A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (15 page)

“How do you always know what I’m thinking?” I whispered back.

She adjusted the strap of her Epiphanie camera bag, which doubled as her purse, over her shoulder. She never went anywhere without it. Or the camera she had tucked inside. “You advertise what you think on your face,” she said. “Your expressions tell a story. Don’t you ever mess with that.”

Steven walked past us, gave a little wave and a smile, and was instantly enveloped by the crowd. Madelyn and I took another step before a woman suddenly appeared in front of us, two glasses of wine in her hands, and an absolutely perfectly wrinkle-free face. “Welcome!” The sides of her mouth curved up in a smile, but it didn’t quite stretch all the way to her eyes. No wrinkles meant no laugh lines, but it was like the smile was incomplete.

She handed us the wineglasses, then picked up her own. “Chardonnay. Is that all right? If you’d rather have red, I have—”

“This is perfect,” I said, stopping her before she rattled off her entire bar selection.

Her smile broadened, but still looked stiff. “I’m Anna Hughes, Buckley’s wife.” She offered us a limp hand. Meemaw always said you could tell the strength of a person’s character by the strength of their handshake.
Steven and Will’s handshake had looked solid and firm. Strong personalities, both of them. But when I took Mrs. Hughes’s hand, it felt even weaker than it looked, as if I were shaking hands with a coil of cooked spaghetti.

I recognized her from around town. Life in Bliss, being so small, meant everyone frequented the same places, particularly the women and the shops. I’d probably seen her in Seed-n-Bead, Josie’s store, or maybe at Villa Farina. “I’m Harlow, and this is Madelyn,” I said. “I’m a friend of Will’s, next door. Your husband helped Will move my grandmother’s armoire down from my attic a few days ago.”

“Right! The dressmaker! How wonderful.” Her voice was growing louder and more boisterous, and I wondered if it was because her face wouldn’t stretch to show her enthusiasm. I had to pay close attention to decipher some of her West Texas twangy accent. “He told me, but when I asked him what kind of designs he’d seen, he couldn’t give me a single detail. Isn’t that so like a man? I’ve been meanin’ to come by and welcome you back to town. And see some of your designs, of course. I hear you’re quite a force in the fashion world.”

The warmth of a blush rose to my cheeks. “Come by anytime,” I offered.

She got lost in a thought as she took a sip of her wine. “My sister would do just about anything to have her wedding dress made by an actual New York fashion designer,” she said absently.

I stood up straighter. Another commission would certainly help me with the shop and all the repairs the old farmhouse needed. “When is she getting married?”

She shook her head and scoffed. “You mean the most recent one?”

“Oh. How—how many have there been?”

She leaned in closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “This is number three. Third time’s a charm. Isn’t that what they say? Pft.” She flapped her hand around, sloshing her wine.

“I just made a wedding gown and bridesmaids dresses. I’d be happy to—”

Her palm went up and I stopped short. “I’m not
in
the wedding. I haven’t been in any of them.”

“Ah.” So what were we talking about? I was a little lost. “So maybe what you need is a
Wow!
dress,” I said. A vision of Mrs. Hughes in a long black taffeta gown, flower detailing on one of the thick straps suddenly filled my mind.

She glanced over my shoulder, the shadow that had cast its pall over her face lifting. “A
Wow!
dress. I like the sound of that. I sure would love to show all those people who…” She trailed off, looking at the glass of wine she held in her hand before directing her gaze down the back hallway. “A
Wow!
dress.” She nodded her head, her eyes narrowing as if she’d just come to an important decision. “I do think I need me one of those and I think you’re just the one to make it for me.”

I bustled with pride. It looked like Macon Vance wasn’t the only person in Bliss with a reputation. Every custom order I snagged meant I could keep the doors of Buttons & Bows open that much longer. And at this point, I wanted nothing more. This was good. I would help Anna Hughes show whoever she wanted whatever she wanted to show them, and her deepest desires would come true in the process. It was a win-win.

“Where’s the wedding?” I asked after I told her again to come by the shop. The issue at hand, though, was how
to turn the conversation to Meemaw and whatever cosmetic procedures she’d had done, or to Macon Vance and Mrs. James. I was here to learn whatever I could.

“Out in the Panhandle. Amarillo,” she said, but her attention had fractured.

There was a weighty pause in the conversation. I didn’t know what to say and I suddenly longed for some embroidery or crewel to keep my hands busy.

