She muttered under her breath, “She mentioned to the deputy, apparently, that she’d overheard a bit of a kerfuffle that morning.”
I wasn’t at all sure if the unspoken accusation that Josie had spilled the beans about something she shouldn’t have was real or my imagination. Either way, I was tongue-tied. There had been a kerfuffle, and we had overheard it. It wasn’t hard to put one and one together.
“Were you with Macon Vance?” Will asked.
I waited on the edge of my seat, wanting confirmation of what I thought I knew: that Mrs. James might not have known Macon Vance socially, but she knew him enough to argue with him over the pageant.
Mrs. James drew her mouth tight, a vertical bow of wrinkles shooting into her top lip. “Yes.”
“Your conversation sounded pretty, um”—I weighed my words carefully—“heated.”
“Yes, well, he was a contrary man. To say we didn’t see eye to eye on things would be understating the matter.”
Will and I raised our eyebrows at each other. Yikes. There was definitely no love lost between Mrs. James and Macon Vance.
I tilted my head to one side, considering what she’d told us just a minute earlier. “But you said you didn’t know him.”
“We’ve had… run-ins. He was an outsider. He didn’t understand the tradition here in Bliss,” she said.
A snippet of their argument came back to me. Do you check their teeth and the bottom of their shoes? Macon Vance might not have understood the tradition, but I thought he actually understood the rules of the pageant pretty well. And he didn’t like them.
“Why was he so against the pageant?” I asked.
She brushed the question away. “It really doesn’t matter,” she said. “Harlow, I’m here because I need your help.”
I didn’t know what she was going to say, but instinct was telling me to keep my nose out of it. I opened my mouth to protest, but she threw up her hand, quieting me. “Before you say anything, hear me out.”
Suddenly Will’s hand was on my knee, gently squeezing a warning. He shook his head, just barely, and muttered, “Your plate’s pretty full with the dresses, Cassidy.”
He was dead right, but Mrs. James looked desperate. As desperate as a plucked, face-lifted, silver-haired former Texas beauty queen can look. I nodded to her. “I’m listening.”
Will shook his head, taking his hand away from my leg, leaving a cold spot in its absence. “Something’s not right here, Cassidy,” he muttered so only I could hear. Water suddenly began dripping from the kitchen faucet. It started out sounding like plop, plop, plop, but to my ears ended up sounding like he’s right, he’s right, he’s right.
So Meemaw didn’t want me helping Mrs. James, either. But was that because I was already stretched thin, or was it the rift between Mrs. James and Nana?
She glanced at the clock, tapping her foot impatiently. “I’ve got crews picking up the runway and delivering the correct stage right this very minute. Everything is in order, but I’ve been summoned by the sheriff, my dear, and in case… in case I’m… unavoidably detained,” she said, “I’ll need you to run the final rehearsal.” She gave Will a pointed look. “Your daughter’s going to be in the program now, so you should be there to help. Make sure the stage is done properly, check the lighting, and such.”
I stared at her. “Unavoidably detained? But this is your baby, Mrs. James. You’ve been working on it all year. Where are you going?” I asked, but the second the words crossed my lips, I wanted to snatch them back. Fear tinged the pallor of her skin and I suddenly knew where she was going.
She was going to be arrested for the murder of Macon Vance. Anxiety raised goose bumps on my skin. Did she know what would happen next because she’d actually killed the man?
Another thought hurried into my mind. She’d summoned me to the club, where I’d left my bag. My scissors were the murder weapon. My skin turned clammy. Lord almighty, I might well end up in the cell right next to hers.
Chapter 9
Cursing the extra work I’d agreed to before Macon Vance was killed, I spent the next hour frantically finishing a skirt for one of my mother’s friends. I pinned a gore to the fabric of the skirt I’d cut apart, stitching the triangular piece in to give it more width. As I finished the top of the triangle by hand, my mind went over what Mrs. James had said. She’d made it clear. I was to go to the Lafayette sisters, masters of all things Margaret Moffette Lea, and get the lowdown on what still needed to be done before Bliss’s big night. Despite their Hatfield and McCoy feud over the changing of the guard, they were the only ones she trusted to get all of the details right. Event planning fell well outside my realm of expertise, but Mrs. James was paying me to take over for her—in case she was arrested—and the Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball must go on, with or without its chairwoman.
I had to believe Mrs. James was innocent. And I did. No matter the rift she and my grandmother might have had, or her sharp personality, I liked the woman.
Which meant a powwow with Fern and Trudy Lafayette.
Meemaw’s old Ford chugged down State Street, a stream of black exhaust in its wake. I peered in the rearview mirror at my contribution to poor air quality, then at the stickers in the lower left corner of the windshield. Both the registration and inspections were up to date, which was miraculous. I suspected that next time around—eight months from now—the truck might not be so lucky and I’d be back to walking. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. I’d spent years hoofing my way around Manhattan, which also served to keep my weight down, but since I’d been back home and the walking had tapered off, I’d plumped up a tiny bit. Not so anyone but me would notice, but still.
I dropped off the skirt I’d finished altering before heading to the south side of town. The houses were sturdy brick structures without much flair or character. Meemaw’s old farmhouse oozed charm, but the Lafayette sisters’ pink brick box sat on the corner of the street looking like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol had been poured over it. Birds-of-paradise and rounded boxwoods adorned the half-moon planters on either corner of the driveway, though the narrow strips of dirt alongside the walkway to the door sat unplanted.
“I’m sure they won’t want to talk to me,” I’d told Mrs. James about Fern and Trudy Lafayette, not wanting to face the dethroned queens of the Margarets. They’d had their hands in the pageant since they’d first moved from West Texas and participated in it sixty-some-odd years ago. They’d been Margarets first, and then, when it became clear to them that getting married and having their own daughters was not in their futures, they’d taken over the pageant. Every Bliss debutante became their daughter by default. They’d been in charge of the whole kit and caboodle, from the planning to the dressmaking—until this year when Trudy’s headaches had become almost debilitating. Everyone said she seemed better, but the festival committee had stepped in and suggested Zinnia James take over this year’s pageant. Now me? I didn’t think they’d welcome me with open arms.
“Those two old mockingbirds are harmless,” she’d said, brushing away my concern.
I wasn’t so sure. I’d taken three commissions from them this pageant season—four, if you counted Gracie—which I’d heard had ruffled their feathers pretty good. And after the blow of the Margaret Society stripping them of their control—ageism existed, even in Texas—I was pretty sure they weren’t going to want to talk to me.