A Custom Fit Crime (12 page)

I went with option number two. I was my mother’s daughter and I didn’t back down from anything. I was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Butch Cassidy, which gave me extra gumption. I wouldn’t turn my back on the likes of Gavin McClaine when I had a beef with him about interfering with my mother’s and Hoss’s wedding, and certainly not when he was asking around about me and why I was even back in Bliss.

My hand fisted and I rapped my knuckles against the door, pushing it open at the same time. “I’m taking her at face value. She came to help her friend with her mama’s wedding and with that photo shoot,” Gavin was saying. “Nothing more.”

I poked my head in and saw Gavin reclined in his chair, his heavy black boots on the corner of the desk, his fingers linked behind his neck. Lindy turned in her chair from where she sat at the far side of the desk. But before either of them could say another word, the realization of their last sentence hit me. They hadn’t been talking about me.

Oh Lord. They’d been talking about Orphie Cates. And Gavin was trying to believe she had nothing to do with Beaulieu’s death.

• • •

“Sorry. Wrong office,” I said, the words spilling from my mouth before I had time to think. The fact that the deputy was questioning why Orphie was in town, and given that Beaulieu had been murdered just after she arrived, was probably a big ol’ red flag. Until the murder was solved, I was pretty sure Gavin would be focusing all his brainpower on that, which meant he’d have Hoss’s ear, which meant the sheriff would be spending his time involved in a murder investigation instead of enjoying his upcoming nuptials with my mother.

Which also meant that Gavin could wedge his foot between my mother and his father, if he was so inclined.

“Harlow Jane,” Gavin said, “were your ears a-burnin’?” Gavin met my gaze, his dark eyes boring into me as if he knew perfectly well that I’d been standing outside the door, listening.

“Why would they be? Were you talking about me?”

Lindy tucked her notebook in her satchel, but her spine was straight, her shoulders back. She was on high alert and while she might not be taking notes, not a single detail of the conversation we were having would slip past her.

“Sure was,” Gavin said. He dropped his legs down, the soles of his boots hitting the hard pile of the industrial carpet with a dull thud. “You have a lot on your plate, what with the wedding and the magazine article—”

“
If
that’s still even happening.”

He ignored my interruption and continued. “And the murder at your shop, of course.”

My heart ratcheted to a thunderous rhythm, but I made my voice remain steady. “I work better under pressure.”

“Then a murder under your roof shouldn’t slow you down in the least.”

My fingers twitched and I forced my feet to stay rooted to the spot. “I’m sure you’ll figure out what happened.”

“Working on that very thing. Top of the priority list.” He pointed at Lindy. “We were just discussing it, in fact.”

Orphie’s face appeared in my head, front and center, her infectious smile tainted by the murder that had happened in Buttons & Bows. “Oh?”

“I’ve been talking with all the people who were at your shop that morning. Wanna go through the list with me?”

How could I refuse? “Sure thing,
Deputy
.”

Gavin’s eyes narrowed. He usually had to remind me to address him as deputy, and calling him Gavin was so much more fun because it got under his skin, but bless his heart, he just kept going. “Great.”

I went through the list in my mind, ticking off one person after the next. “Lindy,” I began, looking at her and offering a quick smile. “And Quinton. Beaulieu, of course, his assistant—”

“Jeanette?” Gavin had flipped open a file folder and alternated between looking down at his notes and looking at me.

“Yes.” I went on. “Midori. Her models—”

“Zoe and Madison?”

“Right. And Beaulieu’s models, Barbi and Esmeralda.”

“Esmeralda,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Who names their kid Esmeralda?”

Who named their kid Hoss or Bubba or Betty Sue? Texans, that’s who, and I imagined Esmeralda was a family name since the girl didn’t look as though she came from some exotic place far away from the South.

“Your mother, too, right?” Lindy asked.

As if she didn’t know with absolute certainty that Tessa Cassidy had been there. “Yes, my mother, my grandmother, and a friend who’s visiting—”

“Orphie Cates,” Gavin said, his lips lifting just slightly on one side. He looked up at me, an innocent, Barney Fife look on his face, as if I couldn’t tell he was smitten with her. If someone who looked like Timothy Olyphant could summon up Barney Fife, that is.

