“Oh dear.”
CHAPTER 13
IT WAS YET ANOTHER OF THOSE COOL AND GRAY mornings so typical for this time of year as I let Blondie and Cosmo out into the backyard. I took my coffee and crochet bag and sat down at the glass table while they ran around. The forest green umbrella was folded down. There was no need for shade. This weather made both the flowers and me feel refreshed.
Peter kept suggesting I sell the house and move to a condo. I wondered if he realized that selling this house would mean he would have to keep his golf clubs, tennis rackets, skis, bicycle and sports trophies at his apartment. It was a moot point anyway, as I had no plans to take his advice. I loved my yard and house.
The gate clanged shut, and I sat up to see who’d come in. Dinah seemed agitated and was winding two scarves around her neck as she walked across the patio. Cosmo ran over and started to bark at her. Blondie merely looked at Dinah. Cosmo seemed to be teaching Blondie a lot of stuff, and I wondered if it would include barking.
“Coffee?” I said as Dinah slid into the chair next to me. She nodded with a grateful smile and took out a pair of her long earrings and began to put them on. Apparently kid-proofing her clothes was only for when Jeremy’s kids were present, which made me wonder where they were.
“Do you have something to go with it? Preferably something sweet and decadent.”
I mentioned I still had some dessert left over from the dinner party the night before last.
“I bet it would taste better with some of that vanilla bean ice cream.”
I laughed as I headed inside.
“Where are the kids?” I asked when I returned with a tray of coffee and the baked apple dessert topped with a generous scoop of ice cream.
Dinah sat back, stretched her legs out and sighed with a definite sense of relief. “The babysitter, again. Jeremy promised he’d be back tonight. I can’t believe I let him stick me with them this long.” She took out her crochet bag and laid it on the table next to mine.
I set the mug of coffee and plate of food in front of Dinah. “I thought you were kind of getting attached to them.”
Before she could answer Morgan came out the door. She was dressed in a creamy yellow leotard and matching tights with some kind of loose short dress over everything. She stopped by the table.
“I’m so sorry I missed the crochet group yesterday,” she said with a tinge of guilt. I saw her eyes stop on the dish in front of Dinah and offered her some. She put up her hand in an extreme “no” motion. “I’m off to the studio for a morning class.”
“You should eat something,” I said, then regretted interfering. She was a grown-up, and besides, there wasn’t a chance in the world she was going to listen to me. But I couldn’t stop myself and threw in a few more lines of how breakfast was the most important meal of the day.
She headed off, giving me the slightest of hopeless head shakes.
“If she wasn’t staying here I wouldn’t know about all this.” I leaned against the back of my chair, feeling frustrated.
“Welcome to my world. If those kids weren’t staying with me I wouldn’t know a lot of things I’d rather not know, too. Like somebody never taught them the basics—pick up your toys, go to bed when I say so, and at least try the spinach souffle.”
“I knew you were getting attached to them.”
“Don’t even say that. It is too upsetting to care and then know that Jeremy is going to be the one responsible for them. Did I tell you Mrs. About To Be Ex took off and isn’t coming back.”
She had already told me that gem, and we looked at each other with understanding. No matter what either one of us said about not getting involved and not caring, we couldn’t help it. I asked her if she’d given them any of her famous cream cheese and caviar sandwiches. It took her a moment to remember that gourmet treat she’d made for her own kids. Then she laughed.
Since there was no group meeting this morning and Dinah didn’t have a class and I didn’t have to be at the bookstore until evening for Romance Night, we were having our own little crochet gathering. I took out my shawl in progress. Now that I wasn’t dropping stitches as often and needed to unravel less, the dusty rose rectangle was beginning to resemble a shawl.
Dinah took out her forest green project. I was amazed how much she’d gotten done, especially with small children in the house.
As soon as we started crocheting, Dinah brought up Sheila and the growing case against her.
“We better hurry up with the other suspects,” Dinah said. “Sheila’s her own worst enemy. Now that they know to look for her fingerprints on the paperweight, they’ll probably try to get her to confess. I’ve seen what the cops do when they get you locked up in an interviewing room. They pretend to be your friend, like they’re going to help you if you just tell them what happened. Then they keep pushing, saying things like they know you were at the murder scene and they know you’re not telling them the whole story and maybe it was just an accident anyway. And the next thing you know, the person starts saying they did it.”
“Where did you see that?” I said, surprised.
“On TV, but it was a reality show,” Dinah said. “I’m just worried that Sheila could end up confessing to something she didn’t do.”
“You’re right. I need to find somebody else for Detective Heather to fixate on.” The dogs ran in the house, and I shivered. “It’s kind of chilly out here.”
Dinah agreed, and she gathered up her stuff, saying we were Southern California wimps. “What is it, maybe a bone-chilling sixty-seven degrees?”
Inside, Dinah sat down at the kitchen table. I left my crocheting next to her and went to get a load of laundry, so it could be washing while I worked on my shawl. That was about as close as I got to multitasking.
I carried the load to the laundry room that was just off the kitchen and dropped the pile of clothes on the floor in front of the washing machine. We continued to talk, and I started to load the things in the washer, stopping to check pockets. I picked up a pair of khakis and pulled out one of the pockets. Two balled-up no-show socks tumbled out. When I did the same to the other pocket a white crumbled ball of fabric popped out and landed on the floor.
“I recognize the socks,” I said, picking them up and putting them off to the side to be included in a load of whites. “But what’s this?” I leaned down to get a better look.
Dinah got up from the table and came next to me.
We both stared at the crumpled ball of fabric, and I got an ominous feeling.
“Why don’t you pick it up?” she said, bending a little closer.
Why don’t you pick it up?” I countered.
“It was in your pocket, so you should pick it up.” She backed away and put her hands up.
“All right,” I said finally and reached for it. I started to smooth it out, examining it as I did. There seemed to be a soft cotton center with a lot of lacy trim, but when I saw the red splotches on it, I dropped it like it was scalding.
“Is that blood?” I said, making a face.
Dinah bent over the half-crumpled ball. “There’s this stuff, phena something or other, that can tell you if it is.”
“That’s great information, but unless you happen to have some in your purse, it’s not much help,” I said.
“Sorry, I’m fresh out,” she said with a chuckle. “We could get a better look at it if it was completely flattened out.”
“This must be what I picked up in Kevin’s office.” I explained how I’d seen something white under the desk and thought it was one of my no-show socks.
“Didn’t you say you saw something white and lacy hanging off the drawer in Drew’s office when we found him in the soup?” Dinah pointed at the lacy edge. “Maybe it was this.”
