A Killing Notion: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (6 page)

“Sounds like you have a good husband.”

She nodded, the anger she’d emanated when we’d first arrived all but gone. “We’re a team. We were going to talk about our schedules and simplifying the other night, but then Chris died and now I don’t know what’ll happen. More late nights than before, I imagine.”

“I’m sure you’ll work it out once he’s back home,” I said, trying to sound encouraging.

She gestured to me and Will. “You know how it is. Relationships are about compromise. We’ve had our share of problems, but he’s never done anything like this. Truly, I’m mad as all get-out, but I’m worried sick.”

“Could he be at a friend’s house? Or a bar? Is he a drinker?”

Her eyes clouded. “He’s as sober as the day is long. Oh, don’t get me wrong—he has his vices,” she said, her gaze straying to the row of cars alongside the house, “but the drink isn’t one of them.”

“Have you called around to the bars in town, just in case?” Losing someone could play tricks on the mind and send even a sober man to the bottle.

“We’ve been married twenty years,” she said. “I’m under no illusions that my husband is perfect, and if he’s turned to whiskey, or whatever, we’ll deal with that. But I don’t think he’s drowned his sorrow in alcohol, I just don’t.”

She knew her husband better than anyone, so I took her at her word. “I’m sorry about your daughter, Mrs. Blake, and I hope your husband comes home soon. If we can do anything—”

She arched an eyebrow at us. “Who did you say you were again?”

“I’m a friend of Miss Reba’s,” I said.

She looked blankly at me and once again, I got the feeling that something was off. “Mr. Montgomery’s wife,” I said.

She shrugged again. “I only met her once or twice, but she’s rather . . . I mean we don’t have the same . . .” She paused and I got the feeling she didn’t want to speak ill of Miss Reba, a new widow. “We don’t run in the same circles.”

Given the differences in their lifestyles, that was evident. I wondered if this caused friction between Eddy
and Chris. Yet another potential motive developed in my mind.

“Again, Mrs. Blake, I’m so sorry about your husband’s partner. I hope Eddy’ll be home safe and sound real soon,” I said, and Will and I took our leave.

I dropped Will back at his truck. He headed back to work at the town offices, and I drove back to 2112 Mockingbird Lane. Something about the encounter with Mrs. Blake had me on edge, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I parked under possumwood trees and crossed the driveway, mulling it over, but the answer didn’t come to me. Something banged and clacked in the distance. I peered through the trees at Sundance Kids, my grandmother’s goat farm directly behind my property. I could make out Nana walking the perimeter of the farm, Thelma Louise, the grand dam of the goatherd, and a few more of Nana’s Nubian and La Mancha goats followed her like Nana was the Pied Piper.

I thought about crossing the grass to chat, but my mind was circling around Mr. Montgomery’s death, Mr. Blake’s absence, Mrs. Blake’s distress, and poor Shane. Instead I walked around back, waved at them, and headed up the back porch steps. If only I’d been able to go inside the Blake house. As it was, I knew we’d been
lucky Mrs. Blake had talked with us at all, but I felt there was something to be learned there.

Too bad I had no idea what that something was.

A series of bangs stopped me in my tracks. This time they came from inside the house. My stomach coiled. It was an awful lot of noise for Meemaw to be making.

It wasn’t Nana, since she was over at Sundance Kids. I stopped just outside the Dutch door, the scent of apples and cinnamon wafting through the open top half of the door. For a split second, I thought it could be my cousin Sandy or her daughter, Libby. While my Cassidy charm centered around the fashion designs I created for people, my cousins’ had to do with food. What they cooked softened the edges of the emotions of the people around them, heightening their senses.

But they wouldn’t just come into my house and start baking, which brought me back around to Meemaw. Had she learned to bake as a ghost?

I plowed through the Dutch door, noticing three things right away:

1) The kitchen was in disarray. Every bowl had been taken from the cupboards, every mixing spoon used, a light dusting of flour seemed to cover every surface, and what looked like a pile of smashed cornbread muffins sat in a mound about two feet away from the oven;

2) At least thirty-six muffins were cooling on the round pine table, and from what I could tell, there were at least three different flavors;

3) Mama stood bent over the butter yellow replica oven. The oven door was open and another tray of what looked to be streusel-topped blueberry muffins was clutched in her oven-mitted hand.

My breath staggered and a sound must have escaped my lips because Mama’s back straightened, she lost her balance, and the tray of muffins tilted right, then left. She managed to keep the tray level, saving the muffins.

