A Custom Fit Crime (26 page)

I tapped the toe of my pump, thinking. “Not old compared to you, me, or anyone else in the normal world, but old compared to other models. I look at Esmeralda and Barbi and they’re babies. They’re like Gracie—”

“They are
not
like Gracie.”

“Agewise, they’re like Gracie,” I amended. “Beyond twenty, if a model hasn’t made it, she probably won’t.”

“So the designers want children to model their clothes.” He didn’t shake his head, but from his tone, he might as well have.

“Unless they stay completely out of the sun, they’ll start getting wrinkles in their twenties. And then there’s gravity and skin elasticity and all that other stuff teenagers don’t have to worry about. Perfect bodies, perfect skin, perfect hair. It all starts being a little less perfect the older a woman gets.”

This time he did shake his head, clearly mystified by the realities of the modeling industry. “That completely depends on your perspective,” he said, pulling me into an embrace. His hand slipped down to my hip and he drew me closer. “Curves and wrinkles, and whatever else life throws your way is perfectly fine with me.”

I laughed. “You’re easy.”

“No, just in love.”

I lost my breath. He’d said it again. It was real.

He continued on with the conversation rather than arguing the finer points of modeling, as if what he’d just said hadn’t been monumental. “So the Dallas models haven’t made it?”

I gulped, getting control of the emotions flouncing through me. “Midori’s here in Dallas, not in New York, and she’s good, but she’s not like Stella McCartney or Donna Karan, so working for her steadily? No, they haven’t made it.”

Examining another designer’s garments went against my nature, and until this moment, I hadn’t felt a need to, as curious as I was about what the models had said. But my instincts had kicked in and were telling me to take a closer look. I held my hand out, letting my fingers dance gingerly over the fabric of the first dress. I wasn’t Gracie, so no visions accosted me. No memories flooded my consciousness. No clues surfaced, as much as I wished they would.

Will continued to watch as I lifted the first of Midori’s dresses off the hook, slipping the shoulders from the hanger. Having no clue what I was looking for, I simply ran my hand along the neckline, then down either side, and finally, draping the skirt over my arm, I felt along the hemline. The hem had to be almost two inches wide. Unusual, but another of Midori’s signature couture elements. While other designers made invisible hems, she made a point of incorporating the hem into the overall look of the garment.

My hand stopped at a knot in the seam on one side. She’d used French seams, the finishing work on the dress impeccable. I flipped the seam so I could examine it. There was a gap, large enough for my index finger to fit in. Calling for a finger, actually. I obliged, digging mine into the hole and feeling around.

“Did you find something?” Will asked, peering at the hemline of the dress I was digging into.

I withdrew my finger and slipped the dress back on the hanger. “Not a thing.”

“What are you looking for, Nancy?”

I cocked one eyebrow upward at him. “Nancy Drew’s a little dated, don’t you think?” There were a million and one fictional female detectives who’d be a better comparison. “How about Brenda Leigh Johnson?” I quipped. “From
The Closer
?”

“You can be whoever you want to be,” he said. “What are you looking for?”

“I wish I knew. Midori was here when Beaulieu was murdered. She was with him on the road, so she could have put something into his coffee. Twice I heard the models say something about the fit of her clothes, and then there’s the fact that her models are so much older than the average.”

He seemed riveted. Waiting expectantly. As if I’d make some deductions just as brilliant as Brenda Leigh Johnson’s and would suddenly reveal just who the guilty party was. Kyra Sedgwick made it look so easy.

If only.

“I keep coming back to why,” I said. “Why would her clothes fit wrong? Why would she choose to work with older models?”

“Any answers?” he asked, his expression turning skeptical. Figuring out some elusive answers to a murder via a few custom-fit dresses did seem far-fetched.

I folded my arms, tapping the fingers of one hand in a steady rhythm against my forearm. “Nothing. Not a darn one.”

I checked the clock again. Midori was going to be here in fifteen minutes, and then it would be time to get ready for the wedding. I turned back to the dresses, wondering what I was missing but stopping short when the bells on the front jingled faintly, barely audible from behind the closed French doors. I held my breath, but it wasn’t Midori. Gracie came in, framed in the threshold of the door. Zinnia James was right behind her.

