Will sat back down, stroking his goatee. “Did you know him?”
“Know him?” She looked at Will as if he’d suddenly sprouted pig’s ears. “No. Not at all. That is, of course I saw him around the club, but no, I didn’t know him. No,” she added, a touch more thoughtfully. “No,” she repeated hoarsely, “and I didn’t want to know him.”
“What did you want to tell me, Mrs. James?” I asked, wanting to cut to the chase. This conversation was getting us nowhere mighty fast.
“I’d say that I’m in a heap of trouble.” She looked at Will, eyeing him suspiciously for a moment before blinking and shifting her gaze to me. “I can trust you, I suppose? Of course I can. That’s why I came here,” she mumbled to herself.
We waited, again, for her to keep talking, but criminy, she was taking her sweet time—which went against everything I knew about Mrs. Zinnia James. In the short time I’d known her, she’d been brutally honest. So why the sudden closed lips?
She’d come here, I reminded myself, so I had a free pass to pry. “You said that everything was wrong. What’s everything?”
She lifted her lemonade cooler to her mouth and knocked back the last of it. “It’s all gone to hell,” she finally said.
“What has?”
“My granddaughter’s future—”
My eyes flew open wide. “Why? The sheriff isn’t shutting down the pageant, is he?” The streetlights had been adorned with festival flags and the invitations had been sent out. The catwalk was up. The lights were situated. Heck, even the bubble machine was all set. The debutantes would be devastated if the event were canceled. The Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball was a Bliss institution. A tradition akin to Fourth of July, Blue Bell ice cream, and pecan pie. Not to mention the investment I’d already made in the dress pulley contraption Will had installed. I didn’t have another wedding dress lined up yet. The commission from Libby’s dress was meant to pay for the pulley. I tossed up a silent prayer.
“No. Goodness, no.” She looked at me like I’d plumb lost my mind.
Which is exactly how I was looking at her. “Then what is it, Mrs. James?”
She stood up, did a slow loop around the kitchen, her heels clicking against the tile, then turned to face us. “The other day at the club,” she said to me. “You told me you weren’t there, but you were.” My jaw dropped open, but she continued before I could stammer out an excuse for lying to her. “The day you left your sewing bag.”
“Y-yes—”
“You didn’t wait to talk to me—”
“You were… busy.”
“Busy,” she repeated.
I nodded my head. “Busy.”
“So you heard?”
I nodded. We couldn’t have blocked out the argument if we’d tried.
“You were with the newly minted Mrs. Nate Kincaid, correct?” she continued.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Yes.” I’d told the deputy and the sheriff that I’d been there with Josie Kincaid. I tried to shove away the fact that I’d omitted the argument from the story I’d told, but from the tight expression on Mrs. James’s face, I suspected Josie hadn’t left out that tidbit.
She muttered under her breath, “She mentioned to the deputy, apparently, that she’d overheard a bit of a kerfuffle that morning.”
I wasn’t at all sure if the unspoken accusation that Josie had spilled the beans about something she shouldn’t have was real or my imagination. Either way, I was tongue-tied. There had been a kerfuffle, and we had overheard it. It wasn’t hard to put one and one together.
“Were you with Macon Vance?” Will asked.
I waited on the edge of my seat, wanting confirmation of what I thought I knew: that Mrs. James might not have known Macon Vance socially, but she knew him enough to argue with him over the pageant.
Mrs. James drew her mouth tight, a vertical bow of wrinkles shooting into her top lip. “Yes.”
“Your conversation sounded pretty, um”—I weighed my words carefully—“heated.”
“Yes, well, he was a contrary man. To say we didn’t see eye to eye on things would be understating the matter.”
Will and I raised our eyebrows at each other. Yikes. There was definitely no love lost between Mrs. James and Macon Vance.
I tilted my head to one side, considering what she’d told us just a minute earlier. “But you said you didn’t know him.”
“We’ve had… run-ins. He was an outsider. He didn’t understand the tradition here in Bliss,” she said.
