Adele glared as if Dinah’s comment were a personal affront to her. I wondered if she was identifying too much with Ali. Adele was in her late thirties with a generous build and a voice that carried over a crowd. Her outfit almost matched the one Ali had worn, only the effect was different. Ali looked cute and Adele looked silly.
Sheila Altman, another of the younger Hookers, remained speechless as she put several small teddy bears into the box. She kept looking at the darkening sky with a tense expression. Even though she tried to control it, Sheila tensed up about most things. I could understand why: She didn’t have much money and was working a bunch of jobs while trying to go to school at night to become a costume designer. Lately she’d been making exquisite scarves and blankets with gorgeous color combinations that she had begun selling in some local boutiques. “We better hurry up,” she said anxiously. “The park closes in a few minutes.”
“Don’t worry, they’re not going to lock us in,” CeeCee said. “Besides, we’re almost done anyway. Brownie anyone?” She held out the bag. “Wouldn’t you know just when I went to the bake sale table I ran into the executive producer of my show and his wife. They asked me a bunch of questions about the crochet group, but I think it was just a cover to see if I was going to buy any baked goods.”
CeeCee’s sweet tooth was legendary, but being the host of a show made staying trim important. “I don’t know what they’re concerned about. The stylist I hired is a wonder,” she said, laying the white paper sack with her purse. “She’s a wiz at making an extra five pounds disappear with a long tunic.”
CeeCee’s attention turned back to helping us clear up, though there wasn’t much left. She absently picked up a red fuzzy scarf and started to fold it.
“Watch how you’re folding that,” Adele said, taking it from CeeCee. Adele and CeeCee were still trying to work out who was in charge of the group.
“Dear, I can handle folding a scarf,” CeeCee said, taking it back and rolling it into a tube. “It seems to be the only one left.” She checked the items still on the table. “No wonder—it’s so cold.” As if to punctuate her comment, she shivered.
Dinah rolled her eyes. “Cold?” she said with a laugh.
“Yes, cold,” CeeCee repeated. “It
Dinah rolled her eyes again. She was my best friend and taught English at Walter Beasley Community College. She claimed teaching English to rowdy freshmen had prepared her to deal with anything, including the Hookers’ personalities.
Dinah pointed to the green grass and the orange trees loaded with fruit still visible in the low light. “Yes, it is February, but this is Southern California. What is it—maybe fifty-five degrees?”
“Yes, dear, but you have to factor in the windchill,” CeeCee said, wrapping her charcoal gray shawl around her shoulders. “And look, the sun’s setting. You know how the temperature drops in the evening.”
Adele stepped between them and turned toward CeeCee. “Are you kidding? Windchill factor?” Adele nodded toward me. “Pink, I can’t believe you’re not saying anything.”
I tried to keep my smile intact even though it grated on me that Adele insisted on calling me by my last name. She only called me Molly by mistake. Adele and I had had a problem since day one, when I’d been hired for the position at Shedd & Royal Books and More that she wanted. She couldn’t seem to see that I was more qualified to be the event coordinator-community relations person. I had experience in public relations thanks to my late husband Charlie’s business. True, I hadn’t really been a salaried employee for Charlie, but I had arranged launch parties at hotels and set up TV interviews for clients. Adele had just been a clerk at the bookstore.
As a consolation, Mrs. Shedd had given Adele kids’ story time. Adele hadn’t taken it well or given up. I’m not sure how it happened, but Adele had ended up working with me on some store events.
“Yes, but this is the Valley, and the temperature is always extreme compared to the other side of the hill,” CeeCee was saying. There was some truth to that. We did bake in the summer and sometimes got frost in the middle of the night in winter. Technically both sides of “the hill,” as the Santa Monica Mountains were referred to, were part of the city of Los Angeles, but the Valley was considered a bunch of suburbs with all that it implied.
Attempting to bring the debate to an end, I suggested we adjourn to the cafe at the bookstore.
