A Custom Fit Crime (17 page)

I introduced her to Orphie, but before I could say what we’d come for, Raylene launched into an overview of the wedding reception plans, detailing the menu. “We’re makin’ braised barbecue chicken wings, coleslaw, fried okra, potato salad, baked beans . . .” She went on, rattling off every last dish she and Hattie were planning to make. “Your mama is goin’ to love it,” she said.

“She certainly will.”

Orphie tilted her head, looking puzzled. “But didn’t your mother say—”

I flashed her a hush-up look. I planned on saving the wedding, not giving in to Mama’s foolishness about canceling. Which meant Raylene needed to go forward, as planned. “You may never get Hoss to go home, what with all that good food,” I said to her.

She smiled, looking mighty pleased. I wanted Seven Gables to be a hot spot in Bliss. Hopefully this would be the first of many wedding receptions Raylene and Hattie would plan.

“What brings you here?” Raylene asked after another few minutes of chitchat.

Automatically, my gaze lifted to the old-fashioned cubbies behind the counter. The unit looked like a turn-of-the-century apothecary, with notes and keys sticking out from each slot. Hattie and Raylene had wanted to create the entire old-fashioned experience at Seven Gables, and they’d succeeded.

I cleared my throat, suddenly a little less confident that she’d just open up Beaulieu’s room and let us search.

“Harlow? Are you feelin’ poorly?”

“No, no. I’m just fine.” I tended to slip further into my Southern drawl when I was around folks who dropped their “g”s and had a strong twang. And also when I was nervous. “I’m just pokin’ around . . . er, that is to say, I’m investigatin’ what happened to the designer who died in my house.”

Her eyes widened. “You are? I’m not surprised, you know. Did you know she helped solve another murder not so long ago?” she said to Orphie.

Orphie shook her head, looking at me as if I were a mystery to her. “Did she?”

“It was nothing,” I said, waving away Raylene’s praise.

“It was not nothin’. She fell off a roof and discovered a dead man. And now she’s happened across another one. She’ll solve it,” Raylene said. “Just as sure as I’m standin’ here, she’ll get to the truth.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Orphie said.

“Yeah?”

No point in dillydallying now, so I charged ahead. “We’d like to take a look at Beaulieu’s room. Do you think we might could do that?” I hurried on, quieting my voice and offering an explanation. “See, we think he might have been blackmailing someone, and I thought maybe we’d find some evidence of it.”

Raylene hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “I don’t know, Harlow. What if I’m not supposed to? Gavin didn’t say not to, but . . .”

“Did he tell you no one could go in?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “No, he didn’t say anythin’ like that.” She hesitated again, but finally pulled her lip from her mouth and straightened up. “I guess it’ll be okay.

“He’s in the Cynthia Ann Parker Room.”

The famous Texans Raylene and Hattie had chosen to name their rooms after included the tenacious Cynthia Ann who’d been kidnapped and raised by Comanche Indians early in the 1800s. She’d endured her childhood and had grown up to become the mother of the last Comanche chief. Some might think naming the room after Cynthia Ann was an odd choice, but I saw the little girl, and the woman she’d become, as a survivor. Beaulieu hadn’t been so lucky.

Raylene slid the key from a cubby and handed it over. “Thank you,” I said. “We’ll be back in no time.”

Orphie and I hightailed it back up the stairs, stopping in front of the room marked with a Cynthia Ann Parker placard. The coast was still clear. Before I could change my mind about what we were doing, I plunged the key into the lock and we slipped inside.

I collapsed against one wall while Orphie pressed her back against the opposite wall, listening for Lindy or Quinton or any of the models. Breaking and entering, even though we had Raylene’s permission, wasn’t something I did every day. “This is crazy,” I whispered.

“Maybe,” Orphie said, “but we’re on a mission to save your reputation and your mother’s wedding.”

Just the right thing to say. “Right.” I pushed off the wall and surveyed the room. Floral wallpaper gave it a period look, but the style was slightly contemporary, so it didn’t feel too froufrou.

