If Hooks Could Kill

CHAPTER 3


I was surprised at what Mason Fields said when he called suggesting we get dinner. Well, I wasn’t surprised about the dinner part. We had been doing that a lot lately. But he said he had some kind of problem. Mason had always been the person who fixed problems. If he’d had any before, he’d never told me about them. But then our relationship was a little odd.

I liked to think of us as friends, though since I’d broken up with Barry, Mason had been trying to knock it up a notch—to what, friends with benefits? It was hard to tell exactly because Mason compartmentalized his life. Other than knowing he was divorced and had two kids, his family had always been off limits to me. In fact that had been the stumbling block to us having more than a friendship before. While we both agreed we weren’t looking to get married, I needed a little more than he seemed willing to offer. Mason was in the middle of my life, but I felt like he kept me on the sidelines of his.

When he wasn’t spending time with me, Mason was a top-flight attorney to the stars. He was the one naughty celebrities turned to to get out of trouble. Mason was very good at getting people out of trouble. He’d done it for me a number of times.

With the summer days still long, it wasn’t completely dark when I walked out of Shedd & Royal. The evening had cooled off only slightly and the air still felt balmy. I drove the greenmobile home. I was beginning to see my son’s point about the car. It was a 1993 190E Mercedes in a color I called teal green and while I thought of it as a classic car, it was beginning to show its age. I left it in the driveway and didn’t go in my house. To go in was to get sucked into a vortex of animals and things to take care of and never get out and I could see Mason had parked on the street and was leaning against his car, checking his BlackBerry. He put it away as soon as I got close, and his face broke out into a happy grin before he hugged me in greeting.

He was still dressed in his work clothes. The light color of the taupe suit made it seem summery. All of his suits were custom tailored and made out of a fine wool that draped perfectly. His blue dress shirt had the collar opened. As usual a lock of his dark hair had fallen across his forehead. I always thought it made him look earnest and hardworking. And I thought the sprinkling of gray made him look distinguished.

“What’s up?” I said as I got in the car. “You said you had a problem.” I might have seemed a little too eager, but it was the first time he was letting me into his life.

“It can wait,” he said as he steered the car onto the street. “Tell me about your day. I could use a little diversion.”

I made a face. Was he backing down? But then I fell for the bait. I mean, who doesn’t want to talk about their day?

We ended up at a neighborhood Italian restaurant. Tarzanians had been eating there for decades thanks to the good food and friendly atmosphere. We took a table by the window and picked up our menus. I didn’t know why I bothered looking at mine. Mason always did the ordering. He knew what I liked better than I did.

When the waiter came by, Mason ordered a Caesar salad for two. They made their own dressing and it was delicious. When Mason ordered several appetizers for us to share, it was like he’d read my mind. With the hot weather and late hour, I didn’t feel like anything too heavy.

The waiter had just brought us a basket of hot homemade bread and I was pouring some olive oil on my bread plate, when I noticed someone come in from the back. Kelly walked through the tables, up to the counter, obviously there for food to go. I started to wave, but she didn’t see me and I let it go.

“You know her?” Mason said.

“Not exactly,” I answered. I started to explain about going to her house, but then realized it was better to start at the beginning of the whole thing. Mason’s eyes widened when he heard about me trying to tackle the actor. Then he laughed.

“I wish I’d been there for that. Anybody I know in the scene?” The Caesar salad had come, and he divided it up on our plates, and asked for fresh pepper.

“I don’t know the name of the actor I tackled, but North Adams was the guy I was trying to save.”

Mason nodded. “He’s a client of the law firm. I know him from charity events and such, but he’s never needed my services. At least, not so far.”

I mentioned our real destination had been Kelly’s. “There’s something weird there,” I said. Mason’s grin widened.

“Great. I love it when you play detective.” I rolled my eyes in response. But after being involved in solving a number of murders, I’d developed some skills. I had started to notice things more and infer things from them. I did it at the grocery store all the time and tried to figure out what the people were shopping for by what they were buying. Like the time I figured out someone was having a barbecue and one of the guests was a vegetarian because they had a bag of charcoal brickets, six Spencer steaks, and one frozen vegetarian entree. I’d actually asked the man and he’d told me I was right.

Mason laughed when I told him about the LUGOs. “I saw the store,” he said vaguely gesturing toward the street. “How’s it doing?”

“I think they’re struggling. The neighbor mentioned Kelly would do anything to make some money.”

“So tell me Sherlock what did you notice about the Hollar for a Dollar people’s house?”

It had gotten to be kind of a game with us. I told him about Kelly’s room and how it seemed like a haven. “It was different from the rest of the house and had nicer furniture and doodads.” I described the refinished library table she had her computer on. I mentioned that I’d seen a chair like her Mission-styled one in a store for a couple of thousand. “Adele knocked into a leaded glass lamp. Even the modern copies of those aren’t cheap. I wouldn’t think much of it if the rest of the house, or what I saw of it, went with the things in her room.” I stopped for a moment and in my mind’s eye, I was seeing it again. “And it wasn’t just the furniture. It was the yarn, too.”