Finally, her eyes darted over my shoulder to the front door as another handful of women sashayed in. “Drinks are on the sidebar,” she twanged. She pointed to bottles of wine and beer on a metal-and-glass occasional table in the dining room, then added, “Excuse me,” and she hurried past us to greet more of her husband’s potential clients.

I deflated. Maybe I wasn’t such a celebrity, and maybe her enthusiasm was more the wine talking than her desire for a custom dress. She’d probably forget this whole conversation and I’d never have the chance to make her that black taffeta dress.

“So where do we start?” Madelyn asked as I caught up with her. She’d ogled the portable massage chair, but stepped aside to let another woman sit down and put her face in the cradle.

I spotted Fern and Trudy. “The Lafayette sisters,” I said.

Gripping her arm, I dragged her with me, plowing through the chattering women with determination. The wine loosened their tongues plenty and Zinnia James’s arrest was the hot topic. “That poor woman,” a lady with the most ratted-out Texas hair I’d ever seen was saying. “Mortifyin’. Absolutely mortifyin’.” The woman by her side nodded, a sympathetic expression on her face. “I
feel for her. She’s never had it easy, and now this.” She shook her head. “I sure do hope she’s holdin’ up all right.”

I did, too. Mostly I was relieved that her friends weren’t throwing her under the bus. They didn’t seem to believe Mrs. James could have killed Macon Vance any more than I did.

The first woman’s lips drew together as if she’d sucked a lemon dry. “Abigail, tell me you are not going to the jail. Why, you simply cannot step foot in that place.”

The woman named Abigail recoiled. “Heaven’s me, no, Cathy. Lawrence would be fit to be tied if I even mentioned it. No. I’ll see her when she gets out.”

“
If
she gets out,” Cathy said. The rest of their conversation faded away as they drifted off, and my shoulders sank.

And here I’d thought they were her friends. “I’m going to visit her,” I told Madelyn, making up my mind on the spot.

“Who, Mrs. James?”

“Yup. Tomorrow.” I couldn’t sit by and do nothing. I’d go to the source to figure out what sort of garment to make her. But most of all, I’d be her friend.

Trudy and Fern had gone into the procedure bedroom before I could speak to them. Josie had shown up while we waited, and she, Madelyn, and I hovered near the back room, debating whether to stay. I caught a glimpse of Steven, Sandra, and Libby Allen, and a flash of memory hit me. I’d seen the parents together at Villa Farina the morning Macon Vance had died.

Duane paused in the hallway, lifting his hand in a wave to Libby as Steven guided his wife and daughter toward the front door. Sandra’s head hung low and her shoulders slumped. So coming out hadn’t gotten her mind off the fact that her mother was in jail.

As I wondered if she’d been to the old brick jailhouse, my worry for Mrs. James grew to the size of a ten-gallon hat.

Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

“Those Lafayette sisters have been in there since the dawn of time,” Madelyn mumbled, tapping her foot.

“Maybe not since the dawn of time,” Josie said, “but for a good twenty minutes.”

Finally, after another five torturously slow minutes, the door was flung open and they sauntered out. Trudy
still looked tense, her fingers pressed against the hollows on the inside of her eyes, just like earlier.

“Don’t rub, now,” Dr. Hughes said, coming up behind her. “You don’t want to spread it around.”

Fern and Trudy said good-bye, then shuffled up to us. “You came?” Fern said.

I nodded. “So did you.”

“Trudy’s headache,” she said by way of explanation. “It hit her harder this afternoon after y’all left. All that squinting over the hand-beading. Couldn’t very well send her alone.”

I nodded with approval. Fern was a good sister. “I was just, er, curious,” I said, not wanting to reveal that I hoped to somehow help Mrs. James. The doctor waved at them, nodding, and as Trudy walked by she held her head high, but her lower lip quivered, from the pain, I guessed.

She didn’t look all that different. Same crow’s-feet. Same wrinkled forehead. Same vertical lines between the brows. If the Botox helped her wrinkles, too, it hadn’t worked yet.

“People pay for that?” Madelyn whispered to Josie and me.

“They do. And a pretty penny, too,” Josie whispered back. “My hairdresser gets it done. She pays twelve dollars a unit.”

Madelyn looked fascinated, her eyebrows arched high on her forehead. “How many units does it take?”

“Twenty-five for her crow’s-feet.”

