“I’d like to thank you all for starting this progressive dinner with us tonight. Wayne and I welcome you to our home.” She paused, in what I judged to be a practiced move from her years of public speaking. “I’d like to take a moment to remember Delta,” she continued.
I’d been wondering whether anyone would talk about Delta, or if her friends would want to stifle the emotions that might come from talking about someone they’d so recently lost. I’d hoped for the former. It was as if Georgia had read my mind, bringing her up right at the beginning of the evening’s events.
“This dinner was her idea,” she continued. “She may not be here to enjoy it with us, but I’d like to honor her by raising our glasses in her memory.”
She lifted hers. One by one, like a wave, the other Red Hat ladies, and then everyone else, raised theirs. “To Delta,” Georgia said.
The two words echoed in the room as everyone repeated them. “To Delta.”
Eyes sparkled with newly formed tears. A few of the women sniffled, the loss suddenly fresh again. But no one said anything. Just when it felt on the verge of becoming awkward, Coco stepped forward, coming to the front of the room to stand next to Georgia. “I think it would be a lovely gesture if each of us took a moment and remembered something about Delta, and then shared it.”
The group gave a collective nod. “She was a good friend,” Randi said. She was divorced and had come to the dinner alone. She stood next to Jeremy Lisle, and I couldn’t help but noticing they looked like they’d make the perfect couple, him with his cool Vin Diesel/Bruce Willis vibe going on, earring in one lobe, and casual shirt undone at the top, her with her spiky silver hair, three inches of jangly bracelets, and long, flowing gauzy skirt that was a throwback to the 1970s.
“You know, Delta refused to take my yoga class,” she continued. “Said she was too heavy to do all those crazy bends and positions. Everything I have will fall right out, she told me. I thought that was an excuse, and for a while, I was offended. But then I told her I wanted to find a renter for the apartment above the studio. Before I could blink, I had a tenant. Your friend, Rebecca,” she said to Megan and Todd, but then she frowned. “’Course, she moved out a few days ago, so if anyone knows someone who needs a place to stay . . .”
Megan frowned. I remembered her saying she’d been trying to get in touch with Rebecca on her cell phone, but to no avail. Now we knew the reason, but why would she have left so suddenly?
I didn’t have time to ponder it. A few people laughed, and Randi blushed, continuing. “Delta didn’t always know how to show it, but when it came down to it, she was a good friend.”
“Hear, hear,” one of the men in the room said.
Everyone raised their glasses again and drank, and then Cynthia stepped forward. “Y’all know that Delta and me, we go way back. We were in kindergarten together. Besides her family, I think I must have known her better than anyone here.”
I shot glances at Coco, Sherri, who stood in the back of the room, Jessie Pearl, Megan, and Todd. There wasn’t a dry eye among them. Georgia’s toast to Delta and Coco’s request to honor her sister were both heartfelt and healthy, but I could see the emotion flooding the people who’d loved Delta, and my heart ached for them. Losing someone you loved was hard enough. Losing someone as complicated as Delta was probably harder because your own emotions were that much more complex.
“We had a love-hate friendship,” Cynthia continued. She gave a staccato laugh. “But good God, I loved that woman. She’d give you the shirt off her back, if you needed it.”
Everyone in the room nodded, confirming that Delta would do anything for them.
“She was always there for me,” Cynthia continued. “Sure, she might have grumbled about it, but I knew I could count on her for anything. Anything,” she repeated. She looked at the ceiling for a few seconds, her eyes glistening. “We needed someone to fill in for Jacob at the church when he fell ill, oh about four months ago. Y’all remember that?”
About half the group nodded, so Cynthia seemed to feel the need to explain further. “He does our bookkeeping. Got sick, then came down with pneumonia. Almost didn’t make it. He was in the hospital for, goodness, a month? Maybe six weeks? Well, I mentioned to Delta that I needed someone to help out, and she didn’t hesitate. She sent me Todd.” She paused, nodding to Megan and her husband. Megan smiled up at him, leaning against his arm. “He’s a jack of all trades. Came right in and took over for Jacob until Delta . . .” Cynthia’s face grew tense. Memories of a lost loved one were tricky. They filled you with warmth and a sense of happiness on the one hand, yet at the same time, they brought the grief right up to the surface.
