A Seamless Murder

by Melissa Bourbon

  I’d always thought she was a pillar of the community, but the deeper I dug into her death, the more I realized that she was on weaker social footing in Bliss than she’d made it seem. So who was the real Delta Lea Mobley?

  “Not really,” Will admitted, “but I bet I’ll understand in another fifteen minutes after you figure it out and explain it to me.”

  I had to laugh at that. And bat him on the arm. “Fifteen minutes, huh? We’d better get moving, then.”

  It had been more than ten minutes since I’d seen the pastor through the window, but I assumed he was still upstairs. I bypassed the main hall that led to the sanctuary, instead heading down the central hall that led to the back staircase. “Coco?” I called her name as loudly as I dared. I always felt a sense of reverence in a church, and that meant no yelling. It was also ingrained in me since, as a child, I’d had my ear pulled by Meemaw more than once for inappropriate church behavior. Sitting in the pew during service meant being quiet, staying still, and being contemplative. I could think about sewing, or flowers, or tipping cows, or climbing water towers. She hadn’t cared what wayward thoughts raced through my mind, just so long as I was silent.

  There were footsteps on the stairs. Which stopped suddenly. I took another tentative step, Will right on my heels. “Why are you tiptoeing?” he asked. “Is the church closed?”

  “Do churches close?” I whispered back.

  “Don’t think so.”

  I guess I didn’t really need to be sneaking around like a cat burglar. So why was I? The only explanation was that all the murder investigations I’d been involved in since I’d been back in Bliss had me questioning everyone.

  “Coco?” I said again, louder this time.

  “Upstairs,” she answered.

  “After you, Sherlock,” Will said. He put his hand on my lower back, urging me forward.

  I started tiptoeing up the stairs before I remembered that Coco knew I was coming and that it didn’t have to be a secret that I was in the church. I shifted to a normal walk as Will’s hand brushed my side. “I like the view from down here.” When I turned, blushing, he gave me a wink and a grin.

  I smiled right back, challenging him. “Play your cards right, and I’ll let you take me home after church.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  I turned, flashing him another coy grin. “What, you don’t believe me?”

  “Not for a second, Cassidy. I think whatever you learn here is going to set you off investigating somewhere and then I won’t see you, unless it’s to talk about murder, for the next two days or however long it takes you to crack the case.” He took hold of my wrist and pulled me down until our lips met. “So I’ll take my kiss now.”

  “Ah, William Flores, you know me too well, I fear.”

  “Like the back of my hand, darlin’, like the back of my hand.”

  Coco was leaning against the wall at the landing at the top of the stairs when we made it up there. “Good grief, and I thought I took the steps slowly. You two are like turtles.” She lifted her hand in a slight wave. “Howdy, Mr. Flores.”

  “Just Will is fine.”

  She nodded and waited.

  After a moment, I realized that she was waiting for me. “I wanted to talk to the pastor, too, so I thought I’d come along.”

  She looked from me to Will and back to me. “You want to talk to Pastor Kyle?”

  “We do,” Will said, joining in. He’d been by my side since I’d moved back to Bliss, and I took comfort from his support.

  “Do you think he’s involved?” she asked, surprised.

  I waved my hands in front of me. “No. Not at all.” I told her about the sideboard and the lamp Cynthia had mentioned to me, and how she thought they’d come from the church. “I thought the pastor could shed some light on it.”

  Coco stared at me, speechless.

  “I don’t know that Cynthia’s suspicions are right,” I said, “but it’s worth asking about.”

  “So the plot thickens.” She turned to head down the hall. “Right this way, kids.”

  We found Pastor Kyle Maguire in his office, the same room where I’d spotted him at the window. He was tall and reedy, his hair thinning on top. He sported a goatee much like Will’s. The difference, though, was notable right away. Will’s very slightly salt-and-pepper goatee made him look just a little bit dangerous, in an outlaw country singer kind of way, while Pastor Kyle’s completely gray growth made him look more haggard than anything else. His button-down cowboy shirt with the mother-of-pearl-covered snaps and pale blue plaid pattern hung loosely on his bony shoulders. With his sunken cheeks and lanky body, I thought he might blow away if a strong wind came through town.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said, after we’d already barged in.

