For Better or Worsted (15 page)

CHAPTER 20

L
AURIE JEAN CAME RUNNING AFTER ME AS
I MADE A
move toward the door. I signaled Dinah to get going. Laurie Jean was faster and rushed ahead of me and blocked the exit. And then she burst into tears.

“I finally thought I was getting a client,” she wailed, “and you’re just some snoop after information. What are you, reporters? P.I.’s?”

Dinah and I traded guilty glances and I came clean. When she heard it was Mason who wanted the list of servers, her eyes went skyward, and then she got up. “You want to see a list of who worked the reception. I’ll show it to you.” She marched into the office and came back with the bin I’d been looking through. She dumped the container on the table and ruffled through the papers before pulling a clump of pages that seemed stuck together and covered in a brown ooze. She pushed it toward me.

My first impulse was to go
ewww
. “Go ahead, look at it if you want. Good luck getting the pages apart.” Laurie Jean gave me a moment to pick up the clump of pages before she continued. “I pay the servers in cash as though it comes directly from the client,” she said. “I don’t keep records on them other than a handwritten list of who is supposed to work. They sign in as they come. I don’t know how it happened, but the sheet was on the table in the service area of the tent.” She pointed to the thing in my hand. “We think the brown stuff is balsamic vinegar glaze. Just before each tray of caprese appetizers went out, each one was given a squirt of the glaze. I don’t know how it ended up on the list. I don’t know who worked the wedding. All I know is that it was a disaster all the way around.”

Laurie Jean began to cry again. “The cops think I put the glaze on the papers and that I’m trying to cover up who was there. Everybody is calling my business Calamity Caterers.” Dinah found a tissue in her bag and handed it to Laurie Jean, and I felt terrible for leading her on and sneaking around. It all ended with a group hug and me offering to try to get her the food gig for a future crochet party. I waited for her to calm down before we left.

I called Mason when we got outside.

“It’s okay, Sunshine. You did the best you could,” he said when I finished telling him the whole story. Then I heard a low chuckle. “Sunshine, you always surprise me.”

* * *

“
I SHOULD HAVE ASKED LAURIE J
EAN ABOUT THE
shirt,” I said as Dinah and I headed down the street toward my car.

“Do you want to go back?” my friend said, but I shook my head. I had to get to work, and I didn’t want to do anything to bring up the wedding again to Laurie Jean. “Are we talking about the shirt you found outside the reception?” Dinah asked. I started the car and pulled out into traffic.

I said it was and reminded her of my discovery, which took longer than I’d expected because this time she had the same reaction Barry had and wondered why I was taking my shirt off in Mason’s yard.

“That’s not the point,” I said. “I think the direction the collar was facing means the killer came out of the reception, dropped the bloody shirt, and then went back in as if nothing had happened.” Then something troubling occurred to me. “Except for one thing—what were they wearing? I’m sure if someone came in without a shirt, they would have been noticed.”

“I bet they would have,” Dinah said with a giggle. We talked back and forth about it for a moment before my friend had an idea. “Didn’t you say you were giving a crochet lesson to Emerson. She was there and wore one of those white shirts. Maybe you can slip in some questions while you teach her the chain stitch.”

I pulled into a parking spot behind the bookstore. Dinah got out of the car and rushed to hers so she could get back to Beasley Community College for her class. I moved at the same speed to the bookstore, suddenly realizing the time.

Mrs. Shedd was glancing down at her watch when I skidded into the bookstore. Normally she didn’t keep tabs on my exact hours, because I always worked more hours than I got paid for. To me it was all about getting the job done. I saw that some of the Hookers were hanging out at the worktable. Before heading back there, I mentioned to Mrs. Shedd that Emerson and her daughter were coming for a pre-party crochet lesson. I also told her about Emerson’s idea for expanding the party. No surprise, my boss was thrilled.

I didn’t get quite the same reaction from Adele. She was hunkered down in the children’s area, finishing up a sign about her upcoming story time event. Usually we just had a photograph of the author, but she’d added a picture of a cute little pig. “Pink, you should have checked with me before you agreed to the lesson. I could have had plans.”

