A Custom Fit Crime (29 page)

“How much can you fit into the hem of a dress?” Will asked, his voice skeptical.

It was a good question. “She’d have to be very exacting when she packaged it, and who knows how much it sells for an ounce, or however they measure it? By the gram?” I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I just wanted to see if it was true. Her bolt of fabric was still here, those silly hummingbirds playing hide-and-seek behind the flowers taunting me.
You can’t find it.

“We already know Beaulieu wasn’t above blackmail.” I described the copycat sketches I’d found in his book of Midori’s work, including the close-up of the hem. But then something else struck me. Zoe had said Beaulieu had a dress just like the one Esmeralda was wearing. I’d seen that dress in one of Lindy’s articles. An article she’d written several years ago. “He wasn’t stealing design ideas from her,” I said. “No, no, no! Will,
she
was stealing from
him
!”

I ran to the workroom and flipped through her lookbook, turning to the end pages. And there it was. Sketches of my designs from my Prêt-à-Porter rack. “She’s the one who went through my designs.”

“So Beaulieu was innocent?”

I considered this. Was he? “He had sketches of my designs on him,” I said, trying to figure out why.

“So he did steal designs?”

My pulse ratcheted up. “Or he really did blackmail people, just like Jeanette has said all along. Maybe he had sketches of my designs to use against her.”

“So you think he found out about the opium, assuming you’re right?” Will said.

“If he did, and he confronted her, that’s a pretty good motive to get rid of him, right? She could have put the sago palm stuff in his coffee when they stopped on their way up here She wouldn’t have known when he’d die, just that he would.”

I shook my head, remembering how distraught she’d been after we’d found him dead. She was either an Academy Award–caliber actress or she’d been genuinely horrified by what she’d done. “I have to go,” I said. No way was I going to bother Hoss and my mother on their honeymoon. Which meant I had to call Gavin and tell him my theory, and then I was going to unwind that entire bolt of fabric to see if, like the hummingbirds, opium was hiding behind the flowers.

I manhandled the bolt of fabric, laying it out on the cutting table, thinking about how to unroll it. It might be hiding something addictive and dangerous, but it was still expensive, gorgeous fabric and I couldn’t, in good conscience, unwind it and let it sit in a huge heap.

Lucky for me, I had no shortage of fabric in Buttons & Bows. Thanks to Meemaw, everything had been put to right after the ransacking and I knew just where a few tall, cylindrical bolts of fabric were stashed. I raced up the stairs, past the pictures that elbowed their way up the wall. Old, discolored photographs of Butch Cassidy and his Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, one of a solemn-faced Butch and an equally contemplative Texana Harlow, my great-great-great-grandmother, as well as other family portraits from generations gone by, made me pause every now and then to take stock of where I’d come from.

Now was not one of those times.

I hightailed it past the photos and into my bedroom. With the exception of the attic, Meemaw had kept a tidy house when the farmhouse was hers. I did the same—one way in which the apple fell right next to the tree— and I had great intentions to clean out the space she’d used to store anything she didn’t want to part with but didn’t want front and center in her life anymore. Given that she’d been a seamstress, that meant she had squirreled away more than the average person’s share of fabrics, notions, and other miscellany.

Hence me naming my shop Buttons & Bows. It was my homage to her.

Loretta Mae had been a spry eighty-something-year-old (she claimed to have been born any number of years and no one quite knew the truth), but the dark attic space through the door off the master bedroom was something she’d never tackled.

I plunged through the door, weaving around stacks of boxes, flying past the shelving stacked with Mason jars of buttons, snaps, closures, and ribbon. I’d moved half of Meemaw’s collection down to the shelving unit on the south wall of the workroom, but there were plenty more to go through.

Someday.

I spied the rolls of fabric leaning up against an old wooden rocking horse. The dim light gave enough illumination to make out which bolt had the least amount of fabric. There was one bright floral tapestry that was fairly sparse. It would do. I grabbed it, tucking it under one arm and maneuvering back through the attic to the bedroom, managing to hit the wall going back downstairs only twice.

Outside, tires screeched, doors slammed, and a second later, the heavy thud of footsteps pounded against the wooden planks of the porch.

