If Hooks Could Kill

If Hooks Could Kill - By Betty Hechtman

CHAPTER 1


I have done a lot of embarrassing things, but this morning I topped even myself. . . .

I watched as the detective walked out of the small blue stucco house down the street from my best friend Dinah Lyons’s house. Everything about him gave off the vibe of somebody who’d been up all night chasing down evidence. His face featured a day-old beard, his tie was pulled loose from the collar of his pale blue dress shirt, and he gave out a weary sigh as he sauntered down the three steps to the front walk and moved toward the black Crown Victoria parked at the curb.

He was almost to the street when a man in a hooded sweatshirt with a baseball cap on top of the hood darted out from behind a large red oleander bush. The morning sun glinted off the gun in his hand. As he raised his arm and took aim, something triggered in my mind, really someone, namely Barry Greenberg. I’d given up trying to find the right title for Barry. It was enough to say he was my ex-boyfriend, he was a homicide detective and he’d recently been shot. I wasn’t about to let that happen to someone else.

Without a second of hesitation, I rushed up behind the guy with the gun. If all the adrenaline hadn’t been pumping I never would have had the force to knock him over. And maybe I would have noticed a few things like the detective’s shirt had no wrinkles. And he was definitely wearing makeup. And there were cameras, lights and lots of people standing around.

“Cut,” a tall man in black jeans and a loose taupe-colored tee shirt yelled as he rushed onto the grass. He glared at me and waved to the uniformed officer hanging by the curb. “Get her out of here,” he muttered, pointing to me as I rolled off the presumed assailant. The man I had tackled got up and dusted himself off, and the throng of onlookers surrounded me as I got back on my feet. But they parted for the officer who came through the crowd, linked his arm with mine, and pulled me to the edge of the sidewalk.

“Pink, what have you done now?” Adele Abrams rushed up behind me as Dinah Lyons started explaining to all who would listen why I had done what I’d done. No, this wasn’t some kind of bad dream, though at the moment I was wishing it was and hoping I’d wake up twisted in the sheets of my own bed. I admit to often finding myself in trouble, but usually it’s for something real. This was all make-believe.

It was summer in the San Fernando Valley and the area had become a back lot for TV and film productions. Caravans of white trucks were on streets all over the Valley. Street corners had yellow signs with arrows to direct the cast and crew to the location. They always disguised the real name of the production with some cryptic phrase, so no one would have guessed by the sign on Ventura Boulevard that the area around Dinah’s house had become the set for L.A. 911.

If this were a TV show or movie, it would freeze-frame right now. Then I’d step forward and explain that my name was Molly Pink and that after my husband Charlie died, I’d started a whole new chapter in my life that included getting a job as the event coordinator at the bookstore Shedd & Royal Books and More, which was just up the street from all this activity. I might mention that I was also in charge of the yarn department we had recently added.

You might wonder about a yarn department in a bookstore. The yarn department was added because the local crochet group, the Tarzana Hookers, met at the bookstore and quite frankly the owners, Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal, were looking for more revenue streams. I think that’s the right term. Actually, with a crafting table and available yarn, the Hookers didn’t just meet at the bookstore—they almost lived there. Mrs. Shedd liked to joke that if we had cots, the group would probably sleep there, too.

Adele Abrams, the person who just called me Pink, worked at the bookstore, too. There was a little tension between us. She thought she should have been promoted to event coordinator instead of Mrs. Shedd hiring me. As a consolation prize, she had been given the children’s department to oversee. Adele didn’t really like kids, though she did like to dress up in costumes for story time.

Then, when the yarn department was added, Adele thought she should be in charge of it. Adele, Dinah and I were all part of the crochet group, and no one would dispute that Adele was far superior with a hook, but she had this small problem. All of the Tarzana Hookers thought crochet was the best of the fiber arts, but Adele took it a step further. If you so much as showed her a knitting needle she would throw a hissy fit. Personally, while I know she had a real reason for being nuts about knitters (she’d had a bad stepmother who was a needle head, as Adele called her), I thought it was time she accepted a world where hooks and needles could get along.

