A Custom Fit Crime (22 page)

“Or drink?” Gavin added.

Her eyes glazed, her lids drifting to half-mast. “Breakfast at Harlow’s,” she said. “I had c-coffee while I helped M-Midori organize patterns and sort through . . . through the Prêt-à-Porter rack.”

She stopped, her breathing growing heavy. Labored. My gut clenched, worry invading every one of my pores. She had the same poison in her that had killed Beaulieu. I reminded myself that she wouldn’t have been moved to an ordinary room if she was in danger. Then again, people relapsed. I squeezed her hand. “Come on, Orphie. You can fight this.”

Her eyelids fluttered, then opened. “I—I went to S-Seven G-Gables,” she muttered softly. “T-tea and s-scones.”

My gaze snapped to Will’s, then to Gavin’s. “Why’d you go to the inn?” I asked, my mind racing through the possibilities. Hattie and Raylene would have made the tea and scones, but any one of the various suspects could have poisoned Orphie’s food. They were all staying there, after all.

But Orphie’s eyes drifted closed and she didn’t answer. Panic set in. I pressed the nurse’s call button, standing back when a woman dressed in teal scrubs rushed in and assessed Orphie. “She’s all right,” she announced after an agonizingly long exam. “Her body’s fighting, but she needs rest.”

Relief flooded me. She was going to be okay. She
had
to be okay. But she wouldn’t be able to give us any more answers for the time being, which meant another visit to Seven Gables was in order.

After another minute, Will, Gavin, and I retreated to the hallway.

“So, Harlow,” Gavin said after the pneumatic door closed again. “I have to ask, did you poison your friend?”

The energy around the three of us pulsated and Will surged forward. “What the hell is your problem, McClaine?”

Gavin stepped back, but his jaw tightened, the veins in his neck pulsing. “You best watch yourself, Flores.”

This time I put my hand on Will’s shoulder, hoping he’d simmer down. His muscles bunched under my touch, but he stilled. “She didn’t have anything to do with that guy’s death.”

Gavin folded his arms over his chest. “He was stealing her designs. I have to ask.”

Will’s eyes darted my way before zeroing in again on Gavin. “That hardly makes her a murderer.”

“I agree,” he said.

I’d been ready to fire off another rebuttal, but stopped, staring at Gavin. “You do?”

“If you’re a murderer, I’m a rodeo star,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be doin’ my job if I didn’t pursue every avenue of investigation.”

Will’s fists were still clenched tight, but his shoulders loosened up. “So, what
do
you think?” he ground out.

“I think it could have been any one of the people at Buttons and Bows that morning,” he began, “and I think there must be a connection between Beaulieu and Miss Cates.”

His eyes clouded as he spoke Orphie’s name. Did he have real feelings for Orphie? Maybe his flirting and flippant nature was merely a ploy or a defense mechanism he used to protect himself from getting hurt. After all, in high school, he’d been shy and awkward—and had been picked on. Those were not things easily overcome.

Interesting.

“Cassidy?”

I blinked, coming out of my thoughts as Will said my name again. “A connection. Right.”

“Who would want both Orphie and Beaulieu dead, and why?”

The only thing that came to mind was the Maximilian book Orphie had taken.

I glanced at the closed door to Orphie’s room, debating with myself. Did I tell them, or did I not? Someone had tried to kill Orphie. What if it had something to do with the book? I had to tell them. Her safety was more important than her secrets.

“There is something,” I said, hoping it wouldn’t color their opinion of Orphie. Gavin seemed smitten, even if he’d only known Orphie for as long as it took to be thrown from a mechanical bull.

Gavin folded his arms over his chest again and Will leaned against the hospital wall. “What is it, darlin’?” Will said.

I gulped down my reservations and just blurted it out. “Orphie came here because she sto— uh, she’s in . . . possession . . . of one of Maximilian’s design books and . . . some of her designs were based on what’s in that book.”

They stared at me as if I were crazy. Clearly they didn’t understand. I gave them a frame of reference. “It would be like plagiarism. Like if a writer stole someone else’s words and claimed he’d written them. Designs are personal. They’re the creative work—and property—of the designer. You can’t just steal them.”

“Like Beaulieu was going to steal yours,” Gavin said.