“Mama, what in tarnation are you doing?” She had her own kitchen to make a mess in, so why in the world was she in mine?

She whirled around. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of another figure flickering in and out of visibility like Princess Leia’s hologram projected in front of R2-D2 in
Star Wars
.

Meemaw was here, too.

“Mama,” I said, looking around the kitchen again. “Why are you making muffins—”

“And cornbread, darlin’.”

“And cornbread,” I amended, “in my kitchen?”

She set the tray on the counter, turning to face me. Flour was smudged across her cheek and her brown hair was mussed, but she grinned like a Cheshire cat. “My oven’s on the fritz, and I had a hankerin’ for some muffins.”

I stared at her, gauging just how much she wanted muffins versus how much she wanted to know what was going on with Gracie’s boyfriend, Shane, and him being a murder suspect. “Is that right?”

“Yup, that’s right. Hoss has a hankerin’, too, for that matter.”

Meemaw’s faint form jiggled, and I got the feeling she was laughing. The question was, was she laughing at me, or Mama?

I gestured to the room and muffin debris. “And the mess?”

Mama sighed. “Either I’m losin’ my mind, or Meemaw’s havin’ a little fun at my expense.”

“By messing with your muffins?”

“Precisely.”

Loretta Mae was full of surprises. I’d seen her use motion to turn the pages of books and magazines. She could move small objects, like a shoe or a spool of thread, from one place to another.

But haunting Mama while she baked in my kitchen was something new. I ignored my great-grandmother’s antics and bent to pick up a dropped muffin. “Something’s bugging me,” I said to Mama.

A damp dishrag sat on the counter. Meemaw. She was a tricky one, bless her heart. I took it and began wiping down the tile.

“What’s that, sugar?” Mama asked.

“Will and I went to Granbury—”

“He’s a sweet man, Harlow Jane.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her, the corner of my mouth raising in a slight grin. We’d been seeing each other for going on a year now. He was everything I wanted in a man . . . and then some. “I know he is, Mama.”

“Okay, so, you went to Granbury with him, and . . . ?”

In my peripheral vision, I caught a flicker, like a TV with a bad connection, but when I turned to look, it was gone.

I continued. “I went to Bubba’s, and then we went to Granbury to talk to Chris Montgomery’s business partner. He wasn’t there, so we went to his house.”

I paused to shake out the cloth in the sink and rinse it.

Mama wasn’t a detective any more than I was, but our curiosity was cut from the same cloth. “And?” she said, her full attention on me.

“He hasn’t been home since the funeral. I’ve been wondering if maybe he has someone on the side, you know?”

An acquiescent moan came from behind me. So Meemaw agreed that my thought wasn’t so farfetched. It made sense. Maybe things weren’t as great in their marriage as Mrs. Blake thought. If he had another woman, he could very well be seeking solace from her.

Mama stood back and watched as I grabbed the ancient phone from its cradle on the wall—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it was one of Loretta Mae’s mottos, so I still had the old phone attached to the wall. The long cord stretched as I bent to clean up some more of my great-grandmother’s mess. After a few rings, Gavin McClaine picked up with a clipped, “Yup?”

“It’s Harlow,” I said, cutting to the chase. “Can you find something out for me?”

“Hello to you, too, sis,” he said, but his voice was mocking rather than sincere. Siblings we were not.

“Gavin—”

“Deputy,” he corrected.

“Eddy Blake hasn’t been home since Chris Montgomery was in the car accident. His wife’s pretty worried. I was hoping you could trace his credit cards or something to find out where he is.”

“Ahead of you there. Not showing at the funeral was a red flag—”

“He was at the reception afterward,” I said.

There was a heavy pause, and I could sense his brows furrowing and him tilting back his cowboy hat as he pondered. He was just like his daddy, Hoss, in that way. “You talked to him?”

“No, but Miss Reba said—”

“I can’t go by what Miss Reba said. She was distraught. Did anyone talk to him? He might could have dropped a hint at where he was heading.”

“Well, I just don’t know, Gavin. I didn’t talk to everyone. I just know that he left his phone.”

“I’ve been checking on him, Harlow. Wherever he is, he’s paying cash or shacking up. His credit cards haven’t been used. Now, I know you wanna play at being detective, but if there’s nothin’ else, I have work to do.”

“Sure thing, thanks,” I started, making a face at the phone, but Gavin had already hung up. I hung up the receiver, muttering under my breath. Stepbrother or not, he had some nerve hanging up on me. I certainly hoped he was sweeter to Orphie than he was to his newly acquired kin. Namely me.

