A Seamless Murder

by Melissa Bourbon

  The poor girl would be in a bad place for a while, I was afraid. At least she had Todd, and her aunts and Jessie Pearl, and, hopefully, her father for support.

  I started for the door, stopping when I remembered that Todd had been in possession of the private investigator’s report. He’d said something about almost burning the entire file, or separating out the incriminating evidence to protect Megan and Jessie Pearl. Megan had gone on to say there wasn’t much to the report, and I had to agree. From what I’d seen, and from what Kristina Boyd, the investigator, said, Anson hadn’t been a cheating husband.

  Hoss had the report now, but what if something had been removed from it? When Todd went to retrieve the file that day, it had taken him a good bit of time. Could there have been something more in the file that he had taken out? But why would he take that risk?

  The only logical answer was to protect someone. Removing evidence was a crime, and a risk. The only person he’d take that chance for would be Megan.

  The whole idea was a stretch, I realized, but since it was possible, I had to poke around to see if I could find any proof.

  I got busy, working as quickly and quietly as I could. I searched the obvious places first. Rifling through the bedside tables, the closet shelves, behind the shoes in the closet revealed nothing. No stack of paper or pictures. No second goldenrod envelope. Nothing that screamed this was information that had been in the PI’s report.

  I stood in the center of the room, looking around. If information had been taken out of the report, where would it be hidden? I’d searched the box of antiques. The drawers of the bureau. There was no place else.

  And then I heard voices. They came from down the hall, growing louder. The sound of footsteps followed. They slowed outside the room I was in and panic set in. I couldn’t be found snooping. Quick as lightning, I sent up a prayer that whoever was in the hall would keep on walking, and then I did the only thing I could. I ducked into the closet to hide.

  Chapter 23

  From my hiding place, the voices were muffled, but I thought I recognized Will’s voice.

  The other person spoke with more force. “Georgia saw her back here.” A man’s voice. Yikes. Were they talking about me?

  I’d spoken with Pastor Kyle and Jeremy Lisle enough to know it wasn’t either of them. It could have been one of the Red Hat ladies’ husbands . . . Georgia’s husband?

  I couldn’t take any chances, so I flipped the little side button on my phone to SILENT just in case. I didn’t anticipate a call, but I’d seen plenty of movies where stupid mistakes like leaving a phone on resulted in an awkward discovery. My phone ringing would be a dead giveaway, and I was not going to take any chances. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, heightening as the door handle turned and the voices outside in the hallway suddenly came into the room.

  “Why do you need Harlow?” I heard Will ask.

  That sweet man. He must have suspected that I was in one of these rooms and was trying to warn me.

  “Megan said the ladies all want to take a picture in their aprons, and they want her in it with them.” Ah, it was Todd’s voice. Made sense.

  “Maybe she went out front for some air,” Will suggested. Bless his heart. He was giving me time to make a clean getaway.

  Their footsteps retreated and the door clicked closed. I heaved a sigh of relief, but still waited a solid minute and then opened the door slowly, peeking through the crack to make sure the coast was clear. I started to slip out, my body rustling the clothes I moved against, but I stopped when my shoulder was pricked by the pointed edge of something. I pulled the hangers apart and there, hanging from the clips of a skirt hanger, was a blue file folder. My breath stalled. Could it be . . . ?

  I held it from the bottom and gave a gentle pull, glancing inside. It held pages that seemed to match the type in the Boyd Investigations report, as well as a stack of photographs.

  Very clever, Todd, I thought. Hanging the envelope between his clothes had been a smart way to hide the information he’d taken from the report. Quick as a lightning bug, I ran to the door, staying on my tiptoes to stop my heels from clicking against the hardwood floor. With my ear to the door, I listened. All was quiet and in seconds flat, I was across the hall, barricaded in the bathroom. Todd had said that the Red Hat ladies wanted a picture, so I didn’t have time to look through the folder this second, and I couldn’t very well carry it out with me.

