Behind the Seams Page 14

  Holding the phone like it was a gun, she backed down the driveway toward the street. It hadn’t registered before, but the garbage cans were lined up against the curb for pick up. Robyn’s were still in the driveway since there was no one to take them out. Still with her eyes locked on us, the woman flipped the lid on her big blue plastic can meant for recyclables. She grunted when she looked inside.

  “Okay, you two, where are they? You know scavenging is against the law. I put a whole sack of bottles in my blue can and now they’re gone. Put them back and I’ll let you go.”

  It took a moment for me to get what she was talking about. I realized we were standing in front of Robyn’s blue can and she apparently thought we were working the neighborhood.

  I held out my hands to show they were empty and Dinah did the same. The woman let out a disappointed grunt and stepped closer to us. She was older, wearing a bright magenta gauze dress and flip-flops. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked us over a few more times. “We’ve been having a problem with scavengers going through the recyclables.” She narrowed her eyes and said, if we weren’t after bottles and cans, what were we up to? She waved the phone around for effect, and reminded us about the 911 on speed dial.

  I pointed toward the “For Rent” sign on the lawn. Suddenly her expression relaxed.

  “You looking to rent the place, huh?” She made no pretense of looking us up and down. “I hope you’re not into wild parties. This is a nice street. Just remember—” She waved the phone at us in what was becoming a redundant threat.

  I finished the thought for her. “You have nine-one-one on speed dial. Got it,” I said. I looked back at Dinah and winked and turned back to the woman. “You’re just the kind of neighbor we’d like. These days nobody seems to care anymore.” The woman’s face lit up with the compliment. “I bet you know all about everybody around here,” I said in a friendly voice.

  “Miranda Baker,” she said, holding out her hand. “And yes, I pride myself on being the eyes, ears and conscience of this street. Let me tell you, nobody TPs the trees around here on Halloween. And by the same token, every house gives out candy.”

  She started to go off into the details of the neighborhood, and I waited until she stopped for a quick breath. I took the opportunity to jump in and bring the conversation back to the house. “Of course, you probably want to see the inside.” She told us she’d get the keys; the owner had left them with her, figuring she’d do a good job at screening potential renters.

  She opened the front door and let us walk inside, then stuck to us like glue. “You know you look kind of familiar,” she said, peering at my face. Since the bookstore was close by, I thought she might be a customer. This could be trouble if she figured out where she knew me from. I didn’t want her to show up in the bookstore and keep asking why I wasn’t renting the house or, worse, find out that all along I owned a house. I tried laughing it off and said I got it a lot. “I have one of those faces that looks like everybody.”

  We stopped in the middle of the living room. As Dinah and I glanced around, Miranda said the owner ought to have gotten the place emptied before he put up the sign. “But you know what they say, time is money.”

  The room looked like what it was, a place where someone had gone to work fully expecting to come home. We glanced through the kitchen and then on to the bedrooms. There were two. One she’d used to sleep in. The double bed was unmade and the closet door open. I walked in, pretending to be curious about the size of the closet, but really was more curious about the photo on the nightstand. It seemed to be a beach scene. She was in the picture and whoever was next to her had been cut out.

  “Is this the person who lives here?” I asked, holding up the picture frame. Miranda appeared uneasy.

  “The owner didn’t want me to bring this up. He said it might make people feel funny about renting the place. But you two look like you’ve got both feet on the ground and know what’s what. It’s not like she died here.”

  I feigned surprise. “How terrible. She looks so young.”

  Miranda stepped closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Murdered. Right in the middle of work. The cops came by and talked to me. They were having a hard time finding her next of kin and wondered if I could help them with that.”

  Neither Dinah or I spoke or even breathed, afraid she’d stop talking just when she got to the important part.

  I’d learned long ago when I first started using The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigation that one piece of advice the book offered really worked. Dead air. It made people nervous and it made them keep talking. Miranda was no different.

  “I told him about her boyfriend.” She hit the hole in the picture with her finger. “That’s him. She went through all her pictures and cut him out. Kind of symbolic, I guess. She was cutting him out of her life.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “They broke up,” Miranda said like I was an idiot for not getting it. “Not that I miss him. He used to park his BMW so it just barely cleared my driveway. I couldn’t even call the cops on it, because technically he wasn’t blocking it.” Miranda knew that he smoked because she’d often seen him sitting outside at night smoking. She knew what brand of beer he drank. Apparently she taken it upon herself to check Robyn’s trash for evidence of scavengers, but she didn’t know his name. “Oh, please,” she said as if it was an absurd thought that she would know his name. “I’m not that kind of nosy neighbor.”

  We’d moved into the other bedroom that functioned as Robyn’s home office. She had one of those wipe-off boards hanging on the wall. Robyn had written in D. J.’s name, but most of the space was devoted to Becca Ivins and Derek Trousedale. She’d written in the perfect couple and then, underneath, things like wedding footage, what happened to their family, awards, a happy ending.

  “She worked on that BOO show,” Miranda volunteered. “When I found out that’s what she did, I asked her to get me some tickets. One of the shows where they give the audience something, like a car.” Miranda kept on talking about how Robyn hadn’t come through yet, then caught herself and said it was hard to think of her as dead.

