A Seamless Murder

by Melissa Bourbon

  I suddenly felt as if I were an egg cracked open, spilling a million pieces of confetti, the bits forming a kaleidoscope of color. The feeling was deep in my bones. My stomach dropped and I stared at Todd. Could she have been talking about her son-in-law, and not Anson?

  I remembered something else. Delta had been searching through the church files. I hadn’t given it a second thought when Pastor Kyle mentioned it, but now I wondered. Was it about Todd? Megan had just said that Delta had passed his resume around. Had she noticed something amiss?

  Todd’s gaze flashed to Megan, but then he focused on me and Will again so quickly that I wondered if I’d really seen the look of concern on his face that I imagined I had. The scotch had loosened his tongue, and he wasn’t holding back. I forged ahead, asking the next obvious question. “I had no idea antiques were so profitable.”

  Todd nodded. Megan had her hand on his shoulder, rubbing it in circles for encouragement. “Oh yes, very. When I first met Rebecca and she told me what she did, I was floored. Aunt Sherri and my mom used to go to dealers and shows, but who knew?”

  Aha, so that explained how Sherri may have seen Rebecca in Plano.

  Coco appeared in the archway to the living room, beckoning me. She still wore the ruffled denim apron I’d made her, and like I had with the other women, I wondered what her deepest want was, and if the apron would help it come true.

  Reluctantly, I left Will with Megan and Todd, following Coco back into the dining room. “I wanted to thank you for trying to help us,” she started, but her voice faded away as the threads of clues began separating in my mind, pulling apart before braiding together in some semblance of order.

  “Hang on,” I told her, then I pulled out my cell phone and texted Madelyn, asking her the question in the forefront of my mind. When we met with Mayor Radcliffe, he stopped to talk to his secretary about someone. Do you remember who?

  She texted me back not five seconds later. No.

  It was a lawyer.

  If you say so, love. I was busy getting my camera ready.

  I waited. Madelyn was a self-proclaimed paranormal junkie and a crime aficionado. I knew she was racking her brain to come up with the answer to my question. My phone pinged and her text appeared. Max? No, Lou? Something about a resume not checking out.

  That’s exactly how I’d remembered it, but I had to be sure. All his degrees. All the universities he’d attended. Did they all check out?

  My blood suddenly turned cold and I froze. “Oh my God.”

  Coco stared at me. “What?”

  I grabbed her arm. “I’ve been looking at this all wrong.”

  She tapped the frame of her glasses, pushing them up into place. “Looking at what wrong?”

  My mind flew back to the pictures in the investigator’s file. I’d assumed that each one had been focusing on a different member of the family. Anson hadn’t even been in the pictures, something I hadn’t realized until this very second. But more than that was the fact that both Megan and Todd were in several of the pictures. The one with Delta had him in the background, and the flag of his alma mater front and center. The one I’d thought had been just about Megan had also shown Todd, Coco, and Sherri at the tag sale. Even the shot with Jessie Pearl had them both working in the yard.

  Boyd Investigations hadn’t followed each family member—there was one common denominator.

  “Delta wasn’t ever investigating Anson,” I said.

  Coco looked baffled. “She wasn’t?”

  I looked toward the living room, not liking the direction of my thoughts, but sure that I was finally on the right track. “It was Todd,” I said softly, as if he’d be able to hear me accusing him from two rooms away. “He was the husband who couldn’t be trusted. He was the one whose college background she didn’t believe,” I said.

  The resume came back to mind, followed by something Mayor Radcliffe had said. He’d told me Delta had been investigating someone, sure they hadn’t gone to the college they’d claimed. We’d assumed she’d been talking about Jeremy Lisle, but I knew that wasn’t true. Jeremy and Delta had both attended Texas A&M. She knew his background.

  Of course she knew her own daughter’s history. She was still in college right here in town. But what about Todd? Three degrees, he said. Political Science, an MBA, and a history degree. Had she suspected, given his inability to find or keep a job, that he wasn’t on the up and up? Had his interest in antiques given him away? Had Delta been digging for information about him and found some contradiction in his background? Or had she tried to help him and discovered the truth?