  Looking around, I noticed that even the bathroom was decked out in antiques and collectibles. A rattan storage table was across from the toilet. I opened the small doors to find a stash of toilet paper, two hand towels, and a spare container of liquid hand soap. Perfect. I slipped the file folder against the back wall of the chest, behind the supplies, closing the door and double-checking to be sure nothing looked disturbed.

  Then I flushed the toilet, ran the water, and took a minute to calm my racing heart. I opened the door, fluffing my hair as I stepped into the hallway . . . and ran smack into Wayne Emmons, Georgia’s husband and the one Red Hat husband who’d made an effort to chitchat.

  “Found her!” he called over his shoulder. To me he said, “Everyone’s been looking for you.” He peered over my shoulder into the bathroom. The toilet was still running, and he looked back at me, so I guess he figured all was as it should be.

  “Oh?” I smiled, playing innocent, since, of course, I couldn’t let on that I’d overheard Will and Todd talking about the photo the Red Hat ladies wanted to take wearing their aprons.

  “Picture time,” he said, studying me. He seemed suspicious. Or maybe it was my guilty conscience that was making me feel like I’d done something wrong. Which, technically, I had. My head felt hot, my vision a little blurry. The after-effects of taking someone else’s property. Or at least relocating it.

  Could I leave the house with the file? It was going to be tricky to figure out how to sneak it out, forget about finding a way to look through it and then get it back into Megan and Todd’s closet. I blinked away the agitation bubbling inside me. I couldn’t say why, but I felt sure that it held the key to understanding what had happened to Delta.

  I refocused my thoughts and followed Wayne back toward the dining room. “I wouldn’t have thought anyone was in the mood for pictures tonight,” I said.

  Actually, the way the evening had gone, I thought they’d all be running for the door to escape the first moment they could. But as we came back into the dining room, I saw the crowd had grown by two and the energy had changed. One Cassidy woman could have that effect. Two ensured it. My mother and grandmother sat at the table, each with a plate piled high with treats, smiles on their faces, and a lightness about them that they didn’t normally possess, especially given the long-lasting feud between the Mobleys and Cassidys.

  It’s not that they weren’t usually easygoing. They were. But at this moment, listening to them laugh and chat and generally lift the spirit of the room, it felt as if Meemaw were here, too, infusing the night with her otherworldly charm.

  Mama met my eyes, and I drew my brows together in a silent question.

  “We saw the twinkle lights in the yard, saw the cars, and when you weren’t at home, darlin’,” she said to me, “why we just decided to come on over.” She turned to Jessie Pearl. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Something knocked against the window. We all turned to look, but I recognized the tat-tat-tat. Thelma Louise.

  Sure enough, the granddam of Nana’s goat herd stood on her hind legs, her forelegs resting on the outside windowsill, the horizontal pupils of her eyes staring at us. Megan jumped, startled, then raced forward swinging a dish towel. “Shoo! Go on, get outta here!”

  “We’re happy to have y’all join us, but I do mind the goat,” Jessie Pearl said, meeting Thelma Louise’s gaze with a challenge. Thelma Louise didn’t budge and neither did Jessie Pearl. It was a standoff.

  Nana pushed back in her chair, the legs scraping against the old pine floors, and started toward the window. Thelma Loui
se blinked once and then vanished into the night. The goat-whisperer in action. Nana’s herd produced exquisite soap and delicious goat cheese, and it was all due to the special rapport she had with the animals. It was an obscure charm, but a charm nonetheless.

  The distraction gave me enough time to text Will and tell him about the envelope I’d hidden in the bathroom. Can you sneak it out so we can look at it before we leave? I texted.

  He shot me a look of clear disbelief from across the room, but he texted back Roger that, and I heaved a sigh of relief. I’d leave it to him, and we’d reconvene at some point to find out whether that file held any other clues.

  Coco clapped her hands, then swept her arms wide to usher the Red Hat ladies together. “You, too, Harlow,” she said, waving me over.

