Deadly Patterns

by Melissa Bourbon

  Will put his hand on my shoulder, giving me a little squeeze.

  “I’m so relieved he’s okay,” I said.

  Hattie nodded, but her color didn’t return and all I could think was that maybe it wasn’t so much Raylene and Boone that had her spooked as it was guilt. If she’d pushed Dan Lee Chrisson off the widow’s walk, maybe her guilt was catching up to her.

  She looked up at Arnie. “Let’s go check on them.”

  He heaved a sigh, but nodded and skirted us to help her up.

  “Arnie’s right. Everything’s going to be just fine,” I said as I gave her a hug. Her body trembled. Images flickered in my mind, flashes of a Victorian dress, jeans and leather jacket, and a skirt with hidden tucks attached to a lining to create soft flounces, rotating, but I couldn’t settle on one and a moment later everything went gray. Why couldn’t I picture her in one specific outfit? “You sure you’re okay?” I asked, pulling away. Was she sick, or was she guilty of something?

  She nodded. “I still can’t believe it. What Raylene’s going through, it’s awful.”

  We talked for another minute before Hattie took Arnie’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

  As they left, Meemaw’s message on the mirror came back to me. Help her. She’s innocent. “Do you think she could have loosened the screws and pushed Dan Lee?” I asked Will after we refilled our coffee. Will wiped the table the Barnetts had just vacated. Hattie and Arnie had both left behind the magazines they’d been looking at. I tucked them in my purse to return them later and slid into the chair. Will sat opposite me, our plate of baked square confections between us. The singer was on a break and low background music became white noise.

  “To avenge her sister’s divorce?” Will asked as he added cream, but no sugar, to his coffee.

  “Exactly. She had the opportunity. She admits she was at the Denison mansion all the time. She was there when he died.”

  “So were Helen Abernathy and Zinnia James. So was Arnie. So were you.”

  “But none of us have motives. Hattie does. And I’m pretty sure Raylene was right outside. Hattie called down for her to wait in the car, but what if she didn’t? What if it was Raylene, and she snuck in and pushed him off the widow’s walk? No more custody battle. No more ex-husband.”

  Will cradled the heavy white coffee mug. “I don’t know, Cassidy. I can’t picture either of them as murderers.”

  Which was, of course, the problem. I couldn’t picture Hattie or Raylene as a murderer either, which meant . . . “Not even Helen Abernathy? I can see that,” I said with a little laugh, but only half kidding.

  “Maybe,” he admitted, “but what’s the motive there?”

  As I thought about this, the most logical, if awful, explanation popped into my head instantly. “They were having an affair, of course.”

  One side of his mouth crept up in a wry grin. “Of course. I wouldn’t have pegged Helen Abernathy as a cougar.”

  “I know.” I sighed, frustrated. “Neither can I.” Everything led back to Hattie and Raylene. “I wonder . . .”

  One eyebrow arched up as Will eyed me. “Wonder what?”

  “The sheriff must have searched Dan Lee’s apartment, right?”

  “I’m sure they did.”

  “And it’s probably not off-limits, or anything, anymore.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Probably not.”

  “And I was just wondering if we, oh, happened by there if, just maybe, the door would be unlocked and we could, mmm . . .” I trailed off, not quite sure what we could actually do.

  “You think you’d discover something Hoss and Gavin haven’t?” he finished for me.

  I shrugged, smiling innocently. “We might.”

  He leaned back, stretching his legs out and folding his arms over his chest. “That, darlin’, would be breaking and entering.”

  My smile slipped. “Yeah, I guess it would be.”

  Giselle’s break finally ended and she did another set. We listened for a while, our conversation shifting from felonies to Gracie, my shop, the fashion show, and the Santa suit. “I worked on it some more this afternoon after you left,” I said, wondering if my charm was working and if I’d stitched any magic into the seams of Will’s costume. “You should come back and try it on.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we were back at 2112 Mockingbird Lane. Meemaw’s old farmhouse was a hop, skip, and jump from the square, but it felt like miles with Will driving, me in the passenger seat, and him not knowing a thing about the Cassidy charms. What would he think if he knew? Would he walk out, like my daddy, Tristan Walker, had? Or would he stick around like my granddaddy had?

