“Why was he so interested in all that old history?” I mused.
“And why was he working on the Denison house, pretending he was somebody else?”
“Searching for gold,” I spouted, completely blank on any real reasons.
“Or frankincense and myrrh,” Madelyn said with a wry grin. “It is Christmastime, after all.”
I bit my lip to stop from laughing. If we hadn’t been talking about a dead man, after having just illegally entered a residence, both dressed like bad cat burglars, the whole scene would have been funny. We’d found a baby in a manger yesterday, for heaven’s sake. “At least the baby’s named Boone and not Jesus,” I said, feeling more than a little punch-drunk.
Madelyn stretched out on the red velvet settee and closed her eyes. She’d kept her beanie on her head. Within seconds her breathing slowed and grew steady.
I, on the other hand, knew I wouldn’t sleep. I’d wanted to clear my suspicions about Raylene and Hattie’s possible involvement in Dan’s death, but all I’d done was to open the door into a big ol’ endless dry pasture. Dan Lee had been lying to his wife for who knew how long. Sounded like another motive for murder to me.
I doodled in my sketchbook, writing down DAN LEE CHRISSON. Why did he change his name? A cloud of warm air encircled me and my eyelids grew heavy. I was more tired than I’d thought.
I tried to focus on the letters, but they wavered, some becoming darker, almost lifting off the page with a shadowed background. Were my eyes playing tricks . . . or was Meemaw involved? But how could she make the letters dance before my eyes?
I didn’t know how she was doing it, but she was. Slowly, a pattern started to emerge. The letters rearranged themselves, as if my subconscious mind knew where they really belonged. And then suddenly, like a zipper closing the gaping back of a garment, it made perfect sense. “It’s an anagram,” I said under my breath, and then louder, “Dan Lee Chrisson and Charles Denison. They have the same letters.”
Madelyn stirred. “What, love?”
“The letters!” I tossed a fringe-trimmed pillow at her. “Dan Lee Chrisson and Charles Denison have the same letters!”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “Why go to the trouble?”
“Maybe it was his way of staying connected to his real identity.”
“But why give up his name in the first place?”
“Maybe he thought that if people knew who he really was and saw him snooping around the house his family had once owned, they’d start asking questions.”
“Except no one around here recognized him.”
I snapped my fingers. “But maybe someone did!”
She looked skeptical. “Harlow, maybe he just wanted to visit the house that had once belonged to his family. He might have been the sentimental type.”
She might be the British voice of reason in my Southern mind, but I was sticking with my new theory. Someone had to know that Dan Lee Chrisson was really Charles Denison.
But the question remained: Why was he murdered?
Chapter 18
I called Raylene Lewis first thing the next morning. I wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth where she’d been when Dan Lee had died. Maybe Michele Brown had been wrong and Raylene hadn’t been on Mayberry Street at all.
She didn’t pick up, though. I left her a message asking her to come by Buttons & Bows later that afternoon, and then ran through my theories. Madelyn and I had done well, but I decided that I needed to talk to someone who hadn’t just committed a crime with me and who wasn’t a tad high on the chase. I considered calling Mama and Nana over, but decided against involving them. We had enough secrets to keep without worrying them over me digging into the latest suspicious death in town.
Will Flores. After my kin, he was the person who came to mind, maybe even before Mama and Nana. But convincing myself that talking things through with him was sane took some doing.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Madelyn said when I called to run the idea by her.
“Pretty sure,” I said. Not a hundred percent, but close to eighty-five.
“You’re not going to tell him everything, are you, love?”
By “everything,” I knew she meant confessing about Butch and his wish in the Argentinean fountain, the Cassidy charms, and Meemaw’s ghost. “I’ve thought about it,” I said truthfully. I just didn’t know if he could accept it.
“Don’t. Don’t do it, Harlow. Tell him what we found last night if you want to, but not the rest. What if he doesn’t believe you? Or worse, what if he freaks out? Takes Gracie away? Blows the whistle?”