  Wayne and Todd both appeared with cameras, Wayne’s a serious Nikon with a high-powered lens and a flash sitting on top. Todd’s the one on his phone.

  The women gathered together in the front room of the house, amid the antiques and collectibles. Aside from Wayne and Todd, the men stayed behind in the dining room, refilling their plates with desserts. I saw Will head down the hall to the bathroom. So the plan was in action.

  The Red Hat ladies wrapped their arms around one another, linking in Jessie Pearl and her crutches, Megan, and me. It might have been my imagination, but I felt Delta’s presence in the room. It may have been just the idea of her, but I came back to Loretta Mae and her ghostly presence at 2112 Mockingbird Lane, wondering once again if that was an anomaly and something that happened only to the Cassidy women, or if there were ghosts all around us, including Delta Lea Mobley.

  The cameras clicked, and we all smiled as best we could. “To Delta,” Todd said, prompting us all to smile bigger.

  “To Delta,” we all echoed, and the cameras snapped again.

  “Well,” Coco said, “you may not cook, Cynthia, but now no one would ever know. Y’all’ll have to send her that picture right away so she can pass it around and prove that she’s worn an apron at least once in her life.”

  The women laughed . . . all except Cynthia, who grimaced. “I may not like to cook, but I can look the part, and I’m okay with that. What people don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  I glanced down the hallway, looking for Will. No sign of him. I checked my phone, remembering that I’d left it turned to silent after my adventure in Megan and Todd’s closet. Now I saw that he’d texted me. Meet me on the back porch.

  The photo shoot was done. Wayne packed up his camera, Todd put his phone in his pocket, and they both wandered off. Cynthia had taken off her apron, tucking it away in her purse in the corner of the room. The Red Hat ladies milled about aimlessly, Jessie Pearl, with the help of Megan, hobbling back to the dining table to sit with Mama and Nana. The others went to their husbands or gathered around the sideboard with the coffee and tea.

  The coast was clear. With a quick glance over my shoulder, I slipped through the kitchen and out the back door to the porch.

  Chapter 24

  There’d been enough light outside to see Thelma Louise a short while ago, so there was enough light to see Will and me if anyone was looking. I kept to the shadows. “Will?”

  “Over here,” he called softly.

  He’d gone to the opposite side of the porch, away from the dining room, where we’d have privacy. He had the contents from the envelope spread on the small round table off to the side. “There you are.” He straightened up and gave me a light kiss on the cheek. “Where’d you get this?” he asked, now that it was safe to press for information.

  “Clipped to a hanger in Todd and Megan’s closet,” I whispered. “Clever. I never would have found it if I hadn’t heard you and Todd coming and jumped in there to hide. Did you find anything?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, so who knows?”

  I stood next to him, and together we quickly looked at each piece of paper and each photo. I catalogued them in my mind as we flipped through the contents.

  First was the intake form I’d seen the first time, but instead of Anson Mobley’s name, the subject had been blacked out. Paper-clipped to the top sheet were snapshots of the five members of the household. The candid shots, each one of them in a different location, definitely hadn’t been in the file the first time I’d seen it. In addition, there was a picture of Rebecca Masters, Megan’s friend and partner in the antique business, who’d gone MIA.

  Will pulled up his cell phone flashlight and shone it on the photos so I could get a better look. The one of Delta showed her bent over the RADCLIFFE FOR MAYOR sign in her front yard, a maroon Aggies flag right next to it. Anson was pictured on the golf course playing a round with Megan, Todd, and Rebecca. Another showed Todd in his car at the bank drive-through. In her candid shot, Megan held what looked like a heavy cardboard box in front of the church. In the background were Todd, Coco, and Sherri. Including a picture of Rebecca struck me as odd. She stood in the Mobley yard, arms folded, an envelope in her hand. The last photo was of Jessie Pearl on her porch, hands on her hips, unsmiling. Megan was in the corner of the yard, and Todd was hunched over a patch of flowers.

  All the people Delta loved, plus Rebecca.

