Deadly Patterns

by Melissa Bourbon

  I inched toward the archway between the kitchen and the front rooms of the farmhouse. Raylene still sat between Madelyn and Mama.

  Josie went back to the stove and started rolling the bag back and forth between her hands. She wrapped a potholder around the handle of the cast-iron skillet she had been heating and lifted it, spreading the oil in the bottom. “Do you really think Maggie could have done that?”

  Before I could answer, Will came back inside. “I just got off the phone with Hoss McClaine,” he said. “There’s no sign of the baby anywhere. They’ve questioned everyone they can think of—”

  I cut him off, my heart racing. “Dan Lee’s girlfriend?”

  “Maggie Pagonis? Yeah, her too.”

  “Did Dan Lee have a key to your house?” I called to Raylene.

  The three women on the couch turned around. Mama murmured something into Raylene’s ear, repeating the question, maybe, and then Raylene nodded.

  I whipped back around to face Will and Josie. “Maggie could have gotten ahold of the key. That would explain why there was no forced entry. Maybe she thinks having Boone will let her keep a little bit of Dan Lee.”

  Josie poured a good helping of the okra into the hot oil. As it sizzled, then settled down to cook, she said, “But where would she hide a baby? How could you keep something like that secret?”

  “What if . . .” I trailed off, not wanting to believe that anyone could steal another woman’s baby, let alone hide him like I was thinking she might have.

  But it made sense. If Maggie did take Boone, she couldn’t keep him with her or someone would notice. Bliss was a small town. Some things, like the Cassidy charms, could be kept under wraps, but a stolen baby? Uh-uh.

  “What if what?” Will asked, studying me. “You feeling okay, darlin’?”

  I waved him away as I edged across the kitchen so I couldn’t be overheard. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I’m fine. I was just thinking that maybe she didn’t plan to take the baby. Maybe she just did it, and then realized that she’d have to leave Bliss. But someone might have noticed her with a child. So where would she hide the baby in the meantime where no one would think to look?”

  Outside, the wind howled and another thought occurred to me. The idea percolated in my head for another second before I managed to voice my thought. “Oh God. Nana said she saw Maggie’s car at Sundance Kids earlier.”

  Chapter 12

  The land I inherited from Meemaw, with my little redbrick trimmed farmhouse—bequeathed to me on the very day I was born, although I hadn’t learned about it until she had passed—was situated right behind Nana and Granddaddy’s five acres. Their land stretched the entire block behind the town square. The city had been wanting to buy it to build a park, but if there was one thing I knew down to my bones, it was that Nana and Granddaddy would never sell.

  I hightailed it through the kitchen, out the door, down the back porch, and through the gate separating our properties. The cold air hit me right away, but I braced myself and scurried down the porch steps, racing across the muddy backyard.

  Will’s voice trailed after me. “Cassidy, what the devil are you doing?”

  But I couldn’t even slow down to answer. If I was right, then Boone was alone and cold and in danger of being stolen away for good.

  I saw Thelma Louise up ahead, standing at the property line as if she were holding sentry. The granddam of my grandmother’s herd, her Romanesque nose giving her a haughty air, looked at me with her unblinking eyes as I barreled toward her.

  I slowed long enough to skirt through the gate, also long enough for Will to catch up to me. “Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind? What are you doing?”

  “The baby,” I started to say, but Thelma Louise bleated. She made it sound urgent. Three short, three long, three short. Like the Morse code distress signal, which made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. She bleated again, and I was sure I was right. “What is it, Thelma Louise?” I called.

  She turned her glassy eyes to me before taking off across my grandparents’ side of the yard. Will and I ran after her, sloshing through puddles, the heels of my boots sinking into patches of mud.

  Thelma Louise slowed, turning to look back at me. “He’s there, isn’t he?” I yelled.

  Will was by my side, his hand on my arm, yanking me up every time I stumbled in the mud. “The baby’s here?”

  “I think so!” We followed Thelma Louise across the open field, past the little stream and the guard dog milling around with the goats, and straight to the outbuilding.

