For Better or Worsted Page 3

  * * *

  MASON SHOWED THE WEAR OF THE EVENING. HE didn’t have on the jacket to his tuxedo, and his bow tie was untied and hanging around the open collar. I think there were even some cake stains on his shirt. This from a guy who usually wore designer suits with a perfect drape and dress shirts with an impossibly high thread count. The only thing that seemed usual was the lock of dark hair with flecks of gray that always fell across his forehead, somehow giving him an earnest look. As our eyes met, I saw that he looked exhausted.

  “I suppose Barry already told you they released Jaimee. It was ridiculous to have detained her in the first place.” Barry started to protest, and Mason put up his hand to stop it. “I know, she was holding the murder weapon, and Jackson Kingsley was insisting she killed his son.” Mason looked at the outdoor chairs as if he was thinking of sinking into one of them. “But Jaimee was just going to check on the cake,” Mason began, before Barry stopped him.

  “I already told Molly what happened.” Did I note something smug about Barry’s tone? “You look beat. I’m sure you just want to collect your daughter and go,” Barry said to him before turning to me. “How about I make us a couple of cups of tea?”

  Mason sighed. “There’s a problem with that.” He turned to me. “Thursday doesn’t want to leave.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “MOLLY, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” THE VOICE ON THE phone asked while I was still in the process of saying hello, groggy from being awakened. Without waiting for an answer, she continued, no doubt figuring that since I’d answered the phone, I must be okay. “So, tell me everything.” The voice belonged to Dinah Lyons, my best friend and an instructor at Beasley Community College. Dinah was known for being able to whip unruly freshman English students into shape, and maybe everybody else, too. I had resisted calling her after Barry and Mason finally left. The fall term had just started and I knew Dinah had an early class. I looked at my watch and saw that it was barely seven. She had already heard about Jonah Kingsley’s murder. It was all over the local morning news and even the national news on Good Day USA.

  I wasn’t surprised, because the story had all the elements to whip newspeople into a frenzy. Who could blame them, really? How many times does a groom get stabbed with the knife meant to cut his wedding cake? And how many times does someone go from wife to widow before the reception is even over?

  In their hurry to get the story up, the newspeople had called Jaimee “the alleged murderer-in-law” as they showed her being escorted away from the reception by a number of uniforms. The reporters were quick to point out that there was cake still sticking to Jaimee’s dress while she was ushered into the backseat of a cruiser.

  Dinah said that the news reports had only mentioned she’d been taken in, but not what had happened afterward. She was surprised when I said they’d released Jaimee without arresting her.

  “How did Mason manage that?” Dinah asked, repeating what the news had said about Jaimee being found almost standing over the dead groom with the bloody knife in her hand.

  “When I tell you, you’re going to laugh,” I said. I explained that Mason, Barry and I had ended up having tea together, and I’d heard the whole story. “Mason didn’t really have to do anything but let Jaimee tell the story herself. And do a demonstration.” I’d heard some crazy alibis, but Jaimee’s was a prizewinner. “You know how women of a certain age have something called batwings?” I began, referring to the loose flesh both Dinah and I had on our upper arms. It made wearing sleeveless garments an act of courage.

  “You might not have noticed it, but Jaimee’s dress had a spaghetti strap top, and in order to hide the jiggle of her arms, she’d bought this shapewear. It looked like a lacy shrug worn over the dress, but it was made of strong, stretchy stuff, and it was meant to make her upper arms appear trim. She tried to tell the cops that it limited her range of motion so much that she couldn’t have raised her arms high enough to stab somebody.”

  “That must have been embarrassing,” Dinah interjected.

