Let it Sew (16 page)

Slowly Tori opened her eyes and fixed them on Frieda’s face, the raw pain she saw
there now taking on an entirely different meaning. “I’m sorry, Frieda.”

“No more than I am, Mizz Sinclair. It was hard to see her the way she was at the end,
but I think it’s even harder now, looking back. Because at the time, I kept thinking
she’d rebound. That she’d get a burst of clarity that would help bring sense to everything
she’d said and everything she’d drawn. But that burst never came. One day she was
sitting there drawing that same old picture, and then the next . . . she was gone.”

Chapter 21

There was something about holding an animal and stroking its fur that had a way of
making a person feel a little less stressed and a lot less alone. It was a quality
Tori had always attributed to cats and dogs because that was all she’d ever known.

But sitting there, on Leona’s couch, stroking Paris’s back while they waited for Leona
to emerge from her bedroom for their first-ever sleepover, Tori was more than a little
aware of the fact that the tension she’d been harboring since leaving Frieda was finally
ebbing enough to become tolerable. And it was because of Paris.

And her sweetly twitching nose.

“The secret I swore you to the last time you caught a glimpse of me in my pajamas
is still in effect. You do realize that, don’t you, dear?” Leona’s voice drifted down
the hallway from the partially closed door at the end.

The smile felt good on her lips, as did the feel of Paris’s fur beneath her fingertips.
“I won’t tell, Leona.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes, Leona, I promise.”

Her assurance was met by a soft padding sound on the hardwood floor that spanned the
length of Leona’s town house. As the noise grew closer, though, the padding became
more hesitant.

“I’ll have you know, dear, I take promises very seriously,” Leona reminded her from
somewhere just off to Tori’s right. “And to break one would result in my warranted
denial of the entire matter.”

“Duly noted.” She lowered her mouth in line with Paris’s long ears and lowered her
voice to a whisper. “Your mama is very silly, Paris.”

“Paris does not find me silly, dear. In fact, she thinks my pajamas are wonderful,
don’t you, my precious?” Leona stepped into the living room and stopped, holding her
freshly manicured hands out to the sides. “They’re soft, they’re warm, and—”

“They’ve got footies!” Tori laughed. “Oh my gosh! Leona, you look so . . .
adorable
.”

“And if anyone from the sewing circle saw me in these, I’d never hear the end of it,”
Leona insisted before dropping onto the upholstered lounge chair across from Tori.
“Especially that Rose Winters.”

“That
Rose Winters?”
Tori ran her palm along the back of Paris’s back, reveling in the sense of peace
she emanated through her fur. “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good. Are you two butting
heads again over your plan to expose The Grinch?”

“No. Not exactly.” Leona bolted upright on her lounge chair and looked around. “Wait.
I haven’t offered you any wine yet. Would you like some wine? Maybe some crackers
as well?”

“Leona, please. My being here is supposed to be relaxing . . . for both of us. For
me, because it’s alone time for the two of us. For you, because Annabelle is spending
the night with Margaret Louise. I’m not here to be treated as a guest from out of
town.”

Leona’s bottom lip jutted outward for the briefest of seconds before aligning itself
with its counterpart once again. “But it’s proper etiquette, dear. And if I don’t
demonstrate it, how will you ever learn?”

“It’ll be our little secret. Like the footy pajamas.” She glanced down at Paris in
time to see her eyes begin to droop. “She’s getting sleepy,” she whispered.

“Because she feels warm and safe. . . . which is why I always hold her until she falls
asleep.” Leona scooted her body along the lounge chair until she was reclining against
the back pillow. “Rose, on the other hand, puts Patches in his bunny bed—awake—and
shuts off the light. Can you imagine such a thing? Why, I had to cover Paris’s ears
so she wouldn’t hear the cruelty her offspring faces on a nightly basis.”

She considered riding to Rose’s rescue and citing a few articles she’d read on the
importance of children learning to fall asleep on their own, but opted instead to
let it go. This was their night. A night for gabbing as the invitation had proclaimed
when it arrived in Tori’s mailbox six weeks earlier.

