A Killing Notion: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (4 page)

He swung his head to stare me down, looking more intense than I was used to seeing him. I’d gotten his dander up. “And you think I do?”

I could see why he was upset, but my self-appointed job was to protect Gracie. “Of course not, but I’m telling you, Shane’s innocent.”

“Because you said so, it must be true,” he said, sarcasm dripping from the words.

“That’s right.” I had a sixth sense—my charm—but
that didn’t help me determine if a person was innocent or guilty. I had to listen to my gut, though, and it was saying Shane didn’t hurt his own father.

“You’re a dressmaker, not a detective,” he said, making it sound almost as if dressmaker was a dirty word. “You leave the investigatin’ to me, and I’ll leave the homecoming mums and dresses to you, sound good?”

I glared at him, my feathers officially ruffled. “No, that does not sound good,” I said, sounding more like a riled up Meemaw than like my normal, even-keeled self. “Gracie is one hundred percent positive that Shane didn’t have anything to do with what happened to his dad, and I believe her, which means I believe him.”

“Police work is based on more than a Cassidy gut instinct,” he shot back.

Will, bless his heart, had stood by watching and listening, not daring to leave me alone with Gavin, but not wanting to get wrapped up in the middle of our argument, either. But Gavin was rubbing him wrong, too, because he piped up with, “Shane didn’t have anything to do with this, McClaine, and I’ll tell you what. Harlow and I will prove it to you.”

Gavin seethed, the veins in his temples pulsing. “Oh no, you won’t,” he snapped. “This is police business, and you will both stay clear out of it.”

His response warranted a good, solid stomping of my foot followed by a resounding, “You’re not the boss of me!” But I was raised to have good manners, and that type of outburst, even if it was deserved and felt down to the marrow of a woman’s bones, wasn’t acceptable. “I can’t help it if people talk to me, Gavin,” I said sweetly.

As if on cue, Reba Montgomery called my name from the buffet table. “Harlow, come on over here for another second, would you?”

And so I did—with a backward glance, Will by my side, and Gavin left to stare at our backsides.

“You start by adding ribbon loops all the way around the edge of the cardboard base,” I said, holding up the sample mum I’d created so the group of girls could see.

“So they’re like the petals of the mum?” Danica asked.

“Exactly.” I picked up a two-and-a-half-inch length of the red ribbon from the pile I’d precut, folded it with a little twist, and stapled it onto the cardboard.

Danica and Leslie, the two girls I was making homecoming dresses for, as well as Gracie and her best friend, Holly Kincaid, sat around the dining table, a circular piece of white cardboard in front of each of them. They each had a stapler and scissors, and piled in the center of the table were the black, white, and red ribbon pieces. Cutting them had been mindless work the night before, which I’d relished. I’d spent the time mulling over Chris Montgomery’s death and how in tarnation I was going to help figure out what had happened.

So far, I hadn’t come up with a plan. The sheriff and
deputy were running their own investigation, and I didn’t have any information they didn’t already know.

The four girls concentrated on ringing their mum backings with the ribbon loops. Danica was slow and precise, sucking in her lower lip, clamping her teeth down each time she stapled a red ribbon along the outer edge. She switched to black and created a second ring. She was slow and meticulous, and I could tell she was imagining just what her mum would look like when she was finished with it.

Leslie, on the other hand, worked quickly, picking up a length of ribbon, twisting, stapling, then doing another one—boom, boom, boom—alternating colors. Red, white, black, red, white, black. At the pace she was going, she would have two or more mums done, none of them looking like the other, by the time the others finished their first.

Holly worked at a steadier pace. She used black first, then white, with just a few red pieces for accent. The contrast and pop of color was vibrant. I turned to Gracie, and what I saw made me suck in a breath. Her loops were different sizes, some twisted at the top, others not, and there was no rhyme or reason to her color choices. No pattern.

I sat in the open chair next to her, putting my hand on her knee. “It’s going to be okay, Gracie,” I whispered so only she could hear.

Her eyes glazed with tears, her lower lip quivering. “I don’t know why I’m making this,” she said, her voice sounding as tortured as she looked. “He says I shouldn’t go to homecoming with an accused murderer. He’s not going to take me.”