  “Wait, it gets worse, and I think she was telling all this to Detective Heather,” I said, thinking that Detective Heather was too young to be worrying about fleshy arms yet. “Mason said that the cops didn’t buy the excuse, and she had to let them try to lift her arms up. It took a lot of pulling to raise her arms, and when they let go, her arms snapped back to her side. The cops were still skeptical, like maybe she was faking it. I think she was almost willing to go to jail rather than tell the rest of it. Mason told me he had to do it for her. He said she’d bought the shapewear online, and in a moment of vanity had ordered an extra small, when a medium was really her size.” I heard Dinah laughing. “Wait, there’s more. She started arguing with him that the shapewear ran small because there was no way she really needed a medium.”

  When Dinah got finished chuckling, I backtracked and told her how Mason had asked me to take Thursday home with me. “So, then they finally all left last night?” Dinah said.

  “Not exactly. Thursday wanted to stay on,” I said.

  “And you let her?” Dinah said, and I could imagine her shaking her head at me. “You don’t even know her.”

  “What could I say? It’s only for a night or so. The poor girl is numb with shock.”

  “You mean like not talking and staring at the wall?” Dinah said.

  “Not exactly. She talked a little.” I was still sitting in my bedroom and really wanted to go across the house to make some coffee, but I didn’t want Thursday to hear our conversation, even if it was only my side of it. It was times like this that I wished I had a coffeepot in my room.

  “What about the groom? Did she talk about him? Like what kind of guy he was and who would want to kill him?”

  “She didn’t say much about him, other than repeat ‘poor Jonah’ a few times with heavy sighs. It was too soon to start interrogating her about him. She mostly acted as if nothing had happened. I’m sure she’s just holding it all in, and it will come busting out eventually. But for now, she wants a place to hide out. Who can blame her? I bet there’s a news crew set up on the street in front of Mason’s house right now. And her mother’s house. Between her mother being sort of a suspect and starring on that reality show, I bet the camera crews are tripping over each other. Mason said the reality-show crew couldn’t get enough shots of Jaimee leaving the police station. And Jaimee loved every minute of it. Her other choice was to go stay at the condo that was supposed to be the home she and Jonah were to settle in after their honeymoon. Can you blame her for not wanting to go there, either?”

  “Hmm,” Dinah said. “Have you considered that it might not be shock at all that’s making her act the way she is? Wasn’t she crouched next to her dead husband?”

  I hated to admit it, but the thought had crossed my mind, though it seemed even the news media was talking about her being the tragic bride who’d been widowed on her wedding day. “I don’t even want to go there,” I said to Dinah. “I like Thursday. She can’t be a murderer.”

  “I hope you’re right, but doesn’t Barry always say you can’t tell a killer by looking at them?”

  Just then, Dinah noticed the time and gasped. She reminded me she wouldn’t be making it to our crochet group’s meeting that morning. And then she hung up.

  Free from the phone, I walked across the house to make some much-needed coffee, passing the door to the room where Thursday was sleeping. I had hastily fixed up the smallest of the bedrooms for her last night. I used it as an office and guest room, but Thursday hadn’t cared that it was tiny and plain. She’d taken the chamomile tea I’d offered her, shut the door, and, I assume, gone to sleep. The door was still shut when I left for work.

  For me, at least, life went on, and I had to get to Shedd & Royal Books and More. It was a short drive from my house to downtown Tarzana. I was about to turn into the parking lot when I saw a cop car pulled to the curb with its doors open, along with a throng of p
eople on the sidewalk. Everyone was looking up and pointing.

  Someone had gotten the idea that all the San Fernando communities along Ventura Boulevard ought to have some kind of decoration to set them apart. Tarzana, due to the Tarzan connection, had gotten the Safari Walk. What it amounted to were some metal cutouts of jungle animals hanging from the light posts, an occasional topiary of a giraffe or elephant, and something they had the audacity to call mini parks. There were no trees or grass or even space, just a block of sidewalk replaced with red brick and one or two boulders.

  The heavyset cop and the others were staring at a light post. I didn’t get it at first, but then I saw the metal cutout of a monkey hanging above the street sign and something else about it. It was now attired in some kind of striped jacket.

  I parked the car and came around to the street to join the crowd.

  “What’s going on?” I said. Someone in the group said there’d been a yarn bombing.

