On the Hook Read online

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s why I chose one of these booths. Other than Lawrence, no one will even know that we met.” He pointed to the enclosed area. “It gives us privacy.”

  “Okay, then, here goes.” I took a deep breath and jumped in. “It started with Adele having a problem with her mother-in-law.” I checked his expression and noted that his eyes were beginning to soften. “I don’t know if you remember Elise Belmont from the Hookers, but she’s trying to break into real estate, and she sort of showed Adele and me a house that her husband had listed and she wasn’t really authorized to show. She made Adele and me promise not to tell anyone that she’d shown us the house.”

  Mason was holding his pen poised. He hadn’t written a thing, but he was clearly listening intently. “When I tell you whose house it is, I think you’ll see the problem,” I said. “You do know who Timothy Clark is, right?”

  Mason’s eye’s opened wider. “Timothy Clark, the actor who had the running part in Bradley V, P.I.?” he said. “Didn’t I just hear that he’d been found dead in his…” Mason stopped and looked at me intently. “In his house.”

  “Yes, that’s him, and to be clear about it, he was found by Logan Belmont, who was showing the house shortly after we’d been there.” I took a breath before I got to the next part. “Did you also hear that they’re saying it was murder?”

  “No,” he said, even more interested. “Was he dead when you were there?”

  “I don’t exactly know.” I explained that the house had two levels, with the living room on the top floor. “Elise went downstairs to make sure everything was shipshape before she brought us down. A few moments later, she rushed up the stairs all discombobulated and said we had to leave because she’d gotten a text from her husband saying he was with some clients and was about to show a house he’d just listed. She knew he meant that house.”

  He put down the pen, and his expression had definitely lightened. “If you want my advice, you get together with Elise and Adele and all agree to say nothing to anybody and there won’t be a problem.”

  The curtain opened and the server set down a glass of red wine in front of Mason along with a platter of appetizers. He picked up the glass. “Here’s to an easy solution,” he said before taking a sip.

  “There might be something else,” I said, swallowing hard. “It was a rainy day and Elise made us take off our shoes and coats so we wouldn’t drip all over. If only she hadn’t rushed us out so quickly, I might have noticed that I’d dropped my scarf.”

  Mason’s expression faded as he set the glass down. “That shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s not like the scarf has your name on it or that anyone even noticed it.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” I said. When I described the scarf, Mason remembered it, and when he heard that Barry had it, he swallowed hard.

  “It might have been okay if I’d told him right off that it was my scarf and how it had gotten there, but I didn’t know why he was asking. I hadn’t seen anything on the news at that point about Timothy Clark being dead. I didn’t even know it was Timothy Clark’s house then. You know, there’s a Robbery Homicide Division, and I thought maybe something was missing from the house and that was what he was investigating. So, I wouldn’t confirm or deny that the scarf was mine. I figured he would just let it go.”

  “But he hasn’t?” Mason asked.

  “No. And he says that he knows I have a connection with Timothy Clark.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “Not that I can think of. I didn’t even really know who he was until I saw that he’d died. I think Barry may be bluffing. But Adele did know Timothy pretty well.” I told him about Adele’s aspirations and taking workshops with the dead actor. “And it was all secret. Adele didn’t want Eric to find out until she was famous, and now she doesn’t want him to know she ever took the workshops. I can see her point. Mother Humphries would be sure to have a lot to say about Adele’s foolishness. There’s a good chance the police won’t connect her to Timothy, since she attended the workshops under the name of Lydia Fairchild.”

  Mason had begun to morph into the person I knew. “And I thought my celebrity clients got involved in some wacky stuff.” He pushed the plate of appetizers toward me and encouraged me to put some on the small plates that had been provided. Typical Mason, he’d ordered a generous sampling of flatbread topped with cheese and tomatoes, mushrooms stuffed with crab meat, shrimp toast, and a mélange of chopped vegetables in a blue cheese dressing.

  I began to load the small plate and let out a breath. It was a relief to be able to talk without being worried that I was letting out any secrets or incriminating myself. He heard the breath, and his mouth curved into a small smile.

  “It’s a relief to get that all out, huh? Tell me what I can do for you,” he said. “If Barry comes calling with more questions, you could have him talk to me.”

  I waited until I swallowed the bite of flatbread before I spoke. “No, that would just make it worse.”

  The fact that Mason was a lawyer and Barry a police detective automatically put them at odds, but my relationships with each of them only made it more of a problem. I doubted it would make a difference that I was estranged from both of them now.

  “I’ll tell you what I think, and then you give me your thoughts. I don’t think Barry is going to arrest me, because then he knows I’d lawyer up and not talk. More likely he thinks he’ll be able to use his interrogation skills to get me to say stuff without realizing it.”

  Mason nodded as he poked his fork into one of the mushrooms. “That sounds about right. I’m guessing you have some kind of plan to look into who killed the guy?”

  This time I nodded. “Elise asked—well, demanded—that I do something so that her husband won’t find out she went behind his back showing the house and all. I’m sure Adele will be on board, too because she’ll want the case closed before Eric finds out she was lying to him when she said she was going to a yoga class.”

