The woman gestured and pointed at the crowd before handing Emily a piece of paper. Emily looked at it and grabbed Madison’s arm and they started retracing their steps.
“We’re moving,” I said to our little group. We let them get ahead and then took up their trail.
They went back to Emily’s Element and we rushed to Dinah’s Honda. Adele tried to talk me into letting her have the front seat. What a surprise. I held firm as she went through her list of reasons, starting with that she was better at tracking Emily’s Element than I was. As a last-ditch effort she said something about getting carsick and throwing up on the kids. I said we’d take the chance.
As we trailed the Element to the mall exit, I said I bet the note was telling them to go somewhere else.
We followed the black SUV to another mall in the east Valley. This one was smaller and the crowd was a little thinner and I worried the women might notice they were being followed. Dinah came up with a solution. Whenever we stopped, the whole group of us would turn and pretend to be admiring a store window. It got a little weird when we stopped in front of the storefront of the mall office and ended up staring at a security guard eating his lunch.
They stopped at the Santa area again. Emily still had the jeweler’s shopping bag and Madison clutched the grocery bag. When we got too near them, I pushed the group behind a sign advertising the food court. A tall elf stood next to the counter with an ad touting photos with Santa. He ignored the line of kids and surveyed the crowd. His gaze landed on Emily and Madison before he walked over to them.
I had the BlackBerry in my hand. Was the elf Bradley in disguise? Nope. He said something to them but didn’t pick up the packages. Emily looked annoyed as she turned away. Madison’s posture sagged as she followed. I turned to gather up our group, but they weren’t behind the food court sign. I did a three-sixty and still didn’t see them. I did notice that Emily and Madison had already been swallowed up by the crowd.
“Sorry,” Dinah said, squeezing between two teenage girls. The kids were holding hands and hanging on to her. “Bathroom stop.”
Adele appeared about the same time holding a bag from a women’s store. “We were just standing around,” she said by means of explaining. “I saw the perfect dress to wear to the book launch. I was just going to wear something I had, but that was before ...” She winked at me.
I threw up my hands at her wink and rushed ahead toward the parking lot. But when I got to the spot where Emily’s SUV had been parked, it was empty.
“We lost them,” I announced when the rest of them caught up with me a few moments later. Dinah put her head down and apologized again and then we turned toward Adele.
“Am I supposed to say I’m sorry, too?” she asked. We all nodded—even the kids. Adele seemed perplexed by the answer. “Okay, if it makes you feel better, Pink, I’m sorry you lost them.” She glanced back to the mall. “As long as we’re not in a hurry, there were some shoes that matched the dress.” Dinah shook her head in annoyance at Adele and told her if she didn’t watch it, we’d lose her.
“Don’t move,” I ordered Adele. I told them all to get in the car and wait. I had an idea.
I rushed back inside and retraced my steps to the Santa house. I checked elves until I found the right one. He was easy to pick out since he was kind of beefy and seemed more like Santa’s bodyguard than his helper. Under the makeup, he had a five o’clock shadow. There was something rough around the edges about him and I bet there were tattoos under the elf suit.
I mentioned seeing him talking to Emily and asked him what it was about.
“Who are you, the elf police?” he said in a grumpy voice. “You want to know anything, you have to get your picture taken. Or let’s just say you had your picture taken, if you get my drift.” He held out his green-gloved hand. I fumbled in my purse and pulled out a five and he shook his head. I found a ten and his shrug said that was acceptable, but barely. He looked over my shoulder at some kid sitting on Santa’s lap. “Hey, kid, I saw that. No pinching Santa. Do it again and you’re gonna get a sack of coal.” He turned back to me. “Kids ain’t what they used to be. Santa, either. He’s got a script now, you know. No more promising anything thanks to some idiot Joe suing the mall. Now it’s just he’ll see what he can do.” I asked him again about what he’d said to Emily.
“All I said was ‘The Grove.’ Whatever that means. I thought the guy who asked me to relay the message said Grover, like the Sesame Street character. You know, since he was talking to an elf and all. But he said no in an annoyed voice and made me repeat what I was supposed to say. Then he said he’d be watching to make sure I did it.”
“He did?” I said excited. “Is he still here?” I looked around and the elf did, too, but then he put up his green hands.
“Naw. Don’t see him.” I asked for a description, but the elf was getting impatient.
“Hey, lady, I didn’t really look at him. I was more interested in the fifty-dollar bill he laid on me. He was a guy, that’s all. I think he had on a baseball cap,” he said before walking away.
Dinah had managed to keep everyone in the car. I promised everyone snacks at the next stop no matter what. I told Dinah and Adele about my conversation with the elf and the message Emily had gotten.
“The Grove,” Dinah said with a exasperated sigh. “That’s all the way over the hill into the city and it’s rush hour. He couldn’t have picked another shopping area in the Valley.”
“All I could get out of the elf was that it was a guy maybe wearing a baseball cap who gave him the message for Emily. It could be Bradley,” I said as Dinah peeled out of the parking lot, heading for the 101. The most direct route was to take the freeway to the Laurel Canyon off-ramp and take the canyon into the city.
Traffic was thick as we started up the steep grade on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. At the top the road turned curvy as it threaded through the Santa Monica Mountains. The traffic clogged to a crawl as we passed Sunset Boulevard.
“I can’t believe Mrs. Shedd let you leave the bookstore to chase after your neighbor,” Adele said. I didn’t say anything, hoping she would drop it. I should have known—Adele never dropped anything. I heard a big aha come from the backseat.
“Mrs. Shedd was in Perkins’ investment club, wasn’t she?” Adele didn’t wait for a confirmation. “Yes, that’s it.” She prattled on, wondering how much Mrs. Shedd had lost and then I heard her suck in her breath. “She didn’t lose the bookstore, did she?” When I didn’t say anything, Adele took it as an affirmative answer and got panicky. “Pink, you’ve got to do something,” she said. She glanced around as if the pieces were falling into place. “Mr. Royal doesn’t know, does he? Who’s the great detective now? Well, thank heavens William and I don’t keep secrets from each other.”
I guess she forgot about not being allowed in his writing room and his not mentioning anything about being A. J. Kowalski. By the time we turned off Fairfax Avenue into the shopping center driveway, Adele had forgotten her panic over the bookstore’s future.
“This is my fav shopping center,” Adele squealed as Dinah pulled into the entrance of the parking structure. “It’s like a little town,” she said to the rest of us as if we’d never been here. “The decorations must be amazing. The Nordstrom here is the best. You know this is where all the celebrities come to shop now.”
“No stopping until I say it’s okay,” I snapped.
Parking at The Grove was much more of a production than at either of the Valley malls. There were tickets to be had and a lot of levels and people directing cars to the level with open spots.