A Custom Fit Crime (14 page)

“But wasn’t that exciting? Working for a real designer, I can’t even imagine that!”

“You worked for Beaulieu,” I said. “It’s the same thing.”

“But it’s not. Beaulieu . . . his stuff wasn’t . . . he didn’t . . .”

She looked over her shoulder again, looking into the front room, and I did, too. Midori had just started riffling through the rack of ready-made clothing at the far end of the shop, and I suddenly realized what had been bothering me when we’d first entered. The outfits on the rack were all out of order, mixed up, one or two of the pieces falling off the hangers. I bit my lower lip, processing. It was as if someone had been riffling through them.

Not knowing why the clothes were askew bothered me, but I pushed the concern aside. It could have been Meemaw, after all. Midori straightened the garments on the hangers as she looked. At least she’d get a better sense of my aesthetic by looking at what I’d made. I hoped. Showing up at my mother’s wedding in a traditional Midori outfit meant I’d probably steal the show, and that couldn’t happen. A wedding day belonged to the bride, and the bride alone. The rest of us had to complement her, not steal the attention. I had to trust that Midori understood this and could produce an understated design for me to wear.

I put my hand on Jeanette’s shoulder, encouraging her to speak. “He didn’t what?”

“He wasn’t like Maximilian.
He’s
one of a kind.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, although I had a feeling I knew where she was going.

“He wasn’t very creative,” she said.

“No?”

“No. I almost laughed when I heard him talking about integrity and originality. I think he’d really convinced himself that he was better than he was.”

My smile was halfhearted. Orphie had been on the verge of becoming nothing more than a copycat. At least she’d had the good sense to quit before she’d jumped across that line with both feet. “It’s easy to get sucked into the glamorous life of high fashion. Sometimes that integrity line blurs,” I said. “All the celebrities coming out at Fashion Week with their toy dogs and sunglasses. It’s a different world.”

She stared off over my shoulder as if she were imagining such a scene. She was Dorothy stepping out of her house in Oz and seeing everything in Technicolor. “I want to be part of it.”

“Then you should,” I said. Me? I preferred the slower pace of the small town, and I loved my shop, but everyone needed to choose their own path. “It’s hard work, and it’s really competitive, but if you want it bad enough, you can do anything.” The words hung in the air like a cloud of mist. Someone had wanted Beaulieu dead enough to kill him. Jeanette had been right here. She had disdain for her boss because of his lack of integrity; she’d made that much clear. But was that enough of a motive to kill him? After all, if she wanted to go to New York so badly, Beaulieu would have been her best opportunity. She would have wanted him alive. She couldn’t just step into his now empty shoes and take over.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

She wandered around the workroom, looking at everything with wonder in her eyes. “Midori said she may have some opportunities for me. She has regular buyers here in the U.S., but she said she’s been thinking about expanding. Or I could start my own collection and see if I can get backing.”

“That’s definitely the hard part. It’s not easy to find investors.”

She laughed. “Not for Beaulieu, but then again, blackmail works if you do it right.”

My brain skidded to a stop. “What?”

She sucked her lower lip in, her eyes going wide. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“Jeanette, was Beaulieu blackmailing someone?”

For the third time, she peeked through the open French doors between the workroom and the shop area of Buttons & Bows. Midori had moved from the ready-to-wear rack to the coffee table, sitting on her haunches and flipping through my magazine stash, perusing my lookbook, and going back to her sketchbook.

Jeanette dropped her voice to a faint whisper. “I heard him on the phone a few times. I could be wrong, but it sounded an awful lot like keeping a secret in exchange for money.”

Oh boy. “Did Beaulieu have the secret or the money?”

“From what I could tell, he knew something about someone, and the only way he was going to keep quiet was if he got some money.”

“Jeanette,” I said, “did you tell the sheriff about this?”

She recoiled, her chin dropping, her eyes bugging. “No! I don’t want to get involved, Harlow. I should never have mentioned it.” She grabbed my arm, her gaze boring into mine. “What if I’m right and . . . and that’s who killed him? They could come after me! You can’t say anything.”

