If Hooks Could Kill

CHAPTER 7


“Well?” Mrs. Shedd said when I came back into the bookstore. My adrenaline was still pumping from seeing all the cops, and most of all Detective Heather, and my mind was out of focus. I gave Mrs. Shedd a puzzled look. “You were going to see what was going on. Is Dinah okay?”

Her question made me remember why I’d gone down the street in the first place. “She wasn’t even home.” I glanced around, wanting to get back to normal. “Right, I was working customer service,” I mumbled to myself.

“If it wasn’t Dinah’s, then where did the police go?” Mrs. Shedd asked. I winced at my lack of information. If it had been any detective other than Detective Heather, I probably would have tried to find out what happened. But we had a history and not a good one. I knew there was no chance she’d give me any information.

And that was fine because I wasn’t sure I wanted any information. Detective Heather was a homicide cop and if she was there, someone was probably dead. Judging by the yellow crime-scene tape, it was a safe bet it was someone from the Donahue house and last time we’d stopped by, the only one home was Kelly. I could just imagine Mrs. Shedd’s face if I told her we’d just been to Kelly’s and now she might be dead.

I knew what Mrs. Shedd would say, too. “Molly, I don’t know what it is about you, but dead bodies seem to show up wherever you go. You visited that poor woman and look what happened to her.”

The worst part was I couldn’t argue with Mrs. Shedd, because it was true. I certainly didn’t plan it, it just seemed to work out that way. I finally answered Mrs. Shedd and simply told her the cops had gone down the street and stopped in front of one of the houses. “I don’t really know what happened.”

“Some of us can find out,” Adele said in a haughty tone that made me want to scream. “Some of us have a boyfriend in law enforcement who is happy to give us important info.” I looked at her and thought what have I done? I was the one who’d gotten her fixed up with Eric in the first place. It had been through Barry, though not directly—a friend of a friend of a friend. Adele’d had such a broken heart, I’d foolishly tried to help mend it. I should have realized things with Adele tended to boomerang.

Adele was out the door in a flash. Mrs. Shedd almost wobbled in the wake of her whirlwind exit. “Is it my imagination or is Adele even more full of herself than usual?” my boss said. It seemed to be a rhetorical question because my boss didn’t wait for an answer, but checked out the front of the store. Her gaze stopped on the junior high boys in gangster outfits who’d been joined by some look-alikes, all of whom were hanging out in the magazine section. They were jostling each other, jumping around and generally being a nuisance.

“Should we ask them to leave?” I said, but Mrs. Shedd shook her head.

“I had Joshua try that when they came in before. Or I think it was them. With those outfits, they all look the same. One of them said his father was a lawyer and he’d be all over us for discrimination because they were customers. He showed Joshua he was buying a chocolate bar and a graphic novel.” Mrs. Shedd told me to keep a watch on them anyway.

I wanted to push whatever was happening down the street out of my mind and headed back to the customer service booth. I was glad there were people waiting.

An author interested in having a launch party at the bookstore had just walked away, when Adele returned. It wasn’t a silent entrance, either. “It’s just terrible. Oh, the humanity of it all,” she said in her loud voice. As she went through the store, the loudness of her voice and her repeating about how horrible it was, attracted the attention of the shoppers and they began to follow her like she was the Pied Piper. Adele snuck a look over her shoulder at the crowd she’d gathered. When they reached an open area, she turned, ready to hold court.

I fought the urge to join the gathering. I did and didn’t want to know what happened. As long as I didn’t know anything about Kelly for sure, I didn’t have to get upset. And there was something else. I’m not proud to admit it, but being in her audience would give Adele the upper hand.

It became a nonissue anyway, because Mrs. Shedd rushed up to the customer service booth and grabbed my arm. Two of the junior gangsters were heading toward the door. Even from here I could see they’d stuck some magazines under their shirts. One of them darted toward the table with the e-readers and grabbed one before rejoining his friend.

“Do something, Molly,” Mrs. Shedd said. “I don’t care if their father is a lawyer.” They were local kids and I knew it was more about the thrill than the actual stuff they’d taken. I ran up behind them and grabbed them both by the back of their shirts.

“Hey, lady, back off,” one of them said and tried to squirm away from my grasp. I managed to transfer my hold so I had a grasp on each of their arms, but I was definitely struggling. One of them had started kicking backward toward my shin. I glanced around hoping for some help. The front door opened and Barry came through. I felt a sense of relief, knowing his cop instinct would kick in instantaneously and he’d step in.