She shook her head, just barely, and then raised her glass. “To Delta.”
Once again, everyone echoed the sentiment. “To Delta.”
“You know Iris, my Golden Lab?” Bennie asked, moving forward to take Cynthia’s place at the front of the room.
Aside from Will and me, everyone nodded.
“She’s an escape artist, right? She gets up on her hind legs and bats the latch of the back gate and gets out. About three weeks ago now, she got out while I was at the market. When I got home, there was no sign of her. No one saw her. She was just gone. I called all y’all, remember?”
This time, everyone except Will, me, Jeremy Lisle, and Pastor Kyle nodded.
“Y’all came, and I appreciate that. More than you know. But it was Delta who organized things. Called Anson to help. Megan and y’all helped, too,” she said, looking at the family. “But she didn’t stop there. She organized the area by grids and sent people to search in specific places. We found Iris all the way down at FM 2951.” Her chin quivered. “If not for Delta, I don’t know if we would have found her. We all know she was going through something these last few months. She wasn’t quite herself.”
A low murmur of assent went through the room, and Bennie continued. “But she was still Delta, and she’d have done anything to help any one of us.” She raised her glass. “To Delta.”
“To Delta,” the group echoed.
One by one, each person told a similar story about Delta and their friendship with her. By the time Megan and Todd spoke, my head was spinning. The stories painted such a drastically different picture of Delta than what I’d known of her for most of her life. She was loved—of that, there was no doubt.
I thought about what Meemaw had always said. People are not always what they seem. Usually, I interpreted that to mean that the goodness people showed often masked something darker. But with Delta, it seemed to be the opposite. The grumpy, cranky, irritable Delta I’d seen masked the goodness she’d clearly had in her and had showed to everyone else. She’d helped her friends in multiple ways.
I thought back to when Delta had first asked me to make the aprons. She’d been boisterous and had come close to being rude. At the time, I’d thought her friends had been frustrated with her, and maybe they had been, but they knew that to be the cantankerous side of their friend, not the only side of her. They also knew she had a lot of bark, especially lately, but maybe her bite wasn’t all that vicious.
The question that I kept coming back to was why had she become so curmudgeonly? Bennie had said she’d been different lately. What had happened to change her? She had a husband who appeared to love her, a healthy, happily married daughter, Jessie Pearl was as fiery as ever, and she had two sisters, who, despite their differences, knew that everything always came down to family. What more could she have wanted?
Sherri had been hanging back, her eyes glistening, her lower lip trembling. She hadn’t worn her apron, I noticed. I wondered how long the Cassidy magic worked in the garments I sewed. If it wasn’t worn right away, would the person’s dreams be realized? I had no idea, but Sherri looked like she could use a bit of help right about now.
I grabbed Will’s arm as Sherri suddenly dragged her fingers under her eyes and propelled herself to the front of the room. A crazy look had come over her. “What’s she
doing?” I whispered, although, of course, he had no more idea than I did.
We watched as her eyes narrowed. She looked at each and every person in the room in turn. A chill ran through me as she met my gaze, but it passed as she moved on to the next person.
“Sherri?” Coco moved toward her sister, her arms outstretched. “Come on, darlin’.”
But Sherri shrunk back from Coco, shaking her head. “I’m gonna have my say,” she said. She paused, as if she were garnering strength or gumption. Or maybe both. “Someone in this room,” she said, her voice icy and accusatory, “killed my sister. I know it, and you know it. You’d best be scared, because”—she paused, looking at me—“we will bring you to justice.”
The chill that had vanished came slithering back over my skin. What in tarnation had come over her? Everyone in attendance looked shocked, but not a single one revealed themselves as a killer with a sneer.
Unfortunately.
I agreed that the killer was probably in the room. Truthfully, it could be any of them.
