Pleating for Mercy

by Melissa Bourbon

  “I don’t have the Cassidy gift!” I exclaimed. I’d held out hope throughout my childhood, into my teenage years, and even into my twenties that my charm would make itself known. It hadn’t happened, and I was resigned to the fact that it never would. “Even if I have a daughter someday, she probably won’t be charmed, either,” I added wistfully. “Time to let it go, Mama. If there’s romance out there for me, great, but I’m not going to stop living in the meantime.”

  “Your charm will materialize one of these days. It’s in you,” she countered, as if she knew it for a fact. “And your daughters will have it, too.”

  I was firmly into my thirties and hadn’t had a serious boyfriend in more years than I cared to remember. And now she had me bearing multiple daughters. Enough was enough. I picked up my sketchbook and opened it to the designs I’d done earlier for Josie and her bridesmaids. “I took the job,” I said, burying my lingering doubts and sliding the book in front of her. “The wedding’s in a week and a half. I’m going to need another seamstress to get it all done in time.” I batted my eyelashes at her. “Will you help me, Mama?”

  Chapter 6

  My love of sewing had started when I was nine years old and had spent an October weekend at Mockingbird Lane with Meemaw. She’d laid out a length of blueand-white-checked gingham on her cardboard cutting board, pinned McCall’s pattern pieces onto it, and cut it apart with shiny silver shears. I’d watch in awe as she sat at her Singer, telling me step by step what she was doing, and before I knew it, the day was gone and Meemaw had created a dress identical to Dorothy Gale’s from The Wizard of Oz. I’d worn it for Halloween that year, and nearly every day after that until my mother had looked at me sideways and said, “Should we make another dress so you can give that one a rest every now and again?”

  My eyes had gone wide and excitement bubbled inside me. “Will Meemaw make me another one?”

  “I’m sure she will,” Mama said, “but I think we should teach you how to do it. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish, he eats for a lifetime.”

  I’d stared at her, not understanding what fish had to do with sewing, but I understood now. Meemaw had made me a dress and I felt like a princess when I wore it. Mama and Meemaw had taught me to sew and from that moment on I had been a queen. When I’d made a mistake and cried, Meemaw had said, “Darlin’, there are no mistakes in sewing. Only opportunities for design.”

  Those were words I still lived by today.

  “These are beautiful,” Mama said, flipping through the pages of sketches I’d done for Josie. She tapped the book with her index finger. “This is your gift, Harlow Jane.”

  It wasn’t a Cassidy charm, but if I’d been a peacock right then, my feathers would have spread with pride. “Thanks to you.”

  “Pshaw!” She waved away the credit. “Meemaw and I gave you the foundation. What you’ve done with that is damn impressive.”

  A sound from the sink caught my attention. The faucet was suddenly dripping, slowly at first with a steady plop, plop, plop. It grew faster, changing until it sounded like yep, yep, yep. I jumped up and adjusted the rusty handle until it stopped dribbling. “This place needs a lot of work,” I said. I penciled “leaky faucet” on my list of things to repair—right next to “doorstop” and “hole in workroom wall”—and sat back down at the table. “Meemaw wasn’t great at maintenance, was she?”

  “She was on past a hundred. No surprise that the old house needs some TLC. I’m sure she knew you’d take care of it. She did have someone come in to do odd jobs every now and again,” she added. “He’ll be by before too long, I’m sure.”

  Mama pointed to the lines angling up the bodice of Josie’s dress. “Is this pleating?”

  I nodded. “At first I thought I’d do inset seams or darts, but the more I looked at Josie and saw what she liked in my design books and the bridal magazine she brought, the more I thought the inset seams would be completely wrong. This is so her. I feel it in my bones.”

  “It’s fine work,” Mama said, “even if it is a weddin’ gown.” She ran her fingertips across the fabric swatches I’d stapled onto the page with the final design. I’d selected White French satin, Diamond French silk, Ivory organza, and Ivory Duchess taffeta. “Which one do you like?”

