Pleating for Mercy

by Melissa Bourbon

  The man with Karen looked a little like a young Robert Duvall, complete with balding head and watchful eyes. He had to be Karen’s husband.

  Josie’s spine suddenly stiffened. “Oh!” She pulled away from Karen and quickly raised her cell phone back up to her ear. “Sorry, Mrs. Kincaid,” she said, listening, then speaking, then listening some more. “Yes . . . I know, but . . . I can’t.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “But Nell’s dead!”

  She looked at the ground, cupping her hand over her eyes as she listened to Nate’s mother on the other end of the phone. The tall man with Karen hunched his shoulders and whispered in her ear. I felt as if I was in the middle of a movie. The characters were bleeding with emotion and I was on the outside looking in.

  “They should postpone the ceremony,” my mother said under her breath. “A wedding on the heels of death is sure to bring bad luck.”

  I didn’t always believe her superstitions, but this one actually made sense. Starting a new life as another one ended felt disrespectful, though it was the natural order of things.

  “No . . . yes . . . you’re right,” Josie said into her phone, a new calm slipping into her voice. Karen grabbed her wrist in support.

  I held my breath, thinking she might gather up her gumption to postpone, but she didn’t. She kept her gaze down and nodded. “Okay,” she finally said and disconnected the call.

  Chapter 8

  “Ms. Cassidy.”

  Mama and I both stiffened as Sheriff McClaine came up the walkway. Josie, Karen, and the Robert Duvall look-alike startled and stared up at us. They’d had no idea we were here, I realized.

  Josie’s eyes were wide and spooked. She raked one hand through her hair, staring at us, then at the sheriff. She shoved her phone into her pocket as Hoss McClaine walked up the porch steps.

  Mama took her hand off mine and gave a barely perceptible nod.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Sheriff.” Mama looked out into the garden. “Quite a tragedy.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

  I looked from Mama to the sheriff and back, wishing I knew what each of them was thinking. Were they hiding a relationship?

  After a long twenty seconds, he turned his lazy gaze to me. “Harlow.”

  “Sir.” I felt like we were playing chicken, and if I blinked, I’d lose. “It’s been a long time.” Though not near long enough. I’d been back in town for less than two months, but when I’d been a resident here, that was probably the longest stretch of time I’d ever gone without seeing the sheriff—he’d hauled me into the station too many times to count on two hands. “Who do you think did this?”

  The look he gave me sent me reeling back to when I was eighteen and he’d brought me home after catching my friends and me tipping cows or that time we’d been busted for climbing Bliss’s water tower. Slipping back into adolescent roles was easy in a small town, especially when you’ve had a few brushes with local law enforcement. I had a momentary feeling of doubt about coming back to Bliss.

  His gaze was steady and unyielding, but I couldn’t figure out why he was staring so intently at me. “Can’t say quite yet, ma’am,” he said, finally answering my question.

  Mama flicked her chin at the sheriff’s notebook. “You have some questions for us, Hoss?” He barely had a chance to acknowledge her before she continued. “That girl’s been murdered. Guess you’d best do your job and figure out who did it.”

  “Guess I should at that,” he said. The side of his mouth quirked up, just a hint, and I got the distinct impression that he liked my mother’s fiery personality. “Anybody see Ms. Gellen today?”

  Mama shook her head no, but Josie nodded from the bottom step, breaking down with another sob. Karen’s husband draped his arm over his wife’s shoulder as she, too, nodded.

  “We were all here. Except Mama,” I said. “Josie, Nell, Karen, Ruthann, and me. I was going to make her bridesmaid dress.”

  He jotted something down in his little notebook, writing slow, just like he did everything else.

  “Is that all?” Mama asked after he’d asked a few more questions.

  “I do have some questions for you,” he said, turning his gaze my way, but he stood there another few seconds doing nothing.

  “Well, are ya waitin’ for a written invitation?” Mama demanded, but there was a little gleam in her eye and I suspected she was playing up how aggravated she was for my benefit.

