Invitation to Murder (Book 1 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) (23 page)

“
I’m serious,” Lillian
said. “You might even have surpassed her as a cook.”

“
Now I know you’re just
teasing,” she said, though she looked remarkably pleased by the
comment. “So how can I help you with your orders?” Sara Lynn asked
after the dishes were all stowed safely back in the basket. “You’ve
done enough,” I said. “That was heavenly.”

“
Nonsense. I’m here, I’m
able, willing and ready, so put me to work.”

“
I don’t feel right about
asking you,” I said. “After all, you put in a full day at your own
shop.”

“
So pay me whatever you’re
paying Lillian, if you can afford it,” she said.

I reluctantly admitted, “She’s volunteering,
at least until I can afford to give her a salary.”

Sara Lynn put her arm around me. “Don’t you
think I know that? If our aunt can volunteer, you certainly can’t
say no to your sister.”

I was too tired to fight her on it. “That
would be great,” I said. “Grab a glue gun and I’ll show you what to
do.” Sara Lynn said, “I can handle this myself.”

I shook my head. “Not if you don’t follow my
directions to the letter. Sara Lynn, you’re wonderful at what you
do, and there’s nobody in Virginia who can make a better scrapbook
than you, but I’m the professional card maker here.”

Sara Lynn looked taken aback by my
statement, and for a second I thought she might leave. Then she
looked at Lillian, who responded, “Don’t ask me for help. She read
me my rights on my first day, too. Jennifer is in charge here.”

Sara Lynn smiled. “If you can take it, then
so can I. Okay, baby sister, tell me what you want me to do.”

I didn’t even resent the “baby sister”
crack. I’d put my foot down, and it had stayed there. The rest of
that night, we made wedding invitations, told stories from the old
days and solved all the world’s problems. The one subject we
avoided was the murder.

The next morning at Custom Card Creations, I
felt relieved that we’d been able to complete the invitations ahead
of schedule, though it had taken all three of us working until past
midnight. I wasn’t all that much of a night owl, but having Sara
Lynn and Lillian with me made the time sail right by.

I was feeling it the next morning as I
opened the shop, though. I’d been straightening up for five minutes
when there was a knock on the front door. Assuming it was Lillian
wanting in, I dropped what I was doing and opened the door.

Anne Albright was there instead. She swept
in past me before I had the chance to tell her we weren’t open for
business yet. I was going to have to stop answering the door or
learn to put body blocks on intrusive people.

“
Where are they?” she
asked, as if I were hiding her family’s crown jewels.

“
Good morning,” I said as
pleasantly as I could manage. “If you’re talking about the wedding
invitations, they aren’t due until tomorrow.”

“
You mean you haven’t
finished them? How hard could it be to do a hundred invitations?”
She eyed me closely, then added, “Unless you’ve been derelict in
your duties. Have you given my order your full
attention?”

“
I am running a shop here,
too,” I said. From the tone in Mrs. Albright’s voice, I could tell
she’d heard about my impromptu investigation. It would have been a
miracle if she hadn’t, given the range of people; I’d talked to who
all had ties to her.

“
Among other things,” she
said. “How’s that article coming?”

“
It’s a work in progress.
Honestly, I didn’t think you’d mind.”

She looked startled by my statement. “Mind?
Why on earth would I mind? I think it’s absolutely brilliant. Will
there be photographs, as well?”

Considering the fact that there was never
going to be an article, I couldn’t exactly promise pictures. “I’m
sorry if we didn’t make it clear, but Lillian and I are doing this
on spec. Once we have the article written we’ll pitch it to the
editor.” Lillian had actually done a few articles for the paper
that way in the past. She hadn’t bothered with writing about
perfect cream puff or how to grow the rosiest tomatoes; my aunt had
written about Las Vegas in one piece and Cancun in another, always
managing to barely skirt the censors.

“
Oh,” she said, the
disappointment in her voice obvious. “Well, we will cooperate in
any way we can. Now, about those invitations ...”

