“Oh,” she said, quietly. The confident dress designer we’d first met seemed to have disappeared completely, replaced with a withdrawn and drained replica without any of the style and grace you’d expect from a famous dressmaker.
“The reason I wanted you here today is to explain yourself. As you know, everyone is saying you’re a murderer.”
“I know they are,” she said with a sigh. She wrapped both hands around the teacup and held it up to her mouth as if absorbing all the warmth from the cup to take in its energy.
“Well, are you?”
“No, I’m not.” She looked me dead in the eye. “I promise you I didn’t kill her. It had nothing to do with me—I wasn’t there.”
When she looked me right in the eyes, I felt she was telling the truth, that she hadn’t killed Carrie. I wasn’t completely convinced though; she seemed to still be hiding something, and while I am a good judge of whether someone is telling me the truth, I’m not perfect.
“It looks very bad for you, Zola. There’s a few things you need to explain to me. If you can do that, then maybe I can help clear your name—of murder, at least.”
She nodded but didn’t offer anything else. I was going to have to do the digging myself.
“You had a key. I gave it to you.”
“Yes.” A guilty frown appeared on her face. “You did. And I... I gave it to Carrie.”
“Because...” prompted Sarah from her seat up on the counter. She was now leaning forward, elbows on her knees and fists under her chin keeping a sharp eye on us. I hadn’t just wanted her there for moral support. If Zola did turn out to be a killer, I wanted her help if things got physical.
“I knew Carrie, from before.”
“When?” asked Sarah sharply.
Zola sat up straight. “It must have been about eight years ago. As I told you before, I came here on vacation every summer.”
“And you met Carrie then?”
She nodded.
“There’s a beach, Secret Cove, next to a little hotel where they do weddings. Do you know it?”
“Of course we know it. This is a bridal shop,” said Sarah with a frown.
“Right. Yes. Anyway, I used to check the newspaper to see when and where weddings were being held. There are loads in the summer, not just on the weekends but almost every day there is a wedding going on somewhere in town.”
What she was saying was true. Sequoia Bay was a popular spot not just for people from the surrounding area, but as a destination wedding venue for people all over the country. We even got Europeans every now and then.
“I had a favorite spot, on top of the dunes just where they meet the trees, up above where they do the weddings. Well, one day, I went to sit down at my favorite spot, and there was another girl sitting right there too. We got to talking. She was just like me—she loved watching weddings, and she particularly liked looking at the wedding dresses.”
“That was Carrie, right?” I said to her, settling back in my chair to listen to her story.
“We didn’t exchange names right away, but yes, it was Carrie. And she had a sketchbook with her.”
“With the dress designs you stole?” asked Sarah with a kick at the counter on the word stole.
Zola looked up at her startled. “I... I’ll get to that in a moment.”
Sarah and I nodded at Zola to continue.
“She showed me her drawings, and they were good. No, not good, they were amazing. Most of the dresses she showed me were far better than what the bride below us was wearing. But she didn’t think so.”
“Why was that?”
“She told me about a friend of hers. Brittany. Her so-called friend and that friend’s mother had been telling her to stop with her silly little drawings and start focusing on the future.”
“Like going to college?”
Zola laughed and shook her head. “No. She told me she was too stupid to go to college, and you know, I think she got that from Brittany too, though she didn’t say it outright. No, Brittany and her mother were encouraging her to think about who she was going to marry instead.”
“Marry? Wasn’t she in high school?”
“I think it was the summer they had graduated. Anyway, Brittany’s mother had never gone to college and so she didn’t think her daughter needed to either. She wanted her to follow in her own footsteps by finding a rich husband to look after her instead of wasting her time with books and all that boring stuff.”
“That’s awful!” Sarah slapped the counter with a hand in outrage. Kiwi squawked in response to the noise.
“It is, isn’t it?” said Zola thoughtfully. “But I figured that was just a small town mentality thing. Sad, but what can you do?”
“What about the drawings?” I asked her.
“They were so good. When she first showed them to me, I encouraged her to keep working on them. But she wasn’t interested. She said that now she’d graduated high school, so it was time to put the silliness behind her and focus on the future. She was going to toss them all away.”
“She told you she was going to throw them all away?” said Sarah skeptically.
Zola nodded. “Yep. She said it was lucky I was seeing her that particular day—it was the last time she was going to come to a wedding to look at the dresses, and it was the last time she would have the sketchbook. She pointed to a trash can near the end of the beach, near the little hotel. She pointed it at and told me, ‘After this, I’m going to throw this in there and grow up.’”
“How sad,” said Sarah. “To give up on your dreams because of what some other girls said.”
“It was sad,” said Zola. “And the dresses were so beautiful. After we said our goodbyes, I pretended to leave, but I didn’t really. I watched her. I didn’t believe she was really going to throw those drawings away but she did. She shoved them into that trashcan and then marched away without ever looking back. It seemed like such a waste.”
“So you took them?” I asked her with a frown.
