Deadly Notions (14 page)

“Yes, they do,” Debbie affirmed. “Two little girls—Abby and Sophie. And both have birthdays coming up at the end of the month.”

Rose sat up tall, a smile softening her wrinkled features. “And we’re going to make them play food?”

Debbie’s eyes shone. “That’s what I was hoping.”

“Count me in,” Tori said as she reached for the slice of bread, turning it over and over in her hands. “I’ll also donate some of the felt. I’m fairly sure I have a bunch in the same color as the top and crust of this bread.”

“Count us all in.” Dixie pulled her legs back toward her chair. “Let’s plan on working on this at our next meeting at”—she looked around at the group—“who’s having the next one again?”

Tori raised her hand. “I am.”

“Shall we invite Chief Dallas, ladies?” Margaret Louise brushed a kiss across her granddaughter’s messy face. “That way he can save the town a little gasoline.”

Georgina cleared her throat. “He’s only doin’ his job. A woman
was
murdered after all.”

Margaret Louise pointed at Dixie. “Did you murder Ashley Lawson?”

Dixie shook her head. “Though I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was tempted.”

Her finger shifted to Rose. “Did you murder Ashley Lawson?”

Rose shook her head.

Her finger shifted to Debbie. “Did you murder Ashley Lawson?”

Georgina held up her hands before Debbie could answer. “What does this prove, Margaret Louise?”

“It stops time from bein’ wasted, that’s what.” Margaret Louise reached in front of the baby and capped up the empty jar of bananas as Melissa moved onto Apple Delight. “We’ve all lived in this town for years—’cept Victoria and she’s no more capable of murderin’ someone than the rest of us are. Chief Dallas is barkin’ up the wrong tree is all.”

“Ashley Lawson was murdered. There is an investigation going on in order to catch her killer. Everyone at this table was overheard making threats against her just hours before she was killed.” The town’s top elected official folded her napkin and tossed it beside her crumb-ridden plate. “I’m sure you can see how that makes me caught where the wool is short.”

“That’s all well and good, Georgina,” Rose stated as she, too, tossed her napkin onto the table. “But remember this: You can put your boots in the oven, but that don’t make ’em biscuits.”

Tori looked a question at Leona only to have it answered by Margaret Louise.

“Rose is right, Georgina. The chief can ask us if we murdered that nasty woman until the cows come home. But askin’ and investigatin’ won’t change the answer none. He’s barkin’ up the wrong tree, plain and simple.”

“I feel bad for Georgina,” Tori said as she walked side by side with Leona on the way toward their final destinations. “I mean, think what that must be like, being elected to oversee every aspect of a town’s well-being. Only in order to do that, you must ruffle the feathers of your friends.”

“The ruffling wouldn’t last nearly as long if everyone would just play along.”

She considered her friend’s words as they crossed Center Street and headed south along the sidewalk that bordered the town square on the east. “You don’t mind being questioned in Ashley’s murder?”

Leona shrugged, her surprisingly toned arms rising and falling beneath the pale pink Donna Karan suit she wore. “Why should I? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You said some not-so-very-nice things about a woman who wound up dead less than twelve hours later.”

“She deserved them. She brought rude to a new level that night.” Leona’s heels clicked against the concrete. “My grandmammy used to say some people are so full of themselves, you’d like to buy them for what they’re worth and sell them for what they think they’re worth. A perfect description of that woman, don’t you think?”

“It is. I guess. Though she’s not the only one who seems—”

“
Seemed
,” Leona corrected.

“
Seemed
to be affected with that disorder.” She cast a sidelong look at her friend. “Is that better?”

“Yes.” Leona slowed as they neared a spot on the sidewalk that was buckled thanks to an exposed tree root. “Georgina would do well to have that removed before someone trips and sues.”

She stepped to the left to allow Leona to clear the spot then fell into step beside her once again. “Though I’m not sure Beth is like that with everyone.”

“Beth?”

“Milo’s college sweetheart.” The second the words were out of her mouth she couldn’t help but cringe at the tone in which she’d spoken them—the hint of hurt and fear as tangible as the gentle spring breeze that lifted their hair from their heads. “You know what? Scratch that. Can we pretend I didn’t bring her up just now?”

“We could, but we won’t.” Leona wrapped her fingers around Tori’s forearm and tugged her onto the Green, pointing her manicured finger toward a bench beside the town’s famed gazebo. “Let’s sit.”

“Don’t you have to inventory the antique shipment you just got?”

“It can wait, dear. Problems with men can’t. They need to be addressed and eliminated without delay.” When they reached the bench, Leona sat down primly, tugging Tori down beside her. “So tell me. What happened?”

That’s all it took for the floodgates to open.

“I decided to take your advice last night . . .”

Leona beamed. “Yes, dear?”

“I left a dinner invitation on the steering wheel of Milo’s car while he was still at work. Then I rushed home and made a beef brisket with all the trimmings.”

“Attacking through the stomach certainly does have potential . . .”

She winced. “I wasn’t trying to attack. Not really, anyway. It was more about trying to show him he’s special to me.”

“Semantics, dear.”