Having a needle hater running a yarn department wasn’t a good idea—not if you wanted a knitter’s business. So, even though I was somewhat of a novice at crochet, Mrs. Shedd wanted me to handle the yarn department.

But none of that explained what I was doing hanging out at a TV shoot. Actually it wasn’t planned. Adele, Dinah and I were on our way to one of the newer Hooker’s houses to pick up some crochet stuff. Her house was around the corner from Dinah’s and we’d had to pass the caravan of trucks and trailers to get there. Even though seeing a set on the street wasn’t new, I still found it exciting. It was fun to see what they’d done to the front of the modest stucco house they were using for a location. They’d carted in trees and bushes and arranged them so that the other houses on the block weren’t visible and so you couldn’t see the open-air tent set up down the street that was acting as a dining room for the cast and crew. A catering truck was parked in the street and the smell of the barbecue wafted down the block.

This is where the freeze frame would end and the action would pick up again. The uniform who’d grabbed my arm had gotten me to the edge of the crowd. Adele followed close behind. “Pink, you’d better thank my boyfriend Eric for saving your skin.” Now that we’d reached the sidelines, Eric let go and apologized if he’d been too rough.

“It was fine,” I said to the barrel-chested man who towered over me. Eric Humphries was an LAPD motor officer and was using his vacation time to work security on the production. In case there was any doubt, he was also Adele’s boyfriend. “Thanks for saving me from the angry mob,” I said looking back at the crew as they tried to set up the shot again. Adele glanced around, saw that no one was watching and touched Eric’s arm in a possessive manner. He responded by beaming a big smile her way. It was embarrassing to watch them making googie eyes at each other. But at least this time the romance wasn’t all in Adele’s imagination.

They made an unusual pair. Adele, with her wild clothes and say whatever attitude, was a sharp contrast to the very proper and polite motor officer. He rode his motorcycle with ramrod straight posture and took his security work at the set very seriously. “Cutchykins,” he said, winking at her. “I’m glad you stopped by. You look lovely as always.”

My eyes started to roll on their own. Didn’t the man have eyes? Adele was wearing a one shoulder sundress made out of multicolored granny squares with a red crocheted flounce at the bottom. She looked like she was wearing an afghan. And Adele had crocheted herself a big brimmed cream-colored hat. It had turned out to be a little too floppy in the brim area, and kept dipping down and cutting off her line of sight.

Dinah rejoined us and Eric went back to his post. “Don’t worry, I took care of everything,” she said. I had no doubt she had. Dinah was a community college English instructor and her specialty was freshman English. She knew how to take charge of an unruly group, no matter who they were. I figured she’d done the same with the production group. “As soon as I explained about your connection to Barry and how he was a homicide detective, and that he’d been shot, and that you were still so sensitive to the whole thing that you’d lost your mind temporarily, they all understood. That North Adams was particularly nice,” she said sending back a glance to the seasoned, tall, dark-haired actor who played the homicide detective I’d tried to save. “He even offered to talk to you and help you with ‘this difficult time,’ as he put it. And the guy who played the shooter seemed to take it as some kind of compliment to his acting ability.”

“You said I lost my mind?” I said, skipping over everything else she’d said. “Great, now they think I’m crazy.” Normally I might not care what strangers thought of me, but I was probably going to see these people again. The bookstore was just up the street and even though the production was self-contained, providing meals and snacks, the cast and crew still drifted up to the bookstore to hang out, buy books, get coffee drinks and scoop up our barista’s great cookies.

“We better go,” I said. “We’ve still got to pick up Kelly’s crochet items.”

“We don’t all have to go,” Adele said, reminding us that she was more or less in charge of the crochet group. It was more in her mind and less in reality. CeeCee Collins was technically the leader, but her acting career was so busy right now it was hard for her to handle the group as well. So Adele had jumped in as de facto leader.

