Sew Deadly (11 page)

Strike two.

“Tell me why you think folks around here are closed-minded.”

Choosing her words carefully, she tried to explain the frustration she felt as a newcomer. “In a city like Chicago, people come and go all the time. Tourists, businesspeople, whomever. It’s just part of life there. And everyone takes it in stride.” As the contents of the main box grew harder to reach, Tori stepped off the stool and set the carton on its side, a motion that caused the remaining six plastic boxes to slide forward. “But here . . . in Sweet Briar . . . virtually everyone here is a native. Someone from out of town instantly stands out. The first week I was here I felt like I was in a fishbowl all the time. Not because I necessarily look different than anyone else or because I was causing a commotion to make myself stand out. But simply because I was an unknown.”

“That must be hard.”

It was amazing how four seemingly innocuous words could make such a difference in a person’s mood, but they could. And they did. Knowing that her words had touched a sense of compassion in Daniel McGuire helped steady her hands and slow her heart rate.

“It can be.” She opened each bin one at a time. The first held googly eyes, the next—toothpicks. A deep container housed various colored bottles of tempura paint and two-dozen clean sponge brushes. The final plastic storage box held rainbow-colored packets of yarn and small precut squares of thin cardboard.

Strike three.

“I bet that kind of scrutiny could make a person lash out.”

“I suppose. It can certainly get under your skin after a while. . . .”

Uh-oh.

Pulling her gaze from the inside of the now-empty cardboard packing box, she fixed it on the man still standing in the middle of her cottage, arms crossed. Only now the sheep’s clothing was gone and the wolf was staring her straight in the face.

“Investigator McGuire, I get the sense you didn’t stop by to welcome me to town or find out how I’m fitting in . . . so why don’t you get to the point.” She gestured toward the various bins she’d piled haphazardly on the floor. “As you can see, I’ve got work to do.”

And like that the niceties were gone.

“Tell me again how you knew Tiffany Ann Gilbert.”

She shook her head, resisted the urge to grab the man by his salt-and-pepper flattop. “As I told you last night, when you
finally
arrived on the scene, I never met Tiffany Ann. In fact, I’d never even seen her until I found her behind the Dumpster.”

The man slowly removed his left hand from atop his right tricep and ran it across his freshly shaven chin. “Then how—may I ask—did you know who it was?”

The question was fair. Made perfect sense, even . . .

When it was asked the night before.

“Didn’t I answer that last night? Several times in fact?” She knew her tone was clipped, bordering on snippy, but he was seriously trying her patience.

“Then I’m asking again.”

She exhaled loudly and deliberately. “I’m in a sewing circle, and during the course of our first two meetings, Tiffany Ann has been a topic of discussion. The description I was given matched the woman I found. The hair color, the sense of style, her age. It simply fit. End of story. And, as it turned out, I was right.”

The man’s steel gray eyes narrowed to near slits as he studied her, a move she suspected was designed to make her nervous.

It didn’t.

“During those same meetings did you learn anything else about the victim?”

Tori shrugged. “She was the town sweetheart or princess or some such nonsense and she had an interest in fashion—wait, no. Interior design.”

“You see the titles the victim won as nonsense, Miss Sinclair?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean nonsense. Not really. It’s just not the kind of thing I have any in—”

“Or did you see those titles as more of a threat?”

Her mouth gaped open. “A
threat
? Of what?”

“Not a threat
of
, Miss Sinclair. A threat
to
.”

She stared at the man, waited for him to offer an explanation for his bizarre words.

“A threat to your standing with a particular teacher?” he baited.

The ludicrous notion that had popped in her head less than thirty minutes earlier wasn’t so ludicrous at all. In fact, if she was reading the situation correctly, her brief meeting with Milo Wentworth at the library on Friday was now a motive for a murder.

Her
motive.

“Okay. I’ve had enough. If you want to have a discussion, I’d be happy to talk with you. But this”—she flipped her index finger back and forth between them—“is not a discussion. It’s an interrogation.”

She spun on her feet and headed toward the entryway, meeting the officer’s gaze as she stopped at the door. “Unless you’re prepared to charge me right now, I have to ask you to leave.”