  Mason couldn’t help himself—his lips slipped into a grin and he rocked his head from side to side with amazement. “How do you keep getting in the middle of such crazy stuff?” It was a rhetorical question, and I shrugged in answer.

  “So, just tell me what you want.”

  “Well, if I’m wrong about Barry’s plans, will you be my one call from jail?” I said. I was half joking. I didn’t think Barry would go that far, but who knew for sure.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “And…”

  “I can’t find out anything. I don’t even know what killed Timothy. Or, for that matter, much about him. Adele is convinced that she was his star pupil and has a rosy picture of who he was. It would help if I knew some dirt that might point to who killed him.”

  Mason had scribbled down some notes. I knew he had lots of connections and could find out the information I needed with a few phone calls.

  When we finally parted company, there were three things that stood out about our meeting. He had never mentioned Jaimee or his daughters or made any reference to our past relationship, nor did he suggest that we meet again.

  What did that mean?

  Chapter Eight

  I stopped off at the bookstore after leaving Mason. I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t bothered by his distance. It just reconfirmed what I thought. I was glad now that I hadn’t asked about Jaimee because I might have lost my cool and said something dumb, like ask if she’d gotten a personality transplant.

  I waved to Lara-Ann to let her know I was there. She was hanging by the front, talking to Rayaad at the checkout counter. The few customers seemed to be content to browse on their own. I was surprised when I glanced to the back of the store and saw a crowd gathered around the table in the yarn department. It was a permanent fixture and technically usually available for anyone to use. But this wasn’t a chance person sitting down to work their needles or hooks for a while. I counted six heads, and when I saw the hot-pink beanie with a big floppy purple flower on the last one, I groaned. Wh
at was Adele up to now?

  She saw me as I approached the back and pushed away from the table before rushing toward me. “What’s going on?” I asked as she stood in front of me to keep me from going forward. “You know any group meetings or events are supposed to go through me.”

  “Shush. Could you keep it down?” Adele said, glancing back toward the table.

  “Oh, so you passed yourself off as being in charge,” I said in a soft but world-weary tone. Adele had a real issue with always trying to be the boss. She suddenly looked upset and grabbed my arm. Did she really think I was going to walk up to the table and say something to strip her of her imagined power?

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “But it was an emergency. I thought that since I was Timothy’s star student, I should get in touch with the people in the workshop and try to smooth things over, since tonight was our usual meeting time. Everybody seemed to want to get together anyway. You know, to figure out where we go from here. We usually met at her house.” She surreptitiously pointed at a woman with short dark hair streaked with lavender. “But she didn’t want the group coming over without Timothy, so I said we could meet here.”

  Whatever annoyance I felt quickly turned to interest. The meeting had suddenly turned into a table full of suspects. “I suppose it’s okay just this once,” I said.

  The group was in the midst of a conversation. “Too bad I didn’t get to audition for The Girls’ Club,” a woman in a straw hat said. “I would have been perfect as the lead.”

  The woman with the lavender streaks shook her head. “It’s clear they were after someone younger. Remember, the concept is that a barely twenty-something female head of a Silicon Valley startup fights to be taken seriously while dealing with her personal life.”

  The woman with the straw hat seemed undaunted. “I’m an actor. I could play younger.” Then her shoulders dropped. “The show’s a super hit out of the box.”

  “I heard they already ordered two more seasons,” one of the others said.

  “Man, I’d like to get a shot like that,” the woman in the straw hat said, sounding frustrated.

  Adele, clearly worried that I was going to somehow upstage her, pushed ahead of me and got to the table first. “Everybody, I’d like you to meet Molly Pink. She works at the bookstore.” I smiled at the group and, much to Adele’s exasperation, added that I was the assistant manager. They went around the table giving their names. The woman with lavender in her hair was Sonia Pierson, Deana Lewis was wearing the brimmed straw hat, Brett Williamson had dark blond hair and an everyman sort of look, and Mikey Fitzpatrick was large and muscular. As they gave their names, I glanced over their faces, checking for anyone familiar. So many customers came and went in the bookstore, I felt as if I’d come across half the people in the southwestern part of the San Fernando Valley.

  I could tell Adele was hoping I’d leave, but the one woman who hadn’t introduced herself got up from the table and approached me. “I’m Alexandra Davinsky.” She held out her hand for me to shake it and pulled me off to the side. “I love this place,” she said, glancing around the bookstore. “I’m a big fan of the café. Those new drinks you just added are delicious.”

  “You mean the Bobaccinos?” I said, and she nodded. Bob, our barista, had come up with the creamy party drinks and named them after himself. “Everybody says they’re great, but so far I’ve resisted the temptation to try one.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said in a friendly tone. “They taste so good but are deadly for my figure,” she said with a smile, looking down at her hips. “I was Timothy’s assistant. As you can imagine, the group is all in shock.” I looked over the gathering at the table, and they were leaning on their hands as if waiting for something to happen. Alexandra stood out from the group. The best way I could describe it was that she seemed more determined than the rest of them. Her thick wavy brown hair was pulled back in a loose bun with some tendrils hanging loose. She wore a long black sweater over a white shirt. At first glance, it seemed casual, but then I noted that the collar of the white shirt she wore underneath it had definitely been popped. The silver pendant on the long chain was distinctive and one of a kind. I noticed a briefcase on the table in front of her empty seat.

