A Custom Fit Crime

by Melissa Bourbon

  Still, I couldn’t quash the notion that maybe Lindy wasn’t who she was portraying herself to be when she was around all of us. Had she seen a different side to Beaulieu when he was alive? Could he have been blackmailing her?

  A wild idea planted itself in my mind. How badly did Lindy want that Pulitzer prize I’d heard her mention? Maybe she’d dug deep and found out something about Beaulieu—his bogarted ideas, for example. And what if he’d tried to pay her off to keep her quiet? He could have turned that into blackmail, and voilà! Lindy Reece suddenly had a motive.

  I thanked the librarian and drove off, formulating a one-two punch for the sheriff.

  Chapter 21

  I stopped myself from barging into the sheriff’s office, pausing to knock on the door instead. A few manners could go a long way, and I wanted mine to help me take Mama and Hoss all the way to the altar.

  “Yup,” a slow, deep voice intoned.

  I opened the door to find Hoss McClaine at his desk, pen in hand, looking like a craggy cowboy with his iron hair, sun-scorched skin, and soul patch under his lower lip. “Do you love her?” I demanded, stopping just inside the doorway. That was the first punch from my arsenal.

  “Harlow,” he said calmly, as if it were perfectly natural for people to barge in on him and ask such a personal question.

  “Don’t Harlow me,” I said. “She wants to call off the wedding. Call off the marriage,” I said, as if he wouldn’t understand the ramifications.

  He tilted forward in his chair and steepled his fingers. “I’m well aware.”

  “You’re aware?” I strode to the desk, put my hands on it, and leaned in. “You’re aware? What are you going to do about it?”

  “She won’t talk to me, Harlow, so there ain’t much I can do about it at the moment.”

  “She won’t talk to you?” My voice rose. “She won’t talk to you? And you’re going to leave it at that?” This was not acceptable behavior for a man willing to enter into matrimony with a Cassidy. “Just because Mama doesn’t want to talk doesn’t mean you can’t make her listen.”

  “She’s hot under the collar—”

  “Yeah, just a little bit. Because you think her daughter—me—that I might have killed Michel Ralph Beaulieu. Which,” I added, throwing my hand up, “is completely ridiculous.”

  He leveled his smoky gray eyes at me. “First of all, I work in facts and evidence, and right now a few things point in your direction.”

  “I can’t believe you’d think—”

  “But,” he said, cutting me off, “I do not think you actually killed the man.”

  “That you’d think I could . . . Wait, what? You don’t think I did it?”

  “Good God, Harlow, of course not. You may be just as hot under the collar as your mama, but a murderess you’re not. I’m no fool.”

  “What about Gavin?” I said. If Hoss really didn’t think I had anything to do with Beaulieu’s death, then maybe he’d listen to my thoughts on Lindy Reece. “And why don’t you just tell Mama what you just told me?”

  He gestured to one of the straight-backed chairs facing his desk. “Have a seat, Harlow.” His voice was grim.

  I perched on the edge of the chair, fidgeting. “You can just spit it out,” I said.

  “I love your mama, Harlow. You know I do.”

  I sensed a but coming.

  “But,” he said, right on cue, “there was a murder at your shop and I have a job to do. I have no choice but to keep you on the suspect list until I can clear your name.”

  My leg shook from the coiled nerves inside me. “But you just said you know I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Like I said, we have to have proof about what happened.” He opened up a plastic evidence bag, took out some creased sheets of paper, and slid them across to me. “We found these on his person.”

  I reached out, my hand hovering over them. “Can I touch them?”

  “They’ve been processed, so yes.”

  Even with them upside down, I could see they were sketches, but when I turned them to face me, the truth smacked me right in the face. They were sketches of my designs. I flipped through them, instantly recognizing Mama’s wedding dress—the same one Beaulieu had mocked—a flouncy skirt that had been on my ready-to-wear rack, and a stylized woman’s jacket that had been hanging from the privacy screen in my workroom. I looked up at the sheriff, feeling my eyes go wide. “He had these on him?”

  “Inner pocket of his vest. One of the deputies noticed that these look very similar to some of the outfits you have at your shop.” He watched me closely, gauging my reaction.

  “That’s because they are my designs.”

  “Why would he have drawings of them?”

  “Good question, Sheriff. Beaulieu has a . . .” I hesitated, wondering how to broach the designer’s reputation. “Let’s just say he borrowed designs from other designers.” Including me, apparently.

  “Interesting.”

  “Yeah.” I looked more carefully at the sketches. He’d made notes on the page in a quick scribble, more rushed than his notes in the sketchbook I’d seen in his room at Seven Gables.

  “There’s been a new development.”

  I refocused on the sheriff, planting my feet firmly on the floor and leaning forward. “What’s that?”

  “It looks like there was poison in his system. Several people there said that Beaulieu had looked queasy, like he might upchuck.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Well, it turns out that he did, upchuck, I mean—in the toilet in your bathroom.”

  I searched my mind, remembering that he had gone to the bathroom after he first arrived. “Oh no,” I said under my breath. “What kind of poison?” I asked. Whoever killed Beaulieu had to have left clues.