My heart broke for her. Just a few days ago, Shane Montgomery had been swinging Gracie around and hugging on her like any good sixteen-year-old boyfriend. Yesterday, after the funeral, he’d looked despondent. And now it seemed he’d moved on to anger, shutting out at least one of the people who cared about him. The thing I didn’t know was if it was guilt or helplessness talking.

“We all know he didn’t do it,” Danica said, stretching her arm across the table.

Gracie hesitated before reaching for it. She managed a nod, but her eyes still teared.

This would never do. I couldn’t let Gracie wallow, feeling powerless. A subtle movement of the curtains caught my eyes. Meemaw. And just like that, I knew what I had to do. Gracie would go to homecoming. She’d wear her mum. And she’d be on Shane’s arm.

I slapped my open palm on the table. Holly, Danica, Leslie, and Gracie all jumped in their seats.

“We’re not going to sit here and do nothing. We’ll figure out what happened, Gracie.” I’d already told Miss Reba I’d help, but there was no reason Gracie couldn’t lend a hand. After all, she knew Shane.

Gracie managed a smile. “I knew you’d help, Harlow.”

“We, Gracie. We’ll do it together. Now let’s think.” I waved my hand as if I were casting a spell. “Come on, girls, y’all, too. Mr. Montgomery’s car crashed on Saturday morning, right?”

Gracie, Danica, and Holly all nodded. Only Leslie seemed unsure of when the accident had actually happened. “Right,” Gracie said. “He was on the country road between Granbury and here.”

“Coming or going?”

She shrugged. “Going, I think. He was always driving out there to check on his second auto shop or something.”

“Did you hear how the crash happened?” Danica asked.

Leslie’s chin shot up. She put her mum down, dropping the strands of ribbon gripped in her hand. “I heard the brakes were cut, and that he lost control and drove into oncoming traffic.”

Danica gaped at her. “So, what, the sheriff thinks Shane tampered with the brake lines? That happens in the movies, but don’t you think that’s a dumb way to try to kill somebody?”

“Right!” Gracie bobbed her head in a vigorous nod. “Because you’d either cut the line, or whatever, all together, right? And then you’d know right away there were no brakes. Or you’d cut a little bit—can you do that? And it would drain slowly, but you’d probably have enough sense to figure out that something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

Danica nodded. “I’d think so. And Shane would know that, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” Gracie said. “Since his dad owns—owned Bubba’s. He knows everything about cars.”

Holly frowned. “Maybe it wasn’t the brakes,” she said. “I heard some people talking about it in town. Steering maybe? Or transmission?” She shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

That was more than I’d gotten out of Gavin McClaine. It wasn’t a lead, but it was something to look into. What, exactly, went wrong with Chris Montgomery’s car? Now I just had to figure out a reason to go have a chat with the people who worked at Bubba’s.

I went back to directing the girls on their mums. After the loops around the base were complete, we moved on to the streamers, which would be stapled to the bottom third of the cardboard circle and would cascade down like a multicolored waterfall.

“You can use as much of that ribbon as you like,” I said, pointing to the mound I’d piled into a rectangular basket sitting in the corner of the dining room. “You have to decide how long you want the strands to hang.” I’d seen them stop at the thighs, but I’d also seen them hanging down almost to the floor. It was all about personal preference.

They each stood, grabbed a handful of ribbon from the basket, and gauged how long they wanted it to be by holding the base to their chests and letting the ribbon fall.

Danica went for the shorter strands, Leslie for the longest, and Holly chose a clump that fell in between. Once again, Gracie seemed stuck.

“Maybe I should make Shane’s mum first? If I make it, he’ll have to come to the dance, right?”

The Cassidys had hidden their charms for generations, but on some instinctive level, people knew Cassidy women were different from everybody else. We all had charms, and Gracie had Cassidy blood in her, courtesy of Butch’s illicit affair with Etta Place. She couldn’t make things come true the way I could; instead, she saw images from the fabric of old garments, and sometimes it shook her to the core. Slowly, though, she was getting a handle on it. “If you want to, that’s fine, but it might not work.”

“But it might.”

