Behind the Seams (23 page)

“They must have some kind of surveillance cameras,” I said.

“Very good,” Pierce said, seeming impressed. “But it didn’t do them much good. Since it was drizzling that night, the person was carrying an umbrella and used it to block the camera’s view. Personally, I think the whole tainted thing is a diversion. To make it look like Robyn wasn’t the target,” Pierce said. I got a sinking feeling that the cops might be thinking that, too. Specifically Detective Heather. Maybe poor Nell wasn’t off the hook after all.

Talia made a loud
ahem
noise and seemed irritated at being kept standing there.

“We’re not here to discuss Robyn,” the segment producer said. Any hesitation about stepping into Robyn’s shoes seemed to be gone. “I happened to be in the area and stopped in to look over the place for the piece on D. J.” The blogoir author nodded to her and she continued. “He’s concerned about being stuck on to the chocolate event.”

She was carrying a folder and began to thumb through the pages. “Robyn left some notes about the kind of shots she wanted.” A sheet slipped out and she grabbed it. “What’s this?” she said, holding it out to D. J. I got a glimpse of it. It seemed to be blank except for
Insert NY
.

He handed the sheet back to her. “We already filmed that. She wanted to recreate when I hit bottom.”

“I’m glad somebody can make sense out of her notes.” Talia found another sheet that had
bookstore
scribbled on it. She struggled to read the handwriting and then ignored the sheet altogether. “The point is, we want something to show off how far D. J. has come. We want something serious.”

I tried to be diplomatic and explained that there would be no horde waving chocolate bars. We would set D. J. up before the event actually began. “It’s much more efficient and cost effective for us,” I said.

Talia cut me off, shaking her head. “Maybe that’s true, but it really won’t work for what I have in mind. Is there any way I can get you to reconsider. I’m sure when Robyn set this up, that isn’t what was agreed on.”

I will usually try to please someone who asks so directly, but she was rubbing me the wrong way. Shedd & Royal was only getting a small fee and a promotional consideration out of all this, and it wasn’t worth a whole separate setup.

“Now if you’d like to reconsider and rent out the store for the day, you could shoot it any way you want,” I said, pleased with how I stood up to her.

Talia’s mouth slipped into the mixture of a sneer and pout. I got the feeling spending more money wasn’t in her plan.

“I’ll say it again. This just won’t work for us. If you can’t accommodate us, I’ll use a different bookstore.”

I called her bluff and told her to go ahead.

“GOOD FOR YOU, MOLLY,” DINAH SAID THE NEXT day when I told her how Talia had tried to steamroller me into doing a whole separate setup for D. J.’s fake book signing. In the end, Talia had sputtered a lot and then given in. We were sitting at my kitchen table and were so busy catching up, I hadn’t even thought to make coffee.

I shared what Pierce had said about the box of sweetener, and Dinah shook her head. “I debated what to do with the information,” I said. Then I guiltily admitted that the first thing I’d done was to check where Nell was when the box was dropped off. “CeeCee assured me Nell was at her house the whole night. She knew because Nell had slept on the couch in her living room. Apparently Nell had gotten fearful of sleeping in the guest quarters since Detective Heather had done her search.”

“Did you tell CeeCee you think Nell might still be a suspect?”

“I had to tell her what I heard. I had hoped to talk to Mason first, but—” When I stopped talking abruptly, Dinah looked up.

“And?” she said. My friend knew me too well not to figure there was something wrong.

“Mason has been hard to reach lately,” I began. “More than hard to reach. He hasn’t been returning my calls. So, I called his house, late, figuring he’d answer.” I paused for a moment. “Let’s say I got more than I bargained for.”

Dinah was all ears as I recounted the phone call. I told her how it had rung a long time and I’d been about to hang up when he had answered.

“Mason,” I said. “Finally. I have so much to talk to you about.”

“Molly, this isn’t the best time,” he said. There was something in his voice I’d never heard before. He sounded awkward, distracted, and then I got it.

