Taken In (16 page)

“I don’t know what we did to deserve you, Charles, but I am beyond grateful.”

“Just invite me to the wedding and we’ll call it even, sugar.”

Tori slid the mini-cupcake-topped napkin across the table, blinking back tears as she did. Somehow, despite knowing the seriousness of Dixie’s predicament, she’d been able to insert an image of the woman she knew into surroundings she could only imagine. Yet within moments of arriving at the jail, she realized she’d been right about only one.

And it wasn’t Dixie.

The Dixie Dunn whom Tori knew was a force all her own. Hovering somewhere around the five-foot-three mark, the woman was solid through and through. Her white hair and age spot–adorned skin might lull a person into believing she was slowing down, but her sharp tongue and fear-inducing glares set the record straight in about two seconds flat.

The Dixie Dunn sitting across from them at that very moment was but a shell of the original. The solid take-no-prisoners stance she usually wore like a badge of honor was gone, in its place a hunched-at-the-shoulders posture that was as foreign to the woman as the defeat that robbed her hazel eyes of anything resembling fight or even life.

“Try this, Dixie,” she rasped. “It’s peanut butter cup and it’s from the cutest little cupcake shop on Columbus Avenue between Seventy-second and—”

“I know where it is . . .” Dixie’s words petered off as her head sank forward and she began to cry, the back-and-forth motion of her shoulders ratcheting up Tori’s sense of helplessness a hundredfold.

Charles retrieved the cupcake box from his lap and held it out for Dixie to see. “There are other flavors if you prefer—pancake batter, maple chip, s’more, and cookies and cream . . .”

Slowly, Dixie looked up and stared at Charles through tear-soaked eyes. “Who are you?”

“I’m Charles.”

When Dixie’s stare refused to yield, Tori filled in the gaps. “Charles is helping to get you out of here.”

The quiver of Dixie’s bottom lip unleashed yet another pair of tears down her pale cheeks. “But he doesn’t even know me.”

Charles scooted his chair closer to Dixie and took her hand, releasing it slowly as the guard assigned to watch over them stepped forward. “No touching please.”

Charles held the cupcake box out to the guard. “Would you like a cupcake?”

“No.”

“I won’t tell.”

The guard’s gaze dropped to the box, prompting him to lick his lips ever so slightly. “Where’d you get those?”

“CupKatery,” Tori answered.

“You got pancake batter in there?”

Charles pointed to the row of cupcakes that were second from the left then added his most enticing smile. “They want you as much as you want them.”

A momentary hesitation fell to the pull of temptation, and the guard reached into the box and extracted two cupcakes. As he ate, Charles patted Dixie’s hand. “You’re right, we haven’t met before now, but from what I saw on
Taped with Melly and Kenneth
the other day, we share a love of books. And as soon as we get you out of”—he waved his hand toward the colorless cinderblock walls that surrounded them, his upper lip curling in the process—“this dank, musty,
awful
place, I suspect we’ll find we have even more things in common, too.”

“I’m not getting out,” Dixie whispered.

“Don’t say that, Dixie!” Tori rose to her feet. “The person who should be here is the person who killed John. That’s not
you
.”

“They’ve certainly done a good job making everyone believe it’s me.”

She spun around but kept her mouth closed as Charles took up the fight. “That’s not true, Dixie. Victoria, here, knows you didn’t do it. Rose, Margaret Louise, Debbie, Beatrice, and Leona know you didn’t do it. And so do I.”

A flash of something resembling the Dixie whom Tori knew and loved skittered across the woman’s face, only to disappear just as quickly behind the one fact none of them could get around. Yet. “The police think I did, and in this case, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

The guard gestured toward the box and his favorite row that now contained two less occupants. “Mind if I have another?”

Charles handed the box to him and then turned back to Dixie. “I knew John.”

Dixie’s face crumpled under the weight of more tears. “You—you knew John?”