  Adrenaline coursed through me. Thelma Louise’s bleats were more frantic and sounded like a talk box on a guitar. “Come quick,” she seemed to say, but I’d already passed her by and crashed through the barn door, skidding to a stop in the milk parlor. A milking bucket, milking hoses, a bottle of liquid dish soap, another bottle of bleach, and a special hose fitted to the kitchen faucet cluttered the rectangular stainless-steel table up against one wall.

  “Where is he?” I asked through my panting.

  Will had his cell phone out, his thumb poised over the touch pad, ready to dial the sheriff, I reckoned. “Are you sure?”

  “It makes sense,” I said, finally catching my breath as I scanned the room. “Grief can send a person reeling. I think she cracked up.”

  Something hit me from behind, and I lurched forward. I whipped around. “Darla—!” I yelled at the black and white Nubian, but stopped when she bleated at me. She trotted around me and stood next to Thelma Louise, both of them training their enormous eyes with their rectangular pupils on me. I took a few gingerly steps toward them, looking around for any sign of a baby.

  “Where is he?” I asked the goats, but, of course, I knew they didn’t understand me. Where was the goat whisperer in the family when you needed her?

  Right. In Fort Worth getting supplies for her homemade lotions.

  Darla trotted over, circling back around me. I dropped my chin, watching her watch me. She lowered her head in response and nudged me forward, past the raised milking contraption, the small cheese room where Nana blended her cheese varieties, and the ladder leading to the roof.

  Thelma Louise came around and prodded Will along beside me until we were standing at the threshold of one of the goat’s stalls.

  “Is the baby in the manger?” I asked with a tense laugh.

  They bleated, staring at me with their burning gazes, and I got the feeling that maybe they could understand me.

  Darla pushed her nose against my leg, nibbling at the pocket of my sweater. I swatted at her, stepping closer to the hay manger. Nana had put it in the middle of the stall so the goats could spread out around it as they munched.

  Thelma Louise turned those shiny eyes to me, her floppy white and black ears swinging as she nodded at me. “What?” I asked, as thunder cracked outside. Another storm brewing.

  The two goats stuck their noses into the hay and rooted around the edges. Then, looking up at me again, they took up positions on either side of the manger.

  I didn’t have to be a goat whisperer to understand where the girls wanted me to look. A sliver of blue peeked over the top of the hay pile. Slowly, I moved closer, my heart in my throat. The sky outside flashed and the lights flickered just as I peered into the manger.

  “Lord almighty,” I whispered to Will. “Call the sheriff. Call Mama. Get Raylene over here.”

  Because right there, shivering in the cold, was a tiny baby wrapped in a powder blue swaddling blanket, tucked into the hollow of the manger.

  Chapter 13

  I’d offered to hold the baby while Raylene talked to a social worker. She stood in the corner, sneaking glances my way, answering questions, so I snuggled the baby against my chest. He seemed no worse for the wear, given his ordeal.

  Deputy Gavin McClaine tipped back his dark brown cowboy hat, staring at me like I’d plumb lost my mind, but Nana hurried into the barn at that moment, her arms loaded down with bottles and pumps for her lotions. Sh
e dropped them at her feet, her fingers fluttering to the blond streak in her hair. Almost instantaneously, the spot along my hairline where my own blond tuft started tingled. This bit of hair, stripped of almost all color, was another Cassidy trait, but I’d only recently begun to realize that it acted almost like a touchstone between us.

  “What in tarnation?” she said as she scanned the barn. Her gaze settled on the baby in my arms. “What are you doin’ with a baby, Harlow Jane?”

  Where to start? “Nana, it’s quite a story.” I gave her the abridged version of what had happened.

  As soon as I wrapped up, Gavin McClaine cleared his throat, clearly aggravated.

  “If you’re just about done,” he said, and then he continued before I could say anything else. “You’re tellin’ me that you just happened to figure out that Maggie Pagonis kidnapped Raylene’s baby and hid him here?”

  Nana huffed, seeming just as aggravated as the deputy. “That’s not the important part of the story, young man,” she snapped, tapping her cowboy boot on the dirt floor of the stall.

  “That’s right,” I said, gently patting the baby’s back. “I just put all the pieces together. Maybe I should be deputized,” I added.

