A Seamless Murder (21 page)

There’d been enough light outside to see Thelma Louise a short while ago, so there was enough light to see Will and me if anyone was looking. I kept to the shadows. “Will?”

“Over here,” he called softly.

He’d gone to the opposite side of the porch, away from the dining room, where we’d have privacy. He had the contents from the envelope spread on the small round table off to the side. “There you are.” He straightened up and gave me a light kiss on the cheek. “Where’d you get this?” he asked, now that it was safe to press for information.

“Clipped to a hanger in Todd and Megan’s closet,” I whispered. “Clever. I never would have found it if I hadn’t heard you and Todd coming and jumped in there to hide. Did you find anything?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, so who knows?”

I stood next to him, and together we quickly looked at each piece of paper and each photo. I catalogued them in my mind as we flipped through the contents.

First was the intake form I’d seen the first time, but instead of Anson Mobley’s name, the subject had been blacked
out. Paper-clipped to the top sheet were snapshots of the five members of the household. The candid shots, each one of them in a different location, definitely hadn’t been in the file the first time I’d seen it. In addition, there was a picture of Rebecca Masters, Megan’s friend and partner in the antique business, who’d gone MIA.

Will pulled up his cell phone flashlight and shone it on the photos so I could get a better look. The one of Delta showed her bent over the
RADCLIFFE FOR MAYOR
sign in her front yard, a maroon Aggies flag right next to it. Anson was pictured on the golf course playing a round with Megan, Todd, and Rebecca. Another showed Todd in his car at the bank drive-through. In her candid shot, Megan held what looked like a heavy cardboard box in front of the church. In the background were Todd, Coco, and Sherri. Including a picture of Rebecca struck me as odd. She stood in the Mobley yard, arms folded, an envelope in her hand. The last photo was of Jessie Pearl on her porch, hands on her hips, unsmiling. Megan was in the corner of the yard, and Todd was hunched over a patch of flowers.

All the people Delta loved, plus Rebecca.

I skimmed the rest of the pages, none of which I’d seen the first time I’d looked at the file. Boyd Investigations hadn’t just followed Anson Mobley. This was a list of each of the family member’s comings and goings over a period of seven days. The notes were succinct.

Anson

10 a.m. Office. 3 hours

1 p.m. Met client at 3900 Magnolia Street

1:20 p.m. Fast food drive-through

2:20 p.m. Met Megan and Todd with boxes to deliver to church

3:33 p.m. Met Delta at listing

On and on it went, detailing everything he did, from playing five hours of golf at the municipal course to meeting Delta for dinner at a local cantina to a two-hour stop at the title company for a close of escrow.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and there were no rendezvous at any hotels. In fact, other than one photo showing a hotel in the background, there was nothing even implying an affair. No wonder the investigator had seemed so adamant that Anson was not unfaithful. There was nothing to indicate anything suspicious. So why had Delta questioned her ability to trust him?

I flipped the page and saw a similar tracking of Megan’s daily activities.

Megan

7 a.m. Yoga

8:15 a.m. Coffee shop with Rebecca

9:30 a.m. School

4 p.m. Church delivery with Todd

4:30 p.m. Met mother at nail salon

Megan’s days were pretty much the same. She went to her classes at the local university, exercised, ran a few errands, and then it all repeated. Two days during the week included
Rebecca coming to the Mobley house and staying for several hours, and a third day tracked Megan, Todd, and Rebecca at a flea market selling their antiques.

Todd’s daily schedule was a little more varied. He worked in the yard, took boxes to the tag sale, worked in the church office, met Delta at a few of her listings to help, went to the bank, to the market, to the nursery. He was always on the go. A jack of all trades, just as he’d said, from the looks of it.

Jessie Pearl had barely half a page of notes. She rarely left the house. Walked around the garden. Moved the yard signs from one spot to another. Pulled weeds. It was an uneventful life.

The last page of notes was about Delta. “Do you think she knew the investigator was checking her out, too?” Will asked, reading over my shoulder.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t understand any of this. She’d had her husband investigated, so why the details on everyone else, and why on herself?

