I was antsy. My toes tingled, my arms itched, and a million thoughts raced through my mind. They were like fireflies, zipping between Gracie and Libby, and all the details of the pageant that I still had to take care of. I’d tried to get an update on Mrs. James, but I hadn’t heard a thing from her.
Finally, after thirty minutes of tossing and turning, I put my glasses back on and got out of bed. If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well be productive.
I spent two hours finishing Mrs. James’s dress. I’d already pieced the sections together. By the time I got to the zipper, the last thing I had to finish, exhaustion had made me loopy. The room grew soft around the edges, like a photographer had blurred the lines. If you discounted the scattered thread, fabric scraps, and pieces of pattern paper, my workroom had a dreamy quality to it.
Sleepiness was finally settling in, but it hadn’t taken hold yet. I glanced at the clock on the wall. Three a.m. At this rate, I was going to be holding my eyelids open with toothpicks at the dress rehearsal. I finished the zipper and took Mrs. James’s dress into the dining room, slipping it onto a dress form I’d moved into the far corner, then headed to the front room to lie down on the settee. I might as well not have bothered. Soon I was tossing and turning. Meemaw’s decision to cover it in velvet was great on a blustery cold day, but not when it was still close to ninety degrees and the humidity had crept up to ninety percent.
I heaved a frustrated sigh before I decided to direct my attention to my new dressmaking project. Planning a design for Anna Hughes’s Wow! dress. I shuffled back to the dining room and sat at the little antique table tucked into the corner. I turned on the computer and waited while it booted up. Even dress designers used the Web for research.
I’d pictured Anna in a black taffeta dress with flowers on one strap, but before I got too far in my sketches, I wanted to get some intel on her sister’s wedding. If it was going to be a luau, for example, then the fun but sophisticated number I had in mind wouldn’t work.
My fingers curled above the home row, hovering, antsy to type something… anything… and to hit the ENTER key. One problem. I didn’t know Anna Hughes’s sister’s first name, maiden name, or either of her two previous married surnames. Which meant I couldn’t just search her online.
What to do? What to do? Finally, my sleep-deprived brain figured it out and my fingers jarred into motion. I typed Anna and Buckley Hughes into the search bar and hit ENTER. This would bring up something about them or their wedding, which in turn should mention some of the family and guests. Anna may not have been in her sister’s wedding, but maybe her sister had been in hers.
While Google did its thing, I closed my eyes. Working into the wee hours of the morning had given me too much time to think. The different complications from the past few days began melding together in my mind. Bliss, Texas, it seemed, was coming apart with deception.
Dark circles spiraled behind my eyes and my limbs grew heavy. After Josie’s wedding fiasco, I’d realized that everyone had secrets. Some people pretended they didn’t exist—like Mrs. James. Some people fought over them—like Nana, Mrs. James, and Eleanor had fought the night of their Margaret pageant. And some people killed over them—like whoever had gone after Macon Vance.
One of my biggest questions was whether or not the Cassidy magic had passed through Senator Jeb James into his daughter, Sandra, and granddaughter Libby. Or was the power of the magical wish diluted through the male descendants? My brother, Red, didn’t have even a smidgeon of magic in him, and neither, it seemed, did his boys, Cullen and Clay. But if he had a daughter, would she be charmed?
Too many questions stemming from the past, and no way to answer them.
I sank deeper in my chair. For the first time that night, sleep didn’t seem so far off. A warmth settled over me and my head lolled to the side. My thoughts grew dreamy, shifting to Libby. She had the burden of two secrets on her, and she knew nothing about either of them. Poor girl. She was like the common denominator between the two mysteries going on in Bliss.
The common denominator.
The words repeated in my head like a mantra until… “Oh my.” What if Macon Vance knew more than just the lineage of Butch Cassidy’s descendants? What if he somehow knew about his wish and that the James women were charmed?
I closed my eyes for a quick second, and when I opened them again, it was morning. The sun was throwing dappled light through the window, and the crick in my neck radiated pain down my spine. I pushed myself up, wrangled my crooked glasses from my face, straightened them on my nose, and looked at the clock.
Slowly, it came into focus. Eight thirty. I shot out of the chair. The dress rehearsal!
Chapter 29
Eighteen girls milled around the stage, hair and makeup done, shifting their weight from foot to foot and glancing around nervously when they stopped pacing. Only four of them—Amanda Blankenship, Julie Plankerton, Libby Allen, and Gracie Flores—had their gowns on. The rest milled around aimlessly, a rising hysteria in their voices. They stared at the racks of nineteenth-century style gowns, but none of them went near the dresses.
Josie stood with a group of girls. I couldn’t hear her voice over the prattle of debutantes, but from the way she patted the air in front of her—like she was trying to get them all to simmer down—I got that they were agitated to a boiling point.