“So he came over and I lit some candles. Then I set the table with my best china. And made one of my best recipes.”

“And how did it go?”

She shrugged. “Fine. For all of about ten minutes. Tops.”

Leona turned to study Tori over the top of her stylish glasses. “Did you have a disagreement?”

She shook her head.

“Did you retire to the bedroom?”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head even harder.

“Perhaps
that
was the problem, dear.”

“No. It was the phone call he got after he’d taken no more than three bites.”

“Phone call?” Leona echoed.

This time she nodded, her words shoring up the gesture with the kind of answers her head couldn’t convey. “From Beth.”

“Oh.”

For a moment neither said a word, their visual focus distracted by a squirrel scampering across the Green. When she did speak, Leona’s words were hushed. “Did he at least keep the conversation short?”

“Relatively, yes.”

“Well, I suppose that’s a good sign. At least he wrapped up the call to continue your dinner together.”

She looked down at her hands as she twisted them inside her lap. “It would have been a good sign, if that’s what he’d done.”

Leona turned to her once again. “He didn’t?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me he left.”

“He left.”

“To be with her?”

Tori switched back to nodding in an effort to keep her voice from breaking.

A gasp of disgust escaped Leona’s thinning lips. “Why?”

“She thought someone was after her.”

“After her?”

She nodded again.

“How?”

“In a dangerous way. She felt unsafe, prompting Milo to ride to the rescue.”

“Who would be after her?” Leona asked. “Other than, perhaps, me?”

Tori’s head snapped up and she turned to meet her friend’s gaze? “You?”

“You think I like what her presence is doing to you, dear?”

She sucked in her breath as Leona’s words took root in her thoughts. “Wait.”

“Wait, what?” Leona asked as she looked around at the empty Green. “What’s wrong?”

“Please tell me you weren’t trying to scare her in the parking lot of the Sweet Briar Inn the other night.”

“I wish I’d thought of it.” Leona ran her hands down the pale pink material that draped across her thighs. “Then again, doing that would have backfired as we saw, yes?”

“She acted as if he knew what room she was in.”

Leona’s hands stilled. “
Did
he?”

“He said he didn’t.” She heard the sadness in her voice but could do nothing to stop it. She’d held it at bay through the circle’s entire breakfast meeting and simply couldn’t do it any longer.

“Do you believe him?”

“I want to. I really do. It’s just that—” She stopped, swallowed, then continued on, her voice adopting a raspy quality. “Well, I wanted to believe Jeff was true, too.”

“I know, dear.”

She sat up tall on the bench. “Wait. I can’t say that. I believe him. I do. Milo is nothing like Jeff.”

Leona squeezed her hand. “Let’s assume he is telling the truth then, shall we?”

“He is,” she insisted.

“Then we have another question to consider.”

She looked at her friend. “What’s that?”

“Why she’d insinuate otherwise.”

Tori’s shoulders slumped. “I wondered that all night while I tossed and turned in my bed.”

“And?” Leona prompted.

“And I came up with nothing because I just don’t get it.”

“I do.”

“Tell me.”

“She’s trying to get under your skin.”

“She’s trying to get under my skin?” she repeated. “But why?”

“To cause trouble.”

“For whom?”

“You and Milo.”

“For what purpose?” Though the second the question left her lips, she knew the answer as clearly as if she’d dreamed it up all on her own.

“To break you up, dear.”

Closing her eyes, she thought back over their meeting at the bakery. She thought about the designs. She thought about the conversation. She thought about the way every male in the room stopped to stare at Milo’s former girlfriend.

“He called me when he got home. He apologized for running out.”

“As he should.”

Her heart twisted under Leona’s words. “He did the right thing, Leona. He really did. What would have happened if whoever it was had tried again?”

“She wouldn’t be an issue any longer, dear.”

Tori couldn’t help it, she laughed. But as the sound subsided, she cocked an eyebrow at the deadpan face Leona sported. “You
were
kidding, right?”

“Perhaps. But one thing can’t be ignored any longer.”

“What’s that?”

“You have a problem on your hands. A blonde, blue-eyed problem.”

“Maybe it was an isolated thing, Leona.”

“Perhaps. Though I suspect your problem just got a lot bigger the moment Milo ran to her aid.”

“So let’s take it from the top again, shall we?”

Tori grabbed hold of her left shoulder with her right hand and kneaded the skin beneath her fingers. “Sure, if you want to, but really, nothing is going to change.”

They’d been at it for nearly an hour, Police Chief Dallas’s chat feeling a lot more like an interrogation minus the swinging overhead light and the two-way mirror with the overeager partner on the other side.

“So you’re saying you never actually said you’d strangle Mrs. Lawson, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“We have a witness that would say otherwise.”

Dropping her hands to the top of her desk, she pulled a pencil from the wooden holder and twirled it between her fingers. “Regina Murphy heard a lot of people saying virtually the same thing. Did she say, specifically, that I threatened to strangle the victim?”

The chief’s eyes narrowed on hers. “She said everyone at the party threatened the victim in one way or another—with strangulation being the stated method of choice.”