  “What’s this?” I said, noting a girl and boy doll made out of yarn sitting on a shelf in the wall unit. They stood out from the rest of the house, which was all clean lines, bare floors and impersonal. The soft-bodied dolls looked as if they were a remnant from childhood and as if they’d been well loved. “They’re crocheted,” I said to Dinah after examining the arms on the girl doll. Miranda started to scowl, and I quickly explained that I was a crocheter and that was why I was so interested in it.

  “Personally, I’m a knitter,” she said with just a touch of disdain. “I never did get the hook business.” I picked up the doll’s foot and noticed something on the bottom. If there was such a thing as scribbling in crochet, that’s what it was. It seemed like initials, but I couldn’t make them out.

  Suddenly Miranda seemed to notice that we were spending more time looking at the things in the house than the house itself. She took the doll from me and put it back.

  “Don’t worry, the place will be cleaned out next week.” She asked if we wanted to put a deposit down. Dinah and I hemmed and hawed; meanwhile, she seemed to be studying our faces.

  “That’s it. I saw you at the square dancing event. You,” she said, pointing at me, “were dressed in a getup all wrong for dancing.” She made a sound as if she was astonished. “Who goes square dancing in pants unless you’re a man?” She turned to Dinah. “Now, missy, you had it right. All those crinolines.”

  We’d begun edging toward the door, realizing we’d gotten all the information we were going to. Dinah came through and said we wanted to look at some more places first. Miranda did a little sales pitch. Apparently we’d done too good a job at selling ourselves as potential neighbors, but she finally let us go. We hung on the sidewalk long enough for her to go back to her house. I was glad Nell had parked a distance away. Imagin
e the fuss Miranda would have made if she’d seen us getting into a car with CeeCee Collins.

  When the coast seemed clear, Dinah and I ran down the street and jumped into the backseat of Nell’s car.

  “We’ve got to find out who Robyn’s boyfriend was,” I said as I pulled the car door shut.

  CHAPTER 18

  “A CROCHETED DOLL? WHO’S MAKING A CROCHETED doll?” Adele said as she came in at the end of the conversation. Almost all the Hookers were gathered around the table, and I was telling them about what Dinah and I had seen inside Robyn’s house. The group had felt protective of Nell before, but now that she’d started crocheting with us, they were even more so. Everyone wanted to see her get her life back.

  Dinah was a no-show. She had a freshman English class to teach. But the rest of us were working on one of Rhoda’s impatient crochet projects.

  “Nobody is making a doll. I was just telling them about what I saw when I went into Robyn’s house. It isn’t about the dolls so much anyway, but what they mean.”

  I had all their attention now. This was my big moment to bring out something I’d read about in The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigation. According to the book, when checking out someone’s surroundings, everything tells something about them. I called it the Sherlock Holmes effect. What could you deduce from things.

  “The point is that Robyn’s house was utilitarian and sparsely furnished. Her office was similar, or at least I think so from what I saw in the box of her belongings. So why would she have a crocheted cactus in her office and keep a couple of worn-looking dolls in her house?”

  “Because they meant something to her,” Elise said in her wispy voice.

  “I can’t imagine anything meaning much to her,” Nell said. “She seemed hard and cold.”

  “All the more reason those two things say something important about her,” I said. “And there’s something else to consider. The dolls look worn and seem like something from her childhood. The cactus appears newer and as though it was made for her office. Both of them had similar initials on the bottom, though I’m afraid I couldn’t read them. I think it’s safe to assume the same person made all of them, which means it’s somebody she’d known when she was a child but she was still in touch with.”

  “Ooh, that’s good,” Sheila said. She had taken a short break from her job at the lifestyle store, Luxe, to join us. Even though it was literally the next store to the bookstore, it was hard for her to get to the group. Not that she couldn’t take off time, she didn’t want to. She’d had enough bad jobs to treasure a good one.

  “Maybe it is someone from her family?” Eduardo said. His voice was so much deeper and masculine than the rest of ours, everyone did a little double take when he spoke. “My gran made a lot of toys for me.” The comment got an extra double take from Rhoda. She didn’t know Eduardo as well as the rest of us since she was relatively new to the group. You truly couldn’t judge Eduardo by his cover-model looks. He had learned how to crochet from the grandmother he’d just mentioned.

  He’d been missing a lot of our get-togethers and seemed like he had something on his mind. When I asked him if everything was okay, he assured me it was. When I asked for details, his almost-too-handsome face broke into a broad smile and he said all would be revealed in good time....

  “I heard Robyn’s parents died when she was young. Maybe she kept the dolls because they gave them to her,” Nell offered.

  “I don’t think finding out who made the doll is going to be any help in finding out who killed her. I think it’s a waste of time,” CeeCee said. “You said she cut her boyfriend out of some photographs. Well, I still think he might have decided to cut her out of his life.”

  Without missing a beat, CeeCee took out a box of buttons and spoke to her niece who had begun decreasing to make the flap on the envelope-shaped purse she was making. “Next, dear, you should think about what you’re going to use as a closure. The button choice can make or break it.” CeeCee took out a handful and spread them on the table. If it was up to me, I’d have voted for the silver heart with a design etched in black.

