You Better Knot Die (7 page)

“That wife of his ought to thank her lucky stars for him,” Rhoda interjected. “The way he just stepped in and acts like a father to her two girls.”

“He’s not their father?” I said, looking up from my work. The body was taking shape.

“You don’t know?” Rhoda said, surprised. “They’ve only been married a couple of years. Emily’s first husband died.”

How odd that Emily had never mentioned either of these facts to me. Elise said Logan had sold them their house and he’d been taken from the beginning about what a great couple they were. “You have to give Bradley a lot of credit. He stepped right in as father to the girls. He even coaches their soccer team. I hear he’s at every PTA meeting. He ran a booth at the spring carnival at Wilbur Avenue Elementary. Logan said he always comes to the chamber of commerce meetings. He’s just this outgoing friendly guy. It’s hard to imagine him having a big argument. Emily is kind of moody. I bet she started the fight and is just telling everyone it was him,” Elise said.

So I wasn’t the only one to wonder about Emily’s story. All I had to go on was Emily’s version, and as Barry kept telling me, people lied.

Dinah came in at the end. I was going to bring her up to speed, but when I saw she wasn’t alone, I stopped.

All of a sudden I was pretty sure I knew what her news was.

“DINAH, YOU DIDN’T,” I SAID AS WE HEADED TO the café. The crochet group had dispersed. I had held back from saying anything until we were alone. My friend’s dangle earrings jangled as she hung her head.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I missed them, and what are holidays without kids?”

She had a point about kids and holidays. Since my boys had grown, I’d let the holidays go. We had always celebrated everything so we’d made ornaments for our Christmas trees and lit Hanukkah candles and made donuts and potato pancakes. The last vestige had been our yearly Christmas Eve party and I’d let that go when Charlie died. Decorations and events at the bookstore had become my only way of acknowledging holidays lately.

Ashley-Angela told Bob she wanted hot chocolate and E. Conner said he wanted hot cider. The almost five-year-old fraternal twins were the children of Dinah’s ex, Jeremy, and his now ex-wife. If you were looking for a definition for irresponsible, Jeremy was it, although his newly exed wife was a close second. Dinah had ended up taking care of the kids a while back, and even though, if anything, she ought to resent them, she’d gotten attached. As she explained it, they were her son and daughter’s half siblings. Jeremy had finally taken over their care, but the damage was done. Dinah worried about them, along with missing them. She had invited them to spend the holidays with her.

“Jeremy is such a snake. I’m sure he was relieved about not having to worry about buying them any presents.” Dinah spoke in a low voice, so the kids off getting napkins wouldn’t hear.

“What does Commander think about them?” I said. Dinah didn’t say anything and I thought she hadn’t heard me, but she finally answered.

“He doesn’t exactly know yet.”

Commander Blaine was Dinah’s current male companion. Her choice of description. We were on the same page about the boyfriend term. I thought
male companion
sounded older than dust, which is why I didn’t use it. He owned a local mail-it center that catered to the many people working out of their houses.

Their relationship almost hadn’t happened. Dinah had found him too fussy about his clothes (think knife-sharp creases in his pants), too enthusiastic about everything, but his worst offense was that he was too obvious about liking her. She’d finally given him a chance, though I thought she was still having some trouble with the last part. She was the first to admit that she seemed to be attracted to jerks.

“But he does know Bradley Perkins,” she added quickly. “I was going to tell him about the kids, but I stalled and started telling him about what happened at your house.”

“What did Commander have to say about Bradley?” I asked.

Dinah scanned the area, then leaned a little closer. “You know how everybody keeps saying what a great guy Bradley is. Well, Commander didn’t seem so sold.” I was going to ask for specifics, but Adele sailed in the café and stopped at our table.

“Pink, where are the snowflakes I gave you to starch?” Adele didn’t even give me a chance to explain that they were drying on my dining room table. “We need them now.”

I looked out into the bookstore. Mr. Royal had finished putting the lights on the tree and had gotten on a ladder and started arranging the pine boughs around the windows—the big empty wall of windows where the snowflakes were supposed to hang. Mrs. Shedd joined us and Adele informed her I was the holdup in the snowflake department.

