“She’s in her forties and has brown hair. She took my kids to the park Tuesday and Thursday morning around ten. She’s probably doing the same with the family she works for now. They live up in the hills, so she’s probably still taking them to Tarzana Park.” I noticed that Ariel’s eyes were filling with water. “What I did was wrong. But please don’t say anything to him.” We all glanced toward the window. Pierce Sheraton and Talia Canon were walking by toward the bookstore. “I’m sorry if it caused some kind of trouble.” She took out a checkbook and wrote a check and handed it to me. “Please give this to the Hearts and Barks people to make up for any problem.”
She’d begun edging toward the door and waved to her daughters and the woman to join her. Then she was gone.
“Well, I guess there was some benefit out of all that,” CeeCee said, taking the check from me. “Her guilt payment is going to help a lot of dogs and cats.”
As we walked back to the bookstore, Adele was sulking and mumbling about losing out on a celebrity crocheter. I was more interested in trying to find the nanny.
No time to think about it. Adele went back to her area and Mrs. Shedd waved me over. Talia Canon was standing with her.
“Molly is the one who handles all the events,” Mrs. Shedd said. “You should talk to her.” Mrs. Shedd took off and I sensed there was some kind of problem. I was still holding the crocheted doll. Talia gave it an odd look. I had it under my arm nestled against my body like I was cuddling it, and I suppose it must have looked a little strange.
“It belonged to Robyn,” I said. Luckily Talia didn’t ask me why I had it. It would have sounded too weird to say I fished it out of the trash. D. J. Florian came out of the cafe and joined Talia. I noticed that the entertainment reporter was following him out of the cafe and carrying a coffee drink. Pierce eyed the doll and gave me a strange look. One that didn’t improve when I mentioned who the doll had belonged to. I began by apologizing for asking him to leave the cafe a while back.
He laughed. “I’ve been chased out of lots of places. It goes with the territory. Don’t worry, I didn’t take it personally.” He looked at the doll in my arms. “What are you doing with Robyn’s doll?”
“It’s a long story,” I said with a dismissive wave. “Did you know her very well?”
“I like to think I know everybody in the business. Too bad about what happened to her.”
I asked him if she passed along information to him.
“What are you, some kind of amateur detective?” he said, suddenly noticing that I was asking him a bunch of questions. “You’re not trying to make me one of your suspects, are you?” He laughed at the absurdity. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but the cops are just considering her a random victim now that other tainted sweetener has shown up.”
“I heard someone brought in a box of it to the Van Nuys police station,” I said, and Pierce got his trademark smirk.
“Not exactly brought it in,” he said. “The cops are trying to keep a lid on it. They want to give the impression they know who dropped off the tainted box.”
“But you know what really happened?” I asked.
“I get the scoops on everything,” he said with a certain amount of cocky pride. “I heard from my source that the box of sweetener was actually left outside the door in the middle of the night.”
“They must have some kind of surveillance cameras,” I said.
“Very good,” Pierce said, seeming impressed. “But it didn’t do them much good. Since it was drizzling that night, the person was carrying an umbrella and used it to block the camera’s view. Personally, I think the whole tainted thing is a diversion. To make it look like Robyn wasn’t the target,” Pierce said. I got a sinking feeling that the cops might be thinking that, too. Specifically Detective Heather. Maybe poor Nell wasn’t off the hook after all.
Talia made a loud
“We’re not here to discuss Robyn,” the segment producer said. Any hesitation about stepping into Robyn’s shoes seemed to be gone. “I happened to be in the area and stopped in to look over the place for the piece on D. J.” The blogoir author nodded to her and she continued. “He’s concerned about being stuck on to the chocolate event.”
She was carrying a folder and began to thumb through the pages. “Robyn left some notes about the kind of shots she wanted.” A sheet slipped out and she grabbed it. “What’s this?” she said, holding it out to D. J. I got a glimpse of it. It seemed to be blank except for
He handed the sheet back to her. “We already filmed that. She wanted to recreate when I hit bottom.”
“I’m glad somebody can make sense out of her notes.” Talia found another sheet that had
I tried to be diplomatic and explained that there would be no horde waving chocolate bars. We would set D. J. up before the event actually began. “It’s much more efficient and cost effective for us,” I said.
Talia cut me off, shaking her head. “Maybe that’s true, but it really won’t work for what I have in mind. Is there any way I can get you to reconsider. I’m sure when Robyn set this up, that isn’t what was agreed on.”
I will usually try to please someone who asks so directly, but she was rubbing me the wrong way. Shedd & Royal was only getting a small fee and a promotional consideration out of all this, and it wasn’t worth a whole separate setup.
“Now if you’d like to reconsider and rent out the store for the day, you could shoot it any way you want,” I said, pleased with how I stood up to her.
Talia’s mouth slipped into the mixture of a sneer and pout. I got the feeling spending more money wasn’t in her plan.
“I’ll say it again. This just won’t work for us. If you can’t accommodate us, I’ll use a different bookstore.”
I called her bluff and told her to go ahead.
CHAPTER 23
“GOOD FOR YOU, MOLLY,” DINAH SAID THE NEXT day when I told her how Talia had tried to steamroller me into doing a whole separate setup for D. J.’s fake book signing. In the end, Talia had sputtered a lot and then given in. We were sitting at my kitchen table and were so busy catching up, I hadn’t even thought to make coffee.
I shared what Pierce had said about the box of sweetener, and Dinah shook her head. “I debated what to do with the information,” I said. Then I guiltily admitted that the first thing I’d done was to check where Nell was when the box was dropped off. “CeeCee assured me Nell was at her house the whole night. She knew because Nell had slept on the couch in her living room. Apparently Nell had gotten fearful of sleeping in the guest quarters since Detective Heather had done her search.”
“Did you tell CeeCee you think Nell might still be a suspect?”
“I had to tell her what I heard. I had hoped to talk to Mason first, but—” When I stopped talking abruptly, Dinah looked up.
“And?” she said. My friend knew me too well not to figure there was something wrong.
“Mason has been hard to reach lately,” I began. “More than hard to reach. He hasn’t been returning my calls. So, I called his house, late, figuring he’d answer.” I paused for a moment. “Let’s say I got more than I bargained for.”
Dinah was all ears as I recounted the phone call. I told her how it had rung a long time and I’d been about to hang up when he had answered.
“Mason,” I said. “Finally. I have so much to talk to you about.”
“Molly, this isn’t the best time,” he said. There was something in his voice I’d never heard before. He sounded awkward, distracted, and then I got it.
“Is someone there?” I said. I waited hoping he’d dismiss my concern with some other explanation, but he