At the time, once she’d gotten over the shock of a sleepover at Leona’s, Tori had
found the linen stationary, calligraphy, and excessive notice to be a bit over the
top, but then again, it was an invitation from Leona, a woman who didn’t believe in
ordinary.

And now that the sleepover was finally there, Tori couldn’t help being glad. For as
prickly as Leona could be most of the time, she was also an amazing listener with
a second-to-none radar where people and their motivations were concerned.

“So tell me, do you need to get a darker shade of foundation or are you really that
pale right now, dear?”

“I’m really that pale.”

Leona narrowed her gaze on Tori’s face. “How come I’ve never noticed how ghostlike
your skin is until tonight?”

“Because it’s not really been tanning temperatures these last few weeks?” she offered,
although she knew it was futile. Leona Elkin was like a dog with a bone. She didn’t
give up until she’d sniffed out the prize.

“That’s true, but that doesn’t explain the darkened circles under your eyes.” Leona
bobbed her head first left and then right as she gave Tori a more thorough once-over.
“Or that tension I felt in your shoulders when you insisted on hugging upon your arrival
this evening.”

It was no use. She might as well hand her the bone and call it a day. “Any paleness
you’re detecting is truly just a matter of cooler temperatures and spending every
spare second of the last month preparing for last weekend’s book fair.”

“And the black circles?” Leona drawled.

“Those would be from not sleeping.”

A flash of interest propelled Leona forward on her lounge. “Is Milo keeping you awake?”

“No. I’m staring at the ceiling long after we’ve hung up for the night.”

Leona rolled her eyes and sank back in her chair. “Then why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Well, until today, I’d say it was due to an overactive imagination and a laundry
list of questions that kept nagging at me every time I tried to shut my eyes.”

“And now?”

“That laundry list of questions has been replaced by answers.”

Leona cocked her head ever so slightly to the left and studied her sleeping Paris.
“Then that’s good, right? You’ve got your answers so you should be able to sleep.”

If only it were that easy . . .

“But you see, that’s the problem. Those answers I got? They just underscored the fact
that my overactive imagination isn’t so overactive after all. In fact, thanks to those
answers, I’m more convinced than ever that things are not as they seem on the surface
regarding Parker Devereaux’s death.”

Leona hoisted her body forward and off the lounge chair. “That’s it. I need wine.
Are you sure you don’t want any?”

She glanced down at Paris, who was watching her mother through partially open eyes.
“Um . . . does Paris still have carrots and milk before bed?”

“Of course. It’s part of her nighttime ritual—a ritual that Rose Winters thinks is
hogwash!”

“Any chance you might be able to substitute one of those crackers you mentioned earlier
for a carrot so Paris and I can have our snack together?”

“Of course, dear. I’d have milk, too, except I have a feeling I’m going to need a
little alcohol when you tell me about your latest attempt to play detective.”

“I didn’t set out to get involved in this, Leona, I really didn’t. But something just
hasn’t felt right since we found Parker’s body on the library grounds.”

“So tell someone else,” Leona mumbled as she moved around the small galley kitchen
filling her wineglass, Tori’s milk glass, and Paris’s bowl.

“And by someone else, do you mean Police Chief Dallas? Because you know as well as
I do that he’s going to go with what’s easy. He always does. And the fact that Charlotte
drew a veritable treasure map right to Parker’s body makes her the easy suspect.”

“Maybe, in this particular case, the easy suspect is the
right
one.” Leona carried a serving tray into the living room and set it on the coffee
table between the lounge chair and the sofa. “Look what Mamma brought you, precious . . .”
Reaching onto the tray, Leona removed a pink-and-white ceramic plate with three thinly
sliced carrots in the middle and placed it on the sofa, her collagen-plumped lips
stretching into a smile at the rapid and appreciative response from Paris.