  The sheriff flipped a page in his notebook and tapped his pen against it. “Where were you earlier tonight?” He scanned the porch with lazy eyes, but I knew they were taking in every last detail, right down to the spool of azure thread sitting on the white-painted window frame and my sketchbook on the little table between Mama and me, opened to the drawing of Josie’s wedding dress.

  “I’ve been here all day. Mama’s been here since, what . . .” I looked at her. “Seven forty-five?”

  “Sounds about right,” she said.

  I’d put a little extra emphasis on the word “Mama,” but he didn’t react. Cool and collected—that was Hoss McClaine. Which just made me wonder what in tarnation Mama was doing sneaking around with him in the first place. She deserved somebody who’d take her out on the town—or at least on the town square. Hiding—whatever it was they were hiding—wasn’t enough for Tessa Parker Cassidy. She deserved better.

  He lifted his gaze to me. “What were you doing here with your mama, Harlow, while Nell Gellen was being strangled in your yard?”

  From the tone of his voice he may as well have been commenting on the lovely weather we were having. It couldn’t be more than seventy-five degrees, a beautiful, mild Texas night in April. But even though his voice was calm and he tipped his cowboy hat back all casuallike, I got the feeling he was suggesting something else, like maybe I had something to do with Nell Gellen being—

  It took a few seconds, but I finally found my voice. “She was strangled?”

  He gave one slow nod. “By the looks of it.”

  “She was waiting on me!” Josie blurted, stumbling up the porch steps and tripping on the last one. I lunged from my rocker and caught her, stopping her from landing on her knees on the splintered wood. “I’m getting married and Harlow’s making my dress,” she said as I pulled her up. “Only . . . only . . .” She sobbed. “Only not Nell’s dress now . . .”

  Time was on the sheriff’s side. He waited while Josie dried her tears, and then he continued calmly as if there hadn’t been a break in the conversation. “What time did y’all leave the shop here?”

  “Nell drove me home around four o’clock,” Josie said.

  “Ruthann and I left together right around the same time,” Karen added from the bottom of the steps.

  “That’s Ruthann McDaniels?”

  A small-town sheriff tended to know everyone. Hoss McLaine was no exception.

  Karen nodded. “That’s right.”

  “And none of you saw Ms. Gellen after that?”

  “She dropped me off at home,” Josie said. “That’s the last . . . the last . . . the last time I saw her.” She broke down with another sob. “W-we were supposed to meet b-back h-here.”

  Karen held a clump of tissues to her face, quietly crying. With my peripheral vision, I saw that Madelyn Brighton had made her way around Nell and was now crouched on her other side. Every few seconds, a flash of light lit up the already artificially bright yard. All I could think of was that Madelyn was going to end up winnowing down seven hundred corpse shots of Nell.

  We all turned as a car screeched to a stop just behind the sheriff’s car. I couldn’t see the make, but by the sound it made, even when coming to a quick stop, it had to be expensive. A woman hurried through the flower-covered arbor. “Josie?”

  Mrs. Lori Kincaid, Nate’s mother. She’d changed clothes since her visit to the shop this afternoon. Gone was the sophisticated cream-colored sleeveless summer frock she’d been wearing. It had been replaced by gray slacks, a white oxford blouse, and
a prim cardigan. This was a rich woman’s It’s nine o’clock at night and there’s an emergency outfit.

  She put a comforting arm around Josie’s shoulders. “Come on, now, pull yourself together.” It was a gentle command, and it did the trick. Josie gave a final sniffle, wiped her eyes, and stood stoic.

  Impressive. That was power.

  “This here’s a crime scene, folks.” Sheriff McClaine’s accent was thick, like gravy on biscuits.

  “Not to mention a private property,” Mama added stiffly. She didn’t like all these people hovering around her childhood home.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the flower head on a weed waving in the yard, growing before my eyes. I flashed a quick look at my mother. “Stop it!” I hissed.

  She frowned at me. “What?”

