I put my palm to my chest. “Me?”
She flicked a look at the man who stood off to her side. He nodded, flipped a switch on the bulky black television camera perched on his shoulder, and suddenly I knew we were rolling.
“You are Harlow Cassidy?” Rebecca Quiñones asked.
I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could answer, she went on.
“The same Harlow Cassidy who owns Buttons and Bows? You’re a custom dressmaker and fashion designer, is that right?”
“That’s right,” I said, the coil of nerves that wound through me tightening their hold. How did she know who I was, and why would she care?
“What’s your relationship with Macon Vance?”
My mind raced. I closed my eyes for a moment to think. Behind my eyelids, streaks of color and memories smeared. “Macon who?” I said. If it was someone from my childhood here in Bliss, I couldn’t remember. “I think you have the wrong person.”
“Macon Vance, Ms. Cassidy. The golf pro for the country club.”
“I don’t know him,” I said as I turned around. I wanted to find Mrs. James, do what I had to do to get Gracie on the schedule for the pageant, and get home to work.
I heard the dull thump of rushing footsteps and suddenly Rebecca Quiñones was in step with me, albeit on the ground next to the catwalk instead of on the platform itself. “Isn’t that your sewing bag?” she asked, pointing to the end of the stage. Suddenly I saw that Sheriff Hoss McClaine had crouched next to my Dena Rooney-Berg bag.
“Y-yes.” Red flags shot up in my head and my mouth grew dry.
“And what do you keep in your sewing bag, Ms. Cassidy? Needles? Scissors? Tape measure?”
The same items that could be found in any dressmaker’s bag. Criminy, what did this woman want? I gathered up my gumption, stopped walking, and turned to face her. “Why do you ask, Ms. Quiñones? Do you have a rip in your skirt that needs mending?”
She gave a smile, and I wondered if the effort would crack her makeup. It didn’t. But it did show me that even her teeth were perfect. Straight and pearly white, the perfect contrast to her olive skin. “No, Ms. Cassidy. My skirt’s fine, but thanks. Actually,” she said, growing serious again, “I’m wondering if you had a personal relationship with Mr. Vance, and if so—”
“I don’t know any Mr. Vance,” I said, cutting her off.
“Macon Vance? The golf pro here at the club,” she repeated.
I shrugged. “Yeah, you already said that. I’m not a member here.”
“That’s right. You’re here because…” She paused and tilted her head to the side. “Why are you here?”
“I’m a dressmaker,” I said. “I’m making gowns for some of the Margarets. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m looking for someone.”
As I approached, the sheriff suddenly stood, his voice raised. “Dust it,” he said to one of his lackeys. Rebecca Quiñones watched me. Behind her, the camera was still rolling. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the sheriff wants to take a closer look at your sewing supplies, Ms. Cassidy,” she said. There was a snarky little edge to her tone that made me think she knew something I didn’t.
“Why?” I said, hesitating. Why was the sheriff here, anyway, and what needed dusting?
Rebecca Quiñones stared at me. “You mean you haven’t heard?”
I looked around, noting the odd mix of somber voices and bustling activity. Suddenly, I felt like I’d been transported back to the porch of 2112 Mockingbird Lane, watching a crime scene unfold in front of me. The same feeling I’d had then—one of helpless shock—came over me. It couldn’t happen twice, could it? Not another… death? “Heard what?” I said, my voice as somber as the newscaster’s expression.
“The golf pro, Macon Vance,” she said. She pointed a perfectly manicured acrylic nail in the direction of stage left. “He was found murdered, and I believe the sheriff was just about to take your bag, and everything in it, into evidence.”
The breath suddenly left my lungs, heat spread to my cheeks, and a wave of dizziness slipped over me. “Murdered?” I looked back toward my bag of supplies, and noticed something I hadn’t seen a minute ago. My inexpensive, orange-handled Fiskars were on the ground, a good couple of feet from my bag, like they’d been dropped in a hurry. I started, a lump catching in my throat. They didn’t look right. The blades were open and stained with something dark. “How?” I asked, barely choking the words out.
Rebecca Quiñones had followed my gaze. From the corner of my eye, I saw her wave her microphone. The cameraman moved in closer, getting a tight shot of me. I tried to turn my back, but Rebecca said, “Stabbed,” and I froze. Because I suddenly knew what the dark substance on the blades was.
Blood.
Chapter 5
Sheriff McClaine, also known as my mother’s secret boyfriend, shooed the looky-loos from the room, then leveled his gaze at me. “Harlow, speak of the devil.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, a solid dose of wariness in my voice.
“Guess you heard about the murder,” he said. “I reckon this is yours?” He gestured to the scattered sewing items.
“Yes, sir.” I thought the sheriff and I had had a little breakthrough after Josie Sandoval’s wedding, but the murder at the golf club seemed to have sent him back to his curmudgeonly state. I jammed my hands on my hips. “I came to collect my bag, and to meet Mrs. James.”
“And just why is your bag here?” he asked in his slow, John Wayne style.
His manner of speaking might be slow and Southern, but his mind was sharp as a tack. I bristled. “I accidentally left it here the other day. I’m working on some of the Margaret dresses.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, tilting his cream-colored straw cowboy hat back on his head. Then he added, “Seems like murder follows you.”
I gulped, not liking this conversation at all, and hoping Rebecca Quiñones and her cameraman had gone far, far way. “I heard, yes, sir.” I was thirty-three, but the sheriff sent me reeling back to being a scolded sixteen-year-old.
“A man was stabbed.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, the words catching in my throat.
“And your fingerprints’ll be all over those scissors there, I reckon,” he said, pointing to the scissors that one of his gloved deputies was sliding into a plastic evidence bag.
“They’re my dressmaking shears,” I said, “so, yes, sir, I reckon they will.”
The sheriff opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, instead waving at someone over my shoulder. “Find anything?
“And you didn’t know Mr. Vance?” he said to me a second later.
In my heart, I knew Hoss McClaine couldn’t possibly think I had anything to do with the golf pro’s death, but I also knew he had a job to do. I shook my head. “Never even heard of him until that reporter mentioned his name.”
The scattered items from my sewing bag had been numbered, and now I saw Madelyn Brighton, her dark skin shimmery from the heat, her short black hair plastered against her head, and her navy slacks and a colorful blouse sticking to her plump body. She’d come onto the stage, Canon camera lifted to her face, snapping picture after picture of the crime scene.
“Can I have my bag back?” I asked.
“No can do,” a deputy said, coming up beside me with his cowboy swagger. He couldn’t have been more than five ten, and was lean and handsome, even in his khaki deputy uniform. He was clean shaven, though I got the feeling he let his whiskers go scruffy when he was off duty. Well, if he ever took a day off, which I wasn’t clear on, considering I couldn’t get a vision of him in anything other than his khakis. Of course, maybe my gift of visualizing people and clothing that would flatter them was selective and limited. My charm was not always under my control.