the deposit on the ballroom at the Belle Vista hotel, which is listed on the wedding invitations. No deposits were paid for flowers, food, the cake, the band . . .” His voice trailed off and I waited for him to say more. He looked at me intently. “Do you know what that means?”

  I had a pretty good idea, but I let him say it. “It means we have no location for the wedding. It means two hundred or so guests are going to show up and find somebody else having a birthday party in that ballroom. The food and the rest of it, is fixable. But finding a location at the last minute”—Mason threw up his hands. “And here is the worst part—my ex has known this for weeks. She was going to take care of it and then tell me. Take care of it?” His voice started to rise. “Jaimee took care of it all right,” he said sarcastically. “If she’d told me when she first found out, we might have found another place. But now? It’s just about impossible.”

  I’d never seen Mason so upset. Instinctively, I put my hand on his as a sign of sympathy. He squeezed it and sighed. “Sunshine, I knew you would understand.” So now I at least knew his ex-wife’s name. And I began to wonder about all the stuff he’d told me about them having an amicable divorce.

  “I could get buses to take the guest somewhere, if we had a somewhere to take them.” He picked up his fork, then dropped it in frustration. “I could just kill my wife.”

  He said it rather loudly and several diners looked toward us with surprise.

  Then Mason pulled himself together and asked if I wanted cheesecake. When I nodded, he ordered us coffees and a piece of cheesecake with extra strawberries to share. “I’m sorry for venting this on you. I suppose you’ve figured this isn’t the first time my ex has made a mess of things and dropped them in my lap to fix.”

  “So your wife’s name is Jaimee,” I said with a teasing smile. “My first peek behind the curtain. How about telling me your daughters’ names instead of calling them the youngest and oldest.” I’d gotten through to Mason and his mouth slipped into a grin as his anger dissipated.

  “Thursday is the one getting married and her sister’s name is Brooklyn.”

  “Thursday?” I said.

  “It was Jaimee’s idea to give her a unique name.” He rolled his eyes. “And Thursday is happy with her name. Go figure that.”

  “See, it isn’t so hard to let me into your life.”

  Mason was back to his usual self and chuckled. “I have been keeping my family separate for so long—it takes time to change. I have to take baby steps,” he said. “I suppose you want to know why we got a divorce.”

  From what he’d just said about Jaimee, it wasn’t too hard to figure, but I let him explain anyway. It was another baby step and I was glad he was taking it.

  “For a long time I was all work, work, work and we barely spent any time t
ogether,” he said. “Then, when my daughters went off to college and I finally had younger lawyers working for me to handle of lot of the grunt work, I started spending more time with Jaimee.” He shook his head with disbelief. “I’m not sure if she changed or if I just didn’t know her in the first place, but I started not wanting to go home.” He beamed a big smile my way. “She wasn’t any fun like you are.”

  After he paid the check, we walked down Ventura Boulevard holding hands. All the stores on the main street were closed and we looked in at the illuminated display windows as we headed back to the bookstore parking lot where Mason had left his car. Traffic had thinned out and the air had gotten the typical evening chill that made the summer weather so tolerable. You always needed a blanket at night and could turn off the air-conditioning and throw open the windows.

  Mason pulled the car in front of my house and cut the motor. “Shall I come in?”

  He’d been asking me that same question every time he brought me home and the answer had always been the same. We both stared at the front of my house and I said something about it not being a good idea.

  “When?” he said, which surprised me. He’d never pushed before. I made a helpless shrug.

  “When he’s gone,” I said. “I know what you’re thinking. I should have my head examined.” I looked toward the front window and just then I saw a familiar form standing in front of it, peering out.

  CHAPTER 4

  Even though it was a shorter distance up the walkway to my front door, I took the driveway and went through the backyard to my kitchen door. Inside everything was quiet. Even the dogs and cats didn’t rush to greet me.

  My plan was to quickly make myself a cup of herbal tea and take it to my room before anyone caught sight of me. I was filling my mug with hot water when Barry Greenberg, my former boyfriend, suddenly walked into the kitchen. It was a relief to see him not in a wheelchair, not in a cast, not on crutches and not leaning on a cane. He was beginning to seem more like his old self, though he was still favoring his left knee.

  “You’re coming home kind of late.” He leaned his tall frame against the counter as I took out the tea things and gave him a dark look. I had to force myself to keep from saying that it was none of his business.

  This was awkward with a capital A. There always seemed to be an undercurrent of anger when you saw an ex-boyfriend. But if he was living with you—well, not living with you, but under the same roof and recovering from something terrible, how could you not feel guilty for the anger.

  A videotape began to play in my mind. It was a combination of what I’d been told about Barry’s shooting and what I’d seen on TV. It had been just an ordinary day, shortly after Barry and I broke up. Barry was loading his car after a shopping trip to Walmart when he noticed a couple of uniforms taking out a pair of teenage boys in handcuffs and figured they’d been caught shoplifting. One of the cops was helping one of the suspects into the backseat of the cruiser when suddenly the other kid started to struggle with the officer handling him. Without hesitating, Barry rushed in, flashed his badge and tried to help.

  This was the part when I had to stop and swallow a few times. How could that kid have been so stupid to go from a shoplifting charge to attempted murder? Somehow he’d managed to get hold of the arresting officer’s gun, even with his hands cuffed behind his back, and began shooting wildly. Barry wasn’t wearing a Kevlar vest. It was all so unexpected, he couldn’t even move. He’d been shot three times. Once in the chest, one in the thigh and once in the knee. Even now, I shuddered just thinking of the pain.