He nodded. “I know how he was with women like you. I know the way he worked your hearts.”

Dixie pulled her hand from underneath Charles’s. “What are you talking about?”

Warning bells sounded in Tori’s head, but not in enough time to thwart Charles from alluding to the part of the John story that Dixie still didn’t know. “If I’d known what he was doing, I would have found a way to warn them and you. But I didn’t.”

“What he was doing?” Dixie echoed. “What are you talking about?”

Charles drew back, his eyes wide with shock. “Padding his bank account and accumulating assets off women like you.”

“Women like me?”

Tori stepped behind Charles and gripped his shoulder with a well-placed hand. “What Charles is trying to say is that John wronged some people . . . one of whom obviously felt the need to settle the score once and for all.”

She was aware of Charles’s head turning to afford an uninhibited view of Tori’s face, but she refused to make eye contact, choosing instead to keep her focus on Dixie. “All we need to do is figure out who that person is and hand him or her over to the police in your place.”

“But who would want to hurt such a sweet and giving man?” Dixie implored.

Charles coughed loudly, stopping only after the second smack Tori delivered to the back of his head.

“With any luck, we’ll have that answer sooner rather than later.” Tori reclaimed the empty seat next to Charles and gestured toward Dixie’s cupcake once again. “Please, Dixie. Eat. I know it’s not exactly healthy, but it’s something. You need to keep up your strength.”

She held her breath as Dixie reached for the cupcake and took one nibble and then another before laying it on the napkin once again. “I’ve been trying to figure out how a piece of scarf from the crime scene ended up in my purse, but I keep coming up empty.”

“There’s only one explanation that makes any sense,” Charles finally said after a sheepish peek in Tori’s direction. “It was planted there by the true killer.”

“But I didn’t go anywhere after I found out,” Dixie said around a third bite of her cupcake. “I cried myself to sleep in my hotel room and woke to find that police officer at my door.”

Tori allowed her eyes to flutter closed at the memory, the wish for a rewind button in life more than a little overpowering. Short of that, though, all they had were the facts—even if they were proving impossible to comprehend, let alone explain. “Then there’s only one other explanation that works.”

Dixie looked up expectantly and waited, the notion that was so obvious in Tori’s mind noticeably absent from hers.

“That piece of scarf was planted in your purse before John was pushed.”

Dixie’s mouth gaped, then closed, then gaped again. “P-planted? By whom?”

Charles waved his hand in the air. “By someone who had John’s murder planned and saw you as a viable scapegoat.”

“But who had access to my purse?”

And just like that, the thought that had tickled at Tori’s subconscious over the past several days stopped its game of hide and seek and demanded her full attention.

Who had access to Dixie’s purse, indeed . . .

She reached into her own purse and pulled out the sheet of hotel paper she’d been carrying around for days, its wrinkled appearance a testament to how many times she’d folded and unfolded it in the hopes of finding the truth she coveted. This time, however, the names on the list were visible in a completely different light.

For Ms. Steely Eye and Caroline Trotter to remain on the list, they would have had to have contact with Dixie prior to John’s fall. But short of Dixie’s breakfast with John, the seventy-something hadn’t been anywhere that Tori and the rest of the sewing circle members hadn’t been as well.

Charles’s chin grazed Tori’s arm as he consulted the list and then addressed Dixie. “Did you meet a woman named Caroline, by any chance?”

“No.”

Tori rubbed at her temples in an attempt to ward off the dull pain she felt building. “Did you meet
any
women when you were at breakfast with John that first morning?”

“No.”

“Did you pass any women who seemed to
know
John when you were heading out of the restaurant?” Charles interjected.

Dixie started to shake her head and then stopped. “There was one woman who tried to grab his arm as we stepped onto the sidewalk, but he said he didn’t know her and we left shortly after that in a cab.”

“Onto the sidewalk where?” Tori asked.

“Outside the Waldorf.”

Outside the Waldorf . . .

