I thought back to that day in the shop. She must have seen Nell trying to hide the ring. She’d made the leg of the shelf shoot across the room like a bullet, causing the button jars to crash to the ground. By her own orchestration, Will was at the ready to do repairs for me, and now I had a shelf that needed repairing. Meemaw had seen an opportunity to help me find the note from Butch, and she’d taken it.
“The first day Josie and the bridesmaids all came in here, Nell was in the workroom but we were all out here. She paced around, always going off on her own to look at swatches or the lookbook.”
“Lookbook?” Will sounded like we were speaking a foreign language.
“My design book.” I waved the whole train of thought away. “It’s not important. The point is, maybe she was trying to get away from all of us so she could hide this.” I held up the ring like a prize.
Gracie raised her hand like she was in class at school. “Um, I have a question.”
We waited.
“It’s just . . .” She bit one side of her lower lip. “Why would Nell have had your friend Josie’s engagement ring?”
“Wh-what?” Will and I stared at Gracie, slack-jawed. “This isn’t Josie’s—”
I stopped short, caught off guard by her wagging head. “Not now it’s not, but it was. I saw it after your friend got engaged to Holly’s uncle.”
And just like that, I suddenly remembered the day Josie and her bridesmaids had first come into Buttons & Bows and the story about her two rings. The first had been too flashy for her and they’d exchanged it for a simpler setting.
I stared at the sparkling diamond. This was that ring? “But why did Nell have it?” I asked aloud. Two other questions quickly followed in my head. Why had she been trying to hide it? And why, oh why, had she picked my shop to hide it in?
Chapter 39
I’d never fancied myself an amateur sleuth, but a desperate phone call from Josie changed my mind. She said she needed to know what had happened to Nell—for her own peace of mind. Part of me wondered if she was beginning to doubt Nate. With her first engagement ring tucked safely in a little navy velvet jewelry bag sitting in the middle of the cutting table, I was certainly doubtful of his innocence.
“Will you help? Just come to the funeral and . . .” Her voice faded away.
“And see what I can see,” I finished for her.
“Yes.”
“Whoever killed Nell isn’t going to be wearing a sign announcing the fact,” I said, but I was already scanning the notes I’d written in the back of my sketchbook. If I was right and Miriam had been about to name Nate as the killer, I couldn’t let Josie go through with the wedding. The truth needed to come out before she married a murderer.
A number of clues seemed to point to Nate as the killer. Was he guilty of murder, or did the fact that Will trusted him mean I was barking up the wrong tree?
Mama and I had spent another hour reading, rereading, and discussing the note. Excitement at the discovery of a letter from Butch Cassidy to Texana Harlow raced through me. Mama finally left to share the note with Nana, and I tried to get back to work. Each time I sat down to sew, picked up a needle and thread, or handled my rotary cutter or shears, the pipes began creaking, cupboard doors flung open and then abruptly banged shut, or the shelves in the workroom shook, rattling the jars of buttons. It was as if Meemaw was trying to send me a message.
Finally, I realized that I wasn’t going to accomplish any real work. As soon as I put down the needle I had been holding, a wall of air practically lifted me from the stool, pushing me toward the French doors. “Wait!” There was no way I was letting Josie’s ring out of my sight. I broke away and snatched the velvet bag from my cutting table. Immediately, the unexpected strength of Meemaw’s invisible hands propelled me all the way upstairs.
In my room, I opened my closet and grabbed the first thing I saw—a cream-colored blouse and a brown cardigan with a pink-and-cream argyle pattern down either side of the buttoned front. My mind had drifted from Nate and Josie to Butch Cassidy, the ring, and Loretta Mae. Meemaw had answers. I knew she couldn’t hold a real conversation with me, but I asked the questions that came to my mind anyway. “Do you think Nate’s guilty? Will there really be a wedding?” I searched the room for a response.
No ghostlike figures or wraiths appeared. Whatever had propelled me upstairs was gone.
But as I started dressing, a stack of magazines on the bedside table shook. The thick one on top, the spring issue of Vogue, fell with a loud splat. The cover of the most recent Threads flew open. Pages fanned back and forth. Just like the first time Meemaw had communicated with me, tiny drops of water spread on the words she was highlighting. One by one she spelled Miriam; then the pages opened to a jewelry ad, a diamond ring front and center.
Questions skittered through my brain. “But Gracie already said it’s Josie’s ring. She was at the Kincaids’ house with Holly right after Nate proposed. She saw it. I don’t need Miriam to verify that, and she doesn’t want to talk to me anyway. I already tried.”
The pages flapped spastically in response, and then, as if Meemaw were squeezing her hand around my fist, I felt my fingers tighten on the little jewelry bag holding the ring. My head suddenly felt filled with cotton, my heartbeat dull and muffled. It was as if she wanted me to remember something, but what?
I summoned up what I knew. Josie had returned the first custom engagement ring to Nate and he’d had a second one made with another custom-cut diamond. He wouldn’t have been able to simply return the first ring to a store for credit, right? Did Nell steal it from him, or could he have given it to her as a bribe to keep quiet about the baby—if it was his?
I thought of one little glitch. If Nate did give the ring to Nell, she wouldn’t have needed to hide it, and he wouldn’t have needed to kill her to get it back—if that was the motive.
It was more likely that Nell had stolen it. “So if sweet Daisy Duke was a thief,” I said aloud, “she may have been killed over that forty-thousand-dollar ring.”
A soft breeze swept through the room, gathering speed. I thought it was Meemaw agreeing with me.
Will trusted Nate, but did I trust Will? For that matter, did I trust Miriam? I wasn’t sure, but I was willing to take my chances. I wanted to share my theory with her and see if we’d come to the same conclusion.
I no longer needed my great-grandmother’s encouragement to get me to the funeral.
Chapter 40
One phone call and thirty minutes later, Mama and I were on our way, the ring tucked safely in my gray-and-white Burberry handbag. Miriam’s prediction had been right on the money. From the looks of it, the whole community had come out for Nell’s funeral. The service was at the old Methodist church one block off the square, catty-corner to Mockingbird Lane. We cut a diagonal, crossing at the corner of Mockingbird and Elm, skirting the courthouse, crossing Dallas Street at the opposite corner, to join the parade of people filing into the old stone building.
The hushed whispers of the mourners all blended together into white noise. From the back of the sanctuary, I spotted Keith and Lori Kincaid sitting three rows from the front, both with their heads slightly bowed. Miriam sat next to her mother, her back ramrod straight, while Holly slouched next to her.
Josie was in the front row with Nate, her shoulders shaking as she tried to control her grief. Whether she was crying over losing Nell, or over her latent fears that her fiancé may have betrayed her, was anybody’s guess. Ruthann and Karen sat on the other side of her, hip to hip. If Nate or either of the bridesmaids moved, I was afraid Josie would topple right over. Her mother and grandmother were at the end of the pew, tissues pressed to their noses.