know that Bradley might be alive.”
“Molly, you don’t know for a fact that he’s alive. You didn’t see him. And the description the elf gave you.” Barry shook his head. “Am I seriously considering what a guy dressed as an elf said?” Barry went into his interrogator mode and wanted to know if I’d actually seen Emily with the watch at The Grove. When I said no, he pointed out that since I didn’t see her with it, seeing her without it didn’t necessarily mean anything. “You see my point. If you tell this story to any investigators, they’re just going to stamp you as being a nutcase.” He put a hand on my shoulder and started to repeat his stay-out-of-it speech. “And let’s just say, for argument, Perkins is alive. He’s not going to be hanging around here waiting for you to find him. He’s probably halfway to somewhere already.”
“Where?” I said.
“Someplace where’s he’s not going to get caught.” I wasn’t happy with what Barry said and looked to Mason for his opinion.
A smile lit up Mason’s eyes. “Personally, I like the elf story. But as I said before, I wonder why he’d take a chance on getting caught just to pick up a watch, no matter how valuable it is.”
“There was something else.” I paused, getting ready for their reaction when I told them what the something else was.
“An afghan?” Barry rolled his eyes. He didn’t have to say the
My head was spinning now and I began to doubt myself. Maybe there was another explanation. I just didn’t know what it was. Finally Barry couldn’t stall anymore and woke up Jeffrey. Mason hung back, but Barry grabbed him with his other arm and they all went to the door together. Mason looked over his shoulder and blew me a kiss.
CHAPTER 18
I THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT BARRY HAD SAID ABOUT seeming like a nutcase, and even though the SEC guy had urged people with information to come forward, I didn’t. Not that I had time anyway. The next few days went by in a blur of snowflakes and preparations for the So Many Traditions event.
Luckily, CeeCee’s snowflake pattern was simple and I was able to turn them out pretty quickly. My crochet partners came through, too. Sheila stopped by on her break from her receptionist job at the gym and gave me a handful. Eduardo brought in more that he’d made while he was waiting around a commercial shoot he was doing for fat-free sour cream. CeeCee dropped some off as she rushed off to a meeting with her agent. Rhoda sent her husband Harold in with the ones she’d made. Of course Adele insisted she’d done her share and I didn’t even think about Elise. Dinah brought the ones she’d made when she came over to help me starch them all. She’d left the kids at home. “You got a babysitter,” I said.
“Commander came over,” she said with an uncertain flutter of her eyes. “This will either make or break things. He said he’d teach them how to play checkers.”
I had stacks of cardboard pieces, rolls of wax paper, pushpins and a big jug of starch. When we’d laid out all the snowflakes, we took them outside and laid them on the lawn furniture to dry. It seemed almost like magic how they went from limp masses of tangled-looking thread to dainty things of beauty. Dinah turned up toward the night sky. “Good,” she said. “Dark blue. No chance of rain.” Maybe it wasn’t going to rain, but it was cold. We could see our breath as we rushed back inside to the warm kitchen.
Dinah hung around while I mixed up the dough for the batch of cardamom rolls for the bookstore. I mentioned that I’d gotten several voice mail messages from Emily. “I haven’t called her back,” I said. “At first I felt sorry for her and thought she’d been left to deal with a terrible mess her husband made. But after the whole thing with the watch and the shopping malls, I’m not sure how much she’s involved. And I don’t have time to figure it out now,” I said, putting the dough in a bowl and covering it to let it rise.
“THANK YOU, THEY’RE BEAUTIFUL,” MRS. SHEDD said, taking one of the snowflakes and handing it to me so I could hang it on the window. She was on the ground, attaching small balls of quake wax to the flakes, and I was on a ladder doing the actual hanging. The bookstore had just opened and there were only a few customers browsing while drinking some of Bob’s first brew of the day.
Mrs. Shedd was quiet for a moment, and when I reached for the next piece to press against the window, I noticed her face had settled into a sad expression. She mentioned seeing the woman on the news the night before and it was obvious she related. “How could all the money he took from everybody be gone?”
By now I was becoming an expert on how Ponzi schemes worked, so I explained how he used the money he took in from new investors to pay the few people who wanted to take out the returns on their investments or who wanted to cash out of the whole venture. “The rest of it ...” I said with a deep sigh. I reminded her of what I’d overheard the SEC investigator say about all the checks written to all the casinos. “It looks like Bradley lost it all gambling.” I asked her if she was going to talk to the SEC people and give them details of her dealings with Bradley.
“Eventually I will,” Mrs. Shedd said. “But right now I want to think about tonight’s event and the launch party and the future. Just the thought of finding the paperwork to bring them is upsetting, and it’s not as if it’s going to change anything.”
Adele came over to where we were working. She looked at the large stack of snowflakes and how many were already hung. “Where’d they all come from?” Her voice sounded surprised and maybe a little disappointed that I’d managed without any more help from her.
“Well, I have things to do,” Adele said, flouncing off. “I have to tweak the setup in the kid’s department and then I am the one in charge of the whole Santa Lucia procession.”
Mrs. Shedd watched her go. “Do you really think the last part was such a good idea?” she said as I continued hanging the snowflakes.
I was having second thoughts myself. Adele had begged to be part of the event and I felt guilty about the yarn department even if she’d brought it on herself by being so anti-knitters. But it was too late to do anything about it anyway.
“What can go wrong?” I said. “All she has to do is help Rayaad’s daughters into the white dresses and hit play on the CD machine.”
Mrs. Shedd sighed. I knew that no matter what she’d said, she was having a hard time getting in the holiday spirit. How was she going to tell Mr. Royal about her losses? I knew she was worried he might be so disappointed in her judgment that their whole relationship would unravel.
By evening the windows had their blizzard of snowflakes and we’d cleared a space in the middle of the bookstore for the procession. The travel books had been cleared from their table and a white paper tablecloth had been put on it. Bob had brought in the trays of brown ginger cookies and I’d cut the buns into quarters and set them on a doily-covered platter. There was punch for the kids and coffee for the adults. We’d covered the whole table with a sheet to be unveiled after the Santa Lucia procession. Even with it covered, the spicy scent of the cardamom and ginger gave away that there was something good under the sheet.
People had begun to filter into the bookstore. I was glad to see them browsing the aisles as they waited for the event to begin. After Mrs. Shedd’s comment, I tried to check on Adele and Rayaad’s daughters, but Adele had them all barricaded in the office and wouldn’t let me in.
Battery-operated candles flickered around the bookstore and we’d added a seven-candle candleholder for Kwanzaa to the table with the menorah. The trees out in front of the store had been strung with tiny white lights and looked very festive.
I was surprised to see Emily Perkins come in with her daughters. She got a lot of hostile stares as she worked through the crowd. Her determined stride in my direction made me think she was on some kind of mission. Whatever it was got aborted when Mrs. Shedd pulled me aside and said we ought to begin the festivities.
