and falafel balls.
Mason delivered me home a short time later. He checked the front door to make sure it was secure. He wasn’t a fix-it wizard like Barry, but he knew enough to make sure the lock worked right and that the panel across the broken part was secure. He did make some comment that if he’d damaged my door, he’d have gotten it replaced by now.
“You know you can always stay at my place,” he said. Mason lived alone with his toy fox terrier, Spike, in a house in Encino that was big enough to accommodate a large family. “No strings attached,” he added with a genuine smile. “I’m surprised Greenberg isn’t standing guard.” Mason’s smile turned to a grin at the jab at Barry.
At last I hit the pillow, but as soon as I did, all my concerns about the upcoming unveiling of the vampire author began to surface. Who was he or she? Did I know them? What if it came out before the launch and took away all our steam? I had to untwist myself from the bedclothes several times before finally falling asleep. It was peaceful for a while, then a dog started barking in my dream. The noise was irritating and interfering with the story I was concocting. It didn’t stop and I rose through the levels of sleep, finally realizing the barking was real.
Cosmo wasn’t in his usual spot next to me. The long-haired black mutt generally slept nestled against my side with his feet in the air. The barking was coming from another room and I recognized it as his. There was something different about it, too. I heard an undercurrent of a growl.
By now I was wide awake and my heart was pounding big time. I heard something fall over and I sucked in my breath. Then suddenly relief washed over me. It was probably Barry and a late-night surprise visit. Still it seemed odd that Cosmo was making threatening sounds since he was more or less Barry’s dog. The easy solution was to call Barry’s cell phone. If I heard ringing, it would confirm it was him. I grabbed the phone next to me and punched in Barry’s cell number, and as the call went through, I listened for ringing in the distance.
All I heard was something else fall over. Uh-oh.
A moment later, Barry answered in a sleepy voice, though he snapped to attention when I whispered, “Barry, I think there’s somebody in my house.”
I WAS HUDDLED IN THE FRONT YARD WHEN BARRY roared up in the Tahoe. He almost drove on the lawn. A police cruiser arrived a second later along with a helicopter. Barry’s instructions had been for me to get out of the house immediately. It was only fear that gave me the guts to propel myself out the window and face the drop into the bushes. Now I wished I’d taken a moment to grab a shawl or robe before I went out. Even with the adrenaline rush, I felt shivery. The helicopter began to circle, bathing me and my front yard in its spotlight.
Barry waved for me to stay put as he ran toward the front door with his gun drawn—this time at least he used his key. The two uniforms went around to the back of the house. A few minutes later Barry came and got me and brought me inside.
“It’s lucky Cosmo is staying with you. Blondie gets an F as a watchdog.” He took me into the den. “I checked and nobody is in here now.” The word
“Molly, first of all, this had nothing to do with your front door.” He showed me the bathroom window I’d left open a crack. It was now wide open with the screen missing. “Here’s where they came in.” The outside door in the den was ajar. “Cosmo’s barking must have scared them off.” The two uniforms were searching the bushes in the backyard with the light from the helicopter. “Whoever it was is probably long gone.” Barry said with a shrug. My backyard faced three others. All somebody had to do was go over my fence and exit through somebody else’s yard. Barry called off the two officers and the helicopter.
I glanced around the den. The end table near the window had been knocked over, but other than that everything looked okay.
For the first time it sunk in that Barry was dressed in the suit he’d been wearing at his first stop of the day at my house. The shirt looked a little rumpled and his tie was pulled loose. His usually neat short dark hair was askew. Then I got it. He must have been asleep at his desk when I called.
Barry pulled an afghan off the arm of the couch and draped it over me, wrapping his arms around me at the same time. “Is there something you haven’t told me?” he said with a little clench of his jaw. I had on occasion gotten involved in things that had gotten me into trouble.
I shrugged off his question as we headed to the kitchen. No way could I go back to sleep after all of this so I offered him breakfast. “All I did was tell Emily Perkins how to figure out where her husband was.”
“And that was ...” Barry said, following me as I turned on the lights. I told him about having her call the credit card company and his expression changed to admiration. “Good thinking, Sherlock. Though I still think you should mind your own business,” he said. I started to pull out eggs and butter and waved Barry over to sit down at the table. It was still solid dark outside, but already almost five.
“I can’t see how telling her that would lead to this,” he conceded. “Is there anything else?” He didn’t sit but instead came over to help me. Butter was melting in the frying pan and I was beating some eggs, adding some cream cheese and chives. Barry poured fresh coffee beans in the grinder and turned it on. “And don’t hold back, okay?”
I stirred the eggs a last time and poured them in the pan. I popped some English muffins in the toaster as I debated whether to tell him everything. But Barry is a master at reading dead air. “C’mon, Molly, you can’t fool me. There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“Okay, here goes,” I said. “You know about the holiday party slash launch the bookstore is putting on for the latest Anthony book?” No recognition showed in his expression. “The vampire-with-a-heart books. I told you about it before,” I said.
The no recognition was replaced with an oh-no look. Barry wasn’t into vampires and thought nobody else should be, either. “Our big reveal is who the author is. Mrs. Shedd thinks somebody is trying to scoop us. And some people might think that since I’m the event coordinator and this is a big event, that I already know who A. J. Kowalski really is and have the information here.”
Barry started to dismiss the idea, but I interrupted him. “Think the Harry Potter books or the Twilight saga. We’re talking a superstar author here. CNN is doing a live feed and all the entertainment shows are sending reporters. The local news stations are coming, too. The whole event would fizzle if somebody announced the author’s identity before the launch. And whoever put out the news first would get a lot of attention.”
Barry sat down at the table with an exhausted sigh. “Molly, you sure know how to fill a day.”
CHAPTER 4
“NOPE, DOESN’T WORK,” I SAID OUT LOUD AS I checked my image in the mirror. The makeup was supposed to cover up dark circles under your eyes. I’m afraid my lack of sleep was too big a challenge even for the self-proclaimed Miracle Circle Eraser. By the time Barry and I had finished breakfast, it was officially morning, though still dark. He checked all the windows and front door and then had to go home. It was his day to drive car pool. Barry was divorced and had his fourteen-year-old son living with him. Barry felt like a hero driving car pool. I don’t think Jeffrey quite saw it that way. Nothing like having your cop dad talk to you like you were a kid in front of your fellow eighth graders to bust your image as the cool drama guy.
And me? I tried lying down, but I kept thinking I heard noises. Eventually I accepted that more sleep wasn’t coming and decided to make better use of the time. I took the pile of thread snowflakes that Adele had made into the kitchen. I poured some liquid starch in a plastic bag and dropped the snowflakes in the pearly liquid one at a time. They came out looking like hopeless clumps of thread. The magic was in the drying. I had already cut apart a cardboard box and covered it with wax paper. I laid the snowflakes and carefully stretched them into shape and held them in place with nonrusting pins. When I had them all done, I put them on the dining room table as dawn was breaking. In the half-light, the snowflakes looked almost real.
I had another cup of coffee and found the snowflake I’d been crocheting. I worked on it until the sunlight streamed in the kitchen. That’s when I started with the makeup.
I was pulling out of my driveway on my way to work when I saw Emily standing beside her black Element in her driveway. I cut the motor and got out. I wanted to explain the middle-of-the-night commotion. When I saw her
