I came around to her and rubbed her back. Pregnancy had made her curvier than she’d been, and she looked vivacious and glowing. “Josie, you’re pregnant.”
“That doesn’t mean free rein to gain a hundred pounds—”
“First of all, you haven’t gained a hundred pounds, and second of all, that little baby inside you must just need peanut butter and pretzels,” I said.
She nodded, barely, but didn’t look entirely convinced. Her cotton maternity top pulled up over a pair of light blue maternity jeans, the dark navy stretchy panel partially exposed. “Whoop, there he goes again,” she said, staring at her stomach as if she had X-ray vision and could see the little baby growing inside her. “It feels like little flutters. Like a butterfly’s inside flapping its wings. Thank God there is a baby in here, or I think Nate would turn his back on me.”
Oh boy, her insecurity over her changing body was making her loopy. “Don’t be silly,” I said, although worry settled into my gut. This was not the fun-filled, confident Josie I knew.
“I’m only five months along and . . . and look at me!”
I did, and while she had a pretty good baby bump and was already moving more slowly, she was still gorgeous. “Meemaw always used to tell me that when you’re pregnant, you feel fat for nine months, but a lifetime of joy takes over once that baby is born.”
Her face cleared for just a split second, but then her frown returned. It would take more than one of Loretta Mae’s bits of wisdom to get Josie out of her funk. So I did the thing I did best; I walked to the portable clothes rack in the front room, riffled through the garments hanging there, and pulled out a maternity blouse I’d made for her. I came back into the workroom carrying the three-quarter sleeve empire-waist tunic, perfect for her to wear over black leggings.
“Oh, Harlow, your magic isn’t going to work on me,” she said, eyeing the blouse.
I froze for a second, staring at her. My magic? Josie didn’t know about my charm! Only Madelyn Brighton, who happened to be a die-hard paranormal groupie, had figured it out, and I wanted to keep it that way. I felt better knowing that the Cassidy secrets were safely under wraps.
“None of your creations can bring my figure back,” she said, and I realized she hadn’t meant it literally.
I released the breath I’d been holding. “It’s not supposed to,” I said. “Try it on.”
One eyebrow rose skeptically, but she maneuvered off the stool, took the hanger, and disappeared behind the garment-strewn privacy screen. A minute later, she emerged from behind the oversized distressed-wood window shutters, her belly leading the way.
She didn’t bother to look in the oval floor mirror, instead just throwing her arms out to the side in resignation. “See? I look like a house.”
My shoulders sagged. She was right. The blouse made her look more pregnant than she was, and the sash belt didn’t sit under her breasts as it should. “It’s okay!” I said, sounding more cheerful than I actually felt. “I have something else I’ve been thinking about. Come back tonight, okay?”
I’d had two other designs knocking around in my head, one of which I’d partially finished, but neither of them had struck me as just the right one for her.
In the back of my mind, doubt was slowly creeping in. Was my charm somehow failing me? Normally, I had a crystal clear vision for a person—like I’d had for Raylene Lewis. But the maternity garment for Josie had me stumped. Nothing explicit came to mind, and making a pregnant woman feel sexy and beautiful had its own set of challenges—which I hadn’t conquered yet.
“Harlow, I’m not sure I can bear it. I know how hard you’re trying, but—”
“Trust me, Josie. I’m going to make you something spectacular for the fashion show.”
And, I decided at that very moment, I was going to make the cheongsam I’d envisioned for Raylene. I would start it after the new year and give it to her to symbolize the hope for a new beginning, assuming she wasn’t put away for murder, of course. I might not be able to take away her sorrow over losing her ex-husband, but surely a beautiful garment would help her figure out how to move on.
Chapter 8
Josie gathered up her jacket and purse, tossing her Ben & Jerry’s container in the garbage can as she left. “Gotta check in at the shop,” she said.
“So you’re not staying for the Santa doll class?” I asked her.
“Oh yeah. I’ll be back. Just want to check the order that came in.”