I conceded. “Yes, it might.”

The boys’ mums were much smaller and had short ribbon strands. They were attached to a garter and the guys wore them on their upper arms. Most didn’t care about how many embellishments there were or the length of the mum as a whole. No, the mum mystique was for the girls, and the guys went along for the ride.

But Gracie dove into making Shane’s mum with both feet. The concentration she hadn’t possessed when working on her own mum was there in spades for Shane’s. In ten minutes, she had the short ribbons looped and stapled around the smaller base used for the boys. She moved right into attaching the longer strands, using the rough measurement from her shoulder to her elbow to determine how long to keep the ribbon.

She finished at the same time Leslie, Danica, and Holly wrapped up the last of their long strands.

“Time to add the embellishments,” I said, pulling out another basket, this one filled with miniature teddy bears, plastic football, volleyball, soccer, and cheerleading charms. I’d walked up and down the aisles at a local craft store, gathering up an array of goodies girls could attach to their mums. Digging through the basket was like diving for treasure.

Leslie didn’t have to search long. She chose a strand of miniature gold bells, one giant cowbell, a wide strand of red ribbon with
BLISS HIGH SCHOOL
printed down the front, and a handful of other silver and gold decorations. “The more bling, the better,” she announced, wasting no time in tying and attaching the items to the strands of ribbon.

Holly eyed it skeptically. “It’s going to be massively heavy.”

“Then Ms. Cassidy can make a harness,” Leslie said, “because nobody’s going to have a better mum than me.”

“Or a better dress,” Danica added.

“You’re going to be the belles of the ball,” Holly said. “I wish Harlow was making my dress.”

Leslie attached another plastic charm to her mum. “Why isn’t she?” She looked at me. “Why aren’t you?”

Holly grabbed the stapler, frowning. “My mother says she’s inspired by Harlow and she wants to make mine.”

I stifled a smile. The impression I’d had of Miriam Kincaid during high school was that of a privileged girl who didn’t have to do much of anything for herself. My opinion had changed when my good friend Josie had fallen in love with Miriam’s brother, Nate, and their family had fallen apart amidst a sordid mystery full of debauchery and secrecy.

Miriam, I’d learned, had a penchant for crafting her own jewelry, had opened up a bookshop on the square, and now, it seemed, she’d taken up sewing. I was afraid she’d find that sewing wasn’t as easy as it looked, and creating the right garment for a person was even more challenging.

Leslie swung her head to look at Gracie. “What about you? Is Harlow making your homecoming dress?”

Gracie shook her head, but kept her gaze down. “I’m making my own.”

Leslie and Danica stared at her, their mouths gaping. “By yourself?” Leslie asked.

After Gracie nodded, Danica said, “Is it fancy?”

Gracie looked up. A veil of shyness had slipped over her. She wasn’t confident in her dressmaking skills yet,
although she was a natural and gifted beyond what I’d been at her age.

“It’s . . . different,” she said. I’d helped her with the design, but the way she spoke now made me wonder if she liked it or not, and if I’d led her astray.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, hoping my words would circle around her and bolster her confidence.

She nodded, almost to herself. “It is. It’s a cream-colored dress with spaghetti straps on top, and all these rosettes on the skirt in pink, rose, and red crinkled chiffon.”

And void of anyone else’s history.

In that way, she was just now starting to control her charm. She’d realized that making clothing from new fabric was a clean slate for her.

The girls plied her with more questions about the dress as they continued to add adornments to their ribbons. They talked about how Danica had ended up in Bliss after her mother passed away, how Leslie lived with her grandmother, and how Holly was an auntie to her uncle Nate and aunt Josie’s baby. Shane and the death of Chris Montgomery didn’t come up again, but despite the lightness that had come into the room, the likely murder of Shane’s father never left my mind.

“Buttercup is due for her inspection,” I said to the mechanic on duty at Bubba’s. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, a hint of gray slowly working its way into the stubble of his beard and sideburns, his skin bronzed, but craggy. His blue oil-stained coveralls hung loosely, the company’s name emblazoned on a patch on the left side of his chest.

He wiped his greasy hands on a blue rag, cocking an eyebrow. “Buttercup? That what Loretta Mae called her?”

