If Hooks Could Kill

CHAPTER 29


Late in the day, the Hookers gathered at the back table for a group session. Whatever benefit I’d gotten from the few hours of sleep had worn off. The episode with Detective Heather hadn’t helped, either. I was on my third black eye of the day. Since it wasn’t exactly our finest hour, Adele, Dinah and I had agreed there was no reason to bring up our fiasco with North’s gun, but I told the group about Kelly’s storage locker.

“Are you sure you went to the right one?” Rhoda said. I nodded and said I’d checked over and over.

“That’s horrible. How’d Detective Heather take it?” Dinah asked, looking up from her work. I choked on a laugh.

“Not well. She said she should have known better than to get sucked into one of my schemes. She rushed off and I had to run to catch up with her or she would have just left me there without a ride.”

“What about getting Mason to back you up?” Sheila suggested.

“Like a cop is going to believe a lawyer,” Adele said with a snort. “Face it, Pink, there’s nothing you can do. You might as well just drop the whole thing and give up the amateur detective act. You’re not going to be able to solve this one. And I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I’ve decided Eric is right after all. There is only room for one crime fighter in a couple.”

CeeCee interrupted and handed out some sheets of paper. “Since some people in the group seem determined to make cowls, I came up with a faster pattern.” She held up a sample she’d made before passing it around. Adele’s cowls were made of dense stitches, while CeeCee’s had lots of spaces. Adele seemed miffed when Rhoda said it seemed a lot more appropriate for summer.

When my workday ended, I practically crawled home from the bookstore. It wasn’t like the days when I was in college, when I could pull an all-nighter and still get through the day. I was walking across my yard, grateful that home was in sight when Peter called on my cell. My son wanted to know if I really did have the hots for North Adams. I could hear the relief in his voice when I told him I didn’t.

“But you won’t tell him that, will you?” Peter said with some discomfort in his tone. I assured my older son that I would be happy to play along with North’s fantasy just like I’d given him the rides, no questions asked.

“Just be nice to him, nothing more,” Peter warned before he hung up.

“No problem on that one,” I said out loud to myself as I walked into the kitchen.

I flinched when I heard a voice.

“Who are you talking to?” Barry asked. He was unloading white containers of Chinese food on the counter and had taken out a couple of plates.

“Just to myself,” I said. Jeffrey came in the room looking glum. He glared at his father with a hopeless expression and turned to me. I asked him if something was wrong. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Barry rocking his head and rolling his eyes.

“Autumn came back from camp, but she started hanging out with some other kids. Well, some other guy,” he added sadly.

Barry doled out a plate of food for him and said they could eat together in the dining room. Jeffrey sighed dramatically and said he’d eat in his room, that he wanted to be alone.

Barry sighed. “I’m trying to be understanding. I don’t know what to do with his moping around.” He gestured toward the containers. “There’s plenty. Help yourself.” He started to leave it at that, but then added with an edge. “I’m sure after being out all night you don’t feel like cooking.”

For a moment I thought of explaining, but then thought why should I? It was bad enough being judged by my sons, but now by Barry, too. We were just supposed to be like roommates. I gave him a “no thank you” on the chow mein and marched out of the kitchen with the last of my energy.

I was more tired than hungry, anyway, and just fell on my bed in my clothes. Mason called and I awoke long enough to talk to him. He was shocked to hear about the storage locker but I was so tired I was beyond sharing in his disbelief. Two seconds after we hung up I was out for the night.

In the morning I felt like a new person. I bounced out of bed, showered and got dressed. It was only as I was walking across the house that I thought about Barry. I hoped he was gone. I couldn’t handle another reproachful stare. No such luck. He was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, drinking coffee and eating some cereal while he checked the screen on his smart phone.

I was relieved when my house phone rang and it was Dinah. She said it had been bugging her about the lamp I’d seen. She couldn’t remember what it looked like.

“I didn’t take it out of the box and there wasn’t much light so I couldn’t make out the pattern in the leaded glass. But when I saw it at Kelly’s it had some kind of blue and green pattern. Flowers maybe. I don’t know.” We arranged to meet later and I hung up.

Barry looked up with a question in his eyes. I just cut to the chase. “Dinah wanted to know about a lamp I saw in Kelly’s storage locker. I suppose Detective Heather has told you all about it by now. How I took her on a wild-goose chase and led her to an empty storage unit. Well, when I went there the first time, it wasn’t empty.” I let out my breath in a huff. “How’s that decorating coming at your place? Will they be done soon?”

Barry had on his inscrutable cop face. “No, Heather didn’t tell me. It will just be a little longer until I can leave.”

I spent the day at the bookstore immersed in work. I didn’t want to think about anything else. Dinah came in just as I was finishing up.

“Let’s get far away from here.” She stuck her fingers in her ears. “It’s even noiser at my place.” The production crew was shooting a scene that had a helicopter landing up the street in the yard of the middle school. The thwack of the rotor was annoyingly loud even inside.

