“That’s why it struck me,” Gina was saying. “He kept repeating that his daughter had a right to know who her father is. Boy, I know what that feels like.”
“Wait.” My mind whirled as I connected the dots. “He has a kid who doesn’t know he’s the father?”
She shrugged, but she didn’t look unsure. “That’s what it sounded like.”
“Do you know who it is?” I prompted when she didn’t offer anything else, but she shook her head. I paused, then asked the big question. “Who’s the mother?”
She snorted. “Take your pick.”
Right. The golf pro who got around.
After a minute, Gina lowered her chin. “You look like you have an idea,” Gina said, her chin lowered, lips pouty.
I pressed my fingertips between my tense eyebrows. “I do?”
“Yeah, you do.”
“I don’t. No ideas.” But as she scraped her chair back and started to stand, I decided to share my suspicion. “Unless…”
She plopped back down. “Unless what?”
“You said he made lots of unhappy housewives happy, right?”
“Right.”
“So what if he had an affair with a married woman and she got pregnant. That’s a pretty good reason to be kept out of the child’s life, right?”
A dollop of color returned to Gina’s cheeks. “Hey, Harlow, that’s pretty good.” She sat up straight, looked off to the side like she was giving my idea considerable thought, but then she shook her head. “So then some angry woman, the mother of his child, stabbed him?”
“I don’t know…” Unless a woman was particularly strong or had the element of surprise, it seemed unlikely that stabbing by scissors would be the method chosen for murder. Which meant…
“The husband,” we both said at the same time.
“If only we knew who his daughter is—was? No, is—,” Gina said, “we’d know who the pretend father is, and voila! We’d catch a murderer.”
If only it were that easy.
“I gotta get back,” she said. She scooted behind the counter and made my iced coffee. Moments later I waved, heading back into the heat. I had Margaret gowns to work on, Gracie’s pedigree to write, and family history to sort out.
What I did not have was a murder to solve.
Somehow it consumed my thoughts anyway.
Chapter 7
My old farmhouse has been in the Cassidy family since Meemaw was a little girl. Now here I was, back in Bliss after a long, grueling stint as a minion in a New York City fashion empire. Just driving up Mockingbird Lane from the square sent a wave of comfort through me.
The driveway ran along the left side of the house. I parked Meemaw’s beat-up old truck under the row of possumwood trees, climbed the back porch, iced coffee in hand, and entered the house through the kitchen. The Dutch door, along with the buttercup retro-styled appliances, were my favorite features of the house. Meemaw had had an eye for style and she’d always known what she wanted. The vintage stamped metal bodies of the stove, dishwasher, and refrigerator made the kitchen the most welcoming room in the house. Next to my sewing workroom, I spent most of my time right here.
But not today. Instead I headed straight for the workroom, but as I passed the staircase, I heard a series of grunting sounds, followed by a loud thump, that echoed through the house. I stopped short. My first thought was that Meemaw was up to no good, rattling the pipes or some other such ghostly activity, but the sounds came again and the hair on the back of my neck rose. Men. My heartbeat revved. There were men in my house.
I didn’t have anything valuable except a legendary and elusive trinket Butch Cassidy had supposedly sent to Texana Harlow, my great-great-great-grandmother, but no one had ever seen hide nor hair of it, so who knew if it even existed.
Panic raised goose bumps on every ounce of my flesh. Frantic, I searched for a weapon, trying to stay calm, but this was Bliss. I dealt with armadillos, snakes, and goats—not intruders. Maybe Bliss wasn’t as insulated as I’d thought.
I spotted my collapsible umbrella in the corner by the front door. That was as good as it was going to get. I snatched it up, flourishing it in front of me as I tiptoed up the stairs. Stopping at the landing, I peered up. A man’s back came into view. I caught my breath. I had nothing valuable to steal—unless you were a seamstress—but from the heaving and groaning, whoever was up there had his eyes on a big ticket item.
I wielded the closed umbrella, wishing Meemaw would somehow provide me with something slightly more threatening. Instead I heard the faint squeak, squeak, bang of the gate out front as it whipped open, then slammed against the latch. It sounded almost like a… laugh. Meemaw?
“The sheriff,” I muttered. As much as I didn’t want to talk to the man right now, what with Gavin McClaine’s thinly veiled suspicion about the presence of my sewing bag and scissors at the crime scene, calling him was my best option for rescue. I turned to race for the phone, but it was too late to make a call. The man at the top of the stairs came fully into view. There was something about him…
He turned and saw me, his surprise instantly morphing into wry mirth as his gaze zeroed in on my umbrella.
“Will Flores,” I said with as much indignation as I could muster, jamming one hand on my hip. “What are you doing here?”
I had my answer the next second as his burden came into view. Meemaw’s armoire! “Moving this for you,” he said, straining under the weight. “I told you I’d come by today.”
What with the summons by Mrs. James and the murder, I’d completely forgotten I’d asked him. He took the deal he’d made with Meemaw seriously, coming by nearly every day to tackle something on my to-do list.
I knocked my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Right! Sorry—”
He set his end of the armoire down, carefully turning it so it could be maneuvered down the stairs. He notched his chin at the umbrella I still wielded like a sword. “What are you planning to do with that?”
I looked from him to the umbrella and back to him, a sheepish grin on my face. In one lightning quick move, I tossed it down the stairs. It landed with a thump by the olive-green-painted antique dining table. “You know Texas weather. Wait five minutes and it’ll change. You never know when the rain’ll hit.”
“I guess you don’t,” he said, barely stifling a laugh.
“We doing this, or what?” someone said, and on the count of three, the armoire was up and being moved again.
“Oh,” I screeched, backing down the stairs. My feet, tucked snugly in my burnt red Frye harness cowboy boots, tangled under me. I stumbled, catching myself on the banister.
Will, a navy bandana wrapped around his head, shot me a look over his shoulder. “You okay?”
Besides the fact that he and his homies had nearly given me a heart attack, I was peachy. “’Course. I just didn’t expect to find you here—”
The antique armoire banged against the wall, knocking down the picture of Butch Cassidy and his gang. It crashed, the glass from the frame shattering against the hard wood of the stairs.
Will lurched back, slamming his back against the wall, his muscles straining as he somehow managed to stabilize the armoire. “They were available early,” he said through his teeth, “so we came over. I tried to call you—”
One of the men held tight to the right side of the piece, but growled. “Jesus, Buck. You got it now?”