By Hook or by Crook

BOB WAS BAKING MAN-SIZE COOKIES SINCE THAT was who we expected the audience to be. I was just hoping there would be any audience as it was mostly women who came to our events. I wondered if men would be open enough to admit they needed a fix-it book.

I was relieved to see a crowd had already started to gather. My relief ended when the author arrived toiletless and explained there was nothing quite like demonstrating on the real thing, at which point he grabbed his bag of tools and took the group into the men’s room.

I pushed to the front of the group standing around the stall and tried to stop him, but he insisted it was win-win. He’d do the demonstration, and the toilet he worked on would be like new. The audience turned to me expectantly.

“C’mon, let him do it,” a man said. “I came all the way from Calabasas.”

What was I to do? I gave him the go ahead, then left him to his work and went to get the signing table ready.

I walked out of the men’s room, and when I glanced up, Barry was standing in front of me.

“The men’s room?” he said, giving me an odd look.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, flashing an odd look back at him. He pointed to the sign for Unbreak My House. I knew Barry could fix anything. Like I was really going to buy that story.

“Am I too late?” he asked, nodding toward the empty event area. I started to shake my head and was going to direct him to the men’s room, but I’d had something on my mind and wanted to discuss that first.

“It’s about the other night. I realized we can’t exactly make a clean break. There’s Cosmo, and we’re going to run into each other like this.”

There was just a hint of smile on Barry’s lips, which I did my best to ignore.

“I think I’ve figured out a solution,” I said.

Barry stepped closer, apparently assuming it was something about not breaking up after all. “I knew you’d reconsider once you thought about it. One of the things I like best about you is how understanding and forgiving you are.” He went to touch my chin, but I stopped his hand.

“Not exactly. I was thinking we could be friends.” Barry froze, then dropped his hand to his side. The smile faded to his blank cop face and his jaw clenched a few times. He didn’t seem happy with my suggestion.

“Friends?” he said in a low voice between gritted teeth.

“Yes. It’s the perfect solution. Cosmo can continue living at my house, and you can come over and take care of him. And if we run into each other like this, we can be cordial. No problems, no expectations, no commitment.”

“And no sex,” Barry said, looking disgruntled to say the least.

“Well, yeah, that is sort of the line drawn between friends and something more.”

“It’s because of the other guy your mother mentioned, isn’t it?” Barry said. His eyes had gotten that piercing look.

I felt a woosh of air as Dinah rushed up, holding some papers. “There you are. I found some more pictures.” As an afterthought she noticed Barry and the fact that we were standing adjacent to the men’s room.

She looked at Barry and at me. “Is this a bad time?” He said yes, and I said no. I noticed he didn’t make a move to leave as I examined the prints she’d brought.

“See, there’s Camille. Doesn’t it look like she’s staring at Mary Beth?” Dinah said, pointing at the trajectory of Camille’s gaze.

Barry’s head shot up at Mary Beth’s name. “Molly, what are you doing? Heather told me you were in custody on Catalina, but she seemed to think you had learned your lesson and dropped your detective game.”

“It’s not a game. I’m telling you this crochet piece is definitely . . .” Then I stopped. I didn’t want him to take it from me.

“There’s a problem in there,” a man said, coming out of the men’s room. Just then, I noticed water seeping out from under the door and the rest of the group made a hasty exit. The author came out last and with his head down in embarrassment mumbled something about how I should have told him we had faulty toilets and he’d changed his mind about the signing.

I looked at Barry. “There’s another thing about friends. They fix things.”

CHAPTER 19

I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT CAMILLE. She had admitted to knowing Mary Beth only in relation to the dance lessons. Yet there she was not ten feet away as Mary Beth wrote her note. Maybe Mary Beth had sensed she was being watched—that whole thing about feeling eyes looking at you. Maybe Mary Beth had looked up and seen her and panicked and stopped writing. In any case, there was definitely more to the relationship than Camille had said.

Still grumbling about his new designation as friend, Barry had stopped the flood in the men’s room and fixed the author’s error. Dinah had helped me mop up and had reminded me that the caretaker of the Catalina house had said the woman with Mary Beth had resembled her.

“Camille doesn’t look like the picture of Mary Beth I saw in the newspaper,” Dinah said as we put away the cleaning supplies.

“True, but Purdue was talking about over twenty years ago, and he said something about long dark hair and loose sweats. And he’s a man. If we both had long hair and sweats on now he’d probably think we looked alike,” I said, standing almost a head taller than my friend.

“What are you going to do?” Dinah asked.

“I can’t lock Camille in an interview room and interrogate her like the detectives do. I’m going to have to find another way to get information. In the meantime, I’d like to find out what all the discord at the dance studio was about. I have an idea, but I need your okay.”

“YOU HAVE MY BLESSING, BUT I DON’T KNOW IF it will help,” Dinah said the next morning as we walked through the Beasley campus to the bungalow where Dinah’s class was held. Vincent stood out from the clump of people waiting outside the prefabricated building.

Unlike his fellow students, who looked as though they picked their clothes from the dirty laundry, he had a sense of style. He was all in black with a red bandana tied over his wavy dark hair. Men sure had a lot of head options these days. When I was Vincent’s age, everyone just had long, often straggly hair. Now men’s heads ran the gamut from dreadlocks or tiny little braids to the intentionally bald look. Then they covered it all up with all kinds of caps, hats and scarves. I wondered if their goal was the same as that of male birds with bright plumage.

Vincent straightened when he saw Dinah and made a little dance move. He snickered when she dismissed it with a wave. I stayed behind as Dinah unlocked the door and went into the classroom. This was one time she was glad to be left out. I was still hearing about how much her teacher advantage had been ruined by taking the dance lesson with Vincent.

I snagged him as he was starting toward the stairs to the bungalow. He gave me a puzzled look as I pulled him off to the side.

“What? You want a dance lesson now?” He had an amused smile.

“No. I’m more interested in information. It looked like there was some disagreement between the managers of the studio and Matt Wells. Do you know what it was about?”

“Is this because of the dead chick?” He regarded me with new interest. “Are you some kind of cop?”

“No, just an interested party. So, what were they arguing about?”

Vincent shrugged. “I’m just a hired hand. I try to stay out of stuff. Just like I never really listened when the dead chick came to the studio and started arguing with Roseanne. Hard to believe those two are sisters. Mary Beth Wells was sure hot, for an older babe.”

“Arguing? About what?” I tried not to sound too eager.

He shrugged. “Look, Mary Beth Wells was an owner, but Roseanne Klinger was my boss. I didn’t want to get