And maybe Midori’s. “Exactly.”

“So if someone—like Beaulieu, for example,” Gavin said, his expression turning grim, “knew that she had the book and had used designs that weren’t hers, that would be a pretty decent motive.”

I glared at him. That was
not
the takeaway from this story. “She came here because she feels guilty and needed my advice. She plans to mail the book back. Orphie is
not
a killer. And she’s lying in there right this very minute because someone tried to do the same thing to her.”

“Which raises the question,” Will said. “Who would want to kill both Orphie and Beaulieu, and why?”

Gavin’s jaw pulsed. He hesitated, finally saying, “You know her the best, Harlow. Could she have poisoned herself?”

I balked. “Of course not!”

He sighed, shaking his head. “Desperate people do crazy things, Harlow. You’ve seen that in action.”

That was true. Since I’d been back in Bliss, I’d seen three murders, each committed by people desperate to hide the truth or protect some secret. Someone in Bliss was desperate right now to have killed Beaulieu and for attempting to kill Orphie. But there was no way I would believe she had done this to herself to redirect suspicion.

“Someone did this to her,” I said, turning and pushing through the door and into the hospital room once again. I needed to ask her one question and to reassure myself that she was going to be okay.

She looked fragile lying in the sterile bed. Her eyelids fluttered open as Will and Gavin filed in behind me. “Orphie,” I said, figuring it was best just to come right out with it. “Did Beaulieu know that you had Maximilian’s book?”

Her fingers curled around the blanket, bunching the material in her fists. “Wh-what?”

I cupped my hand over hers, looking her square in the eye. “Someone killed Beaulieu and tried to kill you. We need to figure out why.”

“The book . . . ?”

“He didn’t know, did he?” In a trial, that question probably would have garnered an
objection, leading the witness
from the prosecution, but I knew Gavin wanted Orphie to be innocent. He kept quiet.

But instead of saying,
Of course he didn’t know!
Orphie pulled her hand away from mine and looked down at the crumpled blanket.

My spine stiffened. “Orphie? He didn’t know, did he?”

One of the men behind me shifted on his feet and I felt the tension in the air grow heavy.

She nodded, lifting her gaze back to mine, peering at me through her muddy eyelashes. “He knew,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

My heart sank. I thought about the night she’d shown up on my porch, pounding on the door in the middle of the night. “Did you know he was going to be here? Is that why you came?” I asked, knowing the answer deep down.

As her fingers worked the blanket, Gavin sidestepped around me and leaned down to whisper in her ear. Her hands stilled, and then relaxed. “H-he sent me an . . . an e-mail,” she said.

She stopped and Gavin nodded to her.

I glanced at Will, lifting my eyebrows in surprise. Gavin and Orphie. They had a connection.

She cleared her throat and continued. “He didn’t know about the book, but he said he knew that I’d stolen Maximilian’s designs and he was going to tell everyone, there’d be a story about it in the newspaper, and I’d be ruined. Unless . . .” Her voice trembled with emotion. “Unless I agreed to pay him. He knew about us being roommates in Manhattan. He said he’d suggested having you as part of the magazine article, and he could pull the plug on that just as easily as he’d made it happen.”

This time she did meet my gaze. “I couldn’t let him destroy
your
career over a stupid mistake
I’d
made.”

“He stole ideas,” I said, trying to understand. “He tried to steal my designs. He had sketches of Midori’s designs. He was blackmailing you—”

“He has—
had
a reputation. He was
somebody
, and I’m nobody. I believed him, that he’d destroy any future I might have, and that he’d take you down, too. He knows—
knew
people. I couldn’t let that happen, so I agreed to meet him here.”

“Why?” Gavin asked. “To what end? Were you going to pay him?”

She nodded. “I was going to give him the book, b-but I couldn’t.”

She looked down at her hands again, ashamed. “But he died before I could pay him.”

Gavin notched his cowboy hat back and looked her straight in the eye. “I need to ask, sweetheart, and I need a straight answer.”

She lowered her chin in one nod.

“Did you kill Beaulieu?”

“I’ve done some things I’m not proud of,” she said quietly, “but no, I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill Beaulieu.”

