Hooks Can Be Deceiving

by Betty Hechtman

The empty cubby was now full of the sponsor’s yarn with a big banner draped across it. One of Rhoda’s Cakes for a Break had been placed in the center of the table. A woman I’d never seen before was doing weird stuff to the cake. She’d sprayed something on it and brushed something on the edges so they glistened. A sign had been placed next to it that said DO NOT EAT.

  The Make-and-Take kits were all in a basket next to Rory’s seat. Extra chairs had been added around hers. The only one getting makeup and wardrobe was Rory, and a dressing area had been fashioned out of bookcases in the same way we’d made the backstage area for Missy Z.

  The director had picked out some Make-and Takers and had them waiting in the music and video department. The plan was that they would film straight through for an hour and then edit it down and add some inserts and come up with a half-hour show.

  I met Rory at the front door and escorted her to the dressing area. I expected her to act like one of the Hookers, but she had totally morphed into being the star of the show. She looked askance at the area as she went to get in the chair.

  “You call this a green room?” she said disdainfully.

  Rory seemed nervous as she sat in the chair and the makeup woman began to work on her hair and face. I was going to excuse myself, but Rory grabbed my arm and begged me to stay. I didn’t think for a minute that it had anything to do with me personally. She just wanted a body there, and I got a hint of what it must be like to be a companion.

  Rory began talking to the makeup woman. I was only half listening, but she seemed to know her and rambled on about how you kept meeting the same people. I saw her looking toward the opening in the improvised backstage area as she spoke. She seemed to be looking at someone. But who? It seemed like everyone in the world was going by. Marianne was there with Janine. Errol and his wife were there as well. CeeCee passed by, talking to the producer and the director. The set director went past carrying a basket of yarn.

  “We’re done,” Rory announced a few minutes later, snapping her fingers in front of my face to get my attention. I uttered a surprised huh, since my mind had been elsewhere. She pushed past me and went out into the bookstore. I blindly followed her and then stopped at the opening, still deep in thought. All these pieces were floating around in my mind. Something Rory had said and something I’d heard from someone else clicked together as if drawn by magnets.

  I pulled out my smartphone and typed something in. As I read over the information that came up, I chided myself for not thinking of it before. I did a quick search and clicked on a link. I felt a shiver as I read an article, and it got worse as I studied the photo that accompanied it. A white phone charging cord decorated with a painted red flower was attached to what seemed to be an extension cord coiled like a snake. The design of the red flower looked like a crocheted one, and it triggered a memory.

  “Wow, nobody would have figured it out,” I said out loud. I had to tell Barry. I clicked on his number but was disappointed when I got his voicemail. I simply said, “I know who did it,” and clicked off.

  “Pink, what are you doing back there?” Adele said. Her voice snapped me back to reality, and I shoved my phone in my pocket and went out to join the fray. I was going to check on the yarn department, which was now being referred to as the set, when Mrs. Shedd stopped me.

  “Good, you’re here,” she said, and pushed a box on me. “This needs to go to the back room.”

  She seemed all aflutter, so I quickly agreed and went back toward the front of the store. The back room was located near Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal’s office at the back of an alcove that had greeting cards and writing supplies. It got a lot quieter as I got away from all the activity.

  I opened the door and was reaching to turn on the light when suddenly I felt an arm come from behind me and grab me as the box fell out of my grasp. I was pulled into the darkness and then the door slammed shut.

  “Just a hint for the future: you should really keep your voice down when you’re talking to yourself,” a man’s voice said. I thought this was some kind of joke and tried to pull free, but his grasp held tight, and I felt something sharp against my back.

  He mumbled something about having to improvise and turned on the light. I tried to turn my head to see my captor, but I already knew who it was. He pushed me onto the straight-backed chair and kicked around the boxes on the floor. He released his grasp on me, but the sharp point that I was sure was a knife stayed against my back.

