Pinned for Murder (16 page)

Looking around, she couldn’t help but feel blessed. Margaret Louise was the epitome of loyalty and warmth. Her twin sister, Leona, was the kind of friend that kept you on your toes, anxious to see what the next adventure would bring. Debbie was thoughtful and good, her inability to be mean to anyone a quality to be respected and emulated. Melissa, Margaret Louise’s daughter-in-law, was the picture of motherhood, reminding Tori of what she, too, wanted . . . one day. Georgina was an example of strength and grace in the face of tragedy, her ex-husband’s embarrassing incarceration on murder charges doing little to stop her spirit. Beatrice’s quiet nature was a gentle reminder to always listen with two ears. And Dixie . . . well, her aloof façade where Tori was concerned was crumbling more and more each day.

But no matter how many rays were streaming down in her direction, one was noticeably missing. One who combined many of the qualities the others exuded and hid them under a prickly shell.

“Has anyone talked to—”

“You won’t believe what happened today,” Georgina interrupted from her spot beside Dixie on the wicker settee Tori had dragged in from the porch. Switching off one of the circle’s portable sewing machines, the mayor of Sweet Briar waited for someone to bite.

Dixie took the bait in record time. “Tell us.”

“Yes, please do,” drawled Leona as she rolled her eyes skyward. “Because it’s not like Victoria was trying to say something.”

Suddenly flustered, Georgina shot a look of apology in Tori’s direction. “Victoria . . . I’m sorry . . . I guess I wasn’t listening.”

Tori held her hands up in the air. “There will be plenty of time to ask my question, Georgina. Tell us what happened.”

“Well . . .” The woman’s voice trailed off in a moment of hesitancy, only to return with an undeniable excitement. “Someone left a very nice donation—with instructions on how it was to be used—in an envelope at town hall.” Georgina sat up tall as all eyes in the room focused on her. Including Leona’s.

“How large?” Leona asked.

“Three thousand dollars.”

A long, low whistle escaped Margaret Louise’s lips as she leaned back in the kitchen chair she’d commandeered. “Three thousand dollars? That’s some mighty generous givin’.”

Heads nodded around the room. Tori swallowed and shifted on the sofa beside Debbie.

“Whom did it come from?” Beatrice poised her hand above the soft yellow scarf she was working on for the women’s shelter in Chicago and waited, with everyone else, for the answer.

Georgina didn’t disappoint. “We don’t know. The envelope was empty except for the cash and the instructions.”

“You mean the three thousand dollars was in
cash
?” Debbie asked.

“So was the fifteen hundred we got at the library.” Tori felt every eye in the room leave Georgina to flock in her direction.

“You got a donation, too?”

She nodded, her mind traveling back to the moment her assistant brought in the mail, a look of stunned belief etched across her face. “Our envelope was in with the rest of the mail but didn’t have a stamp. Nina said it was sitting on top.”

“That’s the way ours showed up, too.” Georgina scooted forward on her chair. “Was there a note specifying what it was to be used for?”

Again she nodded. “Any library projects I’ve been wanting to tackle yet haven’t had the funds to undertake to this point.”

Dixie lowered her chin and peered over the top of her glasses in much the way Leona did. “Do you have any ideas?”

A smile stretched across her face as the list she’d compiled in her thoughts that morning sprang to the foreground once again. “First and foremost I want to find brackets to mount a curtain above the stage. I think the kids would get a kick out of opening and closing a curtain at the start and close of their little shows. Then there’s the curtain itself—something thick and hard to see through. And then, I’d like to buy a few kid-sized chairs to go along with the beanbag chairs Nina donated.”

“That sounds lovely, Victoria.”

“Thank you, Dixie.” Looking across at Georgina, she posed the question begging to be asked. “What was your donation for?”

All eyes returned to Georgina.

“Would you believe the collection booth?”

Margaret Louise clapped her hands together as Beatrice gave a little squeal of pleasure.