A queen-sized four-poster bed, a tower dresser, one nightstand, and a small table and chair were the only pieces of furniture in the room. Beaulieu’s suitcase wasn’t in sight. We’d left in such a hurry, we hadn’t thought to bring gloves, and its being summer meant Orphie and I were both wearing short sleeves. “Just look,” I said. “We shouldn’t disturb anything.”

“Right.”

“Use your hem,” I told her. Even though I knew Gavin and his team had already been here and done their thing, one could never be too careful. “Let’s don’t touch anything.”

“Got it.” She started with the dresser drawers, hiking her sundress up and using the fabric to pull open each one. While she did that, I headed for the satchel lying flat on the writing table. It was lying flat, was made from heavy navy wool with a thick red stripe down the center, and, as luck would have it, the top zipper was undone. I was wearing jeans and a light linen short-sleeve jacket over a beaded tank top. No hem to pick up and use like a glove. I grabbed a tissue from the box on the nightstand, using it to lift the top open enough to peer inside.

Behind me, I heard the dresser drawers sliding open and closed. “Anything?” I whispered over my shoulder. If there was anything to find, the deputy would have discovered it already, but I didn’t let that stop me from continuing the search.

“Not yet.” She left the dresser, heading to the closet.

I grabbed a second tissue and riffled through the bag, pulling a sketchbook halfway out, followed by a printed catalogue of Beaulieu’s fall collection, and a few loose papers. I quickly flipped through them, but nothing struck me as important. My nerves coiled and twisted as I held on to the sketchbook. It could hold a clue as to what Beaulieu was up to. Or it could simply hold his sketches. Did I dare take it all the way out and look through it?

We’d come this far. One little peek might ease my mind, or it might point me in the right direction. I wouldn’t know unless I looked.

Out it came. At the same time, a dresser drawer closed and Orphie came up beside me. “Nothing. He unpacked a few things, but just clothes, scarves, socks. He brought only an overnight bag—it’s in the closet. It doesn’t look like he planned on staying for very long.”

“And nothing that could give us a clue about who might have wanted him dead?”

She shook her head. “Not that I can see, but I’m no detective. No note from the murderer or anything like that.”

“Yeah, that would be a little convenient. Maybe this will give us something,” I said.

She swallowed in an audible, loud gulp when she saw what I was referring to. “Do you think we should?”

“If there’s a clue, it’s not going to be out in the open, is it?”

Her gaze stayed glued to the book and I could see her mind whirling. She’d stolen one designer’s sketchbook. Looking through another was another step down a slippery slope, and from the suddenly green patina of her skin, she didn’t relish revisiting her crime.

I didn’t blame her, and I didn’t want to force her. “I’ll look,” I said. “Did you check the bathroom?”

She nodded. “Nothing. He probably just dropped his stuff off and headed to your shop.”

Of course she was right. He and the others had come to Buttons & Bows first thing that morning, so he wouldn’t have had time for anything else. Not to mention that what little I knew of Beaulieu told me he wouldn’t have wanted to spend his time holed up in an old-fashioned inn.

Orphie didn’t budge, so I opened the book, careful to only touch the corners and only with the tissue wrapped around my fingers. The book itself was a low-budget version of Maximilian’s. It had a coated cardboard cover, nicer than what you’d find at an office store, but certainly not custom-made. No embossed monogram on the cover. The pages inside were off-white and slightly textured. The grain added additional depth to the sketches.

One by one, I turned the pages. I recognized many of the drawings from Beaulieu’s most recent collection. Some pages had two drawings: a smaller sketch in the top left corner, and a larger sketch, with some key elements modified, but overall quite similar to the smaller drawings. “Was he copying these?” I mused aloud, tapping on the two similar drawings of a tailored jacket.

“It sure looks like it.”

I kept turning the pages, stopping once or twice when I noticed words or phrases jotted down. They seemed to be notes about fabric and color or pattern choices, though, nothing that gave a hint about who might have killed him.

“I don’t think this is going to help,” Orphie said as I turned to the next page.

“Maybe not.” I started to agree with her, but stopped. The next page held a small design in the corner, a modified sketch in the center. Close-up drawings of French seams, an attached lining on a jacket, and a wide hem were also highlighted on the page.

But the thing that struck me the most was the color-blocking and slightly asymmetrical design. It was a signature style. And it sent shivers dancing over my skin.

