Reap What You Sew (13 page)

Tori paused in the doorway. “Warren’s been trying to reach you, too?”

Leona sighed. “And this surprises you, dear? Haven’t I told you before that all I have to do is snap my fingers and men follow me around like lovesick puppy dogs?” Lifting Paris into the air, Leona pulled the bunny close for a quick nose nuzzle. “One might think a man of Warren Shoemaker’s stature would be different, but he’s not. Then again, I’m one of a kind, dear, aren’t I?”

You can say that again…

“You didn’t call him back?”

Setting Paris back on her lap, Leona shook her head. “Of course not. When you’re too quick to respond, they lose interest.”

She stared at the woman. “When did you last talk to him?”

Leona waved her manicured hand in the air. “Last night. After I brought over the repellent.”

“Repellent?”

“The brownies, dear.” Leona shifted in her seat, straightening her back just enough to afford a view of Tori’s desk. “Oh good, I see you got my thank-you gift.”

“I, uh—”

“Everyone who tried them loved them, and I still had more than enough by the time I got to Warren’s trailer to keep him happy. And you know what? They worked like magic. Once I told Warren what was in them, he was much more insistent that Anita stay away from us.” Leona threw her head back in amusement. “She argued of course, even went so far as to say the brownies and I should be removed from the set entirely, but, of course, Warren disagreed.”

She opened her mouth to speak but slammed it shut when Leona continued.

“I wore my fitted red suit… the one that makes me look devilishly exciting. Warren was an absolute goner the moment he saw me in it. By the end of the evening, I’m willing to bet Anita Belise was wiped from his radar once and for all.”

“You can say that again,” she whispered as she sank into her desk chair for the second time that day.

“I’ve wondered many times, over the past two years, whether anything I’ve said to you about men has made it into that pretty little head of yours. But now, after your idea with the nuts, I have to say my coaching has been relatively successful, Victoria. To come up with such a fabulous way to get rid of a pesky gnat like Anita was positively enlightened.”

“Enlightened?” she echoed in disbelief as she pinned Leona with a stare to end all stares.

Leona rolled her eyes. “Would you prefer to have me say it was
genius
? Would that be more to your liking, dear?”

“I only mentioned nuts as a way to keep Anita away and give you some time alone with Warren. I certainly didn’t intend for you to use them to
kill
her, Leona.”

The woman’s head dipped forward so she could peer at Tori across the top edge of her glasses. “Good heavens, dear, what on earth are you babbling about?”

She studied Leona’s bewildered expression, a question forming on her lips in the wake of an impossible to comprehend realization.

“Leona? Where, exactly, were you today?”

With the preciseness of a pageant contestant, Leona scooted forward in her chair, swiveling her knees to the left. “Why I brought you your thank-you gift, dear, and then I drove into Tom’s Creek to that wonderful little day spa that’s just opened. It’s not what you’d find in one of the European cities, of course, but it’ll do in a pinch.” Lifting her hand from Paris’s back, she waggled her fingers in the air. “The manicurist I had did a wonderful job with the French tips, don’t you agree?”

With barely a pause, the woman continued. “She tended to chat on and on about some such drivel or another, but seemed to get the hint fairly quickly when I reached for a magazine.” Leona brought her hand back down to Paris and stroked the rabbit’s back ever so gently. “Clients shouldn’t have to pay that kind of money to listen to someone else’s problems for an hour. Though between me and you, dear, the lives of people in the backwoods can be extremely entertaining.”

Tori leaned forward against her desk, grateful for the support the piece of furniture afforded. “So you were never on the set today?”

“I believe we’ve gone over this lesson, dear. One must not appear too easy, remember?”

“Easy?” she repeated.

“I saw Warren last night and, by the time I left, I had him virtually eating out of the palm of my hand. To return so soon would dampen some of the mystique.”

She swallowed. “So you haven’t spoken to Warren since last night?”

Leona offered a mischievous grin. “That’s right, dear. Remember, it’s about building mystique.”

Leona didn’t know…

“Wait. Why were you sneaking around in the bushes just now if you don’t know?”

Leona gasped. “I wasn’t sneaking. I was ensuring Paris some privacy while she used the restroom.”

“Privacy?”

“Of course. She deserves nothing less.” Leona’s hand stopped mid–bunny stroke. “What is it you think I know, dear, besides the fact you look as if you could use a nap and a new under-eye concealer?”

She waved Leona off as she worked to process the woman’s story. “If that’s all you were doing, why were you tapping on my window with a pebble just now?”

Leona’s face took on a crimson shade. “I made a little bit of a mistake this morning, one I didn’t notice until I was walking up to the library just before Dixie left.”

“What kind of mistake?”

Crimson turned to scarlet as Leona’s gaze moved to the floor. Tori’s followed suit. “Do you see my shoes, dear?”

“Your shoes?” Confused, she took in her friend’s burgundy pumps, their height and style more suited to a twenty-year-old than a sixty-something. Then again, they were on Leona… “What about your shoes?”

Leona rolled her eyes. “You don’t see the color difference between the two?”

Tori leaned still further across the desk. “Uh, no…”

With a dramatic sigh, Leona reached down, removed her shoes from her freshly pedicured feet, and set them atop Tori’s desk. “One is slightly browner.”

She squinted. “It is?”

“It is,” Leona confirmed.

“But they’re the same shoe.”

“The same style, yes, but they’re slightly different shades. The true burgundy was purchased for this suit”—Leona ran her free hand down the side of her tailored skirt and jacket—“the browner ones for a pantsuit I got a few weeks ago.”

“So a slight discrepancy in the color of your shoes made you tap on my window rather than knock at the door?”

“Precisely. I didn’t want to risk someone seeing me like… like this.”

