A Killing Notion: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery

by Bourbon, Melissa

  “Not a one. Buttercup here is a peach of a truck.”

  If he thought anything about my name for the old Ford, he didn’t let on. “They made ’em sturdy back then,” he said. “We’re backed up today. I’ll need a good hour.”

  I saw my opening and jumped. “I bet the loss of Mr. Montgomery has put y’all behind. So tragic.”

  “Yeah, it has. I’m pretty new here. Never met the guy, but it knocked his partner off the grid. Mr. Blake’s taking it real hard.”

  “Did he get his phone back?”

  Mac stared at me, his brows knitting together. “Come again?”

  “We were at Chris Montgomery’s funeral and his daughter found Mr. Blake’s cell phone,” Will said.

  Mac’s lips parted and he dipped his chin. “That explains it. He’s missed his shifts and he hasn’t been answering our calls. Guess he can’t answer if he don’t have his phone.”

  “Do you think he’s okay?” I asked. People handled grief in all kinds of ways. Seeing his friend die so tragically could be driving Mr. Blake to face his own mortality.

  Mac’s eyebrows lifted uncertainly. “Like I said, he’s taking his friend’s death real hard.”

  “Will, honey,” I said, taking Will’s arm. Talking to Chris Montgomery’s business partner suddenly seemed vitally important. I assumed that Chris Montgomery’s half of the business would probably go to Miss Reba, assuming she’d even want to keep it, but the day-to-day operations would likely fall to Mr. Blake. Maybe that’s what he’d wanted. Maybe he wasn’t grieving. Maybe guilt had him hiding out or on the lam.

  I gave myself a mental head smack for my cynicism. I didn’t know the first thing about Eddy Blake, and even less about how the two Bubba’s shops were run and how Blake might benefit from his friend’s death.

  “I’m sure you all must be so worried,” I said. “We could go check on him.”

  Will patted my hand and nodded to Mac. “Absolutely. Be happy to.”

  Mac didn’t respond, instead turning and ambling back to the lobby. Will and I followed, an uncertain look passing between us. “How do we get the address?” I whispered.

  Will shrugged. “We can always look in the phone book, or Google it.”

  But it turned out we didn’t have to do either one. Mac pulled something up on the computer and a few seconds later he held out his hand for the truck key. “Be about an hour,” he said as I dropped it in his palm. “5309 Crescent Street.”

  I blinked, registering the address.

  He turned on his heel, tucking a pen he’d been using behind his ear and heading toward the door between the lobby and the garage bays. “Let me know if Mr. Blake’s okay,” he said over his shoulder. “We could sure use his help around here.”

  “We sure will, Mac,” I said. “We sure will.”

  * * *

  True to his word, Mac finished up with Buttercup in an hour, and ten minutes later we stood at the front door of Mr. Blake’s trailer home in the center of a nice mobile home park on the east side of town. While Christopher Montgomery lived in a traditional Texas house made of redbrick, his partner’s house was far more modest. It was a nice mobile home, looking far more permanent than temporary, with a small patch of grass, a shrub, and a few flowers in front.

  “He has a thing for Mustangs,” Will commented, pointing to the left of the small house. Five cars were lined up in various states of repair. Clearly, a car to a mechanic was like fabric to a fashion designer.

  “Here goes,” I said, raising my hand and rapping my knuckles against the door.

  In seconds flat, the door yanked open. A woman stood there, her expression shifting from angry to relieved to disappointed, all before I could blink. “Yes?” she asked.

  I stepped forward, holding out my hand, hoping I looked more confident than I felt. “Mrs. Blake? I’m Harlow Cassidy. This is Will Flores. I . . . we were just at Bubba’s, and Mac said he hadn’t seen Mr. Blake lately. We said we’d stop by—” I looked at Will to my left. “To see if he’s okay and if y’all need anything.”

  Her expression changed again, slipping back to a veil of ire. She eyed my hand, but didn’t raise hers to shake. “I really can’t say if he’s okay,” she said, anger tingeing her voice. “I haven’t seen him in days.”

