One for the Hooks Read online

  I was looking at the lawn, thinking it looked a little thirsty, when I heard a buzzing sound, and something big and black came into my peripheral vision. I thought it had to be a monster insect, but then I saw that it was a drone. It flew around the yard and over all of us. Then made another pass, getting lower as it neared us.

  “Not that again,” Miami said. She looked up and started yelling at it. “You might as well get over it. I’ve already started taking reservations. It is totally within my right to rent out rooms.” The drone made another trip around the yard and then took off.

  “I’m sure they’ll get tired of harassing me,” Miami said, “when they realize there’s nothing they can do to stop me.” She seemed to be talking to Sloan, who nodded in agreement.

  “Ignore all this,” Sloan said to us. “You’re here about yarn.” The guesthouse was a large room with a loft over one end. I did a quick survey and noted that there was a counter at one end that had the essentials to serve as a kitchen. The only furniture was a few chairs and a lot of stacked boxes.

  Sloan pulled one of the boxes off the top and set it on the counter “Feel free to touch or take out any of the yarn you want.”

  Adele had just caught up with us and was sharing the view of the guesthouse. “And now we get to see the mysterious yarn we were promised,” she said in her most dramatic voice and then pointed the phone at the top of the box filled with skeins. Adele stopped recording and joined me in pulling out the skeins of yarn and examining them.

  I had a ball of turquoise wool yarn with the label still on it. I gave the strand a tug to see if the yarn would come apart, and I checked for any signs that moths had laid eggs in it. Then I gave it a sniff to see if it had a bad smell. The skein passed muster in all three areas. I checked the label and recognized the high-end brand, though I imagined the line of yarn was probably discontinued. As I looked through more of the box, I saw that while the yarn was all fancy stuff, there seemed to be just a single skein of each kind. I checked the labels on the skeins and noted they were on the small side; each one was only around 100 yards.

  Adele looked at Miami. “So, what, are you a knitter or a crocheter?”

  Only Adele could ask it like a threat, but then Adele had a thing about knitters. She didn’t like them. She thought crochet was the only important yarn craft, and it annoyed her that knitting seemed to get more attention.

  Miami ignored the question and moved away, letting Sloan step in.

  “Nobody here knits or whatever. Miami’s aunt worked for a local yarn company up until a year ago, and I believe these are samples You can count up the balls of yarn if you want and we can talk price.”

  I saw that Adele was fidgeting and had a storm cloud face. I knew a tirade about the whatever comment was coming, and I wanted to avoid a confrontation. “I don’t know if it would work for us,” I said quickly, noticing that Dinah had stepped in and was leading Adele toward the yard. “We usually have inventory of each particular yarn and color.” I debated if I should explain why and decided to go for it. “You mostly have a single skein of each kind of yarn.”

  Sloan took my comment as a negotiating tactic and said they were willing to sell the lot of it really cheap. “It’s all fancy yarn.” She picked up one of the skeins and showed me the original price sticker still on the yarn. “You could offer it at a reduced price and still make money.”

  It was obvious that Sloan knew nothing about creating something with yarn so I explained again that most projects took more yarn than was in one of these skeins.

  “It’s not my money to spend,” I said finally. “Let me talk to Mrs. Shedd.”

  Sloan seemed disappointed. “When do you think you’ll have an answer? I was just giving you first look.” She gestured back toward the house. We’re going to have an estate sale, and I’m giving some select people an advance look.”

  “How about tomorrow?” I said.

  She agreed and started to herd us to the door, then took us through the house back to the street. When we got back outside, the Holiday House sign had been knocked off its mooring.

  “Did you notice that Starlight Court is a crooked street?” Dinah smiled when she realized what she’d said. “I mean the street itself isn’t straight. But between the stare we got from that guy, the drone flyover, and then the sign vandalized, maybe it’s the other kind of crooked too,” Dinah said when we were back at the bookstore.

  “I don’t think Miami’s neighbors are happy with her plan,” I answered. “Thankfully that’s not our concern. Just the yarn.”

  “It looked like good stuff. There were all kinds of textured yarn, and the colors were beautiful,” Dinah said. Adele and Elise came in as Dinah was talking.

  “Maybe it wasn’t such a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” Adele said. “Lots of pretty yarn, but not enough of any one kind to crochet even a scarf.” When I looked over at her, she was talking to the camera again. I started to wonder about all of Adele’s followers. Did they really watch everything she put out there? Were there really that many people who had so little going on themselves that they wanted to hear Adele go on about crochet?

  “I wish she’d given us a tour of the place,” Elise said. “I’d have liked to see the rooms in that wing she’s planning to use for the short-term rentals and the room she’s going to keep for herself. She says she’s not selling, but I bet she changes her mind. Who knows what the neighbors will do to try to stop her. They could cause problems. The success of short-term rentals is all about reviews.” I chuckled to myself about how Elise was always thinking about “the deal.” It was so at odds with the image she gave off.

  “The yarn was nice,” Dinah said, “but how many people want to buy single skeins of yarn.” I nodded, thinking she was probably right, but there was something in the back of my mind.