Delta

8:15 a.m. Drive-through coffee shop

8:30 a.m. Office

10:05 a.m. House listing on Richland Lane

11 a.m. Church tag sale

11:30 a.m. Lunch with Randi

12:30 p.m. Post office

1:10 p.m. City offices

1:45 p.m. Bank with Todd

2:30 p.m. Megan haircut and color, Delta paid

4:00 p.m. Early dinner with Anson

On and on it went, each page giving a play-by-play. Before long, the details all blurred together, but something tickled at the back of my brain. I flipped back and forth between the pages, trying to figure out what it was that had put me on alert.

“Cassidy,” Will prompted, “we’ve been out here for twenty minutes. We’d best get this file back.”

“One sec,” I said, holding up my index finger. I read through the detective’s surveillance notes one more time, but whatever the red flag was eluded me.

I’d just gathered up all the papers and photos, sliding them back into the blue file, when we heard the kitchen door open, followed by voices. A group of people had come outside. In seconds flat, we’d be caught red-handed.

My heart lodged in my throat as I handed the folder back to Will, who quickly laid it against his chest. The second his jacket was zipped, Georgia, Wayne, and Randi came into view. “There you are,” Randi said, looking from me to Will and back again. “A little alone time?”

I slipped one arm around Will’s back, wrapping around his front as I snuggled up next to him. “A stolen moment,” I said, inwardly cringing at the unintended double entendre. The stolen file hadn’t given me answers, but it wasn’t mine, and guilt flooded my pores.

“Everyone’s getting ready to leave,” Randi said. “Jeremy’s going to take me home.”

I drew in a sharp breath and threw a quick glance at Will. I couldn’t say that Jeremy Lisle had killed Delta, but I felt there were enough questions to raise a red flag. “Will can give you a ride,” I said.

Randi tilted her head and gave me a puzzled look. “Why in heaven’s name would he want to do that?”

I stammered, no good answer coming to me.

“I’m fine, Harlow. Jeremy offered, and I’m kinda happy about that, truth be told.”

“Oh, good. Good.” I forced a smile and nodded.

Will gave me a squeeze, and I grounded myself. I had no solid reason to stop Randi from going with Jeremy. Even if he had killed Delta, he had no reason to do harm to anyone else. So maybe she’d be just fine.

Hopefully.

“I’ll let y’all know how it goes,” Randi said.

Wayne gave a low whistle, and Georgia batted his arm. “Wayne McCarthy Emmons,” she scolded, and to us, she added, “Men.”

Wayne met Will’s gaze, lifting one brow. He directed a sheepish smile at his wife, put his arm behind her and gave her backside a pat. “Aw, come on now, you know you love it.”

“I know your mama taught you manners.”

“Guess I forgot to bring ’em tonight,” he joked. “But I can still watch over you without ’em.”

“Maybe so, but you should bring ’em everywhere,” she chided, but one side of her mouth rose in a soft smile.

“Sweetums,” Wayne said, “I have you. I don’t need no manners.”

“And no good grammar, neither,” she said, mimicking his West Texas twang.

“Oh, Georgia,” Randi said. “Leave him be. He’s fine.”

“That’s right,” he said, “I’m fine. Alls I’m sayin’ is it’s about time Randi found herself a man.”

Randi brushed back her short shimmery hair, spiking it on top of her head. “Getting a little ahead of ourselves? It’s just a ride home, is all.”

“Romance has to start somewhere,” Wayne said, “ain’t that right, Georgia?”

She smiled at him, nodding. “That’s true enough.”

“I gave her a ride home after a pageant about a million years ago. The rest, as they say, is history.” He looked at Will and me. “Where’d you two start?”

“Loretta Mae played matchmaker,” Will volunteered, as Megan and Todd slipped out onto the porch. The party was migrating outside.

I almost added,
From beyond the grave
, but held it in. They didn’t need the nitty-gritty details. Everyone knew that my great-grandmother got what she wanted, one way or another. No reason to draw more attention to that special Cassidy charm.

“We met in statistics class,” Megan said. “He saw me and made a beeline right for me, like he knew just what he wanted.”

“That’s true,” Todd said, but then he frowned. “Worst class ever, though. You were the only saving grace.”

Megan smiled. “He thinks he’s not very lovable.”

