Reap What You Sew (3 page)

“Anita Belise.” Margaret Louise pushed back her own chair then helped her mother to her feet, glancing into the woman’s tote bag before surrendering it for the walk back to the counter. “What about you, Victoria? Will you try to get a part as an extra?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like that before.” She folded the paper article-side up and handed it to Beatrice, her gaze lingering on the headline sprawled across the top fold. “Besides, with Nina on maternity leave, it’s not like I have anyone who can take my place here.”

“You have Dixie,” Beatrice reminded.

That was true, she did. But she didn’t want to take advantage. The twosome had finally forged a tentative bond since Nina’s bed rest, and the last thing Tori wanted was to retreat back to the days when she was top dog on Dixie’s Most Hated List.

“If Dixie had her druthers, she’d be here runnin’ the show. You know that, Victoria.”

Margaret Louise was right. But still…

“I’ll give it some thought,” she finally promised. “Who knows, maybe you’ll see me there, picture in hand, just like everyone else in Sweet Briar.”

Leona took three steps toward the door and then stopped, turning back to look at Tori. “You might want to consider giving the director a lily-white version of your bio, dear. Perhaps something a bit more wholesome and ladylike.”

“More wholesome and ladylike?” she echoed in con-fusion.

“I know that’s a novel concept coming from a place like”—Leona shuddered dramatically—“
Chicago,
but if you simply focus on your job as a librarian and leave off your peculiar little habit of getting mixed up in murder investigations, then perhaps you’ll have a chance at being cast, dear.”

“Leona!” Beatrice whispered in a rare burst of outrage. “That’s not nice.”

“I’m not saying it to be mean,” Leona countered. “Victoria knows that. I’m just guiding her the way I always do, isn’t that right, dear?”

She nibbled her lower lip inward in an attempt to keep from laughing out loud. She was, after all, at work. In a
library
.

“Point noted, Leona. And I’ll keep that in mind. Really. Sweet Briar and its residents have nothing to fear. The only”—she raised two fingers from each of her hands into the air to simulate quotes—“
death
facing us will be part of the movie.”

Beatrice gasped. “So this character… the one who finally finds his soul mate…
dies
?”

“In the book, yes. But that doesn’t mean the movie will go the same way. Movies often change a book’s original story line. It’s why so many book lovers resist seeing big-screen versions of their favorite tales.” Tori stepped out from behind the counter and reached for Annabelle’s hand. “It was so very nice to meet you, Annabelle.”

A moment of clarity pushed the fog from Annabelle’s eyes. “I remember that book,
Memories of Autumn
. It’s a beautiful story.”

Without thinking, Tori reached out, brushed a strand of thinning gray hair from the woman’s wrinkled yet pretty face. “I agree.”

Annabelle reached into her bag, a sudden bout of sadness tugging her lips downward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take these.” And then, just like that, the woman pulled out four more items pilfered from the information desk—a tiny snack bar Tori had tucked behind her computer, another book from the pile to be shelved, a Sweet Briar Public Library bookmark, and a penny.

She accepted the items as Annabelle handed them to her, resisting the urge to look at Margaret Louise and Leona as she did. She didn’t need to look at them. She could sense their discomfort as surely as she could any of the items she now held in her hand.

“Thank you for finding these for me,” she said when the last of the items was safely back in her hands and the clarity the elderly woman had shown just moments earlier was all but gone. “I’d been worried about them. You’re a good finder, Annabelle.”

With barely a nod, the woman shuffled into step behind Leona as they made their way toward the door. Realizing Margaret Louise wasn’t with them, Tori turned to find her friend lingering beside the information desk.

“Margaret Louise? Is everything okay?”

“Thank you, Victoria. The kindness you just showed my mamma was beautiful. I only wish my sister had been payin’ attention.” Margaret Louise swiped the back of her hand across her eyes and then stood up tall. “And don’t mind her none, you hear? She didn’t mean nothin’ ’bout that dead body stuff.”