  It had been Barry’s son Jeffrey who’d called to tell me about his father and to tell me that Barry was asking for me. It was all touch and go then. Barry was delirious, but still worried about his son. I was the only one he wanted his son Jeffrey to stay with. It didn’t matter what had gone on between Barry and me, I loved Jeffrey. I’d taken him home with me from the hospital.

  Barry’s condition kept getting upgraded and eventually he was ready to go home, but there was a problem. His condo was a two-story place and he couldn’t manage stairs. So what did I do? I offered to let him recuperate at my house. What was I thinking? I know what I was thinking—that he would never accept. It was Barry who’d been all or nothing about our relationship, insisting either we got married or were done, and I mean, completely done, not even friends anymore. But he had accepted my offer anyway, saying it was because of Jeffrey. The kid had been through a lot and he seemed happy at my house.

  Mason tried to talk Barry into getting a chairlift put in his condo and even offered to get it done, but Barry stuck with staying at my place. As a last ditch effort, Mason suggested both Barry and Jeffrey stay at his place. He lived alone with a toy fox terrier in a huge ranch house. I wasn’t surprised when Barry turned that down. Though the two men knew each other, I’d hardly call them friends.

  You didn’t have to be a brainiac to figure out Mason’s motive. He was campaigning for our relationship to be something more than pals, and having Barry staying at my house would definitely be an obstacle.

  At first it had worked out okay. My son Samuel had moved back home awhile ago and I gave Barry and Jeffrey rooms down the hall from his. Mine was on the complete other side of the house. I knew there was a constant flow of people coming and going to help Barry out, but I was barely affected by it. We were just ships occasionally passing in the kitchen.

  Whoever had designed this house must have known that someday, somebody would need to get away from it all without leaving home. Once I shut the door to the den behind me and entered the short hall, I could forget about everyone and whatever else was going on in the rest of the house. The master suite was really a suite and far away from the other bedrooms. I had a huge bedroom with a fireplace, a generous-size bathroom and a hall area that was like a sitting room. I’d moved some of my crochet stuff and brought in a comfortable chair to work in. I had all the electronic essentials—TV, video player and computer. I’d brought in a stack of romantic comedies and had a pile of books I wanted to read. It had become a habit for me to come home and shut myself in my little haven.

  Now that Barry had progressed from a cast with crutches, to just crutches, to a cane and now was down to a small limp, I was even more grateful for my refuge. He was up and around more and I never knew quite what to do when we ran into each other. I was looking forward to his going home. I’d have the run of my house back and we could permanently shut the door on our relationship.

  The air filled with the scent of peppermint as I swished the tea bag around in the cup a last time before discarding it. I was all set to grab the cup and my things and head across the house, when Barry started to talk.

  “I just want to thank you again for letting me stay here. I know it’s been great for Jeffrey.” This wasn’t the first time Barry had thanked me. I nodded and said I was glad he seemed to be healed. I waited, expecting him to say something about moving home.

  “I don’t know if you know, but I went back to work,” he said. He was watching me from across the room. I was all befuddled about where to look. It was normal to face someone speaking to you and I glanced up from the mug of tea. He must have changed out of his work clothes into the faded jeans and soft blue tee shirt he was now wearing. He’d looked pretty bad when he first got to my house, and I was glad his face had lost the gaunt look. I might have had a little residual anger about the way things had worked out for us, but I still cared about him. I was having a hard time making sense of it but I thought the best way to deal with it, was by keeping a distance.

  “You must be glad to get back to it.” I picked up the mug but still he didn’t move.

  “I’m not exactly back to my regular job.” He held up a blue binder that had been tucked under his arm. “I’m easing back in by working cold cases.” He glanced toward the steaming cup of tea. “That smells good. What kind of tea is it?” I wanted to take the tea and go, but it felt wrong to just rush out, and the way he was looking at my mug,
it was obvious he wanted some, too. I certainly wouldn’t begrudge him a tea bag. I pointed to the cabinet and told him to help himself.

  Without the slightest hesitation, he grabbed a mug and found one of the tea bags. As I made another move to go, he said, “Maybe we could have our tea together. To toast my going back to work.”

  I was going to beg off, but it was just a cup of tea after all, so I agreed. Barry didn’t wait for me to have second thoughts and led the way to the living room.

  “Seems like old times,” Barry said looking at the couch. When we’d been a couple, we’d spent a lot of time sitting there together. The idea of sitting there now felt strange and uncomfortable. I just wanted to drink my tea fast and escape.

  “Let’s sit outside,” I said, making an abrupt turn. Barry followed me through the kitchen and out the door.

  The yard was filled with the night sounds of crickets chirping and birds calling to each other. My gardenia plant was covered with creamy white blossoms and they filled the air with their heady scent. The floodlights along the back of the house illuminated the patio area and I noticed that Barry still seemed a little stiff as he lowered himself into one of the patio chairs. Above us the sky was midnight blue and the full moon peeked through the orange trees.

  “It’s nice out here,” he said setting the mug of aromatic tea on the small glass table between our chairs. He stretched his leg into a more comfortable position. I asked where Jeffrey was and he said he’d gone to bed.

  In a certain way, Jeffrey had benefitted from his father being laid up. Barry’d had to let go a little and his fourteen-year-old son had started using his bike for transportation. Jeffrey loved the freedom of getting around the area on his own. I might have kept my distance from Barry, but Jeffrey kept me up-to-date on what was going on in his life.

  “The important thing is that you’re better. It looks like it’s all healed up.” I glanced toward his outstretched leg. “I’m sure you’re anxious to move back home and get on with your life. So, what do you think it will be? A few days, a week?”