“How did I get lucky enough to have you fall in love with me?” he asked, grinning.

She answered with a squeeze of his hand. “We have a
story to tell our children. College is for learning, but also for falling in love.”

Just then, the door to the kitchen opened again and Cynthia appeared, the light from the house like a glowing aura around her. “There y’all are. Jeremy’s looking for you, Randi. And I’m heading out.”

So the evening was drawing to a close, and the murderer, if he or she was among us, had hidden in plain sight. We followed the group back inside. Will immediately excused himself and headed down the hallway. The good-byes would give him enough time to replace the envelope on the clip hangers I’d described in Megan and Todd’s closet, and no one would be the wiser.

Something about the file still bothered me. I kept coming back to what Coco had said about Cynthia and her apron. She could look like a kitchen diva, even if she barely knew how to scramble an egg.

The bottom line was that people were not always what they seemed, and we only let people see what we wanted them to see. This had proven true in the past, and whenever murder was involved, it was definitely the case. People hid out in the open, but they didn’t always show others who they really were. It had happened time and time again. Meemaw always used to say that people reveal themselves if you let them. I had the feeling I’d seen the truth about whoever had killed Delta, I just hadn’t realized it yet.

During the good-byes, I finally had a chance to pull Sherri aside. “How are you holding up?” I asked.

She shrugged. “My outburst aside? Okay, I guess.”

“I wish I could have helped more,” I said. Tears pooled in her eyes, and once again I felt as if I’d failed the Lea sisters.
I hadn’t been able to bring them any peace. I only hoped the sheriff would be able to.

“You tried,” Sherri said. “You recovered Mother’s Lladrós. You found those notes from Delta. You made us the aprons. You did everything you could.”

She’d opened the door when she’d mentioned the notes, so I walked through, telling her about the note I’d found that she’d written so many months ago.

“When we were kids, we’d play spy,” she said, her voice soft and nostalgic. “That teapot used to be one of the ways we’d pass secret messages. When she wouldn’t listen to me, I guess I thought I’d write it down and put it there, and maybe one day she’d find it and realize that I’d tried to tell her.”

“Tell her what?” I asked.

She looked over her shoulder, as if she were making sure we were alone. “There was something going on between Todd and that girl Rebecca,” she said. “I didn’t know how to tell Megan, so I told Delta.”

My heart stalled in my chest. “You mean an affair?” My mind raced. The idea that Anson was having an affair, the private investigator, pages pulled from the report. What if Delta hadn’t ever thought Anson was cheating on her? What if she’d been looking into the idea that Todd was cheating on Megan?

I remembered the up-and-down look Delta had given Rebecca the first day I’d met her in the Mobley kitchen. She’d questioned how Rebecca could work in the dress she’d been wearing. Rebecca’s flirtatious reply had been that Todd was going to help.

“Did you see them together?” I asked.

She nodded. “At an antique fair in Plano about a month
before Megan brought Todd home. Rebecca showed up a few weeks later, and at first I couldn’t place her, but then it hit me. I’d seen them together.”

“What did Delta say?”

“She told me I was imagining things. She said Megan was happy, Rebecca was a good friend, and Todd was the perfect son-in-law.”

“So you dropped it?”

She nodded. “I dropped it.”

“And you never mentioned it to Megan?”

“No, never,” she said, her voice quiet. “If I was wrong, I didn’t want to cause her pain.”

“But if you were right?”

She shrugged. “Rebecca moved out of Randi’s garage apartment, and from what Megan said, she’s not returning her calls, so I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”

I wasn’t sure I believed that. Why had Rebecca vanished?

The Red Hatters converged at the front door, stopping us from talking any further. Jeremy led Randi outside. I watched them go, she still with her half apron on, he with his hand lightly touching her back, guiding her. A pool of anxiety settled in my chest, but I shook it away. She’d be fine. Randi was soft-spoken, but she had the strength and wherewithal to defend herself, if she needed to.

Georgia and Wayne left next. Just like Jeremy had with Randi, Wayne guided Georgia, but his touch was more familiar. Suggestive, even, as his hand slipped over the curve of her backside. She batted his hand away, but the evening breeze carried her giggle back to us.