  “Yarn bombing?” I said. The woman pointed to the little jacket, which hardly looked dangerous.

  “It’s like guerrilla crochet,” another woman in the crowd explained.

  “Gorilla?” a man asked, pointing at the metal form hanging from the light post. “It looks like a monkey to me.” The woman who’d done the explaining, rolled her eyes at the man and spelled out guerrilla for him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.

  “It’s supposed to be a surprise splash of color and something soft and handmade,” the woman said. “I’ve seen street signs covered, mailboxes, even a car. But that was all somewhere else. This is the first time I’ve seen it around here.”

  “It looks harmless enough to me,” I said.

  “It’s like yarn graffiti,” a man in the group said.

  “I like to think they’re random acts of whimsy,” a white-haired woman in a red dress said.

  “However you want to describe it,” the cop said in a grumpy tone. “It’s illegal.” He asked if any of them had access to a ladder. The white-haired woman leaned in close.

  “One thing is strange. Most of what I’ve heard of has been knit, but that looks like crochet.”

  Something went off in my mind like a bomb. I knew somebody who was always trying to champion crochet. But how far would she go? By now the cop had gotten a ladder from one of the stores and leaned it against the light pole. It didn’t look that stable, and the cop didn’t look like he really wanted to be climbing it. Finally, he reached the monkey and stripped it of its jacket and threw it into the crowd. I caught it. Yup, it was crochet all right. I stuffed it in my pocket and went toward the bookstore.

  The Santa Ana wind had died down to a breeze, but the air still felt silky and dry. It was too hot to think about sweaters, even for a metal monkey. Who would figure that September would be one of the hottest months of the year? But the Santa Anas were like a hot breath blowing in from the desert, and it was the one time when the city side of the Santa Monica mountains lost their sea breeze, leaving it to roast along with us.

  Though the temperature still felt like summer, the bookstore window was all done up for Halloween and fall. There were piles of paper leaves and a display of spooky books. The entrance had been decked out for harvesttime and Halloween. A pile of pumpkins and gourds topped a small stack of bales of hay. The front tables held Halloween paper goods and fancy candy in the shape of bats and witches. More and more, the bookstore was turning into an everything store, set up with little boutique stations like the serenity table with its books on Zen, candles of all sorts, aromatherapy oils, lavender-scented eye pillows and yoga videos.

  My boss, Mrs. Shedd, was looking over a small selection of Halloween costumes we had this year. She thought it was okay because they were unusual characters like Albert Einstein and Edgar Allan Poe. I knew she had probably already heard about the murder at the wedding, but I was hoping she hadn’t connected it with me. She kept mentioning that dead bodies seemed to show up wherever I went, and I kept trying to make it sound like it wasn’t so. I wouldn’t have much of a case if she brought up the events of the night before. I felt the monkey jacket in my pocket, reminding me of the yarn bombing.

  “Have you seen Adele?” I said, referring to my coworker. Mrs. Shedd looked at me quizzically, and I realized that because it was Adele, my question could be taken two ways. I could have been asking for Adele’s location, or it could have been a rhetorical question about Adele’s latest outrageous outfit. I quickly made it clear it was Adele’s location I was after.

  “She must be here somewhere, I saw her things in the back room.” Mrs. Shedd glanced around the large interior of the bookstore. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, changing the subject. “It’s good you set things up for today’s group in advance.” She directed my attention to the alcove in the window that we used as our event area. “They got here early.”

  Originally, my job as event coordinator and community relations person had mostly been putting on author events, but lately Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal, the two owners, were looking to bring more customers into the bookstore. So we kept broadening the kind of events we put on. We were just starting to host a young adult writers’ group. Mr. Royal had found someone to act as the leader for the group, but I did all the organizing and setup.

  Adele Abrams had been more than a little put out that she wasn’t in charge of the kids’ group. The kids’ department was hers, and she was always concerned about being overlooked. It wasn’t likely if you had eyes. She was known for her colorful clothes and the costumes she donned for reading time.

