Seven Threadly Sins (6 page)

I said gently, “That wasn’t the first time he’d touched you, was it, Macey?”

Macey looked scared, backed away, and lowered her eyes. The slight shake of her head was barely discernible, and so was her soft reply. “No.”

I pressed harder. “Last night when we were in our changing cubicles before the dress rehearsal, I heard you slap him, and I also heard his comment about models having to let people help adjust their outfits.”

Macey shivered and rubbed her bare arms. “It was nothing.”

Dora demanded, “Had he done things like that to you before?”

Macey looked up at us again and shook her head decisively. “No.”

Macey’s denial had been firm, but Dora gave her a stern look verging on disbelief. “If you ever need help, you can count on Willow and me.”

I rested my forearm on Dora’s shoulder. “But we won’t beat anyone up, right, Dora?” I teased.

“I’ll do whatever it takes.” Dora’s voice carried.

Vicki peered into the parlor and stared at Dora with something like horrified fascination.

I opened my mouth to tell Vicki that Dora would never harm anyone, but hadn’t I already said that Dora had raised her hand as if about to hit Antonio, and that I grabbed her arm before she’d had a chance to draw back?

I got along reasonably well with our police chief, but she never lost an opportunity to remind me what would happen if I broke the law. She and I both wanted to see
justice prevail, but our methods of reaching that goal sometimes differed, and she had an unfortunate tendency to conclude that I was interfering with her investigations when I was merely trying to help.

Vicki asked Macey, “Can you join Ashley and me, please? I need to tell you both something.”

Macey tossed me a humorless grin, then followed Vicki into the dining room.

We couldn’t tell what Vicki was saying, but she was probably reiterating what Dora and I had already told the girls. Maybe Vicki was going to charge Antonio for pinching Macey.

Dora may have thought the same thing. Her dark eyes brightened. She raised her eyebrows and took one stealthy step toward the foyer.

Then there was a loud crash in the kitchen. Glass shattered. A woman screamed.

D
ora sprinted to the kitchen. In my higher heels, I wobbled right behind her.

Vicki was already there. Macey and Ashley gawked from the dining room doorway.

The TADAM student who had poured my wine sobbed, “I dropped a tray of glasses.”

Bits of glass were all over the floor.

“It’s nothing to cry about,” Dora said, although she could have sounded more sympathetic.

Macey must have thought so, too. Ignoring fragments of glass, she dashed into the kitchen and gave the girl a quick hug. “It’s okay, Samantha.”

Vicki turned to Dora and me. “I’ll call you two at home if I need you.”

Dora folded her arms. “We’ll help Samantha clean up before we go. And we’ll wait for Ashley so we can walk her home.”

Vicki said drily, “I think she’ll be okay now.” Apparently giving up on dismissing us, she ushered Ashley and Macey back into the dining room.

I asked Samantha where I could find a broom. She
didn’t know, but Dora had no qualms about searching until she found one.

Out in the backyard, a light shined as a door opened. Was this the carriage house that Clay had mentioned?

For a second, I saw Loretta and Clay silhouetted in the doorway, and then the light went out, the yard was dark again, and I doubted that I’d really seen Loretta and Clay.

Especially not in each other’s arms. And then separating, and Loretta taking Clay’s hand and pulling him out of the carriage house as she switched off the light . . .

No, I could not have seen any of that.

But I had. All of it.

I grabbed the broom from Dora and wielded it with speed and power that made her exclaim, “What’s gotten into you, Willow?”

Samantha smiled, sort of.

“You’re all dressed up,” Dora scolded me. “Let me do that. What if your young man comes in and sees you playing Cinderella?”

The back door slammed open. Loretta burst in. “What’s wrong?”

I straightened and stared at her. Where to begin? With the broken glasses, or the news that Loretta’s boss had collapsed and been taken to the hospital?

What I really wanted to do was shout at her to leave Clay alone.

Her hair was messy and her lipstick was smeared.

Clay came in behind her and shut the back door. Something like embarrassment crept across his face. He straightened his tie, but it was too late.

I’d seen the red smudge near one of the buttons on his white shirt.

My heart felt like it was down there on the floor, shattered with all that glass.

Loretta prompted, “Someone screamed just now?”

Samantha gulped between hiccups. “I’m sorry. I dropped some glasses and they broke.”

Dora scowled at Clay as if she’d also seen the red
lipstick on his shirt. Uncharacteristically restrained, she stooped and held the dustpan while I brushed fragments of glass into it, then she dumped the contents of the dustpan into the wastebasket. Finally, she stood and turned to Samantha, who was staring apologetically at Loretta. “There,” Dora said in a surprisingly soothing voice. “All cleaned up. No harm done.”

“Except to the glasses—” Loretta began.

Dora interrupted her. “Glasses can be replaced. They weren’t good ones, anyway.”