  I thought about the photograph with Rebecca. The kaleidoscope of confetti pieces rearranged in my mind. Rebecca called Todd by the name George. Not because he looked like George Clooney, but because it was his real name. They’d known each other before. Had the investigator figured this out? No wonder she’d been so strange on the phone, telling me that Anson wasn’t an adulterer and that she’d never heard of Jeremy Lisle. Because she’d only been investigating Todd Bettincourt.

  Bigger fish to fry, Delta had said, and she’d tossed the investigator’s report to Todd.

  Had it been a warning or a threat?

  Probably both, I thought, but most of all, it had been a motive for murder.

  I texted Hoss McClaine with lightning speed. Mayor Radcliffe got a call from someone named Lou saying that a resume didn’t check out. I think it was Todd Bettincourt’s. And I think it’s a motive for murder.

  I hit SEND and tucked my phone away. It would take the sheriff a little while to track down the answer to my question. In the meantime, I kept processing through what I knew, telling Coco my suspicions. “What if he doesn’t have those degrees and she figured it out? She’d want him away from Megan, right?”

  “But he’s married to her,” Coco whispered, “and they adore each other.”

  I considered this. If he really did adore Megan, then he wouldn’t want her finding out about his past with Rebecca and his falsehoods. Was that motive for murder? We both kept our voices low, afraid that someone else in the house would hear. “She would have gotten proof before breaking Megan’s heart with the truth,” I said.

  Coco raised her gaze to the ceiling. “Maybe that’s why they arranged to meet in the cemetery. She planned to confront him, away from the house and Megan, but things turned deadly.”

  My phone vibrated with a new text coming in. Hoss had been fast. I pulled it out of my pocket long enough to read the message. It was what I expected. Lou Childs with Reynolds, Childs, and Briggs. Definitely Todd Bettincourt’s. Lou checked the references and the degrees. Falsified. He followed up with a second message. Be there in 2 minutes.

  Coco inhaled sharply, just figuring out what I’d already concluded. “She gave that investigator’s report right to him, didn’t she?”

  “Which was a threat. It told him that she knew everything.” It had to have been his name blacked out on the sheet Will and I looked at on the back porch. Unease crept through me. He’d doctored the file to make it look as if Anson had been the target of the investigation.

  We heard someone approach from behind us, and then a man’s slurred voice said, “She wanted me to leave Megan. She didn’t understand that I love her. I really love her.”

  Coco and I both jumped. Coco yelped, and my heart lodged in my throat.

  Todd edged closer, but there was no murderous look in his eyes. Instead he just looked tired. More tired than he had just minutes ago. Dark circles ringed his eyes. His lips were cracked, and his shoulders hunched.

  Will and Megan appeared behind him, but he didn’t notice. He just stared past Coco and me, his whole body swaying. The scotch he’d had with Will had taken its full effect. His words were garbled, and I strained to make out what he said. “I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to talk. To get her to back off. I might not have always done things the right way, but I couldn’t lose Megan.” He leaned forward. “I can’t lose her.”

  Briefly I met W
ill’s eyes, then refocused on Todd. “You met her at the church that morning?”

  His chin dropped toward his chest and he nodded. “I thought I could explain.”

  Suddenly Megan lunged at him from behind. He swung around as she careened into him. “Explain what?” she exclaimed. “That you’ve been lying to me this whole time?”

  He reached for her. “No, Megs, it’s not like that.”

  “I heard you,” she said, her voice returning to calm but laced with a hard edge. “I heard everything you said.” The questions flew from her mouth. “Did you even graduate from A&M? Did you actually go to law school? That’s why you can’t get a job, right?” She threw her hands up, spitting out a harsh laugh. “And Rebecca? You knew her? Were you actually playing me?”

  “Megs . . .” His eyes fluttered and his body swayed.

