Holding the phone like it was a gun, she backed down the driveway toward the street. It hadn’t registered before, but the garbage cans were lined up against the curb for pick up. Robyn’s were still in the driveway since there was no one to take them out. Still with her eyes locked on us, the woman flipped the lid on her big blue plastic can meant for recyclables. She grunted when she looked inside.
“Okay, you two, where are they? You know scavenging is against the law. I put a whole sack of bottles in my blue can and now they’re gone. Put them back and I’ll let you go.”
It took a moment for me to get what she was talking about. I realized we were standing in front of Robyn’s blue can and she apparently thought we were working the neighborhood.
I held out my hands to show they were empty and Dinah did the same. The woman let out a disappointed grunt and stepped closer to us. She was older, wearing a bright magenta gauze dress and flip-flops. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked us over a few more times. “We’ve been having a problem with scavengers going through the recyclables.” She narrowed her eyes and said, if we weren’t after bottles and cans, what were we up to? She waved the phone around for effect, and reminded us about the 911 on speed dial.
I pointed toward the “For Rent” sign on the lawn. Suddenly her expression relaxed.
“You looking to rent the place, huh?” She made no pretense of looking us up and down. “I hope you’re not into wild parties. This is a nice street. Just remember—” She waved the phone at us in what was becoming a redundant threat.
I finished the thought for her. “You have nine-one-one on speed dial. Got it,” I said. I looked back at Dinah and winked and turned back to the woman. “You’re just the kind of neighbor we’d like. These days nobody seems to care anymore.” The woman’s face lit up with the compliment. “I bet you know all about everybody around here,” I said in a friendly voice.
“Miranda Baker,” she said, holding out her hand. “And yes, I pride myself on being the eyes, ears and conscience of this street. Let me tell you, nobody TPs the trees around here on Halloween. And by the same token, every house gives out candy.”
She started to go off into the details of the neighborhood, and I waited until she stopped for a quick breath. I took the opportunity to jump in and bring the conversation back to the house. “Of course, you probably want to see the inside.” She told us she’d get the keys; the owner had left them with her, figuring she’d do a good job at screening potential renters.
She opened the front door and let us walk inside, then stuck to us like glue. “You know you look kind of familiar,” she said, peering at my face. Since the bookstore was close by, I thought she might be a customer. This could be trouble if she figured out where she knew me from. I didn’t want her to show up in the bookstore and keep asking why I wasn’t renting the house or, worse, find out that all along I owned a house. I tried laughing it off and said I got it a lot. “I have one of those faces that looks like everybody.”
We stopped in the middle of the living room. As Dinah and I glanced around, Miranda said the owner ought to have gotten the place emptied before he put up the sign. “But you know what they say, time is money.”
The room looked like what it was, a place where someone had gone to work fully expecting to come home. We glanced through the kitchen and then on to the bedrooms. There were two. One she’d used to sleep in. The double bed was unmade and the closet door open. I walked in, pretending to be curious about the size of the closet, but really was more curious about the photo on the nightstand. It seemed to be a beach scene. She was in the picture and whoever was next to her had been cut out.
“Is this the person who lives here?” I asked, holding up the picture frame. Miranda appeared uneasy.
“The owner didn’t want me to bring this up. He said it might make people feel funny about renting the place. But you two look like you’ve got both feet on the ground and know what’s what. It’s not like she died here.”
I feigned surprise. “How terrible. She looks so young.”
Miranda stepped closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Murdered. Right in the middle of work. The cops came by and talked to me. They were having a hard time finding her next of kin and wondered if I could help them with that.”
Neither Dinah or I spoke or even breathed, afraid she’d stop talking just when she got to the important part.
I’d learned long ago when I first started using
“I told him about her boyfriend.” She hit the hole in the picture with her finger. “That’s him. She went through all her pictures and cut him out. Kind of symbolic, I guess. She was cutting him out of her life.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“They broke up,” Miranda said like I was an idiot for not getting it. “Not that I miss him. He used to park his BMW so it just barely cleared my driveway. I couldn’t even call the cops on it, because technically he wasn’t blocking it.” Miranda knew that he smoked because she’d often seen him sitting outside at night smoking. She knew what brand of beer he drank. Apparently she taken it upon herself to check Robyn’s trash for evidence of scavengers, but she didn’t know his name. “Oh, please,” she said as if it was an absurd thought that she would know his name. “I’m not that kind of nosy neighbor.”
We’d moved into the other bedroom that functioned as Robyn’s home office. She had one of those wipe-off boards hanging on the wall. Robyn had written in D. J.’s name, but most of the space was devoted to Becca Ivins and Derek Trousedale. She’d written in
“She worked on that
“What’s this?” I said, noting a girl and boy doll made out of yarn sitting on a shelf in the wall unit. They stood out from the rest of the house, which was all clean lines, bare floors and impersonal. The soft-bodied dolls looked as if they were a remnant from childhood and as if they’d been well loved. “They’re crocheted,” I said to Dinah after examining the arms on the girl doll. Miranda started to scowl, and I quickly explained that I was a crocheter and that was why I was so interested in it.
“Personally, I’m a knitter,” she said with just a touch of disdain. “I never did get the hook business.” I picked up the doll’s foot and noticed something on the bottom. If there was such a thing as scribbling in crochet, that’s what it was. It seemed like initials, but I couldn’t make them out.
Suddenly Miranda seemed to notice that we were spending more time looking at the things in the house than the house itself. She took the doll from me and put it back.
“Don’t worry, the place will be cleaned out next week.” She asked if we wanted to put a deposit down. Dinah and I hemmed and hawed; meanwhile, she seemed to be studying our faces.
“That’s it. I saw you at the square dancing event. You,” she said, pointing at me, “were dressed in a getup all wrong for dancing.” She made a sound as if she was astonished. “Who goes square dancing in pants unless you’re a man?” She turned to Dinah. “Now, missy, you had it right. All those crinolines.”
We’d begun edging toward the door, realizing we’d gotten all the information we were going to. Dinah came through and said we wanted to look at some more places first. Miranda did a little sales pitch. Apparently we’d done too good a job at selling ourselves as potential neighbors, but she finally let us go. We hung on the sidewalk long enough for her to go back to her house. I was glad Nell had parked a distance away. Imagine the fuss Miranda would have made if she’d seen us getting into a car with CeeCee Collins.
When the coast seemed clear, Dinah and I ran down the street and jumped into the backseat of Nell’s car.
“We’ve got to find out who Robyn’s boyfriend was,” I said as I pulled the car door shut.
CHAPTER 18
“A CROCHETED DOLL? WHO’S MAKING A CROCHETED doll?” Adele said as she came in at the end of the conversation. Almost all the Hookers were gathered around the table, and I was telling them about what Dinah and