They weren’t actually filming any scenes with actors until later. Most of them had some time off and when we left the bookstore, they were hanging around the café. North was among them. He looked over at me and gave me what he must have considered his special wink. I offered a weak smile in return.

I still wondered why he had lied about knowing Kelly. Was there any way I could question him without him taking it the wrong way? No.

To say I was bummed out was an understatement. I’d lost the last shred of credibility I had with Detective Heather. And what had happened to the locker’s contents?

Dinah tried to cheer me up and said we might as well fulfill our promise to CeeCee to stop at Commander’s Mail It Center and pick up the packing supplies he was donating to our booth.

“It looks so much nicer if you get a cute little shopping bag with your purchase, and with a Tarzana Hooker sticker, no less,” Dinah said trying to sound cheery as I pulled the greenmobile in front of the Mail It Center. It was in a strip mall off Ventura Boulevard between a cell phone store and a nail salon. As we approached the small storefront, Commander saw us from inside and waved. More than waved. The minute he saw Dinah, his face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. I was so happy for my friend.

As we passed the post office boxes in the front part of the small storefront, I remembered that Commander had said Kelly had one, for her online business.

“What happens with Kelly’s box now that she’s gone?” I said.

“Interesting that you should bring that up. She was paid up through last week. I’m trying to decide what to do with the contents of her box. For now I just put it over there”—he gestured toward a small bin in the corner.

“Mind if I have a look?” I asked. He seemed uncomfortable with the idea, but finally agreed. There were some pieces of junk mail, several catalogs for yarn and a small box. I picked it up and examined it. Commander saw what I was doing and pointed out “Return to sender, No such address” was stamped on the front.

“Kelly dropped off packages for pick up all the time. She must have made some kind of mistake on this one.”

I held it up and shook it; something clunked inside. Yarn things didn’t clunk and I was suddenly curious about the contents of the box. Commander nixed the idea of opening it.

“But you said the rent on her post office box ran out,” I protested. He still seemed uneasy and said usually when someone stopped paying for a box, he just refused any packages, but he couldn’t refuse a box being returned. Dinah started to work on him, too.

Finally he put up his hands in capitulation. “I’m going to get the packet of shopping bags and tissue paper for your booth. You two watch the front while I’m in the back where I can’t see what’s going on up here,” he said in a knowing tone. “And make sure you put everything back the way it was.” He paused. “That is if anything were to just happen to open.”

As soon as he went to the back, Dinah pulled out a long letter opener and we used it to slide under the flap of the box and release the adhesive. “He must really love you,” I said. Commander wasn’t one to bend the rules and looking the other way was a big deal for him.

I don’t know why my heart rate had kicked up when it took some doing to get the box open. It wasn’t like he was trying to catch us. I suppose it was from the anticipation of finding out what was inside. Finally a small taped-up packet slid out. Dinah took what Commander had said seriously and used the knifelike letter opener to open the inner wrapping without tearing in. She handed it to me and I unfolded the bubble wrap, revealing two small green crocheted bags with drawstrings. I poked my finger into one of the bags to open it and emptied the contents on the counter. Two quarters fell out and pinged against the Formica.

“What’s that about?” I said, picking up one of them.

“Maybe she just wanted to put something in the crocheted bag to weigh it down,” Dinah said as I handed her the other one to look over.

“All the items she sold were pricey. How much could she make on a couple little bags? I quickly took a photo of the small bags and the coins with my BlackBerry before we put everything back. “That’s certainly not what I expected,” I said as I resealed the small cardboard box and dropped it back into the bin with Kelly’s other mail. Dinah called to Commander and let him know we were done without saying it exactly and he reappeared carrying a brown shopping bag loaded with smaller shopping bags and tissue paper.

He avoided looking at the bin of Kelly’s mail. “Did she send out a lot of little boxes like that?” I asked.

“Not at first, but then she’d started bringing one in every now and then. She never said anything about the contents. I tried to engage her in conversation, but she was always in a hurry.” He seemed a little disappointed. “I like my customers to feel like family, but she didn’t seem to have time to be friendly.”

He pulled out one of the shopping bags and showed off the Tarzana Hooker stickers he’d had made. We both gushed over them and thanked him a bunch of times before we went back to my car. “We need to go someplace and figure out what’s going on with that package,” I said.

“I’d suggest my place,” Dinah said as I pulled out of the parking lot, “but the helicopter cowboys are probably still buzzing my house.”

Since I was never sure who or what I was going to find at my place anymore, my house wouldn’t work, either. “How about dinner at Doc Hogan’s Burgerama?” I said. Dinah thought it was a great idea.

The place featured a play yard for the kids and old-fashioned fast food with no pretense of being heart healthy. It was dinnertime and the place was crowded and noisy. Someone had some sense and had set aside a no kids zone.