  I leaned over and touched each one, feeling the differences in texture and weight and noticing the variations in sheen. “The silk,” I said finally. It would drape beautifully, and the tone of the ivory would make Josie’s skin glow. I glanced at the clock. 8:03. “Josie and her maid of honor are coming by again at eight thirty. If she likes the design and picks a fabric, I’ll do a rush order on it while I work on the pattern and the mock-up.”

  She nodded with approval. “It’s perfect for her. She’ll look like a million bucks.” She turned the page. “What about the bridesmaids?”

  “They’re so different. One’s really tall and thin. One’s shorter and a little round. And one—” I conjured up an image of Nell, trying to reconcile her incarnation as Daisy Duke, her pricey accessories, and the fact that she was Josie’s boss and a business owner. “One I haven’t quite figured out yet. I decided to go with different looks for each of them.”

  Mama flipped through the next few pages, commenting on the details of the designs.

  “I just hope Josie likes the idea.” We’d brainstormed styles, but left the bridesmaid dress designs undecided.

  “She’s easygoing,” Mama said. “She’s always mighty friendly. With the weddin’ so near and no other options, she probably won’t care all that much what it looks like.”

  My head snapped up. This was the third time she’d made a reference to Josie as if she knew her.

  “Mama,” I said, “how exactly did you say you know Josie?”

  Her olive irises clouded and her eyes narrowed into what I could only describe as an expression of alarm. She snapped her gaze to the vase of flowers and started rearranging them, pulling stems out, then jamming them back into the same place. “I don’t believe I said I know her, other than when she came around as a child.”

  “You said the wedding gown would be perfect for her, that she’s so friendly and easygoing, and you said something about running into her . . . somewhere.”

  She poked another flower stem back into the vase, turning the thick-bottomed glass before plucking out yet another. “Bliss is a small town. People know one another’s business,” she said. “It’s impossible to keep a secret, and impossible not to know the basics about a person.”

  That was the truth, but I didn’t buy her answer.

  As I was deciding how to respond, voices from outside drifted through the open window. The sink and the window above it faced Mockingbird Lane. I glanced at the oven clock. The predigital readout—white numbers on a black background—said 8:05. The motor made a faint scratching noise as the numbers rotated, changing to 8:06. The oven and clock might be archaic, but they worked. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Meemaw always said.

  Josie wasn’t supposed to be back for another twenty-five minutes or so.

  Mama said something about college kids and frozen yogurt.

  I blinked. “Sorry. What?”

  “I said it’s probably just some kids. You’re frowning. What’s wrong?”

  “It sounds like they’re arguing, doesn’t it?”

  We both sat perfectly still, our ears cocked to the window. One of the voices belonged to a woman and seemed angry and agitated. Whoever she was talking to was much quieter. Men and women . . . their emotions were like oil and water.

  I got up, flipped off the lights, and leaned over the sink to peer out the window. I cupped my hands above my eyes to cut the glare of the streetlights, but couldn’t make out any figures on the sidewalk. The pecan tree to the left of the window blocked my view of the front flagstone walkway and the gated arbor leading from the sidewalk into my yard. The voice I could hear seemed to be coming from that direction.

  I listened, picking out pieces of the
angry woman’s words: “. . . what’s mine . . . owes it to me . . .” It went on for at least another thirty seconds. My heart beat faster the longer I listened. But then, just as quickly as the row had started, it was over.

  “A lovers’ spat,” my mother said with a knowing nod. “Probably kissing and making up.”

  With her on my heels, I went to the front room and peered out the picture window. The street was partially blocked by the honeysuckle-covered fence. The bright pink miniature rosebushes lining the walkway also obscured my view of my own yard. I looked both ways, but from what I could see, which wasn’t much, the street and sidewalk looked deserted. “I don’t know . . .”

  “You’ve always been too curious for your own good. I’m sure it’s fine,” Mama said.

  We both collapsed onto the love seat, putting our feet up on the coffee table. “I know.” When I hadn’t been sewing with Meemaw as a child, I’d been reading Nancy Drew or spying on the townsfolk, even going so far as to hide under a table to watch Red getting a good what-for from Mama.

