Sew Deadly (25 page)

“A little town about twenty-five miles from here. I imagine you drove through it on the way here.”

Mentally she reviewed her drive, tried to recall the towns she’d driven through between Sweet Briar and Ridge Cove but could recall none.

“What town is that?” she asked, her attention thwarted momentarily by a large trunk displayed just outside the flea market’s main entrance.

“Sweet Briar.”

Chapter 17

She slipped Lulu’s log cabin onto the screen and shone it onto the far wall, the picture magnified to proportions that coincided with Quinton’s forest. Once she was satisfied with its placement, Tori stepped out from behind Colby Calhoun’s portable projector and began tracing the building onto the base-coated drywall.

Little by little the drawings Milo’s students had created were being brought to life on the walls of the new children’s room, pictures that would invite curiosity and ignite a passion toward books. It was the kind of library she’d dreamed of as a child, the kind of library she wanted to offer as an adult.

And thanks to Winston Hohlbrook and the rest of the board, it was finally happening. In just one week, her dream would officially move from the recesses of her brain into the epitome of reality.

A reality that would blow the residents of Sweet Briar away—with Dixie Dunn the most flabbergasted of all.

Tori’d never seen herself as the type who gained enjoyment from another person’s downfall, but things were different now. Dixie Dunn and the rest of Sweet Briar were in dire need of a healthy wake-up call about what did and didn’t define a person. And last she checked, birthplace wasn’t anywhere in that definition.

“Would you look at who I found outside?”

Tori pulled her pencil from the wall and turned around. Milo and Lulu stood just inside the doorway, a silent and pale-faced Margaret Louise less than five feet behind.

Lulu squealed as she ran over to Tori. “You’re making my log cabin, you’re making my log cabin!”

Squatting down to the child’s eye level, Tori nodded. “You bet I am. And with any luck I’ll get it painted before I go home for the night.”

“Wow, Tori . . . the trees look spectacular!” Milo approached the wall, his eyes skimming the wide trunks and gnarled limbs she’d transferred from Quinton’s paper to the wall. “The colors you picked are amazing.”

Her cheeks grew warm as she stood once again, Milo’s sincere praise tugging at a place in her heart she’d put in mothballs months earlier. “Thanks.”

Lulu’s teacher took a step closer, his focus no longer on Quinton’s trees or any other part of the children’s room for that matter. “Did you find a trunk?”

“A trunk?”

“Yeah. For the costumes.”

“I—uh—”

“Miss Sinclair?” Lulu tugged on her paint smock.

She looked down, her head grateful for the distraction her heart obviously needed. What was wrong with her? Had she not learned a valuable lesson about relationships?

“Miss Sinclair?” Lulu repeated.

“Yes, sweetie, what can I do for you?”

“I solved the mystery, Miss Sinclair.” The child hopped from foot to foot, her attention obviously at war between what she wanted to say and the allure of the room taking shape around her.

“Lulu, why don’t you give Victoria a chance to get her work done. Maybe she can stop by on the way home . . . and you can tell her
then
.” Margaret Louise’s usual peppy demeanor was gone, in its place a curious mixture of reluctance and disappointment.

She looked from Lulu to Margaret Louise and back again. “No, it’s okay. I could use the break.” She reached down and lifted Lulu onto the table she’d dragged into the room for the sole purpose of housing her various paints and brushes. “Did Mr. Wentworth give you one of Cam Jansen’s books?”

“Who’s that?” Lulu asked, her face scrunching in confusion.

“She’s a little girl in a series of mystery books. She solves crimes by utilizing her photographic memory.”

“What’s pho—pho-pho memory?”

Tori laughed, the happy sound mingling with Milo’s. “Photographic memory. It means she can see something . . . like a scene or a person or a thing, and then recall it by memory at a later time.”

“Oh.” Lulu peeked around Tori’s shoulder, a smile stretching across her face at the sight of her log cabin on the wall. “Will you paint mine, too? Like you did for Quinton’s trees?”

“Of course.” Tori plucked a can of weathered brown from the other side of the table and held it up for Lulu to see. “I even have the perfect color all picked out.”

Lulu’s smile grew even larger. “You don’t need that thing anymore.”

She let her gaze follow Lulu’s to the projector in the middle of the room. “What thing? The projector?”

“Uh-huh.”

Tori looked a question at Milo, who simply shrugged in response.

“I do need Mr. Calhoun’s projector. It’s how I’m going to finish your cabin—”

“
Laura’s
cabin,” Lulu corrected.

“You’re right.
Laura’s
cabin.” Tori touched her index finger to the tip of Lulu’s nose and gave it a gentle push. “I can’t finish Laura’s cabin or Cinderella’s castle or the dwarves’ beds or any of the other wonderful pictures your classmates made for me if I don’t have that projector.”

“You can use your own.” Lulu swung her feet back and forth from the knee, the flow of air they created a welcome relief in a room that had grown all too warm thanks to the projector.

She extended her confusion toward Margaret Louise only to have eye contact diverted.

O-kay.

“I don’t have my own, remember?”

“I know where it is.” Lulu turned her body a hairbreadth so she could run her fingers across the tops of the various paint cans. “
Ooooh.
I love purple.”

“I do, too.” Tori took hold of the child’s hands and held them gently until they regained eye contact. “You know where my projector is?”

“Uh-huh. Your Popsicle sticks, too.” Lulu’s eyes widened. “And it sure is a great big box. I bet you have five million Popsicle sticks in there. Maybe even
six
!”