  She shoved him away. “Why did you marry me?”

  He stumbled back, finally managing to right himself. “Because I love you. I never meant to hurt anyone, but then Rebecca showed up, and your mother kept pushing.”

  “Did you give Delta your resume to pass out?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “She got a copy somehow. I never gave it to her.”

  I filled in the rest as best I could. She’d been caught red-handed by Pastor Kyle searching through the church files. Looking for Todd’s resume, which she’d found. Maybe she’d given it to Lou Childs as a potential candidate for his law office so he could find out the truth. At this point we would likely never know exactly what she’d been thinking.

  But before Childs could do his due diligence, thanks to the investigator Delta had hired, she already knew the resume was a fake. And that everything about Todd was, in fact, fake.

  “So you arranged to meet her at the church,” I prompted, circling back to the morning of Delta’s death, hoping he’d tell us the rest.

  His chin quivered, his eyes spilling tears. He raked his fingers through his hair then buried his face in his hands. “After she handed me the investigator’s file, I didn’t know what to do. She was going to work at the tag sale the next morning, so I asked if we could talk first. Alone. I didn’t mean to do it,” he wailed. “We argued, and she wouldn’t listen.”

  He turned to Megan, reaching for her, but she backed away. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She stared at him, her mouth agape. “You killed her?”

  Todd staggered back until he was pressed against the wall. He sank down, crouching on his wobbly haunches. “I didn’t mean to! When I told Rebecca, she freaked. She wanted me to go with her, but Megs, I couldn’t leave you. You have to believe me, Megs . . . Megs . . .” His sobs grew frenzied. “Delta wouldn’t listen to me. She kept saying that she’d figure out how to make me pay, and that she’d protect you from me. I . . . I . . . I snapped.”

  I looked at Coco. Her upper lip was raised in disgust, but her eyes had glazed with tears. “How could you do that?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” he said again. “We were arguing, and she was belligerent, and then she was just going to walk away. Before I knew what was happening, I’d picked up a rock and hit her with it.”

  He broke down again, his sobs matching Coco’s and Megan’s and now Jessie Pearl’s, who had hobbled to the dining room on her crutches. Mama stood on the other side of the archway, and next to her, towering over her by a good five inches, was her husband. The sheriff.

  Thank God.

  “Not to Delta,” Coco said, her voice cracking. “To Megan. How could you do that to the woman you say you love?”

  A panicked, horrified expression came over him as he looked first at Coco then at Megan. “I’m sorry, Megs,” he said through his tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  And then he collapsed on the floor, his body wracked with despair.

  Chapter 26

  Meemaw’s old Mission-style rocking chair was in the corner of my bedroom. This was where I felt her presence more often than anywhere else in the house. The chair had a walnut finish and leather seat and sat next to the oval freestanding mirror, also Meemaw’s. I’d spent thirty minutes rocking in the chair, thinking about everything that had happened next door. During my time in New York, I’d had plenty of time to observe models and designers and just people in general. What I’d found is that people acted one way when they thought others weren’t watching, putting on a different face altogether when they knew people were. Delta, on the other hand, pretty much showed you what you were going to get. She had her core group of friends, the Red Hat ladies, and she had her family.

  It was true that we all had more in us than we showed the world. It had been true for Delta, although she was more honest about who she was than most. It was true for Jeremy Lisle, Pastor Kyle, and even Mayor Radcliffe. And it was definitely true for Todd Bettincourt.

  After I’d rehashed everything, I moved to the attic to dig through some of the Cassidy women’s old clothes. I had an idea for a keepsake quilt. Something just for myself that honored the women who’d come before me, and would be a memory for those who came after. Meemaw had a stack of runners much like the pile Jessie Pearl had given to me. One or two of them could be included in the quilt.

  I’d decided to offer a class on the keepsake quilt, letting local teens focus theirs on T-shirts. I needed a prototype first, and more than anything, I wanted to include some of Meemaw’s creations. The relationship between Coco, Delta, and Sherri had made me appreciate being a Cassidy all the more. We were honest, we didn’t hide who we were, and above all, we loved each other.

