“It’s moisturizer with a little color. It ought to camouflage your eye.”
“Makeup?” Barry said, eying the tube with discomfort.
“It’s not makeup,” my father insisted.
I took Barry into the kitchen. He was still holding the now-frozen dead fish and the makeup, and I wasn’t sure which one upset him more.
I pointed toward the trash, but he suggested I might want to hang onto it for now in case it turned out to be evidence. Then he opened the freezer and popped it back in, before putting the makeup on the counter and leaning against it. Cosmo had followed us into the kitchen and parked himself next to Barry’s leg.
I made him a plate of the leftover take-out food and then heated up a square of the noodle pudding. The buttery smell filled the kitchen.
He nodded when I handed it to him. “Looks homemade. Your mother?”
I laughed. “No. Me.”
We sat down at the kitchen table, and he began to eat ravenously. I noticed he went for my noodle pudding first. He nodded as he chewed and sighed with pleasure. Then he went back to his tough expression. “I am not going to ask you what’s going on. I know that you’re still mucking around in the Mary Beth Wells case. The fish is a warning. Drop it.”
I nodded. I had my pride and wasn’t about to let on that the whole case was a disaster anyway.
Barry finished the noodle dish and moved on to the corned beef sandwich, potato salad and coleslaw I’d given him. I offered him something to drink. “I can help myself,” he replied, getting up. This was all too weird. So familiar and strange at the same time. He opened the refrigerator, and I saw him do a double take.
“Who’s the beer for? Your new boyfriend.”
“No, it’s for my father. He likes to drink a bottle at night. It helps him sleep. Feel free to have some.”
“How’s it going with the dancer?” There was an edge to Barry’s voice as he came back to the table with the amber bottle. Cosmo was following his every move.
“I’m not going out with the dancer,” I said, hoping to end it.
“Who then?” Barry was looking directly at me. He was Mr. Detective now, interrogating and confrontational.
“You don’t want to know,” I said, breaking eye contact and looking down.
Barry put down the sandwich. He didn’t have to say the name for me to realize he knew it was Mason. When he had finished eating and drank most of the beer, he looked down at the black mutt and ruffled his fur. His face softened for a moment, but it was back to tough cop when he looked at me. “Do you have any idea who the caller was or who might have left the gift?”
I groaned. There were so many possibilities.
“Just spread the word that you gave up,” he said, rising to leave.
There was an awkward moment while we stood facing each other and his gaze held mine. “I don’t know if it matters to you, but I contacted my daughter.”
He thanked me for the food and went to the kitchen door. Cosmo tried to follow, but Barry stepped out quickly, closing the door before the dog could get out. Then Cosmo sat down in front of the glass door and whined.
CHAPTER 28
THE PHONE CALLS, THE FISH AND MY PARENTS concern had gotten to me. Maybe it was time to drop it. So I did as Barry suggested; I told everyone I was stumped by Mary Beth Wells’s secret and who killed her and I was giving up. Only Dinah asked me if I was sure. Nobody even mentioned the crochet piece the next time the group got together. For once all we did was work with yarn and make small talk.
When I got home that evening, my mother was at the kitchen table drinking her hot water, lemon juice and honey. Her hair looked newly done and her nails manicured.
“Sit, sit,” she said after I’d taken care of the dogs.
I listened and the house was quiet.
“No one’s here,” she said. “We’ve practiced as much as we can. We’re as good as we’re going to get. Now we need to rest our voices and our feet so we’ll be fresh for the audition.”
I sat down on the bench across from her. She was nursing her drink and explained my father had gone out.
“I know our visit has been a little disruptive to your house, and I wanted to thank you,” my mother said.
I said the usual baloney about it not being any trouble, and she shocked me by telling me what a good daughter I was. I never knew she noticed.
“So fill me in about these murders you’ve been involved with,” she said, setting her cup down.
“You really want to know?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know,” she answered matter-of-factly. Apparently she had never noticed that we hadn’t had a lot of mother-daughter moments. I told her I’d been in the middle of a couple of murder investigations and solved both cases.
My mother’s face brightened into a laugh. “Who’d ever figure you’d end up as an amateur detective?”
I shrugged.
“Did you ever get sent a dead fish before?”
“No. This was a first.” I kept waiting for her to turn the conversation around to herself, but she seemed genuinely curious and asked for the details of what had led up to the special delivery. “Are you sure you really want to know?” I asked again. She rolled her eyes and nodded in response. I went into my work room and got the package with the crochet piece and the notes. I had stopped carrying it with me. What was the point? When I laid everything out on the table, she leaned closer for a better view.
“Oh, I remember this thing. That’s the Casino Building.” She examined the first panel and then glanced over the rest of them. “What about the others? What are they supposed to be?”
I started going over the filet crochet designs one by one. I pointed out the odd house with the cone-shaped roof and the three panels around it, all with cats. “I found this house a short distance from the Casino and there were cats everywhere.” I indicated what I’d first thought to be the Arc de Triomphe. “This fireplace is inside that house and now I’m pretty sure the mantelpiece has a secret compartment with something hidden in it.”
My mother’s fascination was obvious as I continued on. I explained I thought the motif of the figure with the bow and arrow was meant to signify Sagittarius and referred to a baby’s birth sign. “And I know this vase appears to be filled with drooping tulips, but they are supposed to be Irises and are a clue to the baby’s mother’s name.”
I turned the piece around so the wishing well in the adjacent panel was recognizable. “See the S hanging from the roof. If you add that onto well you get Wells, which is the last name of the person who made this.”
My mother found the MB and nodded with enthusiasm. “I get it. This was like her signature. Very clever of you to figure that all out,” she said. Had my mother just given me a compliment? I told her the rest of it—how the baby turned out to be somebody in the crochet group.
“And I thought your only problems had to do with dating,” my mother said when I had finished.
My mother fingered the stitches on the piece. “This is really crochet? I thought crochet was just used to make those multicolored squares and shawls.”
She picked up the diary entry and read it over:
The island is decorated for Christmas. All the colorful lights brighten up the short cold days, but it doesn’t help me feel any less sad. I hate to have to say good-bye even for a short time. I know things will work out and we will be back together again for keeps. Tomorrow I go back as if nothing has changed. I know I am doing the right thing.
“This is about heartbreak and hope,” she said. I must have given her an odd look. “Molly, it’s like when somebody gives me lyrics to a song. I read over the whole thing to see what it’s about before I worry about each line. Then when I go back it’s easier to get the meaning. The person writing this is sad about having to say good-bye to someone.” My mother flipped the page and read the line on the back. “Oh, she’s saying she’s going to miss the baby.”