“You knew Loretta Mae?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. Meemaw had known everyone in Bliss, and everyone had known her.

“’Course. Everyone knew the old girl. Sure didn’t know she called her truck Buttercup, though. Most folks use Bessie, or somethin’ like that, ya know?”

We both turned to look at the ancient Ford with the rounded fenders and domed cab. “She’s the color of a buttercup, though, don’t you think?”

“I reckon she is at that,” he said.

“I’m Harlow.” I lifted my hand in a little wave instead of shaking his grease-streaked hand. “Loretta Mae is my . . . was my great-grandmother,” I added, but of course he already knew that.

“You’re the spittin’ image,” he said.

“Aw, thank you.” I threw my shoulders back, proud, and grinned. Every Cassidy woman had a tuft of blond hair sprouting from the left temple, and we all had hazel eyes, leaning toward green, with gold flecks. There was a striking resemblance between us, leaving no doubt we were related.

I smiled sweetly, knowing, as Meemaw always said, that you catch more flies with honey. “I didn’t get your name.”

He grinned, revealing slightly crooked, yellowed teeth. “Otis,” he said; then he gestured to the sign hanging from the roofline. “But you can call me Bubba. Everybody does.”

Everybody called everybody Bubba in Texas, but Otis had a name patch with the name emblazoned on it and he worked at a shop with the same name. Not everyone could say that.

“You know how it is. Every tenth hombre’s called Bubba round these parts. Given name’s Otis, but I’s the last of seven kids and all anybody’s ever called me is Bubba. ’Cept my wife, ’course. Anyhow, I cain’t unstick it.”

“Working here is a good fit, then,” I said.

“Yup. Need an inspection, you say? Sticker says you got another month.”

He had good eyesight, and he was observant. Maybe he was that observant about everything, and he’d know something about Shane that could help clear him. “I like
to be ahead on things,” I said. “You know, in case I run out of time later on, it’ll already be done. Loretta Mae taught me that.”

Pay bills when they arrive, put things away where they belong, and plan ahead so you won’t ever be caught unprepared. Those were three of the many rules she’d lived by, and she’d passed those rules on to me.

“She was a good woman. Smarter than most.”

He shifted his weight, looking antsy to get back to work. It was now or never.

“Such a shame about Mr. Montgomery,” I said, my gaze downcast.

He stilled. “Sure is. He was real well liked, ya know? Everybody’s friend. Weren’t afraid to get his hands dirty.”

“Did you know him for a long time?”

“Oh, sure. He hired me to work the Granbury Bubba’s when it first opened what, goin’ on nineteen years now? That was before either of us got saddled down with wives.” His lips curved into a tepid smile. “He found love. Mine, well it was a shotgun weddin’ and all that, but Sally’s a good woman, all the same.”

Sounded like the makings of a passionate relationship, I thought dryly, but I kept quiet and let him continue.

“Eddy offered me the job here at the Bliss shop and it was perfect back then. Sally ’n’ me, we separated for a while, ya know.”

“Eddy Blake from the Granbury shop?”

“Eh?”

“You said Eddy offered you the job here.”

“Right. Got me outta Granbury when me ’n’ Sally was
havin’ troubles. But then Chris came along, ’n’ I stayed here. Sally ’n’ me finally bit the bullet and moved the family to Bliss just a few months ago.”

“So you came here and Chris worked at Granbury with Eddy so you could have some space from Sally?”

He nodded. “Yup. That’s about it. Chris saw her every now ’n’ again. She’d bring her car to Bubba’s over there. He had a run of seeing her every week for eight weeks in a row. I told him I could take his place again, you know? But he said he didn’t mind Sally, and he liked driving back ’n’ forth between the shops.”

“I guess it’s not too far,” I said. “And they’re all country roads.”

“Thirty-five miles, exactly. We stay open late a few nights a week. He’d stay over at the shop those nights.”

“With Mr. Blake?”

Bubba shifted on his feet. “Come again?”

I thought back to Teagen Montgomery finding her father’s business partner’s phone after the funeral, but maybe I’d misunderstood. “Eddy Blake runs the Granbury shop and Chris Montgomery ran this one, right?”

