I came home to relative quiet. The dogs and cats were waiting for my attention, Beth was getting ready to leave after looking after Marlowe. I was pleased to see that Peter was there and seemed to be taking an active role in Marlowe’s care. He had her sitting in the high chair that had appeared shortly after she came to stay and he was feeding her something out of a jar. He looked up as I went through the kitchen with the dogs in tow.
“It’s not the same as when I was little,” Peter said, wiping a dribble of puréed peaches off his daughter’s chin. “Did Dad ever do diaper duty or this?” He had a spoonful of the peaches and pretended it was a plane coming in to land in her mouth. “I saw this move on a TV show.” She giggled and he tried to hand the spoon to me.
“Nope,” I said. “Finish what you started.” I did a pitch on how he should be so glad to have a relationship with his daughter.
He let out a tired sigh. “I think I like the old way better when all that was expected of dads was taking them out for a pony ride.” Peter told me that his brother had fed the whole crew of animals before he left. I let them out into the backyard and went to check the refrigerator to consider my dinner and asked Peter if he was going to join me.
“You know I’d love to,” he said in the tone he used in his business. “But I have a dinner meeting.” He tried to feed Marlowe some more, but she was done with the peaches. He put the cap back on the baby food and dropped the spoon in the sink. “Any update with Miles?” he asked.
When I said there was nothing new yet, his expression changed to displeased and he brought up ending it again. “Maybe it’s one of those things where there is no there, there,” he said. “You could just drop out of the mommy group until Gabby gets back.”
“Not exactly,” I said and told him about Adele’s call from Lily. If he looked displeased before, he was really upset now.
“She’s sure to let on who you really are and it would be so embarrassing to have it out there that I was using my mother to check up on potential investors. I’m sorry I listened to—” He interrupted himself. “You have to go with her when she goes to their house and make sure they don’t decide to use her for the kids’ party.”
He went off to his business dinner and I made an omelet for myself as Marlowe watched from her high chair. She eyed it as I was eating and I put some pieces out for her, which she ate on her own. I thought over what Peter had said and came up with a solution.
• • •
Adele was waiting for me when I came to the bookstore the morning of the party meeting. She was dressed in her queen outfit for story-time. “I thought it would be good for the meeting,” she said, swirling the red velvet cape she wore over a long dress before adjusting the crocheted silver crown that was a little off-kilter. She wanted to know the plan I’d come up with since she was going to be the one to present it. I had written something up and handed the folder with the pages to her while admonishing her not to use my name, but instead refer to me as her associate. I got her to agree by convincing her it would put too much of the spotlight on me to use my name. “Absolutely. I will call you my assistant. Queen Adele is the one in charge.”
Since I knew the goal was not to get the gig, I was more than happy to let Adele run the show.
She insisted on driving even though I knew the way. We made quite a pair as we walked up to the house. She had the cape and crown and I was wearing my usual khaki pants and white shirt with a sweater over it that had become like my work uniform.
The housekeeper did a double take as she let us in and sent us back to the great room at the back of the two-story pseudo farmhouse where the mommy group had met.
Lily joined us after a few minutes. There was no semblance of it being a social call as when I’d been there before. No offer of a drink or elite bagels meant to impress. She clearly viewed us as the help. Adele went overboard with referring to me as her assistant and actually made me stay a step behind her, which worked out in my favor. The only time I stepped out of the background was when I asked if Miles would be joining us. Lily dismissed the idea.
“I’m the one making the arrangements. Even with being CEO of my company, I still have to take care of everything.” There was a strong emphasis on everything, which led me to believe she had to clean up his messes, like maybe pick up his socks. Adele took out a storyboard from the oversized portfolio she’d brought in. She’d created a whole presentation from my notes. The one thing for sure about Adele was that she knew how to command a room. She’d brought a laser pointer and was busy describing the setup for the party as she pointed to the board. I slipped further into the background and mumbled something about using the restroom, which went unnoticed. I couldn’t pass up the chance to have one more look around. I thought it was too intrusive to try to look upstairs and figured the best place to find anything about Miles was in the office where I’d been interrupted by him when I had looked before.
I was beginning to think that Peter might be right about there being nothing to find. Or if there was anything to find, it wouldn’t be there. As I looked around the pleasant room with a view of the side yard, I went over what I had found out about Miles. His two brothers were the principals in the family construction business but he got a share of the profits. He was trying to buy his way into show business and seemed to want the image of being a producer. I looked at all the pictures on the wall from the western and Miles appeared to be having the time of his life.
I guessed he would probably want to do the same with Peter’s production and I ought to make a point of that to Peter again. Maybe it wasn’t anything terrible, but having Miles in the middle of things might be annoying. I glanced at the desks. His appeared unused, but the receipt I’d seen before on her desk had been joined by some others.
I didn’t dare stay gone too long and went back into the large open space. Adele was still using the pointer and the storyboard. Lily had a flat expression and I expected her to interrupt Adele at any moment and tell her she’d changed her mind.
