On the Hook

by Betty Hechtman

  I looked across the table to Dinah. “Maybe it would be better if Commander gave him some advice. He was widowed, and he had to start a new chapter with someone new,” I said.

  “He won’t listen to a man. Hal tried to talk to him, and Leo just didn’t get it. He needs a woman’s touch.” Rhoda gave me a hopeful smile. “Would you? I know you’d be great.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” I said with a smile. “I hope I can live up to your expectations. Call him over and we can do it now.”

  Rhoda seemed unsure. “He’ll be uncomfortable with everyone listening. Maybe he could go over to your house when you have a day off.”

  “Are you trying to set me up with him?” I asked with a laugh.

  Rhoda brightened. “I hadn’t thought of that, but if you’re interested…” Rhoda let the thought trail off.

  “I’ll be happy to try to give him some advice, but that’s it.”

  Leaving nothing to chance, Rhoda locked in a time for him to come to my place.

  “Enough about dating,” CeeCee said, projecting her voice over the conversations that had broken out at the table. “I think we really should get back to our core hooking and start making things for charities again.” She looked out into the bookstore to see if anyone was listening and had misconstrued what she had said this time. There was no one.

  “I mentioned it earlier when some of us met for the unveiling of the CeeCee Collins Mélange at the Petite Café.” She glanced around at the group. “I hope you’ll all go in and try it. But I’m getting off the subject. So what do you all think about getting back to our original mission?”

  “Absolutely right,” Rhoda said, and the rest of us all nodded in agreement.

  “Good,” CeeCee said with a big smile. “I’ll check around and find something special for us to do.” She looked around the table. “Elise hasn’t shown up, has she? She was in the group this morning, so I’m sure I have her okay.” She turned to Adele. “Did she say anything to you after I left about not coming?”

  Adele shrugged and seemed tense. “I don’t know anything about her plans or what she was going to do today.” Her voice sounded forced. She nudged me. “Right, Molly?”

  I was about to say, “Huh?” until I got what she was doing. Adele was trying to say nothing by saying too much. I gave CeeCee a vague nod. “As far as I know, she was planning to be here,” I said. But I couldn’t help but wonder if her not showing up had something to do with her showing us the house.

  Chapter Three

  I intended to call Elise when the happy-hour group broke up, but a bunch of teenage girls came in looking for what appeared to be the next big thing. Apparently Irene, the hottest YouTube goddess, had been telling her minions that books were “the thing.” She had sold them on the idea that there was no greater way to get away from the craziness of teenage life than to read a real book. In physical form. The latest book Irene had been pushing was My Gal Ella, which was a modern-day retelling of Cinderella.

  “She said if we went to a bookstore, we could get a copy right away,” one of the girls said. She glanced around Shedd & Royal with awe. “This place is really nice. I didn’t know it was here.”

  I had to search around our stock to find enough copies to appease them and then put in a rush order for more books.

  By the time I got home, I had forgotten all about Elise. My menagerie was waiting by the kitchen door when I came across the yard. The door was all glass, so I couldn’t miss seeing them. The rain had stopped for the moment, but everything was still very wet. There were puddles on the patio, and the bark of the orange trees was so shiny it reflected the floodlights I had on the back of my house.

  Felix and Cosmo slipped out as I went in. Felix was a small gray terrier mix and loved going outside no matter the weather. Cosmo was an unknown mix of breeds, had long black fur, and resembled a black mop. I expected them to return with muddy paws and pulled out the old towel I used on them to have it ready.

  I made sure not to let the two cats out, though they hung by the door. They were allowed outside only during the day and when they could be escorted. Otherwise they got into too much trouble.

