Elizabeth Lynn Casey - Southern Sewing Circle 08 - Remnants of Murder (5 page)

Slowly, Dixie lifted the chicken leg, only to let it drop back to the plate, untouched. “It didn’t matter how weak he was, he always greeted me at the door, checking his watch to make sure I arrived during the thirty-minute window Home Fare gives their clients.”

“He timed you?” she asked.

“Clyde Montgomery was a regimented man. I suppose that came from his time in the military as a young man, or maybe he was raised that way. I can’t really say for sure because we hadn’t gotten to that aspect yet.”

“Gotten to that aspect?”

Dixie turned the chicken leg over and over on her plate, nodding as she did. “When I showed up on my first day at the exact time I was expected, he invited me to stay and chat while he ate. And since he was the only person on my route that particular day, I accepted. I figured he could use the company as much as I could and it would be a way for me to see that he was eating.”

She pulled her gaze from Dixie’s hands and fixed it, instead, on her face. “Did you have reports that he wasn’t eating?”

“I didn’t need a report to tell me that, Victoria. He was as frail as frail can be.”

“How old was he?”

“Ninety-one.”

“Oh.” She filled her cheeks with air, then let them deplete along with a sigh. “Don’t you wish we could have a magic wand and wave it over the elderly to stop their bodies from giving out?”

Dixie pushed her plate into the center of the table. “Why is everyone always so quick to point to age as the reason for everything?”

The venom in Dixie’s voice caught her by surprise. “I didn’t mean anything bad, Dixie, I just—”

“It didn’t matter that I’d run that library for forty years. The day I turned sixty-eight, I suddenly became incompetent in the eyes of Winston Hohlbrook and the rest of the board. And Rose? Everyone is always watching her like she’s going to keel over any minute.”

“I don’t watch Rose like that,” she protested.

“You don’t follow behind Rose on the way to the dessert table every time we have a sewing circle meeting, Victoria?”

She swallowed. “I don’t do that because I think she’s going to keel over. I do that because I don’t want her to fall.”

“Because she’s
old
.”

She swallowed a second time. “She’s more frail now with the arthritis and—”

“And she’s old.” Dixie warded off Tori’s next explanation with raised hands. “I understand, Victoria. I really do. No one wants to see Rose fall any less than I do. But I also know she’s aware of everyone hovering and watching all the time and it’s defeating.”

Defeating.

She hadn’t considered that before …

“Is that why she didn’t come to sewing circle this week? Or the week before?”

Dixie pulled her glass close and stared inside at the water she’d managed to get below the halfway mark. “When you feel as if everyone around you thinks you’re incapable of doing things any longer, you start to doubt what you can and can’t do, too.”

A hint of bile rose in her throat as the enormity of what Dixie was saying hit her with a one-two punch. “Oh, Dixie, I feel
awful
. I never thought of it that—”

“I’m just so tired of age being the scapegoat for everyone else’s misperceptions. So I turned sixty-eight? That’s not why my ideas for the library became stale. They’d gotten that way from doing the same thing the same way for so long. All I needed was some perspective—a chance to be around new ideas like I was when I filled in for Nina.” Dixie wrapped her hands around her glass, only to let it go and push it in the direction of her unwanted dinner. “And Rose? So what if she passed eighty by a few years ago? She might require a little more time to get down the hallway, and she might need a little help with her plate sometimes, but she still needs her dignity and for people just to love her for being who she is instead of always watching her and waiting for her to die.”

It was hard not to feel like a puppy getting its nose smacked with a paper as the words poured from Dixie’s mouth. She tried to explain the circle’s feelings for Rose, but it was no use. Dixie was on a tear.

“And just because Clyde Montgomery was ninety-one doesn’t mean his death should just immediately be written off as old age.”

She raked a hand through her hair and worked to steady her breath before she spoke, Dixie’s emotional state more precarious than she realized. “But you said he was frail, didn’t you? And he was obviously housebound or he wouldn’t be getting his meals from Home Fare, right?”

“
Rose
gets her meals from Home Fare.”

Tori sucked in a breath. “She does?”

Dixie’s face drained of all color once again, prompting Tori to nudge the water glass back in the woman’s direction. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” the woman whispered. “I promised her I wouldn’t tell.”

“But why? Why wouldn’t she want us to know that?”

Dixie struggled to her feet and made her way across the kitchen in order to stand by the window that overlooked Tori’s shallow side yard. Her back to Tori, she finally answered, “What would you have done if you knew, Victoria?”

“I would have made her some meals myself.”

“And?”

“So would Margaret Louise … and Debbie … and Georgina … and …”

“And with those meals would have come a host of worry visits, right?” Dixie glanced over her shoulder and pinned Tori with a stare. “Well, am I right?”

“Worry visits?” she repeated. “What’s a worry visit?”

Dixie’s shoulders hitched up on an inhale then dipped along with the loud exhale that echoed off the tiled walls. “A worry visit is where everyone shows up at your door wanting to know how you are and what they can do, all the while making you feel like some sort of zoo animal.”

“But we care about Rose.”

“And that’s good. You should. We all should. But this is just a low point for her. The arthritis is acting up and she knows it’s best to stay close to home, but she also doesn’t want a fuss made. She’s struggling to hold on to some sort of independence right now. Calling a place like Home Fare and putting herself on the rolls as a temporary client is important for her psyche. So is not letting anyone know.”

She’d be lying if she told Dixie she was okay with keeping quiet. Rose held a special place in her heart and had since almost the very beginning. Back then, Tori had just assumed the pull toward Rose was simply a need to be around someone who was about the age her late great-grandmother had been when she’d passed away. But as time went on and she got to know Rose better, she’d come to realize her bond with Rose was unique.

