A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (6 page)

As I approached, the sheriff suddenly stood, his voice raised. “Dust it,” he said to one of his lackeys. Rebecca Quiñones watched me. Behind her, the camera was still rolling. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the sheriff wants to take a closer look at your sewing supplies, Ms. Cassidy,” she said. There was a snarky little edge to her tone that made me think she knew something I didn’t.

“Why?” I said, hesitating. Why was the sheriff here, anyway, and what needed dusting?

Rebecca Quiñones stared at me. “You mean you haven’t heard?”

I looked around, noting the odd mix of somber voices and bustling activity. Suddenly, I felt like I’d been transported back to the porch of 2112 Mockingbird Lane, watching a crime scene unfold in front of me. The same feeling I’d had then—one of helpless shock—came over me. It couldn’t happen twice, could it? Not another…
death
? “Heard what?” I said, my voice as somber as the newscaster’s expression.

“The golf pro, Macon Vance,” she said. She pointed a perfectly manicured acrylic nail in the direction of stage left. “He was found murdered, and I believe the sheriff was just about to take your bag, and everything in it, into evidence.”

The breath suddenly left my lungs, heat spread to my cheeks, and a wave of dizziness slipped over me. “Murdered?” I looked back toward my bag of supplies, and noticed something I hadn’t seen a minute ago. My inexpensive, orange-handled Fiskars were on the ground, a good couple of feet from my bag, like they’d been dropped in a hurry. I started, a lump catching in my throat. They didn’t look right. The blades were open and stained with something dark. “How?” I asked, barely choking the words out.

Rebecca Quiñones had followed my gaze. From the corner of my eye, I saw her wave her microphone. The cameraman moved in closer, getting a tight shot of me. I tried to turn my back, but Rebecca said, “Stabbed,” and I froze. Because I suddenly knew what the dark substance on the blades was.

Blood.

Sheriff McClaine, also known as my mother’s secret boyfriend, shooed the looky-loos from the room, then leveled his gaze at me. “Harlow, speak of the devil.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, a solid dose of wariness in my voice.

“Guess you heard about the murder,” he said. “I reckon this is yours?” He gestured to the scattered sewing items.

“Yes, sir.” I thought the sheriff and I had had a little breakthrough after Josie Sandoval’s wedding, but the murder at the golf club seemed to have sent him back to his curmudgeonly state. I jammed my hands on my hips. “I came to collect my bag, and to meet Mrs. James.”

“And just why is your bag here?” he asked in his slow, John Wayne style.

His manner of speaking might be slow and Southern, but his mind was sharp as a tack. I bristled. “I accidentally left it here the other day. I’m working on some of the Margaret dresses.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, tilting his cream-colored straw cowboy hat back on his head. Then he added, “Seems like murder follows you.”

I gulped, not liking this conversation at all, and hoping Rebecca Quiñones and her cameraman had gone far, far way. “I heard, yes, sir.” I was thirty-three, but the sheriff sent me reeling back to being a scolded sixteen-year-old.

“A man was stabbed.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, the words catching in my throat.

“And your fingerprints’ll be all over those scissors there, I reckon,” he said, pointing to the scissors that one of his gloved deputies was sliding into a plastic evidence bag.

“They’re
my
dressmaking shears,” I said, “so, yes, sir, I reckon they will.”

The sheriff opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, instead waving at someone over my shoulder. “Find anything?

“And you didn’t know Mr. Vance?” he said to me a second later.

In my heart, I knew Hoss McClaine couldn’t possibly think I had anything to do with the golf pro’s death, but I also knew he had a job to do. I shook my head. “Never even heard of him until that reporter mentioned his name.”

The scattered items from my sewing bag had been numbered, and now I saw Madelyn Brighton, her dark skin shimmery from the heat, her short black hair plastered against her head, and her navy slacks and a colorful blouse sticking to her plump body. She’d come onto the stage, Canon camera lifted to her face, snapping picture after picture of the crime scene.

“Can I have my bag back?” I asked.

“No can do,” a deputy said, coming up beside me with
his cowboy swagger. He couldn’t have been more than five ten, and was lean and handsome, even in his khaki deputy uniform. He was clean shaven, though I got the feeling he let his whiskers go scruffy when he was off duty. Well, if he ever took a day off, which I wasn’t clear on, considering I couldn’t get a vision of him in anything other than his khakis. Of course, maybe my gift of visualizing people and clothing that would flatter them was selective and limited. My charm was not always under my control.