Her words trailed off as she spotted them on
the worktable up front, and the second I followed her gaze, I
realized that I’d made a horrible mistake Stacked neatly right
beside hers were the ones we’d made for Melinda. Mrs. Albright
walked to the table and instead of selecting one of hers, she
grabbed one of the brass-ringed ones like it was a snake. “What is
the meaning of this?” she asked, the thunder booming in her voice.
“Did you think you’d get away with this?”

I honestly didn’t know how to respond.
Before I could think of some way to tell her about Melinda’s order,
she continued. “You didn’t trust my judgment, I did you? What did
you do, go behind my back and recruit my daughter in this
abomination? Well, you made these for nothing. I won’t pay for
them, do you understand?”

That was about all I could take. I’d
apologize to Melinda later, but I wasn’t about to stand there and
allow anyone to use that tone of voice with me in my own shop.
Besides, I’d already cashed her check. What was she going to do,
demand a refund? If she so much as whispered the word, I’d coldly
inform her that Custom Card Creations did not give refunds or even
store credit on special orders, and she could sing in the wind, for
all I cared.

“
Those aren’t yours,” I
said as I snatched the invitation from her hand.

“
Please, I saw the
announcement, Jennifer. These invitations are for my daughter’s
wedding.”

“
But she’s not the only
one getting married, is she?”

It slowly dawned on her what I was talking
about. “So you pitched the mother of the groom on making her own
invitations? That’s not very ethical, is it?”

“
Mrs. Albright, Melinda
Spencer was here about something else entirely, and she happened to
see the alternate invitations. She liked yours well enough, but she
felt she wanted something different for her own guests. You should
be happy she cared enough to go to the effort and expense. After
all, you both want to see the same thing happen, and that is for
your children to get married.”

She seemed to think about that for some time
before she finally spoke. “You are right, of course. Why, it’s only
natural she’d choose something a little more traditional.” Mrs.
Albright smiled at me as she added, “After all, not everyone gets
our cutting-edge taste do they?”

So now I was a coconspirator? Whatever it
took to avoid the storm. I readily agreed. “Honestly, this way
everyone gets what they want.”

I was putting her invitations in a sturdy
box when there was another knock at the front door. I was seriously
considering changing my hours when I saw Lillian waiting
impatiently for me.

When I opened the door, she said, “There’s a
young man who’d like to come in, too.”

“
We don’t open for another
five minutes,” I said, hoping to get Mrs. Albright out of there
before started getting regular customers.

“
He’s the prospective
groom,” Lillian said, a twinkle in her eyes.

“
By all means, the more
the merrier, then.” I stepped aside and motioned for Larry to come
in. The second I saw him, I realized why Lillian had been urgent in
her request to allow him inside. “I like you; earring,
Larry.”

He thumbed his ear nervously. “Yeah,
everybody in the wedding party got them.”

Lillian asked sweetly, “I’ve always been
curious. What do men do with the other earring in the pair?” True
to form, Lillian wanted to find out what happened to his spare.

“
I’ve got a drawer full of
them,” he said. “They come in handy when I lose one.”

“
Enough chitchat, Larry,
there’s the box.” Mrs. Albright pointed to it like a queen
instructing one of handmaidens. He glumly retrieved the box of
invitations, and I wondered if “sullen” was his normal position, or
the prospect of the upcoming wedding was enough to steal the spark
from his spirit.

“
Sorry,” he mumbled as he
retrieved the box of invitations.

“
Don’t dawdle, Son,” she
said as she produced list that must have had thirty entries on it.
“Larry has kindly volunteered to help me today. He’s going to make
a perfect son-in-law, isn’t he?”

“
I’m sure he will,” I
said, sure of nothing of the sort.

After they were gone, I said, “I messed up.
I should have put Melinda’s invitations in the back until Mrs.
Albright got hers. Things almost got ugly.”

