The writing was spidery and looked rushed, and a few of the letters had been dropped from the words. Clearly a man’s handwriting. As I read it, Meemaw’s voice echoed in my head alongside mine.
3 April, 1898
T~
H and me are meeting up with Etta at Fannie’s. New Mexico or Wyoming next, then to you and, God willing, the babe.
It was signed “RP.”
The small hairs on the back of my neck stirred. It couldn’t be. “Wh-where—”
“Did I find it?” he finished.
I nodded, shoving my glasses up the bridge of my nose before I unrolled the paper and read it again.
He pointed to the workroom. “There should have been a dowel on the leg that came off of that shelf. There wasn’t. That whole thing’s just been sitting on that loose ball of wood, no dowel, because that paper”—he tapped the top of the sheet—“was shoved inside the hole.”
Every bit of breath left my lungs. The round leg had flown off when Nell was in the workroom, right before the jars of buttons fell. The whole scene had Meemaw written all over it. She had wanted me to find this paper. Maybe that’s why she’d arranged for Will Flores to be around, so he could help. “You rascal,” I muttered, my gaze darting around, searching for her misty form.
“Come again?”
“No. Nothing,” I said, but my mind was racing. I bent over, trying to catch my breath, hands on my knees, elbows locked. If this was authentic, then Butch Cassidy really had sent something to Texana and it was probably here somewhere . . . God almighty, the stories were really true. And Meemaw had known the truth all along.
Will put his hand on my back and, like magic, breath filled my lungs again. “You okay, Cassidy?”
I managed a nod as I straightened up. “There’s some family legend, but there was never any proof, but now . . . now . . .” I stopped and regrouped. “But this . . .” I’d let the paper roll into a tight scroll again and clutched it in my hand, afraid it might evaporate if I let go.
He felt my forehead with the back of his hand, then both of my cheeks. “You sure you’re okay? You need to sit down?”
“I’m fine,” I said, batting his hand away. “Look. Look at the date on this.”
“I saw it. 1898.”
“Right. My great-great-grandmother was born in October of 1898.”
The shadow of confusion on his face cleared. “So you think the baby mentioned in the note was your great-great-grandmother?”
The Singer still purred from the workroom. I caught a glimpse of Gracie’s foot. She was back to sorting the buttons from the jars Nell had dropped. I looked up at Will, keeping my voice low, my skin pricking with excitement. “It has to be. It’s addressed to T. That’s got to be Texana Harlow, my great-great-great-grandmother. H was Harry Longabaugh. Etta was his girlfriend.”
“And Frannie?”
I laughed. After a high school research project, I knew almost everything there was to know about Robert LeRoy Parker. “Frannie Porter was a madame in San Antonio. They used her brothel as a rendezvous.”
Will stared at me, riveted. “Family legend. Wait a second. You mean the old outlaw stories about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”
A chill of excitement swept through me. “Butch’s real name was Robert LeRoy Parker and Sundance was Harry Longabaugh.”
Will tapped the rolled-up paper with his finger. “And you think this note was written to your . . . great-great . . . however many greats . . . grandmother, from Butch Cassidy?”
“Yes!” I grabbed his hand, my excited whisper ringing in my ears. “I grew up hearing the stories. Butch Cassidy sent a letter and something else—a trinket—to Texana before he escaped to South America. She never saw him again . . . No one ever found the letter. We never had proof of our family lineage. But this”—I waved the note—“this verifies that it’s all true. He and Texana really did have a baby together.”
“Um, Harlow?” Gracie stood just inside the workroom. She held out her hand, palm up. “I think you should see this.”
“Show-and-tell today,” Will said as we went to see what she held.
It was a ring, the band made out of lustrous platinum. The biggest diamond I’d ever seen sat smack in the center of two rows of smaller diamonds.
Butch Cassidy and Texana were still on my mind. “Butch sent Texana something . . .”
“Hate to burst your bubble, Cassidy,” Will said, holding the ring up to the light, “but this isn’t a hundred and ten, or however many, years old.”