  * * *

  THE WRITING GROUP WAS AIMED AT TEN AND ABOVE, and somehow the kids’ area, carpet decorated with cows jumping over moons and low tables, seemed too childish for the group.

  There were two boys and a girl waiting at the table I’d set up. We had arranged the first meeting of the group for this Monday morning because the kids had no school. But after today, it would meet after school. I noticed a woman standing off to the side and nodded a greeting, figuring she belonged with the kids. I welcomed the kids and told them I expected a few more.

  “Your group leader, Mr. Sherman, should be here any minute,” I said. Actually, I hadn’t met him yet. All I knew was that he had a master’s degree in writing and had some credits. Mr. Royal had done the hiring before he’d taken off on a trip. For years, he’d traveled around acting as Mrs. Shedd’s silent partner, but now that he’d been back for a while, he’d gotten itchy feet and was gone again for some kind of extended retreat.

  “Hi,” I said to the woman. She came forward and introduced herself. “Emerson Lake,” she said. “Lyla is mine.” She pointed at the girl, before explaining that the two boys belonged to neighbors. “I brought them, too. We decided to kidpool.” Emerson laughed and said it was kind of a play on carpooling. With her shoulder-length dark hair and arty appearance, she looked vaguely familiar, but then, everybody did. This was the only bookstore in Tarzana, so everybody came in here to shop.

  “I hope it’s not a problem, but I thought I’d hang around for this first session.” She left it at that, but I understood. I would have wanted to see what the group was like firsthand, too, before I just left my kids on their own.

  Lyla got up and joined her mother. “Can I show you something I want for my birthday?” the girl said. Seeing her, I realized we’d made a good decision not to hold the writers’ group in Adele’s domain. Between Lyla’s trendy outfit and her manner, she was quite grown up, and the set of books she showed her mother were aimed at tweens. I knew because I’d read Joy on Her Own, which was about a high school girl juggling her social life and trying to keep secret that she was bringing up her siblings on her own. And the Savannah books—they were about a geeky girl who built a time machine and had a ghost sidekick. It was a trilogy that came with a crystal bracelet matching one the heroine wore. I admit, I had one.

  Her mother seemed a little surprised and said t
he books might be too old for her.

  “Mother,” she said as she rolled her eyes skyward. “I’m going to be eleven.” There was some discussion about her upcoming party. When Emerson said she’d booked the pizza place that had all the games, Lyla looked stricken. “You didn’t, Mother. That’s for children.”

  I was familiar with the place and had to agree with Lyla, though I wasn’t going to say anything. I think Emerson must have seen her daughter’s point, too, because as I excused myself to get some young adult books on writing, I heard the mother say something about rethinking it.

  By the time I’d come back with the books, Mr. Sherman was there. I did a double take. I don’t know why, but I was expecting someone with a white beard and wire-rimmed glasses. Mr. Sherman, or Ben, as he told the kids to call him, was young, with a mop of unruly black curly hair and an overly serious attitude. Several more kids had joined the group. Their parents hung around for a few minutes, and then I saw them, along with Emerson, make their way to the bookstore café.

  Somehow I felt responsible for the success of this new program at the bookstore, so I used setting up a display of writing books as an excuse to hang around and see how it went. Ben won them over in a flash, particularly when they heard his credits.

  “I suppose you want to know what I’ve written. Some of the stuff you’d probably find pretty boring, but how many of you watched The New Adventures of Janet and the Beanstalk?” Lyla and the two other girls raised their hands. The boys didn’t look that impressed. “Who says girls can’t be heroes?” Ben said. He looked at the boys and mentioned writing some episodes for Zeon, Spaceship Mechanic. He glanced in my direction and described some literary stories in several academic anthologies. He told the kids and me that it was good not to lose touch with the real world when you were a writer. He managed that by dabbling in the food industry. I got it. Food industry was his way of saying he was a waiter.