Taken In (7 page)

Tori was exhausted by the time she let herself into the still-lit hotel suite at nearly ten o’clock that night, the stress of the police station and the depression over her friend’s plight leaving her stranded in utter helplessness.

“Oh, thank God you’re here,” Rose said as she shuffled her way to the door with a speed that hadn’t been seen in years. “Where is Dixie? Is she okay?”

They were the questions Tori had been dreading hearing since she stepped out of the station with the cold hard answers in tow. To leave one brokenhearted and terrified friend, only to be the one who set off those same helpless emotions in the five women now staring at her, waiting, was more than a little difficult.

“She’s—” Tori stopped, swallowed, and began again. “Dixie is still in jail. And she’ll remain there until her arraignment in the morning.”

“Her
arraignment
?” Debbie whispered amid the gasps of their friends. “You can’t be serious.”

Tori’s sigh was long yet depleted as she slumped against the closest wall. “I’m afraid I am.”

“But how on God’s green earth can they possibly think our Dixie was involved?” Margaret Louise challenged.

“Not involved . . .
responsible
.”

“But this is
Dixie
we’re speaking of.”

Leona rolled her eyes in Beatrice’s general direction. “We all know good and well that Dixie can get mighty nasty when things don’t go her way. Just look at the way she treated Victoria when she came to Sweet Briar.”

Five mouths gaped wide with Tori being the first to recover well enough to speak. “She may have made nasty comments and shot some evil death glares in my direction, Leona, but that doesn’t make her any more capable of murder than the rest of us and you know that!”

Leona took three steps backward and lowered herself to the edge of the nearest armchair. “I wasn’t saying she was capable of murder. I was just putting the halo Beatrice was trying to put on Dixie’s head in perspective.”

Rose was the next to recover. “I can’t figure you out, Leona Elkin. Just this morning you volunteered to stay behind and look after Dixie. Now she’s behind bars and you’re upset that Beatrice believes in Dixie’s innocence?” Then, before Leona could respond, Rose lowered her voice to a well-defined hiss. “Just do us all a favor and shut up.
Please
.”

“What can you tell us?” Debbie said, pulling everyone’s focus back to Tori. “They can’t possibly think she’s capable of murder just because she had breakfast with him earlier that day, can they? I mean, she was so happy. So was he. And Dixie was here . . . in the room . . . with Beatrice, Rose, and me when he was pushed.”

“That’s right! She was!” Rose clapped her trembling hands together. “There’s no way she could have been responsible. She had an alibi!’

Beatrice nodded emphatically, pointing at the couch as she did. “We sat right there and talked about her breakfast with John right up until the moment she, um . . .”

Debbie closed her eyes and gave voice to the part of the story Beatrice found herself unable to utter aloud. “Left to have her hair done by a woman she didn’t know.”

“Who told her she was flying out first thing this morning to take a hair-styling job onboard a Mediterranean cruise line for the next six months,” Rose supplied sadly.

Tori spoke around the lump creeping up her throat. “That unverified gap in time, plus the fact that she slept away the effects of her appointment upon news of John’s death, will be Dixie’s first stumbling block at the arraignment.”

Margaret Louise shifted her weight more evenly across her legs. “You mean she’s got more than one?”

This was the part of the conversation Tori had been dreading. Somehow, even knowing she was merely serving as the messenger, she couldn’t help but feel as if she was also the one holding the hammer above the final nail in Dixie’s proverbial coffin. But she had to tell. Dixie needed all the support she could get.

“When that detective went into Dixie’s room, she gave him permission to look through her things.” She closed her eyes against the regret she shouldered for not insisting she be part of their talk, and filled in the rest of the blanks. “He found something. Something that apparently links her to the crime scene.”

“Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t care if Dixie was on the street where he died.” Debbie’s face took on a never-before-seen aura of disgust that prompted Rose to nod along. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“But the missing piece of a torn scarf does. At least as far as the police are concerned.”

“What are you talkin’ ’bout, Victoria?”

She pushed off the wall and made her way over to the couch, where Margaret Louise had sought refuge from legs that had grown noticeably weak. “From what I was able to gather, the police found a torn scarf near the balcony of John’s apartment. The other half was found in Dixie’s handbag.”

More than anything, Tori wanted one of her friends to jump up, to offer a counterpoint explanation as to why the scarf had been found in Dixie’s purse. But just as an alternate reason had eluded her in the police station, so, too, did it elude Debbie . . . and Rose . . . and Margaret Louise . . . and Beatrice.

Tori swallowed. Hard.

She’d known all along they’d be as stunned as she’d been. But still, she’d held out hope. Hope that one of them would say something that could rid her heart of the suffocating reality that had her bracing for the worst.

Dixie was in trouble.

Big trouble.

“Why are you all looking like that?” Leona finally said, the bewilderment in her voice little match for the bewilderment—and raw disgust—she wore across every facet of her face.

Rose was the first to speak, anger lacing each and every word. “Because we’re worried for our friend? Is that so hard for you to understand?”

Leona matched Rose’s ending sneer with one of her own. “I get the worry. This is going to be a battle. But it’s a battle we’re going to win.”

“D-did you hear what Victoria just told us, Leona?” Debbie sputtered.

“Of course I heard her. I’m not deaf. But I also know every single one of you watches
FBI
Manhunt
every Thursday night at eight o’clock.”

Tori slowly raised her gaze to meet Leona’s. “Do you have a point, Leona?”

“What did Dixie say about the scarf?”

“She couldn’t explain it.” Mentally, Tori revisited the moment she asked Dixie about the torn fabric, the former librarian’s wide-eyed fear rivaled only by unmistakable confusion.