  I was afraid to learn the answer to that particular question.

  I hung up my coat while Will picked up the red velvet trousers. “They’re kinda big, don’t you think?”

  I pointed to the fake belly hanging on one of the dress forms. “That’ll fill the suit out.”

  He peered at what could have passed for a pregnant tummy. “I’m wearing that?”

  I unhooked it from the dress form and held it out to him. “It’s a sight better than stuffing a pillow under your shirt, right? This won’t move or get mashed up. It’s . . . authentic—”

  “For Santa Claus—”

  “Which you are going to be. Try it on.”

  When he still hesitated, I added, “It’s for the kids.”

  He blew out a breath, finally taking the garments from me and moving with heavy feet behind the privacy screen.

  I grinned as he bent over, his head ducking down behind the screen, then popping up again as he pulled the trousers on. I didn’t often create designs for men and it showed in the way I’d arranged my dressing area.

  The clothes hanging from the wooden slats fluttered and I heard a noise that sounded an awful lot like laughter.

  Will’s voice rose from behind the screen. “Laughing already? You haven’t even seen me yet.”

  “Meemaw,” I said with a low hiss. “Shush.”

  Will appeared by my side, slipping the half-finished Santa jacket over his jolly belly. The whole thing looked incomplete without the white fur trim, but he definitely appeared to have increased his girth tenfold. Which, surprisingly, didn’t diminish his sex-appeal at all.

  “It looks good,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. He looked good.

  As I pulled the sides of the jacket together, checking the fit, he put his hands on my arms and pulled me toward him. “There’s something about you, Cassidy,” he said, his voice low and rumbling.

  “Something good?” I quipped.

  He lowered his head, his lips brushing mine. “Oh yeah, very good,” he said, backing me up against the couch. “This . . .” He gestured to the room. “You. Everything. I didn’t know I wanted them, but God help me, I do.”

  A shiver wound through me at his confession. He hadn’t known, but he wanted everything I had to offer. As he kissed me, my hands buried in the soft velvet of his Santa jacket, I realized that my Cassidy charm was working just fine.

  Chapter 16

  It had been an hour since Will left, but I still felt like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, a silly grin on my face, the kiss between us lingering on my lips and filling me with a sensation that felt like champagne bubbles. My mind drifted back to the phone call Will had gotten from Gracie, the tilt of his head as he’d listened, the way he’d raked his hand through his hair.

  “Sorry to cut this off, Cassidy,” he’d said after hanging up. “Gracie’s locked out of the house.”

  He’d unbuttoned the Santa jacket, slipped it off and handed it to me. He flipped the suspenders holding up the pants off his shoulders and slid the faux belly off. Suddenly my arms were piled high with half of his St. Nick suit while he strode to the workroom.

  Before I’d had time to hang the pieces back on the dress form, he’d disappeared behind the privacy screen and stepped back out, fully dressed. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he’d said with a s
light grin and another light kiss, this time on my cheek.

  “Are you ready?”

  Madelyn’s voice snapped me out of the memory. Standing next to her in the cold shadows in front of Parkside Apartments in the north side of town, each of us dressed in black jeans, a black turtleneck, and my curls flowing out from beneath a black knit beanie, I felt my smile slip.

  Madelyn peered through the darkness toward the tricolored building. “What are we doing here, Harlow?” she asked. The whites of her eyes were bright under the streetlight and her hands twisted nervously.

  “We can’t sit by and not try to help Raylene and Boone,” I said. “That baby needs his mama. And knowing Gavin McClaine, I’m afraid she’s going to wind up in trouble for Dan Lee’s death, even if she’s not guilty.”

  She grabbed my arm. “But what if she did it?”

  I shook my head. “She couldn’t have,” I said.

  “Harlow, you want to believe that, but who else would have wanted him dead?”

  I hugged my coat tighter. “He was the father of her baby. She loved him. She wouldn’t have killed him.”