A snippet of their argument came back to me. Do you check their teeth and the bottom of their shoes? Macon Vance might not have understood the tradition, but I thought he actually understood the rules of the pageant pretty well. And he didn’t like them.
“Why was he so against the pageant?” I asked.
She brushed the question away. “It really doesn’t matter,” she said. “Harlow, I’m here because I need your help.”
I didn’t know what she was going to say, but instinct was telling me to keep my nose out of it. I opened my mouth to protest, but she threw up her hand, quieting me. “Before you say anything, hear me out.”
Suddenly Will’s hand was on my knee, gently squeezing a warning. He shook his head, just barely, and muttered, “Your plate’s pretty full with the dresses, Cassidy.”
He was dead right, but Mrs. James looked desperate. As desperate as a plucked, face-lifted, silver-haired former Texas beauty queen can look. I nodded to her. “I’m listening.”
Will shook his head, taking his hand away from my leg, leaving a cold spot in its absence. “Something’s not right here, Cassidy,” he muttered so only I could hear. Water suddenly began dripping from the kitchen faucet. It started out sounding like plop, plop, plop, but to my ears ended up sounding like he’s right, he’s right, he’s right.
So Meemaw didn’t want me helping Mrs. James, either. But was that because I was already stretched thin, or was it the rift between Mrs. James and Nana?
She glanced at the clock, tapping her foot impatiently. “I’ve got crews picking up the runway and delivering the correct stage right this very minute. Everything is in order, but I’ve been summoned by the sheriff, my dear, and in case… in case I’m… unavoidably detained,” she said, “I’ll need you to run the final rehearsal.” She gave Will a pointed look. “Your daughter’s going to be in the program now, so you should be there to help. Make sure the stage is done properly, check the lighting, and such.”
I stared at her. “Unavoidably detained? But this is your baby, Mrs. James. You’ve been working on it all year. Where are you going?” I asked, but the second the words crossed my lips, I wanted to snatch them back. Fear tinged the pallor of her skin and I suddenly knew where she was going.
She was going to be arrested for the murder of Macon Vance. Anxiety raised goose bumps on my skin. Did she know what would happen next because she’d actually killed the man?
Another thought hurried into my mind. She’d summoned me to the club, where I’d left my bag. My scissors were the murder weapon. My skin turned clammy. Lord almighty, I might well end up in the cell right next to hers.
Chapter 9
Cursing the extra work I’d agreed to before Macon Vance was killed, I spent the next hour frantically finishing a skirt for one of my mother’s friends. I pinned a gore to the fabric of the skirt I’d cut apart, stitching the triangular piece in to give it more width. As I finished the top of the triangle by hand, my mind went over what Mrs. James had said. She’d made it clear. I was to go to the Lafayette sisters, masters of all things Margaret Moffette Lea, and get the lowdown on what still needed to be done before Bliss’s big night. Despite their Hatfield and McCoy feud over the changing of the guard, they were the only ones she trusted to get all of the details right. Event planning fell well outside my realm of expertise, but Mrs. James was paying me to take over for her—in case she was arrested—and the Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball must go on, with or without its cha
irwoman.
I had to believe Mrs. James was innocent. And I did. No matter the rift she and my grandmother might have had, or her sharp personality, I liked the woman.
Which meant a powwow with Fern and Trudy Lafayette.
Meemaw’s old Ford chugged down State Street, a stream of black exhaust in its wake. I peered in the rearview mirror at my contribution to poor air quality, then at the stickers in the lower left corner of the windshield. Both the registration and inspections were up to date, which was miraculous. I suspected that next time around—eight months from now—the truck might not be so lucky and I’d be back to walking. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. I’d spent years hoofing my way around Manhattan, which also served to keep my weight down, but since I’d been back home and the walking had tapered off, I’d plumped up a tiny bit. Not so anyone but me would notice, but still.