Once she left I was alone with yards of red velvet and white fur and forced to face the fact that I had no ensemble for Josie’s fashion show debut and couldn’t stop worrying that someone in Bliss had pushed Dan Lee Chrisson to his death. And I had almost suffered the same fate.
I wanted nothing more than to believe that Hattie and Raylene had nothing to do with it, but the more I thought back over the events leading to his death, the more the finger pointed straight at them. Hadn’t Hattie said Dan Lee would be sorry?
Anger, betrayal, and revenge were powerful motivators. But it was time to focus on my sewing work. I laid out the red velvet, spread the pajama pants and robe pattern I’d picked up in Fort Worth on top of it, and weighted the thin beige tissue paper down with my pattern weights. There were no design elements to work into the pants, and even if there had been, I didn’t have time. I had to get the Santa suit done.
Using my firecracker-red-and-white floral-handled Ginghers, I cut without thinking, wondering, not for the first time, what made a man leave his wife and child. It had happened to my mother. He’d left Mama with two mouths to feed and not a single dollar to help us along the way. We hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since.
It had happened to Raylene, too. Had her anger gotten the better of her? Or had Hattie taken things into her own hands? Either way, a man was dead, and I felt most sorry for the little baby who was left behind with no daddy.
Fifteen minutes later, the pant legs were pinned together and I sat at my Pfaff and stitched. The whir of the machine was like a cup of Pecan Plantation coffee and a hunk of corn bread—soothing, right down to the marrow of my bones. Surrounded by fabric and buttons and patterns and trims, I felt as if there was nothing I couldn’t do, no obstacle I couldn’t conquer.
But the feeling was a lie. I couldn’t save people from their own sadness or despair. I thought of the long, slow road Raylene Lewis had ahead of her. I couldn’t get her through her grief any faster, if it was grief she was feeling.
And I couldn’t summon up my charm at will, no matter how much I wished I could. The tunic I’d designed for Josie hadn’t made her see how beautiful she was with that baby growing inside of her.
Butch Cassidy’s legacy was failing me at the moment, but there was one thing I could always count on. Mama and Nana. I heard them coming through the kitchen door. They had showed up right on schedule, ready to help me out with my To Do list. Over the next hour, I focused on Will’s Santa suit, Nana worked on Josie’s blouse, and Mama took over cutting out the pieces for the Santa dollmaking class slated to start at Buttons & Bows in less than two hours.
“Maybe you should cancel the class,” she said after she cut the tenth set of fronts, backs, arms, cowls, and hats.
I looked up from the piece of foam I was cutting, but my eyes were drawn to the window leading to the backyard. The winter had made the bushes and trees barren, but Mama and her concern for me were making the wood wither. Most of the time, her charm made things grow, but if her emotions ran wild or stress settled over her, her charm backfired. Sort of like my charm could help a person realize a dream, even if the dream would end in heartache. There was a good side and a bad side to the Cassidy blessing.
“I’ll be fine. I have three people coming, and they already paid. That’s close to six hundred dollars,” I added. The dolls were not cheap to make, what with all their expensive trimmings, and would be three times as much if I tried to sell them retail.
I was making ends meet with the boutique, but teaching classes gave me t
hat extra little breathing room.
“Darlin’, you set up the class before you decided to make more than one outfit for Josie, before Santa fell from the roof and you took on making a new suit for Will, and before you nearly fell to your death. I’ve been watchin’ you and you’re walkin’ mighty gingerly.”
“I’m fine,” I said again.
They worked in silence for a few minutes, not our typical Cassidy behavior. Finally, Nana cleared her throat. “Well, let’s see one,” she said. “Do you have a sample?”
“Of the Santa doll? I sure do.” I ignored the aches in my body, scooted over to the antique secretary desk just outside the French doors of the workroom, and picked up one of the sample Santa dolls I’d made. I turned it for them both to see, smiling. It was modeled after a handmade doll my great-great-grandmother Cressida Cassidy had sewn and that I’d loved as a child. I’d taken the basic structure and created a base, adapted the pattern to include a cowl, used heavy upholstery fabric for the body, and used tassels and trims and buttons to adorn it like an old-fashioned Saint Nicholas.