“Well, none of us really has to go,” I said. “Kelly doesn’t know we’re coming and we can just wait until she comes to one of our meetings.”

Adele snorted. “Maybe you can wait, Pink, but CeeCee and I have our doubts about Kelly’s crochet ability. She keeps saying she’s going to come to a meeting and she keeps saying she’s going to make things for our booth at the Tarzana fair, but I haven’t seen anything to make me believe it’s true.”

“What about the scarf she showed us that she was making?” I said.

“Okay, so she can make a scarf, and so she came to a couple of meetings, and so whenever we see her at the bookstore she says she’s been making stuff at home for the fair. But I want to see proof.”

It was useless to argue with Adele, so Dinah and I traded nods and kept silent. It was just a short walk up the street to Dinah’s house, which was on the corner. Kelly lived around the next corner on the street that paralleled the one the production company was using. As soon as we got on the other street, it was much quieter. The houses were set on orderly little plots, close to the street. This part of Tarzana had sidewalks and seemed more like a neighborhood than where I lived.

“I don’t know why Kelly has to be so difficult,” Adele said with a harrumph in her voice. It was all Dinah and I could do to keep from laughing. Adele practically wrote the book on causing a ruckus. Apparently immune to our stifled laughs, Adele continued. “If she’s going to be one of the Hookers, she ought to follow the rules.”

“Rules?” Dinah repeated with surprise. “What are they, the ten commandments of crochet?”

“I don’t know if there are ten, but there should be something that says if you join the Hookers, you have to go along with the group, and show up to the meetings,” Adele said as the breeze caught the brim of her hat and pushed it down, covering her eyes. She flipped it up and tried to make it stay. Go along with the group? Did Adele hear what she was saying? She never went along with anything.

As we continued down the block, I noticed that the street was crowded with cars and commercial vehicles. Generally it was empty at this time of day. But then I realized they were all part of the production and probably just being kept there until they were needed. I noticed a truck with open slats up ahead, parked in Kelly’s driveway. The back of the truck was filled with greenery in pots and two men in jeans were standing next to it.

Since Dinah’s house was just up the street from Kelly’s, which made them neighbors, my friend knew more about Kelly’s business than the rest of us. “She’s got her hands full,” Dinah began. “You know both she and her husband have kids from previous marriages. It’s always a changing cast of characters in that house. His kids, her kids, no kids. You can’t just pick up and hang out at the yarn table when you have kids out of school for the summer, and you have to cart them around to activities.”

Adele spent some more time fighting with her hat as we got closer. She didn’t seem impressed with Dinah’s explanation. “And there’s her husband’s business,” Dinah continued. “Maybe she helps out at his store.”

The store was Hollar for a Dolllar, Tarzana’s first dollar store. Dinah had heard that Kelly’s husband was hoping to make the one location into a big success, so he could develop it into a chain. “He went up and down the block and gave us all goodie bags of merchandise and ten-percent-off coupons to entice us to go into the store.”

I’d seen the goodie bags. The specialty factor of Hollar for a Dollar seemed to be that it had almost name-brand stuff. Dinah’s goodie bag had contained Uncle Len’s rice, Suckers strawberry jam and Wiggly’s spearmint gum.

As we got closer, I noticed a woman standing on the sidewalk, watching the action with the truck. She had her hand on her hip and you didn’t have to be a body language expert to know she was annoyed. As soon as she saw us, her expression sharpened and she stepped toward us.

“Coming to complain, aren’t you,” she said focusing on Dinah. “Well, I’m with you. It’s not enough that we have that production company around the corner, but thanks to Kelly Donahue, its going to be on this side of the block, too. That is, unless we do something to stop it.”

I knew not everyone found having a production company on their street exciting. To some it was nothing but a nuisance. Apparently this woman was one of those.