  Not what I’d expected to hear. I dropped my arm back to my side and Will took up where I’d left off. “Sounds like he’s taking his partner’s death pretty hard.”

  She didn’t respond to that, just dropped her gaze, her emotion shifting to a palpable worry. “He is. Harder than I expected.”

  A red flag went up in my mind from that last sentence. Could Mrs. Blake have had something against Chris Montgomery that led her to kill him, not anticipating the toll the death would take on her own husband? Anything was possible, and I certainly couldn’t discount the idea.

  “I’m awfully sorry to hear that,” I said. “The accident was a shock.”

  “I heard the car was tampered with and someone forced him off the road.” She shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe this had all actually happened.

  “That’s what we heard, too. Something with the steering.”

  She glanced at the row of cars. “I wouldn’t know a steering line from a water line,” she said, and I had to wonder if she’d said that to plant a seed about her vehicular ignorance.

  “Me neither,” I said. “I just need to turn the key so a car will go. Nothing more.”

  “Me, too. I know my way around a kitchen, and couldn’t care less about cars. But they’re Eddy’s passion.”

  “As far as it goes,” Will said, “cars are a pretty good thing for a man to tinker with.”

  “I guess,” Mrs. Blake said. “He’s a good man. He’s taking this hard, though. When we lost our daughter, he disappeared on me for a week. Couldn’t cope. Drove around looking for her, as if he could bring Sue back to us.”

  “I’m sorry,” I started, but she waved away my sympathy.

  “Chris’s death, it’s a tragedy, but Eddy’ll get past it. We’ll get through it together, just like we’ve done with everything. It’s what marriage is about, right? For better or worse.”

  I looked over her shoulder trying to see the pictures framed on a small table to her right. A large photo of a ginger-haired girl sat in the center spot, the rest of the smaller photos grouped around it. There was a family photo, the images too small to make out, and another of the girl in the driver’s seat of a gray, dull-looking car. It was Bondoed and primered, but from what I could see, a smile lit up the girl’s face.

  Instinctively, I moved forward, but Mrs. Blake shifted, blocking my view. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, both for the loss of her daughter and her grieving husband.

  “Thank you.”

  We stayed silent. If you listen, people will talk, Meemaw used to say. It was true. I’d learned to stand back and let people fill the silence. Mrs. Blake was no different from most other people I’d encountered. She continued. “He’ll be back,” she said, and I wondered if she was trying to convince herself as much as us. “He stays out a few nights a week, but that’s always for work. That business is all-consuming. I sure didn’t expect that when he took on a partner and opened another store. But if that makes him happy and it pays the bills, then I’m all for it.”

  “Sounds like you have a good husband.”

  She nodded, the anger she’d emanated when we’d first arrived all but gone. “We’re a team. We were going to talk about our schedules and simplifying the other night, but then Chris died and now I don’t know what’ll happen. More late nights than before, I imagine.”

  “I’m sure you’ll work it out once he’s back home,” I said, trying to sound encouraging.

  She gestured to me and Will. “You know how it is. Relationships are about compromise. We’ve had our share of problems, but he’s never done anything l
ike this. Truly, I’m mad as all get-out, but I’m worried sick.”

  “Could he be at a friend’s house? Or a bar? Is he a drinker?”

  Her eyes clouded. “He’s as sober as the day is long. Oh, don’t get me wrong—he has his vices,” she said, her gaze straying to the row of cars alongside the house, “but the drink isn’t one of them.”

  “Have you called around to the bars in town, just in case?” Losing someone could play tricks on the mind and send even a sober man to the bottle.

  “We’ve been married twenty years,” she said. “I’m under no illusions that my husband is perfect, and if he’s turned to whiskey, or whatever, we’ll deal with that. But I don’t think he’s drowned his sorrow in alcohol, I just don’t.”

  She knew her husband better than anyone, so I took her at her word. “I’m sorry about your daughter, Mrs. Blake, and I hope your husband comes home soon. If we can do anything—”

  She arched an eyebrow at us. “Who did you say you were again?”

  “I’m a friend of Miss Reba’s,” I said.

  She looked blankly at me and once again, I got the feeling that something was off. “Mr. Montgomery’s wife,” I said.

