If Hooks Could Kill (13 page)

“This and that,” she said. She stared directly at us. “What is it exactly that you’re here for?”

I picked up the wrap. “Do you crochet? We’re always looking for more Hookers,” I said.

It took a moment for it to compute. “You mean your crochet group that meets at the bookstore.” She punctuated it with a laugh as if it was an absurd idea. “I certainly have no time for handicrafts. I bought that from Kelly.”

“Then you were familiar with her online business,” I said. Nanci answered with an impatient sigh.

“No. She just showed me what she was selling. I just bought a few things—most of it was too expensive for me. She made a point that she used only very expensive yarn and made one-of-a-kind items.” Nanci picked up the wrap and showed us how there were beads spaced through it and the yarn, though the same color, changed texture. There was a moment of silence and I saw Nanci glance toward the door. Any second she was going to push us out.

I struggled for a topic that would grab her interest and buy me some more time. “It’s about Autumn,” I said. At the mention of her daughter’s name, Nanci snapped to attention.

“How do you know my daughter?”

“I don’t really know her very well. It’s more her boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?” Nanci was really alert now.

“Yes, Jeffrey Greenberg or maybe you know him by his stage name Columbia.”

Nanci appeared dumbfounded. “The kid on the bicycle? He’s like a baby.”

“Isn’t that the truth. Girls mature so much faster. I just wanted you to know that he’s a really good kid and Autumn couldn’t do any better.”

Apparently Nanci didn’t agree. She went into a whole rant about how Autumn had no time for boyfriends now. She had school, her dance lessons, the soccer team, show choir and of course, preparing for her future, which Nanci was confident was going to include an Ivy League college and a big career. “She’s going to use her talents for more than running the PTA.”

Nanci must have given up her concern about being rude, because she started walking toward the door. “You must have some important appointments to get to.”

Dinah and I looked at each other. It was our last chance.
The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigation
said if time for questioning was limited, go right for the throat.

“Here’s the thing,” I said as we reached the front door and she opened it. I quickly told her how Dinah and I had been next door the day Kelly was shot. “We’re pretty sure a real estate agent stopped by while we were there.” I told her I was trying to find out their identity and wondered if they’d left information at her house.

Nanci paused. “Nobody left anything here.”

“Were you home that day?” I asked.

She looked me directly in the eye. “I heard about you two. Someone at the PTA called you Sherlockette and Watson. Not that I have to tell you anything, but I wasn’t home.”

“Where were you?” Dinah said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nanci said as she ushered us out. “I don’t have to give you an alibi.”

C
HAPTER
19

“You better not tell Jeffrey what Autumn’s mother said,” Dinah said as we walked into the bookstore through the café. The smell of baking chocolate chip cookie bars was so delicious, it practically put me into a stupor. So, nobody baked anymore, huh. True it was for the café, but Bob was using my recipe, which I used all the time. I pinched a little excess on my hip—maybe too much of the time.

“I would never tell Jeffrey what she said. But at least we got our answer about the real estate agent. I’m pretty sure he or she doesn’t exist. So for whatever reason, Kelly didn’t want us to know who’d come over,” I said.

“It could have been Nanci,” Dinah said. “You notice that she got her way. After
L.A. 911
uses the yard, that will be it.”

“It seems crazy, but she was pretty upset about the idea of filming on her street. And we know she knows how to shoot a gun.” I reached out to take the red eye Bob had made for me. He handed Dinah her café au lait.

“Do you think she has a gun?” Dinah asked.

I nodded. “And I bet it’s a pretty one.” I reminded Dinah of the brochure showing off fancy guns.

“Too bad we didn’t ask to see it. Not that I have any idea how to tell if it had been fired recently. I suppose the cops must have found bullet casings and can match them up with a gun. Do you think Detective Heather knows about Nanci’s gun?”

I put up my hands in ignorance. “I’m not going to be the one to tell her, either, unless I’m sure it’s the murder weapon.” We took our drinks and went on into the bookstore while trying to figure out a way to get a look at Nanci’s gun or trick her into admitting that she’d killed Kelly.

The production company must have been filming a scene because none of them were hanging around. Rayaad was even reading a magazine at the cashier stand. She looked up and said Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal were unloading books for the signing.

We found my bosses setting up a display of the books with Stone’s photo and story. They had moved one of the signs promoting the event to stand next to the table. Once Stone had agreed to sign his picture in the surfing book, I’d put up signs around the bookstore and was trying to spread the news by word of mouth. It was all kind of last minute and I was hoping for the best.

I gave Mr. Royal the photo Stone had given me. It was an amazing shot of him walking on the beach holding a surfboard. “If he wants to put out anything about his energy drink, there will be room on the table,” Mr. Royal said. He stared at the photo and spent a few minutes raving on about Stone’s surfing prowess.

“I wonder where Adele is,” I said, doing a three sixty around the bookstore. “It’s too quiet in here.” Dinah followed me as we headed toward the kids’ section. But when we walked into the area with cows jumping over the moon on the carpets and kid-size tables and chairs, there was no Adele.

