“Nicholas, maybe,” Dinah said, mentioning the Luxe shop owner. “Remember she went there the day she told you Bradley was missing. Kind of an interesting time to go shopping for tea. And she was there again around the time Sheila dropped off the blankets.”
I reminded her that she’d been returning things, trying to get cash. Dinah’s red scarf blew across her face and she peeled it back. “Or so he said,” she said as I pulled onto my street. “Until you see a living, breathing Bradley, you really can’t be sure.”
I stopped in front of my garage and got the afghan out of the shopping bag. There was no point in stalling its return. Dinah came along as we walked across my lawn and moved onto the Perkins’ property. The Santa’s sled had been knocked on its side and the half-done string of lights hung from the roof. It looked depressing and I wished she’d finish putting them up or put them away.
Emily ripped open the door before the bell even did its last chime. She glanced up and down the street and then at me. “Do you have it?” she said in a sharp whisper. In answer, I held out the Neiman’s bag, but she pushed it back at me abruptly. “Not here.”
She glanced past us toward the street and her eyes darted nervously. We started to turn our heads to see what she was looking at. “Don’t turn around,” she barked. “They’re watching me.”
“Who,” I said, wishing I could turn to see if there was someone there or she was being paranoid.
“The FBI, the SEC, the state’s attorney people. People who invested money with Bradley. Didn’t you see the way they looked at me at the bookstore? Don’t they get it—I’m a victim like everybody else. I’m hanging by a thread here. Any money I had is frozen until everything gets settled. And then they’ll probably take it, saying it was ill-gotten gains. My credit cards are canceled. And everybody thinks I was part of Bradley’s scheme.”
We stood there a moment and I didn’t know what to say since I’d sort of joined that last group. “Go home,” she said in a impatient whisper, “and throw it over the fence into the backyard.” She shut the door without waiting for a confirmation.
At least now I could check out the street as we walked back past the sideways Santa. Under the circumstances, I could see how she might not care about the decorations. The only vehicles on the street at this time of day were usually gardeners, pool cleaners and cleaning women, with an occasional plumber or pest-control truck thrown in. The assorted cars and vans seemed to fit those parameters. But were they what they seemed?
I watched a man sitting in one of the cars on the street. Was he eating his lunch or keeping an eye on Emily? I shuddered, thinking of being in her position.
Dinah and I went into my backyard. I knew just where to throw it over the fence, thanks to my adventure with Mason. I stepped up on the bench and leaned through the bushes to the chain-link fence. I took the bag and tossed it over. It landed with a plop. There were some rustling noises and I heard something that might have been “thank you” before receding footsteps and finally the sound of a sliding glass door closing.
“Now what?” Dinah said when I climbed down.
“Let’s see what she does,” I offered. Really what I meant was let’s see if she goes anywhere. As if an answer, I heard the rumble of her garage door opening.
“C’mon,” I said, running across the yard to the driveway. As soon as we got in the greenmobile, I backed down the driveway just far enough to see what was going on in hers. A moment later, Emily’s SUV roared backward toward the street. She stopped and checked both ways before backing out. A moment later she was zooming away.
I didn’t bother to look if anyone had pulled away from the curb. I just made the same move she had and took off after her. I was disappointed when I realized she was headed toward the few blocks of stores considered downtown Tarzana. She parked the SUV on the street next to the back parking lot behind the bookstore and the stores adjacent to it.
“Looks like we rushed for nothing,” I said, pulling into the parking lot next to a car with a bike in a bike rack. Still, as soon as I’d stopped the motor, we jumped out and tried to catch up with her. “Geez,” I said, “it really was for nothing.” Ahead she’d just walked into the bookstore. We plastered ourselves against the wall and watched her through one of the big windows that faced the main street.
“The snowflakes look really nice from the outside,” Dinah said. I stepped back to get a better view, then caught myself. We weren’t there to admire the windows. Emily kept walking around, appearing to be looking at books, but every time she picked one up, she fluttered through the pages and replaced it. She spent about five minutes with the books and walked toward the door quickly. We tried to wish ourselves invisible as she came out of the bookstore.
If she saw us, she didn’t seem to care. Her pace slowed and she walked down to Luxe.
“See, I told you,” Dinah said, nudging me in the ribs. “She’s got something going with him.” We crept down the street, staying close to the buildings. When we got near Luxe’s display window, we moved just far enough to look in. Emily was sitting by the waterfall, drinking a cup of tea. Every so often, she looked toward the counter where Nicholas was waiting on a customer. It was pretty clear after a couple of minutes that she wasn’t going anywhere.
We slunk back to the bookstore. “There you are,” Adele said, stopping us near the entrance. “Pink, someone wanted to buy some yarn as a gift. A knitter,” Adele said, practically spitting out the word. “She wanted to see a knitted swatch, but there was nothing hanging on the bin. What’s up with the swatches?”
I was impressed that Adele had actually waited on a knitter. I was always afraid if any came in while I wasn’t there, Adele would ignore them until they left.
I explained that I wasn’t really back to work, that I’d just stopped in. Adele’s eye’s narrowed. “What are you two up to? Some detective thing, Jessica Nancy Fletcher Holmes?” I didn’t answer and she went on. “More about your neighbor?”
I said nothing and Adele stayed planted, saying she wanted to come with. She didn’t even ask where we were going, she just wanted to be part of the action.
“Remember, we’re musketeers,” she said, referring again to a title she’d come up with during our last adventure. She started to pout but then saw that William had joined us and we were suddenly old news. I don’t know what was harder to deal with, Adele trying to get in the middle of stuff or acting flirty with William as she explained to him the musketeer reference.
I told Adele there were some swatches in my tote bag in the office, hoping she heard among all the eye batting and touching the lapel of his sports jacket. “I’ll be back this evening,” I said as Dinah and I headed for the door. Dinah’s house was barely a block from the bookstore parking lot, and instead of going home, she’d suggested I come over. The area was called Walnut Acres because at one time it had been a walnut farm. One of the nutty trees still stood in Dinah’s yard.
We walked around the corner off Ventura onto the side street. Emily’s SUV was still parked where she’d left it. “Maybe I was wrong about everything,” I said as we walked down the block almost completely past the parking lot. “Besides, what am I going to do—I can’t keep trailing her.” Instinctively I looked back toward the parking lot and the greenmobile, but something else caught my attention. Something moving. I elbowed Dinah and she watched with me. The back door of Luxe had opened and someone’s head was sticking out and checking over the area.
“What the . . . My God, it’s her,” I said. Emily pulled the door shut behind her and sprinted across the parking lot. You didn’t have to be a Mensa member to figure out she was headed for her Element.