She had to laugh. “It’s not like it hasn’t been true these past two years.”

Margaret Louise’s plump frame rose and fell with a shrug. “But she has a way of sayin’ it like you did somethin’ to make all those things happen. And you didn’t.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t take any offense to what Leona said. Truly. It was more funny than anything else.” Hooking her hand inside Margaret Louise’s elbow, she walked her to the front door and her waiting family as Beatrice left to join Luke in the children’s room. “We’re talking about a one-or two-week-long shoot, right? Really, what could possibly go wrong?”

Chapter 2

It took everything Tori had not to peel the aluminum covering off the plate and take a taste—or two—of the Mississippi Mud Cake she’d brought for that evening’s sewing circle meeting. However, if it took Rose Winters much longer to open the door, she couldn’t be held responsible for what she might do.

Chocolate was, after all, the main ingredient in the homemade treat, and chocolate was her biggest downfall. Always had been, always would be.

She tapped a few beats of a favorite tune with her foot as she waited for the oldest member of the group to heed her third knock. But no such luck. The door remained closed despite the line of familiar cars parked along the curb that served as confirmation of that week’s meeting location.

Glancing at the still-covered treat in her hand, she contemplated the notion of giving up and heading home, of taking the unanswered door as a sign she might do well to indulge in a rare and much-needed night to herself, but she couldn’t. For as appealing as a night of mindless TV sounded, it simply couldn’t beat the pleasure she got from spending an evening with the crew.

Sure, she loved her job—being a librarian was all she’d ever wanted to do since she was old enough to read her first book. And Milo, well he’d single-handedly restored her faith in the opposite sex after her now-deceased cheating ex-fiancé had blown it to smithereens the night of their engagement party when she found him in the coat closet with one of her girlfriends. But her sewing circle sisters? They made her feel as if she truly
belonged
. And in doing so, Monday night circle meetings had become the wings that helped make the rest of her week soar.

She opened the storm door and knocked again, this time on the heavier, wooden door that Rose tended to keep bolted shut.

Rose appeared not a minute later, all visual bristles softening the moment she made eye contact with Tori. “I know you have impeccable manners, Victoria, but when I tell you to walk right in, I want you to walk right in.”

Tori stepped into Rose’s home, stopping just inside the foyer to plant a kiss on the elderly woman’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Rose, I guess I didn’t hear you. That’s one thick door, you know?”

“That’s why I wrote it on one of those yellow sticky things and stuck it to the storm door.” Rose took the covered plate from Tori’s hand and plunked it on the counter beside a half dozen other homemade treats. “You can read, can’t you?”

“When there’s something
to read
, of course,” she said with as straight a face as she could manage before offering her elbow for the walk down the hall to Rose’s sewing room.

Rose waved aside the assistance and, instead, brought her hands to her hips, narrowing her sights on Tori. “I just said I left a note.”

She shrugged. “Maybe you did, but it’s not there now.”

Margaret Louise strode into the hallway, her ever-present smile widening still further at the sight of Tori standing beside Rose. “Victoria, you made it. I was beginnin’ to think you’d forgotten us.”

“Never.” It was a simple response, yet no less true.

“She decided to stand on the porch for a while instead of following my instructions,” Rose grumbled.

Tori nibbled back the urge to laugh, knowing the sound would only irritate Rose further. Rose, while sweet, didn’t take kindly to being questioned. “If I’d seen a note, I’d have done as it said.”

A flash of crimson rose in Margaret Louise’s cheeks. “A note?”

Rose nodded.

“What color was it?”

“It was yellow,” Rose snapped. “Stuck it on the door myself while you and Leona were yakkin’ away in the kitchen.”

Reaching into her pocket, Margaret Louise extracted a small yellow square of paper with writing on one side. “Is this the note you’re talkin’ ’bout?”