I’d made several samples, in two different sizes. Two of them were here at Buttons & Bows, and I’d given Josie one to put in Seed-n-Bead. I planned to set at least one out at the Denison mansion during the fashion show.
“They’re kind of artsy,” Nana said. “My grandmother would have loved them.”
“Ah, so artsy in a good way?” I clarified. Her smile said it all, and I could tell she was remembering the doll her grandmother had made.
Mama laid out the last length of scrap upholstery fabric on the cutting table, spread the homemade pattern pieces on it, and set pattern weights on top. “Last one,” she said as she started cutting.
“How’s Maggie doing?” I asked Nana. I hadn’t heard much of anything more about Dan Lee Chrisson’s death around town since I’d run into Raylene and Hattie at the Denison mansion. I still couldn’t shake Hattie’s words from my head—telling Dan Lee he’d be sorry he hurt Raylene—but another thing had crossed my mind. Maybe Dan Lee and Raylene were doing more than talking, and if so, could Maggie have found out and confronted Dan Lee on the widow’s walk?
“I gave her time off,” Nana said. “She’s beside herself. Can’t hardly talk straight on the telephone, and when I stopped by her apartment to drop off her tote bag and a few things she left behind in the stalls, she wouldn’t let me in the door.”
So she hadn’t skipped town. “But she’s fine? She’s not hurt, or anything?”
“Just heartache. I saw her car at the farm as I came over here, but that’s the first I’ve seen her since Dan Lee met his Maker.” Nana cocked her head to one side. “What are you gettin’ at, Harlow Jane?”
Good question. “Nothing, Nana. Nothing at all.”
I deposited my thoughts about Maggie in a little corner of my mind. Maybe I was reaching, trying to get my mind off of Hattie and worrying that she might have had something to do with Dan Lee’s death. She had a key, so she could have loosened the screws, and if she wasn’t an expert with tools, she could have stripped them. She’d been at the mansion that day, and she could have snuck up and shoved him into the loose railing.
So could Raylene, I reasoned. If she’d been waiting for Hattie in the car, she could have snuck into the house, skirted upstairs, and taken care of Dan Lee once and for all.
It was easier to believe that Maggie, who I didn’t really know, and not two women I’d gone to school with, was the murderer.
I tested the size of the foam by holding it against my stomach. It stretched past my sides and up to my chest, but was plenty round. “You can wear that next Halloween and pretend to be pregnant,” Nana said, a little twinkle in her eye. “Since I might never get any real grandchildren out of you. Then again, you are making it for Will . . .”
“Nana, bite your tongue. It’s a jolly belly, not a pregnant tummy, and you know perfectly well why I’m making it.”
“My point exactly,” she said, drawing her fingers across her lips as if she were closing an imaginary zipper.
I took the high road, choosing to ignore her. Will and I had gone out a few times, and I saw plenty of him, but we certainly weren’t getting hitched or having children anytime soon.
“I think this’ll fit him just fine,” I said, mostly to myself. Will was taller than I was by a good five inches, which made him over six feet, so the piece of foam I’d cut ought to make him look good and jolly.
I grabbed the cotton casing I’d made to house the fake belly, working the spongy foam into it. Two pieces of elastic hung from one side of the shell, and two pieces of Velcro were attached to the other side. The final step would be having Will try the belly on so I could cut the elastic to the right length. It had to fit snugly. A belly that slipped out of place was no good in my book.
I used safety pins to tighten the belly around one of the dress forms. Next I wrapped the waist of the pants around it and clipped it to hold the pants in place. They looked kind of sad, hanging there with no legs to fill them, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I moved on to stitching the inseam of the red velvet pants and finishing the enormous waist. I’d cut the pants large enough to fit around the fake stomach, but looking at the pants now, I wondered if I’d added a bit too much girth.
I could have Will come over now before I went any further, but the class would be arriving before long. No, I decided. If I had to adjust, I’d do it later. I stitched, pulling out the pins from the waist casing as I went. A few minutes later, I tossed the pants aside and moved on to Santa’s jacket. I’d cut the pieces and had it all pinned together. It was a simple pattern. Now it was just a matter of stitching the seams and adding the closures and fur trim. Easy as pie.
