Elizabeth Lynn Casey - Southern Sewing Circle 08 - Remnants of Murder (11 page)

Before she could respond, Carter Johnson, the diner’s owner, appeared beside their table, a hint of irritation evident around his eyes and mouth. “What can I get for you ladies this evening?”

Dixie peered around the man’s waist, her wide eyes taking in their immediate surroundings before coming to rest, once again, on Carter. “What happened to your waitress?”

“She called in not more than ten minutes ago. After my lunch shift had already left,” Carter groused. “So I’ve got your table and three others until we can get a hold of someone else to come in and cover.”

With a flick of her wrist, Dixie pitched her body forward against the edge of the table. “Carter? Were you a Clyde Montgomery hater, too?”

Tori felt her mouth gape at the question and knew the shock on Carter’s face was mirrored on her own. “Dixie!” she hissed from between clenched teeth. “This isn’t the time.”

“Of course this is the time.” Dixie turned an expectant gaze on Carter, drumming her squat fingers on the table as she did. “Well? Were you?”

A cloud of something Tori couldn’t readily identify flashed across the man’s eyes. “I can’t say I was much of a fan.”

“Then what
can
you say?”

Tori readied her mouth around yet another protest, only to have it die on her lips as the tips of Carter’s ears turned crimson. There were no two ways about it—Dixie’s tenacious scrutiny was having a noticeable effect on the man. The throat clearing and fidgeting that followed were merely the icing on the cake.

“Look. Ladies. I’d love to stay and gossip with you, but I’ve got tables to attend to and coverage to track down.” Whipping a pencil out of his shirt pocket, he tapped it against the order pad in his hand. “So, if I could just get your order right now, that would be great. There’ll be time for chitchat some other day.”

“How about tomorrow?”

He eyed Dixie over the pad. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Will you have time to answer my question tomorrow?”

Aware of the tension building around their table, Tori gestured toward the menu and selected the first item she saw. “I—I’ll take the meatloaf special, please.”

“Red sauce, okay?” he asked.

“Red sauce is fine.” She nodded at Dixie. “You were looking at the pot roast, weren’t you, Dixie?”

At Dixie’s nod, Carter took off for the kitchen, leaving Tori to incur the full wrath of the woman seated across the table. “Don’t you know that in order to get answers, we need to ask questions, Victoria?”

“Yes, but Carter Johnson? Why on earth would you ask him a question like that?” Tori glanced to her left and right for any sign of eavesdroppers. “I mean, c’mon, Dixie, it was almost as if you were accusing him of Clyde’s murder.”

“If the shoe fits, Victoria …” Dixie took a sip of her sweet tea and then pointed a finger over Tori’s shoulder. “Before we leave, I suggest we stop at Lana Morris’s table over there by the door. I’m rather curious as to how she’ll answer the same question.”

Pulling her elbows inward, Tori teed her hands in the air. “Oh no. You’re not going to start randomly pulling people to the side and asking them if they hated Clyde. You just can’t do that, Dixie.”

“And why not? We
are
trying to find the truth, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are. But those kinds of questions put people on the defensive or make them run in the other direction. Either way, that’ll only make our job tougher.”

Dixie’s eyes widened momentarily, only to narrow to near slits as a smile broke out across her face. “So it’s official then, yes?”

Tori drew back. “What is?”

“You’re going to help me catch Clyde’s killer.”

She stared at Dixie. “Help you catch—wait. I didn’t say that. I just—”

“Just now. You said
our
job.”

She opened her mouth to protest, only to let it close around the futile attempt. Dixie was right. And not just because of Tori’s choice in pronouns. Something about Clyde’s death felt off.

In fact, deep down inside, she didn’t need the results of any autopsy to tell her the man had been murdered. The physical clues pointed in that direction all on their own. The extensive list of people who stood to benefit from his rapid demise merely served to tie the whole theory up with a neat little bow.

The problem was, she was incapable of leaving the package wrapped. Bows were meant to be pulled, suspects were meant to be analyzed, justice was meant to be served, and all stories were designed to have an ending. It was the way it was supposed to be. In Tori’s world anyway.