If it were anyone else, she’d call the story preposterous. But, since it was Leona—the same Leona who made Tori swear on her grave never to tell another soul about her footy pajamas—the story held water.

And
proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Leona truly had no clue about the fate that had befallen her chief competitor, Anita Belise.

Which meant it was up to Tori to fill in the blanks.

She pointed at the brownies. “Did you offer one to Anita?”

Leona pulled her shoes from the top of Tori’s desk and repositioned them on her dainty feet. “While that might have been my backup plan, I never had to go that route. I simply showed up at Warren’s trailer after shooting was over for the night and presented them to him as a special treat. True to form, less than five seconds after my arrival, that insufferable woman waltzed right through the door as if she owned the place. I swear, it’s as if she has a security camera like Mr. Kelly’s hooked into her trailer so she can watch Warren’s comings and goings.”

Plucking a pen from her top drawer, Tori worked her thumb and index finger down its shaft, flipping it over and repeating the motion when she reached the bottom. “So what happened when she walked in on the two of you?”

Leona’s sudden smile reached all the way to her eyes. “She took one look at the plate of brownies sitting in front of Warren and nearly tripped over her own two feet in her haste to leave, never showing her face again the rest of the night.” Paris twitched her nose in Leona’s direction as if she, too, were enthralled with the results. “Warren said if he’d had any idea just how quickly the prospect of nuts could clear Anita from a room, he’d have tried it himself a long time ago. Though, to be quite frank, I’m not sure if that’s true. I rather think he likes having multiple women pursuing him.”

Tori set the pen on the desk and released an audible sigh. “Well, if you’re right, he’ll have to find a replacement for one of you.”

Leona’s left eyebrow slid upward. “A replacement? For me?”

“No, for Ms. Belise. After all, she’s the one who is no longer in pursuit.”

In an instant, Paris was hovering above Leona as the woman showered the bunny with air-kisses. “Our dear Victoria is being rather cryptic today, isn’t she, Paris?” Slowly, she brought the rabbit back down to her lap. “Shall we indulge her by asking her to get to the point or shall we just wait her out?”

“Anita is dead, Leona.”

Leona’s head snapped up. “Did you say
dead
?”

“Yes, I did.”

The woman’s mouth gaped ever so slightly. “H-how? When?”

She considered the notion of calling Leona on the less than attractive pose but opted, instead, to save retribution for another day, when its effects would have a more humorous reaction.

Now was not that time.

Recalling Glenda’s words about the state of the victim’s body when it was found, she answered Leona’s second question first. “Maybe around eleven last night, give or take an hour or so.”

Leona set Paris on the end table beside her chair, her hands visibly shaking. “What happened?”

“What happened?” she echoed as Leona’s head bobbed in response. “Are you sure you want me to answer that?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

Tori sucked in a deep breath, allowed it to release slowly while she searched for the most delicate way to break the news. But before she could form the words, Leona beat her to the punch.

“The brownies killed her, didn’t they?”

All Tori could do was nod, the enormity of Leona’s situation suddenly making it impossible to speak.

The same, though, could not be said for Leona. “It’s about time my sister was knocked off that domestic pedestal she’s been prancing on for decades.”

She stared at Leona. “Your
sister
?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Leona’s perfectly waxed left eyebrow arched upward. “It’s not
my
cooking that just killed a person.”

Chapter 11

She hadn’t intended to stop at Margaret Louise’s on her way home. She really hadn’t. It had been an excruciatingly long day heaped with more stress than she ever could have imagined and the one place Tori had been envisioning when she’d finally locked up the library for the night had been her bathtub.

Yet, less than ten minutes later, there she was, standing on her friend’s front porch, straining for the sound of voices or laughter on the other side of the door before lifting her hand to knock. If there was chatter, the tub would win out.

“I sure hope you don’t press your ear to the door like that with Leona. There’s no tellin’ what you might hear if you did.”

Startled, Tori spun around, nearly knocking herself over in the process, her gaze darting around the shadowed porch in search of the person that matched the voice. “Margaret Louise? Is that you?”

“Indeed it is.”

Lifting her hand to her brow line in an effort to block out the too-bright exterior light, Tori squinted toward the darkest corner of the porch, her gaze slowly making out the faintest lines of a familiar shape. “I had absolutely no idea you were sitting there.”

“I kinda figured that.” Margaret Louise shifted her weight ever so slightly, the aging porch chair beneath her body voicing its immediate displeasure.

She stepped toward the voice, the woman’s subdued tone catching her by surprise. “Are you okay?”

“I’m tryin’ to be.”

It was a simple answer yet no less shocking from a woman who exuded positive vibes morning, noon, and night. Tori hurried to Margaret Louise’s side. “Trying to be?”

Margaret Louise nodded.

“Are the kids okay?”

Again, Margaret Louise nodded. “They’re fine. Sweet and ornery just like always.”

She sank into the nearest chair and studied her friend. “
Ornery
isn’t a word I’d use to describe your grandbabies.”

“You ain’t seen ’em clamoring for more cookies when the tray is empty.”

She laughed. “True.”

“You ain’t seen ’em when they’re called in for supper in the middle of a game.”

“But they come, right?”

Another nod. Another creak of the chair. But still, no smile.

Leaning forward, she rested her hand on Margaret Louise’s knee, a troubled thought filling her mind. “Is Melissa okay?”

“Doctor said baby number eight is developin’ just fine.”

Relief flooded her body. “Thank God. You had me worried there for a minute.”

Margaret Louise’s hand fluttered in the air. “No need to worry. Kids are fine, grandbabies are fine, everyone’s fine.”

“I’m having a hard time believing that.”

And, just like that, the façade was gone, Margaret Louise’s shoulders slumping in a way Tori had never seen. “I did something awful today, Victoria.”