Behind the Seams by Betty Hechtman

Author:Betty Hechtman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group, Inc.
Published: 2011-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

“A CROCHETED DOLL? WHO’S MAKING A CROCHETED doll?” Adele said as she came in at the end of the conversation. Almost all the Hookers were gathered around the table, and I was telling them about what Dinah and I had seen inside Robyn’s house. The group had felt protective of Nell before, but now that she’d started crocheting with us, they were even more so. Everyone wanted to see her get her life back.

Dinah was a no-show. She had a freshman English class to teach. But the rest of us were working on one of Rhoda’s impatient crochet projects.

“Nobody is making a doll. I was just telling them about what I saw when I went into Robyn’s house. It isn’t about the dolls so much anyway, but what they mean.”

I had all their attention now. This was my big moment to bring out something I’d read about in The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigation. According to the book, when checking out someone’s surroundings, everything tells something about them. I called it the Sherlock Holmes effect. What could you deduce from things.

“The point is that Robyn’s house was utilitarian and sparsely furnished. Her office was similar, or at least I think so from what I saw in the box of her belongings. So why would she have a crocheted cactus in her office and keep a couple of worn-looking dolls in her house?”

“Because they meant something to her,” Elise said in her wispy voice.

“I can’t imagine anything meaning much to her,” Nell said. “She seemed hard and cold.”

“All the more reason those two things say something important about her,” I said. “And there’s something else to consider. The dolls look worn and seem like something from her childhood. The cactus appears newer and as though it was made for her office. Both of them had similar initials on the bottom, though I’m afraid I couldn’t read them. I think it’s safe to assume the same person made all of them, which means it’s somebody she’d known when she was a child but she was still in touch with.”

“Ooh, that’s good,” Sheila said. She had taken a short break from her job at the lifestyle store, Luxe, to join us. Even though it was literally the next store to the bookstore, it was hard for her to get to the group. Not that she couldn’t take off time, she didn’t want to. She’d had enough bad jobs to treasure a good one.

“Maybe it is someone from her family?” Eduardo said. His voice was so much deeper and masculine than the rest of ours, everyone did a little double take when he spoke. “My gran made a lot of toys for me.” The comment got an extra double take from Rhoda. She didn’t know Eduardo as well as the rest of us since she was relatively new to the group. You truly couldn’t judge Eduardo by his cover-model looks. He had learned how to crochet from the grandmother he’d just mentioned.

He’d been missing a lot of our get-togethers and seemed like he had something on his mind.

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