“For heaven’s sake, Harlow Jane, hadn’t you best get ready for the wedding?” Mrs. James said, Southernness dripping from her words like honey.

“Yes, ma’am. I will be in just a few minutes.”

Mrs. James’s iron gray hair was pulled back in a sophisticated do, and her tailored outfit conveyed just the right combination of power and grace. I’d made plenty of outfits for her over the past year, and I was quite sure that she’d realize all of her dreams throughout the next decade as a result.

“I found Gracie glued to the rocking chair on the porch,” she said. “She won’t hardly say a word to me.” The look she gave Will could have been construed as a silent chastisement for raising such an impolite daughter, but the truth was that Zinnia James adored both Gracie and Will Flores and ushering her into the house was her way of showing concern.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Gracie, noticing right off the bat that she wasn’t wearing the sweetheart dress Jeanette and I had made for her. Instead she had on a plain eyelet sleeveless blouse and a flouncy off-the-rack skirt. The sweetheart dress appeared to be folded up in a plastic grocery bag, the top of the bag twisted and clutched in Gracie’s hand.

She held out the plastic bag, her arm trembling. “I—I can’t wear this. Too m-many—”

She broke off, enough wherewithal about her to sneak a look at Mrs. James.

“It’s okay,” I said. The circle of people who knew about the Cassidy charms was growing. It included Zinnia James, an old friend of my grandmother and related, directly and in a roundabout way, to the line of charmed girls herself. Bliss was like a soap opera, complete with relationship twists and turns to rival the TV show
Dallas
. And then some. I needed a family tree printed out just to keep all the little offshoots straight in my head.

“Darlin’, I’ve told you before, I’d like you to consider me your grandmama. A girl can never have too many grandmothers, you know.”

Gracie gulped, her chest noticeably heaving. “I c-can’t w-wear it.”

“But it’s brand-new,” I said. “There’s no history associated with it.” So far, Gracie’s charm had only related to vintage garments. Maybe it was evolving, just as my own realization of my charms was.

I took the bag, withdrawing the dress from it and hanging it on a hook next to Midori’s pieces, standing back for a moment to ponder. Nothing unusual jumped out at me about the dress. The cut was impeccable. The darts were expertly done. The hem was wide and straight.

Gracie’s deer-in-the-headlights expression faded. She came up next to me. Her jaw tensed, right alongside her body, as if she were bracing herself for a whuppin’ or some other horrible situation. But there was no whuppin’ heading her way.

Except it was. She lifted her arm, opening and closing her hand as if she was gearing up for what she was about to do. And then, before I could stop her,
bam!
her arm shot out and she grabbed a wad of fabric from one of the dresses, squeezed her eyes shut, and stood stock-still.

“Baby—” Will started, but Mrs. James touched his arm and he broke off. A visible shudder passed through Gracie. His own jaw tightened just as his daughter’s had, his breathing becoming shallow and ragged as Gracie’s eyes closed and she slipped into what seemed like a trance.

We watched her in silence as she released the first dress, shuffled to her left, and repeated the process with the next dress. Her actions were identical, right down to the way she stood, her heels planted firmly on the floor, as if roots had sprung from her soles and gripped her in place.

I felt Will’s hand brush mine, and then he took it into his, squeezing. I didn’t want to look away from Gracie, but I tore my gaze from her for a split second and snuck a look up at him. He stared straight ahead, his attention fully on his daughter. He’d grabbed my hand without realizing it, seeking something to ground him where he was. I knew the feeling. Another second on my own and I would have lunged to Gracie and ripped her away from the clothing that was filling her with such turmoil.

“She’s okay,” I said softly, hoping my voice would get through to him. There was one thing I knew for certain about Butch Cassidy’s wish in Argentina so long ago. While it had posed problems for the Cassidy women over the years, none of us had ever suffered because of our charms. They were inherently good. Gracie might be struggling as she adjusted to her gift, but she wasn’t in danger. Nothing bad would happen to her. I knew that as surely as I drew breath into my body.

