Hooked on Murder: A Crochet Mystery

CeeCee explained who Natalie Shaw was and said she'd committed suicide out of guilt for having killed Ellen Sheridan.

'And Ellen Sheridan was?' Bonnie asked, appearing confused.

I left CeeCee to explain. I picked up my crochet hook and some yarn and tried to just concentrate on making a granny square. Dinah leaned in close.

'Lunch after?' she said. 'Then we can talk.' She glanced at my granny square and gave me a thumbs- up.

An hour later dinah and i were sitting in the corner booth of a Thai restaurant down the street from the bookstore.

'Tell me everything. Last night on the phone you sounded shocked, overwrought and not too coherent.'

'I think I earned the right to sound that way after the night I had.'

'Did I hear you right? You mumbled something about Natalie not really killing herself.'

'Okay, here it is. Would you order a pizza if you were going to kill yourself?'

Dinah considered it. 'She ordered a pizza?'

I waved the receipt and told her how I'd ended up with it.

'What did Barry say?'

'He said to leave it alone. He'd seen the report. There was no sign of a struggle in the office or on the balcony. He was short on details of how she looked when they found her. I'm sure it wasn't good. He said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.'

'I see his point,' Dinah said, 'particularly since you are now off the hook. Why would you want to stir things up and put yourself back on the hook? You did show up at the crime scene. I can't believe Detective Heather isn't trying to pin it on you.'

'She was at the office before I got there. It turned out all the cop cars and rescue ambulances were in the back parkinglot. I know I should leave it alone like Barry says, but I just can't.'

Dinah nodded. 'I hear you. So where do we start?'

'By ordering lunch. No good detective works hungry,' I said as the waitress came to the table. 'The pad Thai is the best.'

Since I had the afternoon off and Dinah didn't have a class until evening, we stopped by Yummie Pizza after lunch. An older man with Hal embroidered on his shirt was behind the counter. I showed him the receipt and asked what he knew about it.

'Was there a problem with the pizza? We have a money-backguarantee.' He pulled out a form in triplicate. 'Just fill this out and send it in, and in six to ten weeks, Corporatewill send you a coupon for a free pizza.'

'That's not it,' I said, pushing the form back toward him. I was glad it wasn't. That was an awfully long wait on a money-back guarantee, and a coupon didn't seem as though it would count as money back. But all that was reallybeside the point. 'I wondered what time the order came in and who exactly ordered it.' As an afterthought I added, 'It wasn't a standing order, was it?' That, I realized, would have taken the wind right out of my investigative sails.

Hal looked from me to Dinah and shook his head. 'Who are you ladies and why are you asking all these questions?'

I made the mistake of telling the truth. 'It's about a suicidethat we don't think is a suicide. Like, why would someone order a pizza if they were going to . . . ?'

'Unless you're cops, which I highly doubt,' he said in unfriendly tone, 'I'm not answering any more of your questions. And if you think about it, you should be glad. You can order from Yummie with confidence that your privacywill be respected.'

'That went well,' I said when we were outside.

'I could have told you honesty was definitely not the best policy in this case. Did you see his face when you said the word 'suicide'? I thought he was going to call the cops.'

We were standing around the front, trying to figure out our next move, when a car with a Yummie Pizza sign stuck on top pulled in. A teenage boy got out, holding an empty insulated carrier.

'Hey, Mrs. Lyons,' he called as he crossed the sidewalk. 'You waiting for a pizza?'

Dinah's face brightened. 'Jason?'

He took off his baseball cap, which as I recalled had been the problem when I saw him in Dinah's office.

'You can put the cap back on. I never meant that you had to take it off in my presence. Just in class. So, you work here?'

He balanced the carrier on his hip and flipped the hat back on. 'You've broken me, Mrs. Lyons. My mom wanted to know what happened. All I did was open the car door for her. I thought she was going to freak or something.'

Dinah showed him the receipt and asked the same questionsI had. Jason might have improved his manners, but he was still low on the curiosity scale. He never asked why; he just told us what we wanted to know.

He could tell that the pizza had been ordered at eight p.m. by Natalie, to be delivered at ten p.m., and it wasn't a standing order. Hal apparently always marked those with a 'reg,' so the delivery person would give them extra-good service. Jason looked at the receipt again. 'I know her. I delivered to her a couple of times. She worked late a lot and gave big tips. I made some comment that she must have a really tough boss to make her work so late, but she said she was the boss and she didn't mind. Different strokes, I guess.' He handed back the receipt. 'If you guys want a pizza, I get a discount. We're having a special this week on stuffed pizza. Everybody loves that double crust,' he said, the last part sounding like a well-practiced pitch, like the ones you hear from restaurant waiters trying to get you to order fancy appetizers with some catchy phrase.

Dinah thanked him but said we'd just had lunch. She also told him she'd finished marking his paper and that he had really made a big improvement quickly.

He did some kind of happy dance that included pointing at her and saying, 'You're the man.'

'I can't believe he's the same kid I saw slouching in your office,' I said as we walked away.

'It's just the Lyons effect,' she said with a chuckle. 'I take overaged high school kids and turn them into college students.'

We got in the greenmobile, and Dinah read over the receipt.'I can't believe Barry told you to drop it.'

'Really what he said was to stay out of it. He said they do a psychological autopsy to make sure it really is a suicide.Now that I'm no longer a suspect, he's started telling me how much it bothered him that he hadn't been able to do anything. And he finally accepted that Detective Heather was trying to get me out of the way, but apparently she was so cool about it, even her partner didn't get that she had an agenda.'

There was more. I mentioned that Barry had waved a brochure for a resort in Maui in front of my face.

His exact words had been, 'Just imagine three days and nights in paradise, alone with me. Just moonlight, and mai tais, and absolutely no murder.'

'Sounds nice,' Dinah said.

'I told him I couldn't think about it right now. There is so much going on at the bookstore. The crochet group is fightinga deadline.' I sighed. 'And the Will Hunter thing is up in the air now that Natalie is gone.'

'I'm sure Mrs. Shedd will understand,' Dinah said.

I shook my head. 'That's not it. I need to pull off somethingbig for the bookstore. It's not just that his appearance would bring in people; it could also open the door to other celebrity signings. We'd be the place in the Valley. And there's something else,' I said, dropping my voice. 'I need to prove that Mrs. Shedd was right about hiring me.' Dinah gave my arm a sympathetic squeeze and reassured me that Mrs. Shedd probably already felt that way.

'What was Super Dad going to do with Jeffrey?' Dinah asked, bringing the subject back to Barry's proposed trip.

I shrugged it off. 'It was all very somedayish. We never talked dates, and I didn't say yes.'

Dinah's expression said it all. She would have locked in the trip.

I steered the car out into the traffic on Ventura Boulevardand headed east. 'I was thinking we'd stop by and see what's happening to Pink Sheridan.'

'Sounds like a good idea,' Dinah said.

Everything seemed back to normal at the office and retailcenter. The front parking lot was full, and people were going in and out of the stores and restaurants as if nothing had happened in the courtyard.