The nerves in my stomach coiled and tightened and I didn’t know what to do. I mulled it over while I finished the seams on Mrs. James’s outfit for the fashion show. I’d seen the look on Will’s face the night before when I’d mentioned Dan Lee’s apartment. In my experience with him over the last few months, Will Flores was a by-the-book kind of man. He’d also made it clear that he felt something for me. So how would he take the news that I hadn’t heeded his warning?
“He won’t like it, that’s for certain,” I muttered aloud.
Something clanged in the kitchen, the sound of metal hitting metal. “Meemaw!” I could run through my theories with my great-grandmother if she’d make her presence known.
I raced through the dining room, past the dining table with the sewing machines left from the day before still set up for the second Santa dollmaking class, and skidded to a stop at the threshold of the kitchen. The rattling sound had subsided, but my nerves still jangled. I looked around for evidence of Meemaw, but the red and white checkerboard-patterned curtains below the sink were still. The copper pots and pans hanging from an exposed beam above the pine farm table swayed slightly, the leftover motion not strong enough to bang them together anymore.
“Dang it all,” I said, jamming my hands on my hips and staring down . . . Nothing. “Loretta Mae Cassidy, you’re gonna be the death of me.” And she would. Sometimes having her around was a comfort and I couldn’t ask for anything more. But other times, like now when I was already on edge, it felt more like a haunting.
Something rattled behind me, the distinct sound of tinkling glass raising the hair on my arms. I whirled around and gaped. “No, Meemaw! They’ll break!”
A dozen old clear-glass milk bottles, each one capped with its own galvanized top, stood in a circular galvanized metal frame. Lightbulbs clustered in the center of the frame, the diffused light shining through the glass. It was a quirky lighting fixture, one that Meemaw had made special, and I knew that the milk bottles, embossed with a cow and the words “farm fresh milk” were irreplaceable.
The distinct sound of glass hitting glass made the hair on my arms rise. Warm air encircled me, but did nothing to calm my nerves. “Meemaw, so help me—”
The chandelier fell completely still, but before I could draw in a steady breath, the Dutch door in the kitchen swung open and a gust of frigid air blew in. The hinges creaked and I could have sworn it sounded like someone was saying, “Tell him. Tell him.”
“Fine,” I said defiantly, resisting the temptation to stomp my foot. But was she talking about Madelyn and me sneaking into Dan Lee Chrisson’s apartment, or was she talking about everything else?
I waited, expecting another haunted response. The kitchen door swung closed with a quiet click, but that was it. No more clanking pots. No more shimmying curtains. No more rattling bottles.
Madelyn’s warning came back to me. Don’t do it. Don’t tell him. But I listened to Meemaw. I slipped on my burnt red Frye harness boots, slung my purse over my shoulder, and hurried out the front door.
* * *
The Winter Wonderland festival was set to begin the next day. The square was already buzzing with holiday celebrations. Over the next few days, carolers would stroll the streets, the stores in town would offer last-minute holiday sales, and a reenactment of the Christmas story with Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem and the birth of baby Jesus would
play every night at the Opera House on the corner of Dallas and Magnolia Streets downtown. The reopening of the Denison mansion after being closed up for so many years and the fashion show tomorrow night were the last scheduled events.
I turned away from the square and the festivities, instead heading north up Dallas Street to Bliss’s town offices. The Planning Department and Will’s office were within spittin’ distance from Buttons & Bows, housed in the old Baptist church just a few blocks up. Faded brick siding and a peaked roofline showed the church’s age. The building had been around since the late 1800s and it looked it. It had been remodeled, and I could almost hear the whispering prayers as I stepped through the door to the old vestibule.
The Sheriff’s Department occupied one side of the building and the city offices were located on the other side. I bypassed the law enforcement side, turning on my heel and passing what used to be the sanctuary. I peeked in. It hadn’t changed much. The original pews had been pushed up against one wall, but it still felt like a place of worship.
