else.” I pointed to my cell number on the card. I started to move away, but he stopped me.
“I forgot. The last time my sister came here, she gave me a weird framed photo of herself.”
I asked if I could see it. He seemed a little hesitant at first but agreed to get it. He left and came back as Annie was winding things up with the crocheters.
When he handed me the photo in a flowery silver frame, I almost choked. It was similar to the picture I’d seen in the box of Robyn’s things, as if it had been taken at the same time. She was in the funny hat, and there was a hole next to her. “She must have said something when she gave it to you,” I said. He thought for a moment and finally spoke.
“She did, but I can’t remember exactly what. Something like she couldn’t tell me about it then, but she’d explain it later.” He hung his head. “That was the last time I saw her.” His voice trailed off, and the sadness in it touched my heart. No matter what Robyn had been to anyone else, her brother had definitely loved her.
An hour later, Adele and I were trooping through the cafe on the way to the bookstore.
“Pink, why were you hanging out with the guy with the clipboard? He wasn’t even crocheting,” Adele said. Apparently, Adele had been listening to her MP3 player on the drive in and missed Annie’s whole story. When I explained who Miles was, she got all huffy.
“You should have told me you were investigating. I could have helped. You know, we could have played good cop, bad cop or something.”
I said a silent prayer that she hadn’t known. “Thanks for the thought, but I doubt it would have gotten me any more than I got. He said something about his sister’s job, and then he showed me a photo similar to the one I saw before with Robyn’s ex-boyfriend cut out of it. I’m hoping he thinks of something else.”
“Who’s the ex?” Adele asked. When I shrugged and said I didn’t have a name, she put her hand on her hip and looked toward Bob for agreement. “If I were Sherlock Pink, I’d be looking for Mr. Missing.”
Bob seemed to ignore her comment. He was up to his elbows in brownies for Salute to Chocolate. D. J. was standing at the counter with his empty mug, and Bob stopped cutting the squares long enough to give him black coffee and make me my trademark drink.
“Pink, you’re a caffeine addict,” Adele said with a snort before she rushed on to the bookstore.
Thankfully, most of the preparations for Salute to Chocolate had been taken care of, but still I knew once I walked into the bookstore I’d get snagged into doing last-minute stuff, so I let Adele go on ahead and I found a private corner and called Mason’s office. Adele’s comment had reminded me of what I still hadn’t been able to ask Mason. His assistant answered, and when I asked to speak to Mason, he hemmed and hawed and asked what I wanted. Mason had left instructions that he was to take care of anything I needed. I could feel my face falling. This was worse than when I’d called and he wasn’t alone. When I told the assistant I wanted the name connected to a license plate number, he sounded doubtful but took the information. If I couldn’t get one kind of information, I thought I’d try for another.
“I guess a lot of stuff has changed now that Mason has met someone,” I said. “Do you know anything about her?” I asked.
The assistant took a while to answer. “You mean like a girlfriend? Not that he shares that kind of information with me, but I don’t think he’s got one. He gave me his tickets to the U2 concert at Staples because he had no one to go with.”
“Well, then, if he hasn’t met someone, why is he being so strange? Is he mad at me?”
The assistant seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “He didn’t seem angry. He just said, if you called, I should take care of anything you needed.”
I asked if I could speak to Mason directly to straighten things out. He hesitated and finally said he couldn’t put me through. When he said Mason had been specific about that, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. How could I straighten out whatever was wrong if he wouldn’t even talk to me?
A bunch of thoughts went through my mind. Was Mason sick? Had I done something to offend him? I was definitely going to find out. Just not now.
I ended the call and went on into the bookstore. Mrs. Shedd and Mr. Royal were waiting for me in the event area.
“Look what Joshua made,” Mrs. Shedd said as he carried in a cardboard cocoa bean tree and set it up. Some of the vendors had already brought advertising materials and their chocolate offerings. The main table was clear except for a perfectly centered calligraphy placard with the bookstore name. There was no way the camera could miss it.
D. J. wandered in from the cafe and checked out the preparations.
“Nice,” he said, touching the cardboard tree. No matter how casual he was trying to appear, I knew he was trying to make sure all the arrangements for him were in place. “So what’s the plan?”
“We start off with Eduardo reading from
“Between a cover model and being dipped in chocolate,” he said with a grin. “Sounds good to me. By the way, thanks for doing this. I was afraid Robyn’s death was going to mess things up.” He caught himself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that as cold as it sounded. This bookstore and the cafe have become like home to me now, and I just wanted to say how much I appreciate everything.”
Throughout the rest of the day, even as I finished the setup for the evening, my thoughts kept going back to Mason.
As Mr. Royal and I set up extra folding chairs since free chocolate was likely to bring in a big crowd, I decided that I was going to get to the bottom of the thing with Mason when the evening was done. Making the decision made it a little easier to focus on the event in front of me. Just as I was roping off the event area to keep customers out until the appointed hour, a local food artist rushed in with a fudge sculpture of an open book, along with a brochure showing off centerpieces for everything from weddings to sweet sixteen parties.
As usual, there was more to do than I’d expected, and I had worked straight through without even going home to change. I’d called Samuel to make sure he took care of the animals.
There was a lull in the store around dinner hour, and I rejuvenated with a red-eye and checked out what Adele had done for the kids’ department. She wasn’t big on the idea of a bunch of kids running around with sticky fingers, so she’d set up games. Leave it to Adele to get something crocheted in it. She’d made a yarn checkerboard with milk chocolate and dark chocolate colored squares. Even the games pieces were yarn circles. She had a number of Candy Land games out, too, and a display of the Chocolate Cookie Man series.
Talia and her crew came in and set up their lighting and put up the notification of filming signs.
People began to filter in and fill up the seats. D. J. had changed into a corduroy sports jacket over his jeans and looked very much the writer. He hung around the front of the area, talking to everybody. Even though this was really just a run-through, I could see it was a big moment for him. People seemed to know who he was and were disappointed when he said they couldn’t buy his book yet, since it wasn’t officially out for another few weeks. He seemed personable and knew how to work the crowd. I was glad things had worked out.
One of Talia’s people brought in a box of D. J.’s books. I’d seen the advance copies, but these were the first with the actual covers.
Talia still wasn’t happy about the staged book signing being patched onto a real event. I was hoping to keep her discontent from spreading to D. J. “Don’t worry, it will be fine,” I said to both of them.
“Whatever,” Talia said with an impatient groan. “Let’s get started.”
I didn’t like her pushiness, but I wanted to get D. J.’s part done with. I was about to step to the front of the crowd when Rayaad, our cashier, threaded through the people and got my attention.
“There’s a phone call for you. Someone named Miles said something about a photograph,” Rayaad said over the din of conversation. When I made a move to follow Rayaad, Talia put her hand on my arm.
“You’re kidding, right? You can’t seriously be taking a call now,” Talia said, gesturing toward the film crew.
“It’s important,” I said, but Talia rolled her eyes in disbelief. It didn’t make any difference even when I explained who Miles was and what information he might have. I had no choice but to tell Rayaad to give him my cell number and tell him to call back in an hour.