My stomach catapulted to my throat and all I could think of were drug cartels, AK-47s, and me, dead in my shop. Earl Grey dashed around my feet, his quiet oink echoing in my ears. I whirled around as the bells hanging from the door jingled, swinging the cumbersome tail end of the bolt and narrowly missing the floor lamp next to the sofa. Will rushed through first, Gavin close on his heels. Orphie brought up the rear, moving slowly and looking pale.

“Cassidy, what the devil are you doing?” Will demanded, skidding to a stop and staring at me.

“What am I doing? What in tarnation are you doing? You scared me half to death!”

He stared me down. “You call me, have me look up opium plants, deduce that these highly illegal and addictive flowers are the ones Gracie saw in her vis—”

“Will!” I cut him off before he could finish that sentence and reveal the Cassidy charms—and that they extended to Gracie—to the deputy.

He shot a terse glance at Gavin before saying, “You can’t catch murderers by yourself.”

“I don’t want to catch murderers by myself. That’s why I called you.”

“This is serious, Harlow. One man is dead, and Orphie was poisoned.”

As if on cue, she sank down on the couch in the front room. The toll of the wedding and reception had snuck up on her. Like the doctor said, she needed rest.

“I know it’s serious, Will,” I said, maintaining my grip on the tall bolt of tapestry.

Gavin stepped between us, holding his arms out as if he were officiating a boxing match. “Let’s just simmer down, why don’t we,” he said, more of a statement than a question.

“I don’t need to simmer down. I’m fine,” I said, wishing my roiling stomach would cooperate with my words. He was one hundred percent right. There was a murderer in Bliss, and everything was pointing at it being Midori. Midori, the woman who’d made me the most beautiful dress I owned. Midori, the woman who’d helped me make Gracie her sweetheart dress. Midori, the woman who I’d spent hours and hours with and was supposed to share the spotlight with in
D Magazine
.

Now I really did feel sick to my stomach, and there was no hope of simmering down.

Something nagged at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It smoldered in the back of my brain while Gavin took charge of my workroom. I’d explained my plan of unrolling Midori’s special fabric and rerolling it onto the bolt I’d found in the attic. “To search for opium,” he’d said dryly. Not a question, but a disbelieving statement.

“Exactly.”

He’d pushed back his cowboy hat, scratching his head. “It’s a harebrained idea.”

“So harebrained it might actually be true,” Will had argued.

I checked on Orphie, making sure she was still okay. Her cheeks were hollow, her olive skin pale and carrying a faint patina. “Tell me if you find anything,” she said, letting her eyes drift closed.

I passed the message on to Gavin. He raised one eyebrow at me. “If who finds anything?”

Oh, brother. “If
you
find anything, Deputy McClaine,” I said. “If
you
find anything.”

Mollified, he went back to work. He had called in a fellow deputy, a woman dressed in the same beige uniform he usually wore, minus the off-white cowboy hat, and Madelyn, who walked around the room, snapping official photographs of the event. The deputies pulled on thin latex gloves and slowly unrolled Midori’s fabric, carefully winding it around the second bolt, readjusting every few minutes as it slipped off-center.

“I could help,” I said, impatient at how slowly they were moving.

Gavin didn’t bother to look up at me. “We got it,” he said.

“But I know how to roll fabric. It’ll be easier if—”

“Harlow,” he said, this time looking up at me with narrowed eyes, “I said we got it.”

Another ten minutes passed before they finally reached the end of the roll. Will put his hand on my shoulder as I started forward. “Cassidy, let him do his job.”

“I just want to see,” I said, but I stopped. Gavin would only shoo me away, and I didn’t want him to kick me out altogether, which he certainly could do if he chose to.

Another agonizing minute passed. Part of me didn’t want them to find any opium or seeds or, or whatever might be being smuggled in. The nagging feeling that I’d missed something started up again. Seeds. What was it about seeds that picked at my brain?

“Seeds,” I murmured. “Seeds, seeds, seeds.” As if saying it aloud would somehow provide me with the elusive answer.

“Seeds from the poppy?” Will asked.

I shook my head. “No, that’s not it.” I wandered out to the gathering room, turning in a circle as I thought. I closed my eyes for a minute, remembering the day everyone had descended on Bliss, and on Buttons & Bows. They appeared before my dark eyelids like ghosts, more visible than Loretta Mae ever was. But Meemaw made me feel, whereas the people in my mind were just vacant images that weren’t providing me with any answers.