“Why the pig picture?” I said.

“That’s Hamlet, the mini pig,” she said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes as if it was a ridiculous question. She pointed to the title of the book,
Pig Tales
. “The tales are about him.” She brushed off some crumbs of rubber cement and set the sign on an easel in the entrance to her area.

“So, are you going to help me with the crochet lesson or not?” I asked as I prepared to go to the yarn department.

“You’re lucky I just finished putting up the sign and can help.” She joined me and we went across the store to the back area. Adele pulled out a plastic bin we kept stowed in one of the cabinets. It had a supply of different-size hooks and some odd balls of yarn. I was glad to see Rhoda and Elise were both at the worktable, even though it wasn’t a regular meeting time. Rhoda was finishing a brown scarf to send to a group that sent them off to soldiers. Elise shoved her project into her bag and pulled out a skein of black-and-white variegated yarn, saying she’d come up with a new vampire style. “Instead of exact stripes, this yarn creates the impression of stripes.”

“The plans for the party have changed a bit,” I said before explaining the addition of the parents. I told Rhoda we’d need either two separate projects for the adults and kids, or one that would work for both groups, and I told Elise we’d need more kits.

Elise said she had made up a list of items to put in the kits. She began to search through her bag for it. Ever since she’d started selling the health products, she’d replaced her cloth tote bag with a big thing on wheels. She began to empty its contents on the table. As she set a small shopping bag with a label on the table, she looked toward Adele. “I brought your reorder of the diet powder.” She pushed it to Adele, who seemed a little surprised.

“Leonora was concerned you were going to run out,” Elise explained. At the sound of the name, Adele jumped, looking around as if the woman she was hoping would be her mother-in-law had suddenly appeared. At least she was dressed appropriately. Ever since Leonora had come for her visit, Adele had stayed with the plain look, even when the woman wasn’t present.

Adele snagged the paper shopping bag and went off to put it with her things as the two Hookers packed up their yarn and hooks and left.

Emerson and Lyla showed up just as Adele was returning. I let Adele take the girl down to one end of the table and then directed her mother to a separate spot. I gave her a size J hook and some worsted-weight yarn in an easy-to-work-with beige color. I demonstrated how to make a slipknot, followed by chain stitches. Emerson picked it up easily. It took some doing to segue from helping her do her first row of single crochet stitches to the white shirts at the wedding. I began by commenting on how nimble her fingers were, which was no surprise since she was used to working with her hands on all the event floral arrangements. I commented on how lovely the table arrangements were at Thursday’s wedding, deliberately not mentioning the havoc with the blooms on the wedding cake. From there I took a leap and said how it seemed unfair that she’d had to dress like a server.

Emerson shrugged. “It wasn’t just me. The DJ was dressed that way, too, and the bartenders, even the caterer.” She held up the tail of stitches and admired them. “What’s the project for the party going to be?”

“We’re still working out the kinks on it,” I said quickly before returning to the shirt subject. “Me, I never wear white. Whenever I have, something always gets on it. I wonder what the workers at the wedding would have done if something had spilled on their pristine shirts.”

Emerson seemed irritated as she looked up from her crochet work. “Did somebody say something to you?” It seemed like she was going to wait for me to respond, but then she continued talking. “I was leaving anyway. I can’t believe anybody saw the wine stain on my shirt.”

“Red or white?” I asked.

“What’s the difference?” she said with a hint of annoyance. “If I’d been staying for the whole event, I’d have brought a backup shirt. And the white gloves—” She let out a snort. “None of the servers were used to wearing them and lots of them were getting soiled. The caterer supplied them and brought a big box of them.”

“So when you left, did you go out the back gate?”

“I’m trying to file that wedding reception in the back of my mind and forget about it,” she said. “But yes, I did go out the back gate. My van was parked down the street. I told the police all about it.”

She sounded like she thought that was the end of the subject, but I wanted to ask her one more thing. “Did you see the groom when you were leaving?”