  “Everybody has been fed,” my son Samuel said. He was just slipping on a vintage sport coat over his jeans. His sandy-colored hair was in a ponytail, and I was glad my twenty-three-year-old son had resisted the trend of wearing a man bun. “I let them out before and tried to get Blondie to join them. But you know her. All she wants is to sit in that old chair in your room. I did take her for a walk, though. That dog has some nerve claiming to be a terrier mix.” He glanced out the large kitchen window as Felix rushed out in the yard, got beyond the floodlights’ reach, and disappeared. “Now that’s a terrier,” he said. The small dog with wiry gray hair was definitely truer to the breed. He was feisty and smart. He barked when the doorbell rang and had to be locked away on Halloween because he wasn’t happy with all those strangers in weird outfits coming to his front door. “See, he’s even giving lessons to Cosmo,” Samuel joked.

  Samuel followed me as I walked out of the kitchen and went to hang up my coat and stow my umbrella. He saw me looking into the living room. The coffee table had been pushed off to the side again, leaving the center of the room clear. “My mother and the girls were here again?”

  “Grandma—I mean Liza—said to offer her apologies. They thought they could use the community room in their building, but it turns out they’ve been banned from using it as a rehearsal hall.”

  My mother was the lead singer of the She La Las, a girl group from the sixties that had had one big hit, “My Guy Bill.” She and the girls, Lana and Bunny, were back doing gigs. Personally, I didn’t know why they needed to rehearse so much. I was sure they could do the songs and choreography in their sleep.

  Samuel must have read my mind. “They wanted to warm up before tonight, and they’re working on something new—well, at least new to them—for that charity event. So they’ll be back. That’s why we left everything as is.” He straightened his tweed jacket. “Gotta go. They have a gig at a small club in Burbank. I’m playing keyboards.” Samuel was a barista by day and musician by night. When he wasn’t acting as musical director for my mother, he played his own gigs at local bars. He could play just about every instrument, though he usually stuck to guitar or piano.

  Samuel had been living with me off and on, and it seemed that every time he moved back, he brought some animals with him. I had planned on just one dog, Blondie. When Charlie died, I’d adopted her from a local shelter. She had an aloof personality, and I was sure that she’d been adopted once and returned to the shelter. We’d both been feeling pretty abandoned when I brought her home.

  By now I was used to her personality. I called her the Greta Garbo of dogs because of her preference for being alone. I accepted that she wanted limited attention and didn’t even care much about food. The only thing she got excited about was her nightly walk.

  The two cats had come with Samuel. They had started out with different names but were now known as Mr. Kitty and Cat. Samuel had gotten them from a shelter. They were adult cats—Mr. Kitty was seven and Cat was ten—which had given them little chance to be adopted until Samuel came along.

  Cosmo was a whole other story entirely. I’d gotten custody of him in a breakup.

  Felix was the latest addition to the group. Samuel and his then girlfriend had found him somewhere. And Samuel had gotten the dog when they broke up.

  I followed my son as he walked through the kitchen to the door. As an afterthought, he looked back. “You could come with. It would be good for you to get out there instead of sitting here alone.”

  Says who? The idea of an evening alone sounded great to me. I planned to make myself a nice dinner and cuddle up in front of a romantic comedy and watch Hugh Grant stumble around until he managed to win over Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, or that woman in Love Actually. It didn’t matter that I knew them all by heart; I enjoyed all the silliness and the always-rosy e
ndings. Though I had pretty much given up on it happening in my life. I had been relegated to giving romance advice now. What was I going to tell Leo, anyway?

  After Charlie died, I had tried starting a new chapter. It had started with me getting the job at Shedd & Royal and had included some attempts at relationships. I had married young and had never thought about dealing with dating ever again. I wished it was as simple as my catalog of romantic comedies made it seem.

  With Samuel gone, I went and rousted Blondie from the chair and got her to go outside while the cats watched. All the dogs came in, and I did a number on muddy paws, gave them all a treat, and let them spread out through the house.

  I was happy to find a bunch of white containers in the refrigerator, which meant no cooking. One of the positives of my mother and group using my house was that they always ordered in food. My father did the ordering, and his motto was, better to have too much than not enough. I poked through the containers and saw they had gotten Thai food. I made myself a plate of pad thai with its orange-colored sauce, some thick noodles with a brown sauce, vegetables simmered in a yellow curry, and a big mound of jasmine rice. I left it sitting on the counter while I set up the TV in the room where I kept all my yarn. The plan was to eat first, then crochet while I watched the movie. I popped Two Weeks Notice into the DVD player. The food had inspired my choice. Sandra Bullock had a thing in the movie about ordering lots of white containers of food, though in her case it was Chinese.