For a moment the officer simply stood in the same exact spot he’d held since she’d allowed him inside, his jaw squared, his arms folded once again. But if his posture and accompanying glare were designed to intimidate, they didn’t work. A fact he seemed to sense as he finally grabbed his hat and joined her at the door.

Leaning over, the man brought his mouth mere inches from Tori’s ear. “In case you think small-town cops are closed-minded . . . know this, Miss Sinclair. I always find my man. Always.”

She met his icy stare with one of her own, a move that not only surprised but emboldened her as well. Pulling the door open, she stepped aside, waited as the man lumbered onto her front porch. “For Tiffany Ann’s sake, I certainly hope that’s true.”

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting in the exact same spot staring out at the quiet, tree-lined street in front of her cottage. And she wasn’t sure when, exactly, her leg had finally stopped bouncing. But if she had to guess, a good hour had passed since Daniel McGuire had climbed into his Tom’s Creek dome-topped car and headed south.

The nightly changing of the guard between day and dusk was well underway and yet she stayed put. In the exact same rocking chair she’d slid into as her unexpected visitor had disappeared from sight.

She knew she should be looking for the Popsicle sticks or, at the very least, working on the last section of trim on her pillow. . . . But she wasn’t. The sticks were obviously MIA due to a memory crash on her part and the disappearing front porch bulb made it nearly impossible to see anything in the impending nightfall.

So she sat.

And rocked.

And contemplated her genius decision to accept the position of a woman who’d been forced from her job and mentally chastised herself for leaving the one place she felt at home. Or
had
prior to Jeff’s betrayal, anyway.

“Are you going to sit there from can-see to can’t-see or are you waitin’ all the way to the crack of dawn?”

Margaret Louise.

She started to jump up from her chair but stopped herself midmotion. The people of Sweet Briar—not the least of which was this woman’s sister—thought she was a murderer.

Without waiting for a reply or an invitation, the heavyset woman with the dark gray mop of hair who seemed to sport a face-splitting smile twenty-four/seven stepped onto Tori’s porch, followed by five children ranging in age from twelve all the way down to three.

“If you’re goin’ to live in Sweet Briar, Victoria, you’ll need more ’n one chair on your front porch.” Margaret Louise motioned to the oldest of the children. “Jake, you go inside and bring me out a chair. The rest of you”—she looked around at the remaining four—“go see what kind of trouble you can get into in the backyard.”

The woman followed the older boy’s path into the house with her eyes and then lowered her voice so only Tori could hear. “That one is the spittin’ image of his daddy. Right down to the name. Which means my boy is going to have his hands full.” A satisfied smile crept across her face. “I suspect I’ll be getting some long overdue thank-you presents when that day comes.”

Tori simply smiled in return. Any hesitation she’d felt when Margaret Louise had appeared began to evaporate as the woman’s actions and conversation continued to flow with ease.

Young Jake stepped back onto the porch, the small step stool in his hands. “Will this do, Mee-Maw?”

Mee-Maw?

“It will, son, if you’re hankerin’ to get me up off the floor. Good heavens Jake, that’s a fool thing to bring out as a chair.”

The boy’s face turned red as he tried to shield his eyes from Tori.

Jumping up, she took the step stool from his hands and placed it on the floor. “I actually sit on this all the time, so it’s perfect.” She gestured to her now-empty chair. “Margaret Louise, please sit.”

“You hadn’t ought to have done that but—okay.” Margaret Louise marched over to the white rocking chair and plopped down. “Now, Jake Junior, you go play with the others until it’s time to go. But don’t you be egging them on, you hear?”

The boy dropped his head downward. “Yes, Mee-Maw.”

“Now get.”

A smile that nearly matched his grandmother’s sprang across his face as he rounded the corner and jumped from the porch to the walkway below, disappearing behind Tori’s cottage with lightning speed.

Margaret Louise shook her head. “They’re a handful—every last one of ’em. Except Lulu.”

Tori felt her shoulders ease at the memory of the shy, raven-haired girl. “She is precious, absolutely precious.”

Margaret Louise smiled proudly.

“Where is she this evening?” Tori asked.

“Practicin’. For you.”

Startled, Tori leaned forward on the step stool. “Practicing what?”

