A Custom Fit Crime (19 page)

Being looked at. That was a nice Southern euphemism for me being a suspect. I wanted to deny it, but another thought occurred to me. Could it all have been a plan to set me up? Or maybe to set up Midori or Jeanette! Although their motives were weak, they were still the most likely suspects. “Why was he killed that day and in my house?” I said aloud. “Whoever did this riffled through my designs and made sure that it happened after Beaulieu had been with his rival designers, including me. What if that was the plan all along?”

He leaned against the porch railing. “Who would have done that?”

“It could have been any of them. If he had something on one of them . . .” I came back to blackmail as a motive. “They all drove up to Bliss together.”

“You know, Harlow, you could let the sheriff do his job. You don’t have to be the one to solve the crime.”

“No, but I might be able to help and get it done faster, and if I do, Hoss and Mama won’t have any issues, I won’t be a suspect, and the wedding can go on as planned.”

“Hoss and Tessa love each other,” he said. He wrapped his arm around me again. “We’ll figure this out, darlin’, and everything will be okay.”

Not
you’ll
figure this out, but
we’ll
figure this out. Will considered us a
we.
Warmth flowed through me, in part at his commitment to Tessa, Hoss, and true love, but mostly because he saw us as a team.

“Already working on it,” I said.

I’d taken to calling the ancient pickup truck that had come to me along with Meemaw’s house Buttercup, in part because of the mellow butter yellow color, and in part because of the curved fenders and cab, both of which reminded me of the delicate petals on the flowers. But not even being cocooned in the cab of the old Ford could shake off the chill that had settled inside me.

“No.” My voice sounded hollow. I’d been around murder too much lately, and it was beginning to wear me down. Then again, I’d had a hand in solving each one, so that counted for something. Heck, instead of accusing me, Gavin should be knocking on my door asking for my help.

I saw Orphie’s car pull away as I parked on the street in front of Seven Gables, hopping down from the truck and trudging up the walkway. I tried to muster up some enthusiasm for the wedding so I could talk with Hattie and Raylene about the plans, but the door was flung open before I even got to the porch and Raylene’s expression made me stop cold. “Is your mama’s weddin’ on or off? The way I heard it, Miss Tessa isn’t even talkin’ to the sheriff, she returned his ring, and there ain’t gonna be a weddin’.”

I felt my eyebrows V. Oh Lord. “She returned the ring?” I said, zeroing in on that little fact. Mama loved that ring. Things were a lot more serious than I’d thought. For the first time, I started to doubt that I could stop the wedding from derailing altogether.

She nodded, her lips drawn into a thin line. Behind her, guests milled around. Esmeralda held a teacup. Midori flipped through a magazine. Jeanette walked into the kitchen, plate in hand. And Lindy descended the staircase, slowing as she saw me.

“What am I supposed to do, Harlow?” Raylene demanded. “The flowers?”

Assuming Mama hadn’t canceled the order, of course. “Take delivery. Is everything else on schedule?” I asked.

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. There will be a wedding, Raylene, and we’ll all be here just as soon as it’s over. Y’all just go forward as planned.”

It took another few minutes to reassure her, but finally she was ready to go back to her homemade barbecue sauce, her bacon, cheddar, and cranberry dip, and her petite biscuits. As soon as she did, I turned and bolted back toward Buttercup, jumping into the cab and hightailing it straight to Mama’s house. She could avoid me all she wanted, but she couldn’t run and she couldn’t hide, and it was high time for a major intervention.

• • •

Mama lived in an unincorporated area of Bliss. The road to her house led me past the Bliss Country Club and up a winding road and into Hidden Creek, a small country neighborhood where I’d grown up and my mother still lived. The house was an old Craftsman style with stone columns and front steps leading to a flagstone porch. The closer I got to her house, the more abundantly the flowers and flora grew. Her charm in action. Trees. Weeds. Flowers, particularly bluebells and daisies. I pulled onto the long driveway, passing a thicket of knockout roses, parking in an asphalt slip across from the house.

“Mama!” I yelled, slamming the truck door behind me and storming across the grass. I plowed past the flower stems that stretched across the steps and grabbed the door handle, bursting in. “Mama, what in tarnation are you thinking?” I bellowed. “You are not calling off your marriage to Hoss McClaine.”