  I polished off the plate and began crocheting. I had a bunch of works in progress that served different purposes. For tonight, I wanted something simple that I didn’t have to think about and pulled out the thing I most liked both to make and to wear. The one skein of yarn went from burnt orange to turquoise, and, when the cowl was finished, it would be a colorful accent to my usually bland work outfits. Not that I really had to pay attention to the movie. I’d seen it so many times I practically knew the dialogue.

  I had settled into crocheting, and the movie was just at that part in every romantic comedy where they realize they’re made for each other and somebody has to run somewhere, when the phone rang.

  It was late enough to stir some worry as I reached for the cordless. The phone I had now no longer announced the caller in a mechanical voice, and I always forgot to look at the small screen to see who it was. “Hello,” I said with a breathy touch of concern.

  “Detective Greenberg here,” a familiar voice said in a flat, professional tone. Before I could ask why he sounded so formal, he added, “It’s official police business.”

  Barry Greenberg had been part of my attempts at dating. What had we been to each other? Boyfriend and girlfriend? It sounded so juvenile. I supposed the best way to describe it was that we’d been a couple. It hadn’t worked out for a number of reasons. Mostly, it had seemed that he’d wanted to make all the decisions and his job would always come first. That and he wanted to get married and I didn’t.

  I hated to admit it, but even though we’d been broken up for a long time, I still couldn’t help but feel a flutter when I heard his voice. I was guessing that would never go away, but this time there was another feeling too—concern.

  “What kind of official police business?” The flutter had been knocked out by worry.

  “It’s better if we talk in person,” he said. He was all authoritative cop voice, and it was impossible to tell if he felt any sort of residual feeling talking to me.

  He was a master at controlling his feelings, whether tiredness or hunger or anything connected to romance, probably. He kept them hidden behind the benign cop face and flat voice.

  When I agreed, he told me he was parked in front of my house. By the time I got to the front door, he was coming up the stone path. It had started raining again, but it was a soft sort of rain. All the moisture in the air made the atmosphere feel close, like being in a chilly steam bath. As he reached the front porch, the overhead porch light reflected off the droplets in his short-cropped dark hair. In his tough-guy fashion, he’d left off his raincoat, and more droplets glistened on his dark suit. I did feel a tug when I looked at his face. There were shadows under his eyes and a faint dark stubble on his stubborn jaw.

  It was only when he came inside that I noted he had a folder under his arm.

  “I thought I’d avoid a rush of dogs if I didn’t use the doorbell,” he said, and I nodded.

  He stopped to wipe his feet on the mat. He cocked his head and seemed to be listening just as Hugh Grant called out, “Darling, where are you?”

  “Do you have company?” There was a flicker of consternation in his mouth.

  “It’s a movie,” I said. “I was enjoying an evening alone with a romantic comedy.”

  “Right,” he said, going back to his stone face. I didn’t make a move to bring him farther into the house, and finally he suggested it might be better if we were sitting down. I led him into the living room, and he looked at the readjusted furniture.

  “My mother’s using it as a rehearsal space again,” I said by way of explanation. I was trying to stay cool, but my nerves were on edge. Part of Barry’s job was delivering bad news. I wanted to demand that he tell me whatever it was right away, as the tension was getting to me. But I was also determined to be as controlled as he was.

  “Where would you like to sit?” I said. I had two leather couches that were adjacent to each other. There was usually a table with a lamp between them, but it had been moved and now they formed an L and were touching.

  “It’s your call,” he said. I offered him one of the couches and pulled a chair up from across the room for myself. “Maybe I’ll just stand,” he said, realizing the couch made it seem too much like a social call.