  Madelyn didn’t look convinced, but she stuck by my side as we sidled into the building trying to look nonchalant in our cat burglar outfits. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “And you really think we’ll find something the sheriff didn’t find?”

  My conscience pricked. It was one thing digging into a man’s death on my own to help an old friend, but dragging Madelyn into it? “What did you tell Billy, Madelyn?”

  “He’s in Austin at a conference,” she said. “No explaining necessary. But if we get caught—”

  As a wave of second thoughts crept into my mind, Will’s warning stood out front and center. Breaking and entering. Which meant that if we were caught, we could go to the Bliss County Jail.

  “You’ve been mixed up in murder before, Harlow, but now?” Madelyn dragged her toe along the floor like she was in ballet class and was moving from first to third to fifth position. “There’s a murderer in Bliss. Whether it’s Raylene or Hattie or someone else, we should stay out of it.”

  “I can’t,” I said, fighting against the sliver of guilt churning my stomach. “Boone is innocent in all of this. And that baby needs his mama,” I said again as we stopped in front of Dan Lee’s apartment. Madelyn plastered her back against the wall as I tried the knob.

  It turned.

  Madelyn grabbed my hand before I could push the door open.

  “You don’t have to come in,” I said.

  She moved past me, throwing a glance over her shoulder. “The jailhouse looks pretty nice.”

  I stifled a laugh, right along with the nerves creeping up my throat, ducked in behind her, and closed the door.

  I pushed Will’s sensible warning out of my mind and looked around. What would we be able to find that Hoss and Gavin hadn’t?

  The beams from our flashlights cut through the darkness enough for me to see that the apartment was small, uncluttered, and had entirely masculine decor. If Maggie had spent much time here, she hadn’t left her mark. Madelyn opened and closed the cupboards in the kitchen with her gloved hands. “You never know,” she said, but the shelves held only plates, bowls, and a few jar glasses.

  She checked the last cupboard, slamming it shut a second later. “Three mismatched coffee mugs,” she muttered. “He was a sad sack.”

  I lifted my gaze from the accordion file folder sitting on the computer desk. “Shh! Someone’s going to hear us!” I hissed.

  She buttoned her lips, tugging her beanie down, wiry strands of hair poking out from underneath it. “Sorry,” she whispered. She angled her flashlight at me, the light shining in my eyes for a split second before she trained it on the file. “What’s that?”

  “Looks like the divorce agreement. Employment contract. Specs to a house. Newspaper articles. More newspaper articles.” I held one up. “This one has his name on the byline. He did a little writing.”

  “What’s the article on?”

  I went back to the stack of clippings. “Hobbyists in North Texas.” Not very exciting. I kept leafing through the papers, more and more discouraged. We weren’t going to find anything, just like Gavin and Hoss didn’t find anything. I took out a stack of papers to sort through, starting with a chunk of brittle, aged newspaper clippings. Madelyn slid the accordion file in front of her and dug through it.

  A few seconds later, she gasped, tugging at the vertical slats of the folder.

  My glasses slipped. I pushed them up, staring at her. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s a paper stuck at the bottom,” she said. “It won’t budge.”

  I took it from her and, without thinking, I tipped it upside down. Pages fell in clumps onto the table. A pencil dropped, bouncing against the cheap pine. I angled the file folder sideways. “Shine the light in here,” I said. She did, and as I peered in the folder, the beam landed on the corner of a light-colored piece of paper.

  I gripped it between my thumb and finger, pulling as hard as I dared.

  Madelyn drew in a sharp breath. “Don’t rip it!”

  “Whatever it is,” I said. It was probably nothing. Just a receipt or something. I inched the paper out until I was able to withdraw it completely. “Got it!”

  “It looks like . . . Is it a birth certificate?” she asked, directing her light onto the sheet and reading aloud. “‘Charles Denison.’ Why would Dan Lee have had Charles Denison’s birth certificate?”

  That was a good question. “It’s not the same Charles Denison,” I said under my breath. He’d been born around the time of my great-great-grandparents, but this birth certificate was dated thirty-five years ago.

  Madelyn looked from the paper in my hand to my face. “So does that mean . . .”

