A Seamless Murder (20 page)

“Right, except
he
wasn’t blackmailing
her
. Hoss said she’s the one with the steady deposits in her account.” Will leaned against wall. “Here’s a hypothetical. What if Lisle turned the tables on her? He could have had
her
followed. She could have found out that he’d stooped to something underhanded and blackmailed him for her silence. Would anyone vote for a man who resorts to that kind of intimidation?”

“They wouldn’t.”

I jumped at the sound of a man’s voice behind us. Jeremy Lisle came around the corner, his expression tight. “But that scenario you just painted didn’t happen.” He threw his arms wide. “If you want to ask me something, just do it. I got nothin’ to hide.”

“Mr. Lisle,” I started weakly. “We were just throwing out ideas—”

He held up his hand, stopping me midsentence. “I heard you plain as day. Blackmail? I’m running for public office. Do you really think I’d succumb to blackmail?”

Will put his hand on my lower back, in encouragement and support. It was just what I needed to keep my voice steady and stand tall. “It happens, though. I’ve seen it. Good people making bad decisions.”

He shrugged. “I’ll give you that. There are certainly unethical people in the world. But Ms. Cassidy, Delta Mobley had nothing on me because there’s nothing to be had. If
anything, I knew things about
her
. Good thing
she
wasn’t running for office,” he said wryly.

Jeremy came back the way he’d come, anger still bubbling close to the surface. I didn’t blame him. To overhear that you were a suspect in a murder investigation, even from the likes of me, had to be disconcerting, and if he was innocent, all the more upsetting.

Will returned to the group and was talking to the pastor, so I took the opportunity to sneak a peek at the rest of the house. I had no expectations of finding anything, but I was curious as to whether any other church antiques were hiding in plain sight, and how they might have gotten here.

Walking back down the hall, I glanced in each room. From the décor and clothes laid out on her bed, I guessed that Jessie Pearl’s was at the end of the hallway. Across from it was a closed door. Tiptoeing closer, I turned the handle and opened the door a crack. Clothes were strewn about. Men’s pants, shirts, sneakers, and dress shoes. A few ties dangled haphazardly from the back of a chair. This had to be Anson and Delta’s room, the remnants of Anson’s quick packing evident.

And there, in the middle of the room, was the mattress Jessie Pearl had tried to flip. I tried to picture the scene as she’d described it. She’d gotten up under the mattress, climbing onto the box spring to work it up higher and higher. But instead of being able to flip it over like she’d done before, it
had fallen back down on her. Her leg had buckled under her, the bone snapping.

That’s how Megan and Todd had found her.

I closed the door again, moving down the hall back toward the dinner guests, but stopped at another door. Acting on impulse, I slipped inside, closing the door behind me before I knew what room I was in. The queen-sized bed, the closet doors opened to reveal his and hers clothing, the boxes filled with antiques and knickknacks, all priced for a tag sale or flea market. This had to be Megan and Todd’s room.

I stood back, taking it all in, feeling a sense of sadness close in around me. Megan had left three dresses discarded on the bed, one black, one multicolored, and one black, brown, and cream. She’d ended up in the faded floral number, the apron I’d made the perfect complement to it, but it had clearly taken her a while to figure out what to wear. Not surprising given how much her mother’s sudden death seemed to have shaken her.

The poor girl would be in a bad place for a while, I was afraid. At least she had Todd, and her aunts and Jessie Pearl, and, hopefully, her father for support.

I started for the door, stopping when I remembered that Todd had been in possession of the private investigator’s report. He’d said something about almost burning the entire file, or separating out the incriminating evidence to protect Megan and Jessie Pearl. Megan had gone on to say there wasn’t much to the report, and I had to agree. From what I’d seen, and from what Kristina Boyd, the investigator, said, Anson hadn’t been a cheating husband.

Hoss had the report now, but what if something
had
been removed from it? When Todd went to retrieve the file that
day, it had taken him a good bit of time. Could there have been something more in the file that he had taken out? But why would he take that risk?

The only logical answer was to protect someone. Removing evidence was a crime, and a risk. The only person he’d take that chance for would be Megan.

The whole idea was a stretch, I realized, but since it was possible, I had to poke around to see if I could find any proof.

I got busy, working as quickly and quietly as I could. I searched the obvious places first. Rifling through the bedside tables, the closet shelves, behind the shoes in the closet revealed nothing. No stack of paper or pictures. No second goldenrod envelope. Nothing that screamed this was information that had been in the PI’s report.