“Say anything about what?” Midori stood in the threshold between the two rooms, looking up from her sketchbook just long enough to ask the question. Lindy stood just behind her, notebook in hand. I looked past her to the front. It was open. The bells that normally jingled to announce a visitor were on the floor and kicked into the corner. Lindy had appeared the way a ghost might, throwing us a little off balance as ghosts were known to do. At least in my house.

Jeanette’s eyes flew open wide, but she swallowed and her voice remained steady. “Harlow was just telling me how she feels about sewing and design,” she said, thinking far more quickly than I’d been able to.

Anxiety emanated from Jeanette like heat off a Texas highway, and a thought struck me. Jeanette and Midori had had lunch the day Beaulieu died. What if Midori had been the one being blackmailed by Beaulieu, had made some allusion to it, and Jeanette had figured it out? And what if Midori had somehow killed the man to stop the blackmail?

“I’d love to hear your thoughts,” Lindy said, closing the door and coming farther into the shop. Something in her voice gave me pause. Was she talking about my thoughts on sewing and design, the thoughts racing around in my head, or Jeanette’s plea that whoever had killed Beaulieu could come after her?

“Are you going ahead with the article, then?”

“Come hell or high water, as they say.”

Which didn’t precisely answer my question.

Midori tucked her sketchbook under her arm and clapped her hands. “So your editor said to go ahead?”

“Mmm, not quite, but just about,” Lindy said. The slight shake of her head made me think the not quite was the more accurate part of the answer. She seemed to sense my doubt, because she offered more. “Look, newspapers and magazines are going under all the time. I need to write great stories. Win a Pulitzer. Something, you know? I’m going to write a damn good story and I’ll find someone to buy it. And then maybe I’ll rework it from another angle and sell it again.”

She was nothing if not tenacious. She fit right in with the Cassidy women. “Okay,” I said, pushing my glasses back into place. If she was willing to put in the time to write the articles, we could answer her questions. “Ask away.”

We sat down in my cozy seating area, Jeanette and Midori on the couch, Lindy on the love seat, and me on the settee. “You said you were talking about how you feel about sewing and design,” Lindy started. “Can you elaborate on that?”

I thought for a minute, trying to put what I felt into words. “Women are nurturers,” I said. “That I’m a woman means I want to help people, encourage them, fulfill longings they have—sometimes needs they don’t even understand themselves.” My charm came in very handy in those circumstances. “But I’m also an artist, which means I see beauty and sensuality all around, and I want to find a way to represent that beauty through my designs. It’s always challenging to figure out how to give a woman what she wants while balancing that with something that’s luxurious, practical, and sensual. But that’s exactly what I try to do with every single design, no matter who I’m making it for.”

Lindy’s hand flew across the page as she transcribed what I’d said. Designing for real women of different shapes and sizes was a balancing act. But truthfully, I preferred real curves to a shapeless skeletal figure, another reason I loved being home in Bliss.

We talked design for a few more minutes before Lindy turned to Midori and asked her the same question. “I needed to make something of myself,” she replied. “My family, they do not understand. They do not see what I see with color and pattern and shape. But they support me, and here I am. I donate my runway clothes.”

Lindy’s eyes lit up and I could tell she saw a new angle to her story. “So everyday women can buy your designs?”

“Yes, exactly. I have a buyer and customers who wait. That, above all else, gives me joy. That my dresses carry with them something for everyone.”

Lindy nodded, hurriedly taking down notes on what Midori had said. “That’s fantastic.” As they kept talking, a concentrated gust of air gathered behind me and, like two hands on my back, pushed me off the settee. “Oomph!”

Jeanette jumped up, putting her arms out to block me, but I caught myself just in time, regaining my footing and stopping just before plowing into her. Jeanette stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. Which to her I probably had since it had to have looked as though I’d launched myself across the room. “Are you okay?”

I shook off my frustration with the ghostly antics of my great-grandmother. “I’m so sorry! I’m fine.” I pulled her aside, away from Lindy and Midori and their puzzled looks. “Sorry!” I said to them with a quick wave.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jeanette asked.

I batted away her concern. “Yes, yes, fine. I was wondering, though . . .” I hesitated, not sure how to broach the subject tactfully, but the pause gave Loretta Mae another chance to gather up her energy and push me again. I whipped around, ready to scold her as if she were a precocious five-year-old. “Meemaw!” I said under my breath with a hiss. “Cool it.”