I needed to go see Miss Reba. Now. A clanking noise sounded from the stove. I whirled around, but all I saw was Mama, a new tray of muffins in her hand ready to place in the oven.

“I’m going to see Miss Reba,” I said, knowing exactly what I needed to do. I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed toward the Dutch door, but paused. “I could help you clean up first,” I offered, but behind me, as if to say,
not a chance
, an invisible force cradled me, pushing me forward. Meemaw couldn’t quite materialize, and she
definitely couldn’t handle the very physical tasks of cooking, but she could harness the air like nobody’s business.

“You just go on,” Mama said. “I’ve got this handled.”

“I’ll be back,” I said, and then I was out the door and heading to find Miss Reba Montgomery.

Buttercup didn’t have the bells and whistles of a new car, and she gave a bumpy ride, but she got me from point A to point B quicker than I could shake a stick, and right now, I wanted to get to Riley’s, the furniture store catty-corner to the square. I’d heard through the rumor mill that Miss Reba hadn’t wanted to stay at home and wallow in her sorrow so she’d gone back to her job at Riley’s.

I rumbled down the street, angling Buttercup into a parking spot in front of the store. Miss Reba saw me through the window and waved me in. She looked this way and that before pulling me to a leather sectional and sitting me down. “Have you found out anything?” she asked.

Cut to the chase. I couldn’t mislead her, so I shook my head and waved my hands. “No, no, nothing really. I was in Granbury, though, at Bubba’s, and then I saw Mrs. Blake. I just have a question for you.”

Her frown deepened, the green of her eyes muting as she waited.

“Mr. Blake is taking Mr. Montgomery’s death mighty hard. His wife is really worried.”

She stared at me like I’d lost my ever-loving mind. “
He’s
taking it hard? I’m his
wife
,” she said, pressing an open palm to her chest. “
I’m
taking it hard. Our
kids
are taking it hard. Who the hell is he to take it hard?”

“I know, Miss Reba. It’s just, he hasn’t been home since the funeral, and I thought if you still have his phone, maybe I could help Mrs. Blake track him down.”

Miss Reba was no shrinking wallflower. Her unblinking gaze bore into me. “You said you were going to help clear Shane’s name, Harlow. You said you’d help find out what happened to Chris. He did not lose control of his car; someone forced him off the road. Someone did this to him. You’re supposed to be helping Shane.”

“I’m digging around, Miss Reba. Truly, I am. And that’s why I want to find Mr. Blake. They were partners. If someone had a beef against your husband, Eddy Blake might know about it. I think he’ll be able to help us.”

She threw her hands up in frustration. “I’ve never even met the man. He and Chris couldn’t have been all that close. I don’t see how he can possibly help.”

“That may be,” I said, “but I’d still like to talk to him.” Because you never knew. People said things that revealed information they didn’t know they had or didn’t intend to impart, and people often knew things they didn’t realize they knew.

She hemmed and hawed for another minute, but finally waved her hand in front of her as if she were batting at a fly. “It’s at the house. Teagen’s there. She’s refusing to go to school.” She shook her head, her aggravation evident. “She won’t listen. I know I have to let her
grieve, but it’s like talking to a brick wall. Go on over and get it, if you want.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, my good Southern breeding surfacing. But she was in a state and no amount of sweetness was going to help.

“I still don’t know what good it’ll do, but you’re welcome, Harlow. Now, please, find out the truth before that overzealous sheriff’s deputy stepbrother of yours puts my Shane behind bars.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later I stood at the Montgomery’s front door. I’d rung the bell three times, but Teagen wasn’t answering. I dug my cell phone out of my rag quilt bag and dialed Miss Reba at Riley’s.

“She’s probably in her room with those infernal headphones on and that blasted rap music destroyin’ her mind,” she said. “Try the front door.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to barge in and scare her.”

“It’s fine. She should be doing her homework, not turnin’ her mind off.”

My heart went out to Teagen. Her mother had a Southern way about her, but she was as tough as steel. She’d thrown herself back into work, into proving Shane’s innocence, and into coping with her loss, but she couldn’t assume her daughter was mourning in the same stoic way. She’d lost her father.

It seemed to me that she ought to be allowed to grieve however she needed to.
You can’t rush a person’s feelings, Harlow,
Meemaw used to tell me when I’d been upset over an argument with Mama or about my unrequited love for some boy I’d crushed on.