She shrugged.
“I did. At the time I thought maybe I’d keep them for her. In case I met her again and she regretted throwing them away, I could give them to her. And if that didn’t happen, maybe they’d give me some inspiration, her style was quite different than what I was learning at design school, but it had its own kind of aesthetic that really appealed to me, even though it wasn’t at all professional.”
“So when did you start to copy them?” asked Sarah, hopping down off the counter and coming to stand behind me, her hands resting on my shoulders. Even without turning around, I knew she was peering intently at Zola.
“I… I didn’t,” said Zola.
“Yes, you did,” said Sarah and I in unison.
“I mean, I didn’t at first,” said Zola, hands in her lap and eyes staring down at them. “My first collection, the one that made me famous. That was me. That was all mine. But after the fame started, everyone was saying ‘what’s she going to do next,’ or ‘how can she top her first collection,’ and all those kinds of things.”
“So…”
“So, I couldn’t do it. With everyone’s expectations so high, I froze up. I couldn’t even pick up a pencil without shaking. It was like someone had switched something in my brain and I couldn’t design a thing. It was the pressure, the nerves, the stress, the expectations…”
“Give me a break,” said Sarah from behind me and from the way Zola flinched I knew Sarah’d given her a mean look.
“I’m sure that was a tough time,” I said, trying to be understanding.
I mean, I did understand what she meant, but it looked like she had dealt with the situation terribly. She should have got some help instead of doing what she’d done. And had that led to Carrie’s death? We weren’t there yet but it sure looked like Zola’s story might be leading that way.
“It was very tough. Really tough. And one day, I was just staring at my shelves. Most days I was so wound tight I could barely even take out a book to look at it for
inspiration. At the top of my bookshelf, kind of stuffed on top of the row of books out of the way, I saw Carrie’s sketchbook.
“It immediately brought back memories. Happy memories. Times with my family in Sequoia Bay, the time before I was famous. I pulled it down, and I swear I could smell the salt of the ocean and feel that sea breeze the second I opened that book. I could feel that youthful girl’s inspiration and promise pouring out of it, and filling me up.”
Zola was looking up toward the ceiling, as if recalling the memory of a memory of happier times. I believed her, I realized. At least, so far. She seemed to be telling us the truth. But where would this little tale of her past lead? In cold-blooded murder to cover up her career, or something we hadn’t yet considered?
“And so? You copied them?” Sarah’s tone sounded almost bored, while I was feeling quite moved by it all.
The thought of those happy young girls, with so much promise ahead of them, so much to live for, sitting by the ocean together watching a wedding at which neither of them knew any of the participants. But now one was dead and the other may have killed her, and that promise they once held had been flitted away like ashes in the wind.
“Yes,” said Zola in a very small voice. “When I looked at her scrapbook, there were just so many lovely designs. Designs she had thrown away years before. They were just sitting there, unloved and unseen by anyone except in Carrie’s memory and on my bookshelf. It seemed like such a waste.”
“So basically you were helping the world by copying them?” Sarah’s tone was still harsh.
“Copy! Copy!” shrieked Kiwi from up high. I glanced up at him and he bobbed his head at me happily. He was enjoying the drama.
“I don’t know what I was doing,” said Zola beginning to sob. “I needed new designs. And they were right there. And they were so good. And they were just being wasted. And—”
“And, and, and, excuses, excuses, excuses,” said Sarah.
“What happened last week?” My voice was calm and measured and less hostile than my partner’s.
“Carrie… she found out. She knew. She’d seen my designs in magazines and online and in the papers and she remembered. She remembered everything, about how we’d met, and how she’d thrown away her scrapbook—she remembered exactly what her designs looked like. She said she’d never forgotten and she never would. She told me how much she regretted throwing that scrapbook away and listening to her so-called friend instead of following her heart. She said she’d wasted her life.”
“She wasn’t even thirty yet!” I said, outraged that Carrie had felt that way about herself. Didn’t she realize that plenty of people don’t find their calling until they’re in their thirties, or forties, or fifties, or even retired? She was still so young!
“So when did you decide to kill her?” asked Sarah in a cold tone.
Zola’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. “I didn’t! Please! I’m telling you everything that happened. Please listen to me and believe me.”
“We’ll see. So what happened when she confronted you? I assume you’re not going to say you strangled her with a veil,” said Sarah as she began to pace up and down the shop.
“She wanted some kind of compensation. A dress. For her wedding.”
“That’s it?” I said with a frown.
Zola nodded. “Well, actually she wanted two dresses. One for her wedding, and then she wanted another one of her designs because, well, I hate to say it—”
“Because she knew another bride wanted it?” I asked.
Zola nodded. “It seemed like such a mean thing to do. She just wanted to deprive the other girl of the dress she wanted for her wedding.”
“The other girl was Brittany Bledsoe. It must have been. She was the one who persuaded her to stop drawing in the first place. It was her you have to thank for Carrie throwing her designs away,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Go on. What did you agree?” I asked.