“Molly, I hate to ask you to do this, but could you go home and get them? Joshua is anxious to hang them up.”

I looked at Dinah and she responded with an understanding nod. We’d catch up later. I grabbed my jacket and headed for my car.

Generally my street was quiet in the middle of day. The dog walkers and exercise people came out in the morning and evening. So when I turned the corner I was expecting a big nothing.

Not quite.

A fire department ambulance facing the wrong way was pulled up in front of the Perkins’ house. The dark blue- uniformed paramedics were bending over a figure on the ground. I noticed a dark sedan facing the right way was parked behind the ambulance. A man and woman in business attire stood a little back from the scene.

I pulled into my driveway and ran across my lawn toward the group. By now I could see the figure on the ground was Emily and one of the paramedics was helping her up. She looked shaky and pale.

“What happened?” I said to the group. The woman in the suit stepped toward me.

“She was at her mailbox and suddenly she just collapsed.”

The man came forward. “It looked like she might have hit her head. We called nine-one-one.”

I pointed to my house and explained I was a neighbor.

I approached Emily, who seemed dazed. Her eyes were locked in a stunned expression. When she saw me, she reached out for my hand.

“Bradley’s dead.”

“HERE YOU ARE,” BARRY SAID, WALKING INTO THE yarn department. “Did you forget our plans?” I looked up slightly dazed. The worktable was littered with yarn, hooks and knitting needles. I had been switching between crocheting and knitting swatches, along with reading over the plans for the two upcoming bookstore events. A ball of thread along with a silver hook and a partially done snowflake was off to the side.

Barry appeared to have gotten some sleep and the jeans and dark green pocket tee shirt with an open flannel shirt over it were not his work clothes, and I recalled that he’d had the day off. I didn’t know what plans he was talking about until he mentioned our parting remarks in the morning after I made him breakfast. “Remember we were going to have dinner and . . . ?” The heat coming off his eyes made it pretty clear what he meant by
and
. It seemed the distant past now. Particularly after the events of the afternoon.

Barry suddenly realized I wasn’t alone and he grunted as he saw my company. His irritated sound wasn’t aimed at Sheila. Ever since the table had become a permanent fixture, so had she. Who could blame her? She lived in a rented room in a house in Woodland Hills. All his irritation was aimed at Mason, who was sitting next to Sheila and working on the red dog sweater for Spike.

“I thought you had the evening off,” Barry said to me.

“I would have if it hadn’t been for this afternoon,” I said, sitting up and trying to stretch the kinks out of my back. Barry gave Mason a dark look, apparently assuming my afternoon’s problems had involved him.

Mason put his hands up in innocence. “I had nothing to do with it. She forgot our plans, too.”

Barry glowered at the last comment. “I called your cell a bunch of times but just got your voice mail. What’s going on?”

“Really?” I said, fishing around for my cell phone. It had gone to silent, again. The screen flashed on and the message icon flashed. I put the phone on the table so I wouldn’t miss any calls, but it was kind of like shutting the door after the chickens got out. I looked at Barry. “I’m sorry that I forgot our dinner plans.” I nodded at Mason. “And I’m sorry I forgot I offered to help you with Spike’s coat.” I looked at both of them. “And I’m sorry I apparently made double plans. I’m sorry I didn’t answer my cell phone, too.” I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m tired,” I said, bringing up my aborted night’s sleep on top of a killer day on top of a two-day trip with Adele. “I thought I’d work through the afternoon and go home and crash. But life had other plans.” The three of them had concern in their expressions by now. I sounded pretty close to cracking.

“Okay, what happened this afternoon that changed everything?” Barry said, leaning on the table.

I explained about going home in the middle of the day to pick up the snowflakes, which as it turned out never got picked up. I described the scene with Emily and the paramedics.

“She told me that Bradley was dead, and then as they were loading her in the ambulance, she said her daughters needed to be picked up from school.”

