Josie stood with a group of girls. I couldn’t hear her voice over the prattle of debutantes, but from the way she patted the air in front of her—like she was trying to get them all to simmer down—I got that they were agitated to a boiling point.
I hurried up next to Josie, acting as nonchalant as I could muster. “What’s going on?”
Josie’s face contorted as she gave an exaggerated glance at her watch, then gave me the stink eye. “Late night?” she asked.
I tilted my head to the side, smiling slightly. “Actually, yes.” She gave me a wicked little grin, but I threw my palm up, stopping her. “Sewing,” I said. “Finishing Mrs. James’s dress.”
The excited light in her eyes dimmed and her smile faded. “Oh. Well, that’s no fun.”
I turned to the aimless girls surrounding us. “We’re so behind schedule.”
“You’re late,” Josie said.
“You sure none of you remember your dresses?” I said to them.
They all shook their heads.
I didn’t blame them. The Margaret gowns weren’t something these girls would be caught dead in under normal circumstances. Gracie had an appreciation for fabric and design, but from the look of things, she was an anomaly. I suspected that a good many of the girls here would rather be hanging out at the nice air-conditioned mall in Fort Worth, or tubing on Lake Bliss. Getting up early on a hundred-degree summer day, wearing a heavy dress, and dancing a waltz with a beau were not a modern teenager’s idea of fun. Who cared that their parents had paid thousands upon thousands of dollars for the custom frocks.
“Come on. We have to blaze through this. Where’s the book?”
I felt under my arm, where I normally would have stuck it. Not there. I still hadn’t gotten my sewing bag back from the sheriff, so I’d been using a Michael Kors tiger print canvas bag instead. The rope handles weren’t as sturdy and it didn’t have the interior pockets that my Dena Rooney-Berg bag did, but it would do the job for now until I got my sewing bag back.
I dug my hand inside, knowing that I’d tucked the book right on top. I gulped. Only it wasn’t there. Crouching down to dig deeper into the bag, I had a déjà vu moment. Only days ago, I’d stood right here. And if I hadn’t forgotten my sewing bag, my shears wouldn’t have been readily available to a murderer. And if they hadn’t been right there, an orange-handled beacon to whoever had been with the golf pro in his last minutes, would Macon Vance still be alive?
“Stop.” I chastised myself. There was absolutely no point in saying what if. Macon Vance was dead, and nothing could change that.
“Harlow, the book?”
The girls had wandered off, and Josie bent down next to me. Stage mothers whispered, sending annoyed looks our way. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose, catching a glimpse of Sandra and Steven Allen. Even though I was preoccupied with the missing notebook, I couldn’t help remembering how distraught Sandra had been the night of Buckley Hughes’s party. She hadn’t wanted to attend. But Steven had said he’d made her. “Why would Steven insist that Sandra go out when Mrs. James was being held for suspicion of murder?” I asked Josie. “Don’t you think that’s strange?”
Josie sat on the stage, flattened her palms on the floor and kicked her legs out from under her, crisscrossing them into a half lotus position. “People lie, Harlow. Maybe he didn’t make her go anywhere. Maybe she went on her own, and he wanted to bring her back home.” She gave another pointed look at my bag again. “The book?”
“Right.” My mind swirled with thoughts as I dug through my bag. I felt like I had all the pieces cut for a quilt, but I couldn’t figure out what pattern to use so they’d all go together. Josie’s words played in a continual loop in my head. People lie. My shoulders slumped, as much from knowing that Josie was right as from the fact that I stopped looking, empty-handed. Trudy’s book was not in my canvas bag.
“It’s not here.” I dug through again, hoping I’d just missed it, but I still came up empty-handed.
“You had it when you left last night,” Josie said, but we still spent ten minutes scouring the stage and the makeshift changing room in case we were both wrong and I’d dropped it at the club.
I grabbed my keys, flung the bag over my shoulder, and headed toward the door. “It’s got to be at home,” I said, but twenty-five minutes later, I spun around in my workroom, hands clasped on top of my head, panic rising in me like a wave in the Gulf of Mexico’s dirty water. Trudy’s book was nowhere to be found, and without it, we’d never get the right dresses with the right girls.
“Where is it?” I muttered. I’d already searched the boutique area of Buttons & Bows, upstairs, the kitchen… It wasn’t anywhere. There was no sign of Trudy’s notebook. And I hadn’t a clue how to organize the pageant without her notes.
I thought I’d brought it into the house, but if I had, it wasn’t here now. I’d checked Meemaw’s old truck to no avail. It was just… gone.
The click, click, click of the ceiling fan berated me. The repetitive sound started to morph in my head until it sounded like tsk, tsk, tsk. Was Meemaw taunting me? I dropped my arms and searched the room for any sign of a ghostly presence.
“Meemaw, did you hide Trudy’s book from me?” My voice sounded loud in the empty room, but I cleared my throat and kept going. “Eighteen girls are back at the country club, waiting on me to get them into their dresses and start the rehearsal. And the pageant!”
I paused, cocking my head to the side to listen for a change in the fan’s clicking, or for some other sign that Meemaw heard me. The tsk, tsk, tsk I’d imagined a minute ago was back to a steady click. The rotation of the fan’s blades sent the air whooshing down, ruffling the hair that had slipped out of my two low ponytails. I tucked a wayward strand behind my ear, impatiently adjusted my glasses, and did a clumsy pirouette as I searched the room again.
Still no sign of my ghostly great-grandmother. Great. When I needed her, she was nowhere to be found. “This is getting aggravating, Meemaw,” I grumbled, “and I don’t have time for it.” Trudy and Fern had put their trust in me to take over their final fittings. Mrs. James had come to me to take over her role as the pageant’s coordinator.
I hoped that Meemaw might take pity on me and show herself. No such luck. I was still alone, and completely at a loss. My thoughts ran a little wild as I started my search again.
The Art Nouveau–style magazine rack I’d brought back with me from my one trip to France caught my eye. It sat next to the plush red velvet settee, hand-painted flowers cascading down the avocado green front. I flipped through the fashion and home decor magazines standing upright between the wrought-iron frame. I hadn’t put the notebook in the rack, but maybe Meemaw was playing games and had slipped it between the glossies.
One look proved that she hadn’t.
The rumble of an engine came from out front. I pulled back the sheers to see Hoss McClaine’s black SUV, HOOD COUNTY SHERIFF emblazoned on the side, pull up in front of the house. Mama popped out of the passenger side before Hoss could amble around to open her door for her. Mama was not one for pretense or social expectation. Her voice carried through the screen door. “I’m perfectly capable of openin’ my own door, Hoss McClaine, thank you very much.”