Reaching out, she raked a notebook in her direction and flipped it open to the first page. “So who do you think belongs on our list?”

“Our killer list?”

She pinned Dixie with a glare. “First up, we don’t know Clyde was murdered—at least not officially anyway. Secondly, if he was, you need to realize that just because a person might have motive doesn’t mean he did it.”

Dixie opened her own notebook and wrote
Killers
across the top of the first page. “I think it’s a bit premature to assume the killer was male, don’t you think? Poison could just as easily be administered by a female as a male. Heck, I think a woman could do it even easier than a man.”

Feeling her head begin to spin, Tori grabbed hold of her own pen and pointed it at Dixie. “You think
I’m
being premature?” She lowered her finger to encompass the bold heading scrawled across the woman’s notepad. “The correct word, Dixie, is
suspect
. As in
possibility
, not tried and convicted.”

A string of unintelligible words, whispered between impatient snorts, made its way out from between Dixie’s lips as the woman crossed out the offending word and replaced it with Tori’s. “When did you become so literal, Victoria?”

Ignoring the woman’s comment, she found herself replaying something Dixie had said—something that actually made sense. “Why did you say that thing about females and poison?”

Dixie looked up, the flash of irritation suddenly gone. “Because it makes sense, that’s why.”

“Then help me understand your thinking.”

A waitress from the other side of the diner appeared beside their table with their dinner plates. “Who’s got the pot roast?”

Dixie shoved her notebook to the side to open up the spot directly in front of her body. “I do.”

“Then the meatloaf must be yours …” The middle-aged waitress backed up a step and motioned to their table. “Anything else I can get you?” At their collective head shake, the brunette headed back toward her own section.

“We’ve got him running scared, don’t we?” Dixie mused before swapping her pen for a fork and taking the inaugural bite. “Mmmm. Pretty good …”

Tori blinked once, twice, her focus torn between the sauce-drenched meat on her own plate and her companion’s cryptic words. “Him? Who?”

Dixie moved on to her rice, sampling it quickly. “Why, Carter, of course.”

“What are you talking about?”

Dixie looked up from the carrot she’d just pierced. “Are you going to tell me you haven’t noticed that Carter brought orders to all of the tables around us except ours?”

She held her first bite of meatloaf just shy of her mouth and quickly scanned their surroundings. “I hadn’t noticed.”

After a long pause that included a few bites of vegetable and a few bites of pot roast, Dixie finally laid down her fork. “Oh, I get it. All of this is just a big joke to you, isn’t it, Victoria? You’re here because you still feel bad that Winston cut my meager hours from the library budget.” Pulling her napkin off her lap, Dixie brushed it across her mouth and then tossed it onto the table. “If that’s the case, I don’t need you. I can find the truth on my own.”

Stunned, Tori found herself scrambling to keep Dixie from leaving the table. “Wait. I’m not here out of guilt. I’m here because you asked for my help. Though, in all honesty, I’m still trying to figure out why you’re so determined to investigate regardless of what the chief decides to do.”

For a moment, Tori wasn’t sure whether the woman was going to say something or simply collect her newly purchased notebook and leave. Eventually, though, Dixie spoke, her words, her tone providing a bird’s-eye view of the pain buried not so far beneath the surface. “I spent my life building the library into what it was when you came along. It didn’t have the children’s room and all the buzz that you’ve garnered with that, but I held my own. I kept the shelves stocked with the classics and the best-sellers. I learned the ins and outs of computers so I could help my patrons transition into the world of technology. I knew the parameters of the board’s new budget each year and operated accordingly.

“Then, one day, they decided I was too old and too boring to do what I’d done for more years than you’ve been alive. Bam, I was out on my ear with a pat on my back and a wooden plaque for my years of service. And it hurt, Victoria. It hurt more deeply than I can even begin to explain.”

Tori leaned back in her bench seat, the rising lump in her throat making it difficult to breathe. So many times over the past two years, Dixie had slung her share of biting barbs over the fact that Tori’s dream job had come at her expense. But now, at that moment, there was no over-the-top martyrdom, no hint of guilt, no evidence of anger in Dixie’s words. Just pain. Raw pain.

“I—I’m sorry the board did that to you, Dixie.” It was such a simple response, yet no less true. She
was
sorry.

