On the Hook Page 11

  “What did they ask you?” Adele said.

  “How did I know him? Did he have any enemies?” She stepped closer to Adele. “It’s not like I lied or anything to the cops, but you know Tim and I had sort of a thing and I didn’t mention it. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t either.”

  Adele’s expression sharpened. “Deal, but you can’t tell them I work here either, okay?”

  “Sure. Why do the cops’ job for them?” She glanced around the bookstore and watched as Sheila came in and went to the back of the store. “From what the detective said to me, I’m guessing they think someone in the workshop might have killed him. He kept asking me if I’d actually gotten some tangible benefits from the workshop—in other words, work.”

  I wanted to ask her if the detective she had talked to was Barry, but I also didn’t want to admit I’d had anything to do with anything, so I kept quiet. “Lucky for me, I got a callback on the play this morning, so I could tell the detective about that. Timothy would be so pleased. I’m the second lead in Trending. It’s the work of a new playwright at an equity waiver theater in North Hollywood.” She checked my expression to see if I understood.

  “I know what equity waiver theaters are.” They have ninety-nine seats or less and, since they’re nonunion, are a great place for both new writing and new acting talent to get a shot. I mentioned that my late husband had had a public relations firm and that I had often helped out. She suddenly viewed me with new interest, but when she asked if I still had any of his connections, I changed the subject.

  “What about the others? Do you think they were happy with what they got out of the workshops?”

  Adele opened her mouth to answer, but Deana held on to the floor.

  “It depends what their expectations were. Tim told me from the start that I was a born actress and he could help with the fine-tuning and tweaking of my talent, so I was all about getting work. But for some of them, well, it was the one day a week when somebody took them seriously as an actor.”

  “Tim saw my talent, too,” Adele interjected. “He was helping me fine-tune how to best present my personality. He mentioned that I dressed to show off who I was.” She gestured toward her outfit with a flourish. Her loose-fitting jeans had white doilies sewn on at the knees. Her black top had a row of small white doilies attached near the neckline, so it looked almost like she was wearing a necklace. To finish it off, she wore a hot-pink beanie with a floppy white flower. I had to wonder if Timothy had meant that as a compliment or merely an observation. “If only I’d asked him to give me the details about our upcoming meeting,” Adele added.

  Deana barely seemed to be listening and was muttering about trying to get the right people to see her upcoming play. “Maybe Alexandra can help me,” Deana said, speaking mostly to herself. Meanwhile, she had been watching the trail of people heading to the back of the store. “Isn’t that CeeCee Collins?” she said as our lead Hooker arrived at the table. “I’d sure like to meet her. I bet she has a ton of connections.”

  Deana took a step toward the yarn department, but Adele blocked her way.

  “No, you can’t go back there. It’s for Hookers only,” Adele said in a firm voice. Deana did a double take at the Hooker name until Adele explained the crochet connection.

  Deana leaned around Adele for another look. “Maybe I could join them. I’m sure I could pick up crochet. I already know how to knit.”

  Adele’s eyes grew stormy, and I was sure it had more to do with Deana saying that she knitted than her persistence in trying to connect with CeeCee.

  Adele looped her arm through her workshop mate’s and walked her to the front. I didn’t hear what Adele said to her, but I noticed that my fellow Hooker stood there until Deana was completely out the door. Then she caught up with me as I headed to join the group.

  They had already started and there was a debate going on. Rhoda had brought a sample of another baby blanket pattern and was offering it as an alternative to the one CeeCee had handed out.

  “Dear, I appreciate your effort,” CeeCee began. She had such a happy tinkling sound to her voice that it totally covered up the fact that she was overruling Rhoda’s suggestion. “I showed this one to the captain at the fire station, and he said it was perfect because of how stretchy and substantial it is. It offers a layer of protection to such fragile infants.” CeeCee held up a cream-colored one she’d made and was in the middle of showing how it stretched when she looked up and stopped what she was doing. “Elise! At last you’ve come. I was so—”

  “I saw Logan on the news,” Rhoda interrupted. “How terrible that he was the one to find Timothy Clark.”

