Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and asked what the problem was, hoping she wouldn’t give me too much information. “I’m afraid William might not be the author of the Anthony books,” she said.
I couldn’t help myself and asked what had changed her mind. “He told me he has to go out of town in a couple of days. The launch party is just around the corner. The author wouldn’t be going on a trip right before the biggest night of his life.”
“Where’s he going?” I asked, hoping I could find something reassuring in his destination. Adele was always difficult, but a depressed Adele was even worse. She tended to walk around making very loud plaintive sighs.
“It’s research for his next book. He said something about there being only a small window of time to see an exhibit in Miami. He said he wanted me to come with, but he knew I couldn’t take the time off because of the holidays and all.”
“He could still be A. J. Kowalski,” I said. “He’s going to be back by the launch party, isn’t he?” Adele nodded. “Well, there you go.” Adele suddenly brightened at my words and hugged me a little too tight.
“Pink, thanks. That’s what best friends are for.” She instantly straightened and took some more holiday decorations out of her pocket and began pinning them on her top.
Sheila must have been on a break from her job as receptionist at the gym. She was at the back working on something. Even from a distance I could see she was working in a different palette. Everything she’d made to sell before was in blues combined with greens and lavenders. Whatever she was working on today was all about red. I had a few finished swatches that needed to be hung and I went back there.
I fingered the ball of rusty red fuzzy yarn in front of her. “What’s up with the new colors?” It looked like she was working on a shawl and I could see where she’d mixed in some fun fur yarn that was red flecked with gold.
“Nicholas suggested I do something in warmer colors,” she said, continuing to crochet. “I think it’s turning out nicely.” She held it up and draped it over her shoulder.
“I think he’s onto something. At this time of year it’s nice to have bright and warm colors.” I glanced out the window. The colors of the shawl did seem to cheer up the cold gray day. Because we usually had so much sun, the dark days seemed even more dreary.
It was a pleasure to see how Sheila’s confidence had surged. She still had plenty of tense moments, but she seemed to handle them much better.
I didn’t think talking to Sheila about Nicholas interfered with my promise to Dinah to include her in my next caper. This was just about getting background.
I realized I really knew very little about him. Sure, I’d seen him a lot and had snippets of conversations, but I didn’t even know if he lived in Tarzana. It wasn’t hard to get Sheila to talk about him. After the experience she’d had selling her creations by consignment at another store, she appreciated Nicholas.
“He’s a gentleman in every sense of the word,” Sheila said. It wasn’t just that he’d been complimentary of her work and very fair about what he paid her—it was his whole manner. “Did you ever notice how he really listens to people?” she asked.
“It sounds like you have a thing for him,” I said. I’d never heard her say as much about anybody before. I regretted the comment almost as soon as I’d said it. Sheila stiffened and the color rose in her face. Her breath changed, too, and I recognized she’d gone into anxiety mode.
“It’s not like that,” she stammered. She took a deep breath and let her stomach balloon out before she expelled the breath slowly. She reached in her purse and took out a sandwich-size plastic bag she always carried with her emergency crochet kit. It held a size J hook and some cotton yarn that had been crocheted and ripped a bunch of times. She made a slipknot and began a chain. She made the loops big and loose and went back over them with single crochet stitches.
“I didn’t realize I was coming across that way,” she said with a worried look. “I hope Nicholas doesn’t think I’m coming on to him.” She kept crocheting and her stitches were all over the place, but since it didn’t matter, it began to have a calming effect. “I don’t want to mess things up with him. He’s really paying me well for my pieces.” She took some more deep breaths and moved on to another row. “I don’t think Nicholas would ever think of me that way. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, or at least he’s never mentioned one to me. I don’t know if there’s room for anything besides that store in his life. He’s there practically all the time.”
I asked her if she knew where he lived. By now she’d stopped crocheting with the cotton and ripped out all the stitches and put it away. She answered without hesitation. “He has a small apartment, but I think he barely spends any time there. He’s always at the store. I called his cell the other night about bringing over some more pieces and he had me bring them to the store. It was hours after it had closed.”
“Really?” I said. The bookstore was always open later than Luxe and I’d gone past the store lots of time after its closing and it always looked dark and deserted. When I mentioned that, she said he’d told her to knock on the glass door. She’d seen him come from the back.
“Did you ever see what was back there?” I asked, remembering how Dinah and I had wondered about the walled-off area. She shook her head.
Eduardo stepped up to the table. “Ladies,” he said in his rich deep voice. He took out several plain wool scarves to leave for the collection we were making. CeeCee and her companion, Tony, were going to bring them to a shelter on Christmas Eve. A vampire scarf in progress had gotten twisted with one of the scarves and landed on the table.
He picked it up quickly and put it back in his leather tote. “It’s for my girlfriend. She’s a big Anthony fan,” he said. “A vampire who crochets,” he said with a low laugh.
Even in jeans and a black sweater Eduardo looked like he’d stepped off the cover of some romance novel with a title like
I commented that we’d just been talking about Nicholas. Eduardo was generally quiet during the Hookers’ meetings. So I was surprised at how much he opened up about Nicholas. Apparently after years in advertising, Nicholas had left it behind and opened the store. It had cost him all his friends and his wife, who thought he was crazy to give up a big job to take a chance on a long shot. “The guy’s had some hard times. It’s not easy when you take a chance on something.”
“Is the store doing okay?” I asked, thinking Eduardo might know.
“It’s more about his passion than profit,” Eduardo said. “He’s always upbeat when there are customers around, but I’ve seen him when he was pretty dark.”
Mrs. Shedd interrupted and seemed frantic about me helping in the front with customers. I didn’t have a chance to think about Nicholas again until I’d left the store and gone to Dinah’s. The girl across the street was going to stay with the kids while we did some holiday shopping. I had hoped to crochet presents for everyone, but I’d finally accepted time was running out. Maybe next year. Lucky for us the mall was staying open until midnight.
On the way there, I told her about the whole discussion about Nicholas.
“I think Emily does have something going on with Nicholas,” Dinah said. She reminded me that when Bradley had first gone missing, Emily’s first stop had been at Luxe. “Remember the tea she offered us?”
“Right, and she went to the store to return things when she needed money,” I said.
Dinah reminded me that Nicholas had said she was returning things. “How do we know he didn’t just give her some money?”
“And when she was trying to avoid being followed, she slipped out through the back door of Luxe.” I stopped as another thought surfaced. “Suppose she told Nicholas she was going to meet Bradley? She could have even told him where she was meeting him,” I said.
“He had motive. There’s the money he lost, and if there was something going on between him and Emily—” I stopped myself and shrugged hopelessly. “But none of it means anything if we can’t tie him to the murder. Sheila said he practically lives at the store, so I’m guessing the mountain bike is there. Maybe the afghan and knife, too.”
We’d gotten to the mall and the only investigating we did for the next couple of hours was to find a store that hadn’t sold out of the electronic juggling bear the kids wanted. Several hours and a lot of packages later, Dinah drove into the back parking lot that serviced the bookstore and the other strip of stores along Ventura. She had pulled next to the greenmobile and I started to gather my packages. I glanced up at the back of the building. It was
