If Hooks Could Kill - By Betty Hechtman Page 0,1

like kids, though she did like to dress up in costumes for story time.

Then, when the yarn department was added, Adele thought she should be in charge of it. Adele, Dinah and I were all part of the crochet group, and no one would dispute that Adele was far superior with a hook, but she had this small problem. All of the Tarzana Hookers thought crochet was the best of the fiber arts, but Adele took it a step further. If you so much as showed her a knitting needle she would throw a hissy fit. Personally, while I know she had a real reason for being nuts about knitters (she’d had a bad stepmother who was a needle head, as Adele called her), I thought it was time she accepted a world where hooks and needles could get along.

Having a needle hater running a yarn department wasn’t a good idea—not if you wanted a knitter’s business. So, even though I was somewhat of a novice at crochet, Mrs. Shedd wanted me to handle the yarn department.

But none of that explained what I was doing hanging out at a TV shoot. Actually it wasn’t planned. Adele, Dinah and I were on our way to one of the newer Hooker’s houses to pick up some crochet stuff. Her house was around the corner from Dinah’s and we’d had to pass the caravan of trucks and trailers to get there. Even though seeing a set on the street wasn’t new, I still found it exciting. It was fun to see what they’d done to the front of the modest stucco house they were using for a location. They’d carted in trees and bushes and arranged them so that the other houses on the block weren’t visible and so you couldn’t see the open-air tent set up down the street that was acting as a dining room for the cast and crew. A catering truck was parked in the street and the smell of the barbecue wafted down the block.

This is where the freeze frame would end and the action would pick up again. The uniform who’d grabbed my arm had gotten me to the edge of the crowd. Adele followed close behind. “Pink, you’d better thank my boyfriend Eric for saving your skin.” Now that we’d reached the sidelines, Eric let go and apologized if he’d been too rough.

“It was fine,” I said to the barrel-chested man who towered over me. Eric Humphries was an LAPD motor officer and was using his vacation time to work security on the production. In case there was any doubt, he was also Adele’s boyfriend. “Thanks for saving me from the angry mob,” I said looking back at the crew as they tried to set up the shot again. Adele glanced around, saw that no one was watching and touched Eric’s arm in a possessive manner. He responded by beaming a big smile her way. It was embarrassing to watch them making googie eyes at each other. But at least this time the romance wasn’t all in Adele’s imagination.

They made an unusual pair. Adele, with her wild clothes and say whatever attitude, was a sharp contrast to the very proper and polite motor officer. He rode his motorcycle with ramrod straight posture and took his security work at the set very seriously. “Cutchykins,” he said, winking at her. “I’m glad you stopped by. You look lovely as always.”

My eyes started to roll on their own. Didn’t the man have eyes? Adele was wearing a one shoulder sundress made out of multicolored granny squares with a red crocheted flounce at the bottom. She looked like she was wearing an afghan. And Adele had crocheted herself a big brimmed cream-colored hat. It had turned out to be a little too floppy in the brim area, and kept dipping down and cutting off her line of sight.

Dinah rejoined us and Eric went back to his post. “Don’t worry, I took care of everything,” she said. I had no doubt she had. Dinah was a community college English instructor and her specialty was freshman English. She knew how to take charge of an unruly group, no matter who they were. I figured she’d done the same with the production group. “As soon as I explained about your connection to Barry and how he was a homicide detective, and that he’d been shot, and that you were still so sensitive to the whole thing that you’d lost your mind temporarily, they