adjusting to finding dead bodies and possibly being threatened by neighbors.
Even with the holidays, the Hookers had decided to keep our regular crochet sessions. After everything with Bradley, the cops and Emily, I really needed a little crochet and talk time right now.
Most of the group was already assembled at the table when I got to the bookstore. I almost laughed when I got toward the back and saw what everyone was working on. Adele, CeeCee, Sheila, Eduardo and even Rhoda were making vampire scarves. Elise had returned to the group and was displaying her finished scarf on the table. I picked it up and looked it over. I had to give her credit, everything about it did say vampire.
Dinah came in from the cafe with the kids in tow. When they got to the table, Ashley-Angela and E. Conner sat down near Adele. In keeping with her seasonal attire, Adele had worn the sweater with all the holiday symbols hanging off. The kids were as entranced this time as when they’d seen it first in the car. I was afraid of a scene and went to move them away from her before they started touching the sweater and she went berserk. I wasn’t fast enough and Ashley-Angela touched the dreidel near Adele’s shoulder.
“We’re making our own dreidels,” the little girl said. “Only ours are going to have glitter.”
Adele twisted her head to see what Ashley-Angela was looking at. “I bet yours aren’t crocheted,” Adele said.
The little girl shook her head so her curls bobbled around. “I don’t know how to crochet. Aunt Dinah said she’ll teach me someday. I don’t know when someday is.”
Adele did one of her grand gestures and threw her head back in disbelief at the comment.
She pulled out a hook and some cotton yarn from her bag and offered it to Ashley-Angela, along with a lesson on how to crochet. Okay, the rest of the table was all watching with their mouths open. Adele never ceased to surprise. E. Conner watched for a while then pulled out the coloring he’d brought along.
I took out the owl head and glanced at the pattern. I picked up some black yarn with a sparkle in it and connected it to the finished head and began to work on the body.
When Elise looked up, I gave her a reassuring nod. I was glad she had rejoined the group.
“What’s with this neighbor of yours, Bradley Perkins? He’s dead, he’s not dead, he’s really dead,” Rhoda said to me. “I saw on the news they found his body up in the mountains. I think even that Kimberly Wang Diaz called it a strange case with twists and turns.” Elise looked up at the comment. Her face seemed to tighten and she glanced around to see if anyone was staring at her.
“They’re saying his wife did it,” Rhoda continued. “You know her, don’t you, Molly?”
I nodded in acknowledgment and then explained why I wasn’t so sure she’d done it. All eyes were on me, particularly Dinah’s. Adele stopped with her lesson and got in the middle of the conversation.
“Okay, Sherlock Fletcher, then who did it?” Adele informed the table that Dinah and I had been following Emily when she went to meet her husband.
CeeCee seemed troubled. “Why were you following her?”
“You certainly get in the middle of things, Molly,” Eduardo said.
It was obvious at this point that there was a gap in information. If we were going to talk about it, it made no sense not to share the whole story so we’d all be on the same page.
“Good for you for trying to trap him,” Elise said when I’d gotten to the end.
“It’s kind of beside the point now,” CeeCee said. “The man’s dead.”
“Maybe somebody else saw Emily coming out of Luxe and followed her, too,” Sheila said.
“Yeah, like Nicholas. It’s his store so he must have known what she was doing,” Rhoda offered.
“Nicholas wouldn’t do anything like kill somebody,” Sheila said. Her comment got everyone’s attention.
“I didn’t know you were so chummy with him, dear,” CeeCee said.
Sheila stumbled over her words. She wasn’t chummy with him, but she’d been selling her blankets and other accessories in his store for a while and she thought that gave her some insight into him.
“Nicholas lost some money with the Perkins guy?” Eduardo said.
I said he appeared not to be that upset by it, but several other people threw out comments that it might have been an act. “Someone could have overheard me,” I said. “The bookstore was crowded. I thought I kept my voice down, but who knows?”
“What did the person on the mountain bike look like, Pink? Isn’t that the most obvious question?” Adele said.
“We didn’t get a good look. Whoever it was flew past us,” Dinah said, finally joining in. “They flew past Emily, too.”
Rhoda threw out a question about the bike. Did we know what it looked like or at least what color it was? Both Dinah and I had noticed only that it had wheels.
“If you want to know about mountain bikes, you can ask Logan. He knows all about them. He goes riding up in the mountains all the time,” Elise said. She didn’t seem to have any sense about what she’d just said. Everyone focused on her and I knew what they were thinking. If you wanted a suspect, Logan was a good choice. He’d lost money, his reputation and probably a lot of his real estate business. The implication of what she’d said finally sunk in and Elise looked horrified. “It couldn’t have been him. He wouldn’t do anything like that. Besides, he was ...” Her voice trailed off and then she muttered something about her being at Christmas bazaar all afternoon. She cut herself off abruptly.
Suddenly the big question was where had Logan been yesterday afternoon?
CHAPTER 23
DINAH AND I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT; AS soon as the group broke up, we checked the bookstore cafe for Logan. When he wasn’t there, we headed to Le Grande Fromage. Though I wondered if Logan would still be using a table as his portable office. Those two men had been pretty hostile to him and I was sure there must be others just as angry. I wanted to get there quickly, before Elise warned him to come up with an alibi. She’d rushed off to a hair appointment, so there was a chance she hadn’t talked to him.
The sun was burning off the clouds and shining in the window of the French cafe. The fragrant wreath wrapped in tiny white lights made it seem festive. The lunch crowd was clogging the place and the line at the counter went all the way to the back of the restaurant and blocked my view of the tables.
Dinah was trying to keep the kids from getting jostled by the crowd. Finally the line moved up and I got a clear view of the area where Logan always sat. To my surprise it appeared to be business as usual for him. He had his laptop on the table and seemed to be reading something. I pulled Dinah and the kids with me and we made our way across the small restaurant.
“Mind if we join you?” I said, pulling out a chair. Logan did a double take as his empty table suddenly filled up. He stammered something about expecting someone, but I countered by saying we’d leave when they showed up. Dinah went to join the line to get food and the kids and I stayed behind. I made some small talk about the weather and the book launch party. It was to soften him up before I started asking the real questions and it was a stall while I tried to figure out exactly how to put it. I couldn’t very well just ask him where he’d been the afternoon before. I kept looking at him, trying to picture him on a bike with a helmet to see if it matched my slip of a memory. If only the rider hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I would have recognized Logan’s odd hairline if it had gone past.
One of the things Dinah had done was teach the kids how to take part in the conversation. Ashley-Angela pulled out the little crochet swatch Adele had taught her to make and showed it to Logan. The kids might have been accustomed to being included with adults, but Logan didn’t seem to feel the same about kids. He blew out his breath a few times and I knew he was wishing we’d leave.
“I have a bike, too,” E. Conner said. Logan didn’t seem to be listening, and I suddenly realized the kids were like loose cannons. Dinah was coming back with a tray of drinks and I was trying to get up from the table and take the kids. “What’s an alibi?” E. Conner said. I turned to Logan, hoping he was still tuning out as I tried to grab the kids and make a fast exit. “I can get up myself, Aunt Molly. That’s what Aunt Molly wanted to know if you had in case you were the one who killed that man on the mountain,” E. Conner continued.
Let’s just say we didn’t have to leave the table. Logan grabbed his stuff and pulled his jacket off the back of the chair and was out the door before Dinah even arrived with the drinks.
“Did I miss something?” she said, looking at the empty chair.
Dinah apologized for the kids a bunch of times and I told her not to worry. We’d just have to come up with
