Behind the Seams

door won’t open,” I said. I heard Dinah make a noise behind me. When I turned back toward the pharmacist, he had something in his hands. Before it could register, he’d pulled my hands behind my back and put plastic ties on them. I saw he’d already gotten Dinah. A moment later, I heard the clerk outside the door say, “They’re on their way.”

“Who’s on their way?” I demanded.

“The cops,” he said, pointing toward my purse. The clear bags of Red Hots were visible.

“It’s just a misunderstanding. I was going to pay for them before we left.”

Ty was unmoved, and both Dinah and I started straining against the plastic ties and making noise. Then it hit me maybe this was a good thing. I could show them the photo in my phone and tell them to show it to the director of the halfway house.

“Donna remembered you came in here before,” he said, nodding toward one of the clerks. “Was that just a chance to case the place?”

“Case the place? Yes, I came in here before because this place was the return address on the box of sweetener that poisoned Robyn Freed. That package was sent from here—by you—wasn’t it? I know who you are. You’re her boyfriend.”

“Was. Was her boyfriend,” he said with a sigh. “What’s it to you anyway? You’re not trying to tell me you’re some kind of cops or PIs?”

He realized what he said and laughed. “No, you’re definitely not cops. I don’t think LAPD is that hard up. You’re more like Agnes and Casey,” he said referring to a comedy cop show about two detectives who were also friends. “Cancel the part about private investigators, too. So what are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re just after the truth. So why’d you kill your girlfriend and her brother?”

“Miles is dead?” he said. It seemed like pretty genuine shock. “What happened?”

“I’ll ask the questions,” I said, trying to act intimidating. It would have helped if I’d had a badge or a gun and hadn’t been handcuffed. “Just wait until the cops come and I show them the photo of you and they take it to the halfway house. Ha, you thought making all those photos disappear would get you off the hook.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What pictures?”

“You also have access to all kinds of drugs,” I said, narrowing my eyes, “and probably stuff like cyanide, too. What was it? You were angry because she broke up with you and you cut yourself out of the pictures to hide the evidence.”

“She didn’t break up with me; I broke up with Robyn. We’d been going together for a long time. She cut me out of the photos because she was angry. Robyn was always aggressive, but once she got the promotion to segment producer, she was impossible. The job consumed her, along with her desire to go even further. You can’t have a relationship if you never see each other. She worked twenty-four, seven.”

“Geez, just like dating a detective,” I said, feeling a pang as I thought of Barry. “Did you know who her parents were?”

“Yeah. At first she told me they were dead. Then she told me the truth, which was that they were dead as far as she was concerned. When I heard she was handling the Barbara show they were going to be on, I got concerned. Even more so when she started talking about going outside the box and doing something really flashy without telling anybody. It’s on live in some cities, and whatever Robyn set up couldn’t be edited out. She thought if she could do something that would catch everyone, including Barbara, off guard, the show would make a splash, and they’d make Robyn a higher-level producer. It was all she talked about for the last couple of weeks. Then I snapped. I thought there had to be more to life than a TV show. She didn’t take the breakup well. I think anything close to rejection brought her right back to the relationship with her parents. She told me when she was a kid, they were never there. Either they were off making movies somewhere or they were just busy with something else. It bugged her because they gave off this image of being such caring humanitarian types.”

I heard the bell go crazy as the front door opened, and somebody said, “Back there.” A moment later, the cubicle was unlocked from the outside and a handful of uniforms came in.

“I detained them for you,” Ty said. He stepped over to two of the uniforms and started explaining something. I saw him pointing to the pharmacy area and heard something about us having a meth lab. They had separated Dinah and me and someone grabbed our purses, and the next thing I knew, I was getting into the back of a police car. Again.

Mrs. Shedd was not going to be happy when I didn’t show up for work.

CHAPTER 33

MASON WAS LAUGHING WHEN DINAH AND I WALKED out from behind the counter of the police station. A couple of the cops were laughing, too. I half expected Barry to pop up somewhere, but he didn’t. Though I was sure he’d hear about it somehow.

“You’ll be hearing from us about false imprisonment,” Mason said, putting on his serious lawyer face. He was laughing again before we got out of the door.

It was all a big mix up. Here’s what happened. Ty Holzer saw me walk through the open door into the pharmacy. Unbeknownst to me, inside there was a box of cold tablet packets one of the clerks was putting away. They were not prescription, but they were kept behind the counter and you could only buy a limited amount and had to show ID, all because people were using them to make street drugs. I mean, really, could anybody think Dinah and I were drug queenpin masterminds?

The clerk who’d been doing the stocking saw the Red Hots in my purse and thought they were the red cold pills. All the drinks and such were just stalls and tricks to get us in the consultation cubicle. Needless to say, when the cops took a really good look, or should I say sniff, of the “cold pills,” they realized the mistake.

On the drive back, Mason shared some information he’d gotten. The medical examiner had determined that Miles had died from a drug injection, not from the pills in the doll, which turned out to be aspirin. No syringe had been found in the room, leading them to speculate that someone else had given him the drugs. They were still waiting on results of what was in his system. Lastly, he’d given me a piece of paper. “Sorry it took so long,” he said. When I unfolded it, it had the license plate number and Ty Holzer’s information. It turned out he lived in Tarzana, too.

Mason dropped Dinah off at her house and me at the bookstore. “Should I give you a note, or do you want me to come in and explain?” he asked.

“I’m a big girl. I can handle it myself,” I said, getting out of the car.

Rayaad handed me a package when I passed the front counter. On top it said I’m Sorry in big letters, and inside was a selection of things from the Crown Apothecary, along with lots of coupons for complimentary hot fudge sundaes and a note saying he’d called the director of the halfway house and offered to go there in person and let the residents look at him to prove he wasn’t the one who had been there the day Miles was found dead. Ty had also called Mrs. Shedd and said the new owner had suggested that instead of just a rack of books from some distributor, that Shedd & Royal could have a rack of books for sale along with a sign advertising the store.

“He must feel very bad,” Mrs. Shedd said. She looked at me and suggested that after what I’d been through, I might want to take a crochet break before I started dealing with work. It sounded perfect to me and I headed to the back table. No surprise, there was a group of people around it, including Adele. She looked up as I approached.

“Pink, I heard you got arrested again,” Adele said. “How many times does that make? Let me see,” she said. I rolled my eyes. She made it sound like I was a regular at the police station.

“Before any ridiculous stories start to circulate, this is what happened,” I said and told them about the Red Hots being mistaken for cold pills.

“And you were worried about ridiculous stories circulating. What could be more ridiculous than that?” Rhoda said. Elise was sitting next to her, and in her birdlike voice, said she was just glad that Dinah and I were all right. Sheila appeared to have gotten nervous just thinking about us in plastic handcuffs. Eduardo shook his head. “Somebody is an idiot.” I was surprised at his anger. Eduardo was usually so mellow.

CeeCee was speechless until she began talking about her own stint in jail.