  A part of me hoped Megan would want to come to the class. She needed a way to deal with the grief of losing her mother by her husband’s hand, and then losing her husband to his lies and to the justice system. Coco and Sherri did, too. If I could, I’d help them make it a family affair, one that could heal and bond rather than tear apart.

  I yanked on the drawer of an old sideboard, but it stuck. Something important was in the drawer, though. I was sure of it. What I wasn’t sure of was whether Meemaw was playing games and keeping me out of it, or if it really was just stuck, the wood having swelled and contracted so many times over the years that the whole piece had given up trying to be functional.

  “Cassidy, you in here?” Will’s voice reached me about two seconds before I saw him round the corner. He’d maneuvered plenty of things in and out of the attic for me in the last year, so he knew his way around. “Thought I might find you here,” he said.

  “Why is that?” I asked. I had my grip on the drawer handle again, braced my feet, and pulled. The entire banquet lurched forward, but the drawer stayed shut.

  “Just a hunch. If you’re not in your workroom, or in the kitchen, it’s a pretty good bet you’re in the attic.”

  He reached over and grabbed hold of the handle. He looked around the attic and said, “Loretta Mae?”

  And then he pulled. The drawer slid open easily, and from somewhere in the attic, the pipes creaked and it sounded like laughter. “Meemaw! You are incorrigible,” I scolded. I crouched to look at the treasures the drawer held, and my breath caught.

  “What is it?” Will asked, but a glass crashed to the ground behind him, pulling his attention. He hurried to the attic’s entrance to see what had happened.

  Alone for a moment, I pulled out the garment sitting on top of the folded clothes in the drawer. The soft flannel and the scent of the fabric mixed with the wood it had been sitting in for who knew how many years filled every bit of my being.

  Will came back, a smile on his face. “What’s that?” he asked.

  I held up a pair of children’s pajamas made from a vibrant, whimsical flannel printed with pink and gray elephants clutching umbrellas. The pajamas Meemaw had made me when I was six years old and we’d gone to the fabric store together for the very first time. My mind flooded with a wave of emotions. Meemaw, sewing, the comfort of wearing the garments she’d made for me. It hit me all at once, filling me with utter happiness, but also with a sense of loss. I wanted to go back
to that moment when she’d shown me what she’d made for me, and when I’d known that I wanted to give people the very same joy she’d just given me.

  We talked about Meemaw for a few minutes, and I shared my plan for the class and the quilt. “It’ll be great,” he said.

  “Will Gracie come?” I asked.

  “I don’t think flying horses could keep her away.”

  “Darlin’,” Will said to me a moment later.

  “Mmm?” I folded the pajamas and placed them on the pile of clothes I’d already gathered for the keepsake quilt, then looked up at him.

  Earl Grey scurried over to us, pausing at our feet and looking up at us, his little snout lifting as if he were smiling. Will crouched to pat his head, then stood again and looked squarely at me. Anxiety flitted through me. He had an expression I’d never seen before. It was equal parts determination, trepidation, and excitement.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He moved closer, putting his hands on the banquet on either side of me. “We belong together, Harlow.”

  I gasped, perfect clarity coming over me. I understood what was happening. Meemaw seemed to get it, too, because the door to the attic slammed shut, and a few seconds later we heard scraping noises from downstairs. She was giving us privacy.

  “We do,” I said, my voice breathy with anticipation. We belonged together like Nana and my granddaddy Dalton did. Like Mama and Hoss did. Like leather and lace. I almost laughed as I thought of more ways to say that we were meant to be.

  “I thought about planning a dinner or a little getaway to tell you how I feel, but I can’t wait that long.”

  “No, let’s not wait,” I said, excitement bubbling up inside me. I’d known we’d end up together, but having it happen at this very moment was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Knowing that Will wanted it, too, and that he was too anxious to wait for our future made my stomach flutter.