  I felt him lean down and grab something, and then he pushed the end of a skein of yarn in my hand and demanded I hold it. When I hesitated, the sharp point pushed through my shirt, and I knew my skin was next, so I grabbed the end of it. He began to wind the yarn over my upper arms and around the chair. When he got to my elbows, he dropped the knife and used both hands to finish wrapping me to the chair and tied it off.

  I made the mistake of moving my legs, and he grabbed more yarn and bound each of my legs to one of the chair’s. Finally he stood and came around in front of me.

  All the charm in Michael Kostner’s face was gone. “Now we can talk,” he said in a grim tone. “What is it that you figured out?”

  “Nothing really,” I said. I would have put my hands up in capitulation if I could have moved them.

  “I heard you and your friends talking about your independent investigating the other day. And then a few minutes ago, you did that Eureka thing before you called somebody and left a message and said you knew who did it.” He stroked the fashionable stubble on his chin and gave me a menacing stare. He held up the knife. “How about you tell me about it.” When I hesitated, he waved the knife in front of my face. “Talk,” he commanded.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to swallow back my nerves. “It didn’t occur to me until I heard Rory talking about meeting the same people again, and it came back to me that you had said something about working with her before. When I checked the crew from The Grass Is Always Greener, I saw you were listed as an assistant producer. That’s where you got the idea, didn’t you? All you had to do was dress like the gardeners and blend in with them to set things up. I thought that Marianne might have been the intended victim, but then I remembered something Connie said the first time you came to the bookstore.” In my mind’s eye, I was seeing Connie looking at the red crocheted flower and the square with the torn strand of yarn. “I misunderstood what she said at the time and didn’t realize it had anything to do with you when she said, ‘Now I get it.’” I glanced at his face, surprised at how hard his eyes looked.

  “Mason said you were a client of his. He said you didn’t do anything—but you did, didn’t you?”

  “It was over and done with. Case closed,” he said in an angry voice. “I couldn’t take a chance that Connie would tell her story to someone.”

  I was pretty sure I knew what he was referring to. The article I’d found was about the accidental death of Michael’s wife. She’d been electrocuted when her cell phone fell into the bathtub. The phone had been plugged in, and the charging cord had appeared frayed. The accompanying photo had shown the charger with a red flower painted on the plug. The case was closed because it could have been suicide or an accident, and that had been the end of it.

  “Connie worked for you, or should I say your wife.” There had been a side note to the article about his wife’s death that had mentioned she was a recovering opioid addict. “She was a sober companion, wasn’t she?”

  Rory had said that Connie had worked as a sober companion before working for her. She’d also mentioned that something bad had happened with a cell phone and that she seemed to be upset about it.

  He nodded grimly. “I wanted a divorce, and she was going to clean me out. And she had a nice insurance policy.” He mumbled something to himself about the problem not being original, but the solution was. “My wife was addicted to her cell phone. She practically had a panic attack if it wasn’t with her and charged all the time. She was crazy about her charger too. She had to have a name-brand one and was upset with
me because I used knock-off cords, which she insisted were inferior. She’d painted a flower in red nail polish on her plug so there would never be any confusion between hers and mine.

  “She had to have the phone on the ledge next to her when she soaked in the tub. She plugged her charger into an extension cord that was plugged in outside the bathroom.” I saw his eyes go skyward. “She insisted that made it safe.” He stopped for a moment to collect himself.

  “It was almost too easy. I took one of my no-name cords and painted a flower on it. She was right about the cords being inferior. It was easy to make nicks in the plastic with a razor so that when she used the cord, it would fray. It was no problem switching cords when she was sleeping. Then I waited until she was soaking in the tub. I walked in on her and, as I was talking to her, gave the phone a shove, and it fell in the water. I left without looking back. It was Connie’s day off, and she’s the one who found my wife when she returned.” He was quiet for a moment, and I thought he might be having some regrets. But then he started grumbling about Connie again and how much she’d liked his wife and how upset she had been when she died.