  “No, no, not at all. No bother. Thank you ladies for all you’re doing for the tag sale.” He gestured toward the window. “It looks like a great success.”

  We all nodded in agreement, and I said, “There are a lot of people coming through.”

  After a bit more chatter about the tag sale, he pointed to the sofa and chair against the side wall of the room. “Please, have a seat.” Will and I sat on the sofa, side by side, while Coco took the chair.

  “What can I do for you?” the pastor asked us.

  I looked to Coco, who so far hadn’t uttered a word. She was perched on the edge of her seat, staring out the window. The cat had her tongue, which was something I hadn’t seen before. Usually she was bright with spirit and conversation. She was stymied, so I took the lead. “Pastor, we’re trying to figure out what might have happened to Delta. Her family is really upset. I’m sure you can imagine.”

  He nodded. “Horrible business,” he said. “Just horrible.”

  “You didn’t see or hear anything that morning?” I asked. I knew the sheriff would have already asked him this, but I hadn’t yet finagled my way into Hoss McClaine’s office on a fact-gathering mission, so I had to start from the beginning with the pastor.

  He shook his head. “Delta came in early sometimes. She liked to help out, and get an early start before her day really began.”

  “Did she usually go through the cemetery?”

  He ran his thumb over his goatee, thinking. “Everyone parks in the parking lot over there. With the tag sale, we wanted the shoppers to be able to use the front spaces. I don’t know if she always cut through the cemetery, but we all did sometimes.”

  “Did you see her that morning?”

  He shook his head. “No. And I still can’t believe she was killed right outside. I parked in the upper lot and walked through the perimeter of the cemetery because the John Deere digger was sitting there, blocking the path.” He lowered his chin to his chest. “I must have walked right past her and never saw. If I had, I might have been able to save her. . . .”

  He trailed off, his guilt settling in the room like a wave of humidity. How many other people had walked near the cemetery that morning, never dreaming that Delta lay in an open grave?

  Coco had been listening, but now she leaned forward in her chair. “Who would she have met out there, Pastor?”

  “I’ve wondered that myself, but I don’t know.”

  “What time did you get here?” I asked. “Were there other cars in the parking lot?”

  He gazed at the ceiling, looking as if he were replaying that morning in his mind. “There were a few cars. I think seven? Or maybe eight? Cynthia was here. She’s the project manager for the tag sale, so of course she’s always present. Sherri was here. Georgia Emmons, too, and a few other volunteers.” He fell silent for a moment. “I passed a few cars as I drove up to the back lot. Delta’s daughter’s, I think.” He hesitated, his eyes clouding. “And Anson’s,” he said. “I recognized his Jeep.”

  She looked up at the pastor. “Did you tell the sheriff all this?”

  He nodded his head but looked sheepish. “I did, but I might have downplayed it. I can’t believe any of my parishioners would be i
nvolved in Delta’s death.”

  I wanted to keep the pastor talking, in case he had other important information tucked away in his memory. “You’ve been at the church here for some time. Five or six years, is that right?”

  “Seven, actually,” he said, leaning his bony backside against the edge of his desk. “Aside from what happened to Delta, Bliss is a nice little town.”

  Something in his tone made me look up sharply. He’d said the words, but I got the impression he didn’t fully believe it was a nice little town. “I don’t think I’d want to live anywhere else,” I said. “It’s home.”

  “What about Manhattan? Isn’t that where you were before you came back?”

  So he knew my background, too. There were very few secrets in a small town. Cynthia, Georgia, Sherri, Megan, and Anson had all been around the church the morning Delta had died. Each of them had opportunity, but did any of them have a motive warranting murder?