  She shrugged again. “I only met her once or twice, but she’s rather . . . I mean we don’t have the same . . .” She paused and I got the feeling she didn’t want to speak ill of Miss Reba, a new widow. “We don’t run in the same circles.”

  Given the differences in their lifestyles, that was evident. I wondered if this caused friction between Eddy and Chris. Yet another potential motive developed in my mind.

  “Again, Mrs. Blake, I’m so sorry about your husband’s partner. I hope Eddy’ll be home safe and sound real soon,” I said, and Will and I took our leave.

  Chapter 7

  I dropped Will back at his truck. He headed back to work at the town offices, and I drove back to 2112 Mockingbird Lane. Something about the encounter with Mrs. Blake had me on edge, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I parked under possumwood trees and crossed the driveway, mulling it over, but the answer didn’t come to me. Something banged and clacked in the distance. I peered through the trees at Sundance Kids, my grandmother’s goat farm directly behind my property. I could make out Nana walking the perimeter of the farm, Thelma Louise, the grand dam of the goatherd, and a few more of Nana’s Nubian and La Mancha goats followed her like Nana was the Pied Piper.

  I thought about crossing the grass to chat, but my mind was circling around Mr. Montgomery’s death, Mr. Blake’s absence, Mrs. Blake’s distress, and poor Shane. Instead I walked around back, waved at them, and headed up the back porch steps. If only I’d been able to go inside the Blake house. As it was, I knew we’d been lucky Mrs. Blake had talked with us at all, but I felt there was something to be learned there.

  Too bad I had no idea what that something was.

  A series of bangs stopped me in my tracks. This time they came from inside the house. My stomach coiled. It was an awful lot of noise for Meemaw to be making.

  It wasn’t Nana, since she was over at Sundance Kids. I stopped just outside the Dutch door, the scent of apples and cinnamon wafting through the open top half of the door. For a split second, I thought it could be my cousin Sandy or her daughter, Libby. While my Cassidy charm centered around the fashion designs I created for people, my cousins’ had to do with food. What they cooked softened the edges of the emotions of the people around them, heightening their senses.

  But they wouldn’t just come into my house and start baking, which brought me back around to Meemaw. Had she learned to bake as a ghost?

  I plowed through the Dutch door, noticing three things right away:

  1) The kitchen was in disarray. Every bowl had been taken from the cupboards, every mixing spoon used, a light dusting of flour seemed to cover every surface, and what looked like a pile of smashed cornbread muffins sat in a mound about two feet away from the oven;

  2) At least thirty-six muffins were cooling on the round pine table, and from what I could tell, there were at least three different flavors;

  3) Mama stood bent over the butter yellow replica oven. The oven door was open and another tray of what looked to be streusel-topped blueberry muffins was clutched in her oven-mitted hand.

  My breath staggered and a sound must have escaped my lips because Mama’s back straightened, she lost her balance, and the tray of muffins tilted right, then left. She managed to keep the tray level, saving the muffins.

  “Mama, what in tarnation are you doing?” She had her own kitchen to make a mess in, so why in the world was she in mine?

  She whirled around. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of another figure flickering in and out of visibility like Princess Leia’s hologram projected in front of R2-D2 in Star Wars.

  Meemaw was here, too.

  “Mama,” I said, looking around the kitchen again. “Why are you making muffins—”

  “And cornbread, darlin’.”

  “And cornbread,” I amended, “in my kitchen?”

  She set the tray on the counter, turning to face me. Flour was smudged across her cheek and her brown hair was mussed, but she grinned like a Cheshire cat. “My oven’s on the fritz, and I had a hankerin’ for some muffins.”

  I stared at her, gauging just how much she wanted muffins versus how much she wanted to know what was going on with Gracie’s boyfriend, Shane, and him being a murder suspect. “Is that right?”

  “Yup, that’s right. Hoss has a hankerin’, too, for that matter.”

  Meemaw’s faint form jiggled, and I got the feeling she was laughing. The question was, was she laughing at me, or Mama?

  I gestured to the room and muffin debris. “And the mess?”