I stood in the center of the room, looking around. If information had been taken out of the report, where would it be hidden? I’d searched the box of antiques. The drawers of the bureau. There was no place else.

And then I heard voices. They came from down the hall, growing louder. The sound of footsteps followed. They slowed outside the room I was in and panic set in. I couldn’t be found snooping. Quick as lightning, I sent up a prayer that whoever was in the hall would keep on walking, and then I did the only thing I could. I ducked into the closet to hide.

From my hiding place, the voices were muffled, but I thought I recognized Will’s voice.

The other person spoke with more force. “Georgia saw her back here.” A man’s voice. Yikes. Were they talking about me?

I’d spoken with Pastor Kyle and Jeremy Lisle enough to know it wasn’t either of them. It could have been one of the Red Hat ladies’ husbands . . . Georgia’s husband?

I couldn’t take any chances, so I flipped the little side button on my phone to
SILENT
just in case. I didn’t anticipate a call, but I’d seen plenty of movies where stupid mistakes like leaving a phone on resulted in an awkward discovery. My phone ringing would be a dead giveaway, and I was not going to take any chances. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, heightening as the door handle turned and the voices outside in the hallway suddenly came into the room.

“Why do you need Harlow?” I heard Will ask.

That sweet man. He must have suspected that I was in one of these rooms and was trying to warn me.

“Megan said the ladies all want to take a picture in their aprons, and they want her in it with them.” Ah, it was Todd’s voice. Made sense.

“Maybe she went out front for some air,” Will suggested. Bless his heart. He was giving me time to make a clean getaway.

Their footsteps retreated and the door clicked closed. I heaved a sigh of relief, but still waited a solid minute and then opened the door slowly, peeking through the crack to make sure the coast was clear. I started to slip out, my body rustling the clothes I moved against, but I stopped when my shoulder was pricked by the pointed edge of something. I pulled the hangers apart and there, hanging from the clips of a skirt hanger, was a blue file folder. My breath stalled. Could it be . . . ?

I held it from the bottom and gave a gentle pull, glancing inside. It held pages that seemed to match the type in the Boyd Investigations report, as well as a stack of photographs.

Very clever, Todd,
I thought. Hanging the envelope between his clothes had been a smart way to hide the information he’d taken from the report. Quick as a lightning bug, I ran to the door, staying on my tiptoes to stop my heels from clicking against the hardwood floor. With my ear to the door, I listened. All was quiet and in seconds flat, I was across the hall, barricaded in the bathroom. Todd had said that the Red Hat ladies wanted a picture, so I didn’t have time to look through the folder this second, and I couldn’t very well carry it out with me.

Looking around, I noticed that even the bathroom was decked out in antiques and collectibles. A rattan storage table was across from the toilet. I opened the small doors to find a stash of toilet paper, two hand towels, and a spare container of liquid hand soap. Perfect. I slipped the file folder against the back wall of the chest, behind the supplies, closing the
door and double-checking to be sure nothing looked disturbed.

Then I flushed the toilet, ran the water, and took a minute to calm my racing heart. I opened the door, fluffing my hair as I stepped into the hallway . . . and ran smack into Wayne Emmons, Georgia’s husband and the one Red Hat husband who’d made an effort to chitchat.

“Found her!” he called over his shoulder. To me he said, “Everyone’s been looking for you.” He peered over my shoulder into the bathroom. The toilet was still running, and he looked back at me, so I guess he figured all was as it should be.

“Oh?” I smiled, playing innocent, since, of course, I couldn’t let on that I’d overheard Will and Todd talking about the photo the Red Hat ladies wanted to take wearing their aprons.

“Picture time,” he said, studying me. He seemed suspicious. Or maybe it was my guilty conscience that was making me feel like I’d done something wrong. Which, technically, I had. My head felt hot, my vision a little blurry. The after-effects of taking someone else’s property. Or at least relocating it.

Could I leave the house with the file? It was going to be tricky to figure out how to sneak it out, forget about finding a way to look through it and then get it back into Megan and Todd’s closet. I blinked away the agitation bubbling inside me. I couldn’t say why, but I felt sure that it held the key to understanding what had happened to Delta.