He blinked, real slow. “Right. Eddy don’t come round here much. Granbury’s a busier shop. Chris slept in a little room off the office whenever he stayed the night over there. Home away from home,” he used to say. “Didn’t like being on the roads real late. I wouldn’t neither. Awful glad we’re livin’ in Bliss now. Easier to see the kids, ya know?”

He pulled out his worn, curved leather wallet and slipped out an equally worn and curved picture of two teenagers. The girl had a dimple in her smile and shoulder-length dark hair. The boy had the same dimple,
but his hair was more of a dishwater blond. “Best things me ’n’ Sally ever did,” he said before tucking the picture away again for safekeeping.

It wasn’t a ringing endorsement of love, but there was a sweetness to it, nonetheless. Whatever else they’d done together, Sally and Otis were still making it through on the same side of their marriage and they loved their kids.

I figured now was as good a time as any to dive in and just ask about Shane. “Otis, I heard someone say that maybe the brake lines were cut in Mr. Montgomery’s car. Or something. Is that what you think happened?”

He scoffed. “You’ve been watchin’ too much bad TV. Tampering with the brakes of someone’s car, especially a mechanic’s car, is the dumbest way to kill someone.”

“I heard the deputy sheriff say they were looking at the car, though. And I heard some people saying that his son, Shane, might have—”

“That’s what I been hearin’.” His temples pulsed and his skin had taken on a red hue.

“Do you think he could have done it?” I asked, afraid of the answer for the first time.

Blue veins popped just under the surface of his skin, but he just shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“What do you think happened?”

His gaze darted left and right before settling back on me. “Gavin McClaine came by.” He moved a little closer and lowered his voice a tad, as if there other people milling around and they might overhear. “Said their inspection showed steering linkage sabotage.”

My eyelids fluttered and I stared at him. He might as well have been talking about catalytic converters and transmissions. It would be akin to me talking pleating
and ruching and scalloped hemlines. Bubba would feel my bewilderment.

“Steering link what?”

“Steering linkage sabotage. If someone sheared through the linkage—messed with the steering—the driver would lose control.”

“He wouldn’t have felt it coming?”

Bubba shook his head, frowning. “Nope. It’d be sudden. Total loss of control and way more likely to cause an accident than messing with the brakes. Anyway, way I hear it, he was forced off the road. Steering went, he was chased down, and then he crashed.”

Forced off the road. That was something I hadn’t known. It still seemed like an imprecise way to kill somebody, but if someone knew Chris Montgomery had been driving to Granbury—or back to Bliss—they could have lain in wait, following from a safe distance until the steering started to go.

But the question was why? Why would anyone do that?

If Gavin was right and someone had tampered with the steering linkage, or whatever, that someone would have had to know the inner workings of a car. Unfortunately, that drew a straight line to Shane.

Bubba wiped his hands with his oily rag, antsy as he moved his weight from one heavy black-booted foot to the other. Had his eyes grown small and beady . . . or was that my imagination?

My goal was to prove that Shane wasn’t involved in his dad’s death, but the realization hit me that whoever had sabotaged Christopher Montgomery’s car might well be an employee at one of the two Bubba’s Auto Repair shops.

My heartbeat ratcheted up in my chest and I took an uneven step backward.

It could even be the Bubba standing in front of me.

*   *   *

“It’ll take about twenty minutes, give or take.”

I blinked, chasing away the flurry of nerves in my stomach. Sociopaths excepted, murderers always had a motive that made perfect sense to them. Even if Bubba here had tampered with Mr. Montgomery’s car, he had nothing against me. And he had fond memories of Meemaw, so I was 99.9 percent sure I was safe.

I handed over my keys, placing them in his upward-facing palm. “Perfect, thanks.”

As he clomped toward Buttercup, he turned and called over his shoulder, “There’s coffee inside.”

The sidewalk up to the building was emblazoned with a large stamped outline of the state of Texas. I smiled to myself at Texan pride. I couldn’t think of another state that had so much love for itself.

I stepped into the lobby, the bought air instantly sending a chill all the way to my bones. I’d dressed for the ninety-degree late-summer weather, not thinking Bubba’s would be more like an igloo than a sauna. I stifled a shiver and rubbed the goose bumps from my arms as I took in the details of the shop.