  The name hung in the air. They all must have remembered my warning about Adele’s reaction, and they turned toward her.

  Instead of having some kind of meltdown, Adele just stared back at them all. “What? Is something wrong?”

  “It’s nothing, dear,” CeeCee said quickly, before looking at me with a question in her eyes. I just shrugged. I never knew with Adele. As I heard her let out her breath in a rush, I realized she might have learned more about acting from Timothy than I’d thought.

  “He must have told you more about it,” Rhoda said. “How did it happen? Wasn’t Timothy Clark in a TV show a while ago? Something about a silly detective?”

  Elise took center stage. “Logan is still recovering from the shock. Of course, I don’t know anything about what the place looks like, but I think he had gone downstairs to a den or something, and he saw this man, and then it turned out he was dead.”

  “We’re just glad you’re back,” Adele said. “I’m sure it’s all very upsetting for you and you don’t want to talk about it.” She said don’t want to talk about it in a different voice full of meaning.

  “Adele, you’re absolutely right,” Elise said, sinking into a chair. Sheila explained what the group was doing, handed Elise a sheet with the instructions, and told her to pick some yarn from the pile on the table. Elise seemed relieved to pull out a hook and start crocheting.

  “I’m certainly glad it didn’t turn out for me the way it did for Timothy Clark,” CeeCee said. “I wasn’t talking about the dead part, though I’m glad about that, too. I was thinking more along the lines of his career. When Bradley V, P.I., ended, it doesn’t seem like he got much work.” She let out a burst of her tinkly laugh. “When I think of that character he played, I always laugh.” The bright expression drained from her face. “I know what it’s like. I faced a similar situation when The CeeCee Collins Show ended. But I hung in there, tossed aside my ego, and gladly took secondary roles and even small parts. The reality show got me in the public eye again and, well, playing the part of Ophelia in Caught by a Kiss got me an Oscar nomination.”

  “Enough about murder. It’s so depressing,” Rhoda said. “Molly, you’re a big hit with Leo. He told me that you were going to take him shopping and introduce him to exotic foods. He hasn’t seemed this upbeat in a long time. Thank you so much.”

  “It sounds like he has a crush on Molly,” Eduardo said, his handsome face lit by a teasing smile.

  “It’s nothing like that,” I said. “He just needs a little help getting back on track.”

  Dinah threw me a concerned look. “You don’t want him to get too dependent on you.”

  “I see your point,” I said. Hadn’t Leo said that his wife had handled everything? It wouldn’t do if he just put me in that same position. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure out a way to push him out of the nest so he can see that his wings work on their own.”

  When the meeting ended and everyone was gathering their things, Adele pulled me to the side. “I have an idea how we can do it.”

  “Do what?” I asked, sensing trouble.

  “Get back inside Tim’s house,” Adele said, watching as Elise put her hooks in her canvas bag. “Remember I talked to you about it?”

  “And remember I said no?” I said.

  “Pink, we have to do this. We have to get back in there. After t
alking to Alexandra, I’m sure the details of my meeting are probably on some calendar in his house.”

  “I’m not going back there,” I said. “I got in enough trouble the first time.”

  “There won’t be any trouble this time. And you could look around for clues about what happened to him. It seems like a win-win to me.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “Let me ask Elise to get us in.”

  Figuring there was no way Elise would agree, I said yes.

  She rushed from my side and went to snag Elise. Meanwhile, I cleared off the table and saw that someone had left their hook holder. It was blue metal and looked like a giant hook, only it was hollow with space to hold a set of normal-size hooks. I looked over the table for the plug that closed the end of it, but it seemed to be missing. I stuck it in the pocket of the long cardigan I’d pulled on.

  I was surprised when, a moment later, Adele rejoined me. “I worked it all out,” Adele said with a pleased smile.