Emerson seemed to pause as if she was thinking about what she was going to say. “I probably should have told this to the police.” She paused and blew out her breath. “When I left, Jonah Kingsley was gripping Thursday’s wrist. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but their body language made it appear they were arguing.”

I opened my mouth to ask more, but she shook her head. “I said I wanted to file it away. If we can get back to my crochet lesson and Lyla’s party.”

I apologized and dropped it. “Let me show you how to start the next row.” I showed her how to make a chain stitch at the end of the row, turn her work, and start doing single crochets into the stitches of the preceding row.

She picked it up easily, and her hook began to move in an even rhythm. “You haven’t mentioned the menu yet?”

“Menu?” I repeated.

“The lunch menu for Lyla’s party. Now that the parents are going to be there, it might need some adjusting.”

“Lunch? I thought we were just serving cupcakes.”

“That’s okay,” she said, totally surprising me. “First times are always hard. I remember the first wedding I did.” She explained how nervous she’d been and how she’d felt she had one chance to do it right. “There are no do-overs for events.”

“What about pizza for lunch?” I suggested, but she nixed the idea. Every party had pizza, and the point of this was to have a party that was different. She looked around at the surroundings.

“You don’t want anything too messy or with too strong a smell.” Then her face lit up. “Finger sandwiches. Fruit pieces with toothpicks. Maybe some carrot sticks with hummus. Lyla will love it. So sophisticated.”

I let out a sigh of relief with that settled. No problem. I would be able to give Laurie Jean a job faster than I had thought. “You need to pick out the kind of cupcakes you want,” I said and handed her the list I’d been carrying around.

Emerson chose the basic yellow cake with buttercream icing.

“Lyla is very excited about her birthday party,” Emerson said, glancing at her daughter. “She loves the idea of learning how to crochet. I should warn you that once the party is over, I bet she tries talking you into starting a kids’ group.”

An interesting thought and one Mrs. Shedd would jump on. We’d sell more yarn and supplies, and kids were always hungry, so the café would get more business.

“Strike that. Not a kids’ group. Change it to young adult group,” Emerson corrected. “She hates it when I call her a kid. The writers’ group was a wonderful idea. She spent a lot of time picking out her journal. I think she has a crush on the leader, oops, I mean facilitator. You have to watch everything you say today. When I met Ben, he corrected me.” Emerson got to the end of the row of her swatch and looked at me. I repeated the instructions I’d given her at the end of the first row, and she was already doing it before I finished explaining.

“I had this feeling I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t place it until he brushed back his hair and I saw the birthmark on the side of his face,” Emerson said. I was only half-listening, thinking about the finger sandwiches Laurie Jean would make. No peanut butter and jelly; we’d have them English tea–style. Egg salad, cucumber and watercress. “I was so surprised when I realized where I’d seen him.” What Emerson said next cut through my mind fog and made me sit up abruptly. “Even though he kept denying it, I know he was at the Fields-Kingsley wedding.”

“What? Who are you talking about?” I asked to make sure I was getting it right.

“Ben Sherman, the writer facilitator.” She looked me in the eye to make sure I understood. “He was one of the servers in those white shirts you seemed so concerned about.”

What? The person Thursday claimed not to know, even though I’d seen them talking together twice, was a server at her wedding. I couldn’t wait to tell Dinah. We’d be doing some Sherlock and Watson investigating for sure.

CHAPTER 21

W
HEN THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER TEAM LEFT, ADELE
and I went to the café for a break. I got a coffee and one of Bob’s baked oatmeal squares. They were delicious and almost counted as real food rather than a sweet snack. Adele took out one of her diet powders and sprinkled it in a glass of water. The greenish brown powder slowly descended in the water, turning it a pond color as it did.

Finally, she stirred it and took a sip. She didn’t make a face, so I guessed the taste was better than the color. But she also didn’t seem to be enjoying it, and more than once looked toward my oatmeal square as she grumbled that I hadn’t consulted with her before I agreed to include the parents in the party.

I didn’t want to remind her that the crochet-themed parties were my idea, and Mrs. Shedd had told me to handle them. Adele was just supposed to help with the actual crochet lessons.