Dinah nodded a greeting at her. “Hi, Nanci. I don’t think you’ve met Molly Pink and Adele Abrams.” Nanci’s angry expression broke for a moment as she acknowledged us, and Dinah told us that Nanci Silvers was Kelly’s next-door neighbor and PTA president-elect at Wilbur Elementary.

Nanci definitely acted the part of PTA president. In all the years my sons had gone to school, the names and faces of the PTA presidents had changed, but the personas had stayed the same. The words bossy and controlling came to mind. Nanci’s champagne blond hair was cut severely short with asymmetrical long dagger-shaped strands on the side that did nothing to soften her sharp features. There was something businesslike in her attire. The black slacks and short-sleeved jacket seemed like a suit. The jacket was embellished with a cluster of bloodred crocheted flowers. I noticed she’d started tapping her toe as one of the jean-clad men pulled a palm tree in a big black pot out of the truck. He nodded a greeting at our little group before continuing down the driveway toward Kelly’s backyard.

“Kelly rented out her yard to the production company.” Nanci went on to explain that Kelly’s yard was directly behind one of the houses they were using on the other block. “Not only that, but she’s signed her house up with a location service.” Nanci gritted her teeth. “She’s got dollar signs in her eyes. This isn’t her first marriage, you know. And I think it won’t be her last. That woman will do anything to make a buck. And she didn’t even consult her husband. I want to take up a petition to stop her before our street becomes like that one.” She gestured toward the street behind us.

“Kelly just doesn’t get it about rules,” Adele interjected.

Nanci nodded in agreement. “Kelly doesn’t understand about being part of a group or neighborhood. It’s all about money with her.”

I knew what Nanci was talking about. Renting out your house to a production company could bring in a nice profit. Sometime back when Charlie was alive, someone had tried to hire him to do PR for their house. Yes, a house. It had become quite a star because it was Todd Jenkins house in the family saga The Jenkins. It had also been used as the home of the matriarch in Our Family and Friends. Though a family lived there when it wasn’t being used for a show, it had been built with the idea of renting it out to productions, so the interior was designed with an open plan, which made camera setups easy. Charlie had shown me the house and I had laughed when I saw the kitchen. It was designed for cameras not for cooking. I mean, you practically needed a golf cart to bring the dishes from the dining room to the sink.

After getting an assurance that Dinah wasn’t thinking of listing her house with the location service and being noncommittal about signing any sort of petition, Nanci let us go, but I noticed she followed us as we walked up to Kelly’s house. Kelly’s place had been given an overhaul since it was originally built. Someone had taken the basic stucco house and added a second story. To me, it looked like a cream-colored box with a red-tiled roof.

Kelly answered the door with a cordless phone to her ear. I guess she was used to people just showing up at her door because even though we hadn’t called ahead she didn’t seem surprised to see us. Whenever I saw her, I thought of the phrase cute as a button, though the saying didn’t really make much sense. How was a button cute? But Kelly definitely was. She smiled at us and the two dimples in her cheeks appeared and then quickly disappeared when she saw Nanci lurking in the background. Kelly put her hand over the phone as Nanci fussed about the truck in the driveway and insisted that it was ruining her view. Kelly listened with a tired sigh; clearly she’d heard this before. “It is my driveway,” Kelly reminded Nanci in a pointed tone.

Nanci made a huffing sound, turned abruptly and left. The cuteness came back into Kelly’s face, and while she apologized for the interruption to whoever she was talking to on the phone, she gestured for us to come in. Her chestnut brown ponytail swung from side to side as she led the way. The beige capri pants and loose ivory linen top were casual, but something in the fit and the texture of the fabric said expensive. Still listening to the phone call, she pointed to some small brightly colored blocks in a box and mouthed watch out.

Not only did Adele watch out, she picked up the box and examined the side. She pushed it on me with a knowing nod. The front had the words LUGO Blocks printed in big letters and showed some scary looking pictures of things you could build. Whoever had written the copy clearly wasn’t too good with English. Did anyone really say, “One thousand and one funs,” or “Let’s block”?