  Deputy Gavin ignored that comment, instead saying, “Just tell me what you found.”

  I pointed to the little feeder in the middle of the room, a million questions going through my mind.

  He turned to Nana. “And you had no idea this baby was here?”

  “He wasn’t here this mornin’, I’ll tell you that,” she said. “I reckon Maggie slipped in here after she saw me leave.”

  Gavin didn’t bat an eye, but he was just like his daddy, and I knew that behind that innocent expression was a savvy man who was taking in every detail and processing through every possible scenario. He nosed around the stall, but aside from the manger and a trough of water with a hose slung into it, the small room was empty. Goats didn’t need a lot of decor.

  He looked at me, holding the baby, before going out to the milking parlor. Chattering voices came from outside, followed by the steady clomp of footsteps.

  A minute later, Gavin came back in, Hoss McClaine on his heels.

  “Harlow, Harlow, Harlow,” Gavin said, “why do you reckon that whenever something mysterious is goin’ on in Bliss, you’re right there in the thick of it?”

  There was a shift in the air and I felt Will stiffen beside me, but I met Gavin’s gaze, my voice terse, but soft so as not to wake the baby. “I reckon I don’t know, Sheriff. Just dumb luck, I guess.”

  “A truckload of dumb luck,” the sheriff said. He was a Southern gentleman to the core, but his weathered skin, salty mustache and soul patch, and his unyielding gaze under his bushy eyebrows made it perfectly clear that he didn’t think it was dumb luck at all.

  Raylene rushed over, her interview with the social worker done. “I’ll take him now, Harlow.”

  I felt suddenly protective of the little baby in my arms, almost as if he were my own. Did Boone need protecting? I still didn’t want to believe it, but what if Raylene had had something to do with Dan Lee’s death?

  But once again, as if he could read my mind, Will laid his hand on my shoulder, silently urging me to respond. I handed Boone over, my body instantly cold with the absence of his warmth. I half expected him to break out in a wail, but the sweet thing just sighed, his little body curling up inside the swaddling blanket as Raylene cradled him against her, covering him with an additional blanket.

  She gave me a one-armed hug before the social worker escorted her out of the barn.

  “If y’all will excuse us,” Sheriff McClaine said to Nana and me, “we’d like to have a look around.”

  In New York, a detective might have arrived and said they were going to process the crime scene, but this was small-town Texas and the sheriff didn’t put on any airs. Gavin stomped on the ground, shooing Thelma Louise and Darla out of the milking parlor and into the yard with the other goats. He started poking around again, emerging from the cheese room a minute later. He held up an inexpensive pastel-colored diaper bag. “Found this,” he said.

  Nana shook her head, tapping the tip of her cowboy boot again. “This ain’t Bethlehem, for pity’s sake. Why, that little . . .” She muttered the rest under her breath, but there was no doubt that Nana was steamed. She’d defended Maggie to the women in the Santa dollmaking class, only to find out she was guilty as sin. Maybe not for Dan Lee’s murder. But definitely for kidnapping Boone.

  Gavin absently snapped the wrist of one of his latex gloves and crouched down in front of his find, searching through it. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” he announced a minute later. “Baby formula, bottles, tiny diapers.” He held up a diaper the size of his hand, as if to prove they were, indeed, itty-bitty.

  The sheriff’s cell phone rang from the clip on his rattlesnake skin belt. He answered it with a clipped “Yup?” and then he listened, his lips pursing and his eyes pinching. The air seemed to sizzle.

  Nana’s boot kept tapping. Gavin peered up. Will rested his hand on my lower back, and I held my breath, sensing something important was being said on the other end of the line.

  Finally, Hoss McClaine snapped his phone shut, clipping it back onto his belt. “Well, now, we’ve just had an interesting development,” he said, his Southern accent as thick as good cream gravy.

  Gavin stood, holding the diaper bag at arm’s length. “What’s that?”

  “That was Christine,” he said, his hand clasping the phone on his hip. “Deputy Fanchon,” he added for Nana’s and my benefit, since we didn’t know Christine personally. “She arrested Maggie Pagonis on her way back in this direction, but seems she has an airtight alibi on the morning Dan Lee Chrisson died. She was at Beaumont Salon on the square gettin’ her hair and nails all done up,” the sheriff added.

