A Custom Fit Crime (21 page)

He laughed. “Not a bit of it, but I think you can handle whatever’s thrown at you. You’re a pioneer like that, ready to dig in and do what needs to be done.”

I didn’t feel that way right now, but it sounded nice. Reassuring. The kind of thing you wanted the man you . . . cared about . . . to say. His face disappeared from the window, reappearing a moment later at the front door. He emerged, pulling me into a hug and dipping his head until his lips nuzzled my neck. “You worried about the wedding?” he asked, his breath warm against my neck.

“That, and the murder.”

“First things first,” he said after another few seconds of nuzzling. “We can make sure Hoss and your mama get hitched. You worry about getting the sheriff to the church and I’ll handle your mother. She won’t be able to say no to me, no matter how hard she tries.”

I already had Hoss taken care of, so we were halfway there. I smiled. “I bet she won’t. I know I can’t.”

The heaviness of the air on the porch abated slightly and the sturdy white rocking chairs behind us started up, moving back and forth, back and forth. They creaked, and with each forward motion of the curved legs it sounded like someone—namely Meemaw—saying
ah
, and with each backward rock, saying
love
.
Ah, love. Ah, love. Ah, love
.

Will must have heard it, too. He shot a surprised glance at the chairs, but then his face relaxed. Bless his heart, he’d accepted the Cassidy charms better than I ever could have hoped for. Including the glimpses of Meemaw’s presence he saw every now and again.

Meemaw and her matchmaking had made a good pair with the two of us.

“Now, about Beaulieu, what’s on your mind?”

I told him the latest about the sheriff’s suspicion of poison and the fern. “I searched it on my phone to see what it looks like and I don’t have anything like it here on my property.”

“If it grows in Texas, anyone could have gotten hold of it,” he said. “Access to something like that is a lot different than getting hold of a monitored narcotic or some other drug.”

“Easier,” I said, “but you’d have to know that it was poisonous.” Another check in Lindy’s column. She knew how to do research, was a Texas native, and who knows? Maybe she had the stuff growing in her Dallas yard.

“So, what’s your plan now?” he asked. He didn’t like that I tended to get wrapped up in mysteries wherever I went, but he didn’t fight it, either.

We sat on the rocking chairs, keeping them going with our feet pushing against the wooden slats of the porch. A cocoon of warmth moved around us in a constant stream. If I could see it, I would have described it as a figure eight in a pattern of continual light. “I want to find out if Lindy knew Beaulieu more than she’s been letting on,” I said, following my hunch. “She’s too focused on him, and an article about him dying—murdered, even, for his designs? That could be way more powerful than the article she was going to write about three local designers. What if she plotted the whole thing?”

“You think she’d kill someone to make the story better?”

I shrugged. “Sounds a tiny bit better than killing because your boss is a jerk and humiliates you, or because you don’t like the latest designs he wants you to model.” Which was the best motive I’d come up with for Barbi and Esmeralda.

“How was the poison administered?” Will asked. “No matter who did it, he had to ingest it somehow, right? If we figure that out, maybe it’ll help narrow the suspect list.”

There it was again. We. As in part of a team. I reached over and dusted the tips of my fingers over his forearm. I drew in a bolstering breath, peeking through the window behind me to make sure we were alone.

“No one’s home,” he said, answering my unasked question.

“Orphie?”

“Wasn’t here when I arrived. I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s probably with Gavin,” I said. “They’re, um, seeing each other.”

Will stopped rocking, planting his booted feet on the floor. “Is that right? Gavin McClaine and your friend?” A low chuckle started in his throat and moved into a full laugh. “Maybe it’ll make him nicer, you think?”

I grinned, his laughter contagious. “We can hope.”

“The poison,” he prompted.

“Nana brought over some of her goat cheese. We had crackers. Mama made lemonade and tea—almost dumped a pitcher of it on Beaulieu, too. Mama and Nana served all of us. But neither one of them has a motive, of course, and no one else fixed the food or drinks. I don’t think any of it was ever left unattended, either. The sheriff took the glasses and pitcher, though, so if that’s how he took it in, Hoss’ll find out.”