Oh boy.

“Midori,” we both said at the same time.

“Those look like some of Midori’s designs from last season,” Orphie whispered.

I agreed. Beaulieu’s renditions were modified enough that, while there was a definite resemblance, saying he’d stolen a design would be difficult to prove.

But that’s just what it looked like That was definitely what it looked like from where I was standing.

I tucked the book back into the satchel, not really sure what to do with the ideas forming in my head. I had too many questions, first and foremost: Did Midori know that Beaulieu had been using her designs as inspiration?

“It’s not like I can just ask her,” I told Orphie after we returned the key to Raylene and headed back to Buttons & Bows.

“No, that would mean telling her that we snuck into his room, and that could get back to Gavin, and—”

“And we definitely don’t want that,” I said, although I suspected we had different reasons for wanting to keep our activities quiet.

When Orphie suggested she drop me off and she’d run to the market, I was all for it. “Nachos make everything better,” she said.

She had a point. A block of Velveeta and a can of Rotel made the perfect
queso
. It was a Texas delicacy, and I wouldn’t turn it down.

A little time alone would give me time to think about the implications of finding Beaulieu’s drawings and what they might mean.

Instead of taking me all the way home, she dropped me at the corner of Mockingbird Lane off the square. “I’ll walk from here,” I said when I saw Madelyn Brighton leaning into a shrub, snapping a picture of something with her camera.

“You know,” I said as she pulled up to the corner, “Gavin wants to solve this case. He’s an ‘act now, ask forgiveness later’ kind of guy.”

“Don’t worry about me, Harlow,” she said.

But I did. I wanted her to protect her heart and not fall for Gavin too fast. “Just be careful, okay?”

She squeezed my hand. “I will.”

I watched her drive off, wondering if we had the same definition of careful.

I didn’t have time to contemplate what trouble Orphie might be getting herself into with Gavin because Madelyn turned and saw me. She instantly straightened up, rushed over, thrust her camera toward me, and said, “Look at this. Just take a look.”

A close-up of a spiderweb, its strands delicately strung between the branches of a bush, lit up the digital screen. “It’s a work of art,” she continued. “Each bit is dependent on the one next to it. Without each strand, the web would lose its beauty.”

Her description was an awful lot like the pieces of a pattern. One missing or wrongly cut piece would change the entire look of a garment.

We fell into step together, walking in comfortable silence around the square. I looked over at her, struck, not for the first time, at how beautiful Madelyn’s skin was. It was the color of fine milk chocolate and had the dewy, unblemished look people paid thousands of dollars to get through moisturizers and skin treatments. “It’s genetics,” she had a habit of saying, her British accent emphasizing the “t” in the word. No matter what, she sounded highbrow and elegant, and I always sounded Southern casual. We were quite a pair.

We walked side by side, a big floppy pink hat covering her black hair and shading her face—another reason why her skin stayed so lovely—and me brushing my curls out of my face as the breeze kicked up.

Madelyn was a good sounding board. I filled her in on what Orphie and I had discovered in Beaulieu’s room and waited for her to give me some much-needed perspective. “So Midori has a motive?” she asked.

“She might.” I wasn’t actually sure if seeing the sketch qualified as a motive. “I don’t know if Beaulieu ever made the jacket, and if he did make it—or something else—does she even know? I’ve never seen anything by him that looks like it might have been inspired by her work. If she didn’t know, it wouldn’t be a motive, but if she did . . .”

Madelyn stopped in front of a plate-glass window and swung around to face me. “If she did, love, she’d have a very solid motive.”

“Yes, she would, wouldn’t she?”

Madelyn started walking again. “How do we find out if she knew?”

Exactly what I’d been wondering. “I could ask her.”

“I don’t know how well that’ll go over given that she’d probably get defensive.”

She was right, of course. Which meant I had to think of another way.

We turned the corner and walked past Two Scoops, the old-fashioned ice cream parlor with the red-and-white awnings and the quaint white wrought-iron chairs and table, past the florist, turning again as we reached the next corner.

My ringing cell phone interrupted us. I ducked under the overhang of one of the historic buildings to answer. Hattie’s voice burst into my ear. “Harlow, what the devil is goin’ on?”