“Where did you see—”

“I saw lots and lots of lightbulbs, too. And a book—with big squares and numbers in it . . . like a calendar.” Lulu hopped off the table and skipped over to her grandmother, the pure joy on her face at complete odds with her kin’s.

She glanced at Milo once again, his latest shrug accompanied by a look of confusion he, too, cast in Margaret Louise’s direction.

“What’s she talking about, Margaret Louise?” Milo asked, his audible question a near perfect match to the mental one making a constant loop in Tori’s head.

“Now she could be mistaken. She has a vivid imagination whether she’s holding a book or no—”

“Mee-Maw, I told you I’m not lying.”

“Hush, Lulu. I’m not accusing you of lying. I’m just thinking maybe you saw what you wanted to see. You’d had a lot of excitement at the party, remember?”

What were they talking about?

“But Miss Dixie had all those things in a big shed in the middle of the woods, Mee-Maw. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

Tori’s gasp echoed Milo’s.

“
Dixie?
Did you say Dixie?” she asked, her voice bordering on shrill.

“Yes, Miss Sinclair. She’s been taking good care of your things.”

“I’ll bet she has,” she bit out through clenched teeth. “That woman’s sole goal in life since the moment I set foot in this town has been to make me feel unwelcome and—and completely
incompetent
.”

She felt Milo’s hand on her arm, a steadying gesture that was probably meant to calm her down, but she didn’t care. Nothing could stop the flow of words as they escaped her lips. Not Margaret Louise. Not Lulu. Not Milo. And not even Nina, who had the misfortune of making her entrance at that very moment.

“She did everything in her power to sabotage my work here—she stole the appointment book that made me look ridiculous in front of Milo, she screamed at me over a coffee stain in a book she probably put there herself, she tried to make me look like an idiot in front of the entire library board, and she made me question my sanity every time I replaced another missing bulb on my front porch.”

Margaret Louise finally looked up, her eyes hazy and tear-filled. “What are you going to—”

“And you know what hit me like a ton of bricks during my drive to Ridge Cove this morning? Do you know what thought I shoved down simply because I was ashamed for thinking it about a woman of Dixie’s age and status in this town? Do you?”

Milo’s hand tightened on her arm as he moved in behind her, his lips nearly touching her ear. “I know what you’re going to say and it’s worth investigating but—”

She spun around, her rant continuing at full voice. “Worth investigating? You think it’s worth investigating? Does that mean I have Sweet Briar’s permission?”

He grabbed hold of her shoulders and brought his face to hers. “Do not say it in front of Lulu. Please.”

And just like that the air gushed from her balloon. Inhaling deeply, Tori closed her eyes, fought with herself to regain some semblance of composure before she faced Margaret Louise’s grandchild, a child she adored as if she were her own.

Slowly she turned, her eyes frantically blinking away the enraged tears that burned their way from the inside, out. “Lulu, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken like that in front of you.”

Lulu shrugged. “Miss Dixie took real good care of your stuff, Miss Sinclair. I promise she did. Not a single thing looks broke. Not even a lightbulb.”

Chapter 18

She turned the pen over and over on her desk, the fingers of her right hand sliding from top to bottom. So much had happened that day it was hard to know what to focus on, which tidbit of information could be the key to removing her name from Investigator McGuire’s list of suspects once and for all.

“Do you think I made the right decision letting Margaret Louise confront Dixie?” Tori stopped the pen midturn and looked from Milo to Nina and back again. “You know she’s going to end up letting her off easy. They’ve been friends for more years than I’ve been alive.”

“I think it was a good call, Tori, I really do.” Milo stretched his legs in front of the same chair she’d sat in to read with Lulu. “Dixie Dunn is threatened by you—to a much higher degree than any of us imagined. She’s not going to let her guard down if you’re in the room as part of the confrontation team.”

She stole a glance at her assistant, saw her head nod in agreement.

“But what happens if she
did
try to frame me? Do you think Margaret Louise will be open-minded enough to listen for any clues that might point in that direction?”

“I think she will be. But if she can’t, then Rose Winters will.” Milo rested his elbow on the armrest of the chair and balanced his chin atop his knuckles. “Rose Winters doesn’t let much go. She’s a stickler for rules. Like Georgina.”

“Yeah, but she’s been friends with Dixie for even longer than Margaret Louise has been.” She knew she sounded paranoid, but really, how could they blame her?

“There’s plenty of good people in this town. No one is going to turn the other cheek on someone who’s tried to frame an innocent person.” Nina’s voice, shy but firm, struck a chord.

Then again, everyone thought Dixie Dunn was a relatively decent person, and look at the problems she’d caused already—regardless of whether she had a hand in Tiffany Ann’s murder or not.

Tori voiced those feelings aloud. “I can’t believe she did all those things. Stealing lightbulbs night after night? Sneaking in my house and removing a box of craft supplies I needed for a visit with your students,” she added, pointing in Milo’s direction.

“I know.”

“And, Milo, can you imagine someone being so angry at a person they’d lift an appointment book just to make them look bad even knowing innocent children would lose out as well?”

Nina leaned against the wall, bending her left leg at the knee. “Nobody was the wiser though. You pulled off that first visit in a way not many people could have done
with
notice.”

“And the projector? That was nothing short of wanting to make me go down in flames in front of the library board when the room wasn’t completed by the date I promised.” She slid her thumb and index finger down the pen again, the repetitive turning motion a mind-numbing release.