I chuckled to myself. “You could say please.”
“Huh?” Adele said. Her confusion was real, definitely not faked. She had no sense about how to deal with people.
The favor involved helping her do a favor for William. He’d had a new dishwasher installed and the city permit guy was on his way to check it over. There was some complicated story about William’s car being in the shop and Adele letting him use her new car. She must really care for the guy to let him actually drive her Matrix. She would barely let me operate the windows. I offered her the use of my car, but she said she’d become too used to driving a new car and probably would strip the gears or something if she tried to drive the greenmobile. I resented her calling it an antique.
Adele made a face as she opened the passenger door. Maybe it did squeak a little bit, but I thought it was entitled. The 1993 190E Mercedes ran beautifully but was beginning to show its age in little malfunctions and weird noises. Adele got in as if she thought the car might crumble.
Technically this was supposed to be my day off, but I’d come in for the Hookers meeting, so helping Adele out wasn’t really a problem.
William’s house was in a Woodland Hills area called College Acres. The name came from its proximity to Walter Beasley Community College, I mean WBCC. I really needed to get my abbreviations down. Was I ever really going to start saying OMG and LOL out loud?
The streets around William’s house went by a different name at this time of year. I didn’t know when or how it started, but all the houses in the area went into decoration overload for the holidays. Everyone knew the area as Candy Cane Lane.
I had lots of memories driving through it when Peter and Samuel were young. Everybody turned off their cars’ headlights and crept through the streets with parking lights. I glanced up and down the street. The decorations were in the process of going up in the yards on either side. It seemed to me in the old days it went from right after Thanksgiving to New Years, but over the past years, it seemed to have been funneled down into a few weeks before Christmas until New Years.
Who could blame them? I thought of the congestion on the street. Heaven help anyone who lived in the area and wanted to pull out of their driveway after dark.
“Does Koo Koo know what he got into?” I said to Adele as we pulled into the driveway of William’s house. Next door two men were carrying a giant animatronic Santa into the center of the yard. I watched as they placed it on the lawn and plugged it in. The giant red-clothed figure began to wave and shout “Ho, ho, ho.” Adele let out a loud harrumph and told me to follow her. She fished the keys out of her purse, and although she tried to act as if they were hers, the note attached to them said “spare set.”
The house was appealing from the outside, with its white-wood siding and green shutters. She struggled with the lock, one more indication she hadn’t done a lot of coming and going on her own. As much as she tried to give the impression that she and William were on their way to a permanent relationship, I began to wonder if it was mostly in her imagination.
Inside, the house smelled of fresh paint and new carpet. My first impression was of lots of light and very little furniture. I followed Adele down a short hall and through the service porch into the garage.
“Pink, William not only knows about the area, he’s all set with his own decorations,” Adele said as she flipped on the light. I stepped back and almost tripped over a bike. A giant wooden cutout of Koo Koo dressed as Santa was in my face staring back. The trademark giant red shoes showed from underneath the Santa suit. A freestanding toy bag sat next to the figure. I laughed when I saw what was showing out of the top. Apparently William had large mock-ups of all the Koo Koo books made and then positioned so they showed above the bag. Underneath the quiet exterior, William was apparently quite the marketer.
The doorbell rang and Adele said it must be the inspector. She started giving me some speech about how William asking her to handle the city inspector meant he thought of her as more than just a girlfriend. “A girlfriend with a future,” she said, touching the door in a possessive sort of way.
Adele took the inspector into the kitchen and I took the opportunity to look around, curious to see how William lived. The living room did nothing to change my initial impression of him as very orderly and on the austere side.
I wandered toward the bedrooms. The smallest one was completely empty of furniture. There were just three pairs of the giant red shoes. He seemed to be using the next bedroom to sleep in, which was odd since it was clearly not the master bedroom.
I understood why when I got to the master. It was his writing studio. A computer sat in the middle of a glass desk. The walls were covered with framed book covers of his books and some awards he’d gotten, along with reviews. One whole wall was a bookcase. He had an interesting combination of children’s books and reference books. There were books on the history of dentistry, ciphers and codes, and an encyclopedia of animals. He had a whole set of different kinds of dictionaries and even a whole section devoted to myths, angels and fairies. I was surprised to find a copy of Caught By the Hook sitting on a table next to a comfortable-looking chair.
A large table sat against the wall. I was just checking out what was on it when Adele stopped in the doorway.
“Pink, you shouldn’t be in here.”
I didn’t move and she glanced around the room from her vantage point as it came out that William had never allowed her in the room. “He calls it his man cave and said it was strictly private. The door is always closed.”
“It was open this time,” I said with a shrug. “It just looks like a workroom to me.” I said, laughing at the man cave name. It was so light and bright, calling it any kind of cave seemed ridiculous.
“You’re right.” She took a tentative step into the room. I guess she went along with the in-for-a-penny-in for-a-pound approach. Once she’d stepped into the room, she must have figured why not check everything out. She went to his desk first and picked up an electronic frame and watched as it flipped through the photos.
“None of me?” she said in a disappointed voice. “He probably just doesn’t have any.” She moved over to the table and did a double take when she saw its contents.
“What’s he doing with crochet hooks and yarn?” she said, touching the selection of hooks and yarn that were scattered across the table. I looked over Adele’s shoulder as she checked out a stack of books.
“This is one of mine,” Adele said, picking up the top book and waving it about. “William asked if he could borrow it for someone at his school.” She looked at the ones underneath. They were instructional volumes and had crochet patterns in them.
“Maybe William took your suggestion and is planning to do a Koo Koo Crochets book.”
Adele set the book back down and looked over the things on the table. She seemed concerned when she saw a sheet of green paper on the floor.
“I guess this must have fallen out of the book he borrowed.” She scooped it up and waved the sheet in front of me. It had a drawing of something with squares and lots of notes all over it. “It’s just the notes I made about your neighbor’s afghan. I must have used it as a bookmark.” She appeared flustered—something I’d never seen before. “Did you happen to notice where it was in the book?” When I shrugged helplessly, she took a deep breath and stuck it in the middle. “William is very into details. I don’t want him to figure someone was in here.”
She looked around the room again. “I wonder why he’s being so secretive. I could write the crochet book with him.”