  “Yes, but there’s no comparison. My mama always says you can take the girl out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the girl. That’s one hundred percent true, at least in my case.”

  He nodded, but remained silent. He’d probably learned, as I had, that if you left a silence alone, someone would rush to fill it. Usually it was me keeping quiet, but this time I filled the space with a question. The pastor, I realized, was also here that morning. Opportunity. But did he have a motive? “What brought you to Bliss?” I asked.

  He tilted his head to one side, studying me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but my gut said he was wondering why I was asking him personal questions.

  “I’d been a youth pastor for a lot of years, but I was ready for a church of my own,” he said, his arms folded over his chest. He stared out the window as he spoke, as if he were slipping into the memory. “There was an opening here, and I applied. Came down from Colbert, Oklahoma,” he added, as if we’d know that particular small town. “Heard of it? No? Not surprising,” he said when we shook our heads. “About eleven hundred people from edge to edge is all. Not much to see or do. Which is why I jumped at the chance to come to Bliss. But this murder business . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “I don’t understand it.”

  “Neither do we, Pastor,” I said. “We’re trying to figure out who would have done this to her.”

  Coco flung her hand up and got our attention. “I want to know about the things she donated to the tag sale,” she said, leaving out the part that the figurines we’d found actually belonged to Jessie Pearl.

  Pastor Kyle stroked his goatee as he shook his head. “That’s Cynthia’s domain. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know Delta brought anything to donate. After she quit volunteering in the office, she didn’t come around much. I never was sure what happened and why she turned her back on us.”

  Coco waved his words away, going back to the donations. “We found some of my mother’s very precious collectibles right down there on one of the tables. I know Mother didn’t bring them. She’d never part with them, or even if she’d decided to, she doesn’t drive, so she’d have needed me or Sherri or Delta to bring them. She didn’t ask me. I called Sherri on my way up to see you, and she didn’t know a thing about it. Which means it had to be Delta, which would be just like her.”

  “Didn’t Todd say he brought some boxes over for her?” I said. “Maybe Delta asked him to.”

  The pastor nodded. “I do recollect seeing Megan come through with a box the other day. Didn’t see her husband, but that’s not to say he didn’t drop things off. People have been coming and going for weeks.”

  Coco fell silent for a beat. Maybe she wanted to give Delta the benefit of the doubt. I thought we needed to go to Jessie Pearl and simply ask her. For all we knew, she’d given the items herself and we were throwing Delta under the bus without cause.

  Pastor Kyle had lowered his hand back to his side. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to Coco. “If there’s anything I can do—”

  “I have one more question, Pastor,” I said, interrupting him. Coco, Will, and Pastor Kyle all turned expectantly to me, and I went on. “Someone mentioned to me that a piece of furniture at Delta’s house had been in the church basement at one time.”

  “An old sideboard?” the pastor asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Exactly.”

  “It was falling apart. I’d left it in the basement during last year’s tag sale. That, and a few other bigger items. Delta’s daughter bought it,” he said. “She said her husband could fix it up. They moved it out of here last summer. I thought they were going to sell it. They didn’t?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But I don’t know their plans for it.” I thought back to what Cynthia had told me. She’d made it sound as if Delta had kept her and the other Red Hatters out of her house to hide stolen goods, but according to the pastor, the sideboard wasn’t stolen at all. Had Cynthia known Megan had bought it, and had she been leading me astray for some reason?

  I drew in a sharp breath as I realized something else. She’d steered me toward Jeremy Lisle. To throw me off the trail by painting him as a possible suspect? After all, she’d been at the church the morning Delta died. She could have intercepted her at the cemetery, cornering her at the open grave.

  But why? That was the unanswered question.

  Will cleared his throat. “Pastor, could I talk to you for a minute?” He flashed a meaningful look my way, silently communicating to the pastor that I couldn’t hear whatever it was he needed to speak about. “Privately.”

