Behind the Seams (3 page)

It put me smack in the middle. I would always be Samuel’s mother and this was still his home when needed. But I could understand Barry’s point of view, too. I was Barry’s whatever—if I didn’t like the term
boyfriend
, being referred to as a
girlfriend
really didn’t work for me—and he was part of my life now and had a right not to be treated like an invader.

“There’s Thai takeout in the refrigerator,” Barry said. I’d been too busy helping CeeCee with her demo to do anything more than taste the Apple Bumble Crumble and was definitely hungry. I checked the fridge and saw the line of white cartons. He’d even gotten my favorite pad thai vegetables.

I went back to the dining room to thank him, but he was on his cell phone. I could tell by the serious set of his mouth and his measured tone that it was work. I watched him go from building Barry to detective Barry right before my eyes. He hugged me with one arm as he headed toward the living room. I nuzzled closer, drinking in the scent that was just his.

“I’ve got to get Jeffrey,” Barry said before sticking his head in the doorway of the den. He didn’t have to say anything. As soon as his son saw him, he sighed and started to gather up his homework.

“Yeah, we gotta go. So what else is new?” Jeffrey said in a fourteen-year-old’s version of a world-weary voice.

“He can stay,” I said and gestured for Jeffrey to stop packing up. “He can sleep here and I’ll get him to school.” Barry’s work face disappeared and his eyes softened as he hugged me closer.

“You’re the best. It’s good to have somebody watching my back.” Barry pulled free and headed for the door, almost at a sprint. No matter the long hours, the interrupting calls, Barry loved his job.

This wasn’t the first time Jeffrey had stayed over. I’d taken the bedroom I’d used as an office and moved the computer and desk into the overcrowded crochet room and made a room for Jeffrey.

There was something old school about him. Jeffrey was polite and nice to talk to. He wasn’t hostile or sullen the way some boys his age were. He was still soft around the edges and tried to look more manly by gelling his brown hair into a spiky style. His clothing choice wasn’t typical, either. He wore a lot of suit jackets with jeans. Did I mention that Jeffrey wanted to be an actor, was an actor already, if you counted school plays and that he’d gone on some auditions for commercials. Barry didn’t like the idea, and disliked it even more when Jeffrey started calling himself Columbia.

Barry was still struggling with being a full-time parent, even though Jeffrey had been living with his father for the past couple of years after things hadn’t worked out with him living with his mother.

“Are you hungry? I was going to have some of the takeout,” I said. Jeffrey nodded and closed up his homework. I made up plates for both of us and we took them in the den. I flipped on the TV.

A repeat of the
Barbara Olive Overton
show was on. “I’m going to that show tomorrow,” I said. I explained about CeeCee being on the show, and when he heard what movie she was in, he was impressed. Who knew Jeffrey was a fan of Anthony, the vampire who crocheted?

Talking about Anthony reminded me of the bookstore. “Oh no,” I said suddenly, as I was gathering up the plates. I’d promised CeeCee that I’d go to the show, but I’d forgotten to discuss getting time off with my boss.

“I’M SORRY FOR ASKING YOU AT THE LAST MINUTE,” I said to Mrs. Shedd. It was the last hour before closing and the bookstore had only a few customers. I glanced toward the bookstore café and saw that Bob, our barista and cookie baker, was already in the process of cleaning up the café. “I thought I could do some of the things I was planning to do in the morning now.” I’d come in to ask my boss for the morning off to go to the talk show and to take care of a few things.

I had invited Jeffrey to come along to the store and was surprised when he agreed. He had immediately gone off to look at the big section we had on theater arts.

“As long as you’re here by noon, it shouldn’t be a problem. Funny you should bring up the
Barbara Olive Overton
program. I just had a call from someone there today,” Mrs. Shedd said, putting back a copy of
Caught By the Hook
, which was the first of the Anthony books and the basis for the movie
Caught By a Kiss
. “They want to film something here for one of their background pieces. She said they would pay us a small fee and give us a promotional consideration in the credits. The mention in the credits would be nice, but I was thinking maybe we could slip something with the bookstore’s name in the shot.” Mrs. Shedd sighed. “Anything we can do to help business is a plus.” Mrs. Shedd had made some bad investments with the bookstore’s money and was doing whatever she could to make up for the losses. “The woman I spoke to said she comes in the café all the time and that’s why she thought of Shedd and Royal. I’m not that familiar with the café customers and I’m so bad with names. Hers was something Freed—maybe Rachel. Do you know her?”