I’d realized that it was more than simply calling off the wedding; it was calling off the whole love affair and the happily ever after. It was the one thing the Cassidy women, excepting my grandmother and my granddaddy Dalton, hadn’t managed. Love didn’t tend to last for us. I’d wondered if it would last for Will and me, but I was coming around to the idea that he could accept and love me, despite—or maybe because of— my Cassidy quirks.

“Mama?”

No response. Nothing but silence. I passed the dining room, the sitting room, and stopped at what she liked to call the gathering room. I knew she was here. The garage door outside was open and her burnt orange Jeep was parked inside. The front door had been unlocked, and while a lot of people in Bliss didn’t regularly lock up, Mama had taken to sliding the dead bolt when she wasn’t home. “Too many deaths in Bliss, darlin’,” she told me.

“Mama!” The word sounded loud in the empty house, despite the upholstered furniture and carpeting to absorb my voice.

I glanced in the kitchen—nope—called upstairs—nope—and then hung a right and went through the laundry room and out the back. The screen door banged closed behind me. “Mama!” I bellowed again.

I didn’t see her anywhere in the yard, so I trudged across the lawn, straight toward the cedar, slope-roofed greenhouse she’d added in her backyard ten years ago. It was a small structure on a cement pad, complete with electricity and rows of benches for her plants. Her charm never waned, so she grew plants year-round, never worrying about what the weather was like outside.

“Mama—!”

She popped her head out from the top of the Dutch door, her curly hair held off her face with a wide headband. Mama was the spitting image of her mama, Coleta, who looked just like Loretta Mae. All the Cassidy women looked alike, from their wavy auburn hair to their trademark blond streak sprouting from their temples. Only right at this moment, Mama was looking a might frazzled. Not her usual put-together self.

“Good Lord, Harlow, is there a tornado coming?”

I jammed my hands on my hips, planting my feet and leveling my gaze at her. “No, there is not a tornado coming.”

“Well, then, what in heaven’s name are you hollering about?”

“Mama,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, “you know perfectly well why I’m here.”

She feigned an innocent look, batting her eyes like Mae West. “I’m sure I don’t,” she said, as if she were some traditional Southern belle instead of the feisty, fiery Tessa Parker Cassidy.

“I’m sure you do,” I said, dishing it right back. “You are not going to call off your wedding, so you can just stop telling people that.”

“It’s my life,” she said as she turned away from the door and disappeared back into the greenhouse.

I marched over to the Dutch door and clamped my hands on the base. “And you’re meant to spend your life with Hoss McClaine.”

She held a pair of clippers, her hands covered in snug leather garden gloves, and she snipped at the miniature bonsai tree. Just as soon as she cut one sprig off, another appeared in its place. “I can spend my life with whomever I want, darlin’, and not you or Hoss or anyone else can tell me what I’m meant to do.”

Okay, so maybe that had been the wrong tactic. Mama was superstitious to a fault, tossing salt over her shoulder, avoiding black cats, and never stepping on cracks. But she was also fiercely independent, the result, I was sure, of my father’s walking out on us and of her having to raise Red and me on her own. “But I can tell you what I know, Mama, and that’s that you love Hoss, and he loves you. You belong together.”

I caught a faint glimmer in her eyes before she looked back down at the bonsai and clipped at it some more.

I’d struck a chord. Opening the door, I stepped inside. “I didn’t kill Beaulieu, Mama—”

She whipped around, flailing her clippers at me. “Well, of course you didn’t! And shame on anyone who could think you did.”

I filled in the rest of the sentence that she left hanging there between us.
Like Hoss McClaine.

“They’re just doing their jobs, and the man was found dead at my shop. Of course they’re going to look at me,” I said, sounding far more practical about it than I felt inside. I didn’t want Hoss and Gavin suspecting me any more than Mama did, but I understood it. They had to follow any leads in a tough case.

“Pft,” she said, attacking the poor bonsai. The plants all around her seemed to give a collective shudder in response to her.

“I told Raylene that the wedding is on.”

She froze, clippers open, and slowly lifted her chin to look at me. “Darlin’, I appreciate what you’re tryin’ to do, but you just call her back up and tell her to cancel everything.”