I continued down the hall until I reached Will’s office, knocked on the doorframe and poked my head in. Will was hunched over a long table under the windows on the far wall. The model I’d seen at his house a few months ago sat on the table. Miniature houses and buildings dotted the faux landscape of Bliss’s town square and historic district. I could see instantly that the room fit him.
“So this is where the magic happens,” I said.
He turned, a slow smile gracing his lips and reaching to his eyes. “Come on in, darlin’.”
I came up next to him. “It looks done,” I said, gazing at the model. When I’d first seen the time and detail he’d put into it, I’d realized how alike we were. He was passionate about buildings, how they fit in the environment, shape, and light in the same way I was passionate about design, textiles, color, and what it all could do for a person.
I pointed toward the domed roof and limestone exterior of the courthouse on the square. “It’s beautiful.”
“I move it to the museum this week,” he said. “Third floor of the courthouse. Bliss’s architectural history.”
He’d paid attention to every last detail. I imagined that if one plastic composite piece was missing from any of the buildings, he would have known it as surely as I’d have zeroed in on a missing bead or button on a garment.
“You finished my house,” I said, pointing to the replica of the little redbrick and yellow farmhouse a block off the square. The roofline and dormers were perfect and the other details were exquisite—the wooden porch, tiny rocking chairs, and even a miniature Buttons & Bows sign next to the arbor, a flagstone walkway, and flowers in the front yard.
I looked around the office. Spread out on his desk were two sets of blueprints. “What are these?” I asked, pointing to the white and blue pages, stalling. I wasn’t quite ready to blurt out my crime and my secret family history.
He tapped one set with his fingertips. “These are the original blueprints of the Denison mansion,” he said. “And these”—he flattened out the second set—“are the current blueprints based on the remodeling that’s happened over the years. We have to use both when remodeling if there’s any structural change. The widow’s walk, for example, was added after the Kincaids took ownership, but it’s not reflected on the blueprints.”
It looked like a mess of lines and numbers and smudges to me, but Will bent over the plans, flipped pages, and read the schematics. As I watched him process the information on the plans, I saw another layer to him—and another connection between us. We were both creative and ardent about our art forms, but we were also bookish. We’d gone to school to hone our crafts, had practical experience to understand the foundations, and from there we’d each developed the paths that would help us marry our knowledge with our creativity.
My practical experience with Maximilian had helped me fine-tune my construction skills and my tailoring, but my Cassidy intuition helped me feel the designs on a subconscious level.
Will’s job with Bliss probably helped him keep his practical skills up. He worked on city-owned buildings, from the library to offices to park structures, but from what I’d seen of Will and his interest in the historic district of Bliss, that’s where his passion lay.
“I want to show you something,” he said. “Look right there.”
He touched the historic blueprint and I peered at the white space on the drawing, but couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“This is where the widow’s walk was eventually built,” he continued. He drew a line down with his finger. “And here’s where a side bedroom was added on.”
I turned on my cowboy-booted heel, pacing Will’s office. On the short walk over, I’d prepared myself to tell Will everything, but seeing him again so soon after our date and our kiss sent my nerves spiraling. We had become good friends—more than friends. I cared about him and I cared about his daughter. Suddenly my crime from the night before, coupled with the weight of the Cassidy secret, felt overwhelming. I didn’t know if I could confess any of it to him.
My mind raced, going through the options. I could keep it all tight under my belt, but there would always be a big brick wall between us. He could never really know and trust me if he didn’t know the whole truth, but would the truth be too much for him to accept? Maybe he’d think the women in my family were all freaks. Maybe he’d think I was more an aberration than a woman enchanted with the ability to help others realize their deepest desires. I drew in a deep breath.
It was time to come clean—or at least partway clean—with him. If he hung around me long enough, he was sure to notice. I was surprised he hadn’t already, what with Meemaw’s antics.