  Uh-oh.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I didn’t mean now,” I said to Adele as she urged me to get my things. “We can’t just leave the bookstore.”

  “Elise said it has to be now. She said the house has been released by the police. Logan had a special crime scene cleanup crew take care of stuff, and the house is officially back on the market, or will be tomorrow. There’s been a drop in the price because of what happened, and she said Logan is anxious to sell the house quickly. She thinks he might be bringing someone over to see it tomorrow.” Adele looked at me with a triumphant smile. “I didn’t even have a chance to ask her about looking at the house; she brought it up first.” Elise was going to be one dynamite real estate agent. After everything, she was still trying to sell Adele the house.

  “C’mon. Elise is waiting outside.” Adele waited while I left the cardigan on the chair in the information booth and grabbed my rain jacket before she led the way to the front of the store.

  Even with her rushing me, I took a moment to think about who knew what. All these secrets were exhausting. Elise didn’t know that Adele had any connection to Timothy Clark. And Adele didn’t know about my dropped scarf or that Barry had been dogging me. She also didn’t know that Timothy had been sitting in the den the first time we’d been there.

  As we went to the front, I called Lara-Ann over. “We’re just going out to run an errand. Can you keep an eye on things?” I mentioned that Rayaad was manning the checkout and Mr. Royal was in the office if she needed anything.

  “No problem,” she said. She put down the copy of The Mysterious Case of Mr. Jingles she’d been reading and went to the information booth to hang out.

  Elise’s car was at the curb with the motor running when we came outside. The weekend respite of dry weather had ended, and it was raining lightly. The cars going by made a sloshing noise as they drove down Ventura Boulevard and the street was black and shiny, reflecting the lights from the stores.

  With no discussion, Adele rode shotgun, and I squeezed into the back seat. Again. I was expecting Elise to begin a real estate pitch on the house, but she seemed nervous.

  “It will have to be a quick look,” she said to both of us.

  The side windows of the car were covered with raindrops and slightly foggy, so I couldn’t track where we were until Elise pulled over. As we got out, I saw that the rain had lightened into a mist and that she had driven past the house and parked around the curve. “I didn’t want to park in front and make it obvious that someone was here looking at the house,” she said. “Logan still can’t know that we were here.”

  The three of us walked up the curving narrow street and stopped in front of the house. It was easy to find with the FOR SALE sign out front. In the darkness, the place seemed rather desolate, and I felt a little shiver as Elise did her magic with the lockbox and got the door open.

  “Keep your coats on this time,” she ordered. “Shoes, too. Just wipe them on the mat.”

  Elise went ahead and turned on the recessed lights in the vaulted ceiling. The large space was airy and pleasant, but I was drawn to the sliding-glass door and the view beyond. The water on the window blurred the view, and I slid it open and went outside. The view was mesmerizing. I looked down to the flat area at the very bottom of the hill and, looking across, could see the dots of light from the houses on the opposite hillside. The patio ran the length of the house, and a stairway led down to a twin patio that ran along the lower floor. It ended in a stairway that must have led to some sort of walkway at the base of the house. From there it was all sheer hillside down to the street below.

  “C’mon, Pink. We don’t have time to admire the view.” Adele waited until I’d come inside and shut the glass door before leaning in close. “Where do you think Timothy would have kept all his stuff about the workshop?”

  We looked around the open space of the upper floor while Elise pointed out the features of the kitchen.

  I gestured toward the lower floor. “He probably had a room he used for an office.”

  Elise was in full real estate mode and paying no attention to what we said. “This is a chance of a lifetime for you. I think the price drop is going to be substantial,” Elise said as we followed her down the staircase.

  The lower floor felt stuffier somehow, and there was a faint smell of bleach and carpet shampoo. While the upper floor was all open, the lower floor had a central hallway with rooms angling off of it. Elise took us directly to the master bedroom and bath. It was clear from the furnishings that it had been used solely as a place to sleep rather than partly as an office. There were also two smaller bedrooms. The first was furnished with typical bedroom furniture, but the second one had a couple of chairs and a table along with a trunk. Elise walked in and looked around. “You could probably turn this into a craft room. Logan said that it had been used for making videos or something.”