But instead, he seemed to freeze before looking away. The boys were about to pull free when North Adams came in behind Barry and tried to help. A moment later, Joshua Royal came into the store and joined in.

When I looked up Barry was gone.

The star of L.A. 911 became Detective Jake Blake and used his authority voice to try to scare the boys with threats of arrest and prison. Mr. Royal got the kids to hand over the e-readers and magazines and gave them a stern warning before letting them go.

The customers all missed the incident because Adele still had their attention. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, just the rise and fall of her voice, with an occasional gasp from the small crowd.

“Molly,” a voice called from behind me. I turned and Dinah rushed toward me. I knew she hadn’t been home when the chaos had erupted on her street, but still I was relieved to see her in one piece and hugged her tightly. I could feel her heart palpitating and noticed that her breath seemed a little ragged.

“They stopped me when I tried to go into to my own house,” she said. I urged her to take a deep breath before she continued. “There are cops everywhere,” she said gesturing in the general direction of her street. “Detective Heather is there.” I nodded and told Dinah I’d seen the detective when I’d gone down the street. Dinah swallowed hard when our eyes met. “I started asking the cops questions and they started asking me questions about when I left and things like that.” Dinah stopped to regroup. “I didn’t get many details, but it’s Kelly Donahue. Something about her husband came home and found her. It was too late. They think it was a robbery gone bad. I heard some cops talking about looking for the murder weapon. I’m pretty sure she was shot. The cops asked me if I heard anything before I left.”

“Did you tell them we were at her house earlier today?”

Dinah shook her head. “It’s my policy not to volunteer information that will only cause me trouble. I know I didn’t kill her. . . .” Dinah stopped and looked at me.

“Take a deep breath,” she ordered. My best friend knew what I was thinking.

“Molly, it isn’t personal. No matter what Mrs. Shedd has said about not wanting to go anywhere with you because dead bodies keep showing up. It’s not your fault. You’re not some kind of jinx.”

I was embarrassed to admit that was exactly what I was thinking. “Dinah, I’m terrible. A woman is dead, and here I am thinking about me.” Once that was out of the way, I began to ask Dinah for more details, but she didn’t have many.

“They blocked off the whole area and shut down the production. I’m guessing they’re talking to all the neighbors around Kelly’s house,” Dinah said.

Adele breezed by after she finally dismissed her crowd. She looked at the two of us. “I didn’t see you two in the group when I was explaining what happened. I guess you just wanted to hear it from me personally. It must be kind of embarrassing to not be the one in the know.” The last comment was aimed directly at me. All the attention had gotten to her and she looked like her head might float away from all the hot air inside as she straightened the strap on her gauzy sundress. The lime green swirled with purple made me think of a snow cone. She had pulled her brown hair into tiny little pigtails that stuck straight out.

“No problem,” I said. “Dinah just filled me in.” Trying not to sound too pleased, after all I was talking about somebody who had just died, I told her I already knew that Kelly had been shot and what the cops thought. I watched as Adele deflated like a Mylar balloon with a big leak.

“Oh,” she said with a harrumph. Then she brightened. “But I don’t suppose you know who they think the killer really is. Eric was the first responder,” she said before giving me her spiel how motor cops were often the first ones on the scene in any kind of emergency. “Even though he’s technically off duty while he’s working as security on the production, in his heart, he’s always on duty,” Adele said with a flutter in her voice.

“So?” I said, annoyed with myself for falling for her bait.

“So, he saw the crime scene. It was Kelly’s workroom,” Adele said. “There was stuff tossed around, but he thought it was just a cover-up to make it look like a robbery. He said the first person they’ll be looking at is her husband. He’s the one who found her. Eric said that’s a common ploy to try to cover up being the killer,” Adele said, savoring her moment of being in the know. “The cops are questioning everybody, anyway. All the production people and actors.”

I thought about seeing Dan and his concern over names for his store. He didn’t seem like somebody with murder on his mind. But then Barry had always said you couldn’t tell a book by its cover when it came to murderers.

“That’s nothing special in the information department,” I said, embarrassed that I’d gotten sucked into her game and was trying to one-up her. “In fact, what you just told me is investigation one-oh-one in The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigation.” The book had been my personal bible when it came to learning how to sleuth. “You always look at the closest person first. They usually have means and opportunity. All you need to do is find their motive and some incriminating evidence.”

