Adele waved and then came over. CeeCee came from the dining room and joined the group. We huddled and all agreed that Sheila’s best bet was to simply go upstairs to Drew’s office rather than talking to either of the saleswomen first.
“And be firm,” Dinah said. Sheila took some deep breaths and marched toward the stairs.
Adele held up her find to show us. It was some sort of deep purple turbanlike hat with a tall black feather. She modeled it, but it made her look like a kooky fortune-teller.
“It was Gloria Hearston’s. You know who she was, don’t you?” Adele directed her question at CeeCee, but the name didn’t seem to register. “She was this really famous silent movie star. I can’t believe you don’t know who she was. Her family just released a select number of her belongings.” Adele showed off a sheet of paper that had the Hearston story on it.
As I looked at Adele’s hat again, I noticed the tall bald man from the other day. He was wearing another well-tailored suit and had the same Harrods shopping bag. But his manner was different. He walked toward the door with an expression I could only call satisfied.
A few minutes later, Sheila burst into the middle of the group. She was close to tears and even deep breathing didn’t help. “He laughed at me,” she said, her voice cracking.
We moved into the empty dining room, where Sheila repeated the whole encounter with Drew as we tried to calm her. Kevin walked into the room and didn’t even seem to notice us. I didn’t care what he had said about it being all his brother’s domain. I reached out to grab his arm and get his attention when suddenly a hair-raising scream cut through the drone of conversation. It seemed to have come from upstairs. Everybody froze and glanced up just as another scream erupted.
I expected Kevin to do something, but he seemed glued to the floor, so I nudged Dinah and we took off toward the stairs, joined by half the people in the store. We stopped at the top of the stairs, confronted by a small hallway and several doors. A saleswoman stumbled out of one of the doorways, her eyes big with panic. She saw the crowd and screamed again and slumped against the wall. Dinah and I rushed into the room she had exited. A crowd of people came in behind us, and then there was a collective gasp. At a large desk in the center of the room, Drew Brooks was facedown in a bowl. Red stuff was splattered everywhere.
“Omigod, there’s so much blood,” I said, looking at the crimson marks on the rug, wall and desk.
Adele, still wearing her Gloria Hearston hat, pushed through the crowd. She looked at the desk and surroundings and shook her head at me with disgust. “Pink, it’s not blood. It’s soup.” She mumbled something about precious time being lost while we were standing there like idiots, and pulled Drew’s head up. It was covered with something red, which I now realized was too thick and lumpy to be blood. Adele was right. There was still soup in the bowl.
To her credit, she dragged Drew onto the floor and started CPR. By then the assembled gawkers all had their cell phones out and were calling 911, which apparently froze the system temporarily. Finally one person was designated as the caller.
A few moments later sirens filled the air.
“WHAT THE—” A UNIFORMED LOS ANGELES police officer said after squeezing into the room and seeing Adele crouching on the floor, pumping Drew’s chest. When everyone tried to answer at once, he yelled for quiet so he could get on his radio.
His female partner pushed in behind him and then looked around, shaking her head. “We have to clear the room.”
As much as Adele and I have had our differences, I think Officer Lucy Hernandez could have been a little nicer to Adele when she pulled her off the floor. After all, Adele was trying to resuscitate Drew, but I guess seeing a big woman wearing a turban-style hat with a quivering feather, hovering over a body, with all of us as an audience, must have looked strange.
After Officer Hernandez moved Adele away, she checked Drew’s pulse and her expression dimmed.
The crowd was exiting the room, but I kept moving back so I could have a longer time to look around. I knew that right now all the clues to what had happened were right in front of me and once I left I wouldn’t have another opportunity like this. My first thought was that it wasn’t my problem, but a voice in the back of my head said to check it out anyway. And recently I’d been reading and rereading
Like not all of the red stuff was soup. I’d seen the back of Drew’s head for only a moment before Adele pulled his face out of the bowl, and there was a lot of red stuff clumped in his hair. Then I looked at the desk. Along with the regular desk stuff, I saw a bunch of paperweights scattered on it. One seemed to be a globe and another a brass bust of Teddy Roosevelt. The rest appeared to be made of glass with colorful stuff suspended inside. One of Sheila’s scarves was lying next to the soup bowl. Instinctively, I almost made a grab for it, but just then Officer Hernandez came up next to me to make sure I left. As I took one last look at the desk, I noticed something white and lacy hanging off one of the drawer pulls. It looked as if something had caught on it and ripped. Even as I headed out the door, I kept my eyes on it, imprinting its details on my mind.
There were more uniforms downstairs, and they held us back while the paramedics rushed past. Barry had told me once that as long as the head was still attached to the body, the cops called for a rescue ambulance. I couldn’t blame them. It was better to err on the side of optimism.
Then we were escorted outside to the parking lot as yellow tape was strung around the perimeter, apparently to corral us in.
“Just stay put and no talking to each other,” another uniform said. “We need to get statements from all of you and fingerprints and hair samples.”
A police helicopter hovered overhead. The noise level grew as several helicopters from news stations arrived and hung in the air off to the side.
CeeCee was surrounded by a cluster of people who were apparently ignoring the no-talking order. I passed by close enough to overhear them and figured out they were wondering if this was all part of her reality show. Patricia was also ignoring the no-talking order and was handing out campaign buttons to two women. I heard her say something about Benjamin being serious about reducing crime. Dinah was helping Adele clean up. She had gotten soup on her face and arms and the hat. I guessed the shock of what had happened had set in and she was acting frantic and stunned. When I looked back toward the store, Kevin Brooks was talking to a uniformed officer. Even from a distance I could read his body language: He was in shock.
Beyond the yellow-tape perimeter, I saw the Channel 3 News van pull up. The door flew open, and Kimberely Wang Diaz got out, dressed in slacks and a blazer and wearing stage makeup. I was distracted from her by a black Crown Victoria pulling up behind two police cruisers. When I saw Barry get out, I waved.
He didn’t appear to see me. He was dressed in a suit, wore sunglasses and had a closed expression. Barry was totally serious about his job, and I was sure his mind was already ticking with whatever details he’d been given.
I’d asked him once how he could handle what he had to handle. I didn’t really even want to think about what he saw on a daily basis. At first, he’d been macho and said it was all in day’s work. Then he got real and said he’d had to learn to keep an emotional distance.
Even though he wore sunglasses, I knew he was looking over the crowd. When his head stopped moving, I knew he’d seen me. I waved again. He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand and shook his head. I saw him take out his cell phone as he stepped over the yellow tape and moved toward me.
“Tell me you were just on your way to the post office and you stopped when you saw the crowd and wanted to find out what was going on,” he said when he got close.
His mouth settled into a straight line when I shrugged in a hopeless gesture.
“I didn’t think so.” Directing his attention to the rest of the crowd, he spotted Dinah, CeeCee, Adele and Sheila. He knew who Dinah was, recognized CeeCee and figured who the others were. He got the picture.
“This is the store you were talking about the other day, isn’t it?” he asked. I couldn’t see his eyes because of the sunglasses, but I was sure he was looking heavenward with exasperation. “Molly, you didn’t tell your friend about small claims court, either, did you?”
“It was my suggestion of last resort. We thought if we all came here together Drew Brooks would just pay Sheila what he owed her and she wouldn’t have to go through the whole court hassle. Sheila’s kind of shy and gets