  I remembered Dan Lee’s comment to me that he knew what it was like to not know your parents. Maybe he hadn’t meant it literally. The story around Bliss had always been that the Denisons left town after Charles had lost his house to Justin Kincaid. What if they’d changed their names and kept their identities secret to hide their humiliation? “That Dan Lee Chrisson was not who he said he was?” I finished.

  My mind raced, trying to piece together what this could possibly mean. If Dan Lee’s real name was Charles Denison, that meant that he’d died at the house that had once belonged to his own family.

  It felt horribly wrong in my mind. Had he and his family been hiding their real identities all these years? Another question occurred to me. Did Raylene know the truth?

  Or Hattie?

  Or did someone else discover his secret?

  Madelyn sank down on the slouchy brown couch, frowning. “What about this? Your school chum, Raylene, found out her ex-husband was really the great-great-however-many-greats-grandson of Charles Denison and killed him for the family money.”

  I perched on the chipped coffee table, facing her. “I don’t think there is any family money. Charles Denison—the original, I mean—lost the house to Justin Kincaid. The Denison family eventually moved out of Bliss, from what I remember.” And apparently came back as the Chrissons.

  We both fell silent, thinking, until Madelyn piped up with, “What if she didn’t know that? What if he told her, or she found out, and she thought he had money he was keeping from her? What if she thought they were an oil family like the Kincaids?”

  I sighed. “Or what if Raylene was just a batty old bessie bug?”

  Madelyn stared at me, lips parted. “Sorry, love. I’ve no bloody idea what a bessie bug is.”

  “It’s a beetle,” I started to explain, but then waved my own words away as another thought catapulted into my head. “Never mind. She’s got to be perfectly sane. I’m trying to prove Raylene, and Hattie, too, didn’t have anything to do with all of this.”

  “You may not be able to do that,” she said.

  She was right about that, but I was still going to try. I still wanted to believe in their innocence. Which meant that maybe I was the one crazy
as a bessie bug. “What if Dan Lee Chrisson . . . or Charles Denison . . . was mixed up in something else? Otherwise why would he continue to hide who he really was? Drugs? Or maybe gambling, like his namesake?”

  Madelyn scratched her head through her beanie. “So why was he even at the mansion?”

  A low howl suddenly came from outside as the wind picked up. My hand tightened on the clippings I’d taken from the file and I pointed the flashlight at them. My thoughts raced. Will had said Dan Lee was a history buff, and always at the old house doing renovations. Why? Was he trying to reconnect to his past? “These are old,” I said after I’d skimmed the papers. “Historical articles about Jesse James. Bonnie and Clyde.” I kept reading, and then filled Madelyn in. “They all came through these parts. Says they robbed a jewelry store on the square, then a stagecoach.”

  “They hid out in your yard, didn’t they, Harlow?” Madelyn asked.

  I nodded. “That’s one way Meemaw got the farmhouse listed in the historical registry,” I said, recalling the story I’d heard too many times to count. Bonnie’s mother had been a garment sewer in Cement City, just outside of Dallas. It was tenuous, at best, but I felt a thread of a connection to Bonnie Parker by her presence in my house, as well as through her mother being a seamstress.

  “Clyde played poker with Charles Denison before he lost the family home to the Kincaids. Or so the story goes,” I told her. “Bonnie and Clyde spent three days and two nights in Bliss before the law caught up with them again.”

  An image of a young woman in a silk dressing gown suddenly flashed before my eyes, a shimmer of gold on her finger.

  Who had that dressing gown belonged to? And what did any of it have to do with Dan Lee Chrisson?

  “Anything else?” Madelyn asked.

  I finished looking through the articles and my stomach flip-flopped. Oh boy. I nodded grimly. “There’s one here about Butch Cassidy.”

  Chapter 17

  Twenty minutes later Madelyn and I had dropped the accordion file at the Sheriff’s Department, leaving it at the back entrance where I knew Hoss McClaine would find it. Not entirely ethical, perhaps, but the best I could do. A few minutes later we were back at Buttons & Bows.