  I jerked my head to the right. She stuck her chin out and narrowed her eyes like she was trying to figure me out. “You have a twitch, Harlow Jane. What’s wrong with your neck?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with my neck!” I lifted my chin this time, trying to get her to look at the garden without alerting anyone else.

  She finally looked in the direction of the two-foot-tall black sunflower and the cluster of weeds surrounding it. Her eyes grew round. None of that growth had been there moments before.

  “Mama,” I whispered, a good warning in my voice, “you pull it together.”

  “Ohhhh,” she murmured. She fisted her hands and relaxed her face. I looked back at the weeds. They were still . . . and didn’t seem any taller. She’d gotten it under control, but not before another flash of light from Madelyn Brighton’s camera went off.

  “Miss Sandoval,” I heard the sheriff say, “would you step over here?”

  Josie looked at Mrs. Kincaid for reassurance, her brown eyes rimmed with red. Nate’s mother nodded. “Okay,” Josie said, but she looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

  “Where’s her fiancé?” Mama mused as Josie stumbled down the porch steps and over the flagstone path away from the little group gathered on and around the porch.

  Good question.

  The sheriff turned back to me. “We’ll need statements from all of you,” he announced to the group. To me, he drawled, “I’ll need to ask you a few more questions, and we’ll be searching the premises. A deputy’ll be up here in a minute. The rest of you,” he said with a wave of his hand, “go out the way you came and give your names and contact information to the deputy with your statement.”

  He flagged down a woman dressed in an identical beige uniform, minus the off-white cowboy hat, and gestured to her. She nodded at him, took out a small pad of paper, and intercepted Karen and her husband as they headed toward the sidewalk.

  Mrs. Kincaid threw a look over her shoulder, her gaze seeking her future daughter-in-law. “She’s had a terrible shock. It was her maid of honor. What’s he asking her?” she demanded when she got to the deputy.

  “It’s routine, ma’am,” the deputy said.

  “Routine.” She scoffed. “It’s not like she had anything to do with this . . . this . . .” She waved her arm toward Nell’s body. “With this,” she finished.

  “Like I said, it’s routine,” the deputy said. “Now, if I can get your name and address.”

  Mrs. Kincaid’s voice turned curt. “Mrs. Keith Kincaid,” she said, then rattled off her address.

  The deputy didn’t seem fazed by the fact that she was talking to a member of Bliss’s founding family. She wrote the information in her notepad. “Thank you. Now, if you’ll wait for your son’s fiancée outside the gate, we’d certainly appreciate it.”

  “You’d best find out who did this,” she challenged, wagging her finger at the deputy.

  “We’ll do everything we can.”

  The breeze kicked up as Mrs. Kincaid glided through the arbor, turned left on the cracked sidewalk, and waited at her car for Josie.

  From where I stood, I could hear the gruff rumble of Hoss McClaine’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words.

  “I was coming back to do measurements,” Josie said, and I could picture her putting her hand on her heart as she spoke.

  The sheriff’s voice was muffled, but Josie’s grew louder. My skin turned cold as she said, “She was dead when I got here!”

  I perched on the edge of the rocking chair, my chin on my fist, trying to keep my worry at bay. Mama sat next to me. We both tried to ignore the commotion in the street with neighbors and passersby stopping to stare.

  “She’s the one who discovered the body. He’s got to ask the questions,” Mama said.

  I stared at her. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “How do you always know what I’m thinking? You’re not a mind reader.”

  “Harlow Jane,” she said, “I’m a mother, and that, sweetheart, comes with a whole ’nother set of abilities.”

  I sat back and rocked. All I could think about was the fact that Josie was in a mighty precarious position being questioned by Dirty Harry. “Josie couldn’t have done it,” I said.

  “You don’t know that. She discovered the body.”

  I amended my statement. “I don’t believe she could have.”

  But we both knew that since no one had been with Josie when she discovered Nell’s body, she had no alibi.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning I sat at the kitchen table, my arms folded and serving as a pillow for my head. Now sleep wanted to come? It figured.