Bang!

The sound came from the kitchen. “What the—”

Bang! Bang!

Will and I looked at each other and then, as if we’d communicated telepathically, we both took off for the kitchen. I don’t know what he thought, but I was sure it was Meemaw.

We stopped short in the entrance of the kitchen, staring. The cupboard doors were being flung open and then slammed shut by an invisible force. Drawers slid open before banging closed again.

Will stumbled back a step, staring. “Loretta Mae?”

One cupboard banged open and closed in rapid succession. Her response. But she didn’t stop at flinging cupboards. The air in the room began to spin, forming a cyclone right there in the kitchen. The particles seemed to grow heavy, laden with moisture. The cyclone concentrated in the center and right before our eyes, it began to take the shape of a figure.

My breath caught in my throat and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t swallow or blink or move. My great-grandmother was finally going to appear before me in a corporeal form! Her legs formed first, a bluish tint on the bottom, a subdued red on top. I smiled to myself. Meemaw’s eternal clothing was what she’d loved wearing in life. Blue jeans and a plaid snap-front blouse. Nothing could be more fitting.

“Holy mother of—” Will raked one hand through his hair and then looked at me. “It’s really her?”

“It’s really her,” I said. I reached a hand out toward the figure, watching in awe as it took shape, looking more and more like Loretta Mae. Her wavy ginger locks framed her head, and a rosy glow splashed across her cheeks, visible even though her form was still blurred around the edges and wispy.

Gavin’s voice bellowed from the workroom. “What the devil is goin’ on out there?”

Instantly the banging stopped and Meemaw’s figure grew still, her form rippling and growing fainter.

“Nothing, Deputy,” I said hurriedly.

“Yeah,” Will added, looking as though he’d seen a ghost. Which theoretically he had. “Not a damn thing.”

I held my breath, waiting to be sure he didn’t come out to investigate. The low sound of voices from the workroom told me they’d gone back to the fabric. I turned back to Meemaw. “Don’t go!”

She didn’t. She got back to work, her ghostly form floating around the kitchen, swooshing in between Will and me, leaving a cloudy trail as it wound through the kitchen. One of the drawers near the stove slowly opened and closed. There was no banging at the end of each motion. She didn’t want to cause a commotion, which was good, but I had no idea what she was trying to tell me.

“What is it, Meemaw?” I asked aloud, walking toward her, wishing more than anything that she’d stay still, appear to me completely solid and tangible, but she didn’t. A soft moan, sounding like the word “Loooookkkk,” came from the delicate form. Her rippling arm lifted, pointing to the drawer in question. Beneath my feet, the linoleum was suddenly cold. She dragged the drawer open and closed again until I stepped closer.

As I reached for it to hold it open, a memory flashed. Standing right here in the kitchen, Nana cleaning up. A baggie with some ground seeds. She’d put them in the—

“Oh my . . . oh no. No.” I grabbed the drawer and looked inside. Right there, tucked in between the cumin and the cinnamon, was a snack-sized baggie with seeds like nothing I’d ever seen before.

“Is this . . . it’s the . . . ?” I looked up at my great-grandmother’s ghost. “Meemaw, is this what killed Beaulieu?”

Her head moved slowly, but distinctly, in a nod. I didn’t dare touch it, instead hollering for Gavin, realizing too late that calling the deputy meant Meemaw would have to vanish.

It happened in the same moment. Gavin traipsed from the workroom into the kitchen, holding his cowboy hat by the rim. At the same moment, Meemaw’s ghostly form popped like a bubble, splitting into a thousand tiny pieces and disappearing into thin air. Gavin didn’t seem to notice, instead shaking his head at me. “I have to give it to you, Harlow,” he said. “I thought you were one fry short of a Happy Meal when you started talkin’ ’bout opium. Plumb crazy, but darn it if you weren’t right on the money.”

“You found something?” Will asked, sounding just as amazed.

“Oh yeah, we found something all right. Packaged and lined up all nice and neat where the material attaches to the cardboard. Very clever, I must say.”

“What’s the theory, then?” Will asked. “Beaulieu found out about the drugs, confronted her—”