  “It’s just sinking in that they’ve all been left hanging. It’s different for me. Tim was a master at picking out his students’ strong points. He made me realize that I was more interested in writing what the actors were going to say than in doing the saying. I wrote scenes for the group to use for practice, and then I wrote a whole screenplay.” She suddenly stood a little taller. “And it’s in pre-production now. He was going to tout my success along with the girl from the vegetable commercial and the woman who got a continuing part in a sitcom as part of the credits of the workshop.”

  She sensed that I was a little confused. “The fact that Tim was a successful actor with an Emmy nomination gave him a lot of credibility, but it helped even more to show that some of his students went on to big things.”

  “The vegetable fairy?” I didn’t get it at first, then remembered the commercial. “You mean Cauli Flower, that girl with the raspy voice?”

  “You know, that commercial won the National Children’s Nutrition Council’s award because Cauli Flower turned out to have the same power to influence kids’ food choices as some of those elves and animals in the cereal commercials.”

  Adele was hanging off to the side, shifting her weight impatiently, no doubt wishing that I would go away. Alexandra seemed to have something on her mind and continued talking, “The group doesn’t know this, but I was about to start giving my own workshops, though they will be for scriptwriters. I know you have events here; maybe we could work something out.”

  Adele’d had enough by then and butted back into the conversation before Alexandra could finish. “Since you were Timothy’s assistant, you must have known about all the auditions he arranged and meetings for our group.” She looked at the other woman expectantly.

  “Afraid not. Timothy kept tight control on everything he set up.”

  Adele’s shoulders slumped. “All the information is probably locked away on his phone or a computer.”

  Alexandra chuckled. “Tim didn’t trust electronics. He did it all on a paper calendar with a lot of Post-it notes.” She made a move to the table and I stuck with her, curious about the rest of the group.

  Adele went right to the spot she always took at the head of the table but didn’t sit. “I’m sorry about the delay.” She shot me a dirty look. “I know we’re all devastated by Timothy’s death, but I know we were all so committed to our dream.” She hesitated and took a breath. “I was just thinking that, as Timothy’s star student, I could take over.”

  “Star student,” Deana, the woman in the straw hat, said with disbelief. “If anyone was his star student, it was me. We were waiting for a callback on a drug commercial. He said I was amazing as a woman the day after chemotherapy.” At that, she took off the straw hat and mussed her long, honey-colored hair before producing a scrunchie and arranging her hair so that some strands hung down. Then she leaned on the table in a tired pose and let out a long sigh. “You have to imagine me without makeup,” she said, looking up from the pose for a moment.

  “Have any of you actually gotten any work?” I said, interrupting.

  They looked at one another and then at me. The tall, slender man who’d introduced himself as Brett spoke. “Timothy always said it was all about timing and how important it was that I worked at my craft in the workshops so that when the right audition came along, I’d be ready.”

  My face must have given away what I was thinking—that it sounded like a bunch of double talk—and Deana spoke up. “I’m waiting for callbacks on a play and the drug commercial. Timothy said nothing took the place of the experience of working in live theater and he was sure I would be a standout.”

  Sonia Pierson spoke up. “I’ve gone on some auditions, but so far, nothing. Still, the workshop was e
verything to me. For one night a week, I was an actress. Timothy kept telling me to hang in there because he knew I had star potential.”

  Mikey Fitzpatrick looked around at the group. “What’s with you people? Timothy’s dead and all you can talk about is yourselves. Just think about what he did for us all. I know he was still pursuing his own career, but he gave most of his time and talent helping us with ours. He gave me a lot of encouragement. He was there to see all of us through auditions and meetings with casting directors.”

  “For a price,” someone muttered. When I turned to see who had spoken, I couldn’t tell.

  Mikey seemed undeterred and ended by saying that he wouldn’t be where he was if it weren’t for Timothy. Deana rolled her eyes and muttered something about him wanting to star in a comic book movie.

  Adele seemed a little crushed by hearing that Timothy had apparently led all of his students to believe they were his star pupil and on the brink of stardom, but in typical Adele style, she didn’t give up. “I know he had set up a meeting for me about my crochet show. It’s just terrible that he’s dead, but if I knew the details of the meeting, I could probably go there on my own.”

  There was some rumbling in the group, and I gathered that some of the others thought he’d set something up for them as well.

  Brett nodded sadly. “Well, I guess there’s nothing we can do.” He turned to the others. “Anybody know what happened to the Big T?”

  They had heard the news on TV the same way I had. Deana had checked around online to see if there were more details but hadn’t come up with any more information.

  I couldn’t help myself and, before I could stop the words from coming, spoke. “It was murder.” Their heads swiveled toward me as if they were all Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

  “How do you know that?” Alexandra demanded.

  “What?” Adele squealed. “You knew that and you didn’t tell me?”