Rose’s eyes narrowed still further as they latched onto Margaret Louise’s left hand. “How is anyone supposed to know to come in if you’ve got my note in your pocket, Margaret Louise?”

Slowly, Margaret Louise reached into her other pocket and pulled out three more items—a single key on a light-up chain, a quarter, and a trial-size vitamin jar. “By any chance are these your things, too, Rose?”

Rose leaned closer. “That’s my house key… and my vitamins.”

“And the quarter?” Margaret Louise asked.

“How am I supposed to know if that’s my quarter or not? I keep my loose change right over there on that hall table.” Rose turned and looked toward the spot she’d indicated. “But since there’s nothing there at the moment, I’d say it’s probably mine.”

Tori looked closely at the items in Margaret Louise’s hand, reality dawning just as surely as if she’d seen what had transpired with her own eyes. “Your mamma is here, isn’t she?” she finally asked, not unkindly.

Margaret Louise merely nodded, the corners of her normally happy mouth turning downward.

And, just like that, Rose’s bristly demeanor was gone, in its place the kind of deep-rooted compassion that had jettisoned her onto Tori’s personal list of favorite people. Waving aside the items Margaret Louise held in her direction, Rose lowered her voice to a near whisper. “She’s ninety-two, Margaret Louise. She walks without a cane, she lived with an elderly sister and no outside help until just three days ago, and she’s in reasonably good health. So she got confused and took a few things this one time… I’m sure it’s nothing for you to be worrying about.”

Only it hadn’t been this one time. Annabelle had lifted things on three separate occasions at the library just that morning… .

Dementia, perhaps?

Or maybe Alzheimer’s?

Margaret Louise gently removed Rose’s hand from her arm and turned it over, laying each of the recovered items into the elderly woman’s palm. “Mamma has been doin’ this for as long as I can remember. She did it at friends’ homes when she dropped Leona and me off at birthday parties. She did it in our classrooms when she came to watch us in a program. She did it on my weddin’ day, and at Jake’s baptism party, and again when I lost Jake’s daddy.”

Tori swapped stares with Rose before they both turned to study Margaret Louise. “It’s not her age?” Rose finally asked.

“Some of it might be. Things like the confusion and the forgettin’, I s’pose. But the rest… no. She’s a kleptomaniac hoarder.”

Rose blinked once, twice. “A kleptomaniac hoard—what on earth?”

“It means she helps herself to things without asking. Usually it’s things of little value.” Margaret Louise pointed to Rose’s hand. “Like an empty pill bottle or a light-up key chain. The difference with Mamma is that she prefers to take several things at one time in an almost hoarding fashion.”

She took in everything Margaret Louise was saying, processed it against everything she’d seen that morning. Including the almost irritated way in which Leona regarded Annabelle. “Does she know she’s doing it?”

“If she does, it’s not in a malicious way. But tryin’ to get my sister to see that is like tryin’ to get an oink out of a pig that’s already turnin’ above the fire.”

“Leona comes down on her?”

“No, Rose. She just ignores her—and the stealin’—as if it’s not happenin’. Why I remember goin’ to a party when we were five or six. It was at Susie Hillmaker’s house.” Margaret Louise stared off into the distance as if she were revisiting an all too familiar time and place. “Susie had a grand house. When it was time to leave, Mamma came to get us. As we were walkin’ out, she snatched up a few things—a hairbrush, a bobby pin, a penny, and a mint from some fancy glass jar on the hall table. Leona saw it, I know she did. She’d been walkin’ right behind Mamma and right in front of me when it happened. But Leona kept right on walkin’… pretended she hadn’t seen a thing. So when we got in the car, I had to take the things out of Mamma’s purse and bring them back inside. After that, I never got invited to another party at Susie’s house. Leona did, of course. But not me.”

“Why not?” Rose asked in a shaky whisper.

“Because Susie’s mamma thought I was a thief.”

Tori sucked in her breath. “You never told them the truth?”