She was looking down at the counter and I had come up behind her and raised the broom, ready to strike. The back door made a noise as it opened and Emily turned toward it just as Mason came in, fussing about me not returning calls. She took in my raised broom and her mouth fell open. “Are you crazy?” she yelled as she pushed past me and Mason and took off without a word. She rushed across the yard, jumped on the bench and launched herself over the fence.
“Was it something I said?” Mason said, deadpan.
I didn’t react to Mason’s comment. I was a little zoned out by what had just happened. I’d been so geared up for Emily to make a move, it seemed anticlimactic that she’d run off. Finally Mason waved his hand in front of my face to get my attention and asked what had just happened.
“I’m not sure,” I said. I started to tell him everything about Bradley from the beginning, but he already knew.
“That’s why I’m here,” he said. “Greenberg got in touch with me. He was worried you might need a lawyer. Something about you being found hovering over Perkins’ body, covered in his blood. I left you a bunch of messages.” I still had the broom poised for action and Mason took it out of my hands and put it in the corner.
“Detective Heather said I was a person of interest, but I think that was just to bug me. She seems to have focused on Emily being the killer.” I shuddered when I said that, thinking she’d been in my kitchen with close access to knives a few minutes ago. Still there was something that didn’t seem right. I’d noticed it when she was running across my yard. I mentioned to Mason that she had on the same clothes she had on in the photos. “If she’d stabbed Bradley, you’d think she would have gotten blood on her clothes or been worried that she had and she would have changed them,” I said.
“It’s too bad the detective didn’t arrest her,” Mason said, glancing out the window toward the fence. “I don’t like leaving you here. Come to my place.” When I looked askance, he quickly added there was no hidden agenda in his offer.
I assured him I’d be okay, though I still startled when I heard a key in the front door lock. Samuel came into the kitchen a moment later. He’d been picking up a lot of work at holiday parties and I’d barely seen him even though we were sharing the same roof. He nodded at Mason and asked why there was a media frenzy going on out front. I was glad to let Mason tell the story since I’d repeated it so many times. Samuel’s eyes widened at what he was hearing and then he seemed upset.
“Mother, are you nuts?” Samuel said, before launching into a lecture about me staying out of trouble. Mason offered to stay, but Samuel said it wasn’t necessary. Nobody listened to me when I said I thought I might have been wrong about Emily’s intent, now that I’d realized the thing about her clothes.
“Please take care of your mother,” Mason said. “And for God’s sake, Molly, keep your doors locked.”
After all that had happened, I expected to have a hard time sleeping but surprised myself by falling into a deep sleep. True I had a lot of strange dreams, but by morning I felt normal. It was a little creepy at how well I was adjusting to finding dead bodies and possibly being threatened by neighbors.
Even with the holidays, the Hookers had decided to keep our regular crochet sessions. After everything with Bradley, the cops and Emily, I really needed a little crochet and talk time right now.
Most of the group was already assembled at the table when I got to the bookstore. I almost laughed when I got toward the back and saw what everyone was working on. Adele, CeeCee, Sheila, Eduardo and even Rhoda were making vampire scarves. Elise had returned to the group and was displaying her finished scarf on the table. I picked it up and looked it over. I had to give her credit, everything about it did say vampire.
Dinah came in from the café with the kids in tow. When they got to the table, Ashley-Angela and E. Conner sat down near Adele. In keeping with her seasonal attire, Adele had worn the sweater with all the holiday symbols hanging off. The kids were as entranced this time as when they’d seen it first in the car. I was afraid of a scene and went to move them away from her before they started touching the sweater and she went berserk. I wasn’t fast enough and Ashley-Angela touched the dreidel near Adele’s shoulder.
“We’re making our own dreidels,” the little girl said. “Only ours are going to have glitter.”
Adele twisted her head to see what Ashley-Angela was looking at. “I bet yours aren’t crocheted,” Adele said.
The little girl shook her head so her curls bobbled around. “I don’t know how to crochet. Aunt Dinah said she’ll teach me someday. I don’t know when someday is.”
Adele did one of her grand gestures and threw her head back in disbelief at the comment.
She pulled out a hook and some cotton yarn from her bag and offered it to Ashley-Angela, along with a lesson on how to crochet. Okay, the rest of the table was all watching with their mouths open. Adele never ceased to surprise. E. Conner watched for a while then pulled out the coloring he’d brought along.
I took out the owl head and glanced at the pattern. I picked up some black yarn with a sparkle in it and connected it to the finished head and began to work on the body.
When Elise looked up, I gave her a reassuring nod. I was glad she had rejoined the group.
“What’s with this neighbor of yours, Bradley Perkins? He’s dead, he’s not dead, he’s really dead,” Rhoda said to me. “I saw on the news they found his body up in the mountains. I think even that Kimberly Wang Diaz called it a strange case with twists and turns.” Elise looked up at the comment. Her face seemed to tighten and she glanced around to see if anyone was staring at her.
“They’re saying his wife did it,” Rhoda continued. “You know her, don’t you, Molly?”
I nodded in acknowledgment and then explained why I wasn’t so sure she’d done it. All eyes were on me, particularly Dinah’s. Adele stopped with her lesson and got in the middle of the conversation.
“Okay, Sherlock Fletcher, then who did it?” Adele informed the table that Dinah and I had been following Emily when she went to meet her husband.
CeeCee seemed troubled. “Why were you following her?”
“You certainly get in the middle of things, Molly,” Eduardo said.
It was obvious at this point that there was a gap in information. If we were going to talk about it, it made no sense not to share the whole story so we’d all be on the same page.
“Good for you for trying to trap him,” Elise said when I’d gotten to the end.
“It’s kind of beside the point now,” CeeCee said. “The man’s dead.”
“Maybe somebody else saw Emily coming out of Luxe and followed her, too,” Sheila said.
“Yeah, like Nicholas. It’s his store so he must have known what she was doing,” Rhoda offered.
“Nicholas wouldn’t do anything like kill somebody,” Sheila said. Her comment got everyone’s attention.
“I didn’t know you were so chummy with him, dear,” CeeCee said.
Sheila stumbled over her words. She wasn’t chummy with him, but she’d been selling her blankets and other accessories in his store for a while and she thought that gave her some insight into him.