Loretta argued, “Yes, they were. Antonio buys only the best.”

Dora shook her head. “Trust me.”

I did. Dora had been an interior designer before her retirement, and she had an encyclopedic knowledge of nearly everything that could go into a home.

Dora added, “Arguing about fifty-cent glasses is not important. If you heard other screams earlier, it’s because your boss fainted and his wife screamed, and they’re both on the way to the hospital.”

Loretta faltered backward. And landed conveniently against Clay. “Screams?” she whimpered. “Earlier? Antonio and Paula? What’s wrong with them?”

Vicki spoke from behind me. “You didn’t hear a scream about forty-five minutes ago?”

Loretta shook her head. “No, I was busy.” She turned her head and smiled up at Clay. “Getting reacquainted with my first love.”

Clay’s voice was as flinty as his face. “We were discussing renovating the carriage house so it could be used as an apartment, either for TADAM staff or as a source of income for TADAM.”

For over forty-five minutes?
If the mansion had a subbasement, my heart was somewhere in it, and sinking fast.

Dora looked out the back window. “Let’s do it!”

That seemed like a rather enthusiastic reaction, considering that all I could see through the back window were shadows of shadows. But then, Dora was always eager to
design. I felt a pang. What if she liked the mansion’s carriage house better than Blueberry Cottage and decided to rent it? I’d need to find a new tenant, and although she could be a little too snoopy about what might be going on in my apartment, I liked her, and we looked out for each other.

Besides, my hopes of anything interesting
ever
going on inside my apartment were in smithereens. Was Clay as excited about finding Loretta again as she was about finding him?

He had never acted like he was having trouble getting over a first love.

Then again, I was never sure where I stood with him.

At least I knew that he and I were friends, and I’d hoped we were becoming more than friends. I should have been less dedicated to my career. I should have put more time and effort into romance. Making that decision now could be a little late, though.

While I was debating with myself and carefully not looking at Loretta and Clay, Vicki was explaining that Antonio had become ill and that Paula had gone to the hospital in the ambulance with him.

“And so did my son-in-law, Gord,” Dora proclaimed. “He’s a doctor.”

Loretta sagged farther into Clay. “This is very upsetting. I should go, too, but I’m not in any shape to drive.”

Of course not, if she insisted on pasting herself so closely to Clay that she’d have to sit on his lap in her driver’s seat.

Vicki waved the notion away with one hand. “You’d just be in the way. I’ll give you the hospital number. Do you have a pencil and paper?”

Samantha grabbed a magnetized notepad and pen from the fridge and thrust them at Loretta. “Here.”

Ashley’s phone jingled. She read a text, then asked, “Can we go home now? My dad’s getting worried.”

Vicki nodded. “You’re all free to go.” She recited a number to Loretta, who wrote it down.

I touched Dora’s shoulder and told Ashley, “We’ll walk you home.”

Clay eased around Loretta. “Mind if I join you?”

I didn’t mind, but my mouth refused to open.

Dora answered for all of us. “Of course not!”

“Clay,” Loretta wheedled, “you can’t go. I’m sorry, but I got lipstick on your shirt. Because of my extensive education in textiles, I can wash the stains out. Piece of cake.”

“I can do it.” Clay’s voice was still surprisingly stony.

Loretta pouted. “I don’t know how to lock up the mansion and carriage house.”

Vicki stared at Loretta like she was a particularly repulsive insect that had just scurried out from behind a baseboard. “I’ll give you a hand. It’s part of my job description, and I have Antonio’s keys. Besides, I don’t mind looking around a little more before I go.”

“I guess I can do it myself,” Loretta began.

Vicki snapped, “No need.”

I almost smiled at Vicki’s stern police officer act, but Loretta stopped arguing with her. And with Clay.

Dora asked, “Macey, are you going our way?”

Macey told us an address that was just around the corner, between TADAM and Ashley’s house. “You’ll come with us, too, Samantha, won’t you?” Macey explained that Samantha was one of her roommates.

Samantha nodded. “Yes, please.” It came out barely above a whisper.

Dora shepherded the three girls and me out the front door ahead of her and Clay, then draped her hand over Clay’s arm.

Macey and Samantha led the way, with Ashley and me behind them, and Dora and Clay following us.

All I wanted to do was put distance between myself and Clay and his lipstick-stained shirt. I didn’t want to examine my unexpectedly strong feelings of desolation. I didn’t want to think about Clay until I was home alone.

And I definitely didn’t want to talk to him and possibly betray feelings that he couldn’t return.

I didn’t own him, I reminded myself. We weren’t a couple—except in some of my more unrealistic dreams, I guessed—and never had been. Maybe I’d been like Mona, reading too much into a smile, a glance, or a swift embrace.