  I suggested we finish the outing with a drink. We crowded around a small table in the corner, and I took everybody’s order. Bob, our usual barista was behind the counter. He smiled when he saw me. “One Red Eye coming up,” he said. “Let’s see. It’ll be a café au lait for Dinah, Adele always gets a half-caf latte with almond and coconut milk mixed.” He eyed Elise. “I think she’s a straight black coffee.” He looked at me for confirmation. Had we really become so predictable? Not me anymore. “Right, except for no Red Eye for me. I’ll have …” I looked over the menu for the most unlikely thing for me to order. “I’ll have a frozen espresso Blur with an extra shot,” I said.

  Bob jiggled his head in surprise. “Wow, a party drink for you. You never order them.”

  “It’s time for me to kick up my heels. Change, do something different. Who knows what I might do,” I said. The Blur was the name that Bob had recently given to the list of frozen drinks I called party drinks. They were delicious and full of calories that I usually avoided. He asked if we wanted any treats and showed off the lemon bar cookies he’d made. I ordered one for everybody.

  All eyes went to the tall beige slushy drink when I returned to the table.

  “Who got the Blur?” Dinah asked. I pointed at myself and they all sucked in their breath in surprise.

  “It’s time to shake things up,” I said. “Have new experiences. Taste different drinks. See things in a different way.”

  Dinah shot me a knowing look. She knew I was thinking about Mason and his offer. There was something else too. What had been in the back of my mind had moved forward, and I remembered a project I’d monkeyed around with. “I have an idea of what I could do with that yarn.”

  Chapter Six

  “What if we deliberately don’t have the same yarn for a whole project?” I began. “We could mix colors, textures, and types of yarn. It could be a scarf worked the long way so that it would seem like there were stripes.”

  Adele had her phone out and was back to taping. “I want to get this down for my followers.” She pressed something and began talking. “I was just in a high-level meeting,” she said. “We were discussing a top-secret plan for the
yarn I showed you before. One of the things we’ve discussed is how difficult it is for knitters to work the long way. All those stitches crammed on a needle, just waiting to fall off and have stitches going haywire. But that would never happen with crochet.” She cocked her head at an angle. “And that, my Adeleites, is your ammunition when someone tries to tell you knitting is the superior craft. The Adele is over and out.” She clicked her phone off and set it on the table, leaning back in the chair. “Being a yarn star is a lot of work.”

  “Back to your idea,” Elise said. “You’d have to create kits with the yarn. If you let people pick their own, they’d never decide. You’d have to include a hook and the directions,” she said. “I’ve made up kits for the bookstore before. I could do it again.” We all remembered her kits from the days when, instead of being focused on real estate, she was fascinated by Anthony the crocheting vampire and had created what she called “vampire crochet.” She’d made up kits for different projects, and they’d sold very well.

  “It would be nice if the project was easy to make,” Dinah said. “Something a beginner could do.”

  “And we could kick it off with an event. We could give a crochet lesson to anyone who wants one,” I said.

  “I’m sure you’d want me to be the chief teacher.” Adele said. “Having The Adele would bring a little excitement to your mundane event. Of course, I’d talk it up on the vlog,” she said in the snooty tone she’d recently adopted.

  After that, we all went our separate ways. Elise had an appointment to show a house; Adele was meeting her motorcycle-officer husband, Eric, for lunch; and Dinah had office hours at the community college. And after a short stop in the yarn department, I went to talk over the idea for the yarn with my bosses.

  Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal were in the office they shared. They had been partners in the bookstore forever and now were partners in life, though she chose to continue to go by Shedd. The argument was that if she changed her name they’d have to change the name of the bookstore to The Royals Books and More, which she thought sounded like Duchess Meghan and Prince Harry had taken over the bookstore.

  I knew her first name was Pamela and his was Joshua and, as assistant manager, it would have been perfectly acceptable to call them by their given names, but I just couldn’t, even if Adele had begun to.

  Mr. Royal was a perfect example of how unfair aging was. Though he was around the same age as Mrs. Shedd, he seemed years younger. He moved with agility and had an air of adventure about him. I suppose it came from the all the time he had been a silent partner and off experiencing the world. I didn’t know everything he’d done, just that he had worked his way across the Atlantic on a ship and that he’d once had a job at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.

  Since they’d tied the knot, my two employers spent a lot of time in the office just enjoying each other’s company as they read some of the new releases. Currently, they were deep into their respective books, and their lunch of a baguette, cheese, and grapes was sitting in a basket on the desk.

  I observed them for a moment, thinking how a second-act marriage seemed to have worked out for them. Could it for me? I tried to make some noise as I came in so as not to startle them, but they were too deep in their books and it wasn’t until I spoke that they noticed I was there. They both jumped in surprise.

  “Sorry I startled you,” I said. “I wanted to tell you about my field trip.” I left out all the extra stuff about protesting neighbors and the details of the house and went right to talking about the yarn.

  “I was going to recommend not buying the yarn because there was so little of each kind,” I began. I didn’t bother calling them skeins or balls; both were vague terms rather than an actual indication of the number of yards. “But we came up with an interesting idea.”