“Of course she couldn’t,” Leona said.

“Would you quit talkin’ in circles, Twin? You’re only makin’ things worse.”

Leona looked from Tori to her sister and back again, before widening her gaze to include Debbie, Rose, and Beatrice, as well. “Dixie can’t explain the torn scarf because she didn’t put it there.”

And just like that, Leona singlehandedly removed the hammer and nail from Tori’s hand. “It was planted on her,” Tori whispered.

Slowly, dramatically, Leona rested her hands in her lap. “Exactly. Which means it’s
our
job to figure out who did the planting and why.”

“But why would someone do that?” Debbie protested through the sudden silence.

Keeping her focus locked on Leona, Tori gave the answer she should have come to on her own while sitting across a table from Dixie at the police station. “To draw attention away from the real killer.”

Leaning forward across her lap, Rose buried her face inside frail hands while Beatrice stared off in the distance.

“How is Dixie holding up?”

Rose let her hands slip back to her lap as she, along with everyone else, waited for Tori’s answer.

“She’s terrified, Debbie. Absolutely terri—”

A strangled sob cut Tori off mid-word. “This is all my fault! I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong and now Dixie feels like a rubber-nosed woodpecker in a petrified forest!”

Tori blinked once, twice. “Margaret Louise?”

“It was my idea to get her datin’ again. She tried to argue, tried to tell me she was doin’ just fine with her volunteerin’, but I was sure she was wrong. I was sure she needed a friend to help her with that smile she’s lost little by little over the years. And now I wiped it clear off her face once and for all thanks to my meddlin’.”

Rose peered down at her lap. “You didn’t meddle alone. I was right there, dirtying up the waters, too.”

“Me three,” Beatrice said sadly.

“But it was my idea to get her lookin’ at that datin’ site,” Margaret Louise said. “And it was my idea to make her look like she knew somethin’ ’bout cookin’ besides pourin’ soup in a pot and openin’ a sleeve of crackers.”

“And it was my idea to help her sound more intelligent since she was spending much too much time blushing the few times they
did
actually interact online,” Rose chimed in. “I should have just minded my own business and let Dixie show her true colors when she was ready to show them.”

“I don’t know why I thought I could be more charming than Dixie,” Beatrice wailed.

“Because
I
said you were.” Margaret Louise exhaled a rush of air from between her thinning lips. “Don’t you blame yourself for this mess, Beatrice. You were just tryin’ to help me on
my
quest for Dixie’s true happiness.”

It was Leona who finally cut through the parade of self-recriminations coming from her sister’s mouth. “I don’t care if you made Dixie sound like the Queen of England, Margaret Louise. None of you were sitting at that breakfast table yesterday morning. None of you were on the receiving end of John’s smile.”

“But you said yourself he was a con artist,” Debbie reminded.

“A con artist when there was something to gain from the con.”

Tori held off any further comments with her hand. “What are you saying, Leona?”

“I don’t care how Rose or Beatrice or my sister polished up Dixie’s image. She was still wearing a floral housecoat when she met John. And we all know that Dixie can’t get through a conversation without relaying how she got ousted from her job at the library to make room for Victoria.”

“So?”

Leona pinned first her sister and then Tori with a pointed look. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know librarians don’t make a lot of money. Retired librarians make even less.”

“Your point, Leona?” Rose demanded in a bored voice.

“Dixie said John wanted to see her again, right?”

As heads nodded to her left and right, Leona continued, “That says to me that, despite all lack of reason, John was actually interested in Dixie. The Dixie who showed up across the table from him at breakfast and remained with him for more than an hour and a half.”

Tori considered calling Leona on the backhanded slap volleyed in Dixie’s direction, but let it go. After all, it was shared for the sole purpose of freeing Margaret Louise, Rose, and Beatrice from guilt’s paralyzing effects.

At any other time and any other place, she might have considered pulling Leona aside and commending her for her selflessness. But now was not the time.

All that mattered was getting all six of them on the same page where Dixie was concerned.

“Someone set Dixie up for this murder,” Leona fairly purred. “Someone with an axe to grind where John was concerned. Our singular focus needs to be on finding that person.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Feeling her energy begin to rebound alongside the first glimmer of hope in hours, Tori stood and turned to face her friends. “We all need to put on our thinking caps and come up with some ideas as to who that person might be.”

Debbie took the ball and ran. “The easy guess would be one of the women this guy has bilked over recent weeks.”

“Revenge is always a good motive,” Tori said by way of agreement.

“But so is money, is it not?”

Tori took in Beatrice’s words along with everyone else. “It is. But in the case of the women he bilks, I think they’d seek revenge
because
of the money.”

“But surely some of the women this bloke has taken up with have children of their own.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Think of the Queen. When she passes, the throne will be left to her successor—Prince Charles, will it not?”

“Assuming he’s still of sound mind,” Tori said.

“And if an elderly woman has a fair amount of money, it is quite likely it will go to her heirs, yes?”

“Yes but . . .” The words petered from her lips as the meaning behind Beatrice’s took root. “Wait. You’re right. Behind a duped and heartbroken woman can be a whole army of protective soldiers. Children, siblings, neighbors, et cetera.”

“Children, siblings, and even neighbors who may have been counting on a monetary inheritance that no longer exists because of John Dreyer and his con artist ways.”

Tori stared at Beatrice as the young woman’s words settled in her thoughts, Leona’s head bobbing in her peripheral vision.

“The church mouse does indeed pay attention, doesn’t she?” Leona drawled.

Ignoring Leona’s latest barb, Rose lifted her hands upward in exasperation. “How on earth are we going to figure out who this man was seeing when he’s lying on a slab with a name tag wrapped around his big toe?”