I gave up any hope of seeing those sewing supplies—or my Dena Rooney-Berg bag—again and started a mental list of what I’d need to replace. Tape measure, pins, seam ripper, spools of thread—

“Why’d you bring your sewing scissors to a golf club?” the deputy asked me. His brown eyes narrowed and he studied me like he thought I had a secret or two. Which I did. They were just unrelated to Macon Vance.

“Like I told the sheriff, Deputy, um…”

“McClaine.”

“No, not the sheriff…” I stopped, looked from one man to the other, then did a double take. “You’re…
Gavin
?” As in Hoss McClaine’s son? I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. He’d been a few years younger than me and I don’t think I’d ever uttered three words to him. He’d been the shyest boy in school, which had made him fodder for Derek Kincaid and his posse of entitled rich kids, but hadn’t gotten him involved in much else.

He nodded and the corner of his mouth lifted in a cocky smile. I got the feeling he liked shocking people who remembered him as the ninety-pound weakling. “All grown up.”

Yes, indeed. “I had no idea you were a deputy,” I said, thinking he might give the town’s crop of preeminent bachelors a run for their money. If you could get past the cocky attitude.

He knocked back his straw cowboy hat, identical to his dad’s, and stared me down. “Just transferred from Fort Worth. Heartwarming trip down memory lane,” he said with a heavy drawl. “Now, back to my question, Miss Cassidy— It is Miss, isn’t it?” Deputy Gavin cracked that satisfied smile again, like he was privy to the fact that being a thirty-three-year-old unmarried woman meant you were past your prime and on a downhill slide.

“Yes,” I said, throwing my shoulders back and my chin up.

He nodded, his left eye narrowing slightly. His father looked from him to me, then back to him. He patted Gavin on the shoulder. “Looks like you can handle this. ME’s here. Come find me when you’re done.” And he ambled off behind the velvet curtain.

Gavin didn’t miss a beat. “Why did you bring your scissors to a golf club?”

I threw one arm out and gestured to the runway and stage lights. The room was deathly quiet with all the people cleared out. I lowered my voice to compensate. “The Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball. I’m making dresses for a few of the girls. I came to meet Mrs. James—”

“The senator’s wife?”

As he pulled a notebook out of his pants pocket and poised the tip of a miniature pencil on the page, my heart stopped. “Y-yes, but—”

“Zinnia?” he said, but he seemed to be talking more
to himself than to me. He gave a single nod, then said, “Continue.”

“She just wanted some ideas—”

“’Bout what?”

“I’m not actually sure,” I admitted.

“Right,” he blurted, as if he’d made some great discovery. “Because she didn’t know you’d been here, isn’t that right?”

Nerves pricked the surface of my skin. “I—I, uh, n-no. We didn’t end up talking, which is why I’m back here now.”

“Did she ask you to meet her here?”

“That’s right.”

“To give her some ideas?”

I didn’t like the way this was going, but there was no escape. “To talk about plans for the ball—”

“Festival business. I see. And did you sew something for her?”

“Here? No, I—”

“Yet you brought your sewing bag. With scissors. Why? Did you
think
you were going to sew something? Did she give you the
impression
she needed you to sew something?”

“No, I’d just come from doing some alterations, but—”

I stopped as his eyes narrowed. He tilted his head to one side. “Mighty convenient, don’t you think?”

“Mrs. James is a good woman,” I said. I had to stop myself from wagging my finger. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Gavin McClaine.”

“Was I talking about Mrs. James?” he said, accusation lacing his voice.

I gulped, his meaning loud and clear.

“Why’d you leave the bag?” he continued.

“I… um…” I bit my lip. What I’d said so far had come out all wrong.

“Harlow,” he pressed, adjusting his hat lower on his forehead. “Answer the question. Why’d you leave the bag?”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I put it down while I was looking at the catwalk. Mrs. James was… um… she was busy.” The argument she’d been having with… with… Oh, Lord. She’d been arguing with the golf pro. Who was now dead. My skin turned clammy. This was not good. “I, um, I decided I’d catch up with her later and I left.”

“And the bag…,” he said, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging there.