To know her treasured friend was going through a difficult time and didn’t want Tori’s help was hard to swallow, let alone respect.

“Don’t worry, Victoria. I’m keeping tabs.” Dixie retraced her steps back to the table and rested a calming hand on Tori’s shoulder. “If the situation changes, I will let you know. You have my word on that.”

“Can I call her just to say hi? The way I normally would?”

At that, Dixie offered the faintest hint of a smile. “Of course. Normalcy is good. It’s why Clyde’s son, Beau, showed up with scones every morning at ten sharp. It’s why Clyde liked to sit out on his sunporch after their tea and read the classics. It’s why he waited at the window when it was time for his dinner to arrive. It’s also why he liked to retire to that same porch chair after his meal, looking out at the very lake his daddy and his granddaddy before him admired while they, too, drifted off for a much-needed afternoon nap. Normalcy is a comfort. It makes us feel safe and secure.”

“Normalcy,” Tori repeated. “I guess I never really thought of it as a comfort but it makes sense.”

“It also helps raise a red flag when something is wrong.”

She looked up at Dixie. “Raise a red flag? About what?”

“About the truth. Or at least the need to investigate a little further.”

“We’re talking about Clyde’s death again, aren’t we?” It was a rhetorical question really, especially in light of the way Dixie’s field of vision obviously encompassed a scene beyond the kitchen they both inhabited at that moment.

Dixie nodded, once, twice.

She studied her friend’s face closely, her thoughts registering the same take-no-prisoners clearheaded woman she missed terribly at the library. Dixie wasn’t about tall tales. Sure, her predecessor could play the martyr routine better than anyone Tori had ever met, but this wasn’t about playing a martyr. And if she listened to her gut, she also knew it had nothing to do with proving one’s worth, either.

No, Dixie genuinely believed something was amiss about Clyde Montgomery’s passing. Maybe it was needless. Maybe it wasn’t. But either way, the least she could do for the woman was hear her out.

“Tell me.”

Dixie closed her eyes briefly. “Are you going to listen or are you going to write off my ramblings to age? And Clyde’s death to the same?”

She patted Dixie’s spot at the table. “You think there’s more to this man’s death, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then there must be a reason, right?”

Dixie nodded again. “There is.”

“Then I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

Dixie’s lower lip trembled ever so slightly before it disappeared behind a well-placed hand. “Chief Dallas thinks I’m crazy.”

“At least he doesn’t think you’re a killer,” she quipped.

Shrugging, Dixie dropped into her chair with a thud. “In order for him to think I’m a killer, he’d have to think there was a murder. And he doesn’t.”

She leaned forward across the table, noting the way Dixie worried her lip and twisted her hands inside one another. She knew those motions, knew them well …

“But
you
do, don’t you?”

Dixie traced the pattern on the top of her Formica table then stopped, her gaze slowly rising until it mingled with Tori’s. “Clyde Montgomery was murdered. And with your help, Victoria, I’m absolutely certain we can prove it.”

Chapter 5

Tori had always prided herself on being one of
those people who learned lessons the first time, committing to memory whatever knowledge she’d gleaned from a particular situation. But after finding herself searching for clues surrounding one too many dead bodies, she had to consider the very real possibility that she wasn’t as smart and savvy as she once thought.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” she asked as Dixie rooted through an overgrown flowerpot to the left of Clyde Montgomery’s front door. “I mean, I’m thinking Chief Dallas wouldn’t be too thrilled at the idea of us breaking and entering.”

“I imagine you’d be right … if we were actually breaking and entering.” Dixie pulled her hand from the dirt, brandishing a standard-looking house key in her hand as she did. “But since Clyde told me where to find his key after my second on-time visit, I kind of feel as if I have his permission.”

“I’m not sure if permission granted premortem actually extends into postmortem, you know?”

“Well, in the event you’re right, I also have Beau’s permission. That, alone, certainly covers the gap.”

She stepped to her left to afford a glimpse around the northeast corner of the stately plantation-style house and marveled at the view of Fawn Lake, the late afternoon sun sending shoots of light across its surface. It was a view she could get used to if it wasn’t for the nagging sense that they shouldn’t be there in the first place. “Now who’s Beau again?” she asked as she turned to find Dixie brushing potting soil from the key’s teeth.

“Clyde’s son. I spoke to him on the phone after I found Clyde. He asked me to stay until the body was removed.”

“He didn’t come when he heard?” she asked.

“He couldn’t. He was away on business and the earliest flight he could get has him landing in Charleston sometime tonight. Even if he drove straight here from the airport, it would still be late. So he asked me to lock up.” Dixie inserted the key into the lock and turned, a sly smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Unfortunately, I forgot … which is why I have to come back now.”

“Dixie, I just heard the lock disengage,” she argued.

“You did? Because
I
didn’t hear that.” Dixie rolled her eyes skyward then pushed the door open, beckoning for Tori to follow as she did.

Ah yes, their breaking and entering that wasn’t really breaking and entering …

Reluctantly, she followed her friend into the dead man’s estate despite the chorus of warning bells sounding in her head. “Dixie? I—I really don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

“You don’t think it’s a good idea to call a murder a murder so that a killer can be brought to justice?” Dixie shook her head from side to side, throwing in an unmistakable tsk-tsk for good measure and maximum guilt potential.

She heard the door click behind her as Dixie pushed it shut, the woman’s continued tsks and clucks making Tori’s cheeks warm in response. “Geez, Dixie, you don’t really have to say it that way, do you?”

“I didn’t realize there were multiple ways to speak the truth, Victoria.”

There was a part of her that wanted to remind her friend of the chief’s conviction regarding the elderly man’s demise. But to utter such words would be akin to giving the Sweet Briar Police Department’s top brass credit for knowing what he was doing.