“Will, I have something to—”
“Harlow!”
My heart plunged to my feet at Madelyn’s screech. She stood in the doorway of Will’s office, shooting me a frantic look that said, Don’t you dare tell him. She practically flew to my side and hovered like a hummingbird at a honeysuckle bloom.
From the depths of my purse, my cell phone rang. I dug past the magazines I still needed to return to Hattie, past my wallet and my travel sewing kit, and finally landed on my phone. I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“Harlow Jane,” Mrs. Helen Abernathy said. “Come on over here, would you? We have some things to discuss.” With that, she ended the call.
Chapter 19
My position in the town’s hierarchy was somewhere between that of a ranch hand out on FM Road 31 and Josie’s new role as wife to one of Bliss’s favorite sons. And I was happy with that. I felt comfortable flying under the radar. All of the Cassidy women did. Most of the time we succeeded in remaining there, but occasionally, being lower on the totem pole got my dander up.
Being haughtily summoned by Mrs. Helen Abernathy put me in a mood. Having Zinnia James request the pleasure of my company was one thing. After all, she was my unofficial benefactor and the business she sent my way was going a long way toward keeping Buttons & Bows afloat—no small feat in a small town prone to polyester and corduroy.
To ignore Mrs. Abernathy’s call would lead to trouble, seeing as how she and Mrs. James were . . . I’d been about to finish that thought with the word “friends,” but really, I wasn’t so sure “friendship” hit the mark. They were cordial, sure, but there always seemed to be a thread of tension between them.
But more than anything, I was curious. I wasn’t sure why she had summoned me, but it had piqued my interest. Telling Will about my charm and my recent criminal activity would have to wait.
I left Will and Madelyn to stare at each other, offering them both a quick wave and an “I’ll see you later!” Then I leaned into the icy wind as I hurried back home. Why hadn’t I driven to the town offices?
A few minutes later, I sat in the old truck I’d inherited from Meemaw. “Come on, Bessie,” I said, holding my breath as I turned the key. It took three tries, but it finally sputtered to life. I blasted the heat first thing. It didn’t
do much to thaw my frozen fingers and toes, but it was a start.
I rumbled north toward the ritzier part of town the Abernathys called home. The house sat amidst grassy fields and slightly rolling hills. Horses meandered across the large properties, and occasionally, a Longhorn, its horns looking far too heavy to be held up by its head, popped into view.
The truck lurched to a stop in front of the Abernathys’ sprawling stone house. I didn’t dare park in the driveway for fear old Bessie would leak oil and tarnish the pristine cobbled drive.
Instead, I parked along the road, tightened my coat around me, and fought the wind as I walked up the stone path, past a little pond, over a mini bridge to the other side of the pond, and up the front steps. I stopped long enough to tilt my head back and stare up at the turrets and faux balcony just above the entry.
The Royal Abernathys.
I reached the massive, hand-scraped wood door, used the door knocker, then stood back, shivering, while I waited. And waited. Finally, as I raised my hand to knock again, the enormous door swung open and Mrs. Abernathy stood there. I stared, my breath catching in my throat. She was wearing the exact outfit I’d imagined her in the day I’d fallen from the widow’s walk at the Denison mansion. The asymmetrical lavender sweater was darker than the one I’d imagined, but it buttoned at the top and hung beautifully. A white tailored blouse with darts and a flared hem peeking out at the bottom of the sweater made it a bit whimsical. The look was finished off with coordinating lavender pants.
“Goodness gracious, Harlow, what is it now? Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? Every time I see you, you stare in horror.”
Mama taught me plenty of manners, but they flew out the window in the face of a memory. Or maybe it had been a premonition. Was my charm evolving? I clamped my mouth shut, trying to school my expression. “I—I’m sorry, Mrs. Abernathy. I just . . . that outfit . . .” I shook the cotton from my thoughts. “You look lovely,” I finally said.
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