  The sheriff and his crew had stayed until nearly one in the morning. They’d searched the yard and then I’d let them into the shop. Big mistake. They’d riffled through every last drawer and cupboard, leaving things in worse disarray than they’d already been in.

  I was up until three a.m. cleaning up the shop and trying to push away the thoughts running rampant through my mind. To say I was spooked was an understatement. A woman had been killed on my property, after being in Buttons & Bows, and the sheriff and his deputies had searched high and low for clues. What if Nell had been killed before seven forty-five when Mama got here? I would have no alibi. Would I become a suspect?

  I’d tossed and turned the rest of the night. But the roosters at Mr. Higgins’s place directly next door didn’t care that I needed to sleep in. That was a peculiarity about Bliss. Zoning restrictions were basically nonexistent. We had tiny farms in the middle of town. You needed an acre for a horse, but a chicken coop was fair game on our quarter-acre lots. By six o’clock, I gave up trying to sleep through the cacophony and crawled out of bed. Not even coffee could perk me up.

  A fervent knock on the door of Buttons & Bows made me jump. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the redfaced vintage wall clock hanging exactly where it had been, on the brick column next to the kitchen sink, for the last thirty years. For a moment I wondered if, just maybe, it had finally stopped working because according to the hands, it was six fifty in the morning, and that was way too early for someone to be needing designer clothes. But it sounded like I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been able to sleep.

  The pounding on the door repeated itself, followed by a voice. “Harlow! It’s Josie.”

  I jumped up. If there was anyone I desperately wanted to see right now, it was Josie Sandoval. Mrs. Kincaid had whisked her away after the sheriff had interrogated her, so we hadn’t had a chance to talk again. “Coming!” I called.

  I’d brushed my teeth and pulled on a pair of cut-off jeans and a sleeveless plaid blouse before coming into the kitchen, none of which painted a picture of a fashion designer. Now I darted a glance around the farmhouse kitchen looking for a way to see my reflection. It might be early and the visit unexpected, but I still figured I should look presentable since Josie was a client.

  I spun around. No mirrors. Meemaw had been a purist. A kitchen was for cooking and gathering, not primping. The white plantation shutters at the window above the farm sink suddenly rattled. A wave of panic flowed through me. The murder in my front yard had put me on edge. I�
��d checked all the window latches before going to bed, hadn’t I? Or maybe I’d just imagined I had.

  I pushed the slats open wide enough to reach my hand through to shut the window—“Odd.” I bit my lip. It was closed and locked tight. So what had disturbed the shutters?

  Josie pounded on the door again. As I turned away, I caught a distorted glimpse of my reflection in the window. Oh! I was not a pretty sight at the moment. Two hours of fitful sleep had that effect on a person. I combed my fingers through the tangles in my hair trying to get it to lie a little flatter. Finally I just gave up. What I looked like at the moment had no bearing on my design and sewing abilities. Josie wouldn’t even notice anyway.

  I yanked open the front door and caught Josie with her fist raised, ready to pound on the door again. “I didn’t expect you,” I said.

  She dropped her arm to her side. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I brushed her apology away, closing the door after she stepped inside. “Did you get any sleep?” I asked, though from her disheveled hair and red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes, I already knew the answer was no.

  She shook her head and collapsed on the sofa, in the exact spot where she’d sat the day before. She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders heaved. I reached for a box of tissues, thinking she was going to break into sobs, but her body stilled and she suddenly sat up straight and looked me in the eye. “How could this have happened?”

  My hackles went up. It almost felt like an accusation, and I’d had enough of that from the sheriff and the deputy. I didn’t even know Nell, for pity’s sake. “I, um . . . Josie . . . don’t know. I hope you don’t think—”

  She looked at me, horrified. “Oh, God, no!” She wedged herself into the corner of the sofa, pulling her knees up. “It’s just . . . I mean . . . I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  That made two of us. The deputy’s questions the night before had focused on why Nell would have been killed on my property. I had no answers to any of her questions. “I only met her today,” I’d told the officer, to which she’d replied, “Interesting.”