  I noticed what looked like a giant shade with a pull cord hanging on one of the walls. Curious, I gave the cord a tug, and it began to unroll. I was surprised that it was all green.

  “It’s called a green screen,” Adele said. “They’re used in filming. You can fill the green background with anything you like in post-production.” She stood in front of it and made moves like she was skiing. “Just a little editing and it could look like I was shooshing down a snow-covered mountain in the Alps,” Adele said.

  Elise looked at her with surprise. and I had to choke back a laugh. Adele’s outfit with the floppy flower on her hat and the jeans decorated with the doilies along with her ample build did not say “skier,” no matter what kind of background you put behind her.

  “How did you know all that?” Elise said.

  Adele hemmed and hawed for a moment, and then I jumped in to save her. “That’s pretty much common knowledge now,” I said nonchalantly.

  Elise furrowed her brow. “Well, I didn’t know about it.” She looked at the wall again. “I suppose I should make note of it in case I come across it again in a house.”

  “The man who was living here probably used this room to film things for his students who were willing to pay extra,” Adele said. Elise wasn’t really paying attention, but I remembered Adele going on about Timothy making a reel for her, filmed on his phone in the yarn department. I guess she had gone for the bargain version.

  “Let’s not waste any more time in here. I’m sure whatever it was used for is irrelevant to you. Let me show you the room for Mother Humphries.”

  The hall ended in a doorway, and I could see the back of a black leather couch and, beyond that, a big-screen TV. I shuddered, realizing that must have been where Timothy had been sitting when we’d come the first time. I also wondered how Elise had missed seeing him.

  “You didn’t come in this room when we were here before?” I asked.

  Elise seemed flustered by the question. “When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I turned the other way. I think I went into the master, and then I got Logan’s text.” She glared at me. “I really don’t want to think abou
t it.”

  She walked around the room, pointing out the features. I glanced down at the light carpet in front of the couch and noted that it was spotless. The crime scene cleaners had done a good job of removing any telltale signs of the murder. I took in the whole room in a glance, and Elise was right. It could easily be made into a separate living area. There was a bathroom and a closet along with a large bar area that could be turned into a kitchenette.

  But, of course, that’s wasn’t why Adele and I were really there. While the rest of the house looked staged to sell, this room felt lived in. Was there anything in the room that could provide a clue as to who had killed Timothy? Elise wanted to hurry us along, but Adele gave her the story that she needed to spend some time in the room, imagining it for Mother Humphries. Elise begrudgingly agreed. She started to lean against the back of the sofa, gazing at the hallway, and then must have remembered that this was where Timothy had been sitting and jumped away. She said she’d be sitting in the room with the green screen.

  As soon as we were alone in the room, Adele started checking out all the photographs of Timothy on the wall and the painting of him as Binkie MacPherson, until she saw me go to the writing desk in the corner. The top was spread with papers and things, and I started flipping through everything.

  Timothy was certainly a paper guy. Adele found a notebook marked WORKSHOP. She thumbed through it quickly, noting that it contained a list of students and records of when they had paid him.

  “Thank heavens,” she said with relief in her voice as she shoved the notebook in front of me and pointed out the listing for Lydia Fairchild. “See, I paid in cash and gave him a junk email address, so there’s no way there’s any connection to the real me.”

  I was more interested in the calendar and grabbed it before she had a chance to. I began to go through the pages, looking for the previous week’s listings. Alexandra had been right: Timothy was obsessed with Post-it notes. Instead of writing things in the spaces provided on the pages, he had stuck the sticky notes on the pages. I found the column for the previous Monday and went through the scribbles on the squares of paper. In the spot designated for five o’clock, a turquoise paper said simply, MAKE AN OFFER THAT CAN’T BE REFUSED.