  Which meant Maggie didn’t kill Dan Lee Chrisson. And we were no closer to identifying the murderer or eliminating Raylene as a suspect.

  Chapter 14

  An hour later, Josie, Will, and I were alone at Buttons & Bows. Will had finished replacing the last of the air filters and was sweeping the floors where he had worked. I watched him for a minute, a trifle mesmerized. A down-home Southern man cleaning up after some physical labor. There was something mighty appealing about that.

  But even that appeal couldn’t take my mind off of discovering Boone, hearing about Maggie’s arrest, and my ongoing concern over who had tampered with the railing at the mansion. Maybe sewing would help me figure out who was behind Dan Lee’s death.

  I’d picked up the scattered trim from the dining room, readying the area for tomorrow’s class while Josie finished frying her okra. When she was done, she brought a bowl of it with her to my workroom.

  “Here you go,” I said, handing her the second blouse I’d made for her. She eyed it doubtfully, but slipped behind the privacy screen to try it on, emerging a minute later. She didn’t even bother to look in the mirror, instead heading straight for the cutting table to grab a handful of okra, popping two of them into her mouth and resting her hand on her belly before she spoke again. “A baby in the goats’ stall,” she muttered, shaking her head. “That’s just crazy.”

  I batted her hand from the bowl of okra. “Would you quit that? You’re gonna get crumbs and oil all over the fabric.” And that would never do—even if it was just a polyester blend.

  The dark magenta background was made interesting by the embossed floral pattern done in the same magenta, one shade lighter, but looking at Josie in it, I knew it wasn’t right. The ruching I planned to do on the extra folds, which would fall just below the breasts, would accent the fullness of Josie’s breasts, but now that I saw it on her, I was also pretty sure it would make the fabric flare out a bit too much over her swollen belly.

  “Never mind,” I said, nixing the blouse. With my hands on her shoulders, I sent her back behind the privacy screen.

  “No good?” she asked, snatching another bite of food before
she disappeared.

  “No good.” I sat on the stool, propped my elbows on the cutting table, and dropped my head to my hands. “What would be good?” I muttered. I felt like my creative well was dry as a stretch of South Texas desert.

  Will came up next to me and leaned against the table. “You okay, darlin’?”

  I didn’t look up. I’d been in possession of my Cassidy charm for only a few months, and I was sure that I was already losing it. I should be able to design the perfect garment for Josie—I had never suffered through this many failed attempts—and yet no new designs were coming to me. “Peachy,” I mumbled, more to the table than to him.

  He laid his hand on my back and leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Give yourself a break. It’s been a tough day. You’ll get your mojo back.”

  A shiver swept up my spine from the combination of his touch and his warm breath against my neck. A quick memory of him kissing me not so long ago flitted in and out of my mind. But the feeling wasn’t enough to zap me out of my funk. I wanted to believe Raylene was innocent, but I just wasn’t sure, and it weighed on me

  “I hope so,” I said to Will, but part of me also wondered if I’d been good at fashion design only because of my charm, even if I hadn’t known about it until recently, and if I’d now lost it for good.

  “Let’s go out tonight,” he said softly. “Just you and me. No weddings. No debutante balls. No fashion shows. Get your mind off of things.”

  I turned my head to look up at him and couldn’t help but smile. He looked like a rogue outlaw, what with his goatee, his black T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. Either that or the hottest country music star this side of Nashville.

  “Deal,” I said.

  “It’s not you, you know,” Josie called. “It’s me. It’s this gargantuan stomach. Nothing could make me look good right now except getting this little babe out of me.”

  Will straightened up as Josie came out from the changing area. He grabbed his toolbox, but stopped to look at her, giving her a crooked smile. “There’s nothing more beautiful than a pregnant woman. I missed it the first time around, but”—he moved his gaze to me, real slow, and I felt a splash of heat spread up my neck to my cheeks—“if I ever get married and get the chance to be a father again, seeing my wife pregnant with my child will be one of the highlights of my life. That’s my two cents.”