Before I could ponder that any further, Sherri was talking again. “The dinner must go on, but I refuse to stay in the company of a killer . . . whoever you are.” And then, without another word, she turned on the heels of her flats and marched out the front door.
Chapter 20
Sherri’s outburst was like a big ol’ white armadillo in the room. Everyone tiptoed around it as we tried to enjoy our pre-dinner drinks. After a while, we all gave up, piling into our trucks and SUVs and caravanning the five blocks to Randi’s house, the second stop on the progressive dinner route. She lived alone in a small Craftsman, and while the houses on her street varied in age and style and were well kept with manicured yards, only Randi’s showed any personality. Three cement gnomes stood on the porch to greet guests. Instead of a traditional wreath on the front door, she had a galvanized steel watering can filled with fresh flowers.
She had raced ahead of the rest of us in her hybrid. Now she stood at the front door, holding it open, looking like an earth goddess in her gauzy dress and half apron. “Come on in, y’all,” she said. One by one, we filed inside. The interior was an eclectic mix of bright curtains and rugs, bold furniture, mellow yellow walls, and artwork. She had a collection of miniature Buddhas on a console table and a dark blue and green woven wall hanging that looked a bit like I imagined Aladdin’s magic carpet would.
The theme for the progressive dinner was favorite family foods, and from the looks of Randi’s table, her family came from five different countries. She’d been in charge of appetizers and had bruschetta from Italy, seven-layer dip from Mexico, baba ghanoush from the Mediterranean, Chinese pot stickers, and meatballs simmering in a Crock-Pot. People acted like flies at a picnic, hovering around the dining table, as if filling up their plates somehow absolved them from having to address Sherri’s accusations. But once the plates were laden with appetizers, the chatter couldn’t be held at bay. “Y’all were her closest friends,” Jessie Pearl said to the Red Hat ladies who’d circled round. “Sherri spoke outta turn. I know none of you coulda done anything like that to Delta.”
Bennie squeezed Jessie Pearl’s hand. “Of course not,” she said, but she glanced at each person in turn, a hint of suspicion clear in her eyes. “We’ve known all y’all for so long. A lifetime. So why in heaven’s name would she say something like that?”
My thoughts exactly. Did she know something we didn’t? And if so, that sent a wave of concern through me. If she was right and one of the people at the dinner was the culprit, and she’d just called them out, it had been a challenge. The question was, would the killer react?
Another thought struck. A note in one of the the Lladró figurines had mentioned Rebecca, and Randi had said Rebecca had suddenly moved out of her rental. Coincidence, or was she running from someone? What did Rebecca know?
I racked my brain, trying to make a connection between Rebecca and anyone here. Megan had said they’d met at an antique show in Granbury and had become fast friends. She lived above Randi’s studio. Neither connection sparked an idea, but I’d keep thinking.
One thing about Sherri’s challenge kept me at ease. She hadn’t made it to Randi’s house yet, and if she was right and one of the people in the room now was the killer, that meant she wasn’t in immediate danger.
But where had she gone to, and was she coming back?
The women dropped their voices, appearing to offer comfort to Megan and Jessie Pearl. Will and I circled around to the opposite side of the table. He filled up a plate with samplings of every appetizer. I was more sparse in my selections, my appetite having been replaced by healthy curiosity. I wanted to know what Sherri was thinking and what she might know, but since I couldn’t pick her brain, eavesdropping on the invited guests was the next best thing.
The men and women had naturally segregated, the women on one side of the table and the men on the opposite side in two groups. The husbands of the Red Hat ladies stuck together. I could tell this was not their first Red Hat rodeo. They threw back their drinks, piled their plates high with food a second time, and spoke in deep baritones with the familiarity of family. Not surprising. Their wives had known each other for too many years to count, which meant the men had, too. Will, Jeremy Lisle, Pastor Kyle, and Todd were the outsiders. They stood off to the side, each of them cradling their plates in one hand, a drink in the other. “So if I leave, they’ll think I killed Delta?” I overheard Jeremy asking, sounding as if he couldn’t quite believe he was mixed up in all of this.
Todd shook his head. “Sherri didn’t mean it. She’s grieving.”