We sat down at one of the yellow striped red tables. Their fries were made from fresh-cut potatoes cooked in some kind of good-tasting oil and then served in brown paper bags that were immediately dotted with grease stains. No fancy dipping sauce here, just oodles of catsup.

We’d gotten a jumbo order, which was okay because we were sharing it. Besides, the motion of dipping fries in catsup and then transporting them to my mouth always helped me think.

“So what do we have?” I said to Dinah as she ripped open the paper bag making the hot fries more accessible.

“French fries and catsup,” she said giving me a puzzled look.

“I know that,” I said. “I mean what information do we have and what does it all mean?” We’d gotten colas to go with the fries, and not diet, either. Not even American ones. We’d gotten the Mexican version that was made with real sugar instead of the high fructose syrup stuff.

“Worth every calorie,” I said savoring the crispy fry with just the right amount of catsup. “Let’s recap what we know about the whole Kelly business. I’ll begin,” I said. Even with the no kid zone, it was still pretty noisy and we had to talk loud. “We know North lied about knowing her. And we know that there was a gun in the storage locker.” I wiped a dab of catsup off my knuckle. “But now it’s gone.” I groaned reliving the ride back with Detective Heather where she suggested maybe it had all been a dream. I assured Dinah I’d really seen the gun.

“I never doubted that you did,” my friend said. “We just have to figure out what happened.”

“Somehow Dan must have figured out that someone had been in the storage locker and realized he had to move the gun,” I said.

“And he took everything because then there was no chance any of it could be traced back to him,” Dinah added. She was curious about what else had been in there.

She already knew about the lamp. I chewed on a french fry. “That’s right,” I said amazed that I could have forgotten. “The crochet pieces we picked up. The ones with the bullion stitch that made Adele go nuts. They were in there.”

“So it wasn’t the junior shoplifters who took them from the bookstore. It must have been Dan,” Dinah said incredulous. “Remember he came late. He could have taken them while everyone was gathering in the event area. Now that I think about it, he had a plastic bag, but I thought it was just stuff from his store. But why would he have taken them?”

“I don’t know. When I saw them in the storage locker, the felt backing had been pulled apart.” I took a slug of my cola drink. “It’s just weird. And what’s with the package at Commander Blaine’s? I thought Kelly was selling gorgeous crocheted shawls in some pricey yarn, not little bags with quarters.” I paused for a moment, looking down at the table. In my mind’s eye I was seeing the bin of bullion flowers when Adele had first let me see them. I had assumed that Kelly meant to add pin findings to the felt discs she’d used as backing. But now I was seeing them in a different light. The pieces were round and not much bigger than the coins. Even the name of the stitch. I mentioned it to Dinah. “When you hear the word bullion what do you think of?”

“Clear soup?” Dinah said. I rolled my eyes.

“What else?”

“Okay, I think of gold, which is money.”

“Maybe he knew there were quarters in the crocheted flowers she gave us.”

“What, and Dan needed change for a parking meter?” Dinah said laughing.

“Good point. It’s a lot of trouble to go to for some change.” Just then I noticed that Dinah had a funny expression on her face. She seemed to be trying to tell me something, but what? I realized her eyes kept darting behind me. I turned and Barry was standing inches from me, holding a large sack of food.

“Is this your new hangout?” he said, eyeing the pile of greasy french fries. “And to think you have been giving me the evil eye about all the stuff I’ve been bringing home for dinner.” He leaned in real close. “You might want to check, but I think there’s a french fry in your hair.”

Then he straightened and bid us “happy eating” and headed toward the door.

“That’s it. I can’t take it anymore. He keeps giving me dirty looks in my kitchen, in my house.” I told Dinah about his comments when I’d been out all night.

Dinah laughed. “No matter what that man says, it isn’t over between you two or why would he even care?”

“Well, it’s over as far as I’m concerned and the sooner he moves on, the better. Mason has been very understanding, though he has a lot on his mind, at the moment anyway. Dealing with his ex-wife and the wedding disaster and the idea that in the not too distant future he could end up a grandpop.”

“What’s Barry excuse for not leaving? He’s back at work, he doesn’t limp unless he thinks someone is watching.”

I reminded Dinah about the work he was having done to his place. “I sure hope they finish soon. I can’t take all those disapproving shakes of his head.”

We finished our fries and drinks and both left feeling full and swearing we never wanted to eat again. “That’s what Barry doesn’t get. It’s only once in a while for us. He and Jeffrey are eating this stuff every day.” Dinah looked at me and shook her head.

“If you’re so anxious to get rid of him, why do you care what they eat?”

“I care about Jeffrey. He’s a growing kid. He needs salad.”

“Are you sure it’s just Jeffrey’s nutritional needs you’re so concerned about?” Dinah said.

“He told me Barry thinks catsup is a vegetable.” I might have sounded a little too emotional about that fact.

“Say what you will, but you haven’t completely let go,” Dinah said. I started to argue, but she gave me a knowing nod. Sometimes best friends know you too well.