A police supervisor showed up after a while and looked over the situation. She, in turn, put in a call to somebody else. That’s when things got really strange. She decided they should move everybody outside and hustled us out the door. Not even the cops stayed inside.
An awkward-looking black truck rumbled in front of the cop cars and parked directly in line with the cafe. I waited to see who was going to get out. After what seemed like forever, two people exited the truck. I say
One of the officer’s radios squawked and he bent his ear toward it. “Okay, folks, we have an all clear, you can go back in.”
Mr. Royal pulled me over. “Do something. The last thing we want is for people to connect the cafe with people in hazmat suits.” I saw his point. Everyone had sort of stunned expression and seemed reticent about going back inside.
The obvious answer was to give something away. Nothing like free stuff to cheer people up. I found Bob and the three of us worked it out. Bob and I went on inside, and Mr. Royal apologized to the crowd and said we’d be giving out free party drinks to make up for it.
“Wait for me,” Adele called, threading through the people until she caught up with us. We worked out an assembly line. Bob manned the blenders. I poured the drinks into small cups, Adele did whipped cream and set them out on the counter. Dinah stepped in and handled crowd control. CeeCee was our first customer. She seemed a little unnerved by what had just happened.
“That’s it. From now on, it’s only real sugar for me.”
Finally Bob made drinks for us and seconds for CeeCee, and we all collapsed around one of the tables. D. J. pulled up a chair and joined us. The doll was still laying on the table and I went to pick it up. CeeCee sucked the last of her drink through a straw and got my attention.
“I made a few calls while we were stuck outside. I described the doll, and one of the Hearts and Barks directors remembered it. More than remembered it; she’d bought it for her granddaughter. When she told me who’d donated it, I was surprised I hadn’t remembered myself. Ariel Rose made it. Get it?” CeeCee said, pointing to the rosebud on the underpants.
Adele reacted first. “Ariel Rose,” she repeated in a loud voice. “The Ariel Rose. She crochets. Wow, we’ve hit the jackpot.” The donation was from several years earlier before Ariel Rose had become the current
D. J. listened with a confused expression. Dinah was sitting next to him and told him the whole story of the doll in the garbage and why we were so interested in it.
“Pretty clever,” he said. “Also pretty interesting. It doesn’t exactly go with the image I got of that producer. She seemed all aggressive-career-woman to me.”
Bob pulled a chair up and joined us. “It looks like Robyn was just what they call collateral damage. Someone is out to discredit Nature’s Sweetie. The whole pitch for the product is how it has almost no calories but is safe and natural. You think anybody is going to want to buy it now?”
“That’s wonderful news,” CeeCee said and stopped herself. “Dear, that came out wrong. It’s not wonderful news that nobody is going to buy that sweetener. It’s wonderful news that as soon as the dust settles, I’m sure they’ll give Nell her job back.”
Now that Adele had heard that Ariel Rose crocheted, she said we had to meet her and talk her into being a cheerleader for the yarn art. “Just think of it, if she wore a little caplet over her evening gown on her next red carpet event and said she’d made it.”
“Hold on, dear,” CeeCee said to Adele. “If Nell is not on the hot seat anymore, the whole investigation is over with. It doesn’t matter about the dolls.”
“Here’s something weird,” I said. “This doll is obviously from when Robyn was a small child. Ariel Rose is in her late twenties and can’t be more than a few years older than Robyn. Unless she was some kind of child prodigy in the crochet department, it seems a little odd. Are you sure the doll in the past sale and this doll were made by the same person?”
“I know my crochet,” CeeCee said, “and the underpants with the rosebud is like a signature. Plus you said there was the surface crochet markings on the bottom of the shoe, and the person I spoke to said there were yarn squiggles on her doll, too.”
“I think we should talk to her. Even if we’re not investigating Robyn’s murder anymore, I’m really curious about how Ariel, the crochet items and Robyn are all related. Besides it feels a little anticlimactic to just drop everything.”
“If anybody is going to talk to her, it should be me. We talk the same language, besides I’d like to get her involved with Hearts and Barks again,” CeeCee said. “And Molly should go with me. She’s the professional here.” Adele’s eyes bugged out in response to the comment.
“I’m as much as a professional as Molly Poirot Pink is,” Adele protested.
“Let me see if I can put something together,” CeeCee said, pulling out her cell phone. I knew where she was headed. She’d call her agent and publicist, who in turn would get in touch with Ariel’s agent and publicist and try to set something up.
People outside the entertainment industry thought everyone knew each other, but it was far from true. Personally I thought the idea of setting something up would never work out, or if it did, it would take too long for it to happen.
“I think we should find out where she’s going to be and just show up,” I said.
“We can’t ambush her,” CeeCee said. “Then she’d never agree to help out with Hearts and Barks or even talk to us. Let me think about it.”
I stepped away from the table and called Mason. Really for two reasons. To see if he knew how we could get in touch with Ariel Rose and to find out if he could get a name to go with the license plate number I’d gotten. Even if the investigation was technically over, I still wondered who Robyn’s boyfriend was. I got his office, and instead of being put through, his assistant came back on the line and said Mason was tied up and offered to take a message.
By the time I went home for the day, I still hadn’t heard back from Mason.
In the meantime, I found another way to get to Ariel Rose. It happened by chance. Dinah and I had arranged to have a girl’s night out. It seemed like it had been forever since the two of us had an evening together. I made a brief stop home to take care of the animals, but it turned out to be unnecessary. Barry was working on the shelves and Jeffrey was in the den doing his homework. They had let the dogs out and fed them and the cats.
“Trouble sure follows you. I heard there was some excitement at the bookstore,” Barry said. He hadn’t changed out of his work clothes, which meant that he was probably expecting to leave. He’d merely taken off his tie and jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. “So, CeeCee’s niece should be off the hook,” he said. I asked what he knew and he gladly shared this time because he thought it would end my skulking around.
“The crime lab found several packets in the box from the bookstore cafe that appeared to have been opened and glued shut. It was like playing Russian roulette with sugar substitute. Lucky Bob didn’t put the sweetener out sooner.” I shuddered when he said this, remembering that Bob had offered me a packet. I’d almost been curious enough to try it.
“The packets looked just like what they found in Robyn Freed’s desk drawer and the box that somebody brought into the Van Nuys station. There was a note inside of that one from someone who seemed to have a beef with the product. They said all their claims were lies.” He explained they were all at the crime lab being checked for cyanide, but everybody seemed confident that it would be the same in all of them. “Then they’ll look for trace evidence that occurs in all three boxes and hope it connects them to somebody. So you see your work is all done.” I didn’t say anything, but until Nell was in the clear and actually had her job back, I wasn’t considering this case closed.
I asked him who had brought the box of sweetener to the Van Nuys station.