The lobby was merely a grimy sitting room with aluminum-framed chairs, an oak-and-glass coffee table that had seen better days, and a stack of mostly men’s magazines. Anyone interested in cars, sports, and fishing had their pick of reading material.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I seized the opportunity to snoop. Keeping one eye on Bubba
through the glass window, I peeked behind the counter. The computer was in sleep mode. I tapped the mouse, bringing the screen to life. Bubba’s logo of a cartoon mechanic holding a stethoscope to the hood of a car appeared, along with a password box. I left it to fall asleep again, and turned to look at the wall. A few thank-you notes addressed to Bubba’s hung on an inexpensive bulletin board. Next to it was the framed business license for Bubba’s with Eddy Blake as the proprietor. Odd, since they’d owned it together, but maybe Chris’s partnership was more the silent kind.

Next to the license was a metal Texas star, the quintessential symbol of love for the Lone Star State. I spun around looking at the shop, but nothing struck me. No handy slip of paper lay on the counter or floor with a name and motive scribbled on it, squarely pointing the finger at the killer. Not that I expected there to be, but it would have been nice.

I sat in one of the cloth-seated chairs, opened my bag, and withdrew my sketchbook. In fashion school, I’d learned to find inspiration all around me. From the steel beams and cranes at a building construction site. From people bustling on the street. From the trees at the city park.

But Bubba’s wasn’t doing it for me. The Cassidy women had taught me to surround myself with things I love—and I’d taken that to heart. My yellow farmhouse and Buttons & Bows were filled with fabrics, color, trims, Meemaw’s old dishes, an old milk bottle chandelier, and retro appliances. All things that made my heart swell with comfort, history, and memories.

But no matter how I tried, no visions circled in my head from Bubba’s Auto Repair Shop. I flipped through
the first half of the book, bypassing the faces and bodies and pastel designs I’d painstakingly drawn, until I got to a blank page. I dove right in without thinking, sketching the lobby, more as a distraction than anything else.

My pencil flew over the page and before long, I had the entire lobby finished and shaded. I stood, peering through the glass window in the door separating the waiting area from the garage. Bubba crouched beside Buttercup, holding the hose from the air compressor to one tire. After a moment, he moved to the next. I leaned against the counter, cradled the sketchbook on my forearm, and drew the garage next, adding a rough outline of Buttercup, the empty car bay at the opposite end of the garage, the tools scattered across a workbench in the back. Socket wrenches, air guns, ratchets, screwdrivers. Tools to a mechanic were like notions to a seamstress, which made me realize that Bubba and other mechanics were artists in their own way. They problem-solved, created, fine-tuned, and loved cars in the way that I used thread and a sewing machine, an iron, and other notions to design, create, and execute the perfect garments.

I flipped the page, an image of a dress with hard lines and edges, a sharp bodice, and pencil skirt forming in my mind. The sketch came quickly, the lines long and precise. Bubba’s had inspired me after all. But before I could add any details, the door from the garage opened. Bubba walked behind the counter, brought the computer to life, and in seconds, had printed out an invoice for Buttercup’s state inspection.

“Thanks, Otis,” I said, handing over my credit card. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a nod. “Glad to see you takin’ care of Loretta Mae’s truck.”

“Buttercup,” I said with a smile.

I felt his eyes on me as I walked to the door. Stopping, I turned back to him. “Tell Shane I said hey.”

“Shane ain’t been ’round since the accident,” he said. “Before, even.”

For a split second, I had a glimmer of hope that that would somehow prove his innocence. But it vanished with a pop. Anyone who knew how to tamper with a car would do it covertly, and certainly not for everyone to see right at an auto repair shop. “Of course not. I imagine being here would remind him too much of his dad.”

Otis arched a bushy eyebrow at me. “I think you got it all wrong, Ms. Cassidy.”

I arched an eyebrow right back at him. “How so, Bubba?”

“I’d bet my own life that Shane did it. He had the know-how. He woulda had the opportunity. And with the way he fought with his old man, he might coulda snapped.”