This time, Jeanette stared at me. “Who’s Meemaw?”

I laughed off Jeanette’s question. “Oh, no one. Just my great-grandmother. All this talk about my sewing philosophy made me think of her. She taught me to sew.”

Jeanette gaped, looking for all the world as though she didn’t believe a word I’d just said, but I was sure that the alternative—that a ghost had shoved me—wasn’t even on her mind, so she finally shrugged, letting it go. I seized the bit of privacy we had while Lindy monopolized Midori. “Jeanette, I really think you should talk to the sheriff.”

She backed away. “I can’t, Harlow.”

“If you really think Beaulieu was blackmailing someone, you have to.”

She didn’t budge, and I didn’t think there was any way she’d tell her suspicions to Gavin or Hoss. I could do it, but before I did, I wanted some proof. If someone was running scared, he or she might resort to murder . . . again. If Jeanette was right, someone had been blackmailed by Beaulieu, and quite possibly, one of them had resorted to murder to stop it.

I’d decided that Buttons & Bows was the Bliss equivalent to Grand Central Station. No sooner had Jeanette and Midori left to head back to Seven Gables than Mrs. Zinnia James burst into the shop, standing tall, chin up, paper-thin skin pulled taut over the angular bones of her face, and dressed like Nancy Reagan in a smart suit, hose, and pumps.

Mrs. James was a senator’s wife, but more than that, she was the matron of Bliss. She had her hand in everything, from sitting on committees to running charitable events to organizing some of Bliss’s oldest traditional events. And she’d elected herself my personal patron, taking me under her wing.

“Harlow Cassidy,” she said, her cadence slow and her accent thick. “What in tarnation is going on around here?”

Every time I saw Mrs. James, I envisioned her in a new outfit, each one more individualistic and arty than what she normally wore. This time, it was a maxi dress. The fabric looked to be a shimmering gold cloque lamé like one you might find in Paris, the fibers of the cotton blistered to produce bumps and folds and then woven together with another fabric. Or it could have been a guimpe, the ribbons wrapped around a fibrous yarn. Either way, it was bold and was sort of an upscale version of the typical Texas bling.

Before I could answer, Orphie waltzed in looking more relaxed than I’d seen her since she’d arrived. “Mrs. James, meet Orphie Cates. We roomed together in Manhattan. Orphie, this is Mrs. James.”

Orphie smiled warmly, extending her arm. Mrs. James, on the other hand, narrowed her eyes and gave Orphie a discerning look as she clasped her hand around Orphie’s in a firm grip. “You look like you’re in love,” she said.

Blunt might have been Mrs. James’s middle name.

Orphie’s smile wavered. “No, not yet, but it could happen.”

I gawked. “You don’t mean with Gavin?” I said, cringing at the horrified edge in my voice.

Mrs. James was silent for a beat before letting loose an amused chortle. “Gavin McClaine?”

Orphie’s smile was completely wiped from her face. She looked from me to Mrs. James, and then jammed her hands on her hips. She thrust her chin up defiantly. “Yes,
Deputy
Gavin McClaine. And what, pray tell, is wrong with that?”

Oh boy. She looked so serious and ready to defend Gavin at all costs. “Darlin’,” I said, “Gavin mentioned something to me earlier today.”

“You saw him?”

I nodded. “At the sheriff’s station. I went to give him a piece of my mind—”

She huffed. “A piece of your mind about what?”

“I thought he might could have been trying to interfere with the wedding.”

She gasped, staring at me as if I were crazy. “He wouldn’t do that!”

“You don’t know him, Orphie.”

“He’s not the same guy he was when you were kids, Harlow. People grow up.”

I stared at her as if
she
were the one who’d gone off the deep end. “You just met him.”

“Sometimes you just know,” Mrs. James said matter-of-factly.

Orphie nodded. “That’s right. Sometimes you do. Thank you, Mrs. James.”

They shared a look that defied logic. After all, they’d just met, too, yet here they were, forming an alliance about love at first sight.

“We went to that bakery on the square and shared a cannoli,” Orphie said, and her eyes got all dreamy again.

I didn’t want to burst her bubble, but I had to dig a little. “Did he ask you why you came to Bliss?”