He handed it to me so I could take a closer look. All my wishful thinking didn’t make me right. This ring was shiny and brand-spanking new. “This was in that bag of buttons?” I asked Gracie.
“Yep.”
Why would a brand-new ring be mixed in with Meemaw’s buttons? My mind shot back to the day Nell died, yanking out buried images, rearranging them, and shoving them right back into my consciousness.
Nell had been in the workroom. I’d been too busy telling myself that the customer is always right to worry much about why she’d been back there. What had she been doing that could have unsettled the shelves and broken the button jars? Was she searching for something? But how would she have known there was something hidden there? And of all the jars, would she have picked the right one?
Then, for the second time in a few minutes, I lost my breath. She wasn’t searching for it. “Oh my God, she was hiding the ring!”
The Singer had stopped its steady rhythm. “Who was hiding what?” Mama asked, coming over to us.
Instead of answering, I handed her the note. She scanned it, met my gaze, and just like that, all the color drained from her face. “This is proof,” she whispered.
My eyes welled as I nodded. It was a monumental moment for the Cassidy family, but we were also in the thick of a murder investigation. Mama and I wrapped our arms around each other, savoring the moment for as long as we could, whispering about the discovery, Butch and Texana, and our family history.
Mama wandered off a few moments later, still in a daze about the note. Eventually, my mind drifted back to Meemaw and the ring. She’d never done things the easy way when she was alive. Now that she’d passed, everything was more puzzling.
I thought back to that day in the shop. She must have seen Nell trying to hide the ring. She’d made the leg of the shelf shoot across the room like a bullet, causing the button jars to crash to the ground. By her own orchestration, Will was at the ready to do repairs for me, and now I had a shelf that needed repairing. Meemaw had seen an opportunity to help me find the note from Butch, and she’d taken it.
“The first day Josie and the bridesmaids all came in here, Nell was in the workroom but we were all out here. She paced around, always going off on her own to look at swatches or the lookbook.”
“Lookbook?” Will sounded like we were speaking a foreign language.
“My design book.” I waved the whole train of thought away. “It’s not important. The point is, maybe she was trying to get away from all of us so she could hide this.” I held up the ring like a prize.
Gracie raised her hand like she was in class at school. “Um, I have a question.”
We waited.
“It’s just . . .” She bit one side of her lower lip. “Why would Nell have had your friend Josie’s engagement ring?”
“Wh-what?” Will and I stared at Gracie, slack-jawed. “This isn’t Josie’s—”
I stopped short, caught off guard by her wagging head. “Not now it’s not, but it was. I saw it after your friend got engaged to Holly’s uncle.”
And just like that, I suddenly remembered the day Josie and her bridesmaids had first come into Buttons & Bows and the story about her two rings. The first had been too flashy for her and they’d exchanged it for a simpler setting.
I stared at the sparkling diamond. This was that ring? “But why did Nell have it?” I asked aloud. Two other questions quickly followed in my head. Why had she been trying to hide it? And wh
y, oh why, had she picked my shop to hide it in?
Chapter 39
I’d never fancied myself an amateur sleuth, but a desperate phone call from Josie changed my mind. She said she needed to know what had happened to Nell—for her own peace of mind. Part of me wondered if she was beginning to doubt Nate. With her first engagement ring tucked safely in a little navy velvet jewelry bag sitting in the middle of the cutting table, I was certainly doubtful of his innocence.
“Will you help? Just come to the funeral and . . .” Her voice faded away.
“And see what I can see,” I finished for her.
“Yes.”
“Whoever killed Nell isn’t going to be wearing a sign announcing the fact,” I said, but I was already scanning the notes I’d written in the back of my sketchbook. If I was right and Miriam had been about to name Nate as the killer, I couldn’t let Josie go through with the wedding. The truth needed to come out before she married a murderer.
A number of clues seemed to point to Nate as the killer. Was he guilty of murder, or did the fact that Will trusted him mean I was barking up the wrong tree?