I didn’t know much about the café customers, either, and shook my head. “Did she explain what they wanted to film?”

“More or less. They’re doing an upcoming show to coincide with the release of a book called
Back from Hell
. Timing wise, there won’t have been any actual book signings, so they want us to set up a fake one. Are you familiar with the author, D. J. Florian?”

Mrs. Shedd and her formerly silent partner, Mr. Royal, had been spending more time at the bookstore lately, but apparently she hadn’t paid attention to all the upcoming releases. “His book is one of those blogoirs.” Mrs. Shedd looked puzzled and I explained it was a mixture of a blog and a memoir. “He’s the one who was struggling with a drug problem and started writing a blog more to help himself, but you know how it is these days. Somehow it got caught up in the blogosphere and he got a lot of followers. What was different about him was his blog was funny and literate and not totally self-centered.” I recalled reading some interview with him where he’d talked about his life going in a downward spiral. He’d lost his place to live, his job, his friends, everything and ended up living on the street. “His turnaround was very dramatic. Something about hitting bottom and being on the street at five minutes to midnight on the last day of the year. A lot of people were inspired by his journey. He’s actually local.”

Mrs. Shedd appeared unimpressed and turned toward the display of Anthony books. “I’d rather have another hot vampire book.”

“You know, CeeCee’s niece works on the
Barbara Olive Overton
show,” I said.

Mrs. Shedd didn’t seem particularly surprised. The entertainment industry was woven into the everyday life of the San Fernando Valley. It was home to a number of production studios and television stations, who employed a lot of Valley residents. The area was often used for filming. It was a common sight to see a line of trucks and generators and mobile dressing rooms parked on residential streets. Actors, writers, directors and producers lived in the area, particularly in the communities nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains like Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana and Woodland Hills. It wasn’t that unusual to find yourself standing behind some soap opera actor or news anchor in the grocery store checkout line, and every dog groomer and cleaners had framed eight-by-tens of their celebrity customers. But the bookstore had never gone that route. CeeCee would have had a place of honor if we had.

“Have I met CeeCee’s niece?” Mrs. Shedd asked. She caught her reflection in the large windows that faced Ventura Boulevard and smoothed a stray blond hair back in place. Her hair was so perfect, it almost looked like a wig. Mrs. Shedd was in her late sixties without a hint of gray. The silky texture, however, suggested the blond was natural.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Her aunt is trying to get her to take up the hook and keeps dragging her to our group’s meetings.”

We were trying to make the events at the bookstore really large events. So instead of having a single author signing their latest books, we were teaming up with local business owners to put on something bigger that would attract more people and help us all. Shedd & Royal already had a reputation for their events. Let’s just say they seemed to court disaster, but in a good way. No matter what happened, they always turned out to have good book sales, so Mrs. Shedd had learned not to mind if there was a miniriot.

I noticed that Jeffrey had gone into the café. Bob had given him some of the end-of-the-day leftover cookies and the last of the lemonade. Bob had his laptop set up on the table and the two of them were talking. No doubt they were discussing the science-fiction screenplay Bob had been writing for as long as I’d worked at the bookstore. Maybe Jeffrey was trying to get a part in it. I’d never asked too many questions about it, but Bob was always banging away at the laptop when business was slow. He looked like somebody who would write a science-fiction screenplay, with his pale skin, light brown hair and some glob of hair growing between his chin and his mouth. It wasn’t a beard, more like a puff ball.

I was relieved Mrs. Shedd was okay about me going to the show. CeeCee had been almost panicky, and I figured I could sit in front and coach her if necessary. I took the signs for the Salute to Chocolate event I was holding and slipped them into frames. I put the biggest one near the front door and then placed the others around the bookstore. It was going to be an all-chocolate evening, with a highlight of having Alain Des Plaines, a chef on the food channel, sign his ultimate chocolate cookbook:
Melts at Body Heat
.

