Sew Deadly (4 page)

When she reached the top step, Tori rapped softly on the trim of the screen door, hoping that someone would hear her despite the boisterous laughter and pockets of conversation that threatened to drown out everything in its midst.

“Come in!”

Quietly, she pulled the screen door open and stepped inside, her presence causing eight sets of eyes to turn in her direction and eight active mouths to cease any and all movement.

She gulped.

“I—uh.” Tori shifted the pitcher of lemonade to her other arm as she worked to find real words—intelligent words. “I-I’m Tori. Tori Sinclair. Georgina Hayes invited me?” She knew her voice sounded uncertain and weak, but feeling as if one was in a fishbowl made it tough to portray anything else.

“Oh, yes. Georgina told me you were fixin’ to come tonight.” A woman in her mid- to late thirties, with dirty-blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, left the group of women huddled in the entryway to the living room and approached Tori, a smile brightening her face as she neared. “I’m Debbie Calhoun. Welcome.”

Calhoun. Calhoun.

“Oh—your home, it’s absolutely beautiful. Like something you might see on the cover of
Southern Living
magazine.” Tori held the pitcher outward. “I brought some homemade lemonade. I hope you like it.”

“
Lemonade?
Hmmmm. Well—isn’t that sweet of you. I can’t recall the last time—or anytime, I reckon—someone’s brought lemonade. How very quaint. I’ll set it on the dining room table alongside the desserts and I’m sure it will be delicious.” Debbie took the pitcher from Tori’s hands and gestured toward the rest of the crowd still standing in the same spot, their collective gaze fixed on the newcomer. “We’re just waiting on Georgina and Dixie—they should be along directly.”

“Dixie isn’t coming,” said a woman with perfectly coiffed white hair and a small, turned-up nose.

“How come, Rose?” Debbie asked.

Several of the women exchanged looks before the one Debbie had referred to as Rose finally answered. “She said she wanted to attend Cynthia’s dance recital in Wal bash but I think that was just”—she swung her attention squarely onto Tori—“
an excuse
, bless her heart.”

Uh-oh.

“Excuse? Whatever for?”

Georgina’s arrival prevented the woman from answering Debbie’s question but it didn’t take much to figure it out anyway. A dance recital hadn’t kept Dixie Dunn from attending the weekly sewing circle.

Tori
had.

The momentary lull in conversation caused by Tori’s arrival ended the moment Sweet Briar’s mayor swept into the room, an embroidery-topped sewing box in one hand, a cake box in the other. “I’m here. I’m here. I’m sorry I’m late, but Thomas actually made it home in time for supper this evening and I wanted to make sure he had his favorites.” The woman who’d sat in Tori’s tiny living room just the night before seemed larger than life as she set her box on a table and removed her straw hat. “Oh, Victoria, I’m so tickled you came. Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

“Not at all. But please, call me Tor—”

“I didn’t think you would.” Georgina retrieved her box from the table and gestured for Tori to follow her into the dining room. “And if you had, all you’d have to say is ‘the Calhoun home.’ Everyone knows where it is. Having a celebrity under one’s roof tends to do that.”

“Celebrity?” Tori questioned as she took in the top of the dining room table, the white lace cloth covered with apple pies, peach and cherry cobblers, cutout cookies, assorted cakes, and powdered sugar-topped brownies.

Debbie nodded as she added Tori’s pitcher to the lineup, positioning it beside a silver ice bucket on the right side of the table. “Colby—that’s my husband—is an author.”

Tori’s ears perked.

“An author? How exciting! What did he write?”

Rose, who’d entered the room behind them, snorted in disgust. “You’re a
librarian
and you’ve never heard of Colby Calhoun?”

“Now, Rose. Colby is well known
here . . .
but Victoria isn’t from here. And he hasn’t written anything since before Jackson was born.” Debbie straightened a stack of napkins then led the way down a hallway and onto a screened-in porch where the rest of the women had retreated to after Georgina’s arrival. “Watch your step, Victoria. The power cords for the machines can be quite the tripping hazard as many of us know, right ladies?”

Heads nodded around the room as Tori stopped beside Debbie, the hostess’s eyebrows suddenly furrowing. “Now, what was I saying? Oh . . . yes . . . Jackson is our youngest son. Colby wrote for years before and after our wedding, but he’s resting his brilliance and watching the children these days so I can pursue my pet project.”