  The pastor nodded, and they stepped into the hallway. As soon as Will closed the door behind him, I leaned forward on the sofa, meeting Coco’s gaze. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t understand, Harlow. What did that old sideboard have to do with anything?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe nothing. But is Cynthia in charge of all the tag sales?” I asked. If she didn’t have anything to do with the last one, she might not have known that Megan had bought the furniture from the basement. That still wouldn’t explain why she’d been so quick to implicate Delta as a thief, but it was a start.

  But Coco nodded, and my heart lodged in my throat. “She’s been in charge of the tag sales for as long as I can remember. She runs the office.”

  “And Delta used to volunteer here at the church?”

  “For about three years or so. I don’t know why she stopped.”

  From what the pastor had said, he didn’t know, either. Which meant I needed to find out from the one person who seemed to know a lot more than she was letting on. Cynthia Homer.

  Will and the pastor came back in looking a touch conspiratorial, which had me wondering just what they’d been discussing. They shook hands, and Will waited by the door. “Ready?” he asked us.

  I was. I had a new theory swimming in my head, and I needed time to think about it.

  Chapter 13

  Half an hour later, Coco had gone to work, and Will and I had left Mama and Nana to their volunteer time at the tag sale. As we were walking back through the cemetery, passing by Delta’s gravesite, the figurines, overalls, and jeans packaged up in a bag strung over my forearm, I asked, “What was the powwow with the pastor about?”

  Will held my free hand, pulling me along at a quick clip. “Just giving you time to talk with Coco and poke around the office.”

  I stared at him. Oh Lord, I’d missed a perfect opportunity to snoop! “I might need to go back,” I said sheepishly.

  “You didn’t poke around?” he asked, an amused tone in his voice.

  I hung my head, thinking that a real detective would never have missed such a prime opportunity. “Not even a little bit. I was preoccupied thinking about how Cynthia Homer might be involved. Snooping wasn’t even on my mind.”

  “You probably wouldn’t have found anything, anyway. The pastor seems like a stand-up guy to me. Not the type to resort to murdering anyone. I didn’t get any hint of a motive, either.”

  I had to agree with him. I hadn
’t gotten the impression that the pastor and Delta had been close, or even friends, but I also hadn’t sensed any animosity toward her from him. More than anything, he’d seemed genuinely concerned about Coco, wanting to help her cope with his counsel.

  “Who else could have done it?” Will asked as we entered the parking lot.

  I was going to keep the idea of Cynthia as a suspect to myself until I could give her more consideration. “Jeremy Lisle,” I said, revisiting the candidate for mayor and the president of the Historic Council.

  He leveled his gaze at me. “I’ve known Jeremy for a long time,” he said.

  “Do you think he has it in him?”

  He shrugged. “Anybody probably has it in them if they’re pushed enough and something snaps. But that doesn’t mean either of those things happened with Jeremy.”

  “They argued about something,” I said, before I remembered that Cynthia had been my source for that information. Had Jeremy and Delta really argued, or was that something Cynthia had said to throw the scent away from her?

  “They had a difference of opinion,” Will said. “She never should have been on the council in the first place.”

  “But she was voted off.”

  Will opened the driver’s door of Buttercup for me, but we both stood alongside it, not ready to end our speculations. “Which means he had her voted off the council,” he said. “That gave her reason to do him in, not the other way around.”

  That was a very good point. “But there could be more to the story. They didn’t get along. She supported Radcliffe for mayor. Donated money to Radcliffe’s campaign, even. She didn’t believe in preserving the history of the town.”

  “Jeremy may be a lot of things—driven, a hard-ass, and competitive—but a murderer? I don’t know about that, Harlow.”

  He’d used my given name, which meant he was serious. “Maybe you’re right, but he had a motive. We already know that it doesn’t take much to bring a person to murder in the heat of the moment. If Jeremy Lisle has any violent tendencies, Delta might have pushed too far, and he might have unleashed on her.”