  Ten minutes later, the door was flung open, sending the jingling bells flying off the doorknob once and for all. Startled, I sprang up from the couch like a gymnast. Josie collapsed in the doorway, tears streaming down her face, her breath coming in gasping sobs.

  “C-call 911,” she blurted.

  I raced to her while Mama ran to the kitchen for the phone. “What is it?” I did a quick once-over, looking for an injury, but she looked fine. No blood. “Are you hurt?”

  She slapped the tears off her face and gathered herself up. Grabbing my hand, she pulled me out the door, across the porch and down the steps. “It’s N-Nell,” she choked out. “I—I felt for a pulse. N-nothing. Oh, my God.” She pointed to the arbor and gate welcoming people into the garden, and into Buttons & Bows. There, to the right and nestled amid a patch of bluebonnets, was Nell Gellen’s motionless body. “Harlow,” she said in a harsh whisper, “Nell’s d-dead.”

  We didn’t need 911. We needed a coroner.

  Chapter 7

  A slow shiver wound its way through my body and took hold of my senses. It started at my toes and worked all the way up to the hair on my head. It was hard to wrap my brain around the fact that someone I knew, even only slightly, had been murdered. I could only imagine how her friends and family would feel.

  The mayhem that soon arose on Mockingbird Lane had me wondering if I’d brought New York City chaos back with me to Bliss. Leading the pack was Sheriff Hoss McClaine. He stood on the sidewalk just outside Meemaw’s arbor, shouting orders, directing the powerful rigged lighting setup, and jotting things down on a little notepad. He kept one eye on Josie, who stood at the end of the porch talking on the phone to her soon-to-be mother-in-law. He also kept an eye on Mama and me, I noticed. Over the years, the Cassidy women had been blamed for plenty of things that had gone wrong in Bliss. When people didn’t need something from us, they were quick to judge. I prayed Hoss McClaine didn’t start a witch hunt.

  The sheriff kept working as Mama and I sat on the front porch, moving back and forth in tandem on our wooden rockers watching the commotion. All I needed was to be chewing on a wheat stalk and the hillbilly look would be complete. It was dark out now, but it might as well have been broad daylight with the power of the artificial light gleaming down on the yard. For a small town, Bliss seemed to have some decent equipment.

  A black woman marched through the arbor and straight over to the sheriff, clearly not intimidated by his deep growls and barks. He greeted her with a slight dip of his chin. She folded her arms across her ample chest and waited. After a short exchange, he let her pass through the rosebushes to the cordoned-off scene of the crime.

  When she stood under the lights, I could see she was shorter than I was, full-figured, and had cropped hair that clung to her head. Something hung around her neck, but I couldn’t quite see what it was. I leaned forward, stopping my chair from rocking. “What’s she got?”

  “A camera,” Mama said just as the woman lifted it to her face and started snapping. She took pictures of the arbor, the ground, and everything but the dead body. Mama kept on rocking and I suspected her attention was glued to the sheriff.

  “So who is she?” I asked.

  “That’s Madelyn Brighton,” Mama said. “She’s a transplant. Literally. She’s from England. Met her Texan husband over there and came back with him. He’s a professor at the University of North Texas and she works for Bliss.”

  I never would have guessed that Bliss could support any more staff than the sheriff, a handful of deputy sheriffs, a few office employees, and the mayor. We were a spit of a town. Growing, yes, but not anywhere near the size of a metropolitan city. “Doing what?”

  “Any photography that needs doing, she does. I reckon she’s taking pictures for the medical examiner, or whoever crime-scene photos go to.” Mama kept her eyes on Sheriff McClaine as she rattled on. “I hear she’s creating a tourist brochure for Bliss. There’s a master plan for the community now. Bike trails, horseback riding trails, parks. Things like that. They have an architect and a civil engineer on staff so we don’t sacrifice our historic, small-town feel.”

  I gaped at my mother. This was not the same Bliss I’d grown up in. “You’re kidding, right? A tourist brochure? As in people coming here for vacation?”

  Mama just shrugged. “A lot of people want small-town living. They like to see the old history. Plus we have the lake. You came back, didn’t you?”