“So it could have been any of them,” he said. “The models, the photographer, the journalist, the designer. They were all right here.”

“Not the models,” I said. “They were dropped off at Seven Gables before the rest of them came here.”

“Which lets them off the hook.”

We sat, just rocking, both of us thinking. It was comfortable silence like nothing I’d ever experienced before. The only sounds were the creaking of the chairs and the cicadas hidden in the trees. The occasional truck rumbled by, but Mockingbird Lane was a quiet street. Almost ominous at the moment given my somber mood.

“Why else would someone have wanted him dead?”

I mused aloud, not really expecting an answer, but Will offered one anyway. “Midori could be jealous of him as a designer.”

“I think he was stealing her designs,” I said, hoping he didn’t ask how I knew that. I hurried on. “He was trying to steal
my
designs. The sheriff found sketches in his pocket of pieces I have in my shop.” I snapped my head up. “He hated Bliss. He made that perfectly clear from the second he walked in, but if he wanted my designs, he had to come here.”

“Okay, but you didn’t kill him. Midori could have, but again, how?”

“And unless she knew he was using her designs, she’d have no motive.”

“But maybe she
did
know. Hoss had to consider
you
as the killer for that very reason. If he was stealing her designs, she might have wanted to put a stop to it. Can you ask her?”

Oh yes, that had risen to the top of my list of things to do. Right after I made sure Mama and Hoss got hitched.

My cell phone rang from the depths of my oversized purse. I riffled through the contents until I found it, glancing at the screen. Madelyn.

“Hey,” I said, happy to hear her voice.

“You’d best get down to Presby,” she said in her British accent.

“To the hospital?” My insides clenched. Mama? Nana? Granddaddy? All the people I loved—with the exception of Will because he was sitting next to me—raced through my head.

“Your friend Orphie.”

The nerves in my gut jettisoned to my head, making me feel as if it were stuffed full of cotton. “What happened?”

“I don’t have the full story, but from what I gather, she was at the bead shop when she just collapsed. Josie said she turned green, acted like she was nauseated and headed for the restroom, and then she just fell. Josie called 911 and they brought her here.”

“How did you—?”

“I’m here to get some statistics for the Bliss Web site I’m working on for the town. I saw the emergency team wheel her in on a gurney.”

The vise around my insides tightened. “Is she . . . will she . . .”

“I don’t know, love.”

I stood without thinking, grabbing my purse from the porch and blindly walking down the steps. “On my way.”

Will was by my side the next second, guiding me by the elbow. “What’s going on?”

I headed toward my truck as I told him what Madelyn had said, my voice sounding hollow as I heard myself utter the words, “Orphie . . . collapsed . . . hospital . . .”

He took the keys from my hand, opening the passenger door for me. “I’ll drive,” he said.

“Good idea.” I slid in, and seconds later, I was having a déjà vu experience. Not so long ago, we’d driven to Presbyterian, Bliss’s only hospital, to stop a killer, Now we were speeding down the road toward praying we’d find Orphie alive and on the mend.

We stopped at the information desk where an elderly volunteer gave me Orphie’s room number and pointed us in the right direction. She’d already been moved from the ICU to a regular room, a very good sign. Will stayed by my side as I half walked, half ran down the wide hallways, rode the elevator up two floors, and finally found her room. The cloying mixture of antiseptic and sickness filled my nostrils, pushing down into my gut until I was nauseated with it.

It hung around me like a nebula lying thickly around a lone planet. “She’ll be fine,” I muttered, trying to reassure myself.

Will kept silent, his hand on my lower back as we found her room and pushed open the large, pneumatic door. It closed behind us slowly and with a soft
whoosh
.

The curtains around the first bed were drawn. The second bed was empty. No overcrowding at Presby. At least Orphie had her own room.

I found the opening in the curtain and peeked through. The bed was slightly inclined and she was propped up by several pillows. Her eyes were closed, her breathing steady, her hair spilled gently over the pillow. Even in repose, she had that angelically lovely quality about her. I had a flash in my mind of her in a lightweight clingy knit skirt and a ruched top with a crisscrossed front, both in soft lavender. I took it as another sign that she was going to be fine. At least that’s what I told myself. “Orphie?”