Mama and I had spent another hour reading, rereading, and discussing the note. Excitement at the discovery of a letter from Butch Cassidy to Texana Harlow raced through me. Mama finally left to share the note with Nana, and I tried to get back to work. Each time I sat down to sew, picked up a needle and thread, or handled my rotary cutter or shears, the pipes began creaking, cupboard doors flung open and then abruptly banged shut, or the shelves in the workroom shook, rattling the jars of buttons. It was as if Meemaw was trying to send me a message.
Finally, I realized that I wasn’t going to accomplish any real work. As soon as I put down the needle I had been holding, a wall of air practically lifted me from the stool, pushing me toward the French doors. “Wait!” There was no way I was letting Josie’s ring out of my sight. I broke away and snatched the velvet bag from my cutting table. Immediately, the unexpected strength of Meemaw’s invisible hands propelled me all the way upstairs.
In my room, I opened my closet and grabbed the first thing I saw—a cream-colored blouse and a brown cardigan with a pink-and-cream argyle pattern down either side of the buttoned front. My mind had drifted from Nate and Josie to Butch Cassidy, the ring, and Loretta Mae. Meemaw had answers. I knew she couldn’t hold a real conversation with me, but I asked the questions that came to my mind anyway. “Do you think Nate’s guilty? Will there really be a wedding?” I searched the room for a response.
No ghostlike figures or wraiths appeared. Whatever had propelled me upstairs was gone.
But as I started dressing, a stack of magazines on the bedside table shook. The thick one on top, the spring issue of Vogue, fell with a loud splat. The cover of the most recent Threads flew open. Pages fanned back and forth. Just like the first time Meemaw had communicated with me, tiny drops of water spread on the words she was highlighting. One by one she spelled Miriam; then the pages opened to a jewelry ad, a diamond ring front and center.
Questions skittered through my brain. “But Gracie already said it’s Josie’s ring. She was at the Kincaids’ house with Holly right after Nate proposed. She saw it. I don’t need Miriam to verify that, and she doesn’t want to talk to me anyway. I already tried.”
The pages flapped spastically in response, and then, as if Meemaw were squeezing her hand around my fist, I felt my fingers tighten on the little jewelry bag holding the ring. My head suddenly felt filled with cotton, my heartbeat dull and muffled. It was as if she wanted me to remember something, but what?
I summoned up what I knew. Josie had returned the first custom engagement ring to Nate and he’d had a second one made with another custom-cut diamond. He wouldn’t have been able to simply return the first ring to a store for credit, right? Did Nell steal it from him, or could he have given it to her as a bribe to keep quiet about the baby—if it was his?
I thought of one little glitch. If Nate did give the ring to Nell, she wouldn’t have needed to hide it, and he wouldn’t have needed to kill her to get it back—if that was the motive.
It was more likely that Nell had stolen it. “So if sweet Daisy Duke was a thief,” I said aloud, “she may have been killed over that forty-thousand-dollar ring.”
A soft breeze swept through the room, gathering speed. I thought it was Meemaw agreeing with me.
Will trusted Nate, but did I trust Will? For that matter, did I trust Miriam? I wasn’t sure, but I was willing to take my chances. I wanted to share my theory with her and see if we’d come to the same conclusion.
I no longer needed my great-grandmother’s encouragement to get me to the funeral.
Chapter 40
One phone call and thirty minutes later, Mama and I were on our way, the ring tucked safely in my gray-and-white Burberry handbag. Miriam’s prediction had been right on the money. From the looks of it, the whole community had come out for Nell’s funeral. The service was at the old Methodist church one block off the square, catty-corner to Mockingbird Lane. We cut a diagonal, crossing at the corner of Mockingbird and Elm, skirting the courthouse, crossing Dallas Street at the opposite corner, to join the parade of people filing into the old stone building.
The hushed whispers of the mourners all blended together into white noise. From the back of the sanctuary, I spotted Keith and Lori Kincaid sitting three rows from the front, both with their heads slightly bowed. Miriam sat next to her mother, her back ramrod straight, while Holly slouched next to her.