  She had a point. I was back, and I had to admit there was a lot to like about small-town life.

  If you could overlook having a murder take place in your front yard.

  I sat back and started rocking again. Madelyn Brighton looked like a force to be reckoned with. She was crouched next to the dead body in my front yard at 10:20 on a weekday evening, which told me she had bigger aspirations than taking pretty pictures of Bliss. Medical examiner, maybe? But one body did not make for a career in criminal justice. Surely murder—and I was convinced it was murder; how else would a healthy young woman wind up dead in a stranger’s yard?—couldn’t be a common occurrence in Bliss.

  “Why would anybody kill her?” Mama prattled on to herself as she creaked back and forth in her rocker. “She was a nice girl. Built the bead shop from the ground up. Not literally, of course; it’s on the square. But she remodeled it, taught classes, hired your friend Josie. She put all her time and energy into Seed-n-Bead. Did I show you the bracelet I made?” She thrust her arm toward me, her fist nearly ramming my chest. “She helped me, you know. Dug out her special stash of premium beads just to find ones that matched my eyes,” she said.

  I turned my palm up and Mama rested her hand in mine. I knew less about beads than I did about Nell. I had worked long enough in the fashion industry to admire quality costume jewelry, though, and the double strands of silver and crystal beads with two spectacularly bright green ones strung on the center of each bracelet wire were spectacular.

  She wriggled her wrist, letting the silver and glass jingle. “I’ll always think of her when I wear it.”

  “It’s lovely,” I said, but what really caught my eye was the ring on her other hand. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now it glinted in the moonlight. My heart skittered to a stop. “Mama, is that a diamond?”

  Her gaze shot to her right hand, to the yard, then back to me. Not to the yard, I realized. To Sheriff Hoss McClaine. Holy cow, Mama and Hoss McClaine? Was there something going on there? Could he have given it to her? But a man didn’t buy a diamond ring for a casual friend.

  She tucked her hand by her side, the shimmering stone out of sight for the moment. Like that would make me forget about it. I dropped the subject . . . for now. Which was a good thing, because at that very moment a shrill voice carried into the garden. “She can’t be dead! I was with her practically all day today. She was almost ready to—”

  “Calm down. You need to calm down, now,” a man said, drowning out her words, but the woman kept talking
.

  “Just. Today!” She didn’t seem to realize that everyone who dies had been alive just moments before, so the fact that Nell had talked with the woman shrieking in the street earlier today wasn’t anything unusual. In fact, I figured the sheriff would want to talk to everyone Nell had spoken with today in hopes of gathering some clues about what had happened.

  A low voice countered the shrill one that was still ranting just beyond the entrance to the yard. As she calmed down, a flicker of recognition flitted through me.

  “It’s a mistake. It has to be. Josie’s wedding . . .” The voice trailed off as a man and the woman stepped through the archway, framed in the moonlight. I recognized her immediately. She’d been with Nell practically all day today—right here at Buttons & Bows.

  “Karen!” Josie stumbled across the gravel pathway toward the couple, tear streaks glistening on her face in the moonlight. They fell into each other’s arms. She still had her cell phone pressed to her ear, and I couldn’t tell if she was talking to the person on the other end of the line or to her bridesmaid.

  Whether Karen was holding Josie up, or Josie was holding Karen up, I couldn’t tell. I felt like an intruder on Meemaw’s porch, watching Nell’s friends grieve for her. “She was only thirty-five,” I heard a muffled voice say. Mama and I looked at each other. Tears pricked behind my eyelids. It didn’t matter how old Nell was. Her life was over far too soon. She was just a couple of years older than me, and I felt like I’d hardly even started living.

  What was it that people said these days? Thirty was the new twenty, and forty was the new thirty. My whole life was ahead of me, just like Nell’s had been just a few hours ago.

  “Thirty-five,” I muttered, shaking my head. Mama rested her hand on mine and squeezed, seeming to understand the thoughts circling through my head. Looking at Josie and Karen, and at Nell’s body, still being photographed by Madelyn Brighton, seemed to put everything into perspective. Life, after all, was fragile.