I gave up any hope of seeing those sewing supplies—or my Dena Rooney-Berg bag—again and started a mental list of what I’d need to replace. Tape measure, pins, seam ripper, spools of thread—
“Why’d you bring your sewing scissors to a golf club?” the deputy asked me. His brown eyes narrowed and he studied me like he thought I had a secret or two. Which I did. They were just unrelated to Macon Vance.
“Like I told the sheriff, Deputy, um…”
“McClaine.”
“No, not the sheriff…” I stopped, looked from one man to the other, then did a double take. “You’re… Gavin?” As in Hoss McClaine’s son? I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. He’d been a few years younger than me and I don’t think I’d ever uttered three words to him. He’d been the shyest boy in school, which had made him fodder for Derek Kincaid and his posse of entitled rich kids, but hadn’t gotten him involved in much else.
He nodded and the corner of his mouth lifted in a cocky smile. I got the feeling he liked shocking people who remembered him as the ninety-pound weakling. “All grown up.”
Yes, indeed. “I had no idea you were a deputy,” I said, thinking he might give the town’s crop of preeminent bachelors a run for their money. If you could get past the cocky attitude.
He knocked back his straw cowboy hat, identical to his dad’s, and stared me down. “Just transferred from Fort Worth. Heartwarming trip down memory lane,” he said with a heavy drawl. “Now, back to my question, Miss Cassidy— It is Miss, isn’t it?” Deputy Gavin cracked that satisfied smile again, like he was privy to the fact that being a thirty-three-year-old unmarried woman meant you were past your prime and on a downhill slide.
“Yes,” I said, throwing my shoulders back and my chin up.
He nodded, his left eye narrowing slightly. His father looked from him to me, then back to him. He patted Gavin on the shoulder. “Looks like you can handle this. ME’s here. Come find me when you’re done.” And he ambled off behind the velvet curtain.
Gavin didn’t miss a beat. “Why did you bring your scissors to a golf club?”
I threw one arm out and gestured to the runway and stage lights. The room was deathly quiet with all the people cleared out. I lowered my voice to compensate. “The Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball. I’m making dresses for a few of the girls. I came to meet Mrs. James—”
“The senator’s wife?”
As he pulled a notebook out of his pants pocket and poised the tip of a miniature pencil on the page, my heart stopped. “Y-yes, but—”
“Zinnia?” he said, but he seemed to be talking more to himself than to me. He gave a single nod, then said, “Continue.”
“She just wanted some ideas—”
“’Bout what?”
“I’m not actually sure,” I admitted.
“Right,” he blurted, as if he’d made some great discovery. “Because she didn’t know you’d been here, isn’t that right?”
Nerves pricked the surface of my skin. “I—I, uh, n-no. We didn’t end up talking, which is why I’m back here now.”
“Did she ask you to meet her here?”
“That’s right.”
“To give her some ideas?”
I didn’t like the way this was going, but there was no escape. “To talk about plans for the ball—”
“Festival business. I see. And did you sew something for her?”
“Here? No, I—”
“Yet you brought your sewing bag. With scissors. Why? Did you think you were going to sew something? Did she give you the impression she needed you to sew something?”
“No, I’d just come from doing some alterations, but—”
I stopped as his eyes narrowed. He tilted his head to one side. “Mighty convenient, don’t you think?”
“Mrs. James is a good woman,” I said. I had to stop myself from wagging my finger. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Gavin McClaine.”
“Was I talking about Mrs. James?” he said, accusation lacing his voice.
I gulped, his meaning loud and clear.
“Why’d you leave the bag?” he continued.
“I… um…” I bit my lip. What I’d said so far had come out all wrong.
“Harlow,” he pressed, adjusting his hat lower on his forehead. “Answer the question. Why’d you leave the bag?”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I put it down while I was looking at the catwalk. Mrs. James was… um… she was busy.” The argument she’d been having with… with… Oh, Lord. She’d been arguing with the golf pro. Who was now dead. My skin turned clammy. This was not good. “I, um, I decided I’d catch up with her later and I left.”
“And the bag…,” he said, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging there.
“I forgot about it.” I pointed to the spot where I’d left it. “I set it down, was looking around, and I forgot.”
It might have been the truth, but he wasn’t done asking questions. “Did she specifically ask you to bring your scissors?”
My skin pricked and dark swirls danced behind my eyelids. So now we were talking about Mrs. James. “No, of course not. She didn’t ask me to bring anything. It’s a sewing bag. I always keep a pair of scissors in it.”
“Uh huh.”
My mind suddenly reeled back to the moment I’d seen Josie’s maid of honor dead in my front yard. To being questioned. To the horrible feeling of being a suspect in a murder investigation. Criminy. Was I a suspect? And had I just made Mrs. James a suspect? “Neither one of us had anything to do with this,” I said, defending Mrs. James even though the tiniest bit of doubt crept through me. She hadn’t looked herself yesterday. Surely it wasn’t because she’d been about to take someone’s life. Right?
“Does she know what you keep in your sewing bag?” he repeated.
“She’s never seen my sewing bag, so she wouldn’t know what I keep in it,” I snapped. “And she didn’t ask me to bring it.” Gavin McClaine was as unrelenting as his dad had been when I’d been busted breaking and entering at the Grange Hall when I was sixteen. He didn’t care that I’d just been trying to recover our school’s mascot costume—a massive bronco—that my brother Red had taken. When it came to high school football in Texas, a prank was sacrilege. You just didn’t mess with football.
He ignored my frustration and went on. “What was Mrs. James busy doing? Why didn’t you meet with her?”
I hesitated, my sails deflating. I liked Mrs. James, but the fact was, I didn’t know her very well. What if… “I don’t know,” I finally said. “She was, um, talking to someone. I figured I’d catch up with her later.”
“Uh huh. Who was she talking to?” His miniature pencil scratched against the notepad again.
“I couldn’t see. I didn’t want to interrupt—”
“But she asked you to meet her.”
“But she was busy—”
“And you couldn’t see who was she talking to?” God, he had a bad habit of interrupting me.
I shrugged. “No, Gavin—”
“Deputy,” he corrected.
I rolled my eyes, but not before he saw. I was not scoring any points with Deputy Sheriff Gavin McClaine. “Deputy,” I said. “I couldn’t see.” I pointed to beyond the bubble machine. “They were back there and I was out here.”
He clearly didn’t like my story, but after a few more questions, he finally let me go. I caught a glimpse of Macon Vance’s muddy shoes—still on his feet—as I left. Only one thought circled in my mind. Could Mrs. James have done this?
Chapter 6
Another murder in Bliss. Not so blissful, I thought. I parked my old jalopy of a pickup truck in front of the Italian pasticceria, Villa Farina, on the square. Bobby Farina was a third-generation baker who lived out his family’s tradition of producing delectable Italian mini pastries, but today what I needed was an iced coffee. My stomach was still churning from seeing MaconVance’s dead body. Butter and sugar might do me in.