You Better Knot Die (21 page)

“What about the second time someone broke in?” Dinah asked in a low voice.

I thought it over a moment and realized it was the same night I’d seen the motorcycle in the Perkins’ driveway. The motorcycle Emily denied was there. “That could have been Bradley, too.”

“Obviously Emily didn’t know whatever it is about the afghan that makes it so important or she wouldn’t have lent it to you.”

“Right. She said his sister had made it, so maybe she just thought he wanted another one made by her,” I said. “Like it had some kind of sentimental value like the watch.”

“But it wasn’t about the sentiment,” Dinah said. Her voice started to rise, but she forced it back to a whisper.

In the end we came up with two conclusions. There was something hidden in the afghan and once Emily had it back, she was going to get it to Bradley.

CEECEE CALLED ME AT THE BOOKSTORE THE NEXT day. She wailed on about what a production it had been and how embarrassing for her, but she had gotten the afghan back. She said she would bring it to the next Hookers’ meeting. I didn’t want to wait and said Dinah and I would come to pick it up. CeeCee hesitated, at first anyway. It took a certain amount of bribery for her to agree.

“Did I mention I’d be bringing cookies?” I said. “Homemade butter cookies.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want those cookies to go to waste,” CeeCee said before setting up a time.

I had already spent the morning clearing up the bookstore from the previous night’s festivities and was going to take off for a while since I was working in the evening until closing. Ashley-Angela and E. Conner were at a play date with the neighbors and Dinah had come by to meet me for lunch.

We dropped our lunch plans and flew to my house to make the offered cookies. It took no time as I had mixed the dough up a couple of days earlier and formed logs and put them in the refrigerator. It was the same recipe I used for my showstopper stained glass cookies. When I made those I rolled out the dough and used cookie cutters and mashed up hard candy to make them live up to their name. For CeeCee’s, I just sliced them, sprinkled on some red sugar and baked them. Within a half an hour we were out the door with a plate of warm cookies minus a couple that Samuel had snatched.

I pulled the greenmobile to the side of the road in front of the wrought-iron fence surrounding CeeCee’s property. I got the cookies and we went up to the intercom on one of the stone pillars on either side of the gate. In the old days, the gate was unlocked, but the price CeeCee paid for her renewed success was the need for security.

The pillars were beautifully decorated with pine fronds and red bows. Once we announced ourselves, the wrought-iron gate swung open and we walked onto a path lined with poinsettias. The pathway led through a small forest to the stone cottage-style house, which looked like something out of a fairy tale.

We heard the “girls,” as she called her two Yorkies, before the door even opened. Once Talullah and Marlena got a whiff of the cookies, they ran over my feet and danced on their hind legs, looking up at the plate as I walked into the entrance hall. Two people were hanging more pine fronds on the archway that led into the living room. Even from the hall I could see the tree. It went up to the ceiling. Someone was on a ladder hanging the lights on it. For a moment I watched mesmerized. I knew celebrity-types hired people to decorate for the holidays, but it still seemed strange not to do it yourself.

CeeCee led us into the dining room, which seemed our usual place to meet. She’d already taken the plate of cookies from me and lifted the wax paper off the top. “Molly, these smell delicious.” She had a cookie in her mouth before she set the plate on the table.

The housekeeper came in from the kitchen with a silver tray set up for tea and coffee. She put it on the table. “Rosa, will you get that Neiman’s shopping bag on the service porch?” CeeCee said before taking another cookie and telling us to help ourselves to coffee and tea.

A moment later the woman returned and set the department store bag next to CeeCee.

The actress leaned toward us, not making a move toward the bag. “Okay, ladies, fess up. What’s the big deal about this afghan?”

There was no point in lying, so I told her the truth. Or the reduced version. When I started at the beginning with Bradley disappearing and their argument about the crocheted piece, she waved her hand impatiently. “Too much information. Get to the point.”

“I am sure there is something hidden in it.”

“You know, dears, I played a guest spy in that TV show
Retail Espionage
. Of course, my character was only concerned about smuggling out the formula for a lipstick shade, but I learned a little about hiding things in plain sight.” She took out the afghan and spread it on the end of the table and the three of us began to look it over.