  During my stop in the yarn department, I’d rounded up some odds and ends of yarn and made a mini sample of what a scarf would look like. I brought it out and showed it to them and then explained the idea of making kits. “Each one would be unique. I thought we could call them Serendipity scarves,” I said. “Elise would help with the kits, and I thought we could have an event to showcase them.” The details of the event came together as I was speaking “The pattern we’d include would be simple enough for a beginner, and we could have crochet lessons available.”

  Mrs. Shedd looked over the tiny scarf. “I like the idea.” She handed the piece of crochet work to Mr. Royal. “What do you think?”

  He was far more effusive. “Molly, that’s a fabulous idea. Anything one of a kind is always good. I give you a hearty yes. The event sounds like it would be a draw.”

  “I’m glad you like the idea,” I said with a smile. “I just want to have another look at the selection just to make sure the yarn will work with the plan. Then I’ll work out the deal.” As I turned to go, Mrs. Shedd pointed to a box of books.

  “Merry Riley is coming in to sign some stock. Once she signs them, I thought you could arrange them on a table with her picture and a placard about her return visit with the book club.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Mr. Royal, always the gentleman, insisted on carrying the books into the store for me. I cleared off a table of beach reads, which, now that it was late August, seemed pointless anyway. I set out a stack of Merry’s inspirational books and took the empty box back to the storage room. On the way back, I picked up a roll of “Signed by author” labels.

  When I came back, Merry was standing next to the table with her pen ready. Several women had stopped to talk to her, and it had turned into an impromptu author event. Her husband was lounging against one of the bookcases, looking at his phone. They were certainly a close couple. I cringed remembering how I’d introduced him to someone as Mick Riley when his last name is actually Byrd. Merry was all friendly smiles with the women she was talking to. I wondered if I should go and apologize to him again for the snafu with his name. But I decided it was best left alone.

  When I approached the table, I realized one of the women talking to Merry was Sloan. By now I realized the popped collar was her look.

  “I see you found your books,” I said to Merry with a friendly smile. “Let me get you a chair.” I put down the roll of stickers. I’d put one on the outside cover of all her books after she’d finished signing them.

  “I’m good,” the actor said to me, reaching out to give my hand a squeeze. I envied her breezy manner—the way she seemed confident and comfortable in her skin. But then, why not? She had a nice career going, a couple of almost grown kids, and a husband who adored her.

  As soon as she started signing the books, I turned to Sloan.

  “Do you have an answer on the yarn?” she asked. “I gave you first dibs, but I’ve got other people to contact.”

  “I’d like to have another look,” I said. I’d actually only looked through one box and wanted to check out the other boxes of yarn before I committed.

  Sloan tried to hide her consternation. “Can we do it now? I’d like it settled. There’s something else I need to focus on.” I was surprised at how upset she sounded, and I felt bad about not being able to accommodate her.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t leave now. How about tomorrow morning around eleven?” I said.

  She seemed a little deflated but nodded. “That would work, but please leave that posse of yours behind.”

  “No problem,” I said. As an afterthought I asked her if everything was okay.

  She let out a sigh. “I made a mistake I have to fix,” she said cryptically. She went to pick up a large tote bag on the floor, and I saw the puffy white head of a small dog over the top. “That’s a wrap,” she said to the dog. That’s when I realized that the only reason she’d come in the bookstore was to ask for the order. She really seemed to want to get rid of that yarn. I was sure I’d get a great deal.

  With that set, I still wanted to talk over the plan with the Hookers since I was going to need their help with the event. I was ready for a little crochet ti
me and looked forward to the group’s gathering.

  Adele was back from her lunch with her motorcycle officer husband and ensconced at the table when I went back to the yarn department. I stayed at the edge of the area, watching her. She had a whole selection of hooks on the table and her phone on a tripod so her hands were free. I listened as she seemed to be telling a story about a favorite pair of jeans that had an unfortunate accident. She hardly sat still as she talked but gestured with her whole body. She got up and paced, looking like her world was ending. The next thing I knew she was tossing glitter confetti as she unfurled a pair of jeans on the table like it was a magic trick. I moved closer to see what she was up to and saw her indicating what looked like a vine with leaves and red flowers climbing up one leg of the jeans. “And just like that I had my favorite jeans back, and a one-of-a-kind art piece through the miracle of crochet.” She hit a button on the phone and leaned back in her chair with a tired sigh.

  Adele had turned her self-importance into an art form. Like it or not, one thing seemed true. Adele had charisma. I’d come to realize that people being fascinated with you didn’t necessarily have anything to do with admiration. Sometimes they just wanted to see how far you would go. Between her wild crochet outfits and things like making a hole in a pair of jeans into a drama, Adele specialized in over the top.

  For a moment I thought about what it would be like if I accepted Mason’s offer to work with him and left my post at the bookstore. It was appealing to think of working on something so important and, of course, being with him, but I was torn about giving up the life I had. Even with her vlog, Adele would take over my position. She’d turn every event into the Adele show, and she’d probably put up a fence around the yarn department with a sign that said “No Knitters Allowed.”

  “What were you thinking about?” Dinah asked, looking at my face as she came up beside me. She saw Adele sitting at the table with her phone. “Let me guess. She did something outrageous.”