When I’d finished with the signs and put out a stack of schedules for the month, I went back to the yarn department. It was the newest addition and my favorite part of the store. We’d arranged the yarn by colors. There was a permanent wood table for the Hookers or anyone who wanted to stop by and work with yarn, along with some easy chairs. I picked up a few stray skeins and put them back where they belonged. All our yarn was high end, and Mrs. Shedd had wanted a crocheted and knitted swatch for each of the yarns we sold. Getting the crocheted ones was no problem, as Adele and the Hookers all pitched in. I’d been left to do the knitted ones and still had a lot to finish.

Mrs. Shedd and I had decided that to make our yarn department stand out, we’d let people try it before they bought it. Each bin had a skein available to cut a sample from. We’d recently gotten in some variegated wool, worsted-weight yarn from Japan. The colors went from pumpkin to deep purple, with a lot of colors in between. I was curious how the colors would look when crocheted and cut a length from the sample skein. We kept a bunch of hooks and needles for the samples, and I pulled out a K–size hook and sat down at the table.

“There you are,” a male voice said. I turned just as Mason Fields reached the table. “I called your house and your BlackBerry and got no answer. I just happened to be picking something up at Le Grande Fromage and saw your car in the store’s parking lot.”

“You called my cell phone?” I said. My purse was sitting on the table next to me. It took a while to find the black phone in the dark cavity of my purse. But when I checked it, sure enough, it showed that Mason had called while I was in the store. I realized I’d heard some ringing but never associated it with my phone. When I told Mason the problem, he grinned and asked for my BlackBerry.

“I can fix that.” He walked away for a few moments and I resumed crocheting. When he returned, he handed back the phone and told me to bury it in my purse. Then he punched in the number.

Suddenly a high-pitched voice started squawking from my purse. “Hey, get me out of here. Help me, please! Somebody, pick me up. Hurry before it’s too late.” We both laughed and Mason explained he’d used the feature to record your own ring along with his best impression of a cartoon character in distress.

“Well, I certainly won’t mix that up with other people’s phones,” I said, taking the phone out and making the “ring” stop. “Thanks, I guess,” I said with a grin and a roll of my eyes.

“Why are you sitting here alone?” He slid into the chair next to me. I recapped the chain of events that had gotten me there, and Mason asked to see what I was making. As I held up the swatch of yarn, he caught my hand and looked at it.

“Still empty, Sunshine? The detective must be upset that the ring is still in the box hidden away somewhere.”

I pulled my hand back. Mason was a high-powered criminal attorney and my good friend. Though
good friend
sounded kind of weak. He was so much more than a friend. Unlike Barry, who always told me to stay out of things, Mason helped me get information and even helped in my sleuthing activities. When Barry and I had broken up, Mason and I had almost gotten together, but our definition of relationship had been different. He kept telling me that his definition wasn’t written in stone, but by then it was too late. Like Barry, Mason was divorced, but unlike Barry, he wasn’t looking to get married again. He had a solid build, earthy brown eyes and brown hair sprinkled with a little silver, a lock of which usually fell across his forehead, giving him an earnest look.

I was glad when he dropped the subject. I knew I was going to have to do something about the ring in the drawer eventually, but in the meantime, I didn’t want to think about it. “Why were you looking for me?” I asked.

“Oh, just to see what was up with you. If any dead bodies had fallen in your lap. If you wanted to get a cup of coffee.”

“So you just wanted to see me,” I said, and he nodded.

“And hopefully without an entourage,” he added with a grin.

“Molly, they’re turning off the lights,” Jeffrey said as he joined us at the table. He noticed Mason and they traded nods of acknowledgment. They knew each other from numerous get-togethers at my house. Both of them looked disappointed at seeing the other.

“PINK, I THOUGHT YOU WEREN’T GOING?” ADELE said with a mixture of surprise and disappointment, leaning over the seat of her Matrix as I followed Dinah and got in the backseat. Sheila was already sitting on the passenger side in the front. The Hookers who were going to the show had decided to carpool and arranged to meet in front of the bookstore. Rhoda and Elise opted to take Rhoda’s car rather than have four of us squashed in the backseat. Adele sensed there was something up and grilled me until I admitted that CeeCee had asked me to come. I mentioned that she wanted me to be there to coach her, just in case. I did not mention that CeeCee had really been more concerned about me keeping the Hookers, well, Adele in line.