Gracie perched on the stool at the cutting table cradling a cup of sweet iced tea, the outside of the glass beading with condensation. “I kept seeing these flowers. Pink and purple and white,” she said. “And then this weird river of white gooey cream. And that lady, the designer from Japan? She’s walking through this field, picking the flowers and turning them upside down and shaking them.”

Gracie’s vision sounded much more like a nightmare than something that had really happened. And it had nothing to do with the dresses, unless Midori had been wearing each one while in a river of cream. Which seemed highly unlikely.

“What could it mean?” she asked, looking at me as if I would know the answer right off the bat.

“I wish I knew.” I’d looked at the hems one more time, but I still had no idea why they’d be so uneven or what it was that bothered me about them. I hoped I’d have another chance to look, but that would have to wait.

I glanced behind me to where Beaulieu’s garment bags hung. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, but maybe they held a clue. I circled around the cutting table. As I approached the garment bags, my gaze hitched on two bolts of fabric Midori had brought with her. The ones she’d told me that she carried with her always, in case inspiration struck. “What if that’s not the reason?” I mused.

Will and Gracie were by my side again, Gracie asking, “What if what?”

Fabric wound around a cylindrical piece of cardboard was heavy and unwieldy. It had struck me as odd that Midori would drag these around with her. I tried to put myself in her shoes. I had an armoire filled with fabric, as well as bolts lined up against the wall. Upstairs in the spare bedroom, the closet held even more fabric. Was there any that I’d deem so important that I’d haul it around with me wherever I went? My gut response was no, there wasn’t any fabric
that
special to me.

I did a mental walk-through of everything I had ever owned, giving it another try. Again, I came up with the same response. No.

A crazy idea sparked in my mind. I crouched down and started to grab hold of one of the bolts, but Will intervened. “I’ll get it.”

I smiled my thanks, then patted my hand on the cutting table. “Right here, please.”

He laid it down, the two open ends of the cylinder hanging off either side of the table. I poked my fingers inside, feeling around. For what, I didn’t know, but there had to be something.

A momentary twinge of guilt slipped over me. I didn’t have anything other than a bit of odd behavior that pointed the finger at Midori. “I’m sure there’s nothing here.”

“If she had something to hide in there, she wouldn’t just leave it sitting here, would she?” Gracie asked.

I’d thought the same thing, except . . . “Maybe, but then again, it was odd enough that she brought it with her. If she hauled it around with her to keep an eye on it, that would look suspicious. Just leaving it here would be the normal thing to do. It is a dressmaking shop, after all.”

“Makes sense,” Will said. “It would look strange for me to haul around blueprints everywhere I went, or project materials. If I were trying to hide something, I’d leave them where they were safe and where they’d blend in.”

I crouched down and peered into the hollow of the cardboard. The light from the window made it easy to see right through to the other end. There were no obstructions. Nothing packed inside. Nothing out of the ordinary. So much for that idea.

Will picked up the bolt again, putting it back where it had been.

“I don’t know what I thought I’d find,” I said. I gestured wide with my hands, frustration settling over me. The answers to whatever had happened to Beaulieu just weren’t coming.

The bells on the front door jingled and Midori walked in, my finished maid of honor dress draped over her arm in a pliable garment bag. Orphie roused herself on the settee, and Will, Gracie, Mrs. James, and I all froze. We’d put the bolt of fabric away just in time.

“Let’s go, baby,” Will said to Gracie. He grabbed the sweetheart dress, brushed his lips against my cheek, and said, “Off to pick up your mom. See you at the church.”

I thanked him, and moved aside as Midori came into the workroom. “I hope you like this,” she said, hanging the garment bag on the hook next to her other dresses. She put down her bag.

Orphie came in and sat on the stool Gracie had just vacated. “May I?” she asked, reaching for the sketchbook peeking out of the bag.

“It’s Jeanette’s,” Midori said, but she pulled it out and handed it to her. “Sorry to hear about your situation. Very scary ordeal,” she said. “You are lucky.”