As Kelly hung up, she saw me reading the box and made a disparaging sound. “Sorry about the blocks. My kids were here last week and Dan brought the blocks home from the store for them. He doesn’t understand that kids care about brands. LUGO?” she said with a snort. The phone rang in her hand and she went to answer it. “Go on into my workroom. I’ll be in there in a minute.” She put the phone to her ear as the three of us went in the direction she’d pointed. Adele pressed ahead mumbling something about wanting to see if there were any crochet supplies.

Dinah pointed at the “No Kids Allowed” sign on the door and gave me a quizzical look. Dinah was all about teaching kids and young adults how to behave, not excluding them. We passed through the door into a large room at the back of the house. A sliding glass door looked out on the backyard, and there were the men we’d seen before, walking around the yard measuring things.

“Hmm, let’s just see what she’s got,” Adele said as her hat brim flopped in front of her face. She lifted it away from her eyes and quickly began to look around the room.

I was less concerned about finding proof that Kelly really crocheted than with checking out the whole room. We all loved seeing each other’s craft rooms, hoping they’d be as messy and yarn filled as our own.

Kelly’s was neither a mess like mine, with bags of yarn all over the place threatening to trip anyone who walked in without watching their step, nor super perfect looking like the ones I’d seen that were set up like yarn stores. Kelly seemed to favor plastic bins over shelves or cubbies. There were piles of them along the wall and Adele rushed toward one to check the contents. She seemed disappointed when the first one she opened contained yarn. And not just any yarn. When Adele held up a handful of skeins, I recognized the labels as high-end expensive yarn.

The room had a different feeling than what I’d gotten in the rest of the house, where the furniture seemed modest and utilitarian. The living room couch and chairs were plain and could probably live up to the abuse of the assorted kids who stayed there. But Kelly’s crafting room was filled with nice things. There was artwork on the walls and all the furnishings were tasteful and eclectic. Her computer sat on a beautifully refinished library table and the Victorian dining chair pushed into it had a dusty rose cushion to soften the back. A Victorian-style love seat was covered in the same dusty rose material. An old trunk served as a table in front of the love seat and held a silver tray with a silver tea service. I guessed that the Mission-style easy chair was Kelly’s seat of choice judging by the facedown magazine on the small table next to it and the full-spectrum floor lamp arranged to illuminate it. I was admiring the doll-size figure of a knight next to a small silver bowl of dried rose petals when Kelly came in the room.

“You found my knight in shining armor,” she said with a smile. Adele let go of the lid of the plastic bin she was snooping in and turned quickly, no doubt to hide what she’d been doing. The brim of her hat flapped down over her face blocking her view, and Adele suddenly lost her balance and whirled across the room. The burst of wind from her movement flipped the brim back up and Adele reached out to steady herself and almost knocked over a lamp with a leaded glass shade sitting on the end of the computer table. I grabbed the brass base just in time to steady it and knocked a small book to the floor instead. I replaced the book, noting it was some kind of guide to coins.

“That glass shade wouldn’t have taken a tumble well,” I said. When I asked about the Tiffany-style lamp, Kelly laughed and said it was just a copy. “Just like everything else in here,” she said, making a sweeping gesture with her arm. “Is there a reason for your visit?”

I noticed that one of the men had set a potted feathery palm tree in front of the sliding glass door. The other man looked at it and shook his head. The first man pulled it away.

Before Adele could stick her foot in her mouth, I told Kelly we’d come to pick up anything she’d made for our booth at the Jungle Days Fair. Kelly’s phone rang, interrupting us. She answered it and listened for a moment before turning to the group.

“I have to go pick up my kids and take them to their father’s house. I still have a little finishing to do with the pieces I made. I’m really coming to the group meeting tomorrow. I’ll bring everything in then.” She ushered us toward the door. “I promise.”

When we got outside, Adele gave Dinah and me a knowing glance. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”