“I forgot about it.” I pointed to the spot where I’d left it. “I set it down, was looking around, and I forgot.”

It might have been the truth, but he wasn’t done asking questions. “Did she specifically ask you to bring your scissors?”

My skin pricked and dark swirls danced behind my eyelids. So now we
were
talking about Mrs. James. “No, of course not. She didn’t ask me to bring anything. It’s a sewing bag. I always keep a pair of scissors in it.”

“Uh huh.”

My mind suddenly reeled back to the moment I’d seen Josie’s maid of honor dead in my front yard. To being questioned. To the horrible feeling of being a suspect in a murder investigation. Criminy. Was I a suspect? And had I just made Mrs. James a suspect? “Neither one of us had anything to do with this,” I said, defending Mrs. James even though the tiniest bit of doubt crept
through me. She hadn’t looked herself yesterday. Surely it wasn’t because she’d been about to take someone’s life. Right?

“Does she know what you keep in your sewing bag?” he repeated.

“She’s never seen my sewing bag, so she wouldn’t know what I keep in it,” I snapped. “And she didn’t ask me to bring it.” Gavin McClaine was as unrelenting as his dad had been when I’d been busted breaking and entering at the Grange Hall when I was sixteen. He didn’t care that I’d just been trying to recover our school’s mascot costume—a massive bronco—that my brother Red had taken. When it came to high school football in Texas, a prank was sacrilege. You just didn’t mess with football.

He ignored my frustration and went on. “What was Mrs. James busy doing? Why didn’t you meet with her?”

I hesitated, my sails deflating. I liked Mrs. James, but the fact was, I didn’t know her very well. What if… “I don’t know,” I finally said. “She was, um, talking to someone. I figured I’d catch up with her later.”

“Uh huh. Who was she talking to?” His miniature pencil scratched against the notepad again.

“I couldn’t see. I didn’t want to interrupt—”

“But she asked you to meet her.”

“But she was busy—”

“And you couldn’t see who was she talking to?” God, he had a bad habit of interrupting me.

I shrugged. “No, Gavin—”

“Deputy,” he corrected.

I rolled my eyes, but not before he saw. I was not scoring any points with Deputy Sheriff Gavin McClaine. “Deputy,” I said. “I couldn’t see.” I pointed to beyond
the bubble machine. “They were back there and I was out here.”

He clearly didn’t like my story, but after a few more questions, he finally let me go. I caught a glimpse of Macon Vance’s muddy shoes—still on his feet—as I left. Only one thought circled in my mind. Could Mrs. James have done this?

Another murder in Bliss. Not so blissful, I thought. I parked my old jalopy of a pickup truck in front of the Italian pasticceria, Villa Farina, on the square. Bobby Farina was a third-generation baker who lived out his family’s tradition of producing delectable Italian mini pastries, but today what I needed was an iced coffee. My stomach was still churning from seeing MaconVance’s dead body. Butter and sugar might do me in.

Lord almighty, I really had brought the violence of New York City back with me to Texas.

Gina, the college student who seemed to live at Villa Farina, was like a sight for sore eyes. Her two-toned black-and-red hair was pulled back into a ponytail, little curls sticking to her hairline from the early-morning heat and her proximity to the kitchen, where hot ovens were going throughout the day. The buildings on the square were old, drafty as hell, and inefficient as all get-out. “Y’all are up and out early this mornin’, Harlow.”

Gina’s looks belied her soft nature. Drop her in Jersey City and she’d fit right in… until she opened her mouth to speak and her Texas quirk came out. “Y’all”
was her standard word, something only a true Southerner could understand. “I’ve been over to the country club.” I leaned in, a thread of guilt winding through me. I wasn’t an inherently gossipy person, but anxiety at another murder in Bliss had formed a knot in the center of my gut and telling someone else about it might help unwind it. “There was a murder.”

“No,” she said, her voice barely a breath. She glanced over her shoulder, then over mine. No one was in line behind me. “Who?” she asked.

“Macon Vance—”

She gasped. “The golfer? N-no, really?” Her already pale face drained completely.

I nodded. “The place was a madhouse. The local news was there, and tons of looky-loos.”

Her voice dropped to a low whisper. “How?”

I lowered my voice to match hers. “He was stabbed.”

Her hand went to her heart and she turned a little green. “Did they arrest anyone?”