“
And how did you diffuse
it?” Lillian asked.

“
I’m not sure, but somehow
it ended up that Melinda’s tastes were too pedestrian for our
visionary stand.”

Lillian laughed. “I can’t imagine how in the
world you kept a straight face coming up with that one.”

“
Oh, she supplied the
theory. I just didn’t refute it. It was a lot of fun last night,
wasn’t it?”

“
Yes, I had a good time
working with you both. In a way I’m sorry to see both orders
completed.”

As I finished putting Melinda’s invitations
in another box, I said, “Hopefully we’ll get more custom jobs
soon.”

“
Dear girl, does that mean
you’re going to be actively courting the wedding invitation
trade?”

“
Hardly, though I don’t
mind cashing the checks. No, I’m afraid that once Mrs. Albright’s
go out in the mail I won’t be doing many more of those. But there
are lots of cards, and we’ve got everything here to make them
special.” I was in a good mood, too, having delivered half my
special orders already. “So, are you ready to make more cards
today?”

Lillian nodded. “Whatever you’d like to do
is fine with me. I didn’t realize we had anything else to
mass-produce.”

“
I was talking about
another private lesson in making individual cards. That’s really
what this shop is about, after all.”

Lillian’s smile brightened. “In that case
I’d love to.”

Chapter 17

“
I’ll be right back,” she
said as she dashed into the storeroom. Thirty seconds later she’d
retrieved a shopping bag and rejoined me up front.

“
What have you got
there?”

Lillian started pulling things from the bag.
“This is from our last lesson. I thought we could actually do
something with them, since I’ve learned the proper way to fold
paper now.” The last was said with a smile, and I knew Lillian was
getting back into the spirit of card making.

I chose a few of her
samples, one with a half fold and the other with a dual fold.
“Okay, which one would you like to start with?”

Lillian said, “Can we use one of these
instead?” She pulled out the two she’d already embellished. One had
an open framed front, while the other sported a raised edge.

“
Whatever you want to do,”
I said.

She selected the simple fold with the raised
border. “Let’s do one of these. After all, this is the type of card
I’m used to seeing.”

I laid the other aside for later. “Okay, but
the window cards are fun to do, too. Now, do you have a particular
occasion in mind?” I asked.

“
I’d like to do a
thank-you card,” she said.

“
Good enough. If you’d
like a calligraphy message inside, I’d be happy to do it for
you.”

“
Thanks, but I want to
make this one all by myself.”

I’d planned on going into greater detail
with her about the different ways to embellish a card, but I didn’t
want to kill her enthusiasm with too much instruction. “Give me
five minutes to teach you some of the basics. Then you’ve got the
run of the shop.”

“
Okay, but I took a few
books home last night and I have a good idea what I want to do.
I’ll need some foam tape, some hot glue and lots of
extras.”

I couldn’t keep myself from laughing. “You
know what? Have fun. The shop is yours.”

She started walking the aisles, carefully
considering nearly everything I had in stock until she found
exactly what she was looking for. I pretended to be busy going
through the mail for the third time that morning, but she was so
fascinating I couldn’t bear not watching her.

Lillian took some lacy gold ribbon and tied
a beautiful tight bow, then snipped its edges and mounted it on the
front of the card with foam tape. I hadn’t even needed to tell her
that the foam tape gave cards more of a three-dimensional look; she
must have picked that up from one of the books she’d read. But when
had she had the time? I’d been beat last night, barely managing to
undress before I’d crawled into bed, and Lillian had found time to
study basic card making after our late-night session at the shop. I
nearly missed her next step when she attached a string of small
beads intertwined with ribbon. It was a little formal for my taste,
but that was one of the great things about making your own cards.
You could choose whatever style pleased you most, or create our own
as you went. Lillian embellished the raised border with a series of
small red rhinestones, then turned her attention to the inside of
the card. She carefully penned her message, studied the entire card
again, then handed it to me.