all understood. That North Adams was particularly nice,” she said sending back a glance to the seasoned, tall, dark-haired actor who played the homicide detective I’d tried to save. “He even offered to talk to you and help you with ‘this difficult time,’ as he put it. And the guy who played the shooter seemed to take it as some kind of compliment to his acting ability.”
“You said I lost my mind?” I said, skipping over everything else she’d said. “Great, now they think I’m crazy.” Normally I might not care what strangers thought of me, but I was probably going to see these people again. The bookstore was just up the street and even though the production was self-contained, providing meals and snacks, the cast and crew still drifted up to the bookstore to hang out, buy books, get coffee drinks and scoop up our barista’s great cookies.
“We better go,” I said. “We’ve still got to pick up Kelly’s crochet items.”
“We don’t all have to go,” Adele said, reminding us that she was more or less in charge of the crochet group. It was more in her mind and less in reality. CeeCee Collins was technically the leader, but her acting career was so busy right now it was hard for her to handle the group as well. So Adele had jumped in as de facto leader.
“Well, none of us really has to go,” I said. “Kelly doesn’t know we’re coming and we can just wait until she comes to one of our meetings.”
Adele snorted. “Maybe you can wait, Pink, but CeeCee and I have our doubts about Kelly’s crochet ability. She keeps saying she’s going to come to a meeting and she keeps saying she’s going to make things for our booth at the Tarzana fair, but I haven’t seen anything to make me believe it’s true.”
“What about the scarf she showed us that she was making?” I said.
“Okay, so she can make a scarf, and so she came to a couple of meetings, and so whenever we see her at the bookstore she says she’s been making stuff at home for the fair. But I want to see proof.”
It was useless to argue with Adele, so Dinah and I traded nods and kept silent. It was just a short walk up the street to Dinah’s house, which was on the corner. Kelly lived around the next corner on the street that paralleled the one the production company was using. As soon as we got on the other street, it was much quieter. The houses were set on orderly little plots, close to the street. This part of Tarzana had sidewalks and seemed more like a neighborhood than where I lived.
“I don’t know why Kelly has to be so difficult,” Adele said with a harrumph in her voice. It was all Dinah and I could do to keep from laughing. Adele practically wrote the book on causing a ruckus. Apparently immune to our stifled laughs, Adele continued. “If she’s going to be one of the Hookers, she ought to follow the rules.”
“Rules?” Dinah repeated with surprise. “What are they, the ten commandments of crochet?”
“I don’t know if there are ten, but there should be something that says if you join the Hookers, you have to go along with the group, and show up to the meetings,” Adele said as the breeze caught the brim of her hat and pushed it down, covering her eyes. She flipped it up and tried to make it stay. Go along with the group? Did Adele hear what she was saying? She never went along with anything.
As we continued down the block, I noticed that the street was crowded with cars and commercial vehicles. Generally it was empty at this time of day. But then I realized they were all part of the production and probably just being kept there until they were needed. I noticed a truck with open slats up ahead, parked in Kelly’s driveway. The back of the truck was filled with greenery in pots and two men in jeans were standing next to it.
Since Dinah’s house was just up the street from Kelly’s, which made them neighbors, my friend knew more about Kelly’s business than the rest of us. “She’s got her hands full,” Dinah began. “You know both she and her husband have kids from previous marriages. It’s always a changing cast of characters in that house. His kids, her kids, no kids. You can’t just pick up