“Yes, Orphie Cates. My
friend
.”

Gavin met me gaze again. “And you, of course.” He chuckled, but the sound sent a chill down my spine. He had a truckload of Southern charm he could employ when he wanted to, just like his daddy, but underneath it all, he was shrewd and wanted nothing more than to get the job done.

“And me.”

He flipped a page in his file, scanning it before looking back up at me. “Let’s go through them all, one by one, shall we?”

I got my feet to move forward and sat in the hard, ladder-back chair next to Lindy. Wanting to hightail it out of there might be at the top of my list of things to do, but making sure nobody I knew and loved ended up in some horrible state penitentiary was higher on my to-do list. “Sure.”

He looked at Lindy. “I’ll talk to you later, darlin’,” he said.

Some people liked a Southern man’s endearments, but from the tense look on Lindy’s face, she wasn’t one of them. She stood, slinging her satchel over her shoulder, and with a quick, almost nonexistent wave, she was out the door.

Gavin dipped his head and held his palm out to me. “I want your perspective on the suspects, Harlow.”

I nearly fell out of my chair. “Since when do you want to hear what
I
have to say? Haven’t you already interviewed everyone?”

He sat perfectly still for a good ten seconds. “I have,” he finally said, “but I’m interested in what you observed.”

I wasn’t quite speechless, but I was stunned.
“Okay.”

“Let’s start with Beaulieu, shall we? What do you know about him?”

I perched on the edge of the chair. No amount of effort could stop my heart from hammering in my chest. “I know of him and his designs,” I said, not really sure what Gavin wanted to hear. “I met him last week when we did the first photo shoot in Dallas. He was just as surly then as he was here. Almost.”

He took out a fresh sheet of paper and started jotting down notes. “What’s his reputation in the fashion world?”

“He’s a good stylist,” I started. Orphie’s description of him came back to me. “I guess he’s, er, was, a bit derivative.”

Gavin stared at me, his head shifting forward on his neck as if he were a turtle darting its head out of its shell. “Derivative how?”

Beaulieu wasn’t on trial and I felt guilty at speaking ill of the dead, but then again, understanding the victim of a crime could help Gavin figure out what really happened. “He sort of”—I made air quotes—“
borrowed
from other designers.”

“Did he borrow from you?”

“No!” I understood the question, but the idea was absurd. A sliver of doubt about Gavin’s motives worked under my skin. Maybe I’d fallen prey to his Southern charm. A little barrier went up, just in case.

“What about from Midori?”

Oh boy. If Beaulieu routinely used my designs, or Midori’s, adopting our aesthetic and point of view, and one of us happened to be at the right place at the right time when Beaulieu was murdered, we’d be the first suspect. But I shook my head. “From what I gathered, they didn’t like each other, but no, his aesthetic was more influenced by other big-name designers, like Jean Paul Gaultier. If you put their collections side by side, they’d be pretty similar.”

“But this Jean Paul Gaultine character—”

“Gaultier,” I corrected.

“I stand corrected. This Gaultier character wasn’t at your shop, or in Bliss.”

I sat back on the hard chair. “No.” And the odds of him sneaking into Bliss to kill Beaulieu over some stolen designs were zero. Which brought the focus back onto me and Midori.

“Anything else you know about him?” With Gavin’s heavy Southern drawl, the French elegance of the dead man’s name was lost, another thing Beaulieu would have been cringing at. The first being his murder, of course.

I shook my head. “Not really, no.” He had no connection to anyone who’d been in my shop that I was aware of. “He brought in his own models from New York,” I offered.

“I ran into them at Seven Gables,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile.

A sudden thought occurred to me and I framed a question that could help with my own personal investigation. “Hattie and Raylene mentioned you were there. Something about the wedding?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Harlow, I ain’t gonna lie to you. You Cassidys? I think y’all are nuttier than a tornado chaser, but my pop is happy, and if your mama makes him that way, I’m not gonna poke the fire.”

I was speechless for a second, finally managing a hoarse “Really?”

“Sure. I’m not gonna break up two people in love. I’m not heartless.”

“So why were you grilling Hattie and Raylene?”