My absence didn’t seem to have been noticed. Adele had gotten to the list of what she would provide, which I knew was the last part of the proposal I’d created. I let her finish and got ready for the rejection.
“Let me see if I understand this,” Lily said. “You are proposing putting on a vintage-themed party with games such as pin the tail on the donkey. The food would be a lunch of hot dogs, French fries, Jell-O, a grocery store sheet cake and cups of grocery store brand ice cream. The decorations would be streamers, a banner with a personalized happy birthday, and balloons. There would be party hats and party favors, which would be paper baskets filled with bags of something called penny candy. The entertainment would be you reading some special stories.”
I listened, almost mouthing the words, imagining what she was thinking of the plan. There was no ice cream truck offering an assortment of treats, no pony rides, goody bags with real jewelry or a fancy menu of goat cheese pizza and fruit parfaits or a cake from a trendy bakery. There was nothing elite about the party.
Lily got to the end of her roundup of what Adele had said and I took a step toward the door.
“I love it,” Lily said finally. “The whole vintage concept is so fresh and nothing like the parties we’ve gone to. I’ll be a trailblazer.” Then she gave the date when she wanted it and my mouth fell open at how soon it was. I also understood why she was willing to hire Adele. She had no other options.
All I could think of was that Peter was going to throw a fit.
• • •
Adele was still high from giving her presentation when the Hookers met in the late afternoon and I realized I had created a monster. “It’s just the start,” Adele said, pacing up and down next to the table where the rest of us were sitting. Adele’s over-the-top behavior had affected Sheila the most and she’d pulled out her emergency string and crochet hook and was frantically making a long string of chain stitches.
Rhoda laughed that Lily had found the idea fresh. Elise was upset that she’d been left out since she thought her real estate expertise would come in handy. Eduardo suggested adding a pinata.
While Adele was going on about her triumph, I had leaned in to Dinah and told her how my plan had backfired. “And now I have to help her do the thing,” I said.
Elise made another pitch to help, but Adele refused again. “I know what you’re up to,” Adele said. “You want to pitch the parents on listing their houses with you.” Adele shook her head for emphasis. “Molly is my helper.” Everyone looked up at her not calling me by my last name. Adele glanced over the table. “Why are you all so surprised? Molly asked me not to call her Pink anymore.” I choked back a laugh. Was that all it took? Just asking her?
Just then, Leslie Bittner walked into the yarn department and looked around at the table full of people and the cubbies filled with colorful yarn arranged by type.
“Are you interested in joining us?” I asked, indicating an empty chair. Leslie turned her gaze to the table. “No, thank you. I wanted to talk to CeeCee Collins,” she said, looking directly at the actress. Eduardo got up from the chair next to her and gestured for Daisy’s assistant to take it.
Leslie shook her head. “I was hoping for something a little more private.” CeeCee got up and the two of them walked back into the bookstore and stood near the reference department while we all watched.
“What do you think she wants?” Dinah asked.
“After talking to her the other day, I have a pretty good idea,” I whispered. I was going to say more, but CeeCee returned and Rhoda in her direct way asked what it was all about.
“She wanted me to host the podcast that Daisy Cochran was going to do. She’s taking it over now,” CeeCee said with a disapproving sound. “She said I would be the perfect host and tried to sell me on what a great opportunity it was for me. She seems certain the podcast is going to be a hit. She went on explaining that Daisy had left outlines for the shows and the reveals were going to be pretty shocking. She said that some people who thought they were home free might be in for a surprise. She didn’t name names and once she understood I wasn’t interested, she stopped cold.”
“I suppose whatever information Daisy left could get the police to take an interest,” Eduardo said. “Maybe even bring a charge for murder.”
“Someone who thought they were home free could freak if they thought they were in jeopardy,” Rhoda said. “I wonder how far they’d go to keep things quiet.”
Elise looked at me. “You’re the detective here. What do you think?” Adele let out a groan at the comment.
“I do think it could have gotten Daisy killed,” I said. “I keep hearing about all the dark stuff she knew. Hearing that she was going to put it out there now must have made some people nervous.”
“I thought she died from a seizure,” Sheila said, making awkward stitches on the row of chains.
All but Adele’s head swiveled back to me for an answer. She seemed to be purposely not getting involved and was staring down at the crochet project in front of her. “Maybe, maybe not. The homicide detective I talked to seems to be investigating it as foul play even though they don’t seem to know for sure if it was,” I said.
“Homicide detective?” Rhoda said. “Then you are talking to him again.”
“No,” I said decisively. “It wasn’t Barry. I told you all that is over, as in no contact.”
“What about this one?” Rhoda said. “What does he look like?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “He was strictly investigating, playing Columbo with just one more question.”
“Or maybe he’s just looking for an excuse to see you,” Rhoda persisted.
I shook my head. “No. It’s because I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a suspect.”
They all seemed shocked and I brought up the drink and that Daisy was overheard accusing me of trying to kill her.