“I wish it was, I really do. Because then I wouldn’t look like this,” Tori pointed
out before accepting the plate of cookies from Leona and placing them on her lap.
“But I look like this because my gut has been telling me the easy suspect is the wrong
suspect. And now, after talking to Frieda at the center today, I’m more convinced
than ever that Charlotte didn’t act alone when she killed her husband.”

Leona lifted her wine goblet from the tray and returned to her lounge chair. “As you
know, I found it rather perplexing myself, how a woman of Charlotte’s age could not
only dig a hole but deposit a grown man’s body inside . . .”

“See? That’s how it starts for me. I have a thought like that and then it leads to
another one—like if she didn’t dig the hole, then who did?” Tori wrapped her hands
around her milk glass and stared inside, the image of Frieda’s tearstained face tickling
her subconscious. “And if someone helped her, why were they involved? Were they merely
helping Charlotte or was Charlotte helping them?”

Leona looked at Tori over the rim of her glasses. “Why would Charlotte help someone
kill the love of her life?”

“To which I counter with, why would
Charlotte
kill the love of her life?” When Leona’s gaze drifted back to her wineglass, Tori
raised her milk glass in response. “Now you see why I look like this.”

“So tell me what you learned today,” Leona prompted before taking a long sip from
her glass. “Tell me what moved you from speculating to being sure?”

“Not a
what
, Leona . . . a
who.
A who who just happens to be
Charlotte Devereaux’s nurse—Frieda Taylor.”

Slowly, she took Leona through the discussion she’d had with Frieda at the center,
including the woman’s absolute certainty that Charlotte had been trying to tell her
something. “And I’ll admit, I found the first part of what Charlotte had said peculiar
all on its own, but when she added that last sentence, the one about having been wrong,
it sent a chill down my spine.”

Leona lowered her glass to her lap. “Say them again, dear?”

“Which part? The first part? Or the second?”

“Both . . . together.”

Tori leaned her head against the back of the couch and repeated the words exactly
as Frieda had shared them. “‘I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t stand to lose them both.
But I was wrong.’”

A blanket of silence descended across them as each considered the words Charlotte
Devereaux had been desperate to share, only to have them written off as the ramblings
of a mind ravaged by illness. After a while, Leona spoke, her voice, her demeanor,
commanding attention.

“And this picture she was determined to give her son was the one that led us to Parker’s
grave, yes?”

Tori nodded.

“Well, it seems to me that the first part of what she was trying to get across was
her way of justifying the fact that she’d kept Parker’s death a secret for so long,”
Leona mused. “At least that’s the only thing that seems to make sense.”

Tori took a sip of her milk then poured the rest into Paris’s bowl. “And the second
part?”

“I don’t know. Both could refer to people or, perhaps, things. Or a combination of
the two, I imagine.”

When Paris had had her fill, she hopped to the edge of the couch and waited for an
assist down to the ground. Several hops later and she was across the room and safely
in Leona’s arms. “You’re really good with her, Leona.”

“She’s the child I never had,” Leona replied. “And I’d do anything to keep her safe.”

Tori nestled into the corner of the couch and watched in quiet awe as Leona kissed
and cuddled the garden-variety bunny. There was no doubt about it—the mother-child
bond, whether biological or not, was truly something to behold.

And one day, when the time was right, Tori would get to experience that bond for herself.
Like Leona was experiencing it now.

“I know it’s different in some ways, but I feel the same about Milo. There’s nothing
I wouldn’t do for him.”

Leona looked up from a sleeping Paris and nodded. “From what I’ve heard, that feeling
will only grow stronger once he’s your husband.”

“My husband,” she whispered in echo. “I love the sound of that, Leona.”

“I know you do, dear. And if all goes well, you’ll still be saying that fifty years
from now rather than sitting in a chair drawing a map to where you buried his body.”

Chapter 22

Tori hadn’t realized just how worried she’d been about her comment to Ethan Devereaux
until after she’d hung up with the president of the library board and felt her body
slack in relief. Whatever Charlotte’s younger son may or may not be plotting in retaliation
for being told off, he hadn’t exercised it yet.

“Victoria?”