  “It’s called sago palm,” he said, brushing the pad of one thumb against the thatch of hair under his lower lip. I knew him well enough to know that this meant he was weighing his thoughts. He wasn’t one to jump to quick conclusions. He was slow and steady. It could be infuriating, but at the moment, I liked that about him.

  I stared at him. “What is that? A palm tree?”

  “It can grow mighty tall, yes, but not to tree size. More common in south Texas, but they’re pretty hardy and can survive the freezes we get if they’re covered.”

  I cataloged the garden at 2112 Mockingbird Lane, trying to picture any palms I had. Even if I had one, there hadn’t been time for someone to dash outside, spot a poisonous plant, do whatever had to be done to make it ingestible, and then get Beaulieu to drink it. My yard was more of an English garden, lush and floral rather than fronds of tropical plants jetting out here and there. “Okay.”

  “Every part of ’em is poisonous,” he said.

  “I certainly didn’t see him eat any greens. Honestly, he wasn’t there for very long. Nana brought out some goat cheese and crackers, but no one ate any. There was tea and lemonade. No palm bushes on the menu.”

  “The poison most likely came through the seeds. Ground up, they’d be easily digested.”

  My mind hiccupped as it tried to remember something, but it was just out of reach.

  “Sheriff, I don’t even know what that palm bush looks like, let alone that it’s poisonous,” I said.

  “I believe that, Harlow. I’m just followin’ the clues and the evidence. If you have any ideas, I’m all ears.”

  The perfect opening to the second part of my one-two punch. I told him about Lindy Reece wanting to write a hard-hitting investigative piece. “If she discovered proof that he stole other designers’ ideas, it could have turned ugly between them.”

  He rubbed his thumb against the thatch of hair under his lip, thinking. “But wouldn’t she be the one dead in that scenario?”

  And that was the problem. Without knowing if he’d somehow turned the tables on her, my theory could be hard to prove.

  “And the wedding?” I said after we’d spent a minute in silence, both pondering the scenario I’d brought up.


  “She’s as stubborn as all get out,” he said, “but I can live with that. Bein’ stubborn’s better than a poke in the eye, but she’s done dug her heels in on this. Truth be told, I think it’s an excuse. She don’t want to believe I won’t up and walk out on her like your daddy did.”

  I had a feeling that his armchair psychology was right on the money. I stood up and faced him square on. “Look here, Sheriff, we don’t need to go to Babe’s for any rehearsal dinner. In fact, we don’t need anything more than you and Mama professing your love to God. So if I can get her there, will you be at the church?”

  His smile lit up his craggy face. “I reckon so, Harlow. Yes, I reckon so.”

  Chapter 22

  After a quick trip to the fabric store for a zipper, a few spools of white thread, and hook and eye closures, I parked in my driveway under the possum wood trees, walked through the side gate and through the yard, and up the front porch steps. No matter how I was feeling inside, coming home to 2112 Mockingbird Lane made my heart beat slow, my breath come easier, and filled me with ease.

  I mounted the porch steps, ready to finish the last-minute projects for the wedding. I had to go on as if the wedding was happening. A strange heaviness settled over me as I stepped onto the porch. I was used to Meemaw haunting me, her invisible presence flittering in and out of the various rooms in the house at a whim, but this, once again, was different. I could almost feel my great-grandmother’s sadness, as if she were magnifying everything I was experiencing.

  I closed my eyes, working to keep my mind still and empty, thinking only of Loretta Mae, wishing she were here and that we could talk. The bushes and plants and flower petals remained motionless, not a rustle or whisper to be heard. The spigot stayed firmly in the off position, no hiss or sputtering or flow of water sounding. Not a creak, and nary a sound came from anywhere around me. “Meemaw?” I finally said aloud, wondering if my voice would have the power to summon her this time.

  The sound of cars passing by on Mockingbird Lane and the occasional slamming of a door hit my eardrums, but I got no other signs that Meemaw was near.

  “Woolgathering again?” a man’s voice said through the dining room window.

  I jumped, my heart shooting to my throat for a split second before I recognized the voice. Will Flores.

  I spun around to face him, seeing his shape through the dark screen. “I guess so,” I said with a smile, coming closer. “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  I frowned. “I hope you don’t have bad news. I’m not sure I can take that right now.”

  He laughed. “Not a bit of it, but I think you can handle whatever’s thrown at you. You’re a pioneer like that, ready to dig in and do what needs to be done.”

  I didn’t feel that way right now, but it sounded nice. Reassuring. The kind of thing you wanted the man you . . . cared about . . . to say. His face disappeared from the window, reappearing a moment later at the front door. He emerged, pulling me into a hug and dipping his head until his lips nuzzled my neck. “You worried about the wedding?” he asked, his breath warm against my neck.

  “That, and the murder.”

  “First things first,” he said after another few seconds of nuzzling. “We can make sure Hoss and your mama get hitched. You worry about getting the sheriff to the church and I’ll handle your mother. She won’t be able to say no to me, no matter how hard she tries.”

  I already had Hoss taken care of, so we were halfway there. I smiled. “I bet she won’t. I know I can’t.”