I figured Teagen’s grief was the same. It had to run its
course, and if a little Rihanna or some Drake helped her cope, then so be it.

“Is it open?”

I blinked at Miss Reba’s voice and tried the handle. “It’s unlocked,” I said.

“Then go on inside. Teagen’s room is at the top of the stairs, second door on the right. I think I put the phone in my bedside table.” She paused. “Or maybe in the bathroom. I don’t know where I put it; just have her find it for you.”

For someone who’d seemed so in control, her nonchalance at not remembering where the phone was seemed odd, but I chalked it up to her buried emotions. I’d learned over the years that you could run from what you felt, but you couldn’t hide it. Mama’s very literal effect on plants was the perfect example. No matter what she felt—or how hard she tried to fight the emotions—the plants responded to her, either withering away from her sadness, growing brittle and thorny from her anger, or blossoming with her joy. That was her Cassidy charm.

I thanked Miss Reba again, then tucked my own phone away before stepping inside. The last time I’d been in the house, the townsfolk had been here mourning Chris Montgomery’s death, the buffet table had swayed from the abundance of comfort casseroles, dump cakes, and fried chicken, and I’d agreed to help the Montgomery family—and Gracie—by proving Shane’s innocence in his father’s death.

The house felt hollow and sad now.

I made my way toward the stairs and started to call for Teagen, but stopped short. If Shane hadn’t had anything to do with the car accident, then someone else had.
Someone who knew cars. What if that someone was Miss Reba? Maybe she’d learned from her husband over the years. Maybe
that
was why she was so stoic with her grief. Maybe her own conscience was the thing driving her need to clear her son. And since I was a dressmaker, not a private investigator, she figured the truth was safe with me looking into it. A safe bet to assuage her guilt.

“Oh, Miss Reba,” I muttered aloud, “I hope that’s not the case.”

Miss Reba was a friend and a longtime resident of Bliss. From what she said, she didn’t spend any time at Bubba’s. Just like Mrs. Blake. Neither one had met the other. As Mrs. Blake said, they didn’t run in the same circles. So if she knew anything about cars, it likely wasn’t from hanging around her husband’s business.

Still, I couldn’t let go of the apprehension I felt, a bundle of anxiety settling on my chest like a weight. I debated my options. Could I, in good conscience, poke around the house?

It was my turn to hem and haw. I’d poked around in plenty of places, but it was too big an invasion of privacy to search the Montgomery house. Miss Reba had asked me to clear her son, but she surely hadn’t reckoned on me redirecting attention on her in the process.

If anything was amiss, I’d have to find it out more honestly. I mounted the stairs, passing photographs of Shane and Teagen hanging on the wall. Just like at my house, the pictures elbowed their way up the wall, a collection of important moments captured in time. There were few of the kids with Miss Reba, and a handful of the older generation. Everyone smiled.

At the top of the stairs, I called to Teagen. The first
door was wide open. I stopped and peeked inside. Clothes littered the floor, posters of Carrie Underwood, the Eli Young Band, and several classic cars were pinned to the walls. It looked like what I imagined a typical teenage boy’s bedroom would look like.

Nothing on the surface that would prove or disprove Shane’s innocence.

I hesitated, wanting to sneak in and look around in the closet and his drawers, but I resisted the invisible pull. Butch Cassidy might be my kin, but I was basically a law-abiding citizen. Teagen in the house, possibly happening upon me while snooping, would not be a good scenario.

The second door on the right was closed. I rapped my knuckles against the hollow door. Silence.

I knocked again, louder this time. “Teagen? It’s Harlow Cassidy.”

Still nothing.

Lifting my hand, I was about to knock again when the door was ripped open by Teagen, with her ginger hair in disarray, one earbud hanging down in front of her body, and a frown that seemed to start at her eyebrows and continue to the corners of her mouth. “Who are you—?” She stopped. “Wait. Ms. Cassidy?”

“I didn’t mean to startle you, Teagen.” Black eyeliner smudged the area beneath her eyes and dark shadow framed her eyelids. Her fingernails were painted black, a big change from the white and Kelly green they’d been painted just a few days ago. Either Teagen had cleaned up for the funeral, making a big effort to look like the clean-cut good daughter, or that had been the real her and now her grief was sending her hurtling down a black hole. “Your mom asked me to come by—”

She snorted, glaring at me. “Are you kidding me? She sent you to check on me?”