Charles’s finger tapped the paper, leading her focus to the top name on the list—Ms. Steely Eye. “This is the one you saw while you were there, right, Victoria?”

“One you saw where?” Dixie repeated woodenly.

Charles swung his crossed leg back and forth, his answer coming easily and without any shred of the guilt Tori felt creeping across her own face. “At the restaurant. While standing behind the potted plant.”

Dixie turned her now fiery eyes on Tori. “Why were you standing behind a potted plant at the Waldorf?”

Tori swallowed once, twice. “Um . . . Margaret Louise wanted to see you on your date.”

“You and Margaret Louise were spying on me from behind a potted plant?”

“Beatrice, Debbie, Rose, and Leona were there, too,” Charles happily reported before retrieving the cupcake box from the police officer and liberating a maple chip cupcake for himself. “Thank heavens those potted plants were big, right?”

The fear-inducing glare was back.

And it was trained squarely on Tori.

“You watched me on my date with John?”

“Only for a few minutes,” she admitted through a mouth that was suddenly dry. “We just wanted to see you being happy.”

“They weren’t the only ones, either.” Charles snapped his fingers toward Tori’s purse. “Show her Beatrice’s camera. Let’s see if she remembers Ms. Steely Eye from that morning.”

Grateful for any opportunity to remove herself from the path of Dixie’s mental dagger throws, Tori reached into her purse, pulled out Beatrice’s camera, located the desired picture on the display screen, and set it in the middle of the table. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

She felt Dixie’s icy stare as it left her face in favor of the camera now positioned halfway between them on the simple metal table, the subsequent gasp of air from the woman’s throat sending a welcome chill down her spine.

“That’s her,” Dixie mused. “The one who grabbed John’s arm as we were stepping outside to catch a cab across town.”

Charles sat up straight, shoulders back. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Did she approach you?” Tori asked.

“Not at that time, no. But I did recognize her from the bathroom earlier. We washed our hands next to each other.”

Tori felt an infusion of adrenaline course through her body. “Where was your purse?”

Dixie’s brows scrunched in thought. “On the counter. Between us.”

“Did you step away from it at any point?”

“I dried my hands, of course, but I don’t see what any of this has to do with anything.”

“It may answer the question as to how that ripped scarf was planted in your purse.” A face-lighting smile crept across Charles’s face just before he grabbed Dixie’s hand and gave it a good squeeze. “We’re going to get you out of here, Dixie, I can feel it in my bones.”

“But how can a woman John didn’t know plant something in my purse for a crime that hadn’t yet happened?”

“She couldn’t.”

Dixie dropped her head into her hands and groaned. “You’re talking in circles.”

“She couldn’t if she didn’t know him, but we’re fairly confident she did.”

Dixie lifted her head and pinned Tori with eyes that were bewildered yet tired. “I don’t understand.”

Slowly, she pulled the camera back across the table and shut it off, Ms. Steely Eye disappearing from the screen, but not from Tori’s thoughts. She remained silent for a moment as she returned the equipment to its case then slipped it back into her purse, the love and loyalty she felt for Dixie making her choose her next set of words carefully. “I know that in the grand scheme of things, we haven’t known each other as long as you’ve known Rose or Margaret Louise or any of the others in the circle. But in the time that I
have
known you, Dixie, I’ve always admired your ability to land on your feet. You did it after the library board retired you in preparation for my arrival in Sweet Briar, you did it when you dusted off that hurt and stepped in for Nina when she went out on maternity leave and I was on my own at the library, and you did it again just a few months ago when Nina came back and there wasn’t money left in the budget to even keep you on in a part-time capacity. I mean, look at you, Dixie. Look at what you did. In a span of a few short weeks following that heartbreak, you landed a volunteer position with Home Fare, helped solve a murder, and managed to secure a paid position for yourself as the organization’s volunteer coordinator. Who does that at
thirty-five,
let alone
seventy-five
?”