He chuckled again, but this time it wasn’t directed at me, and no chill wound its way up my spine. “Grillin’s the wrong word, Harlow Jane. That Raylene makes a mean pecan tart,” he said. “I’d do just about anything for a truckload of those.”

I peered at him, my protection mode kicking in. “So you’re not interested in the models?”

“As suspects? Of course. Other than that? Hell, no. What kind of man do you think I am?”

Maybe a better one than I’d given him credit for. “And Orphie . . . ?”

“I ain’t talkin’ about my personal life with you. Unless you wanna start sharin’ about you and Flores?” He winked because he knew good and well that I wasn’t about to tell him a thing about my relationship with Will, which meant whatever he might or might not feel about Orphie was going to stay his business. My only fear was that he was making nice with her only to ferret out more information, but deep down I didn’t believe that.

He grinned, looking like a cat who’d swallowed a canary. “Tell me about Midori.” He paused. “Isn’t that a drink?”

I’d have to deal with whether or not to open Orphie’s eyes about Gavin later. For now, I stayed zeroed in on the murder. “Midori sour,” I said, nodding.

“Does she have a last name? Or maybe that
is
her last name?”

I sat back, trying to relax a little bit. He was doing his job, nothing more, nothing less. If you didn’t count the fun he wanted to have along the way. “I don’t know, actually. All I know is that she’s from Japan, she goes back pretty often, the other models here are from Dallas and she uses them regularly, and she’s known for being very . . .” I hesitated, thinking about how to phrase it. “Persnickety,” I finally settled on, “when it comes to her designs, who’s showing them, and who buys them.” And who makes them. She was a bit of a control freak, I realized.

“So she’s high-strung. Great.” He gestured with his hand so I’d go on.

“Jeanette works for—” I stopped and regrouped. “Worked for,” I corrected, “Beaulieu. She was his assistant.”

“And you just met her.”

I nodded. “Yes. She’s staying at Seven Gables, too. Seems pretty lost right now. On top of her boss dying, she’s lost her job. I sort of got the feeling she’d love it if Midori hired her, but Midori doesn’t use an assistant.”

“Anything else about Jeanette”—he glanced down at his notes, then back up— “Braden?”

“I like her,” I said, and I did. She was what we Southerners called a sweet gal. “I hope she can find a job with a better boss than Beaulieu has been. Someone who doesn’t chew her out and—” I stopped when the conversation, if you could call it that, between Jeanette and Beaulieu came back to me.

“Spill it, Harlow.”

“Spill what, Gavin?”

He pointed his finger at me. “You’re a dang open book. I can see it in your eyes. You’re thinking something, but you’re not sure you should tell me. Look here, darlin’, your allegiance should be to the sheriff’s department, not to some girl you just met, who you don’t know, and who might could have killed that man.”

I was brimming with turmoil. On the one hand, he was right. I needed to let the sheriff’s department do its job. Let Gavin do his job. But I liked Jeanette and maybe my wayward thoughts meant nothing at all.

“Harlow . . . ,” he said, his voice heavy with warning.

“Okay,” I said, making up my mind. I was a fashion designer, not a detective, and I didn’t have any business getting involved. “Beaulieu was pretty rough on Jeanette. He humiliated her, right there in front of all of us.”

Gavin nodded, encouraging me to go on.

“He chewed her out for wrinkling a garment and he told her to press it. She was pretty upset about it.”

He jotted down some notes. “Interesting. Good. Now, tell me what you know about the models.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” I said, and then added, “Except that they’re like oil and water.”

“The Dallas girls don’t get along with the Yankees?”

“Exactly.”

“A little friendly competition between them?”

“Competition, yes. Friendly? No. We all had tea a little while ago at Seven Gables. Let’s just say the Dallas girls aren’t too happy to have Beaulieu’s girls here, and Beaulieu’s girls think they’re better models than the Dallas girls. Not much love lost between them.”

“I got that from them, too,” he said, “but do you know if there was love lost between any of them and Beaulieu?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“We can’t forget the
D Magazine
people. Quinton Holstrom and Lindy Reece.”

I hadn’t really given them serious consideration. They’d been sent to do a job, but weren’t connected to Beaulieu. At least not that I knew of. But I nodded anyway. They had been present, after all. But with Beaulieu dead, their story was out the window. Neither one of them had a motive that I could see.