  “Aunt CeeCee is right,” Nell said. “I bet her boyfriend is the killer.” Everybody looked at me.

  “I’m working on it,” I said, hoping no one asked for details. I agreed finding his identity was important; the trouble was all I had reached were dead ends. I was relieved when Mrs. Shedd came by the table carrying a stack of books and broke the chain of conversation.

  “I found some more books with a chocolate connection,” she said, setting them down next to me. “See what you think.” As she was about to leave, she commented, “There was some more of that graffiti on the signs for the Salute to Chocolate.” Both of us looked in Adele’s direction.

  “I’m responsible for the kids’ department, not the kids,” she said. Mrs. Shedd didn’t seem happy with her comment. I started to get up to clean off the pen marks, but she said she’d already taken care of it.

  I set down the cell cover I was making. It was my first attempt at impatient crochet and was actually for my phone. I thought the cream-colored cotton might make it easier to fish out my BlackBerry from the dark cave of my purse.

  I looked through the books she brought and had to chuckle at the titles. I wondered how Tom Clancy would feel about The Hunt for Chocolate October. She’d found a cookbook that just had recipes for chocolate chip cookies, and one that featured chocolate drinks. There was a paranormal romance called The Clairvoyant Chocolatier, and a mystery called Bittersweet Death. The last book was Felix and the Fudge Factory. As soon as Adele saw me holding it, she jumped up and came around the table.

  “Why did Mrs. Shedd give that to you?” Adele had backed off a little from trying to take over my domain as event coordinator, but heaven help anyone who touched anything related to the kids’ department. She repeated to the group that it wasn’t her fault if kids were marking up the signs in the store.

  CeeCee was craning her neck to get a better view of the covers of the cookbooks. “Are you going to have samples?”

  “Luxe is providing chocolate tea,” Sheila said. I was pretty sure that wasn’t what CeeCee was thinking about. I mentioned the exotic chocolate bars and that Caitlin’s Cupcakes was bringing in bite-size pieces of their vampire cupcakes.

  CeeCee was practically drooling. The sweet tooth must have run in the family because Nell was gazing at the chocolate chip cookbook with a hungry eye.

  “I don’t know why Caitlin doesn’t just call them Anthony cakes,” Elise said. She almost had a swoon in her voice as she said the name of the vampire known for his crocheting. I saw Rhoda rolling her eyes. She’d softened a little about the vampire character but still thought he was too foofie. Elise had been over the top about Anthony from the books, but when the movie came out, it had only gotten worse. Now she had a real face to put to the character. I had expected to hear that she was stalking Hugh Jackman.

  I started looking into the bookstore, picturing how we should set up the chocolate festival so we could use it for the fake book signing as well. Someone walking through the area caught my eye. Barry? He was carrying a bag of something and looking for something. Me, maybe?

  I left the table and walked toward him. As soon as he saw me, his face opened into a warm smile.

  I was glad for the smile. Usually when he just showed up at the bookstore, it was because there was some kind of problem.

  He held up the bag. “I brought lunch.” He asked if I could leave and suggested we take the food to the park. I must have looked surprised at his impromptu plan.

  “I thought it would be fun, babe,” he said. “I had some time before I had to go to the morgue.” Fun and morgue so close together seemed a little odd, and Barry did sound like he almost choked on fun, but he certainly got credit for trying. Even though I had to believe it had something to do with my adventures with Mason.

  Mrs. Shedd was okay with me taking my lunch break then. I left my crochet project and grabbed my pur
se.

  The May gray clouds had burned off and the sun was shining. We went to the Los Encinos State Park, which was like an oasis in the midst of busy Ventura Boulevard. We ignored the old ranch house that had been turned into a museum and found a bench that faced the guitar-shaped minilake that was fed by a natural underground spring. The ducks and geese saw the promise of food and gathered around us.

  Barry sat down with a sigh and I knew he was tired. It made me appreciate this gesture even more. He’d gotten wrap sandwiches and some containers of different salads that we shared.

  “This is nice,” he said. He sat so we rested against each other. We passed the containers of salad back and forth, and I tossed bits of my sandwich to the visitors at our feet. After his initial comment, Barry was suddenly silent, which was like a neon sign saying there was something on his mind. It took a few minutes of listening to him breathe before he finally got it out.

  “So, have you thought any more about the condo?” he said. He didn’t leave a space for me to answer, but described his plans for the place. The shelves he was making for my yarn would fit in the third bedroom. He would make built-in cabinets for the den to make it seem roomier. And he realized he’d forgotten to show me the space for a laundry setup in the garage.

  All I could do was to tell him the truth. The condo was very nice, but it wasn’t the right time for me to make that kind of change. Barry didn’t say anything. I just heard a little grunt of displeasure. Of course, I felt the need to smooth things over and started telling him I was so distracted because of Nell. I mentioned going to the dead woman’s house and Barry sighed and shook his head.

  “No breaking and entering,” I said before explaining the place was for rent. Barry surprised me by chuckling. I was expecting some kind of admonishment about keeping my nose out of things.