“For the building phase?”

Georgina shook her head at Tori. “No . . . to buy the items that go in the booth. And the letter specified that he or she wanted all of the items that are purchased with the money to be available in the booth during the Autumn Harvest Festival.”

“Can the booth hold that kind of inventory?” Melissa asked as she glanced up from her strip of fleece. “Three thousand dollars is going to buy a
lot
of food.”

“We’ll make it fit.” Margaret Louise reached into her sewing box and extracted a spool of turquoise-colored thread, then held it against the fleece she’d chosen to work with that night. “There have been so many times I’ve wished we had the food on hand rather than a coupon to redeem during a specific weekend.”

“Maybe you could use some of the money to buy a storage chest for all of the items and store it behind the booth during the festival,” Dixie suggested.

“That’s a good idea except the note said it had to be used on items that would help the less fortunate.” Popping the spool back into her box, Margaret Louise pulled out a slightly different shade of blue and, again, held it to the fleece. “Although helpful for the volunteers at the festival, a chest wouldn’t benefit the needy in a direct way.”

“I agree,” Georgina said.

“Colby has a chest in the garage for paint cans and various tools he never uses. Perhaps that would work.”

“Three thousand dollars is going to buy a
lot
of food,” Melissa repeated.

“I think Rose has a chest like Debbie just described, too.” Dixie rested her hands on her thighs and released a sigh. “It might be another way to help her feel needed right now.”

Rose.

Seizing the opportunity to pose her earlier question in its entirety, Tori jumped back into the conversation. “Has anyone heard from her today?”

Seven heads shook from side to side.

“She’s taking this Kenny situation very hard.”

Beatrice sat upright. “Ken—”

“
Murdock
,” Dixie hissed. “Kenny Murdock. The same Kenny we’ve been talking about for the past week. You know . . . the one who strangled Martha Jane Barker to death in her bedroom?”

Tori closed her eyes against the image spawned by her predecessor’s words. It still seemed so surreal, so foreign. Seven days ago she’d stood in the very same room where Rose’s lifeless neighbor would be found, the grouchy woman alive and well right beside her, pontificating on everything from the laziness of her newest employee to the inadequacies of the banking system.

“I stopped by her place this morning to bring her some fleece.”

“And how was she?” Leona asked of her sister.

The woman’s plump shoulders rose only to fall back down to their normal position. “Quiet. Distracted. Sad. I tried my best to cheer her up . . . even told her a few stories about you, Twin . . . but nothing perked her up.”

“Stories about me?”

“Did they involve her being old?” Dixie asked with a mischievous tone to her voice.

“I’m not old.” Leona tossed her magazine onto the end table beside the green and blue plaid armchair that was a favorite among the circle when meetings were held at Tori’s house.

“And I don’t breathe,” snapped Dixie.

“If only we could be so lucky.”

A chorus of gasps rang out around the room.

“What?” Jutting her chin upward, Leona crossed her arms in front of her chest. “She started it.”

“I think it’s time we head into the kitchen and try out the treats everyone brought . . . what do you say?” Tori looked around the room in a desperate attempt to give Leona time to pull her foot out of her mouth. “Margaret Louise brought chocolate chess pie, Debbie brought those mini cheesecakes everyone adores, and that’s just the beginning.”

Slowly but surely, the members of the circle left their chairs in favor of the kitchen, whispered outrage still passing between their lips as they shot daggered looks in Leona’s direction. When they were gone, Tori turned to her friend. “Must you antagonize Rose and Dixie the way you do?”

“Must
I
?” Leona balked as she brought her hand to the base of her neck. “Surely you mean, must
they
?”

“No, not really.”

Pulling back, Leona dropped her hand to her side. “They live to antagonize me.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“They’re jealous, that’s all. Rose might be able to catch a peek at Curtis from her window during the day but I”—Leona spun on her stylish pumps and marched toward the kitchen—“I get to see him all night—”

Tori held her hands up in the air. “Too much information, Leona. Too much information.” Turning to follow, she stopped in her tracks as her gaze skirted across the end table. “Um, Leona?”