“Don’t listen to her, Victoria. Debbie’s pet project is a smashing success.” Leona patted the empty cushion beside her and smiled. “I’m so glad to see you here. I had no idea.”

All eyes, including Georgina’s, left Tori’s face to scour Leona’s.

“You know this one?” Rose asked as she lowered her frail body into a high-backed chair in the far corner, a gooseneck lamp bathing the spot in light.

“I most certainly do. Victoria and I had a wonderful time getting acquainted in the shop yesterday, didn’t we, Victoria?”

“
Tori
. And yes, we did.” Tori sat on the love seat beside her friend and pulled her pillow and sewing box from her bag.

“Oh, Victoria . . . that’s lovely.” Debbie crossed the screened porch to Tori’s side and leaned in for a closer look. “The twist to your cord is perfect.”

“Thank you.” Her face warmed with the compliment. “I have a long way to go, though.”

“It’s just lovely,” Debbie repeated. “Do you need a sewing machine tonight?”

Tori shook her head softly. “Not tonight. I’m trying to do as much by hand as possible. For this project anyway.”

“How long have you been sewing?” Rose asked.

Tori considered her answer. Somehow she’d gotten off on the wrong foot with this elderly woman—an obvious friend and supporter of Dixie Dunn. And while she suspected loyalty ran deep among a group of sewing buddies, she also knew she needed to present the facts as she knew them. The first one being, she wasn’t evil.

But it was Georgina who answered the woman. “Victoria has been sewing since she was a child. She learned under her great-grandmother’s tutelage.” Georgina claimed a rocking chair near the center of the porch. “Isn’t that right, Victoria?”

“Yes. But please, just call me Tori.”

A question regarding thread companies from a young girl perched at a picnic table took the spotlight off Tori momentarily and she exhaled deeply.

“How’s it going?” Leona whispered in her ear.

“I wasn’t sure there for a moment, but I’ll be okay.”

“I hear Georgina stopped by your place last night and invited you to our circle?” Leona picked a piece of lint off Tori’s arm.

“She did. She even brought me a plate of brownies.”

Leona carefully placed the offending speck on a cloth napkin and folded it just so. “Did you send her a thank-you note yet?”

“Not—not yet.”

“Lesson number one, dear—it’s never too soon to write a thank-you note in the south.
Never
.”

“Okay, I’ll—”

“Lesson number two—your name is
Victoria
. You’re trying to blend in, remember?”

“But Tori is my na—” The disapproving look on Leona’s face cut her protest short.

Al-righty then
.

“Did you bring a treat to share?”

Finally she’d scored a hit
.

Tori nodded. “I brought some homemade lemonade.”

“
Lemonade
, dear?” Leona
tsked
softly under her breath. “Lesson number three—and this is an important one—southerners drink
tea
. Sweet tea.”

“No lemonade?”

Leona scrunched her nose slightly and shook her head.

Huh.

“And a drink—regardless of whether you grew the lemon tree yourself—isn’t homemade enough. You need to
bake
something, dear. Preferably from an old family recipe that’s been handed down.”

“I have some of those, I thin—”

Leona reached out and patted her hand. “Recipes from Tampa don’t count. Not in Sweet Briar, anyway.”

She couldn’t be serious.

Or could she?

But even if she was, at least Tori had sewing in common with—

She turned an accusatory eye on her new friend. “I thought you said you didn’t sew.”

“I don’t.”

“Then why are you here?”

Almost as if on cue, a woman bearing a striking resemblance to Leona breezed into the room, her arrival and its impact unmistakable.

Leona simply pointed at the woman and mumbled, “Same reason I’m living in Sweet Briar.” Then, in a louder voice for everyone to hear, “Margaret Louise, I want you to meet the new librarian,
Victoria
Sinclair.”

“Victoria Sinclair—now there’s a mouthful. Ever think about goin’ by Tori?” Leona’s twin grabbed hold of Tori’s hand and pumped it up and down, her smile as wide as two football fields. “Now imagine if you had a middle name inserted in there like I do—wow!”

“She likes to talk,” Leona mumbled under her breath only to be drowned out by the sound of her sister’s animated voice. “Has since we were children. Only she does it with a southern accent now.”

