I zeroed in on Anna, wondering if her version of the story was true, or if Sandra’s was. Either way, there was something about her that sent up a warning in my head.
The dance concluded, and Mrs. James straightened up, gave Nana’s hand a fortifying squeeze, and waited for her cue to go onstage to announce the Margarets and read the pedigrees. Before she passed the curtain, she stopped and turned. “Harlow, I almost forgot. When I went to pick up the dress at your shop, your computer was buzzing. Making a really strange noise, almost like something was inside the box.”
Meemaw. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll get it fixed.”
“Yes, good.” The music faded and the girls dropped into a deep curtsey. Applause and a few “Yipees!” broke out from the audience. “I couldn’t help but notice,” Mrs. James continued, “that you’d Googled Anna Hughes.”
“Oh! Right.” Good grief, that seemed like eons ago. “I was trying to find out about her sister’s wedding.” Inside, my stomach roiled. It was as if Mrs. James had known I’d just been thinking about the doctor’s wife.
“It’s a doozy of a secret she’s been keeping from her Amarillo days,” she said, one eye on the Margarets, her fingers lightly fluttering over her forehead, then along her upper lip. I’d never seen Mrs. James nervous. It made her even more endearing.
“O-ohhh.” I frowned. “Yes.” Affairs and daytime drinking were pretty good secrets.
“Your pipes started creaking, too.” She turned to look at me, one finger poised against her cheek. “That’s quite a rickety old house you have there,” she added, but she cocked her head at me, like she wanted confirmation that it was Loretta Mae, and not the pipes, making a ruckus in my house.
“That darn plumbing,” I said, giving an aw, shucks snap with my fingers. The beaus made their way onto the stage, spun the Margarets in a well-rehearsed twirl, then retreated back to the wings.
“Quite a scandal,” Mrs. James said. “Fern said Trudy’s recovering nicely. Guess we can tell her she was wrong. Lightning certainly can strike the same place twice.”
I stared at Mrs. James’s back. Scandal? Lightning? “I don’t—,” I started to say, but the music queued, the girls separated into two lines, and Mrs. James waved at me. She glided out to her spot, looking exactly like a former debutante should look, her silhouette lovely as she basked in the limelight. Being held in the town’s jailhouse hadn’t hurt her one lick.
As Mrs. James read each birth story, the young lady’s beau joined his Margaret onstage. The teenage boys edged up behind me, waiting for their cue. I only half listened to Mrs. James, my mind trying, instead, to make sense of the fragmented conversation we’d just had.
Lightning striking twice. Someone else had said that to me. Recently, too. But who?
“She looks beautiful.”
Will Flores’s voice at my side pulled me out of my thoughts. “Yes, she does,” I said, looking at Gracie. My gaze drifted to Libby. She looked so poised. To think, Macon Vance, her own father, could have destroyed that.
My stomach grew tight as I remembered something. Deputy Gavin McClaine had said Macon Vance was from Amarillo. Mrs. James had just said there’d been some scandal in Amarillo with Mrs. Hughes.
Coincidence? My gut was saying no way.
I still didn’t know what Trudy Lafayette and lightning striking twice had to do with anything.
I tapped my foot impatiently, waiting while Mrs. James read through each Margaret’s pedigree. Each girl stepped forward, one by one, as her beau handed her a yellow rose.
“Darlin’,” Will said, catching Gracie in a hug as she left the stage, “you’re beautiful.”
Duane dropped Libby’s hand as she came up to us. The straight skirt, double rows of ruffles, and the heavily appliquéd bodice with the square neckline perfectly matched the girl and her quiet personality. Sandra glided up next to her, their smiles widening as Steven appeared from behind the backdrop curtain in his Victorian suit. Behind him, the beaus gathered, dressed to the nines in period costumes, waiting to escort the newly presented girls during their first waltz.
Seeing the Allens together—or maybe it was the new ideas percolating in my mind—I was beginning to believe Sandra’s version of things. She and Will both painted less than flattering pictures of Anna Hughes. They couldn’t both be wrong.
“Libby’s gown is wonderful, Harlow,” Sandra said to me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so… so… happy.”
“Well, of course,” Mrs. James said as she passed by, as if it were ludicrous to think it would have turned out any other way. I thought about chasing her down to find out what the Amarillo scandal had been, but she was already surrounded by a group of clucking mamas. I’d have to catch up with her later.
Libby beamed. She did look happy. Poised and confident, just exactly what I’d hoped she’d feel after wearing the dress I’d made for her. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks had a rosy tint to them, and she looked like she’d blossomed, breaking out of her caterpillar cocoon, emerging as a colorful butterfly. “I’ll probably never wear this again,” she said, “but I love it.”
Gracie extricated herself from her dad’s hug and whispered something to Libby. They giggled, said, “Ta ta!” in unison and with perfect debutante inflection, and skipped off, giggling and talking before their waltz.
“I need a computer,” I said to Will as the music started again.
Sandra Allen piped up. “Tina Nelson’s the country club’s manager on duty. I’m sure you can use hers. Ta,” she said with a wave of her hand as she and Steven started to wander off. Will and I started backstage, but Sandra’s voice stopped me. “Harlow?”
“Yes?”
“I can’t thank you enough for stepping in and taking care of things for my mother.” She gestured to the stage and the Margarets milling around. “Everything really is perfect.”
I smiled, and thanked her. It was perfect, except that Trudy and Fern weren’t there to see the fruits of their labor. Trudy was barely hanging on after being attacked, and there was a killer still on the loose who had used my dressmaking shears as a murder weapon.
Chapter 37
We stayed put until the waltz was over and Gracie had been escorted by her last-minute beau, one Jason Boone, off the stage and to her seat in the banquet hall. Will whispered in her ear before joining me at the club’s lobby computer. He stood on one side of me, Josie and her blond-haired, suntanned husband, Nate, on the other. “What are you looking for?” Josie asked.
I’d Googled Anna Hughes, just as I’d done at home, and was scrolling through the entries. “Following a hunch.”
“I hear you got you some smarts, Ms. Cassidy.”
We all turned to see Deputy Gavin McClaine amble up to us looking just the same as he ever did in his beige law enforcement clothes. Once again, I tried to get a vision of him in something else—anything else—but came up blank. The man was an enigma… but not necessarily in a good way.
“So you’re Will Flores,” Gavin said. He didn’t offer his hand like a good Southern gentleman. Good manners only went so far, apparently.
Will didn’t offer his either. “Deputy.”
Nate straightened up, his left arm draped comfortably around Josie’s shoulder, the other extended. Breeding had been drilled into him by Lori Kincaid, society matron extraordinaire.
“Gavin. Heard you were back in town,” Nate said, his chin dimple looking more pronounced than usual. Where Will was more ruggedly attractive, and Gavin was kind of badass good-looking, Nate was a classically handsome man. Together, he and Josie would make beautiful babies.