“And you volunteered,” Barry said.

“What else could I do—leave the girls stranded at school? The couple in the suits certainly weren’t going to do it. They were already in their car.”

“Who were they?” Mason asked. I didn’t have an answer. They were gone before I had a chance to ask them and Emily had a few other things going on.

“So, what happened to the Perkins guy?” Barry prodded.

“I didn’t find out until later. I picked up her girls and went by the hospital. Emily was ready to be released. They’d determined she hadn’t hit her head and had just passed out from shock.” I described driving them all home with a side stop at a fast-food drive-thru.

“She told her daughters she’d taken a misstep off a ladder while trying to finish putting up the Christmas lights. She didn’t say anything about Bradley to them, so I guess they still thought he was away on a business trip. They bought the story about the ladder and she got them to take their merry meals into the den. When we were alone she dropped the cheerful pretense and took a letter out of her pocket and handed it to me. The torn envelope looked benign. It was addressed to her and postmarked Long Beach. The letter was anything but benign. Emily began to cry as I read it over.”

I took a deep breath, feeling my stomach clench at remembering the note. “It was a suicide note. He said by the time she read it, he’d be gone. That’s why he bought the one-way ticket on the Catalina Express. He knew it would be dark and not crowded and nobody would notice him go off the back of the boat. And why? He said he’d gotten in over his head with his business and this was the only honorable thing to do.”

I described how helpless I felt watching her holding herself and rocking back and forth. How I wished there was something to say to comfort her. Charlie’s death had been sudden and it had been hard to deal with, but he’d had a heart attack. Not the same as choosing to die.

“She had a momentary glimmer of hope. The note had said what he planned to do. Maybe he’d changed his mind. But when she checked her phone messages, there was one from the customer service people at the boat company. A wallet and cell phone had been found left on the evening boat the night before.”

I told them that Emily called the police officer she knew. He was the one who’d been there when the meter reader had mentioned the smell coming from my house. Since he knew Bradley from his daughter’s soccer team, she thought he could help her. I leaned back in my chair and tried to summon some energy. “I didn’t get back to the bookstore until this evening.” I didn’t mention how I had doubted Emily’s story before. Her reaction to the letter seemed genuine and the balance went toward believing her.

In my peripheral vision I noticed William had come up to the table.

“Somebody probably got in touch with the coast guard. I imagine they made a sweep,” Barry said. “But after that amount of time, and that amount of ocean, and sharks ...” Barry’s shrug said it all. They wouldn’t find anything. I was surprised when he offered to check it out to be sure. Mason didn’t take that information well. I think he was happier when Barry told me to stay out of things and Mason got to be the ear I turned to and my source for information.

Barry pulled out his phone and went off into the corner. William was too polite to interrupt and only now, when there was a lull in the conversation, said hello.

“If you’re looking for Adele, she isn’t back here,” I said.

“She’ll probably show up here any minute,” the clown author said with a knowing smile. “What’s going on? I heard you say something about the coast guard.”

I started to explain about Bradley, but as predicted Adele swept into the department and latched arms with his. I finally got it all out, even what was in the suicide note.

“That’s terrible,” William said.

“You’re so right, honey,” Adele added. “Those poor little girls, even if he wasn’t their real father. He won’t be there to take them to your next Koo Koo event.” She gave William’s arm a tug. “We better go if we’re going to make our dinner reservation.”

Barry returned just as they were walking away and said the coast guard had initiated a search by boat and aircraft for a possible person in the water and so far had found nothing. “There’s nothing more for you to do.”

Mason nodded in response to Barry’s comment, though Barry was trying to ignore his presence. Sheila had stopped crocheting as she listened to the story and the tension showed in her eyes.

“How strange. I just heard somebody talking about Perkins this morning, Sunshine,” Mason said. “I was getting a coffee to go at the French café and overheard two guys at one of the tables. One of them had funny hair and was telling the other one that Perkins had some magic system with investments. I remember thinking it sounded like the guy with funny hair worked for Perkins. You know, drumming up business.”