  The heaviness of the air on the porch abated slightly and the sturdy white rocking chairs behind us started up, moving back and forth, back and forth. They creaked, and with each forward motion of the curved legs it sounded like someone—namely Meemaw—saying ah, and with each backward rock, saying love. Ah, love. Ah, love. Ah, love.

  Will must have heard it, too. He shot a surprised glance at the chairs, but then his face relaxed. Bless his heart, he’d accepted the Cassidy charms better than I ever could have hoped for. Including the glimpses of Meemaw’s presence he saw every now and again.

  Meemaw and her matchmaking had made a good pair with the two of us.

  “Now, about Beaulieu, what’s on your mind?”

  I told him the latest about the sheriff’s suspicion of poison and the fern. “I searched it on my phone to see what it looks like and I don’t have anything like it here on my property.”

  “If it grows in Texas, anyone could have gotten hold of it,” he said. “Access to something like that is a lot different than getting hold of a monitored narcotic or some other drug.”

  “Easier,” I said, “but you’d have to know that it was poisonous.” Another check in Lindy’s column. She knew how to do research, was a Texas native, and who knows? Maybe she had the stuff growing in her Dallas yard.

  “So, what’s your plan now?” he asked. He didn’t like that I tended to get wrapped up in mysteries wherever I went, but he didn’t fight it, either.

  We sat on the rocking chairs, keeping them going with our feet pushing against the wooden slats of the porch. A cocoon of warmth moved around us in a constant stream. If I could see it, I would have described it as a figure eight in a pattern of continual light. “I want to find out if Lindy knew Beaulieu more than she’s been letting on,” I said, following my hunch. “She’s too focused on him, and an article about him dying—murdered, even, for his designs? That could be way more powerful than the article she was going to write about three local designers. What if she plotted the whole thing?”

  “You think she’d kill someone to make the story better?”

  I shrugged. “Sounds a tiny bit better than killing because your boss is a jerk and humiliates you, or because you don’t like the latest designs he wants you to model.” Which was the best motive I’d come up with for Barbi and Esmeralda.

  “How was the poison administered?” Will asked. “No matter who did it, he had to ingest it somehow, right? If we figure that out, maybe it’ll help narrow the suspect list.”

  There it was again. We. As in part of a team. I reached over and dusted the tips of my fingers over his forearm. I drew in a bolstering breath, peeking through the window behind me to make sure we were alone.

  “No one’s home,” he said, answering my unasked question.

  “Orphie?”

  “Wasn’t here when I arrived. I haven’t seen her.”

  “She’s probably with Gavin,” I said. “They’re, um, seeing each other.”

  Will stopped rocking, planting his booted feet on the floor. “Is that right? Gavin McClaine and your friend?” A low chuckle started in his throat and moved into a full laugh. “Maybe it’ll make him nicer, you think?”

  I grinned, his laughter contagious. “We can hope.”

  “The poison,” he prompted.

  “Nana brought over some of her goat cheese. We had crackers. Mama made lemonade and tea—almost dumped a pitcher of it on Beaulieu, too. Mama and Nana served all of us. But neither one of them has a motive, of course, and no one else fixed the food or drinks. I don’t think any of it was ever left unattended, either. The sheriff took the glasses and pitcher, though, so if that’s how he took it in, Hoss’ll find out.”

  “So it could have been any of them,” he said. “The models, the photographer, the journalist, the designer. They were all right here.”

  “Not the models,” I said. “They were dropped off at Seven Gables before the rest of them came here.”

  “Which lets them off t
he hook.”

  We sat, just rocking, both of us thinking. It was comfortable silence like nothing I’d ever experienced before. The only sounds were the creaking of the chairs and the cicadas hidden in the trees. The occasional truck rumbled by, but Mockingbird Lane was a quiet street. Almost ominous at the moment given my somber mood.

  “Why else would someone have wanted him dead?”

  I mused aloud, not really expecting an answer, but Will offered one anyway. “Midori could be jealous of him as a designer.”

  “I think he was stealing her designs,” I said, hoping he didn’t ask how I knew that. I hurried on. “He was trying to steal my designs. The sheriff found sketches in his pocket of pieces I have in my shop.” I snapped my head up. “He hated Bliss. He made that perfectly clear from the second he walked in, but if he wanted my designs, he had to come here.”

  “Okay, but you didn’t kill him. Midori could have, but again, how?”

  “And unless she knew he was using her designs, she’d have no motive.”

  “But maybe she did know. Hoss had to consider you as the killer for that very reason. If he was stealing her designs, she might have wanted to put a stop to it. Can you ask her?”

  Oh yes, that had risen to the top of my list of things to do. Right after I made sure Mama and Hoss got hitched.

  My cell phone rang from the depths of my oversized purse. I riffled through the contents until I found it, glancing at the screen. Madelyn.

  “Hey,” I said, happy to hear her voice.

  “You’d best get down to Presby,” she said in her British accent.

  “To the hospital?” My insides clenched. Mama? Nana? Granddaddy? All the people I loved—with the exception of Will because he was sitting next to me—raced through my head.