Dinah fingered one of the white flowers that sat on top of the background. “I wonder how Madison did this?” She tugged at it to see if it had been sewn on, but it hadn’t. “Somehow she crocheted it up from the green squares.” I started to explain about surface crochet, but CeeCee interrupted me.

“Who cares how it was made?” CeeCee said, flipping though the tassel on one corner. “If I was going to stick in some microfilm, it would be here.” She checked the two tassels hanging off another corner. When she came up empty she moved on to the next corner. “I think some of the tassels must have gotten knocked off in transit,” she said, noting that corner only had one tassel and the other corners had none.

“Do you even know what microfilm looks like?” Dinah asked.

CeeCee glanced at the table and flicked off a crumb. “The script didn’t exactly cover that,” she said.

“Bradley isn’t a spy anyway,” I said.

“You have a point,” CeeCee said. The three of us looked at the whole coverlet again, trying to figure out what could be hidden in it. Then we went over every inch and checked each flower, but in the end, we couldn’t find anything.

“It really is pretty, but I think if I was making it, I’d drop the yellow flowers and just go with the violet, red and white ones,” Dinah said. “And I think I’d space them better. It’s kind of strange to have a bunch of flowers in one square and then none in the next one.”

We stared at it until our eyes were blurry and all the cookies were gone.

“Molly, dear, no offense to your abilities as a sleuth, but maybe since her husband is dead and even with all the trouble he’s caused, she really does want it for sentimental reasons.” CeeCee mentioned her confused feeling when her husband died and she found out the financial mess she was in. She rolled up the coverlet and put it back in the bag. “Well, I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure you have something you have to do,” CeeCee said, walking us toward the door.

Dinah and I discussed the possibility of CeeCee being right about why Emily wanted the blanket as we drove to my house. The truth was we hadn’t actually seen Bradley and the elf had only said a man talked to him. It could have been some other man. But who?

“Nicholas, maybe,” Dinah said, mentioning the Luxe shop owner. “Remember she went there the day she told you Bradley was missing. Kind of an interesting time to go shopping for tea. And she was there again around the time Sheila dropped off the blankets.”

I reminded her that she’d been returning things, trying to get cash. Dinah’s red scarf blew across her face and she peeled it back. “Or so he said,” she said as I pulled onto my street. “Until you see a living, breathing Bradley, you really can’t be sure.”

I stopped in front of my garage and got the afghan out of the shopping bag. There was no point in stalling its return. Dinah came along as we walked across my lawn and moved onto the Perkins’ property. The Santa’s sled had been knocked on its side and the half-done string of lights hung from the roof. It looked depressing and I wished she’d finish putting them up or put them away.

Emily ripped open the door before the bell even did its last chime. She glanced up and down the street and then at me. “Do you have it?” she said in a sharp whisper. In answer, I held out the Neiman’s bag, but she pushed it back at me abruptly. “Not here.”

She glanced past us toward the street and her eyes darted nervously. We started to turn our heads to see what she was looking at. “Don’t turn around,” she barked. “They’re watching me.”

“Who,” I said, wishing I could turn to see if there was someone there or she was being paranoid.

“The FBI, the SEC, the state’s attorney people. People who invested money with Bradley. Didn’t you see the way they looked at me at the bookstore? Don’t they get it—I’m a victim like everybody else. I’m hanging by a thread here. Any money I had is frozen until everything gets settled. And then they’ll probably take it, saying it was ill-gotten gains. My credit cards are canceled. And everybody thinks I was part of Bradley’s scheme.”

We stood there a moment and I didn’t know what to say since I’d sort of joined that last group. “Go home,” she said in a impatient whisper, “and throw it over the fence into the backyard.” She shut the door without waiting for a confirmation.

At least now I could check out the street as we walked back past the sideways Santa. Under the circumstances, I could see how she might not care about the decorations. The only vehicles on the street at this time of day were usually gardeners, pool cleaners and cleaning women, with an occasional plumber or pest-control truck thrown in. The assorted cars and vans seemed to fit those parameters. But were they what they seemed?

