A Killing Notion: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (3 page)

At least half the population of Bliss was in attendance at Christopher Montgomery’s funeral. It had been a closed casket, which was disturbing since that most likely meant his remains weren’t in good condition. I’d looked for an enlarged photo of Mr. Montgomery on an easel or a framed image on the table with the guest book, but there hadn’t been one. “It was a request in his will,” someone had said. “He wanted everyone to remember him in their own way, not from some snapshot or staged image.”

The turnout was either a testament to the impact he’d had on so many people’s lives . . . or it was proof that the people in our small town couldn’t resist the pull of morbid curiosity. Word had circulated pretty quickly about Shane being a suspect in his father’s death.

I wandered through the crowded living room, absorbing snippets of conversation, most in hushed, secretive tones.

“Such a shame. If only he didn’t travel so much
between here and Granbury, maybe it would have turned out differently.”

“That poor Teagen, bless her heart. She’s going to grow up without a father.”

“Reba must be beside herself about Shane.”

“How could he have done it?”

“You have to have a mountain of hatred to kill your father.”

That was the truth, but Lord almighty, it seemed the people were ready to string Shane up before he was ever charged, let alone convicted.

Will sidled up to me, placing his hand on my lower back, as the newly widowed Reba Montgomery came up to us. “I want to thank you for coming, Harlow. Will.” She clasped a hanky in one hand, dabbing at her eyes as the tears pooled. She was the spitting image of Reba McEntire, wavy locks of feathered red hair, crystal blue eyes framed with black eyeliner, shimmering dangly earrings, and a generous bust usually accented by a halter-style top. I’d heard her tell the story of her naming plenty of times. Her mama took one look at the shock of red hair she’d been born with and named her Reba right on the spot.

But right now her face was drawn, her cheekbones more hollow than normal, and her usual radiant smile was absent. The death of her husband had taken its toll on her, but in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t see her in anything but the smart, fitted suit she currently wore. To a lot of Southern women, as Miranda Lambert so aptly phrased it in “Mama’s Broken Heart
,
” it didn’t matter how you felt, it only mattered how you looked. Miss Reba, as everyone called her, in all her ginger glory, took
that sentiment to heart. She put her best into looking like a lady, and not even her own broken heart over her dead husband could change that.

“We’re awfully sorry for your loss,” I said, feeling like the sentiment was way too formal and didn’t really convey how awfully sorry we really were. She wrung her hands, poor thing, trying to keep a brave face. She could only mask so much.

“I still can’t believe it. Sometimes I think I’ll wake up and find this is all a horrible nightmare.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Everything I thought of to say sounded cliché and vacant in my head. Being next to her, squeezing her hand was all I could do, and it seemed to bolster her.

“Us meeting was fate,” she said, “and I don’t even believe in fate. Or at least I didn’t.” She shook her head, her hair tumbling around her tired face. “The moment I laid eyes on him, I knew, and when he spoke, you know, I would have married him on the spot.”

I had only met Chris Montgomery a few times, but I had to agree with Miss Reba that there’d been something about him, a quality that made people like him on the spot. He looked like George Clooney and had the charisma to boot.

“How did you meet?” I asked, sensing that she needed to talk about it.

She gave a melancholy smile. “He and Eddy Blake—his partner at Bubba’s—had just started their store here in Bliss. The minute I walked in and saw him, I knew he was the one. He was a real spitfire. He serviced my car personally, and instead of charging me, he asked me out.” She laughed halfheartedly, swiping at the tears falling
from her eyes. “We went to the Porterhouse on Vine and had surf and turf, and then do you know what we did?”

“What?” I asked.

“He took me to Dairy Queen. Dairy Queen, can you believe that? But that just sealed the deal for me. I thought, if this guy can be comfortable at Dairy Queen
and
Porterhouse on Vine, he’s some kind of man.” Her voice hitched. “It became our tradition. We always went there on our anniversary. To Dairy Queen. Sort of a joke, you know?”

Will’s hand against my lower back gave me strength to fight the tears welling in my eyes. Miss Reba had loved her husband, and I couldn’t imagine her loss.

After a moment, she squared her shoulders. “I’ve heard people talkin’, you know. About Shane,” she added after Will and I looked at each other, and then back at her. “The sheriff came by even.”

