You Better Knot Die

Table of Contents

 

 

HOOKED ON MURDER

DEAD MEN DON’T CROCHET

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

A STITCH IN CRIME

YOU BETTER KNOT DIE

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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reaction to the recipes contained in this book.

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-44525-9

1. Crocheting—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.E288Y68 2010
813’.6—dc22
2010028229

Sandy Harding is a wonderful editor, and I am so grateful to be working with her. A big thank you to Jessica Faust for helping make my dream come true. Thank you to Natalee Rosenstein for making Berkley Prime Crime such a great place to be. Once again the Berkley art department has given me a wonderful cover. Megan Swartz has been a great help with publicity.

I have to thank my team of experts for answering questions about all kinds of odd things. Financial information came from Steve Palley and Rich Scheiner. Howard Marx, M.D. took care of the medical questions. Los Angeles Police Officer and writer Kathy Bennett advised me on police procedures. Ken Sobel was my gambling consultant. With her crochet skill and eye for detail, Linda Hopkins was a great help with the crochet patterns.

A special thank you to Roberta Martia for all her support and crochet advice. Another special thank you to Judy Libby for her legal expertise and years of friendship going back to our college newspaper days.

Rene Biedermann, Connie Cabon, Alice Chiredjian, Terry Cohen, Clara Feeney, Pamela Feuer, Sonia Flaum, Lily Gillis, Winnie Hineson, Linda Hopkins, Reva Mallon and Elayne Moschin are part of the Thursday crochet and knit group. Thanks for the friendship, support, sharing of patterns and knowledge, and fun. Paula Tesler keeps us stretching our yarn horizons.

Burl, Max and Samantha, you guys are the best. What else can I say?

“PINK, YOU’VE GOT A PROBLEM,” ADELE ABRAMS said as she slowed her car in front of my house. I had been crocheting a snowflake—or trying to—while she drove, and it took me a moment to look up. But when I did—

Lots of strange things have gone on at my house, but the scene that greeted me beat anything I’d seen before. My mouth fell open and I dropped the silver hook and white thread I was holding.

I don’t know what was the most shocking. Was it the line of police cruisers along the curb, the uniform stringing yellow crime scene tape across my front porch or the group of uniforms conferring on my front lawn? My house, a crime scene?

“What did you do this time?” Adele asked as she pulled to the curb in front of all the cruisers. Neighbors were drifting into the street and the kid who lived a few houses down had his video camera pointed at all the action.

I took a moment to glare at Adele. We had just spent two days together, which was about a day and a half too much. Adele and I worked together at Shedd & Royal Books and More and we were both part of the crochet group, the Tarzana Hookers, who met at the bookstore. I wouldn’t call us friends exactly, more like family. You pick your friends—you get stuck with family. Instead of answering, I just shot her a withering look.

A black Crown Victoria roared into my driveway. The car had barely squeaked to a stop when the door flew open and a tall man in a suit jumped out. Before I could call out his name, Barry sprinted across the lawn, breaking through the yellow tape strung across the porch. He had some kind of tool in his hand. I heard the splintering of my front door and a moment later it flew open. I was out of the car by now, though I didn’t get far. One of the uniforms stopped me and didn’t seem to care when I said it was my house.

Adele was out of her side of the car in a flash, almost catching her jacket on the door. The jacket was part of what she called a more-subdued look. I wasn’t sure what was subdued about it. She’d taken an electric blue ready-made boxystyle blazer and added kelly green and fuchsia crocheted trim around the neck, down the front and at the cuffs. “Pink, you dropped your snowflake.” When I turned, she was holding out the ball of white thread, my steel hook and what appeared to be a tangle of the fine yarn. She glanced around. “Maybe I better stay here with you.” I shook my head and gestured back toward the car. I didn’t know what was going on, but I did know I didn’t want to have Adele in the middle of it. She hung her head as I got my suitcase out of the trunk. “Pink, I’ve been your backup before. C’mon, let me be part of the action.” When I pointed toward the car again, she went into a full pout, but she finally got back into the new Matrix station wagon and drove off.

Adele and I were just returning from our trip to San Diego, which Adele kept referring to as a yarn emergency. Since our crochet group, the Tarzana Hookers, had become so connected with the bookstore where I worked, one of the co-owners, Mrs. Shedd, had recently added a yarn department to the store. It was still a work-in-progress because Mrs. Shedd wanted the yarn we sold to be special and high-end rather than what was sold at the big craft stores. When she heard about a yarn store closing in San Diego and selling off their stock, Mrs. Shedd had sent us down there at the last minute.

It was just the high-end unusual stuff we were looking for, and we had packed the back of Adele’s wagon solid with yarn. The rest was being UPSed up to us. Adding the new yarn section was good and bad. Good that we were getting all this wonderful yarn, and bad because everything at the bookstore was already on overdrive due to the upcoming holidays and our big launch event. Now we had more work than ever.

“Did you find the body?” one of the uniforms asked when Barry returned a few moments later.

Body?

I tried again to talk to the uniform, but he was impassive. That was when Barry saw me. When he’s working, he usually has a neutral expression, but now his whole face relaxed and his breath came out in a gush as he crossed the space between us. Then his expression changed from relief to a mixture of surprise and annoyance.

Homicide Detective Barry Greenberg was my boyfriend. I thought boyfriend was a stupid title for a man in his fifties but had given up on finding a better one and finally gone with it.

“Molly, where were you?” Barry said, looking at the suitcase next to me.

“What body?” I said, ignoring his question. “What’s going on?”

“It’s okay, we’ll get to that in a minute,” he said. “You can’t just disappear like that. So where were you?”

“Didn’t you get my message?” I said. He shook his head. “I’m sure I left you a message.” I stopped for a moment. I had left him a message, hadn’t I? There had been so much to do when the trip came up and I had been in a hurry. “I know I meant to leave you a message.” I thought when I explained my sudden trip was work related he’d understand. His work schedule was such that he often disappeared for days, sometimes with barely a word. I guess not. He just got more agitated as he asked why I hadn’t returned any of his calls.

Cell phones are great as long as they’re charged. I pulled out mine, which was completely dead. “Sorry. In my haste to leave, I forgot the charger. Now what about the body?”

By now all the cops were listening to our interchange. Barry refused to give out any details until I explained the details of my San Diego trip. He snorted when I mentioned it was a yarn emergency.

“Hey, Greenberg, we want to know about the body,” an officer who seemed to be in charge finally said, getting impatient.

“It’s
bodies
and they’re in the attic,” Barry said, reaching out to catch me as my legs went rubbery with the news. Still I pulled away and stumbled toward my house. As soon as I walked in the door, the smell of death was unmistakable. I covered my nose and went back outside.

It took a while to get everything sorted out. The gist was that the cops had been at my neighbor’s taking a report. Emily Perkins had called them, concerned that her husband Bradley had gone missing.

Coincidentally the gas meter reader was making his rounds and while reading my meter had noticed a bad smell coming from the bathroom window I’d left open a crack. Seeing the cops, he’d mentioned the smell. Well, woman with missing husband and dead smell coming from next door . . . The cops taking the report called out the cavalry. Barry heard the call and address and he hadn’t been able to get in touch with me for a couple of days so he jumped to conclusions.

And the real source of the stink: I had a backyard full of orange trees that attracted all kinds of rodents who had started making side trips into my attic. I’d had all the entrances sealed up and some traps had been left for any stragglers. There had been three. As soon as the pest control people came by and removed the bodies, the smell disappeared.