“Her stuff is here,” Dinah said touching Adele’s tote bag sitting next to a notebook on the counter against the wall. Dinah’s elbow brushed the tote bag and it toppled off the counter and fell bottom up on the floor.

“We better pick this up before Adele comes in,” I said grabbing a runaway ball of yarn. I noticed a hook had fallen free. “Did you see where this came from?” I asked Dinah as I rummaged through the stuff on the floor. I finally found a swatch of yarn missing a hook and figured they belonged together. Before I slipped the hook back into a loop, I examined the cream-colored yarn. I held it up to show Dinah.

“Poor Adele,” I said. “These are supposed to be bullion stitches.” I handed them to Dinah and she shook her head in dismay.

“I see what she means about it being her Achilles’ heel. These are terrible.” We’d both seen photos of properly done bullion stitches and they were tight coils with a slightly crescent shape. Adele’s coils were anything but tight or neat and appeared to be coming undone. We put everything back in the bag and set it back where it was.

“What’s in the notebook?” Dinah asked.

“It is just sitting here,” I said as if that made snooping in it okay. As soon as I opened it, I almost dropped it.

“Look.” I pointed to the title “Adele Abrams, Very Private Detective”
on the first page. Underneath it said “Case Book.” There was no way I was putting it down now. I flipped to the next page and saw “Case #1—The Murder of Kelly Donahue
.
”
Beyond that she had a page titled “Suspects” and below that had headings for “Who Gained From Her Death,” “Alibis,” and
“Adele’s Golden Triangle of Guilt.” A whole separate sheet was called “What to Wear to an Investigation
.
”

“Wow, she sure has a long list of suspects.” I did a double take as I got lower on the list. “Including you and me.”

“Geez, is she crazy?” Dinah said looking over my shoulder.

“She put an ‘
LOL
’ next to us,” I said going through the list. “She’s got Dan at the top with an asterisk. Nanci Silvers is right under him. Look at all the production people she listed. The only names I recognized were Fred and Zeke, the two prop guys I’d overheard and North Adams.” It seemed like she’d listed everyone on the cast and crew except Eric. “She ought to put herself on the list. She could be trying to kill everyone who knows how to do the bullion stitch, so she won’t look bad.” I was just joking about that and we both started to laugh. Neither of us heard Adele come in until it was too late.

“What are you doing?” she demanded pulling the binder from my hands. She stuffed it into her tote bag. As she did, she noticed that things weren’t quite as she’d left them. “CeeCee knows, doesn’t she?” She pulled out the little swatch of bullion stitches and she started to cry and pull out the stitches at the same time. Adele cried like everything else she did, loudly and with a lot of drama.

Dinah and I surrounded her and gave her a group hug. She seemed so heartbroken over her crochet disability as she called it, we both reassured her that we were sure she’d master the stitch in no time and once again promised not to mention it to CeeCee.

I was hoping the fuss would make her forget we’d been looking at her detective book. Of course it didn’t. “A lot you know. Eric was helping me with it. Maybe you don’t know, Pink, but homicide detectives make up a murder book for each of their cases. Us serious freelancers do, too.” She pulled the notebook back out. “When you see this you’ll understand how on top of things I am. I couldn’t get any crime-scene photos of the body so I had to improvise.” She turned to a page I hadn’t seen and showed how she’d drawn Kelly’s workroom with a stick figure sprawled face up with a large red mark in the middle of her chest in front of the sliding glass door. She had used red curlicues going from the stick figure to areas all around it to show the blood spatter. “Eric told me where the body was.”

“I’ve seen a real murder book,” I said to Adele. “Just the other night, Barry showed me the one from a case he’s working on.” I was going to tell Adele more about it, but she cut me off.

“Mine is almost as good as the real thing,” she said, holding the picture page open.

“I drew it all based on what Eric told me, like they could tell that Kelly was shot at close range and was facing her assailant.”

“So then this is accurate? She was on her back?” I asked, and Adele nodded. “It means she was facing her killer.”

Adele snapped the book shut. “All of it points toward the culprit being Dan Donahue. Except they haven’t found the murder weapon and they don’t have any other hard evidence that he did it. At least, not yet,” Adele said, giving us a knowing look.

*   *   *

Although Mason and I had been having dinner together most nights, that night we didn’t. He called to tell me they were having some kind of family powwow about the wedding situation. I realized I had no place in it, but I still felt left out.

I was surprised to come home to an empty house. For so long Barry had been there every night, mostly Jeffrey, too. But now that Barry was back on his feet, literally, it made sense they wouldn’t just be staying put. I could tell by the trash, they’d had dinner before they went wherever. The takeout food containers gave it away. And the number of dishes in the dishwasher.

I laughed at myself. I was becoming quite the detective. Figuring out Samuel was out was easy. The light was off in his room and the door was shut. I had the house all to myself, finally. It was still balmy outside due to the fact it had been over one hundred degrees during the day. It seemed like a perfect night for an ice cream dinner. The only problem was no ice cream.