“No, Mama.
I
appreciate what
you’re
trying to do, but I’m not going to let you ruin your future over this.”

She didn’t blink. Didn’t hardly move a muscle. “That’s the point, isn’t it? How can I have a future with a man who could think my daughter could kill a man?”

My eyes teared. Her love for me filled my soul with warmth, but damn it, she was misguided and as stubborn as a damn pack mule. “Mama, you’re the one who told me what a good man Hoss is. You told me he accepts you and your charm, and he’s fair, loyal, and as honest as the day is long.”

“All of which has nothin’ to do with him even givin’ a whisper of a thought to you or any of my kin bein’ capable of murder.”

“Maybe not, but you have to trust him, Mama. Just as surely as he accepts you for who you are, you have to know that he’s got to do his job. And that’s what he and Gavin are doing. They’re good at it, too. They’re not out to hang me, or anyone else. They just want to figure out what happened.”

She finally set her clippers on her potting table, leaning one hip against the freestanding cedar table as she peeled off her gloves. Her lower lip quivered, just barely, and her left eye twitched. Around her, the flowers she tended so lovingly began to droop, their color fading to a paler version, their stems and stalks turning brown and taking on a brittle look.

I felt the confusion emanating from her. The tips of my fingers tingled and I swallowed the emotion bubbling up inside me. It wouldn’t do for both of us to lose control, and from the looks of the plants all around us, she was not winning her battle. One of us had to keep it together. “Where is he?”

She looked up at the slanted ceiling, chewing on her lower lip. “How should I know? We split up.”

“No, Mama, you are having a momentary lapse in judgment, is all. I’m going to find Hoss and we’re going to sort this all out.”

She released her lower lip and a second later, one side of her mouth lifted in a faint smile. “You know somethin’?”

“You mean besides the fact that you’re getting married tomorrow to the man who completes you?”

She laughed. A good sign. “Yes, Jerry Mcguire, besides that.”

I smiled to myself. She hadn’t nixed the wedding again. A very good sign.

“Mama, how about a deal? If I can figure out which one of the people with Beaulieu killed him, you get hitched, as planned. Your dress is ready. My dress is almost ready. Raylene and Hattie are ready. Even the weather is cooperating! There’s no reason for you not to become Tessa Parker Cassidy McClaine.”

Her answer was a hefty shrug of her shoulders. “We’ll see,” she said, which in my experience meant it could go either way. But I took that as a lifeline, choosing to be optimistic. The planning and preparations would go on.

I left her to her plants and spent the drive back to town thinking about Midori, Jeanette, the Dallas and New York models, and even, to my dismay, Orphie and her secret about Maximilian’s book. Could Beaulieu have known about it, and could he have been blackmailing her? I still didn’t think Orphie could kill a man, and certainly not Beaulieu, but it got me thinking. How far and wide was his reach? Of everyone who’d come to Bliss with him, who did he have the longest relationship with?

I ran through the list in my head one more time, stopping short on someone I hadn’t really given much thought to. Lindy Reece. She’d done an article on Beaulieu before, had been to his atelier, and had her pulse on the fashion industry. Could he have been blackmailing her, and could that have led her to murder?

Or perhaps there was a different reason altogether.

Either way, I had to find out, and I knew just where to start.

The Jebediah James Library was one of the newer buildings in Bliss. It was nondescript and flat roofed, but still, it had character. It was named after Senator James, husband to Zinnia James, who was one of my biggest fans.

I hadn’t had much spare time to read, so I hadn’t signed up for a library card since I’d come home to Bliss. No time like the present. My boots thudded lightly against the tight loops of the carpet inside the building. The library was completely quiet.

“Afternoon.” The librarian, a woman with gunmetal gray hair cropped close to her head, clasped her hands in front of her at the circulation desk. “What can I do for you now?”

Looking at the librarian, I got a vision of her in jeans, a blinged-out T-shirt, and a lightweight Southwestern vest. Nothing that I would or could make for her, but it was her style more than the mousy pants and beige blouse she currently wore. Somewhere down deep, she had a sassy side she hadn’t tapped into yet. Either that or she felt compelled to dress a certain way for her job. After all, people had a certain perception of what a librarian looked like, and this woman was definitely living up to that expectation.