“High drama, that’s what it was,” Jeremy said.
“Every family has secrets,” Pastor Kyle said.
“Did Delta?” Jeremy asked. He acted nonchalant, but I sensed tension in his shoulders.
Pastor Kyle offered counsel to his congregants. Had Delta gone to him, and if so, would she have told him what had put her on edge these last few months?
“Sure,” Pastor Kyle said, but he immediately closed his mouth and took a step back. He seemed to realize that he’d spoken out of turn, revealing something that should have been private.
The room had grown completely silent, all eyes on him. His face clouded, and a panicked look took over. “Look, she couldn’t stand that she’d been lied to. She never said who lied, or what it was about, just that she had proof and wouldn’t tolerate it.” He looked at me, cocked a frenzied eyebrow, and then he threw up his hands. “That’s it. That’s all she said.”
Jessie Pearl, with her pursed, thin lips, hobbled toward the pastor, crutches under her arms. “You sure about that, Pastor? She didn’t say nothin’ else?”
But instead of answering, he tossed his plate on the table and headed toward the door. “Dragging Delta’s name through the mud isn’t going to bring her back. It doesn’t matter anymore what she thought of folks. She’s gone, and nothing’s going to bring her back.”
“No, but it could help us figure out who killed Delta,” I said.
He whirled around to face me. “The truth is, folks lie every day. They lie about what they do, about what they think, about who they are.” He gestured to us all. “I see the worst of people when they come to me, but I also see the best in them. They so often focus on the bad things in their lives. Delta was no different from anyone else. She felt betrayed? Well, who doesn’t? She loved you and only wanted to protect you,” he said, looking straight at Megan. “She loved her family and her friends, even if she didn’t always know how to show it in the best way. Remember this. No family is what it seems from the outside, and everyone has secrets. I reckon Delta knew that better than most.”
Megan surged forward, draping her arm through Pastor Kyle’s. Her eyes glistened with a fresh layer of tears. “Thank you, Pastor. Granny, Daddy, Todd, Auntie Coco, Auntie Sherri, and me, we’re all grateful to you. Whatever my mother told you, it was between you and her.”
He patted Megan’s hand. “She’s watching down on
you. She’ll always be your protector. Your own personal guardian angel.”
The tears she’d been holding back let go in a waterfall. She tried to say something more to him, but her words seemed to stick in her throat.
Todd had moved next to Megan, pulling her into a comforting embrace. Gently, he drew back. “It’s going to be okay, Megs.” He led her out of the dining room and away from everyone, bending his head toward hers. Solidarity. It was just what I imagined Will doing for me if I were ever so distraught.
The pastor headed for the door. “I’m leaving, but—”
“We all know you didn’t kill Delta,” Coco said, waving away his worry at Sherri’s earlier accusation.
He laughed it off, but he looked relieved to have had it spoken aloud. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to the group as a whole, and then he shut the door behind him.
I debated what to do. I had a question to ask the pastor, but I also wanted to be a fly on the wall during the dinner party. So much could be learned by sitting quietly back and listening.
I leaned over to whisper in Will’s ear, deciding that the chance to speak with the pastor was more important than eavesdropping. If the killer was standing right here in the dining room, he or she wasn’t going to suddenly say something to reveal the truth.
“I’ll keep my ears open,” Will said, reading my mind.
I squeezed his hand in thanks. “I’ll be right back.”
He edged his way into the group, while I dashed quietly outside to intercept the pastor. He was walking down the sidewalk, passing truck after truck. Except for Randi, the Red Hat ladies had come with their husbands, each sitting shotgun in the 4x4s their husbands drove. Even Jeremy Lisle and Will had trucks. Only one SUV was parked on the street, and it stood out like a sore thumb.
Pastor Kyle had a crossover. It was the same red as Anson Mobley’s Jeep, but a different make and model. For a second I’d entertained the idea that the vehicle in the private investigator’s pictures wasn’t Anson Mobley’s at all, but someone else’s altogether. Without a clear view of the license plate, it was possible.
A Seamless Murder Page 18
