stared a little too long. A moment later, the woman left her ice tea sitting on the counter and walked over to the table.
“Oh, Ms. Collins, I’ve been watching you since I was a girl,” she said, eyeing her with reverence. CeeCee changed her expression in a split second and smiled sweetly, despite the
“Did you make that?” the woman squealed touching the small purple purse CeeCee was holding. She had just attached a tiny white flower with an iridescent crystal in the middle.
Eduardo came in from the bookstore. “Are we meeting here now?” he said, looking over the overflowing table.
Adele stood up and grabbed her work. “No, c’mon, everyone, let’s go to the yarn department where we have some room.” CeeCee gave her an annoyed flick of her eyes. Even after all this time, Adele was still trying to take charge of the group.
The coffee had done its job and I felt like myself again. Just as I prepared to get up, Mrs. Shedd came in and looked around.
“There she is,” she said as Annie Hoover stepped from behind her. If I had looked awful, the nanny looked worse. The two kids I’d seen her with at the park trailed her.
“It’s Miles,” Annie said. “He’s dead.”
CHAPTER 30
I HADN’T NOTICED AT FIRST THAT ANNIE HAD more with her than the kids. Then I saw the man and woman in dark suits. They flashed badges and I told the rest of the Hookers to go on without me. It turned out to be without Adele as well. The man glommed on to Adele, not that she seemed to mind. I watched as she puffed up with importance and wondered if he knew what he was in for. The woman introduced herself as Detective Henderson and explained she was an investigator with the sheriff’s department. She was all friendly as she led me outside and said she’d like to ask me a few questions to clarify things. She opened the passenger door of her sedan and gestured for me to get in. The door shut almost before I’d cleared it. She got in the driver’s seat and took out her pad. She asked me about the previous day.
“I went to the halfway house with Annie to help teach a certain crochet technique,” I said. “What happened to Miles?” She ignored my question. Not a surprise, I knew by now that the law enforcement people tried to keep all the questioning in their hands.
“Ms. Hoover said you were interested in talking to Miles. Why is that?”
I dreaded telling her I was investigating Robyn’s death. Along with not wanting to answer questions, law enforcement people weren’t all that fond of amateur investigators. The detective just stared at me, waiting for an answer. Finally I just told her the truth. It didn’t go over very well, particularly when it was obvious I was investigating to try to prove the cops were wrong.
She had her notebook open and was scribbling down notes. I asked again what had happened to Miles. She was getting impatient and must have realized she might have to give some information to get some.
“He ODed,” she said curtly. “We’re trying to find out how he got the drugs. Ms. Hoover mentioned that you’d given him a crocheted doll. We found it in his room. The back was cut open as if something had been stashed inside.”
“What?” I said in an incredulous tone. This wasn’t good. I suddenly felt vulnerable. Had I been set up? “I don’t know anything about anything,” I said. The detective gave me a disbelieving look and said nothing, and I knew she was using the dead-air technique. But two could play that game. I just sat there and let the silence hang like a stone in the air. She finally cracked.
“Where’d you get the doll? Why did you give it to him? When did you put the drugs in?”
“I don’t have anything else to say,” I said.
“I’m just trying to clear things up,” she said in a friendly voice. When I held my ground, she excused herself and went back into the cafe. Through the window, I watched as she waved to the detective who was questioning Adele to confer with her.
She doesn’t know who she’s dealing with, I thought. This was all a ploy and I knew exactly what she was going to say when she came back. She didn’t let me down, either. “You might as well just tell me the whole story. Your friend just gave you up,” she said with a triumphant air.
For a split second, I wondered if it was true. But then when the detective claimed that Adele had said I’d put drugs in the doll and given Robyn the poisoned sweetener, I knew it was just a detective’s trick. Her partner probably said something similar to Adele. There was something wrong about them being able to lie like that, but I knew they did it.
“You’re not going to deny that you were present when the victim’s sister was poisoned are you?” she said. I admitted to being there, but that was all. She tried to work me some more, but I just stonewalled her. I’d learned enough about how cops worked from Barry to know that saying nothing was my best defense, but I also knew that this wasn’t going to be the end of it.
Finally Detective Henderson left. Annie was sitting in the cafe with her charges. She looked worried. Adele was sitting with her and gave me a suspicious look as I sat down.
“Pink, I can’t believe you fingered me,” she said.
“I didn’t. That’s just a detective’s trick to try to get confessions. I didn’t finger you any more than you fingered me,” I said. Adele suddenly avoided my eye and looked down at the table. “You did finger me, didn’t you?” I said incredulous.
“I’m sorry, Pink, that detective got me in the corner. I might have mentioned that you were there when Robyn died. He said they were going to arrest me and there’d be no judge to set bail and I’d be stuck in a cell for days.”
“Arrest you for what?” I threw up my hands. “Nobody gets it, the cops don’t have to tell the truth.”
Adele threw herself across the table and almost tackled me with her hug. “Can you forgive me, Pink?” When I took a moment to answer, she got hysterical. “You have to, we’re like sisters.”
Finally I let her off the hook and she left the cafe to go back to the yarn department. Annie said she had to get the two kids to some kind of event and gathered them up, along with their chocolate milk. I watched them go out the door as I pulled out my BlackBerry
“Sunshine,” Mason said in a happy voice when he picked up the call. No delay this time, as soon as his assistant heard it was me, he put me through. “How are you doing? Do you need some consoling?” he said.
“Not exactly, more like legal help.” I told him about Miles and my visit from the sheriff’s investigator. I could practically hear Mason sitting taller on the phone as he told me what to do. Basically, if the sheriff’s people came back, I was to say nothing and call him. I knew it wasn’t a matter
When I finally got back to the yarn department, the group had scattered and only Dinah was still there. “What happened?” she said, reading my expression.
If only I’d been able to take Miles’ call. A thought went through my mind. What if somebody didn’t want me to hear what he had to say?
CHAPTER 31
AFTER THE WHOLE THING WITH BARRY AND NOW being almost accused of providing drugs to Miles, I did the only thing I could do, which was totally put it out of my mind and focus on work. I stayed late at the bookstore to make up for all the lost time. There was plenty to do. We were still cleaning up from Salute to Chocolate. The vanillites had turned out to be peaceful enough, but after they left, I’d begun to notice they’d left bits of vanilla beans everywhere. It was both good and bad. The good part was the bits of bean smelled better than any air freshener you could buy and added a gentle fragrance to the whole place, but the bad part was people had started complaining about being startled when they came across some little brown things they thought were bug