I brought the dogs inside and grabbed my purse. Gelson’s and Whole Foods were closing for the night, so I headed toward Ralph’s. The hot weather seemed to have made lots of people put off their grocery shopping because even though it was almost ten, the parking lot was crowded.

Once I got inside the store, I remembered other things I needed and, before I realized it, had a cart full of things like paper towels and cat food. I was ready to pick up the ice cream and check out, when I almost crashed carts with Dan Donahue. I had assumed by what I’d seen at their house that Dan brought everything they needed from his store, but apparently I was wrong. His cart had a whole selection of merchandise.

When he looked up to apologize for the cart crash, I said “Hello.”

“Molly Pink, the bookstore lady, right?” he said. I nodded and he started to back his cart away. I wasn’t about to let go of the opportunity to ask him a few questions, so I grabbed the side of it and stopped his escape.

I wished Dinah was there. We could do a good cop, bad cop thing and get information out of him without him even realizing he was giving it. But with no Dinah, my options were limited. You couldn’t do just bad cop.

“I’m surprised to see you shopping here,” I said. I studied his face. He looked tired and his smile seemed a little wan.

He glanced at his cart with a sheepish expression. “Bang for a Buck doesn’t carry everything. I’m going to have the reception for Kelly’s funeral at the house and I needed some things.” He paused with a long sigh. “I wanted to have what she particularly liked.”

“How are you holding up?” I said. This was the hard part. How to figure out if Detective Heather and Stone, along with everybody else, were right and he was a cold-blooded killer, or was he a grieving husband. He sighed again as he moved a loaf of cocktail rye bread so it wouldn’t get squished by a bottle of Kalamata olives.

“Thanks for asking.” I thought he was going to leave it at that, but then he continued on. I wasn’t sure if he needed to vent or he was trying to work up sympathy. He began by talking about the shock of coming home to find Kelly. I noticed he seemed a little weak-kneed and I suggested we sit down by the closed coffee kiosk.

I started by saying it seemed like too much of a burden for him to have to arrange the reception after the funeral. “I’d be glad to handle it. I’m sure I can get your neighbor Dinah Lyons and her friend Commander Blaine to help.” He gratefully accepted.

“And then to have the cops all over me.” He was leaning on his knees, clasping his hands. He lifted his head and looked at me directly. “You don’t think I killed my wife, do you?”

This is where I started to play stupid cop. “The cops think
you
killed Kelly?” I tried to sound shocked at the thought. He reacted with relief.

“Good. I was afraid the word on the street was that I did it. It’s crazy. Why would I want to kill Kelly?”

The list of reasons clicked off in my head. There was the big insurance payment I heard he was getting. There was the fact that they weren’t getting along and another divorce would break him. Then there was what the assistant manager of Dan’s store said about him being upset that Kelly wouldn’t help out at the store. And what about whatever was going on between him and Nanci Silvers. I just gave him a sympathetic smile.

“I thought at least my kids would be here, but under the circumstances my ex is keeping them. Kelly’s kids are staying with her ex. I don’t know what to do.” He seemed like he might cry. He was seeming less and less like a cold-blooded murderer and more and more like someone Detective Heather had just latched onto. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

“I’m just curious. When you came home that day, did you ring the doorbell?”

“That’s a strange question,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

I hate it when people answer a question with a question. It comes across like they are trying to avoid something. I started viewing him as the cold-blooded killer again. Maybe I’d catch him off guard by seeming sympathetic.

“I’m sure the cops will drop it. What evidence do they even have?” I said.

He took a breath and nodded. “Exactly. They tested my hands, no residue of gunpowder. Just because I’m the one who found her doesn’t mean anything.”

“Then the obvious question is who did kill her?” I waited a beat before continuing. “What about your neighbor, Nanci Silvers? How well do you know her?”

He stood up and prepared to leave. “I don’t know her at all.”

I checked his eyes. No surprise he was looking away.

Even though it was late by the time I finally got home with my ice cream, I called Dinah. Commander was with her and they both were enthusiastic about putting on the reception, but for different reasons. Commander liked to arrange any kind of gathering, particularly if it helped someone out during a tough time. On the other hand, after hearing that Dan claimed not to know Nanci, Dinah saw it as an investigation opportunity. While I was on the phone, Barry and Jeffrey walked in, arguing.

“But Dad, I don’t see why I can’t just ride over to our place. I can go up stairs.”

Barry’s face looked stormy. “There’s no discussion. Give me your key.”

I had to stick my finger in my free ear to be able to hear Dinah. She picked up on their fussing.

“Barry seems to be having a hard time letting Jeffrey be independent,” she said. I just murmured an uh-huh in response. Dinah and I finished her call and I finally sat down to my ice cream dinner. I had the kitchen to myself for only a moment before Barry popped in.

“I thought I’d have some tea.” He opened the cupboard I had given over to them and took out several boxes. “I owe you some tea bags.” He undid the cellophane and started to take some out. I told him to forget it, but he insisted on at least making me a cup.