The woman turned, a look of disgust on her face. “
Um
?
Um
? Have I not taught you how to speak in true southern fashion yet?”

“What are you doing with that?”

“Doing with what, dear?”

“That!” She pointed at the magazine.

A pinkish hue blossomed across Leona’s cheeks. “I left my travel magazine at home. And that’s all you had.”

“That’s all I—” She stopped and shook her head. “My subscription ran out a few months ago. I’ve been meaning to extend it but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.” Leaning over, she lifted the magazine from the table and turned it over in her hands, her gaze seeking and finding the mailing label.

Leona Elkin
15 Heritage Way
Sweet Briar, South Carolina

“Leona Elkin?” she whispered. Feeling the corners of her mouth tug upward, she glanced in her friend’s direction, the woman’s cheeks still redder. “You subscribe to a
sewing
magazine?”

“It’s a gift. For Margaret Louise.”

“Then why doesn’t it have her name and address on the label?”

Stamping her foot on the hardwood, Leona narrowed her eyes at Tori. “Okay, yes . . . I get a sewing magazine. Must we place more importance on it than is truly necessary?”

“It’s a sewing magazine,” Tori repeated. “And you don’t sew, Leona.”

“I do, too. I sewed that handkerchief that was supposed to be for that—that crazy Vetter woman.”

Tori raised her left eyebrow.

“You know I did.”

She raised her right eyebrow. “You pushed a button on the machine, Leona.”

“Oh give me that.” Leona strode across the room, pulled the magazine from Tori’s hands, ripped the mailing label from the back cover, and stuffed it behind the envelope pillow that graced the armchair she’d abandoned in lieu of dessert. “You have better things to think about, dear.”

“Such as?”

“Milo, for one. Really, dear, you need to be constantly reinventing yourself to keep him interested.”

“Milo and I are just fine.”

“And then there’s these hats and scarves you’re hurrying to make for that shelter in that dreaded city.”

She opted to ignore that one.

“And last, but not least, there’s the little matter of how to spend that donation you got today.”

Cocking her head, she studied her friend. “Leona? Did you give those donations?”

“No, dear. Donations like those tend to come from people who have come into money they weren’t expecting. If that were me, I’d go to London.”

“London,” she repeated under her breath as Leona waltzed out of the living room and into the kitchen.

Leona was right. People who had money to burn tended to do one of three things. They spent it—traveling to exotic places and/or adding to their list of possessions, donated it to a favorite charity or cause near and dear to their heart, or tucked it aside in a bank.

Unless your name was Martha Jane Barker. Then you stuffed it in a sock drawer. . . .

A sock drawer.

In a second she was across the room, rounding the corner into the kitchen, seven backs hunched over the table as their owners discussed the merits of one another’s desserts. “Georgina?”

“Yes, Victoria?”

“What happened to Martha Jane’s money?”

Brushing a strand of hair from her forehead, the town’s top elected official shook her head sadly. “It’s gone.”

“Gone?” she echoed.

“Gone.”

“You mean—”

“Whoever killed her stole her money, too.”

For the first time in days she felt a sense of hope, hope that maybe Rose was right. Maybe Kenny wasn’t involved. “So maybe it was nothing more than a robbery gone bad. Maybe Martha Jane walked in on the thief.”

The woman tapped her chin with the index finger of her right hand. “Perhaps. But there was nothing else amiss.”

Tori narrowed her eyes on Georgina’s face. “What do you mean there was nothing else amiss?”

“There was only one drawer open in the entire house.”

The mayor’s words filtered their way through her mind. “Only one drawer . . . So whoever did it knew where to find the money, is that right?”

“It certainly looks that way.”

“And Kenny knew?”

Georgina nodded. “Martha Jane said it loud and clear when she accused him of stealing it the first time.”

Chapter 14