“Is someone there?” I said. I waited hoping he’d dismiss my concern with some other explanation, but he just cleared his throat a few times. Suddenly I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable. “Sorry, if I interrupted something.”

“We’ll talk another time,” he said, and then he’d hung up.

“I guess I knew it was inevitable that he’d meet someone eventually,” I said, “but it just seems so sudden.” Dinah came over and put her arm around my shoulder as I continued talking. “I’m still going to call him about Nell, but I’ll call his office.”

Dinah tried to change the subject. “In the meantime, you asked if I was up for some investigating,” she said, reminding me that I’d called her and asked for her help. She had no classes and no plans with Commander and had jumped at the chance to be back in the middle of things.

I repeated the story about Ariel Rose and her nanny with an agenda.

“We want to meet the nanny,” I said. “In fact, let’s go now. The time is perfect,” I said, checking my watch. I got up and she followed. I was glad to have Dinah with me again. She was decked out in her best dangle earrings and had gone back to her long-scarf look. This one was white and gauzy and wound around her neck with a long tail to blow in the breeze. Dinah looked contemporary and fun. She was both.

“And why is that again?” Dinah asked as she got into the passenger side of the greenmobile.

I explained that the way Ariel Rose had recognized Robyn’s doll made it pretty certain Ariel’s former nanny had made it. The crocheted cactus I’d found in Robyn’s office had been made by the same person. We knew because the initials crocheted on the bottom of both the doll and cactus had looked the same. Since the doll was old and the cactus relatively new, it seemed pretty obvious the nanny had known Robyn when she was a child and was still in contact with her.

“She probably knew a different side of Robyn,” I said. “I think if we find out more about who Robyn was, it might point us toward who killed her.”

“Sounds good to me.” Dinah pulled the door shut and I started the motor.

I had a plan. It might have seemed like a lame plan, but it was the best I could come up with. According to Ariel Rose, Annie the nanny had taken her kids to the park on Tuesday and Thursday mornings around ten. I was hoping she’d kept the same schedule with her new charges. It was a little after ten as I steered the greenmobile toward Tarzana Park.

We didn’t know what she looked like besides having brown hair and being in her forties. It was certainly not enough of a description to pick her out of a crowd. So I’d come up with the other part of the plan.

I parked not far from where I’d parked when I went square dancing. Neither of us wanted to have to worry about our purses, so we left them in the trunk, but we both took our totes with our crochet supplies.

How funny, I hadn’t been to the park in years and now in the space of a few days, it was my second trip. I glanced toward the recreation building and thought back to the square dance. I got a warm feeling thinking about how Barry had made such an effort to get there. That evening had made up for the times when things went the other way and our plans got trashed.

We got to the playground and picked out a bench. Being there brought back memories. My boys had played there when they were little and later moved on to play baseball in the sports field. I looked at the playground equipment.

“It’s not exactly the state-of-the-art stuff that Ariel Rose said she had in her backyard,” I said. Dinah nodded in agreement. The equipment was utilitarian and well used, but the kids in the sandbox and on the merry-go-round and swings all seemed to be having fun. I searched the mostly women sitting on the benches that ringed the play area. It was easy to eliminate most of them as possible Annie Hoovers. They were too young and too busy texting and talking on their cell phones. I had decided that a professional nanny would be more likely to keep a constant eye on her charges.

There were several older women in the group, but there was no way to tell if any of them was Annie.

“If we can’t find her, let her find us,” I said, taking out my crochet project in progress. Dinah got the idea and took out hers, too.

We both were working on cell phone socks using Rhoda’s impatient crochet method. Dinah joked, if all else failed, we could probably sell them there. She gestured toward the array of potential customers with their naked cell phones. I noticed a woman on the other side of the play area watching us. Was she Annie? I didn’t want to stare, but out of the corner of my eye, I watched as she checked on a couple of kids playing on the edge of the sandbox and then came over toward us. I forced myself not to look up until I sensed her standing in front of me. When our eyes met, we exchanged smiles.

“What are you making?” she asked in a friendly voice.