“That’s nonsense,” Dinah said.
“I agree,” I said. “But it’s another case of a cop following his gut reaction, so sure that he’s right.”
“What are you going to do?” Sheila said in a worried voice.
“Find out the truth,” Dinah said. “With my help.”
Adele finally looked up, rocking her head and rolling her eyes. “Here we go again. P—” She started to say Pink, but stopped herself. “Molly is going to do her Sherlock Holmes–Nancy Drew–Miss Marple thing.” I didn’t dignify it with a comment.
“The CPA is still available,” Rhoda said, going right back to her matchmaking efforts. “You could do worse.”
“Or I could do not at all,” I said. It seemed like I had enough on my plate without being worried about romance.
We’d been so I intent on our conversation that I hadn’t noticed that someone was sitting in one of the easy chairs in the yarn department. It was only when Dinah got up to leave that I looked around the area and saw him.
“Garth?” I said, surprised at realizing he was the one occupying the chair. I felt all their eyes on me as I took a couple of steps toward the chair, prepared to talk to him. I decided to be proactive and not let the Hookers assume that the writer was some secret lover of mine. I retraced my steps and hung over the table. “He’s from the mommy group I’m taking Marlowe to,” I said in a low voice. “That’s all.”
I heard some chuckles as I walked away and someone said something about me protesting too much.
“Hey,” Garth said as I approached. He was wearing jeans and a green T-shirt under a leather jacket. Hard to tell with a writer if they were his work clothes or his casual wear since they were probably the same. He stood when I got closer and glanced back at the table. “Is that CeeCee Collins?” he asked, looking at the petite blondish woman.
I nodded and explained who the group was.
“Tarzana Hookers,” he said and chuckled. “I bet that gets a laugh every time.” He wanted to know what we were making and the difference between knitting and crochet. I considered bringing Adele over and letting her loose on him, but I decided to spare him her dramatic show and told him.
“Good to know. Seems like you have some interesting characters.” He paused for a moment, as if an idea had struck him and he was thinking it through. “I think I’m going to write a concept for a sitcom about a group like yours. Did I hear right that you investigate crimes?”
“That was Adele. If you need a character for your concept, she’s the one to use. Though you’d probably have to tone her down. She was just teasing me,” I said.
“I also heard you say you might be a suspect,” he said with a question in his voice. “It sounds like something I could use. I could make it a comedy crime show.”
I brought up Daisy and her author event. “It’s ridiculous. All because someone overheard Daisy say I was trying to kill her because I got her the wrong fruit smoothie.”
He laughed. “That’s even too ridiculous for me to include in a script. I’m sure there were people with real motives. Daisy had been tossing around hints that she was going to release some stunning information. She talked to me about writing something for the podcasts. Not a script really, more of filling in an outline and organizing the information so suspense would build and lead to a final reveal.”
“So then you must know about the information she had,” I said and he shook his head.
“It never went further than her talking to me about how she wanted to organize the podcast. I wondered if it was all hype anyway. I guess we’ll never know.”
“Her assistant has all the notes and she’s planning to go ahead with the podcast once she finds a celebrity to host it,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, surprised. Then he muttered something about thinking that the whole project was dead. He looked up at me and smiled. “Next time the group meets, it’s our place. There won’t be the splendor of Taylor’s house.” He let out a tired sigh. “She always makes such a big deal about the place and being Mrs. Palmer. I wonder how she’s going to react if, like her husband’s other marriage, theirs ends.” He caught himself. “I shouldn’t really gossip about the others in the group.”
“Feel free to talk all you like,” I said. “What about Lily and her husband?” I tried to appear nonchalant, but I was hoping for some inside information I could pass along to Peter.
“You’ve probably noticed that she’s a bore going on and on about her cocoon jackets and how she’s CEO,” he said. “As for Miles, I’d say he’s just what you’d expect from someone with two older successful brothers. He puts on a big act of being important, but I think he’s pretty thin-skinned.” Garth shrugged.
“I’m assuming you’re here for a reason besides talking about the mommy group,” I said. “Can I help you with something?”
“I had forgotten about this place until you talked about it with the group. I had some time to kill and I love bookstores. So here I am.” He pointed at a stack of books next to him. “That’s what happens when you browse in a real store instead of buying online.”
He started to gather the books. “The woman in the front said you were back here and I didn’t want to leave without at least saying hello.”
It was the first time I’d ever talked to him without the group there and I asked him how he felt about being a guy in a mommy group.
“Well, since you asked,” he said. “I don’t really like it, but I do it because it’s networking. The meeting I had today is because Kath thought of me when they decided to do an infomercial about her husband’s plastic surgery clinics. I’d much rather work on something about your group, but in the meantime writing a script about the magic they perform pays the bills.”
I asked if it was hard to write and he let out a sigh. “Yes. There’s no storytelling. It’s all about painting a picture full of promises and at the same time adding that there are no guarantees. I gather they had some unhappy patients.”