I dropped off the skirt I’d finished altering before heading to the south side of town. The houses were sturdy brick structures without much flair or character. Meemaw’s old farmhouse oozed charm, but the Lafayette sisters’ pink brick box sat on the corner of the street looking like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol had been poured over it. Birds-of-paradise and rounded boxwoods adorned the half-moon planters on either corner of the driveway, though the narrow strips of dirt alongside the walkway to the door sat unplanted.
“I’m sure they won’t want to talk to me,” I’d told Mrs. James about Fern and Trudy Lafayette, not wanting to face the dethroned queens of the Margarets. They’d had their hands in the pageant since they’d first moved from West Texas and participated in it sixty-some-odd years ago. They’d been Margarets first, and then, when it became clear to them that getting married and having their own daughters was not in their futures, they’d taken over the pageant. Every Bliss debutante became their daughter by default. They’d been in charge of the whole kit and caboodle, from the planning to the dressmaking—until this year when Trudy’s headaches had become almost debilitating. Everyone said she seemed better, but the festival committee had stepped in and suggested Zinnia James take over this year’s pageant. Now me? I didn’t think they’d welcome me with open arms.
“Those two old mockingbirds are harmless,” she’d said, brushing away my concern.
I wasn’t so sure. I’d taken three commissions from them this pageant season—four, if you counted Gracie—which I’d heard had ruffled their feathers pretty good. And after the blow of the Margaret Society stripping them of their control—ageism existed, even in Texas—I was pretty sure they weren’t going to want to talk to me.
After my third pass of their house, there was nothing to do but buck up and park. I’d worn coral capris, a funky patterned T-shirt with a flower design that looked a lot like one of the birds-of-paradise in the yard, and wedge sandals—none of which I’d made. Better not to flaunt my dressmaking skills. I needed the Lafayette sisters to make sure the pageant happened as scheduled. Alienation wouldn’t be a good thing.
But as I walked up the plain cement walkway, a prickly sensation crept up the back of my neck—like I was being watched. As if on cue, the lace curtains in the window to the right of the front door fluttered and I caught a glimpse of a face withdrawing. I raised my hand to knock, my knuckles just barely touching the fake wood door when it swung inward, nearly knocking me off my feet.
“Honey, I’m so sorry ’bout that,” a low-pitched voice said. “I sure didn’t mean to catch you off guard.”
“It’s okay. No problem.” I straightened up to my full height and smiled—right into the eyes of the most Southern-looking woman I’d seen in a good, long while. More Southern, even, than Mrs. James. She was eighty if she was a day, but she carried her years well. She had perfect posture, her shoulders down and back, as if she practiced walking around with a book balanced on the top of her head. A strand of pearls perfectly accented her long, elegant neck. Despite the weight of the sticky July heat, she wore a lightweight, pale pink cardigan that complemented a floral skirt that hit midshin. The look was topped off with practical beige rubber-soled shoes.
While she wasn’t dainty, not by any stretch of the imagination, she wasn’t overly sturdy, either. Her short Jamie Lee Curtis hair intensified her stern demeanor. I could see how she might’ve intimidated men and why she’d never snagged herself a husband. As the thought circled around me, an image passed through my mind, like a blip from the future. She was… me… in forty or fifty years.
“Fern,” another voice, this one a bit higher pitched, called, “who’s that at the door?”
“She hasn’t given her name yet, Trudy,” the woman in front of me said over her shoulder. She turned back to me, giving me a good once-over. “You don’t look like you’re selling nothin’.” Like any good Southerner, she dropped the “g” off the end of the word—something I’d worked hard to stop doing while living in New York.
“No, ma’am, I’m not.”
The other Lafayette sister shuffled up behind the first. She wore her hair in an elaborate updo, had thick spidery eyelashes that had to be fake, wore a pair of jeggings with a long teal and black tunic, and had the same face as her sister, although hers was preserved quite a bit better. More moisturizer as a young woman, or wider-brimmed sun hats. “Let the girl in, why don’t you?” Trudy said.
I liked that idea. Preferably before they figured out who I was and shooed me off their property for jumping into their seamstress territory.
Fern held the door open for me and I passed through, following Trudy down the entry hall and into the linoleum-floored, Formica-countered kitchen. “Can I offer you some sweet tea?”