Josie was in the front row with Nate, her shoulders shaking as she tried to control her grief. Whether she was crying over losing Nell, or over her latent fears that her fiancé may have betrayed her, was anybody’s guess. Ruthann and Karen sat on the other side of her, hip to hip. If Nate or either of the bridesmaids moved, I was afraid Josie would topple right over. Her mother and grandmother were at the end of the pew, tissues pressed to their noses.
Strains of a melancholy violin song sounded through the speakers while images of Nell flashed on a screen hanging behind the altar. Nell snuggling a long-haired gray cat. Nell behind the counter of Seed-n-Bead. A group of women with Nell in the center, all holding up their completed bead projects. Miriam and Nell, side by side, smiling into a mirror. Nell looked happy, like everything was right with the world.
My gaze was drawn straight to Nate. His head was bent, his lips close to Josie’s ear. How much effort was it taking him to ignore the slide show? Probably not nearly as much as it was taking him to ignore the intense stare Miriam had trained on him.
I felt the weight of someone else’s stare, but couldn’t identify who was behind it.
Ruthann watched the pictures, dabbing her eyes with a tissue, but Karen stared at the screen, emotionless. She’d said her husband would be here with her, but he wasn’t by her side. She’d set her heart up to be trampled, and I felt sorry for her.
I twisted around to look at the rest of the mourners. The deputy sheriff who’d been first on the scene after we’d discovered Nell’s body sat in the last row, as far to the right as possible. She wasn’t in uniform, but something about her posture and the jerky way she moved her head as she watched the slide show told me she was still here on official business. I looked at the altar just as another bead shop photo flashed on the screen. The deputy, in off-duty clothes, was in the photo, smiling and holding her wrist out to show off a bracelet.
Small-town living—there was nothing like it. You’d never get to know the law enforcement in a big city. New York cops didn’t go to local beading classes. Not so in Bliss.
I spotted Sheriff McClaine standing in the back of the sanctuary. He caught my eye and gave a polite nod. He wasn’t watching the slide show, either. Was he observing, as I was, who else was not watching, wondering if there was guilt behind the uninterest?
By now, almost everyone was riveted by Nell’s life in pictures, except Josie, who was crying, and Nate, who continued to whisper in her ear.
I kept searching the c
rowd, my gaze flitting over people I didn’t recognize, zeroing in on those I did. Just in case Miriam was wrong and I spotted the real killer diabolically gloating at getting away with murder.
No one gloated.
One man had his head down, as if he was texting or reading e-mail on a phone. He looked familiar, but from the back I couldn’t place him. Then it hit me. It was Ted, Karen’s husband, sitting on his own instead of sitting by his wife. That signified major marital trouble, which directed my theories away from Nate and back to Ted Mitchell as Nell’s secret love.
Thank God I wasn’t a detective. I think it would make me crazy. All those suspects and possible motives. Give me patterns and fabric any day of the week.
Mama and I forged through the throng of people and down the center aisle, looking for a place to sit. Gossip flew from one person to another, echoing in my head as if it were being hollered instead of whispered. “Poor girl.” “I heard she was pregnant.” “Had to keep our husbands locked up.” “Too young to die.” The sentiments were pretty evenly divided. Half the town was genuinely sad that Nell had died, but the other half seemed to think she got what she deserved.
“Pregnant?” Mama grabbed my wrist and whispered, raising an eyebrow at me. “Did you hear that?”
There hadn’t been a chance yet to tell her about Nell’s pregnancy. I nodded, prying her fingers off my arm. Her ring sparkled. I’d assumed Hoss McClaine would have already filled her in, and frankly, I was surprised he hadn’t. My respect for him rose a notch for his professionalism—and another notch for the tasteful bling he’d bestowed on my mother.
“I told you, she never went for the right sort of man. Wonder if that’s what was eating at her,” she was saying.
Someone waved to me from a center pew. I grabbed Mama’s hand and we picked our way past knobby knees and feet, finally squeezing in next to a cluster of women. Zinnia James, and her husband, the senator, scooted over to make room for us. I recognized the other women as the ladies Mrs. James had come to Buttons & Bows with the day Nell had died, including Mrs. Abernathy. We all nodded at one another.
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