  “Here’s the problem,” he said. “She walked into my office as I was working on the charger cord. She didn’t know what she was seeing, and I thought that she’d forgotten all about it, but the way she acted that night at the bookstore made me a little nervous.

  “I called her cell phone later and apologized for not recognizing her. I said I hadn’t realized who she was until after I’d left the bookstore. It didn’t take long before she blurted out that she’d always felt there was something off about the charger cord that had been found with my wife but could never put her finger on it, but somehow seeing me, the yarn flower, and some other yarn had triggered something, and suddenly she’d remembered seeing a cord with a flower in my office. She said she knew then that I’d switched them. The cops still have the phone cord, and all she’d have had to do is tell them that my wife’s cord was the name brand and they could see that the one they have isn’t. I’m sure they’d reopen the case with me as a suspect.

  “If nothing else, my position with the Craftee Channel would be screwed. Our viewers are mostly women. Do you know how it would look if one of their executives was in the middle of an investigation of the death of his wife?”

  He went back to talking about Connie and seemed to want to talk about how he had set it up, as if he was proud of his cleverness. “I was already worried about Connie before I talked to her, so I went to the house. I left my car on the street and then walked onto the property. In the dark, they didn’t see me, but I saw Connie walk across the lawn to the guesthouse. Then I got the idea to adapt what we’d done in The Grass Is Always Greener. I live in the area, and I know that gardeners come the day before trash pickup. I waited until the real ones were ready to leave, and then I set up the radio with a frayed extension cord and reset the sprinklers so they would leave a big puddle. I also knew that Connie always took Tuesdays off and her habit was to come back in the evening. Since it was still technically her time off, I knew she would go directly to the guesthouse and to get there would have to cross the waterlogged lawn, which would be electrified.”

  He looked at his watch and suddenly seemed impatient. “I’m afraid I have no playbook this time, and it’s not my style to do anything too direct or with blood.” I knew I was in trouble when he began to rummage around the storage room. I considered yelling, but considering where we were and with all the noise going on in the rest of the store, I knew no one would hear me.

  I tried to keep an eye on what he was doing. He grabbed the big-bulbed Christmas lights and plugged them in, but they didn’t come on. Then he flipped the switch above the plug, and suddenly the colorful bulbs lit up.

  “I’ll just have to adapt what I already know,” he said under his breath as he flipped the switch to off. I watched as he used the knife to cut at the cord on the lights, and then he wound them around my shoulders. “It’ll be sizzle, sizzle, flash and you’re frizzled,” he said gaily. This time he did look at me, and I felt my stomach clench in panic.

  He pulled a water bottle out of his pocket and doused me with it. Meanwhile, I’d been looking around for something to help me escape. I looked at the boxes of yarn on the floor and the pastel Easter Bunny leaning against the wall. The water was soaking into the yarn and made it smell slightly gamy.

  He’d unplugged the holiday lights before he strung them on me, but now he got ready to plug them back in, making sure the switch was turned off first.

  “Au revoir, mon chéri.” He bent to plug in the lights, not realizing the cord was too short and they had pulled partly off of me and part of the cord was on his feet. His momentary distraction gave me time to make my move. When he got over the shock of seeing where the lights had landed, he looked up and gasped to see me standing in front of him as the rest of the colorful lights with the frayed cord fell on him. “I hope you don’t have sweaty feet,” I said, eyeing the light switch.

  Just then the door flew open and Barry came in.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I couldn’t ruin things for Mrs. Shedd by disrupting the shoot, so I kept things quiet and got Barry not to flood the place with cops. Instead, Barry, Michael, and I had a cozy little conversation in the back room. Most of the talking was done by Barry and me. All Michael said was that he wasn’t saying anything without his lawyer.