Dixie slowly spread the napkin across her lap once again, her gaze cast downward as she shook her head ever so slightly. “I’ve had a chance to see what you’ve done at the library since you arrived and I can see that they made the right decision. You’ve livened things up. You’ve brought in younger readers. You’ve made the library a fun place to be.

“Being able to work beside you during Nina’s maternity leave was exciting. It brought a new purpose to my days and, in some ways, made me feel young and alive … in a way I haven’t for far longer than I realized.”

When Dixie’s hands returned to the table, Tori reached over and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Having you there was invaluable. To me and our patrons.”

Dixie’s lips trembled upward into a shy smile. “Thank you for saying that, Victoria. It means a lot. It really does. But when the board sent me packing again last week, I felt empty. Like I no longer had any use.”

“Dixie! That’s not true.”

Dixie pulled her hands out from underneath Tori’s. “But then I overheard Georgina talking about Home Fare’s issues with Clyde and I felt like I could do something. Like maybe I could make a difference all on my own. Like I used to. And even though I only delivered out to his house four times, I felt like I made a connection with him.”

Before Tori could respond, Dixie continued on, her eyes sparkling as she spoke. “Because I’m new and only have another client or two, I could stay and chat rather than just hand him a meal and walk away. We talked about books. We talked about food. We talked about our lives. He showed me pictures, told me about his land, complained about the previous folks who’d delivered his meals, and the day before he died, he shared with me his frustration over the sudden downward spiral his health was taking.”

“I’m sure you were a blessing to him, Dixie.”

“As he was to me by giving me a reason to get dressed and leave the house.”

And there it was. The reason behind Dixie’s desire to see justice served.

She picked her fork up off her plate and pointed it at Dixie. “Then we need to eat, my friend. Playing detective can be very hard work and more than a little stressful at times. We need to keep up our strength.”

“Agreed.”

Tori scooped up a bite of meatloaf and slid it into her mouth, the flavor-filled meal eliciting a tiny groan of pleasure. “This is so, so good.”

“Let’s just hope it’s not laced with arsenic.”

Pushing her plate forward, Tori grabbed her water glass and took a large mouth-swishing gulp. When she was done, she met Dixie’s gaze head-on. “Okay. Walk me through your theories. I’m all ears.”

Undaunted by her own words, Dixie took yet another bite of pot roast and chewed it slowly, deliberately. When she finished, she leaned back in her seat like a queen holding court. “Clyde deteriorated over a five- … maybe six-week time period, right?” At Tori’s nod, Dixie continued. “According to the research I did on my own computer after we spoke last night, he was most likely poisoned slowly—a little here, a little there throughout that time period.”

“Okay …”

“Food was given to him all the time, Victoria.”

“By the Home Fare organization,” she reminded.

“And by council members and business owners who thought they could sweet-talk their way into making Clyde change his mind about selling his land to a resort company. Even before I started delivering his meals last week, I always knew Clyde loved food. Why, he didn’t care about any of the games or rides at the various festivals throughout the years. He didn’t go for the chitchat or the gossip. He went for the food and the food only.”

Her meatloaf special now forgotten, Tori found herself staring at Dixie as another sewing circle member’s voice began to play in her head …

It didn’t matter one iota how nicely we asked, or how many times Councilman Haggarty and Councilman Adams sat in that man’s precious sunroom and pled the town’s case. It didn’t matter how many blasted pies Betty Adams sent along with her husband in the hopes of sweetening their chances.

“In fact, I think he may well have been one of Margaret Louise’s taste testers for her sweet potato pie recipe a year or so back. Probably even lent a tongue for all those cookbook concoctions she’s been trying out on us the past six months.”

Clyde Montgomery cared about one person and one person only. Himself.

“Victoria? Have you heard a thing I’ve said?”

Had she ever.

Suddenly, it all made sense. The pleas of Sweet Briar’s business owners and town officials may have fallen on deaf ears when it came to asking Clyde to sell some of his property. But there were other ways to reach their goal.

Pulling her gaze from Dixie’s exasperated face, Tori retrieved her pen from its resting place atop her still-clean notebook and began to write.