“Readin’. When I left the house, my Jake was attemptin’ to fold laundry and Lulu was reading
The Little Engine That Could
to an elephant, a tiger, a polar bear, and a monkey.”

“Excuse me?”

Margaret Louise chuckled, a quiet, steady sound that started deep in her chest and brought a welcome release to the charged air that had surrounded Tori all evening. “She’s practicin’ in front of her stuffed animals. So she can read well for you tomorrow.”

Ah. Lulu’s class visit to the library.

Tori looked down at her hands. “I’m sure she’ll do just fine.”

“And so will you, Victoria.”

Confused, Tori looked up.

“With everythin’ that’s goin’ on right now.” Margaret Louise waved her hand in the air, setting the chair to rock with a pudgy, sandal-clad foot. “No one in their right mind can accuse a woman who makes butter with a class of eight-year-olds, and inspires my Lulu to read, of something as-as cotton-pickin’ awful as murder.”

If there had been any doubt in her mind how closely she’d been guarding her heart from possible hurt the moment Margaret Louise appeared, it vanished with the whoosh of air that escaped her mouth.

“You don’t believe I-I—” She stopped, steadied her voice, and then tried again. “You don’t think I killed Tiffany Ann Gilbert?”

“Not any more ’n I believe Carter Johnson uses real eggs.”

She looked a question at the woman on her porch.

Margaret Louise waved her hand in the air once again. “We’ll save that for another day. Just hold off eating at Johnson’s Diner until we do.”

She bit back the first smile she’d felt on her face all day.

“I see that smile. And you let it out. You’ve got nothin’ to be down in the mouth about, my friend.”

“Everyone in this town thinks I murdered the town sweetheart. That makes smiling a little tough,” Tori said, her voice raspy as it emerged from her mouth.

“That’s not true. I think the town’s split.”

She sat up. “Really?”

Margaret Louise nodded, her foot moving the rocker even faster. “My son, Jake, for one.”

“I don’t know your son.”

“But he knows Lulu.”

She made a mental note to give the little girl an extra hug in the morning.

“And his wife, Melissa, doesn’t think so, either.”

Okay, make it two hugs.

“I passed Nina on the way out of the market earlier this evening, and she doesn’t believe it either.”

Tori looked at her hands once again, linked them together and twisted them around. When she spoke, her words were barely audible to her own ears. “Your sister does.”

“Don’t mind Leona. My twin ain’t got the sense God gave her since about ten o’clock this mornin’.”

“I don’t understand,” Tori said, dropping her hands to her side.

“I’ve been after her for years to find a man. Does she listen? Of course not. Then suddenly, a man walks in her shop—the kind that thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow—and she loses her mind. Literally.”

Tori couldn’t help it. She had to smile.

“That’s better.” Margaret Louise leveled her foot against the ground and brought the rocker to a stop. “Leona will come to her senses. You just wait ’n see. In the meantime, we need to do some figurin’.”

Tori stood. “Figuring?”

“You didn’t kill Tiffany Ann. But someone did. The sooner we figure out who, the sooner I can sample some new pie recipes.” Margaret Louise rose to her feet.

“Pie recipes? I don’t understand.”

“Once the real killer is caught, Sweet Briar will be lined up right here on this porch looking for your forgiveness.” Leveling the index and middle fingers of her right hand in her mouth, Margaret Louise blew a whistle loud enough to be heard three streets over. In an instant five sets of feet clambered up the porch steps. “And around here, Victoria, gratitude and apologies are expressed with pie.”

“I’d be happy with a box of Popsicle stick—”

She clamped her mouth shut as an official-looking white car turned down her street, the occasional street-lamp reflecting across its telltale rack of overhead lights. Would it ever stop? Would she ever be truly welcome in this town?

“I wouldn’t count on those pie recipes anytime soon,” she mumbled as she slumped back onto her stool and gestured toward the police car as it drew closer. “Investigator McGuire is determined to brand me a killer.”

Margaret Louise followed the path of Tori’s hand, pitching her head forward as she squinted at the car. “That’s not McGuire. He’s driving around town in a Tom’s Creek car. That’s one of ours and”—she jogged her head to the left and back to the right as the car passed, her eyes narrowing even more—“if I’m right, that was just Georgina’s husband.”