By Hook or by Crook

“So you made it back.” CeeCee pulled her wheeled craft carrier up to the table and then took the bag off her arm and laid it down. “You really left us in the lurch. It wasn’t until we got on the boat that we remembered you drove. I offered to call a car service, but Adele insisted her boyfriend would pick us up.” CeeCee appeared perturbed. “I don’t know what he does, but he has some weird stuff in his car. I had to ride next to a pair of giant red shoes.”

Adele arrived as CeeCee made her comment. She glared at Dinah and me and then her look changed to pleading. Adele always described William as being a serious author of important nonfiction topics when she mentioned him to the group. The way I looked at it, just because Adele was always trying to give me a hard time was no reason to do the same to her, so I said nothing.

Adele appeared relieved when she realized I wasn’t going to out her boyfriend. “William was wondering if the subject of Making Amends had to be a bookstore employee. He thought it might be an author—perhaps him.” Adele continued on about how William’s spirit had almost been crushed by his third-grade teacher and he was sure that now that he was a well-known author, she’d like to apologize and give him the grades he truly deserved on his workbook.

Once Sheila got close to the table, she rushed over and hugged me. “I’m so glad you’re all right. When I heard you got arrested—”

“Arrested? Who got arrested?” Camille stood at the head of the table, looking over all of us.

“Pink did,” Adele said.

CeeCee addressed Camille. “Maybe you want to rethink being in this group. I’m sure you don’t want to associate with jailbirds.”

“Wait a second,” I said, interrupting. “First of all, I wasn’t arrested, just detained. It was a misunderstanding.”

“What kind of misunderstanding?” Adele said with her hands on her hips.

I was going to try to talk around what had happened, but Dinah’s words about it being harder to kill two people suddenly rang in my ears. It would be even harder to go after a group. I decided my best defense was to keep them all in the loop.

There was a collective “ooh.”

I stepped next to Camille. “Did you know Mary Beth Wells?” I asked.

Camille swallowed hard. “I heard about her murder. I was shocked.”

“But did you know her?” I asked while Adele rolled her eyes.

“Here goes Nancy Jessica Drew Fletcher Marple.”

Camille ignored Adele and looked at me. “I’m not sure if this counts as knowing her. I contacted her a few years ago for donations for the silent auction for my children’s school—Welton Preparatory. They’re off on their own now. And not following in the family business, I might add,” she said. Her daughter was in med school with plans to work in a third-world country, and her son was a park ranger on the big island in Hawaii. “They won’t even come back for the party I’m throwing for Hunnie next week. My life coach said my children should be an inspiration to me. Like them I should branch out and try new things with new kinds of people. She particularly mentioned ordinary people, like you.” Camille gestured toward the whole group.

CeeCee blanched. I’m sure she didn’t like being referred to as ordinary. She hardly seemed ordinary to me. She’d had her own sitcom for years and was hosting Making Amends. It was CeeCee’s choice to act like a regular person and do things like run the crochet group. I watched CeeCee swallow her annoyance. As long as her future on the show was undecided, she wasn’t about to ruffle Camille’s rich feathers.

“Hi, everybody,” Ali said as she sprinted up to the table and pulled out a chair. She might as well have made a recording of her apology for being late; then she could just hit the play button whenever she arrived anywhere. She could have included the part about having to leave early, too. The funny part was for once she was on time.

I didn’t care if she had time-management issues; she always made me smile. Something about Ali’s bright eyes, impish smile and interesting assortment of clothes made me think of a tall pixie. It was funny how styles had changed. In the days when I was her age, if I’d mixed all those patterns and worn all those layers, someone would have stamped me as weird with no taste. She came across as cute and original.

“You were saying how you knew Mary Beth Wells,” I said to Camille, trying to pick up the thread of conversation.

Camille took a moment to collect herself, then continued. “I got a donation of a dance lesson with Matt Wells himself.” She looked sheepish. “I remember it so well because my husband bought them for me at the auction. The school was starting a tango club and I wanted to join. Mary Beth is the one I contacted for the donation.”

“So she worked in the dance studio business?”

Camille shrugged. “I guess so because I called their corporate office and she was there. I never saw the office or the actual dance studio. Matt came to my home gym and did the lessons there.” She paused and appeared to be making some mental calculations. A flicker of realization suddenly crossed her face. “Does Mary Beth Wells have a house on Catalina? Is that the house you broke into?”

“Break in is such a strong term. I climbed in through an open window.”

Camille seemed fascinated. I guessed her elite friends didn’t do stuff like that.

“Yeah, Pink. And how far along are you with unraveling the code?” Adele said with a snort.

“Molly’s doing great,” Dinah interjected, glancing sharply at Adele. “She’s already figured out what several more of the panels mean.”

“Well, Pink, and what great clues did you find in the house?” Adele asked snidely.

“For one thing,” I said, trying to be evasive, “Mary Beth Wells was certainly very fond of filet crochet.”

“What kind of crochet?” Camille asked. Eduardo had just joined us, and CeeCee told him to do the honors of answering her question since he was such an expert at it. While Eduardo talked to Camille, Ali showed us her latest creation. She’d made a crocheted cactus and stuck it in a terracotta pot filled with a hunk of green florist’s foam. Then of course, she had to leave.

AN HOUR LATER, THE GROUP WAS GONE AND I was putting away the table and setting up for the night’s program—a book called Unbreak My House. It was a guide to home repairs, and I wondered if it would attract much of an audience. Author Felix Lyndstrom was planning to demonstrate how to repair the inside of a toilet. He hadn’t exactly explained how he was going to do the demonstration. I certainly hoped water wasn’t involved, but I rolled out plastic under the demonstration table just in case.

“Mrs. Pink,” a voice said from somewhere in the vicinity of the chairs. I peeked out from under the table and saw Detective Heather. Today she was wearing another one of her suits, black with white pinstripes. She had on heels that made my feet hurt just looking at them and her makeup job was so perfect she seemed not to be wearing any at all. Her white blond hair almost touched her shoulders.

“I think you can call me Molly,” I said, getting up. “Is this about the dance lesson? It’s a public place, and I had every right to be there getting my complimentary lesson.”

Detective Heather put up her hand to stop me. “It’s not about the dance lesson.” I waited to see if what she was going to say would make it obvious Barry had told her about our breakup. But her attitude and tone were still just short of hostile, so apparently he hadn’t.

“I’m here to pick up the blankets your group made. Tell your group thank you,” she said in a gruff voice. She stopped a moment and her face softened. “They really help.” She went on to tell me that a man had been brought in for questioning about the death of his wife and he’d had his eleven-year-old son with him. She knew the man was going to end up being arrested and the boy would have to go to social services. They tried to give him some game to play with while the father was in the interview room, but the boy had withdrawn completely, no doubt over what had happened. “On a chance, I handed him one of the blankets. At first, he pushed it away. But I left it on the bench next to him. When I looked back, he’d picked it up and was holding it next to his face.”

I was stunned. This was the closest thing Detective Heather and I had ever had to a real conversation. I’d never seen her let down the hard exterior before, and I almost wanted to hug her. Almost.

Instead, I walked her up to the front counter and got the large plastic bag that held the next batch of blankets. As she turned to go, she paused and said, “I heard you were a visitor at the Catalina sheriff’s station because you were found inside the Wells house.” Detective Heather gave me an exasperated groan. “If I hear you