I refocused my thoughts and followed Wayne back toward the dining room. “I wouldn’t have thought anyone was in the mood for pictures tonight,” I said.

Actually, the way the evening had gone, I thought they’d all be running for the door to escape the first moment they could. But as we came back into the dining room, I saw the crowd had grown by two and the energy had changed. One Cassidy woman could have that effect. Two ensured it. My mother and grandmother sat at the table, each with a plate piled high with treats, smiles on their faces, and a lightness about them that they didn’t normally possess, especially given the long-lasting feud between the Mobleys and Cassidys.

It’s not that they weren’t usually easygoing. They were. But at this moment, listening to them laugh and chat and generally lift the spirit of the room, it felt as if Meemaw were here, too, infusing the night with her otherworldly charm.

Mama met my eyes, and I drew my brows together in a silent question.

“We saw the twinkle lights in the yard, saw the cars, and when you weren’t at home, darlin’,” she said to me, “why we just decided to come on over.” She turned to Jessie Pearl. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Something knocked against the window. We all turned to look, but I recognized the
tat-tat-tat
. Thelma Louise.

Sure enough, the granddam of Nana’s goat herd stood on her hind legs, her forelegs resting on the outside windowsill, the horizontal pupils of her eyes staring at us. Megan jumped, startled, then raced forward swinging a dish towel. “Shoo! Go on, get outta here!”

“We’re happy to have y’all join us, but I do mind the goat,” Jessie Pearl said, meeting Thelma Louise’s gaze with a challenge. Thelma Louise didn’t budge and neither did Jessie Pearl. It was a standoff.

Nana pushed back in her chair, the legs scraping against the old pine floors, and started toward the window. Thelma Louise blinked once and then vanished into the night. The goat-whisperer in action. Nana’s herd produced exquisite soap and delicious goat cheese, and it was all due to the special rapport she had with the animals. It was an obscure charm, but a charm nonetheless.

The distraction gave me enough time to text Will and tell him about the envelope I’d hidden in the bathroom.
Can you sneak it out so we can look at it before we leave?
I texted.

He shot me a look of clear disbelief from across the room, but he texted back
Roger that
, and I heaved a sigh of relief. I’d leave it to him, and we’d reconvene at some point to find out whether that file held any other clues.

Coco clapped her hands, then swept her arms wide to usher the Red Hat ladies together. “You, too, Harlow,” she said, waving me over.

Wayne and Todd both appeared with cameras, Wayne’s a serious Nikon with a high-powered lens and a flash sitting on top. Todd’s the one on his phone.

The women gathered together in the front room of the house, amid the antiques and collectibles. Aside from Wayne and Todd, the men stayed behind in the dining room, refilling their plates with desserts. I saw Will head down the hall to the bathroom. So the plan was in action.

The Red Hat ladies wrapped their arms around one another, linking in Jessie Pearl and her crutches, Megan, and me. It might have been my imagination, but I felt Delta’s presence in the room. It may have been just the idea of her, but I came back to Loretta Mae and her ghostly presence at 2112 Mockingbird Lane, wondering once again if that was
an anomaly and something that happened only to the Cassidy women, or if there were ghosts all around us, including Delta Lea Mobley.

The cameras clicked, and we all smiled as best we could. “To Delta,” Todd said, prompting us all to smile bigger.

“To Delta,” we all echoed, and the cameras snapped again.

“Well,” Coco said, “you may not cook, Cynthia, but now no one would ever know. Y’all’ll have to send her that picture right away so she can pass it around and prove that she’s worn an apron at least once in her life.”

The women laughed . . . all except Cynthia, who grimaced. “I may not like to cook, but I can look the part, and I’m okay with that. What people don’t know won’t hurt them.”

I glanced down the hallway, looking for Will. No sign of him. I checked my phone, remembering that I’d left it turned to silent after my adventure in Megan and Todd’s closet. Now I saw that he’d texted me.
Meet me on the back porch.

The photo shoot was done. Wayne packed up his camera, Todd put his phone in his pocket, and they both wandered off. Cynthia had taken off her apron, tucking it away in her purse in the corner of the room. The Red Hat ladies milled about aimlessly, Jessie Pearl, with the help of Megan, hobbling back to the dining table to sit with Mama and Nana. The others went to their husbands or gathered around the sideboard with the coffee and tea.

The coast was clear. With a quick glance over my shoulder, I slipped through the kitchen and out the back door to the porch.