She took another gulp of the drink and looked back at the glass and then at the envelope it came in. “It says all natural ingredients, but does that mean it’s safe? Cyanide occurs naturally in apricot pits,” Adele said.

“Why don’t you ask Dr. Chopin Wheel,” I said, reminding her of the author event that evening. “He’s one of those alternative medicine guys.”

“Pink, that’s an excellent idea,” she said, dumping out the contents of the glass. I let her go on into the bookstore ahead of me. Bob made another pitch for the birthday cookie as I went by. I had to give him credit for his persistence.

I started putting out the folding chairs for the event and glanced out the window that faced Ventura. As darkness was settling, the sky had turned a soft translucent blue. I wasn’t worried about the turnout. Dr. Wheel was like a rock star in the world of alternative medicine, and I knew he’d draw a crowd.

I’d done this so many times—it was almost automatic. I set up a table at the front with a display of his latest book and had all his others displayed nearby. For the event, Bob brought in pots of Dr. Wheel’s special oolong tea and chia seed crackers. When I was worried about the turnout for an event, I always talked the Hookers into coming. Not tonight. Sheila was the only one who showed up, and that was completely on her own.

Sheila was always looking for some new help for her anxiety.

The seats were all full by the time Dr. Wheel came in with his handler. It was funny to see the handler dressed in business attire, escorting the man wearing loose dark-wash blue jeans and a teal blue T-shirt. The escort had neatly trimmed dark hair, while Dr. Wheel’s was mostly gray and done in a long braid. There was a soft roundness to his body, and he had a glowing smile only partially hidden by his neatly trimmed gray moustache. He wore a bunch of bracelets made from different stones, which I knew from his book were supposed to have healing properties. I think the silver-and-turquoise necklace was just for looks. Despite his hectic travel schedule, he seemed mellow, which made you think maybe there was something to his theories.

I noticed that Adele had slipped into the first row, right in the middle. Since she seemed confident that she wouldn’t be seeing Leonora, she’d jazzed her outfit up a bit with a necklace she had crocheted out of silver wire and colorful clay beads, and a natural-color beanie-style hat with a row of bluish lavender flowers.

I’d barely introduced Dr. Wheel when Adele’s hand shot up. His smile was warm as he nodded for her to speak. It was times like this that I wished we had a big hook so we could grab Adele by the arm and take her out of the picture. But all I could do was cringe as she popped out of her seat, faced the crowd, and began to ask about the diet powder. “I’m asking this for all of you,” she said in her this-is-important tone of voice.

“I was actually going to take questions at the end,” Dr. Wheel said, “but I’m also not one of those people with a rigid plan.” He walked over to Adele, took the envelope of powder, put on a pair of half-glasses and began to read it over.

“The ingredients listed on here are all considered safe,” he began. But he cautioned that since the ingredients were imported, they weren’t always trustworthy. “You don’t always know what you’re getting.” Adele’s eyes opened wider as he mentioned that there had been a problem in the past with that company. Though he said the product had since been discontinued, a banned substance had been found in one of their products that had been linked to the deaths of some consumers.

A rumble of conversation went through the crowd. “I’m glad that—” and he looked toward Adele to identify herself. As soon as she gave her name, he added it to his spiel while gesturing for her to sit down. “I’m glad that Adele brought this powder up. I am a bit of a renegade in that I tell people not to take supplements. I think you should get your vitamin D from some safe sun exposure, your vitamin C from oranges, and, of course, we can’t forget all those antioxidants you get from a daily dose of chocolate.”

The crowd loved what he was saying because as he pointed out, it was all easily accessible and cheaper than pills and potions. He went on about a few cures like ginger candy for an acidy stomach and tart cherry juice for arthritis. He didn’t just talk to the crowd, he interacted with them, asking about their problems and then bringing up how various chapters in his book had just the information they needed.

When someone asked how to beat the blues, the friendly-looking doctor smiled. “One of the best cures is laughter. I have a whole chapter on busting a bad mood. It includes my list of go-to movies. They’re all comedies and available on DVD.” Then he let several people express issues they had without his offering a solution.