I watched a man sitting in one of the cars on the street. Was he eating his lunch or keeping an eye on Emily? I shuddered, thinking of being in her position.

Dinah and I went into my backyard. I knew just where to throw it over the fence, thanks to my adventure with Mason. I stepped up on the bench and leaned through the bushes to the chain-link fence. I took the bag and tossed it over. It landed with a
plop
. There were some rustling noises and I heard something that might have been “thank you” before receding footsteps and finally the sound of a sliding glass door closing.

“Now what?” Dinah said when I climbed down.

“Let’s see what she does,” I offered. Really what I meant was let’s see if she goes anywhere. As if an answer, I heard the rumble of her garage door opening.

“C’mon,” I said, running across the yard to the driveway. As soon as we got in the greenmobile, I backed down the driveway just far enough to see what was going on in hers. A moment later, Emily’s SUV roared backward toward the street. She stopped and checked both ways before backing out. A moment later she was zooming away.

I didn’t bother to look if anyone had pulled away from the curb. I just made the same move she had and took off after her. I was disappointed when I realized she was headed toward the few blocks of stores considered downtown Tarzana. She parked the SUV on the street next to the back parking lot behind the bookstore and the stores adjacent to it.

“Looks like we rushed for nothing,” I said, pulling into the parking lot next to a car with a bike in a bike rack. Still, as soon as I’d stopped the motor, we jumped out and tried to catch up with her. “Geez,” I said, “it really was for nothing.” Ahead she’d just walked into the bookstore. We plastered ourselves against the wall and watched her through one of the big windows that faced the main street.

“The snowflakes look really nice from the outside,” Dinah said. I stepped back to get a better view, then caught myself. We weren’t there to admire the windows. Emily kept walking around, appearing to be looking at books, but every time she picked one up, she fluttered through the pages and replaced it. She spent about five minutes with the books and walked toward the door quickly. We tried to wish ourselves invisible as she came out of the bookstore.

If she saw us, she didn’t seem to care. Her pace slowed and she walked down to Luxe.

“See, I told you,” Dinah said, nudging me in the ribs. “She’s got something going with him.” We crept down the street, staying close to the buildings. When we got near Luxe’s display window, we moved just far enough to look in. Emily was sitting by the waterfall, drinking a cup of tea. Every so often, she looked toward the counter where Nicholas was waiting on a customer. It was pretty clear after a couple of minutes that she wasn’t going anywhere.

We slunk back to the bookstore. “There you are,” Adele said, stopping us near the entrance. “Pink, someone wanted to buy some yarn as a gift. A knitter,” Adele said, practically spitting out the word. “She wanted to see a knitted swatch, but there was nothing hanging on the bin. What’s up with the swatches?”

I was impressed that Adele had actually waited on a knitter. I was always afraid if any came in while I wasn’t there, Adele would ignore them until they left.

I explained that I wasn’t really back to work, that I’d just stopped in. Adele’s eye’s narrowed. “What are you two up to? Some detective thing, Jessica Nancy Fletcher Holmes?” I didn’t answer and she went on. “More about your neighbor?”

I said nothing and Adele stayed planted, saying she wanted to come with. She didn’t even ask where we were going, she just wanted to be part of the action.

“Remember, we’re musketeers,” she said, referring again to a title she’d come up with during our last adventure. She started to pout but then saw that William had joined us and we were suddenly old news. I don’t know what was harder to deal with, Adele trying to get in the middle of stuff or acting flirty with William as she explained to him the musketeer reference.

I told Adele there were some swatches in my tote bag in the office, hoping she heard among all the eye batting and touching the lapel of his sports jacket. “I’ll be back this evening,” I said as Dinah and I headed for the door. Dinah’s house was barely a block from the bookstore parking lot, and instead of going home, she’d suggested I come over. The area was called Walnut Acres because at one time it had been a walnut farm. One of the nutty trees still stood in Dinah’s yard.