“Wait. You can’t forget this,” Sheila said, pointing at a brown paper grocery sack as CeeCee started to close the box of leftovers. Sheila spoke so fast, she choked on her words, and she began to tap the fingers of her nonpointing hand on the table. Then she took the pointing hand and used it to stop her moving fingers.
“What’s in that bag? I don’t remember putting anything in a bag,” Adele said, glancing at the rest of us. We all shrugged in reply and eyed it ominously.
“Pink, why don’t you check it out?” Adele suggested. She stepped away from it as she pulled on a long denim coat over her leggings and miniskirt. Adele had adorned the coat with doilies. She hadn’t said anything, but I knew she thought it was a walking advertisement for the wonders of crochet.
Sheila had edged down the table and was standing next to me. I felt her hand grab onto my arm.
“Too bad Eduardo isn’t here,” CeeCee said, referring to our other member. Eduardo Linnares was a hunky cover model/poet/expert crocheter. He was also a gentleman and would certainly have dealt with the bag that was creeping us all out if he hadn’t had to skip the fund-raiser do some of his cover-model work.
“Stop being so silly,” Dinah said, moving along the table toward the sack. Dinah was a gutsy ball of energy. She flipped her long, intertwined purple and orange scarves over her shoulder and out of the way, and grabbed the bag. She opened it with abandon and looked inside. She seemed perplexed but not horrified, which I took as a good sign. What were we expecting? Maybe something dangerous like a gun or a bomb? Or something furry and dead? Or something forgotten like a dirty diaper? Everyone had moved to the other end of the table to distance themselves from the threatening bag, and Sheila was gripping her purse with white knuckles. We held our breath as Dinah dumped the contents on the table. Nothing exploded nor did anything disgusting spill out. Just something colorful and some papers. Dinah started to sort through them, but CeeCee stopped her.
“We can’t do anything about this here. Let’s just take everything with us.” The park ranger was locking up the buildings, and all the other people were gone.
“Yes, yes,” Sheila said quickly. “The ranger is going to lock the gate any minute.” Between concern over the bag’s contents and the ranger shutting things up, Sheila had started to hyperventilate. Adele took the empty grocery bag and handed it to her. Sheila began breathing into it in an effort to calm down. Meanwhile, Dinah gathered up the contents; she waited until Sheila was finished and then reloaded the stuff in the bag.
A few minutes later, we all walked into the bookstore cafe. It felt warm and cozy after the chilly evening air and smelled of fresh brewed coffee and hot chocolate chip cookies. This aspect of the modern bookstore still amused me: It used to be that bookstores didn’t want patrons to come in with drinks or food, but now, realizing that selling refreshments was a good income source, they practically pushed snacks on their customers. Shedd & Royal Books and More went the extra distance: The cafe’s onsite baking sent the smell of freshly baked cookies wafting into the bookstore, which made the customers salivate.
We all ordered drinks and were soon seated around a small table, onto which Dinah poured out the contents of the grocery bag. CeeCee picked up the colorful piece and spread it out, while Adele picked up what appeared to be a note and read it out loud:
“And?” CeeCee said impatiently.
“And, nothing,” Adele said with a snort as she looked at the back of the sheet and showed us it was blank. “That’s it.”
“Since it ends in midsentence,” Dinah said, “I would guess the writer got interrupted. Just a wild guess, but I’d bet it is a she. I don’t see a guy writing a note like this.”
“Here we go again.” CeeCee shook her head and sighed. “Ever since my show became a hit, people have started acting like I am the go-to person to fix their mistakes. Mostly, I get e-mails with their dark secrets, or regular mail. Sometimes they’re confessions and sometimes they want me to be the middleman between them and their Aunt Sara to help patch things up.” She looked at the small pile of stuff. “Chances are the person who wrote the note will come back looking for her things. We had enough signs on the table saying who we were and where our group meets. But in any case—” She pushed the pile toward me. “Molly, you’re the one who deals with mysteries.”