I held out the cell phone sock and told her about the impatient crochet idea. She seemed very interested and asked if she could look at mine. I invited her to sit and she joined us. After looking over my project, she handed it back and pulled her own crochet things out of her pocket.

“I always carry a ball of cotton and a hook and make washcloths,” she said, showing off a half-finished square. I told her about the Hookers and invited her to join us.

“It sounds nice,” she said. She stood to check on her charges. The kids waved to her and she sat down again. I introduced myself and mentioned story time at the bookstore. She fit Ariel’s description and I was ninety-nine percent sure she was Annie. I pulled out the long soft girl doll from my bag and showed it to her. That took care of my one percent of doubt. Her reaction to the doll said it all. Her eyes got round and sad.

“Where did you get this?”

“It belonged to someone named Robyn Freed.”

Her voice was almost a whisper. “I know. But how did you get it? Who are you?”

I decided the best thing to do then was to tell the truth and explain everything down to Ariel Rose giving a hint about where we could find her.

When I explained about Nell and that I was trying to find out what really happened to get her off the hook, she asked me if I was some kind of private investigator.

“Not exactly. More like a concerned friend. I was hoping you could tell me something about Robyn that would help me figure out who might want to kill her.”

Annie thought it over a moment and then agreed to help. “The first thing you should know is that Robyn was living a lie,” she said. As she told me the details, I struggled to listen as I heard the whine of sirens in the distance. They were definitely getting louder. When a police helicopter flew overhead and began to circle low above the park, it all but totally drowned her out. Between the thwack of the helicopter and the shrill sirens, I only got the bare bones of the story. I caught a glimpse of flashing lights as two black-and-whites zipped into the parking lot.

“For once, it isn’t anything we did,” I said to Dinah with a laugh. But even so, we were like lemmings and followed the crowd to the parking lot to see what was going on.

When we got closer, I grabbed Dinah’s arm. A group of people were standing around the greenmobile pointing at the trunk as the cops approached. One of the uniforms had his nightstick in hand and was about to smash in the window. I pushed through the crowd to find out what was going on. Then I heard it. A voice was calling from inside the trunk.

“Hey, get me out of here. Help me, please! Somebody, pick me up. Hurry before it’s too late.” It stopped for a moment than began again with the plaintiff cry.

I dove through the crowd and grabbed the police officer’s arm just before his tool hit the glass. Not a good move. His partner had my hands behind my back and cuffs on before I could blink.

“I have the key,” I said, trying to point toward my pocket with my elbow.

The officer who’d handcuffed me stuck her hand in my pocket and snatched the key. She fumbled a moment, realizing it was an old-fashioned key and not some clicker device before using it to unlock the trunk. She jerked it open and started rummaging through the assorted junk back there. Did they really think there was a person hidden under my recyclable grocery bags?

A moment later, a black Crown Victoria drove over the sidewalk into the parking lot. Barry was out of the car with the motor still running. I don’t even think he even saw me before he pushed through the crowd to get to the open trunk. Just as he did, my phone started again. His expression went from tense to rolling his eyes in a split second as he found my purse and pulled out my whining BlackBerry.

When the crowd realized what was calling for help, they started to laugh. Even the cops joined in. They took the cuffs off and I reached for my phone, but Barry held on to it.

“I don’t know why Fields even gave this phone to you. It’s nothing but trouble,” Barry said with a dark look. He reprogrammed it to have a regular ring. “That should keep you out of trouble until we can get you a new phone.”

When I looked back toward the playground, Annie was gone.

DINAH AND I HAD LEFT MY HOUSE WITHOUT SO much as a cup of coffee. After all the excitement, we both needed something for sustenance, so we headed for Caitlin’s Cupcakes. Recently Caitlin had branched off into savory items. She called them cupcakes because they were that size, but they were more like mini quiches and popovers. As soon as we got there, I called CeeCee to tell her what I’d learned from the nanny, but as soon as she heard the word
bombshell
, she insisted I come directly to her place to talk because she was worried about who might be listening. Frankly, it was just a bunch of hungry Tarzanians who seemed more concerned that someone might butt in line, but I saw her point.