Dead Men Don't Crochet

“I left more food for him in the kitchen. As long as I’m here I might as well feed him.”

Barry was a homicide detective—and very clever and very stubborn. His idea of calling before coming over was using his cell phone at my door—a problem for me. His excuse was that the nature of his job made it hard to make advance plans.

As we walked into the kitchen, Barry pointed out the cabinet door he’d fixed. He was a master with his hands and repaired anything in my house that seemed broken.

“Where’s Jeffrey?” I asked. Barry had been divorced for a number of years, but only recently had his soon- to-be fourteen-year-old son come to live with him.

Barry gritted his teeth. “At a rehearsal.” Jeffrey wanted to be an actor and wanted to be known as Columbia Greenberg, which he thought was a star name. Barry hated the name and the idea, and kept trying to steer him toward some kind of criminal justice career.

So, why was Barry in my backyard with Cosmo? The only way Barry and Jeffrey could adopt Cosmo was if they had backup. The adoption people knew that homicide detectives often worked odd hours and almost fourteen- year-olds weren’t always dependable when it came to remembering to walk a dog or feed it. Since I had a house with a dog door and a big yard, and I was a total soft heart when it came to animals or kids, I’d agreed to be their backup.

At first Cosmo was just an occasional visitor, and I gave Barry a key so he could drop off the dog. Then Cosmo’s visits began lasting a few days at a time, and eventually he moved here full-time, but since he was Barry’s dog and Barry wanted to be a responsible pet dad, he kept the key and the right to come over whenever so he could look after his dog.

Quite frankly, though, this whole dog thing was as transparent as chiffon; I knew Barry was totally pleased with himself for figuring out how to get a key and full access to my house and my life.

Barry asked me about my day as he got the dog’s bowl, and I told him about Sheila’s problem. “That’s what small claims court is for,” he said. He didn’t seem happy when I didn’t jump at the idea. “Molly, don’t get involved,” he warned. “Just tell her to take it to small claims court.”

Blondie came into the kitchen when she heard Barry open the refrigerator. Blondie was my dog. I’d adopted her shortly after Charlie died. She was a strawberry blond terrier mix who had been in a shelter for a year and a half and had never quite adapted to life outside a cage. She mostly kept to herself and had adjusted to Cosmo’s presence by ignoring him.

Barry reached for a can of dog food, but his hand stopped on the amber bottles of Hefeweizen. “You should get rid of these; they probably aren’t any good anymore.” He started to take the bottles out, but I stopped him. He didn’t look happy. The wheat beer was Charlie’s favorite, and I’d bought it without thinking when I saw it on sale. It had been sitting in the fridge for months and months. Barry was probably right about it being bad, but I couldn’t bring myself to toss it.

He shrugged, took out the dog food and put some in Cosmo’s and Blondie’s bowls. Then he showed me some supplies he’d left for Cosmo and a bottle of wine he’d brought for us. He grabbed two wineglasses, and we went into the living room. He was dressed in his work clothes: a suit, blue oxford cloth shirt and striped tie.

“You’re still thinking about Sheila and the problem with the store, aren’t you?” he asked.

I nodded and told him how upset she was. Barry knew she was juggling a make-do job with going to school and that she had anxiety issues. He opened the wine and poured us each a glass, and we sat down on the couch. He pulled his tie loose and me close. “I think I know how to get your mind off of her,” he said suggestively while he checked his watch.

“Sure you can squeeze it in?” I teased. These days any time we had alone and naked was pretty much like fast food: standardized and over quickly. He always had to rush off to question some person of interest or take Jeffrey to the dentist or just be home with him.

“If you’d let me make an honest woman of you, there wouldn’t be any problem,” Barry said, kissing my ear. He put his hand on my thigh, reminding me of how good his hands were at other things beside cabinet repairs. But I also thought, here we go again. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him. Actually, I thought I loved him. But there were a few things that stood in the way of me going along with his plans. For one there was the issue of me trying my wings. I needed some solo flying time to see that I could do it before I shared the controls with somebody else again. And there was the issue of my freedom. Right now I had no one to answer to if I decided to take up juggling or jet off to Paris. Not that I had done either, but I knew that I could. And the final thing was Charlie. I figured that as long as I had his favorite beer in the refrigerator, I wasn’t ready.

But I wouldn’t say no to an afternoon passion pit stop. Barry slipped out of his jacket and pulled me toward him while I started to unbutton his shirt. He showed off his exceptional kissing skills, and I sighed. Then the doorbell rang.

“Ignore it,” he said in a low growl.

“I can’t.” I pulled away from him and pointed to the open shutters on the large window. We couldn’t see who was at the door, but they surely had seen us. Maybe not clearly enough to know what was going on, but enough to know somebody was home.

Cosmo flew to the door in a barky fury. Blondie walked behind him, letting him do the talking. I walked past the dogs, and Barry stayed on the couch, hoping it was just a FedEx delivery.

When I opened the door, a young woman was standing there, holding a suitcase. Barry wasn’t going to be happy. This wasn’t just a package to take in and then shut the door. I had met the young woman only a few times, but I recognized her as Morgan, my younger son’s girlfriend.

These days my sons usually kept me out of the loop because in the past I had gotten too attached to some of their previous girlfriends and it had made them uncomfortable.

“Didn’t Samuel call you?” she said, picking up on my surprise.

I explained I’d just gotten home and suggested maybe he’d left a message. What could I do but invite her in?

“Hey, babe, the couch is getting cold,” Barry called from the living room. And time was running out before he had to pick up Jeffrey. He did a double take when I walked in with Morgan and her suitcase.

And sure enough, when I checked, Samuel had left a message on my house phone. I had a feeling he’d avoided calling me on my cell because he didn’t really want to talk to me directly. The message was vague on exactly why, but Morgan needed a place to stay for a couple of weeks. Samuel said she couldn’t stay with him because he was sharing a place with three other guys and there were already too many people. So he asked if she could stay with me. Like I said, I’m a total soft heart for animals and children, even when they are grown up.

“Morgan’s going to be staying with me,” I announced in a slightly forced bright tone.

Barry was already picking up his jacket and tie and heading for the door.

“I’ll take a rain check,” I said, following him to the back door. I kissed him long and deep enough to remind him of what he was missing. He threw a hopeless look toward Morgan and offered me one last bit of advice.

“Remember, small claims court, and you stay out of it with Sheila.”

CHAPTER 3

BARRY JUST DIDN’T UNDERSTAND. NO WAY WAS I going to stay out of it with Sheila. She had turned to the Tarzana Hookers in her time of need. I wasn’t totally discounting the small claims court idea, just putting it off on the back burner in case nothing else worked.

I had shown Morgan to Samuel’s room. He thought since he was offering his old room to her, it wasn’t really an imposition to me. In his mind, no matter where he lived, his room would always belong to him. Luckily Peter didn’t feel the same, or he would have had a fit with what I’d done with his old room. I had taken out most of the furniture and all his sports trophies and stuck them in the garage along with all the sports equipment he insisted on leaving here. Then I’d turned the room into my crochet space.

I’d also shown Morgan the kitchen and told her to help herself to anything. She took a glass of water. From the first time I’d met her I suspected she might have an eating problem. She had that sort of waifish thin body dancers often had, but reminding myself to mind my own business, I headed for the phone.

“We have to do something for Sheila,” I said to Dinah. I had already told her about my houseguest, expecting