Lifting her head off the desk, she acknowledged her temporary assistant with the closest
thing to a smile she could muster. “Yes, Dixie . . . what can I do for you?”

“Did everything go okay with Winston just now?”

Tori gestured toward the empty chair across from her desk, only to have the offer
turned down flat. “I can’t, I’ve got to keep an eye on the floor. But I’m worried
about you. Did it go okay?”

It never ceased to amaze her how much things could change over a period of time—even
things that had seemed chiseled in stone for all eternity. Like Dixie’s feelings toward
Tori.

Two years earlier, when she’d accepted the job of head librarian, Tori had unknowingly
placed herself on Dixie Dunn’s personal Most Hated list. It didn’t matter that the
woman had been forced into retirement by the library board. It didn’t matter that
someone was going to be brought in to fill her shoes whether it was Tori or not. In
Dixie’s eyes, Tori had stolen her job.

Yet somehow, someway, the two of them had not only gotten past their rocky start but
managed to develop an actual friendship based on mutual respect and admiration.

“Everything was fine with Winston. It was just a routine check-in call, and nothing
was said about Ethan Devereaux at all.”

Dixie’s shoulders dipped in relief. “Phew. I think that’s a very good sign. Ethan
is all about the immediate, never showing interest in anything for longer than a day
or so. If he hasn’t said anything yet, I doubt he will.”

“I hope you’re right,” Tori mused before burying her head in her hands. “Ohhh, Dixie,
I was so sure he was calling to give me my walking papers.”

Dixie sliced her hand through the air, releasing the hint of a snort as she did. “While
I’m not one to put too much stock in the current board, I do have to give them credit
for knowing a good thing when they find it. And they found you.”

Tori dropped her hands to the desk and mouthed her gratitude for Dixie’s support around
the growing lump in her throat.

“You’re welcome, Victoria. I’m just glad it worked out.” Dixie leaned the top half
of her body out into the hall and turned her head toward the main room for a quick
sound check. “I better get back out there. But first, I wanted to tell you you’ve
got a visitor out at the information desk.”

Closing her eyes against the image of the walk she’d hoped to take, Tori took a deep
breath and made a mental count to ten. “Who is it?”

“Jerry Lee Sweeney. With the box of look-and-find books he’s donating to our Cookies
and Books with Mrs. Claus. Would you like me to just accept them or do you want to
come up and get them yourself?”

Tori pushed back her chair to stand and then stopped, the opportunity the man’s presence
provided hitting her squarely between the eyes. “Actually, could you just send him
back?”

“Of course.” And with that, Dixie Dunn was gone, the quiet pitter-patter of her shoes
soon replaced by a heavier, more authoritative step that slowed as it reached Tori’s
office.

Rising to her feet, Tori came around her desk and extended her hand to the same tall
man with the same salt-and-pepper hair she’d seen twenty-four hours earlier, only
this time, he was carrying a box teeming with small puzzle books ideal for stuffing
into the circle’s stockings.

“Jerry Lee, what a nice surprise. Though if I’d thought about it, I could have gotten
these from you yesterday and saved you the trip today.”

At her nod, he set the box on top of her desk. “I was out here anyway for the regular
job.”

The regular job . . .

She waved to the same chair she’d offered to Dixie and was glad to see him accept.
If he sat, he’d stay for a little while. And if he stayed for a little while, she
could ask questions.

Rounding her desk once again, Tori took her seat and quickly hatched a conversation
that would open the doors she needed to open. “Ever since I saw the Devereaux Center
for the first time the day after Thanksgiving, I haven’t been able to get it out of
my mind. I mean, you really have something special there.”

A genuine smile lifted his mouth upward, only to fade from his face as quickly as
it had appeared. “Yes, we do. And that is what’s making this waiting game so hard
for everyone involved.”

She rested her elbows on the arms of her chair and tented her fingers beneath her
chin. “I met him the other day.”

Jerry Lee furrowed his brow. “Him?”

Swallowing, she took a gamble and hoped it would pay off. “I believe you referred
to him as The Prince.”

“Ahhh . . .”