As I hurried the three girls along, Dora clunked behind us in her thick heels, keeping Clay farther and farther from us. Dora had been able to race toward Antonio and, later, from the reception room to the kitchen in those heels, so I was certain she was walking slowly on purpose, maybe to give me a chance to lecture the girls about not allowing a teacher to take advantage of their desire for good grades.

Dutifully, I launched into my spiel. “You know, you don’t have to—”

Ashley interrupted me. “Chief Smallwood told us the same thing.”

“What?” Samantha asked. “Told you what?”

Macey and Ashley filled her in, allowing me to merely walk along, trying not to think about the man a block behind us. Despite the revealing velvet dress and the stiletto heels, I felt like a dowdy chaperone.

We dropped Macey and Samantha off at their apartment, then headed toward Ashley’s house.

Ashley asked me, “Don’t those shoes hurt to walk in?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“We can slow down. It’s like you’re trying to get away from Clay. You don’t have to worry about Edna’s mother stealing him from you. She’s old.”

I stifled a laugh. Apparently, Ashley hadn’t recognized the real threat, despite Loretta’s coy reference to lipstick.

It was all my imagination, I told myself.

No, it wasn’t.

Ashley stopped at the walk leading to her front porch. “Are you going to wait for Clay and Dora?”

“They’re probably having a conversation about design. They don’t need my input.”

In the darkness, illuminated only by streetlights, Ashley cocked her head and gazed up at me. “You’re acting weird tonight.”

I summoned up a smile. “What a thing to say to your boss.”

Ashley clapped a hand over her mouth and squeaked between her fingers, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

I interrupted her. “Only joking. See you tomorrow.”

Speed-walking the rest of the way home, I tried not to hobble too obviously or precariously.

However, in those shoes, I wasn’t about to negotiate the downhill slope through my side yard to my apartment. Instead, I went into my shop.

I locked the door, unplugged the night-light, and hid in the darkness. I was sure that Clay would accompany Dora all the way through my yard to the door of Blueberry Cottage, and I wasn’t ready to talk to him.

Sure enough, I heard their voices out on the sidewalk, and then the gate to my side yard clanged.

Seconds later, from downstairs in my apartment, Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho began the excited barking that signaled they’d heard or seen someone they liked outside. They raced up the stairs to the door of In Stitches, which I kept closed, and down again. They knew I was in the shop, and they were trying to get me to let them out to greet their friends.

I didn’t move.

After a few minutes, the dogs settled down. Listening, I stayed out of sight of the front door and windows.

I knew I was being silly. I was stressed from staying up late every night for weeks to complete the garments I wore in the fashion show. I’d have enjoyed all that pattern-making, sewing, and machine embroidery if I had designed the clothes, or if I had liked them. And then last night, the dress rehearsal hadn’t been a lot of fun.

Tonight had been even worse.

If Antonio hadn’t possibly damaged Ashley’s ego, I could have laughed off his joking insults about our seven threadly sins, but the undercurrents of nastiness surrounding TADAM had been too much, especially capped by Paula’s accusations of assault and murder.

No, the worst part of the evening, of the past weeks and months, had been seeing Clay’s arms around Loretta.

I heard footsteps on the shop’s front porch. I crouched behind sewing cabinets. Someone tapped on the glass door. I held my breath and didn’t move. What if Clay wanted to tell me how happy he was to find Loretta again after all these years?

The dogs barked, galumphed upstairs, snuffled at the door at the top of the stairs, barked again, and thudded downstairs.

After a few minutes, I decided that whoever had been on my porch was gone. I tiptoed to the door at the top of the stairs.

Four furry bodies greeted me the second I opened it.

I decided that if Clay was persistent enough to return to my backyard and apartment door, I would talk to him after all.

Bravely, I turned on lights, tromped downstairs, slipped into the moccasins I kept by the patio door, and let the animals outside.

“There you are,” Dora called out.

The dogs romped to her back porch. They loved Dora, but they also loved Clay. My carefully suppressed hopes returned. Was Clay, by any chance, sitting with Dora on her back porch?

I waited for the cats to finish their careful digging, then shooed them inside and closed the patio door before I wandered down to talk to Dora and whoever might be with her.

Dora was in one of her Adirondack chairs. “Clay was looking for you,” she said. Except for my two dogs, she was alone.

“I must have been upstairs in my shop.”

The dogs had arranged themselves on each side of her, conveniently close to her hands. She scratched their ears. “He said he would check there. Didn’t he find you?”

“I guess I was downstairs by then. Too bad I missed him.”

“You don’t sound very convinced.”

I merely shrugged and crossed my arms over the low-cut dress. I should have thrown on a sweater before I came out into the rapidly cooling evening.

Dora prodded, “Don’t you want to hang on to Clay?”

“You can’t hang on to something that’s beyond your grasp.”

“He’s not. He likes you. I can tell. I couldn’t get him to say even
one
word about that redhead. She probably threw herself at him.”