Bless my soul. That was a whole lotta money to get rid of a few lines for a few months.

“Step right in, little ladies!” Buckley Hughes’s voice boomed at us.

“No, no.” I waved my hands, taking a step back, wanting to go talk to Trudy and Fern.

“Harlow.” The doctor took my hand and pulled me into the room. Josie and Madelyn were on my heels.

“It’s perfectly safe,” the doctor said, but my stomach clenched at the sight of the syringes and vials.

“Really, no,” I said, trying to be polite. There was no way I was forking over hundreds of dollars to minimize my wrinkles. And if I ever did, it would be in a sterilized doctor’s office. I subscribed to Meemaw’s philosophy that I’d earned every single one of them and they were a testament to my years. Plus, I’d just seen on Trudy that it didn’t work.

“I was wondering, though…” I decided to just ask what I wanted to know down deep. “I heard that my great-grandmother came to some of your parties. Did she…” I swallowed, still hardly believing it could be true. “Did she get any treatments? Loretta Mae Cassidy,” I added, picking up a vial with a salmon-colored lid and label from the stainless steel medical table and turning it over in my hands. “That was my great-grandmother.”

“’Course. I knew Loretta Mae pretty well. She was a talker, that one. Always with the questions and the predictions and the stories about Bliss.” The doctor perched on the edge of his chair, stroking his clean-shaven chin. “Lots of women come on over to the parties but never get a treatment. Far as I know, Loretta Mae didn’t get anythin’ done. Not by me, anyway.”

I put down the vial as Madelyn and Josie crowded behind me. “Are you sure? Fern and Trudy Lafayette seemed to think she’d had some work done, but I… I just have a hard time believing that.”

He paused for the quickest beat, then got up and strode around us to the door. “Anna?” He moved a few steps into the hallway and called again.

His wife appeared a moment later. His voice was too low to hear, but he came back into the room after a minute, shaking his head. Anna followed him.

“My husband’s right,” she said, her accent thicker than a pot of baked beans. “Loretta Mae came around every now and again, but she never got any treatments done.” Her words were a little slurred. Her wineglass was full again, I noticed. Flowing drinks didn’t seem like a good idea at a cosmetics party. Impaired decision making, and all. Could a woman really know what she was giving consent for if she couldn’t think straight? I glanced around the room. No Shiners or Merlot for Dr. Hughes, thankfully. At least if he aimed for a woman’s forehead with his syringe,
he
wouldn’t miss.

The doctor leaned against the doorjamb, one arm folded over his chest, the other cocked at the elbow, his finger tapping his chin as he thought. “Now, she did come in and talk to me about it once or twice,” he said. “Seems to me we spent more time chatting about everything else under the sun, though. She was skittish, if I recall, but whenever I brought up the procedure, she changed the subject to her quilts, her daughter’s goats, my life, Will next door…
you
. Anything, really. I just figured she was lonely and wanted to talk.”

Lonely? Skittish? Loretta Mae? That didn’t sound right. Then again, if she’d been considering going against one of her own personal life philosophies, I could see why she would have been on edge. “She talked about me?”

He cupped his chin, his thumb joining the tapping rhythm. “She couldn’t wait to have you back home,
although…” He paused, looking up at the ceiling as if his memories were stored there.

“Yes?” I didn’t know what insight a doctor who’d barely known Meemaw could give me, but I’d take any scrap he threw.

“She seemed to be worried about something. I’m a pretty good judge of character, and it seemed to me like she was keeping something under wraps.”

“Secrets,” Anna Hughes blurted. “Everyone’s always keeping secrets, aren’t they, honey?” Her ankle buckled and she stumbled, her wine sloshing over the sides of her glass.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said as her husband took her by the elbow to help her stand, gently taking her wineglass from her and putting it down next to a collection of Botox boxes.

“Anna,” he said, coaxing her into the floral armchair in the corner.

Her eyes were glazed, but she pressed her lips together, put her fingers to them, and turned an invisible key.

Even though she’d zipped her lips, her words stayed with me. Meemaw had definitely been keeping things on the down low. From the cell phone conversation Gina had overheard at the café, it seemed Macon Vance had had a secret. Mrs. James herself had been arrested. If I was wrong about her, then her secret was that she’d killed the man. Anna Hughes would probably want her drinking tonight to be kept a secret. The list went on and on. I’d just never thought Meemaw would keep things buckled up tight under her rhinestone belt, but it seemed she had.