I accepted and a minute later they’d ushered me to one of the strange modular lounge sofas in the living room. Just like the sisters, the couches were a matching set. They were upholstered in pink silk, the curved and tufted pieces fitting together with a round occasional table situated between them. Hers and hers. I remembered the sisters around town when I was a child, but couldn’t remember ever seeing them up close and personal. They were one of a kind—the sisters, and the furniture. I sat on one sofa, crossing my legs. They sat side by side opposite me, looking like silver-haired, aged Barbie dolls.
“I guess I should introduce myself,” I began. “I’m Harlow Cassidy.”
Their reaction was instantaneous and synchronized. Sharply inhaled gasps, a pointed look at each other, and chins angling toward me. Trudy recovered her smile before Fern did. “Well now. Isn’t this somethin’, having you right here. We knew your great-grandmother, of course,” she said, her drawl as thick as a pot of baked beans.
“I think everyone in town knew Loretta Mae,” I offered, relieved they hadn’t hauled me off my feet and kicked me to the curb. That wouldn’t have been very Southern of them, but I’d feared it could happen just the same.
“What can we do for you?” Fern asked. Her voice didn’t have the same lightness her sister’s did. The fact that they were twins did not mean they had the same perspective or experiences.
I shifted on the furniture, uncrossing then recrossing my legs in the other direction. “Mrs. James… Zinnia James… said I should come speak with you.”Once again, their reaction was simultaneous, but this time it was Fern who spoke, and her anger was clear. “Did she, now?”
“Yes, ma’am. She asked me to… to help her with the pageant. I know how important it is—” Though not from personal experience.
Their expressions softened like butter that’s been sitting out for a spell. I clasped my hands together and continued. “Go see the Lafayette sisters, Mrs. James told me. They know everything there is to know about the pageant and ball. She’s just so… busy,” I added, praying that Mrs. James was passing in and out of the sheriff’s office and not staying for an extended visit. “So here I am.”
The laugh lines around Trudy’s eyes grew even softer, but Fern’s tightened. “Zinnia said that?” they both asked at the same time, but oddly, the emphasis was completely different. Trudy was surprised and sounded pleased with the pos
sibility that Mrs. James had sent me their way, but Fern wasn’t so willing to let bygones be bygones.
I nodded. “She did. She said she’s really sorry you haven’t been involved in the pageant. She said that was a mistake.” I made up that part, but figured it was true on some level, and I knew it was what the Lafayette sisters needed to hear.
They both sat, waiting, so I continued. “I have a few questions. Do you mind?” I took a button-adorned lavender clothbound journal from my purse and flipped it open. “The stage is set—”
“I heard tell that it was a runway,” Fern snapped, “not a stage.”
“It was a runway, but that was a mistake. It’s all been squared away.”
Fern harrumphed. Trudy didn’t pay her any mind. “That’s a relief. When we heard about the runway, we both thought the Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball was done for. Didn’t we, Fern?”
“Completely.”
“Oh, I understand,” I said, nodding. “But there’s no need to worry. The runway’s gone.”
“How are the rehearsals coming along?” Trudy sounded almost giddy. “I’ve been dying to poke my head in and check them out, but Fern doesn’t think that’s a good idea. Better that I stay out of Zinnia’s way, but we used to be such good friends. I made her gown, you know. Just like I made your grandmother’s—”
“Wh-what?” You could have knocked me over with a feather. They’d made my grandmother’s Margaret gown? I thought Meemaw had made it. “Was it yellow?”
“Oh, yes. Coleta’s was like a gauze-covered sun and Zinnia’s was sky blue.”
“We were just learning back then—”
“Like you are now,” Fern muttered, shooting daggers at me.
“—so it took us months to make a single dress.” She slipped into a dreamy recollection. “We got to where we could make a dress in mere weeks. Satins, silks, and velvets. Every girl wears a corset and bloomer—did you know that? Oh, yes, of course you know that. You’re makin’ two dresses, is that right?”
A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery Page 7