“He’s a rather . . .
difficult
person,” she said as diplomatically as possible.

“The Prince was, is, and will always be a spoiled brat who took advantage of the gift
he had in his parents and never, ever appreciated any of it.” Jerry Lee stood, walked
to the plate glass window behind Tori’s desk, and stared out toward the Green. “Ethan
was the golden son, the one with the looks, the brains, and the impeccable grooming.
In contrast, Brian was the special needs son, the one who inspired pitying looks and
understanding pats on the shoulder and couldn’t possibly amount to anything more than
a sweet cross to bear.”

Tori heard the gasp as it escaped her lips but not before she had a chance to squelch
it completely. “Frieda told me that Charlotte adored Brian!”

Jerry Lee rested his forehead against the glass. “Because she did. But even Charlotte
saw Brian as some sort of delicate flower that needed to be shielded from life when,
in actuality, he could do anything as long as he had the proper guidance. Still can.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“Anything and everything. Heck, I truly believe he would have done a fine job running
Parker’s company if Parker had changed his will the way he’d intended.”

She dropped her hands back to the armrests and gripped them tightly. “What did you
just say?”

Jerry Lee parted company with the window and turned to face Tori, his eyes hooded.
“I said, I truly believe Brian would have done a fine job running Parker’s company
if Parker had changed his will the way he’d intended.”

She worked to make sense of what she was hearing, her thoughts spinning off in a million
different directions.

“Parker Devereaux was going to leave his company to Brian?”

“He’d finally come to realize that Ethan was worthless. That he would run the company
into the ground if he was at the helm.”

“But Brian is mentally challenged,” she protested.

Jerry Lee’s face hardened at her words. “Brian may have challenges, but with careful
guidance and ongoing encouragement, he can do just about anything. And I have absolutely
no doubt he would have done Parker and his life’s work proud if given half a chance.
Hell, we already were these past five years.”

Piece by piece, a picture began to form in Tori’s thoughts that looked very different
from the one everyone else in Sweet Briar seemed all too willing to accept. But in
order for it to be right, Jerry Lee, in turn, had to be right.

“Are you certain Parker was going to change his will, leaving control of his company
to Brian?”

Jerry Lee wandered back around the desk and stood behind his chair. “Parker Devereaux
was not only my boss but he was also my best friend. He made his company the success
it was and is because of his larger-than-life personality. People were drawn to him
because of that. But the behind-the-scenes stuff? That was my department. And it gelled
the way it did because we trusted each other, talking through things on a daily basis.”
He raked a hand through his hair and exhaled deeply before continuing. “Parker struggled
with my recommendation to cut Ethan out of the company should anything happen to him,
but as time went on and he saw more and more examples of Ethan’s worthlessness, he
began to see the light. It was tough on him, no doubt, but he’d gotten where he was
by being smart. Ethan was no longer a smart choice—if he ever was at all.”

Wow. It was all right there. And it made perfect sense.

Charlotte Devereaux may not have been strong enough to dig that hole on the grounds
of the library five years ago. But Ethan surely was.

Charlotte Devereaux may not have been strong enough to get Parker’s body into that
hole by herself. But once again, Ethan was.

And now, thanks to Jerry Lee, Ethan also had motive.

“You realize you need to tell Chief Dallas all of this, don’t you?” she said.

Jerry Lee held up his hands, palms out, and waved them back and forth. “Oh, no. I
can’t prove anything I’m saying. And without that, we’ve got a map . . . drawn by
Charlotte. I start pointing fingers at Ethan for something that can’t be proven, and
Brian and I will both be out of work. With my age and his challenges, we’ll both be
hard pressed to find a job of any kind in this climate.”

She felt the man’s frustration, recognized the anguish in his eyes, and knew there
was only one option.

“Well then, maybe someone else should do the pointing,” she said even as her mind
was jumping ahead to the remaining holes that still needed to be closed.

Tipping his head in her direction, Jerry Lee made his way over to the door, stopping
when he reached the hallway. “Maybe someone should . . .”