Mason knew what a mess my craft room was. More than once he’d almost skidded across the floor after getting his fancy shoes caught in a grocery bag full of yarn. “No bags of any kind,” I said. Her stuff was all in plastic bins stacked neatly against the wall. I pictured Adele opening one of them and visualized the yarn she’d held up. “I recognized the brands. It was all pricey stuff.” Mason still looked a little puzzled.

“The point is, instead of a hodgepodge of stuff like the rest of us have, Kelly’s looked like stock. She had a whole container of the same kind of yarn.” Mason kind of shrugged and urged me on.

“So what do you think it means?’

“I don’t know. We don’t even know if she really crochets or is a crochet pretender as Adele called her. Either way, it seems odd she would invest so much money in yarn. It was funny, too, that she didn’t have any samples of her work sitting in the room.”

“So maybe Adele is right and she’s a fake. A fake with fancy taste,” Mason said.

“What’s the difference if she is or isn’t, anyway,” I said. We’d started on the thick slices of fresh mozzarella with tomatoes and basil, along with the stuffed mushrooms and grilled asparagus done in garlic and olive oil. “Now you tell me your problem.”

Mason’s face changed. The grin faded and he set down his fork. He took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. “You know my daughter is getting married and you know the wedding invitations have gone out.” He watched as I nodded.

As I was agreeing, I was thinking that I didn’t even know either of his daughters’ names. He just called them my youngest and my oldest. And about those invitations— I hadn’t gotten one. I had dropped enough hints, but he’d shrugged them all off. As far as I was concerned not getting invited to the wedding was a definite sign our relationship shouldn’t be moving to the next level.

“I just found out the wedding planner declared bankruptcy. It seems her assistant was embezzling money and never paid the deposit on the ballroom at the Belle Vista hotel, which is listed on the wedding invitations. No deposits were paid for flowers, food, the cake, the band . . .” His voice trailed off and I waited for him to say more. He looked at me intently. “Do you know what that means?”

I had a pretty good idea, but I let him say it. “It means we have no location for the wedding. It means two hundred or so guests are going to show up and find somebody else having a birthday party in that ballroom. The food and the rest of it, is fixable. But finding a location at the last minute”—Mason threw up his hands. “And here is the worst part—my ex has known this for weeks. She was going to take care of it and then tell me. Take care of it?” His voice started to rise. “Jaimee took care of it all right,” he said sarcastically. “If she’d told me when she first found out, we might have found another place. But now? It’s just about impossible.”

I’d never seen Mason so upset. Instinctively, I put my hand on his as a sign of sympathy. He squeezed it and sighed. “Sunshine, I knew you would understand.” So now I at least knew his ex-wife’s name. And I began to wonder about all the stuff he’d told me about them having an amicable divorce.

“I could get buses to take the guest somewhere, if we had a somewhere to take them.” He picked up his fork, then dropped it in frustration. “I could just kill my wife.”

He said it rather loudly and several diners looked toward us with surprise.

Then Mason pulled himself together and asked if I wanted cheesecake. When I nodded, he ordered us coffees and a piece of cheesecake with extra strawberries to share. “I’m sorry for venting this on you. I suppose you’ve figured this isn’t the first time my ex has made a mess of things and dropped them in my lap to fix.”

“So your wife’s name is Jaimee,” I said with a teasing smile. “My first peek behind the curtain. How about telling me your daughters’ names instead of calling them the youngest and oldest.” I’d gotten through to Mason and his mouth slipped into a grin as his anger dissipated.

“Thursday is the one getting married and her sister’s name is Brooklyn.”

“Thursday?” I said.

“It was Jaimee’s idea to give her a unique name.” He rolled his eyes. “And Thursday is happy with her name. Go figure that.”

“See, it isn’t so hard to let me into your life.”

Mason was back to his usual self and chuckled. “I have been keeping my family separate for so long—it takes time to change. I have to take baby steps,” he said. “I suppose you want to know why we got a divorce.”

From what he’d just said about Jaimee, it wasn’t too hard to figure, but I let him explain anyway. It was another baby step and I was glad he was taking it.

“For a long time I was all work, work, work and we barely spent any time together,” he said. “Then, when my daughters went off to college and I finally had younger lawyers working for me to handle of lot of the grunt work, I started spending more time with Jaimee.” He shook his head with disbelief. “I’m not sure if she changed or if I just didn’t know her in the first place, but I started not wanting to go home.” He beamed a big smile my way. “She wasn’t any fun like you are.”

After he paid the check, we walked down Ventura Boulevard holding hands. All the stores on the main street were closed and we looked in at the illuminated display windows as we headed back to the bookstore parking lot where Mason had left his car. Traffic had thinned out and the air had gotten the typical evening chill that made the summer weather so tolerable. You always needed a blanket at night and could turn off the air-conditioning and throw open the windows.

Mason pulled the car in front of my house and cut the motor. “Shall I come in?”

He’d been asking me that same question every time he brought me home and the answer had always been the same. We both stared at the front of my house and I said something about it not being a good idea.

“When?” he said, which surprised me. He’d never pushed before. I made a helpless shrug.

“When he’s gone,” I said. “I know what you’re thinking. I should have my head examined.” I looked toward the front window and just then I saw a familiar form standing in front of it, peering out.