Adele tried to dismiss what I’d said. “I was just telling you that in case you get any ideas about investigating. Eric has it under control.”

I just smiled and nodded and didn’t even bother mentioning that Eric rode a motorcycle and gave out traffic tickets when he was on duty. Yes, he might show up when there was a riot or an earthquake, but he wasn’t a detective. He didn’t detect or investigate like my boyfr— I stopped the thought in my head, glad I hadn’t said anything. I didn’t need Adele to remind me again that Barry and I weren’t anything any longer.

Adele walked off saying that she had to get back to the children’s area. She was in the process of planning a big event. She was going to have Eric as the special guest reader of Officer Pauly Solves the Case of the Missing Parakeet.

Dinah hugged me again and said she was going back home. Before she left she glanced toward the café and saw North sitting at one of the tables. “What’s he doing here?” she asked. I just shrugged as an answer.

After the shoplifter’s caper, Mrs. Shedd suggested we keep the e-readers behind the information desk and only let people try them right in front of us. Mr. Royal wanted to keep it easy for people to play with them and said he’d figure out a way to keep them on the table.

Eventually, I went into the café for a late afternoon red eye and saw that North Adams was still in there. Nice as the café was, I thought it was odd that he was hanging out there alone.

As I stopped to pick up a lid for my drink and some napkins, the two men who’d been working in Kelly’s backyard, putting the trees along the back of her house, came into the café. They made some chitchat with Bob, our barista, and said that they wanted coffees for the road. They seemed surprised to see North and stopped at his table when they’d gotten their coffees. I was curious about their conversation and, shall we say, took my time getting a lid and napkins.

“You do know they shut us down and sent everybody home,” the older of the two jean-clad men said to North. When the actor nodded, the man seemed perplexed and asked why North was hanging around. He was going to stay perplexed, too, because North avoided the question by changing the subject.

Instead North asked, “Do you guys know what happened exactly? I was in my trailer.”

The older man whose name was Fred said after lunch he and Zeke had been ready to start laying out the props for the next setup, but had gone back to the Donahue yard to add some more bushes. “We never got to do it. Our security guy was out front with the mister from the house. Then a bunch of cop cars came tearing down the street.” He explained that as soon as the police heard they’d been working in the Donahue’s yard, they wanted to question them. “The cops gave us the bare bones of what happened.” Fred paused and let out a sigh before he repeated what the cops had said—that a woman had been found shot in the house.

“Do you know who she was?” Fred said. North answered with a shrug. “You remember Rexford Thomasville?” When North seemed to draw a blank, the prop guy continued. “He’s a set designer. Or he was. I heard he has a store in Santa Barbara now. Kelly was his daughter. I didn’t recognize her at first, but she remembered me and showed me some things she was selling online in case we needed them for an upcoming production. It turns out back when, she tried working with her dad, and we all worked together on McCavity. Of course, when she told me who she was, I remembered her. All you had to do was see her smile. The whole family has matching dimples.” North had a glazed look, like he was getting a much longer answer than he’d expected and way too much information. When Fred started talking about Kelly’s brother who had the same dimples and had helped out with props before becoming some kind of surfing champion, North cut him off by asking how long they’d be shut down. Neither of the prop guys knew and finally picked up their coffees before leaving.

I finally popped the lid on my drink and prepared to go back to the bookstore. Adele sailed into the café as Eric came in the door from outside.

“Hi cutchykins,” he said as a goofy grin spread over his face.

“Oh, Eric, you’re such a hero,” Adele said, rushing up to him. She turned to the smattering of people in the café and explained that Eric had been the first responder to the tragedy up the street. “The whole production had to shut down while they process the crime scene,” Adele announced to the café patrons. “But Eric, Officer Humphries to the rest of you, is still working. He’s never off duty.” He didn’t seem to mind her effusive comment about how wonderful he was. If anything he just stood a little taller. She linked arms with him and said that after what he’d done, Mrs. Shedd wanted to make sure he got a complimentary drink and cookie snack.

It was all a little too sugary for me and I escaped back into the bookstore, still thinking about the conversation I’d overheard. I’d just sort of glossed over the two prop guys when I’d seen them bringing stuff in the yard. It had never occurred to me that Kelly might have a connection with one of them. Maybe I’d spent too much time thinking about mysteries, but I automatically wondered if Fred had told the whole story. Or just enough to throw someone off the track.