“No, she just said you’d be home—”

She ripped the remaining earbud from her ear and threw the tangled string, along with her iPod, onto the mound of blankets on her bed. Either she hadn’t heard, or she wasn’t in the mood to listen. “She’s completely crazy, you know? Ever since the break-in last month. And now since Daddy died, she’s a thousand times worse—and she was pretty bad before.”

“Bad how?”

“Way overprotective. She kept me and Shane both on a tight leash, but now? Might as well be in cages.”

“But you’re here and she’s at work and Shane’s . . . ?”

“Shane went back to school today, and he’s going to Bubba’s later. He didn’t do what they’re saying, you know, but even our mother isn’t sure. He just up and left. Said he was going to work on cars just like Dad. She didn’t want him to go, but then she went back to work, so she couldn’t really argue, could she?”

Guilt gnawed at my gut for even thinking Miss Reba could have had anything to do with her husband’s death, but Teagen had presented an opening I couldn’t ignore. “I’m sure it’s been hard on all of you,” I said, not knowing quite how to comfort her. I’d lost my dad long ago, but he hadn’t died; he’d walked out on my brother, Red, my Mama, and me once he’d found out about the Cassidy charms. Tristan Walker walked away and never looked back. And that wasn’t the same thing at all as having your dad die in a suspicious car accident.

“Yeah, well she’s not making it any easier.” Her shoulders hunched as she turned and plopped down on an
oversized beanbag chair in the far corner. “She doesn’t get it. I want to go to school. What does it matter, anyway? Everything could end tomorrow. Splat. Done. Over. So what’s the point?”

Aside from the beanbag chair, which Teagen occupied, and the unmade bed, there wasn’t a place to sit. I leaned against the doorframe. “I must have misunderstood your mom. I thought she said you
didn’t
want to go to school.”

She huffed, overly dramatic, but effective for conveying her utter frustration with her mom. “
Nooo
. She doesn’t think I can handle people talking about Shane and our family. She treats me like I’m still eight years old. Like I can’t deal with conflict, you know?”

“Teagen, I’m sure it’ll get easier. Just give her some time.”

Her lower lip trembled, making her look more like an eight-year-old who’d gotten in trouble for using her mom’s makeup than the tortured new teenager she was. “How much time?”

I crossed the room in five quick strides, crouching down in front of her. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to your dad. Trying to clear Shane’s name. Knowing the truth will help her get through this,” I said, hoping I was right. I could only imagine the dark hole Teagen would fall into if her mom ended up involved in her dad’s death.

Something she’d said a few minutes ago resurfaced in my mind. “You said you had a break-in last month? I don’t remember hearing about that.”

She ran her fingers under her eyes, whisking away the tears that had spilled and smudging her eyeliner even
more. “My dad wasn’t worried about it. He didn’t want to even report it, but it freaked my mom out.”

I stood from my crouched position and went to perch on the edge of the bed. “What happened?”

She shrugged. “This is Bliss. No one locks their doors, right?”

“Right.” Back in New York, Orphie and I had had three deadbolts and a chain on our loft apartment. Here, people trusted one another, and while it was a bad habit to leave your door unlocked, it was something we were all guilty of.

“Yeah, well, this one night, somebody just walked right in. Guess it wasn’t really a break-in since they didn’t actually break the lock or anything.”

“Did they steal anything?”

She shook her head, but said, “Some of my clothes were missing. A few of Shane’s things. His letterman jacket. Some pants. My iPod.” She gestured to the one she’d tossed onto the bed, a glaze coating her eyes. She swiped at her nose as she said, “My dad bought me another one the next day.”

“Were you here when it happened?”

She spit out a laugh. “Oh yeah. My mom woke up screaming when she saw someone just standing over their bed holding a box, or something. It was all really
Friday the Thirteenth,
minus the blood.”

A chill wound through me. I knew what it was like to wake up to weirdness, but my sleep was almost always interrupted by Meemaw, not by a stealthy burglar. “Did the sheriff ever figure out who it was?”

“Nope,” she said as she pushed off the beanbag chair and headed for the door. I took one last look around her room before following her.

“I’m going to return Mr. Blake’s phone to—” I stopped, not wanting to bring up how distressed he was to Teagen and that I’d be returning it to Mrs. Blake. “Your mom sent me over to collect it.”

She paused, one foot in midair on the staircase. “Oh. Well, then . . .” She swung her foot around and headed back into her room, yanking open her top dresser drawer and digging inside. A moment later, she handed over the phone. “Me and Shane were going to take it back to him. We thought maybe he could tell us something more about our dad.”

“Like what?”