  Actually, Michael did speak a little, just enough to ask how I’d escaped my bonds. “It’s rather ironic,” I said. “The yarn that made Connie think of that extension cord was defective. It frayed when you pulled at it. The water you dumped on me made it even weaker, and all I had to do was push out with my arms and legs and it came apart. That’s it over there,” I said, pointing to a box of yarn that said RETURN on the side. I pointed out the box of yarn next to it. “Now, if you’d chosen that yarn, it would have been another story.” And a disaster for me. Those boxes contained the yarn I’d taken out of the cubby, and those strands were like iron.

  Barry did his best to keep his cop face, but he still rolled his eyes. “As soon as I heard your message, I figured you would probably get yourself in trouble.”

  “Hey, maybe I did, but I got myself out of it too,” I said, and we both looked at the state my clothes were in. Not only had the yarn broken and left pieces stuck all over me, but the dye had come off when it got wet. My khaki pants were smeared with blotches of purples and reds.

  Michael might not have wanted to talk, but there was nothing to stop me from sharing what he’d told me. Barry wrote it down without a word.

  Finally, I helped Barry take Michael out the emergency exit. I waited to see if Barry would say anything or even look back, but he was in full cop mode and Detective Heather was standing by the curb.

  I didn’t have time to think about it. I had to get back to work. Nobody batted an eye when I showed up in the hodgepodge of clothes I’d gotten from the lost-and-found box coupled with a pair of faded jeans I’d left there.

  Everyone was in place and they were about to start shooting. With so many people milling around, no one seemed to notice that Michael was missing, though I’d already called the station and told them that he had been called away.

  I didn’t join the Hookers at the table. It was partly because of the outfit. Did I really want to be seen on TV wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a dachshund wearing a blonde wig? How had somebody left that at the bookstore, anyway? The other reason was that I seemed to be more of an arranger than a participant. I joined Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal to watch.

  Rory did fine and came through in the crochet department. She helped the Make-and-Takers, threw in two Dance Breaks, and got in her pitch for left-handers.

  The only time she seemed nervous was when she had to try Rhoda’s Cake for a Break and do a pitch for the flour.

  Afterward, she explained, and I understood why she hadn’t wanted anyone to see the old reality show. It also explained why she hadn’t tried to get public
ity by connecting herself with Connie’s death. Rory had gone gluten free, and it had been Connie’s job to keep her from having even a taste of anything made with wheat flour. On the show, Rory had denounced gluten as practically being the devil’s food, though she had since dropped the whole thing. She had been worried the current sponsor would find out about her past stance and that would get her fired.

  Rory also confided that Connie had known she had split from her husband while they were appearing as a supposedly happy couple on the reality show. So that was the secret information she’d been worried about getting out.

  Mason was the one to give me the news that Michael was being charged with first-degree murder for Connie’s death and attempted murder for trying to do me in with the Christmas lights. As it turned out, it probably wouldn’t have worked, but it was Michael’s intention that counted. And his wife’s case was being reopened. Michael had called Mason’s firm looking for a lawyer as soon as he’d gotten his one call at the police station, but no one would take his case.

  The Craftee Channel dropped him immediately, just as he had feared.

  The Craftee Channel felt completely differently about the bookstore, however. They were impressed with what troopers we were, considering the circumstances, and decided to make Shedd & Royal the permanent set for the series.

  Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal were overjoyed. Not only would they be paid for the use of the bookstore as a location, but Shedd & Royal would be a star for sure.

  Adele didn’t become the sidekick as she’d hoped. The new producer looked at all of the Hookers as being in that position. They did give her a credit as Crochet Consultant. She had a good time rubbing it in her mother-in-law’s face.

  Rhoda’s cake was a big hit, and she was invited to be on one of the channel’s cooking shows.

  Elise made up kits for the bracelets, and they were sold on the channel’s website and in the bookstore. She succeeded in getting the set designer to place one of her Color Square blankets on the back of Rory’s chair, and then she added “featured on Creating With Crochet” to the ones she was selling at the open houses.