  “Maybe I will, too,” I said. I wasn’t about to have him towering over me. Much as I had tried to hide it, the worried looked showed in my face.

  “Everyone you know is okay,” he said, apparently picking up on my expression. I took a deep breath and let it out, which didn’t go unnoticed. “I’m sorry. I should have said that right away.”

  He took the file from under his arm. “I’m here about this.” With no coffee table to use, he put it on the arm of the couch and then opened it to reveal an eight-by-ten photograph of an orange-colored scarf on a wood floor. “Do you recognize this?” he said.

  Of course I did. It was my go-to scarf that I was particularly proud of, since I had created the design myself. As an accent, I had added yellow flowers using yarn that glowed in the dark, though that had turned out to be a disappointment. The yarn glowed for only a few moments and no one had even noticed this unusual trait. That might have been why the yarn had been discontinued. Barry had seen me wear the scarf numerous times, and it was obvious he knew it was mine, or else why would he be here? But where had he gotten this picture and why was he asking?

  I took a moment to think. I remembered that I had thrown it on that morning as I was leaving. I retraced my steps in my mind. I’d gone directly to meet everyone at the Petite Café. I was sure I hadn’t left it there, as I remembered going back to the table to grab my umbrella, and there had been nothing else left. I’d gone to the bookstore afterward. Could I have left it there? And then I remembered the stop before the bookstore. Elise had rushed us out of that house. She had grabbed my coat off the clothes tree as I was stepping into my shoes. It must have fallen on the ground.

  Barry was too much in serious cop mode for this to be merely a lost-and-found sort of thing. If he had just been returning my scarf, he would have brought it with him. Why all this nonsense about sitting down? Unless there was more to it.

  “Why do you want to know?” I said. I saw his shoulders drop, and there was the slightest noise as he blew out his breath in consternation.

  “Just answer my question with an answer, not another question,” he said.

  “I’m not saying anything until you tell me why you’re asking,” I said, thinking of my promise to Elise to never disclose that we were at that house. “I doubt you
have time in your busy cop schedule to act as the lost-and-found of women’s accessories, so I’m assuming it’s somehow connected with your core business of crime investigation,” I said, trying to be light about it.

  Barry stepped closer to me. “Molly, stop it. You’re not going to trick me into giving you any information. You do realize that we can test the scarf and get DNA from it?”

  “Maybe you can and maybe you can’t, but it takes a long time and you have to have something to match it with,” I said, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

  “I should have known you’d be difficult,” he said, shaking his head with frustration.

  “Only because you won’t tell me what’s going on.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. I’m in charge,” he said.

  “And that was the problem, wasn’t it? You wanted to make all the decisions.” Oops, I’d strayed into personal matters. I tried to cover it, but his eyes had flashed and he’d dropped the cool-cop thing for an instant.

  “Forget I said that,” I said.

  “Then you’ll answer my question. Do you recognize this scarf?”

  “Not answering until I know why you’re asking,” I answered.

  “You’re impossible,” he said, and the benign face cracked.

  I knew that he probably hadn’t eaten, and maybe I felt a little bad about giving him such a hard time even though there was no way I was going to say anything until I knew what was going on with the scarf. “My mother left a lot of Thai food. How about I make you a plate?”

  He started to shake his head, but I think the mere mention of the food got through his ability to keep his hunger at bay. “Maybe I will take you up on that. It’s been a long day, and I’m not sure there’s anything at my place. But don’t think you’re buying me off with a plate of pad thai. You’re going to tell me about the scarf.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” I said with a smile.

  I don’t know why I always seemed to end up offering him food whenever I saw him, which actually hadn’t been much recently. I mean, we were finished as a couple and he wasn’t interested in being friends. Our only connection was Cosmo. When he and his son had adopted the small black dog, I’d agreed to let him stay at my house, since I had a yard and a doggy door. When we’d broken up, Cosmo had just stayed with me, though Barry’s son, Jeffrey, had visitation rights. Being a typical teenager, the visits were spotty at best and recently had gone down to nothing, since Jeffrey was staying with his mother for the moment.