Oh Lord. Talking to the deputy sheriff about this subject was one thing, but hearing Reba’s grief compounded by the rumors that her son had been involved? That was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. “No one believes it, Miss Reba,” I said.

She turned abruptly to face the buffet table, grabbed a white ceramic plate, and began piling it up with food. A fried drumstick. A scoop of macaroni and cheese. A hunk of chicken-fried steak. Soupy baked beans. And a helping of peach cobbler. She had the big eye, or she just wasn’t paying attention.

I snuck another raised-eyebrow look at Will, but before he could reply with his own facial gestures, Reba swung back toward me and thrust the overloaded plate at me. I took hold of it without thinking, but she didn’t
release her own grip. Instead, she tugged on it, pulling me closer, the sauce from the beans drenching the other food. “You have to help us, Harlow,” she said, her voice cracking again.

I startled, letting go. “What?”

She stumbled back a step before catching herself, and then dropped her voice even lower. “You’ve done it before. Shane didn’t do what people are saying. You have to help him, Harlow.”

Criminy, why was I suddenly the go-to person in Bliss for private detective work? Will’s hand snaked around my waist—his protective mode. At this rate, he was going to have me locked up to keep me out of it. “Miss Reba,” he said. “You’re upset. I’m sure Harlow understands, but you have to let the sheriff do his job.”

But Miss Reba didn’t want to hear that the sheriff had things under control. Her eyelids fluttered spastically before falling to half-mast. “He’s my son,” she said with a low hiss. “My
son
. They’ll be accusing my daughter next, as if either one of them could have killed their father.” She looked me in the eyes. “It doesn’t make a lick of sense, Harlow. Shane didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Mama,” a girl said, sliding in to the space next to Miss Reba. Their ginger hair and the clear ice blue of their eyes were identical. She handed a black cell phone to her mother. “It’s Mr. Blake’s.”

She stared at it for half a second before blinking and coming back to herself. “Thank you, love. Harlow, Will,” she said to us. “My daughter, Teagen. Teagen, this is Mr. Flores. And this,” she said, lifting her arm toward me, “is Harlow Cassidy, the dressmaker.”

Harlow Cassidy, the dressmaker. The four words went together more often than not, these days. I was the only Harlow Cassidy, as far as I knew, so the clarification that I was the dressmaker seemed unnecessary. But not to the people of Bliss.

The girl looked a few years younger than Gracie, so I pegged her at around thirteen. She was heavy in the thighs and still had an adolescent softness around her middle.

“Buttons and Bows, right?” she asked me. I nodded, noticing how the red rims around her eyes emphasized the clear blue of her irises. She put on a brave face, though, just like her mother.

“Mama said we could come by your shop to look at your clothes,” she said.

“You’re welcome anytime, Teagen,” I said, a sudden vision of her in low-rise jeans, a graphic tee, and a modified, embellished Army jacket. Puzzling, since none of these clothes were anything I designed. I’d thought my power was more specific, homing in on how the clothes I made helped a person’s wishes and dreams come true. Apparently not.

I looked at Teagen again, the image of the same outfit popping into my mind for the second time. Definitely store-bought. But the jacket . . . it was embellished with strips of fabric, beads, and other adornments. I hadn’t done a lot of that type of thing, but maybe . . . ?

“Did you see Mr. Blake?” Miss Reba asked Teagen. “My husband’s business partner,” she said as an aside to us.

“No. I just found the phone by Daddy’s side of the bed.”

Miss Reba looked alarmed, her eyes opening wide. “What were you doing in the bedroom? Teagen, you can’t—”

“I miss him!” She swiped at the tears spilling from her eyes. “I thought I’d feel closer to him there.”

Will squeezed my hand. I looked at him and he tilted his head, the message clear. We were intruding, so we should step away. My heart ached for Teagen, Shane, and Miss Reba, but Will was right. This was their private moment, Teagen’s pain palpable, and we needed to leave them to their sorrow.

We inched away, but Miss Reba’s chin lifted and her voice rang clear. “I really should find Mr. Blake.”

She looked over her shoulder, searching the mourners.

I took that as a dismissal and started to walk away in earnest, but Miss Reba’s hand shot out, her coral fingernails clawing the bishop sleeve of my blouse. “Harlow, I’ve heard about you,” she said, her voice coming out in a hiss.