“Well,” said Zola looking at me with imploring eyes. “I did feel I owed her something, so I said she could have her pick of the dresses. Even take two of them. So I let her have the key and told her to come in the dead of the night and take the dresses she wanted. In return, she would drop all her claims to my designs. We’d keep it all a secret. I was going to meet her here that night and have her sign a contract, an NDA. I gave her your key to let herself in and try on the dresses.”
“So was there a death penalty clause in the non-disclosure agreement?” asked Sarah with a raise of her eyebrows.
“No! That night, it didn’t happen like it was supposed to. I didn’t meet her. She didn’t sign the contract.”
“Well, what happened then?” I asked with a frown.
“I came to the store that night, as planned. Long after you’d locked up for the night. It was dark, and quiet. At first I thought there was no one there, but when I got close I heard voices.”
“Voices?”
Zola nodded. “She was supposed to come alone! That was our agreement. But there was someone else there. I’d come early, too. It was dark and the middle of the night and my imagination started to run away with me.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I thought it was a trap! A set up of some kind. I thought if I went in the lights would go on, the cameras would be rolling, and I’d be revealed to be a… you know.”
“A fraud?” asked Sarah.
Zola winced and nodded, her cheeks red with shame.
“So?”
“So I left! I didn’t go in there that night. I wanted to talk to Carrie to find out just what was going on. The next morning, in the cold light of day, I thought that perhaps I’d been imagining things. Maybe Carrie had been talking to herself. Maybe she’d had a radio on. Maybe she’d been on the phone. No one from the media had contacted me or anything. I thought it had just been one of those middle-of-the-night, imagination run amok kind of situations.”
“You knew nothing about her murder?” I asked.
Zola nodded. “Nothing! When I came in, I was as shocked as you. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to think or do.”
“You went into the fitting room,” I pointed out with a nod of my head in that direction.
“You remember.”
“Of course I remember. I’ll never forget that morning!”
“I did go in there. She was wearing the dress, so I figured her regular clothes would be in the fitting room.”
“What did you want with her regular clothes?” asked Sarah.
“The key,” I answered. “You were looking for the key that I gave you, because if it was found with Carrie, you would be implicated.”
Zola nodded, shame-faced.
“And you opened the window!”
Zola nodded again, eyes staring down into her lap. “I opened the window so the police would think she climbed through it.”
“So you’re telling us that you knew Carrie would be there that night and you gave her the key to the shop, but you had nothing to do with her death and have no idea who killed her?” asked Sarah, standing right next to Zola and almost talking directly into her ear.
Zola nodded unhappily. “That’s right. And whoever killed her must have taken the key and locked the shop up after they left, because I didn’t find the key in her belongings. And neither did the police. It must have been taken by the person I heard her talking to.”
“Do you believe her?” Sarah asked me as if Zola wasn’t there.
I stared at Zola. I’d heard what she said, and I knew she hadn’t been dishonest with us. She wasn’t a bad person; she was just a regular person who’d made one massive mistake that had spiraled out of her control.
“Yes, she’s telling the truth.”
Zola let out a long stream of breath between pursed lips.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” she said.
“Nor did Carrie,” I answered with a frown.
“You, go now,” said Sarah. Waving h
er hands in a shooing motion toward the door.
Zola cocked her head and looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Come on, off you go. Up. Out,” said Sarah again, tapping Zola on the shoulder and pointing her in the direction of the door.
Surprised, Zola slowly rose to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” she said to us.
“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” shrieked Kiwi.
Zola looked shaken as Sarah hustled her out the door.
When the door was closed behind her, Sarah came back to me and she took the seat Zola had been sitting in.
“That was a bit abrupt,” I said.
Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “She told us everything. We didn’t need her moping around the place bringing us down. She’s caused enough trouble without making us all more depressed as well.”
With a soft laugh, I nodded at her. Perhaps she was right. I was glad to be rid of Zola, for the moment.
“So,” said Sarah. “Brittany?”
“Or her mother?” I answered.
We had such a good understanding with each other we didn’t always need to talk in complete sentences. Just a word or two would suffice.
“The killer’s probably still got the key,” said Sarah.
“Yes. They probably do,” I answered. “Maybe we can use it to lure them here.”
“How?” Sarah had her thinking-frown on her face when she asked.
“I’m not sure. We’ll think about it.”
BZZZ.
My phone started to ring. I picked it up and looked at the screen.
“Huh. Would you look at that?” I said.
I held out the phone so the screen faced Sarah, and she responded with a low whistle.
“I wonder what she wants.”
Chapter 17
The screen on the phone read “Brittany Bledsoe.”
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hi, this is Brittany Bledsoe, future bride. I had an exclusive, private viewing with my mother?”
Sarah was staring at me with a What’s she saying? look on her face.
“Lovely to hear from you,” I said, trying to keep the nervousness from my voice. Was I talking to a killer? Or the daughter of a killer?
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