Except that the bells on the front door of my shop chimed and a gaggle of women meandered in. It was time to make some Santa dolls.
I hightailed it out to the front room as Michele Brown, a transplant from Houston, lifted her hand in a wave. Her mass of curly mahogany hair fell past her shoulders. She pushed it aside as she bent to set down her sewing machine. “We’re a few minutes early,” she said. “Hope that’s okay.”
I nodded, smiling. “It’s fine.”
Mama and Nana waved and offered a friendly Texas howdy, then went straight back to work.
“Couldn’t hardly wait to get started on the dolls,” the portly woman beside her said—Diane, Michele’s sister, I remembered. They’d seen my sample Santa doll at Seed-n-Bead and had signed up for the class then and there, according to Josie.
When I’d met them the first time, I’d instantly seen Diane in a long caftan with a slit neckline decorated with embroidery and three-quarter sleeves that flared at the end. In my mind, the full cut complemented her full figure.
Michele, on the other hand, had thrown me for a loop. I’d pictured her in contemporary nun’s apparel: a simple headdress instead of the traditional starched white cotton wimple, a nondescript skirt that fell to mid-calf, and a white blouse.
A third woman brought up the rear, closing the door with a bang and then striding toward me. “Olive Madison,” she said, stretching her arm out. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Harlow Cassidy,” I said. She squeezed as she shook my hand, and if she’d been staring into my eyes and pursing her lips, I’d have thought she was trying to get a message across. But she smiled and I realized that she was just rodeo strong. She could probably wrangle a bull if she ever had the need.
I pulled my hand free, rubbing the crunched bones, and pointed to the dining room. My two extra sewing machines sat on the table, close to two portable tables filled with all the trimmings for the dolls. “We’ll be working in there.”
Michele hauled her machine up the three steps and set it at an empty space. “Just give me a minute, and I’ll be right with you,” I said, heading back into the workroom.
“You sure you don’t mind us bein’ early?” Diane asked sheepishly, her words slow and as Southern as they come. “We figured it would be bette
r to be early than late, but it it’s not convenient—”
I waved away her worry. “It’s fine! We’re just finishing up a few projects. You can take a look at the samples—” I pointed to the small Santa doll on the desk next to the French doors and to the large doll I’d put on the coffee table in the seating area. It stood next to a little basket filled with fabric scraps and next to my lookbook—a collection of my designs, from both my time at Maximilian’s and my solo projects.
Diane and Olive made a beeline for the lookbook, but Michele stopped to peek into the workroom. She stepped across the threshold and, as if drawn forward by an invisible rope, headed straight for the dress form. She gently brushed her fingers over the red velvet, then poked at the soft foam belly.
“For the Winter Wonderland festival?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That lovely Will Flores is going to play Santa,” Nana said. “Isn’t he a peach for filling in at the eleventh hour?”
Mama and Michele both nodded. “He doesn’t have any young children, does he?” Michele asked, squeezing the hollow pant leg.
Nana and Mama both turned their eyes to me and I felt a slow red heat creep up my neck. “Hush,” I said, but the sound of my voice was drowned out by the clanking pipes above us.
Michele dropped the velvet and stared upward. She took a step back, gaping at the dress pulley contraption clinging to the ceiling. “What was that? Is it going to fall?”
“No! I put gowns on that so I can adjust the height and do handwork, hems and beading.” Meemaw, hush, I silently implored. “That’s just some old pipes groaning,” I added.
Something squeaked, sounding an awful lot like laughter. I turned and stared out the window to the backyard. The gate between my property and Nana’s goat farm swung back and forth, a creak sounding with each swing.
It stopped just as suddenly as it had started, and all I could think was that Meemaw was having a little too much fun with her playful haunting. She’d brought me back to Bliss and had brought Will into my life. But since she couldn’t stare me down and ask me what in tarnation I was waiting for, she flitted around in her ghostly form scaring the bejeebers out of my customers.
Deadly Patterns Page 7