I gulped. “I’m sorry, Miss Reba, but what do mean?”

Instead of answering, she swung her gaze to Will. “Your girl, she cares about Shane.”

“She does,” Will said, looking none too happy about his baby girl caring for a kid some people thought capable of killing his father.

Miss Reba flicked her gaze back and forth between us. “She said you could help, Harlow. That you’ve figured out the truth before.”

“Yes, but, Miss Reba, but that’s different—”

“How is it different? Someone died and you helped find out who the killer was.” She clasped her hands
around mine and squeezed. “I want you to help Shane. Gracie said you could do it.”

A low growl came from Will. He’d told Gracie not to get involved, and that he didn’t want me involved, but she hadn’t listened, and she’d convinced Miss Reba that I could help.

A hush came over the room and I spun to see Shane walking toward us, his head hung, shoulders hunched. The quiet turned to a low whisper. Inside, my blood pulsed. It seemed that people had already decided Shane was guilty. Maybe he was, but what if he wasn’t? He’d lost his father, and until he’d been proven guilty, he was a victim here.

“He called me from the car, you know,” Miss Reba said. “Told me to wait up for him, that he was taking care of something in Granbury, but that he’d be back and he wanted to talk.” A sob caught in her throat, but she swallowed it, closing her eyes for a beat while she gathered her emotions up and tucked them away. “I told him I’d wait up for him, but he never came home, Harlow.”

“I’ll help,” I said, the words coming before I could stop them—or even think about what helping would involve.

“Cassidy,” Will said into my ear, a warning in his voice. “Don’t get involved.”

But Loretta Mae’s voice was in my other ear saying, “Do what’s right, darlin’, and you’ll have no regrets.”

Shane walked right through the front room, not looking at his sister or his mother. He ignored the whispers and a moment later, he was out the door, the screen door banging closed behind him. No more laughter. No light
in his eyes. No dreams of homecoming as he’d had a few days ago.

“I’ll help,” I said again, and this time I meant it one hundred percent.

*   *   *

“Is it true?” I asked, cornering Gavin McClaine a short while later. He wore his typical tan uniform, a sharp crease from a good iron running up the legs of his pants. Gavin was a stickler for keeping a shipshape uniform.

The deputy sheriff lifted his chin slightly as he scratched his scalp. “I reckon you want me to read your mind, is that right, Harlow? Because otherwise, I don’t know what in tarnation you’re talking about.”

Will sauntered up next to me, two clear plastic cups in his hands. He gave me one and I took a sip of the ice-cold lemonade. September in Bliss meant the temperature still hovered just under the triple-digit mark. Another month and the humidity would be gone and cooler weather would settle in on the town, but for now, I fanned myself with one of the floral napkins Miss Reba had set out on the buffet table.

“I’m talking about the rumors going far and wide about Shane—” I broke off and peered around, making sure no one could overhear us as I’d just overheard them earlier. Lowering my voice, I continued. “I’m talking about the rumors that Shane had something to do with his father’s death.”

Gavin let a slow smile spread from cheek to cheek. “Harlow, did your stepdaddy deputize you when I was up in Missouri visiting Orphie?”

I bristled. “You know he didn’t.”

His smile grew even wider. “So then, I’m at a loss as
to why you’re grillin’ me about the Montgomery boy when that would be top secret police business.”

“Top secret.
Pft.
” I glanced up at Will who, after a year now, had figured out the love-hate friendship Gavin and I danced around. We went way back to elementary school together, and now that we were both in our thirties, we’d come to a sort of peace with one another. The fact that his daddy had recently married my mother made us stepsiblings, something I had a hard time wrapping my brain around.

“She’s worried about Gracie, that’s all,” Will said, “and she wants to make sure you’re not going to lock Shane away without looking at the whole picture.”

Gavin’s smile was gone. He and Will were eye to eye, and while I knew that in a one-on-one challenge, Will would come out on top, Gavin looked mighty intense at the moment. “She’s pokin’ her nose into police business,” Gavin said, speaking as if I weren’t right there in front of him.

I jammed my hands on my hips. “Because I’m looking out for Gracie and Shane, and I don’t want anyone accused of something they didn’t do.” And because Gracie and Miss Reba had both asked me, and I couldn’t very well deny either one of them.