  I skimmed the rest of the pages, none of which I’d seen the first time I’d looked at the file. Boyd Investigations hadn’t just followed Anson Mobley. This was a list of each of the family member’s comings and goings over a period of seven days. The notes were succinct.

  Anson

  10 a.m. Office. 3 hours

  1 p.m. Met client at 3900 Magnolia Street

  1:20 p.m. Fast food drive-through

  2:20 p.m. Met Megan and Todd with boxes to deliver to church

  3:33 p.m. Met Delta at listing

  On and on it went, detailing everything he did, from playing five hours of golf at the municipal course to meeting Delta for dinner at a local cantina to a two-hour stop at the title company for a close of escrow.

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and there were no rendezvous at any hotels. In fact, other than one photo showing a hotel in the background, there was nothing even implying an affair. No wonder the investigator had seemed so adamant that Anson was not unfaithful. There was nothing to indicate anything suspicious. So why had Delta questioned her ability to trust him?

  I flipped the page and saw a similar tracking of Megan’s daily activities.

  Megan

  7 a.m. Yoga

  8:15 a.m. Coffee shop with Rebecca

  9:30 a.m. School

  4 p.m. Church delivery with Todd

  4:30 p.m. Met mother at nail salon

  Megan’s days were pretty much the same. She went to her classes at the local university, exercised, ran a few errands, and then it all repeated. Two days during the week included Rebecca coming to the Mobley house and staying for several hours, and a third day tracked Megan, Todd, and Rebecca at a flea market selling their antiques.

  Todd’s daily schedule was a little more varied. He worked in the yard, took boxes to the tag sale, worked in the church office, met Delta at a few of her listings to help, went to the bank, to the market, to the nursery. He was always on the go. A jack of all trades, just as he’d said, from the looks of it.

  Jessie Pearl had barely half a page of notes. She rarely left the house. Walked around the garden. Moved the yard signs from one spot to another. Pulled weeds. It was an uneventful life.

  The last page of notes was about Delta. “Do you think she knew the investigator was checking her out, too?” Will asked, reading over my shoulder.

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t understand any of this. She’d had her husband investigated, so why the details on everyone else, and why on herself?

  Delta

  8:15 a.m. Drive-through coffee shop

  8:30 a.m. Office

  10:05 a.m. House listing on Richland Lane

  11 a.m. Church tag sale

  11:30 a.m. Lunch with Randi

  12:30 p.m. Post office

  1
:10 p.m. City offices

  1:45 p.m. Bank with Todd

  2:30 p.m. Megan haircut and color, Delta paid

  4:00 p.m. Early dinner with Anson

  On and on it went, each page giving a play-by-play. Before long, the details all blurred together, but something tickled at the back of my brain. I flipped back and forth between the pages, trying to figure out what it was that had put me on alert.

  “Cassidy,” Will prompted, “we’ve been out here for twenty minutes. We’d best get this file back.”

  “One sec,” I said, holding up my index finger. I read through the detective’s surveillance notes one more time, but whatever the red flag was eluded me.

  I’d just gathered up all the papers and photos, sliding them back into the blue file, when we heard the kitchen door open, followed by voices. A group of people had come outside. In seconds flat, we’d be caught red-handed.

  My heart lodged in my throat as I handed the folder back to Will, who quickly laid it against his chest. The second his jacket was zipped, Georgia, Wayne, and Randi came into view. “There you are,” Randi said, looking from me to Will and back again. “A little alone time?”

  I slipped one arm around Will’s back, wrapping around his front as I snuggled up next to him. “A stolen moment,” I said, inwardly cringing at the unintended double entendre. The stolen file hadn’t given me answers, but it wasn’t mine, and guilt flooded my pores.

  “Everyone’s getting ready to leave,” Randi said. “Jeremy’s going to take me home.”

  I drew in a sharp breath and threw a quick glance at Will. I couldn’t say that Jeremy Lisle had killed Delta, but I felt there were enough questions to raise a red flag. “Will can give you a ride,” I said.