  Mama sighed. “Either I’m losin’ my mind, or Meemaw’s havin’ a little fun at my expense.”

  “By messing with your muffins?”

  “Precisely.”

  Loretta Mae was full of surprises. I’d seen her use motion to turn the pages of books and magazines. She could move small objects, like a shoe or a spool of thread, from one place to another.

  But haunting Mama while she baked in my kitchen was something new. I ignored my great-grandmother’s antics and bent to pick up a dropped muffin. “Something’s bugging me,” I said to Mama.

  A damp dishrag sat on the counter. Meemaw. She was a tricky one, bless her heart. I took it and began wiping down the tile.

  “What’s that, sugar?” Mama asked.

  “Will and I went to Granbury—”

  “He’s a sweet man, Harlow Jane.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her, the corner of my mouth raising in a slight grin. We’d been seeing each other for going on a year now. He was everything I wanted in a man . . . and then some. “I know he is, Mama.”

  “Okay, so, you went to Granbury with him, and . . . ?”

  In my peripheral vision, I caught a flicker, like a TV with a bad connection, but when I turned to look, it was gone.

  I continued. “I went to Bubba’s, and then we went to Granbury to talk to Chris Montgomery’s business partner. He wasn’t there, so we went to his house.”

  I paused to shake out the cloth in the sink and rinse it.

  Mama wasn’t a detective any more than I was, but our curiosity was cut from the same cloth. “And?” she said, her full attention on me.

  “He hasn’t been home since the funeral. I’ve been wondering if maybe he has someone on the side, you know?”

  An acquiescent moan came from behind me. So Meemaw agreed that my thought wasn’t so farfetched. It made sense. Maybe things weren’t as great in their marriage as Mrs. Blake thought. If he had another woman, he could very well be seeking solace from her.

  Mama stood back and watched as I grabbed the ancient phone from its cradle on the wall—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it was one of Lor
etta Mae’s mottos, so I still had the old phone attached to the wall. The long cord stretched as I bent to clean up some more of my great-grandmother’s mess. After a few rings, Gavin McClaine picked up with a clipped, “Yup?”

  “It’s Harlow,” I said, cutting to the chase. “Can you find something out for me?”

  “Hello to you, too, sis,” he said, but his voice was mocking rather than sincere. Siblings we were not.

  “Gavin—”

  “Deputy,” he corrected.

  “Eddy Blake hasn’t been home since Chris Montgomery was in the car accident. His wife’s pretty worried. I was hoping you could trace his credit cards or something to find out where he is.”

  “Ahead of you there. Not showing at the funeral was a red flag—”

  “He was at the reception afterward,” I said.

  There was a heavy pause, and I could sense his brows furrowing and him tilting back his cowboy hat as he pondered. He was just like his daddy, Hoss, in that way. “You talked to him?”

  “No, but Miss Reba said—”

  “I can’t go by what Miss Reba said. She was distraught. Did anyone talk to him? He might could have dropped a hint at where he was heading.”

  “Well, I just don’t know, Gavin. I didn’t talk to everyone. I just know that he left his phone.”

  “I’ve been checking on him, Harlow. Wherever he is, he’s paying cash or shacking up. His credit cards haven’t been used. Now, I know you wanna play at being detective, but if there’s nothin’ else, I have work to do.”

  “Sure thing, thanks,” I started, making a face at the phone, but Gavin had already hung up. I hung up the receiver, muttering under my breath. Stepbrother or not, he had some nerve hanging up on me. I certainly hoped he was sweeter to Orphie than he was to his newly acquired kin. Namely me.

  I needed to go see Miss Reba. Now. A clanking noise sounded from the stove. I whirled around, but all I saw was Mama, a new tray of muffins in her hand ready to place in the oven.

  “I’m going to see Miss Reba,” I said, knowing exactly what I needed to do. I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed toward the Dutch door, but paused. “I could help you clean up first,” I offered, but behind me, as if to say, not a chance, an invisible force cradled me, pushing me forward. Meemaw couldn’t quite materialize, and she definitely couldn’t handle the very physical tasks of cooking, but she could harness the air like nobody’s business.