“My son, Jake, said one of the guys from his garage changed your tire today . . . said you must have run across something mighty sharp to get a slash like that,” Margaret Louise continued. “Did you run across any tongues on the way to work?” The woman burst into a momentary fit of laughter, stopping only to poke Debbie with a playful elbow. “Ha! Did you get it?
Sharp tongues
?”

It didn’t take long to realize that twin sisters could be as different as night and day. Where Leona was quiet and easygoing, Margaret Louise was loud and boisterous. Where Leona’s laugh was quiet and dainty, Margaret Louise’s was hearty and room-filling. But as different as they were, Tori couldn’t help but take a shine to this woman as well—the kind of person who could cause others to experience that soul-reaching laugh her great-grandmother had claimed was priceless.

As the night wore on, Tori realized she hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time. Everyone there—including Rose—was a character in their own right. She soon learned that Debbie was the owner of Debbie’s Bakery in the town square and that Margaret Louise baked many of the delectable desserts that were sold in the shop. She discovered that Beatrice Tharrington, the young girl who’d asked about different threads, was a nanny for a family in town, her soft British accent a nice change of pace in a room of southerners. She learned a few fascinating facts about the civil war era coin collection Georgina and her husband were painstakingly piecing together. And finally, she learned that Rose Winters was a retired kindergarten teacher from Sweet Briar Elementary who’d had Debbie in her class decades earlier. And while it was obvious on more than one occasion that the woman was close to Dixie Dunn, Tori also didn’t miss the softening in Rose’s demeanor as they sewed away the time.

Conversation was lively as each member—except Leona—worked on their latest sewing project. Rose was making a skirt for her daughter, Margaret Louise a blanket for her next grandbaby due in February, and Beatrice was stitching a vest for her mother in England. Debbie was making an embroidered sign for her shop, and Georgina was hemming a pair of Thomas’s slacks.

“Did you hear Tiffany Ann is comin’ back?” Margaret Louise asked, only to be sidetracked by a needle poke. “Good heavens, you’d think by now I’d know to bring a thimble.”

“I didn’t know that. But it makes sense. I saw her father in the market last week and he said they were fixin’ to drive a fair piece to her graduation this past weekend.” Rose stopped working on the scalloped border at the base of the skirt and looked up. “I wonder if that means she’ll be helping with the floats for the Fourth of July parade.”

Leona set her antiques catalogue on her lap. “Tiffany Ann Gilbert’s hair is the color of spun gold, Victoria, like something out of a fairy tale you’d find in your library. Her face is flawless, her lips perfectly plump and pouty. And—”

“And she could make a
preacher
curse,” Margaret Louise interjected.

“A preacher curse?” Tori whispered to Leona.

“It means she’s pigheaded, dear. She believes in doing everything her way. While she’s polite, it’s apparent she believes she can do things better.” Leona waited for the pockets of conversation to die out before continuing her description in a voice just loud enough for everyone to hear. “Tiffany Ann also happens to be the Sweetheart of Sweet Briar. And I mean that quite literally—as in pageant, literally.”

Tori looked up from her cord twisting. “So she rode on the floats each year?”

Margaret Louise laughed. “She did that, too . . . but she also
designed
them. All of them. She not only had a flair for makin’ herself shine, but she had a flair for makin’ everything around her shine, too.”

“She got a hankering to be an interior designer and went a country mile to some fancy college. And let me tell you, that girl is going to make a pretty penny. You just wait and see.” Debbie set her embroidery hoop on the side table beside her chair and rubbed her eyes.

“I could use her in the children’s room,” Tori said as she bent over her work once again.

“Children’s room?” Leona asked.

Tori shrugged at her sheepishly. “I know it might be a bit ambitious right off the bat but I think we need it.”

Leona’s eyebrow cocked in her direction, the woman’s voice dropping so as to be heard by Tori and Tori only. “I thought you were going to take it slow.”

“I was—I mean, I am,” she whispered back. “I just think this one idea will be good for the kids.”

“There’s no space for a children’s room at the library,” Rose interjected from across the room. “Though it would be wonderful.”

Tori widened her eyes at Leona then turned her focus onto Rose. “I agree. And I think I can pull it off by using the old storage room in the back of the library. I spent most of the day in there, and it’s wasted space.”