The big question suddenly front and center in my mind was whether or not someone else knew about the Maximilian book in Orphie’s possession. Was that why she’d been targeted? But that still didn’t answer the question of why Beaulieu had been killed.

“My head hurts from thinking about this,” I told Will as we walked up the flagstone path in front of my house. We stopped short at the base of the porch steps. “That was closed when we left,” I whispered, seeing the door cracked open.

“Yes, it was.”

I searched the yard for a weapon, zeroing in on a trowel tucked under a geranium plant by the steps. I grabbed it with one hand and grabbed Will’s arm with my other hand, and together, we tiptoed into the house.

I stopped short at the sight, my breath stalling in my chest. Most of what I owned appeared to be on the floor. My dress forms lay on their sides, the outfits that had been on them disheveled and askew—including Mama’s wedding dress. Magazines had been dumped from their rack, patterns were in a pile on the workroom table, and every cookbook from my collection was on the kitchen floor.

“Do you think they’re gone?” I whispered.

Will snatched the trowel from my hand and skirted around me. Silent as a panther, he crept through the gathering room, into the dining room, quickly surveying the kitchen and utility room. He peeked out the back window before heading toward the stairs. He held one finger to his lips, pointing to himself and then to the stairs.

My temples throbbed, my head swimming with fear. What if the killer was upstairs? What if Will couldn’t subdue him—or her—with a garden tool?

He disappeared around the bend at the landing. The house creaked, like all old houses. My muscles clenched with each sound. I moved forward, and then, like a beacon from a lighthouse, the floor lamp in the workroom flickered, finally turning on. Meemaw.

I crept forward, jumping at a movement to my right. Earl Grey scurried past me. “Oh, thank God you’re okay!” I whispered as he disappeared into the kitchen.

In the workroom, the lamp clicked on and off. I paused in the threshold, gripping one of the French doors. “Meemaw?”

A series of sounds and movements went around the room like a trail of dominos triggering the actions. The light stopped flickering, illuminating the room. The curtains next to it billowed, even though the window was closed. They blew to the right, lightly dusting the last outfit hanging on the privacy screen. It fell to the floor, sliding across as if it were being pulled by an invisible string. Once it stopped, Meemaw’s old Singer came to life, the presser foot clamping down and the motor bringing the needle up and down, up and down, up and down. It went faster and faster, the sewing machine bouncing across the table until it balanced on the edge.

“Meemaw, stop!” I dodged the mess on the floor, pushing the Singer back to the center of the table just before it crashed to the floor.

“Meemaw,” I said, hoping she would calm down. The room fell quiet. “What happened here?” I asked, knowing she couldn’t answer me.

The pipes in the ceiling were one of her go-to methods. If only we knew Morse code, it might have been effective. The pipes groaned and clanked, starting slowly, then growing as she became more agitated again.

“Loretta Mae Cassidy,” I said, my voice as stern as I could make it. It was like scolding a precocious child—only worse. “This is not helping. Listen, how about you clank once for no, twice for yes?”

I’d seen that type of thing in movies. Maybe it would work now. It was worth a try. “Okay?”

Two clanks. She was game.

Excitement bubbled inside me. This could really work!

Now that I had her here, I backtracked to the murder itself. “Meemaw, did you see who murdered Beaulieu?”

One clank. No. Which was what I expected since he was most likely poisoned before he’d come to my shop.

I fast-forwarded to today. “Did you see who did this to Buttons and Bows?” I asked as I bent to pick up spools of thread, tossing them into a basket.

Two clanks.
Yes! I knew she had to have seen them.

“Who? Who came in here?”

Silence. Because, of course, she couldn’t answer that question with a yes or a no.

I kept getting ahead of myself. “Meemaw, can you tell me who did this?”

One clank.

“Why not? You said you saw who it was.”

Two clanks
.

What did she mean? “Did you recognize the person?”

One clank.

“Okay. Did you see a face?”

One clank.

I threw up my hands in frustration. “Then, Meemaw, I don’t understand! You said you saw who did this but didn’t see anything helpful?”

Two clanks
.

I tried one more tactic. “Was it a woman?” This question seemed easy enough. Quinton had been the only man around that morning, aside from Beaulieu. If it wasn’t a woman who’d ransacked the place, then Quinton was the likely culprit. If it
was
a woman, then I was still at square one.