Her eyelids fluttered.

“Orphie?” I said again, this time slipping through the curtain and taking her hand. “Can you hear me?”

Her eyelids quivered again, but this time they cracked open. “Harlow.”

I perched on the side of the bed and took her hand. “How do you feel?”

She managed a little smile. “Like a million bucks.”

I couldn’t pussyfoot around, so I just blurted out my question. “What happened, Orphie?”

What there was of her smile faded. “I felt a little sick, but I tried to just keep going. Your friend Josie was showing me how to string felt beads. And then it just hit me. I . . . my stomach . . .”

She stopped, glancing over my shoulder at Will.

“Your stomach was upset?” I asked, letting her off the hook for giving us the down and dirty details.

She nodded. “I thought I could make it back to your house, but . . . but . . . I couldn’t. I lost it in the bathroom, and then I . . . I just collapsed.”

Behind me, the door whooshed open, followed by the thud of cowboy boots hitting the linoleum floor. I turned to see Deputy Sheriff Gavin McClaine hurry in. He was clean-shaven but still managed to look tousled. He could have stepped right into a TV show about a powerful, good-looking Southern lawman. The women would fall at his feet.

Me? He got my craw and I just wanted to throttle him for showing up here after Orphie had gone through such an ordeal.

Except they were, apparently, seeing each other.

He slowed once he saw us next to the hospital bed, nodding at Will as he sidled past him. He came up beside me, moving so he was next to the bed and leaning down close to Orphie, his expression softening. “How are you holding up, Miss Cates?” he drawled, the charm he normally dripped replaced by concern.

If I’d been able to catch Orphie’s eye, I would have sent her a warning look. Gavin was like a snake with blue eyes, drawing you in before he shot out an attack. The conversation between him and Lindy Reece was front and center in my mind. Either he suspected Orphie of having something to do with Beaulieu’s murder, or he was using Orphie to get more information about me, Beaulieu, and the whole ugly situation. Maybe both. No matter what, I was afraid this was all just a game to him. I easily envisioned him with a toothpick or blade of grass, ready to spin his six-shooter and take out Jesse James or some other old-time outlaw.

But Orphie didn’t look my way. She remained focused on Gavin. “Doctor said I’ll live,” she said, managing a pained smile.

“About that.” Gavin skirted around me, pulling up the chair that had been pushed into the corner.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and expectant. Oh Lord, she was enamored with him. With Gavin McClaine. The overzealous, pompous deputy. Good God, I’d thought Orphie had better taste than that.

He cleared his throat again. “I just talked to the doctor. They’re still waitin’ on the results from some of the tests, but it seems pretty clear that you ingested poison.”

What little color Orphie had in her cheeks instantly vanished. “Poison?” she repeated, her voice scarcely more than a whisper.

“What?” I said, squeezing her hand, bolstered by Will’s hand on my shoulder.

“There’s more,” Gavin said, grimacing. “The symptoms are consistent with a plant. Something called a sago palm . . .”

My temples pounded, drowning out the rest of his voice. The sago palm. “That’s the same poison that killed Beaulieu,” I said, my voice strained.

Will’s hand tightened on my shoulder, just barely, but enough to bring me back to the moment.

Gavin nodded. “One and the same. I’m afraid this was an attempted murder.” He looked back at Orphie and once again, a soft, reassuring smile graced his lips. “Thank the Lord it didn’t work.”

She pulled her hand away from mine and held it out to Gavin. I watched, shocked, as he placed his, palm down, in hers, their fingers wrapping around each other’s hand. “Wh-who?” she managed.

Gavin broke his connection with Orphie long enough to shoot me a penetrating look. “I don’t know yet, but believe me, I will find out, and whoever it is will be strung up by their heels.”

I’d Googled the sago palm after the sheriff told me about it, and found that symptoms can start quickly, or take up to twelve hours. That didn’t narrow down the time frame much. I perched on the side of the bed, edging between my friend and the deputy. “Orphie, what did you eat today?”