“What I’m hearing from you, and what I know to be the basis of most problems, is stress. I have devoted a whole chapter to a solution so elegant, it makes me smile every time I think of it.”

Someone shouted out from the crowd in a tired voice. “I know. It’s all about meditation. But do you know how stressful it is to try to meditate?”

Dr. Wheel nodded in acknowledgment. “I do mention meditation, but without the stress.” He stopped talking, and I thought he was going to leave it at that, just a tease to get people to buy his book. But it turned out just to be a pause to build up the tension.

I heard Adele yelp when she saw what he took out of his shoulder satchel. He held up a wooden hook and a ball of undyed cotton yarn. “In case any of you don’t recognize this, it’s a crochet hook that I carved myself,” he said, showing it off. “The store-bought ones come in all different materials, but I like wood the best.” He went on to explain how easy crochet was to learn and that his book included a basic lesson and directions for what he called a meditation washcloth. The point was that working on it made meditation easy. All you had to do was focus on the movement of your hook.

Adele’s eyes were shining with adoration, and when someone asked why not knitting, I thought she was going to swoon when he gave his answer. “I personally find knitting stressful. All that worry that you’re going to drop a stitch or make a mistake. Mistakes in crochet are easy to fix, so there’s no worry about making them. I start with the most basic easy pattern. You can just keep repeating that or move to more challenging ones.”

He laid out a whole series of meditation washcloths in different colors and variations of stitches. “And you can clean your face with them when you’re done. How often is something so win-win. And in the case of weight loss,” he looked at Adele, “so often stress is the basis for eating problems. So instead of eating a bag of potato chips, make a potato chip scarf.” In sync with what he said, he pulled out a long cappuccino-colored ruffly scarf that did indeed resemble a stack of chips.

Adele popped back out of her seat and said she couldn’t agree more. I was concerned she was going to turn it into a personal conversation with him, so I stepped in and used my arm as a hook to remove her.

She started to fuss until I told her I needed her help with the signing. While he took questions, I set up the signing table. When Dr. Wheel took his seat there, Adele positioned herself next to him, opening the books to the signing page, so all he had to do was write his name. I’d never seen Adele so gushy, but Dr. Wheel seemed to appreciate her help and complimented her when she showed off her crocheted necklace. There was worship in her eyes as she gazed at him, and when there was a lull in people she leaned closer. “I’d love to talk crochet with you later,” she said in a seductive voice.

By now she was acting flirty with the washcloths, naming the stitches in the more complicated one and bragging about all the stitches she knew and could teach him. But a sudden pause in the background din of conversation caught my attention and out of the corner of my eye, I saw people parting to make way for someone.

None other than Eric Humphries came striding through the crowd in full motor cop uniform, right down to the shiny black shoes with boot tops. He was a head taller than most people in the crowd, and his barrel chest and ramrod-straight posture made him even more imposing. In his hand he held something that looked like a pair of bright-colored crocheted mittens. His gaze moved over the top of the crowd and then focused on Adele, who was holding one of the washcloths as she leaned on the table and talked to Dr. Wheel. Eric’s expression went from upset to horrified. He held up the striped tubes in front of Adele. “These were on the handles of my motorcycle. Do you want to explain?”

The way Eric’s eyes were flitting back and forth between the crocheted mittens and Dr. Wheel, I had the feeling his question had taken on a new meaning.

Adele stood up with a dramatic sigh. “Eric, I wasn’t expecting you to stop in,” she said. “How can you even think I’m the yarn bomber? I wasn’t the one taken into custody at the mall.” She waved her arm in my direction.

“Maybe we should talk about this outside,” Eric said, glancing back at Dr. Wheel. Adele told her boyfriend to go on ahead and that she’d be out there in a minute.

With Eric on his way out the door, she turned back to our author guest. “I will treasure these few moments we spent together. I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression when I accepted your heartfelt offer of one of your handmade hooks. I can only accept it if it comes with no strings attached.”