outnumbered the elegant motif of Meredith's. 'I can make one of those.' He grabbed a ball of yarn from in front of CeeCee and whipped up the first two rounds of a granny square, and it had all four corners.
'He's in as far as I'm concerned,' Dinah said. Sheila echoed her sentiment. CeeCee came out of her thoughts only long enough to notice that he'd arrived.
'It's fine with me. We need all the help we can get,' CeeCee said vaguely, and went back to her work.
Adele smoothed out her leopard-print pants and black tunic. She touched the black scarf she had tied around her head and, seeming to find herself in order, voted him in too.
She then began prattling about how she'd seen everythinghe was in, including the commercial he'd done as a kid for chocolate-chip cookies. He shrugged off the fawningand glanced around the table. 'Doing something real like this beats out playing a part any day.'
I kept watching CeeCee. It was so unlike her to not get in the middle of some entertainment business conversation. She wasn't pushing us to work faster, either. Something was wrong, and it had to be big to make her act so strangely.
Dinah wasn't starstruck, and made easy banter with Will. She even asked about the slippers.
'Someone finally asked,' he laughed. 'Everybody looks, but you're the first person to give me the question. I'm a firm believer that if your feet feel comfy, your world totally rocks. My feet just get hugged by all that lamb's wool.' He moaned with pleasure and then offered to let Dinah try them. She declined.
CeeCee looked up for a moment and gazed around at all of us, then shook her head absently and went back to her work, which now looked like slow motion. Even with Will's help, and he actually was helping, I was worried.
By midnight we had all the squares we needed, but the job of putting them together was daunting. CeeCee came to again, and started to talk about the map and big needles. Then she just looked at Adele and said, 'You handle it.'
Adele gave us each some squares and showed us how to use single crochet to join them into a strip. She skipped CeeCee, who had put her head down on the table and gone to sleep.
Sheila had been staying very quiet. Along with being generally nervous, she seemed shy as well. But by the way she paid close attention to the conversation and kept openingher mouth and then saying nothing, it was obvious she wanted to join in.
Finally she took a deep breath, and the words just came out as she looked at Will. 'In my other life, I work at Tarzana Women's Workout World.'
Will nodded in recognition. The little bit of encouragementgot her to keep going.
'Both Ellen and Natalie are--I mean, were--members.' Sheila's expression darkened as she appeared to remember something. 'You know, I don't think Ellen ever realized me, the receptionist, was the same person as me, the crochet group member. But, then, she never seemed to pay attention to anyone, just went through her routine, weights, treadmill and out.' She seemed to have gone off on a tangent about how so many of the gym members were stuck in a rut. 'I could always tell who was in a class even if I just saw the back of their heads.'
Apparently the class area had a glass wall and was in clear view of the reception desk. I was only half listening until she got to the part about the day Ellen died.
'And, like always, Natalie was in her regular spot for the lunchtime kickboxing class.' Adele glanced Will's way and mentioned that she was a regular in that class, too, and offered to show off some of her kicks.
I asked Sheila whether she knew the exact time all this had taken place. She knew down to the minute when Nataliehad arrived and left. It turned out Sheila was a little more fanatical than I'd realized.
Dinah turned toward me and nodded with comprehension.Sheila had just given Natalie a perfect alibi. She had been at the gym from before until well after Ellen's approximatetime of death. Unless Natalie had known how to dematerialize, there was no way she could have killed Ellen, which meant the suicide and note were both fakes. And I'd thought her pizza order was compelling.
What had Natalie said to me about Ellen's appointment book?
By now my mind was getting fuzzy and my vision a little blurred from stitching together the squares. But even in my muddled mind, I knew there wasn't much I could do with Natalie's alibi. With Barry out of my life, I couldn't tell him. Detective Heather? No way.
I glanced around the table. Everyone had fallen into a stupor. The coffee was long gone, and the cookies, too. We were almost there. We just needed to join all the strips, and we'd be finished. CeeCee was still asleep, hugging an unfinishedgranny.
Even Adele looked glassy-eyed.
Will stood up and stretched. 'You need to get your blood flowing.' Somehow he got everybody, including CeeCee, to stand, and he led the group through a tai chi routine, which magically revived us all--except for CeeCee, who went back to sleep.
In a burst of energy, we connected all the strips.
The sun was up, and life along Ventura Boulevard was starting to stir, when we finally finished. Who knew Will Hunter would end up saving the day?
I looked at the finished afghan lying on the table. I was amazed that we had done it. Before CeeCee had become un-functional,she had laid out a plan for the afghan that balancedthe intricate patterned pieces Ellen and the others had crocheted in the beginning with the granny squares and plain Janes we'd made later as time became short. Adele's oversize squares, with their floppy flowers and bright colors,made up the center and added some texture. I was surprisedto see how, when placed in to the finished product, her work looked quite beautiful. Ellen's and Meredith's similarly patterned squares were arranged to add accents. Sheila's color choices made her work stand out. She used mostly complementing shades of blue and green. CeeCee had spruced up most of the newbies' work with shell stitches in the black borders. Dinah's and my grannies blended in with the others, which seemed like a good sign. The final touch was the four solid double-crochet blocks CeeCee had made for the corners. She had tacked a crochetedred heart to two corners, and on the other two she had tacked a white dog and a white cat.
As far as I was concerned, the whole thing was flat-out beautiful, and I was proud to think I had a part in making it. It was partly lack of sleep and partly emotion, but my eyes got misty.
The morning crew arrived at the bookstore and began going through the opening procedures as we packed up the afghan. Everybody had a reason why he or she couldn't take the finished product to the fair, most of which probablyhad to do with wanting to grab some sleep and a shower. I was left holding the blanket.
Bob, the barista, handed me a coffee as I headed out to make the delivery.
As I turned to go, CeeCee came out of her trance long enough to make a remark about the health cookies Bob had just made. 'It's not what's in them,' she said, putting one down with disdain after taking a bite. 'It's what's not.'
Why did that ring a bell?
CHAPTER 23
Since it was early saturday morning, traffiCon the 101 was manageable. If I hadn't felt so out of sorts from being up all night, and if I hadn't been been so focused on getting the afghan delivered, I might have appreciatedthe silvery mist hanging over the San Gabriel Mountains as they loomed over the Valley. But I wasn't noticing anything but the car in front of me, and wondering how much longer until I got to the World Studio back lot in Burbank, where the fair was being held. Even the feeling of unease that had started when I realized Natalie had an alibi was pushed to the back of my mind.
As usual, nothing went smoothly, and I had to go through a bunch of wrangling to get in since the fair wasn't officially open and I wasn't on any list. The security guard finally got hold of someone from the auction committee, who got me in.
I parked and walked into what seemed like the center of a sweet little town--except it was a set that had been used on countless TV shows and movies. The signs and decorations on the storefronts changed according to what was being filmed. Judging from the current state of the storefronts, I guessed they were doing the talkative mother-and-daughter sleuths in their small Connecticut town.
There was lots of activity as booths and pet corrals were set up in the center of 'town.' There were going to be animalsavailable for adoption, booths selling pet products, informationbooths for animal organizations, and a lot of food.