I hurried up next to Josie, acting as nonchalant as I could muster. “What’s going on?”
Josie’s face contorted as she gave an exaggerated glance at her watch, then gave me the stink eye. “Late night?” she asked.
I tilted my head to the side, smiling slightly. “Actually, yes.” She gave me a wicked little grin, but I threw my palm up, stopping her. “Sewing,” I said. “Finishing Mrs. James’s dress.”
The excited light in her eyes dimmed and her smile faded. “Oh. Well, that’s no fun.”
I turned to the aimless girls surrounding us. “We’re so behind schedule.”
“You’re late,” Josie said.
“You sure none of you remember your dresses?” I said to them.
They all shook their heads.
I didn’t blame them. The Margaret gowns weren’t something these girls would be caught dead in under normal circumstances. Gracie had an appreciation for fabric and design, but from the look of things, she was an anomaly. I suspected that a good many of the girls here would rather be hanging out at the nice air-conditioned mall in Fort Worth, or tubing on Lake Bliss. Getting up early on a hundred-degree summer day, wearing a heavy dress, and dancing a waltz with a beau were not a modern teenager’s idea of fun. Who cared that their parents had paid thousands upon thousands of dollars for the custom frocks.
“Come on. We have to blaze through this. Where’s the book?”
I felt under my arm, where I normally would have stuck it. Not there. I still hadn’t gotten my sewing bag back from the sheriff, so I’d been using a Michael Kors tiger print canvas bag instead. The rope handles weren’t as sturdy and it didn’t have the interior pockets that my Dena Rooney-Berg bag did, but it would do the job for now until I got my sewing bag back.
I dug my hand inside, knowing that I’d tucked the book right on top. I gulped. Only it wasn’t there. Crouching down to dig deeper into the bag, I had a déjà vu moment. Only days ago, I’d stood right here. And if I hadn’t forgotten my sewing bag, my shears wouldn’t have been readily available to a murderer. And if they hadn’t been right there, an orange-handled beacon to whoever had been with the golf pro in his last minutes, would Macon Vance still be alive?
“Stop.” I chastised myself. There was absolutely no point in saying what if. Macon Vance was dead, and nothing could change that.
“Harlow, the book?”
The girls had wandered off, and Josie bent down next to me. Stage mothers whispered, sending annoyed looks our way. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose, catching a glimpse of Sandra and Steven Allen. Even though I was preoccupied with the missing notebook, I couldn’t h
elp remembering how distraught Sandra had been the night of Buckley Hughes’s party. She hadn’t wanted to attend. But Steven had said he’d made her. “Why would Steven insist that Sandra go out when Mrs. James was being held for suspicion of murder?” I asked Josie. “Don’t you think that’s strange?”
Josie sat on the stage, flattened her palms on the floor and kicked her legs out from under her, crisscrossing them into a half lotus position. “People lie, Harlow. Maybe he didn’t make her go anywhere. Maybe she went on her own, and he wanted to bring her back home.” She gave another pointed look at my bag again. “The book?”
“Right.” My mind swirled with thoughts as I dug through my bag. I felt like I had all the pieces cut for a quilt, but I couldn’t figure out what pattern to use so they’d all go together. Josie’s words played in a continual loop in my head. People lie. My shoulders slumped, as much from knowing that Josie was right as from the fact that I stopped looking, empty-handed. Trudy’s book was not in my canvas bag.
“It’s not here.” I dug through again, hoping I’d just missed it, but I still came up empty-handed.
“You had it when you left last night,” Josie said, but we still spent ten minutes scouring the stage and the makeshift changing room in case we were both wrong and I’d dropped it at the club.
I grabbed my keys, flung the bag over my shoulder, and headed toward the door. “It’s got to be at home,” I said, but twenty-five minutes later, I spun around in my workroom, hands clasped on top of my head, panic rising in me like a wave in the Gulf of Mexico’s dirty water. Trudy’s book was nowhere to be found, and without it, we’d never get the right dresses with the right girls.
“Where is it?” I muttered. I’d already searched the boutique area of Buttons & Bows, upstairs, the kitchen… It wasn’t anywhere. There was no sign of Trudy’s notebook. And I hadn’t a clue how to organize the pageant without her notes.
I thought I’d brought it into the house, but if I had, it wasn’t here now. I’d checked Meemaw’s old truck to no avail. It was just… gone.
The click, click, click of the ceiling fan berated me. The repetitive sound started to morph in my head until it sounded like tsk, tsk, tsk. Was Meemaw taunting me? I dropped my arms and searched the room for any sign of a ghostly presence.
“Meemaw, did you hide Trudy’s book from me?” My voice sounded loud in the empty room, but I cleared my throat and kept going. “Eighteen girls are back at the country club, waiting on me to get them into their dresses and start the rehearsal. And the pageant!”
I paused, cocking my head to the side to listen for a change in the fan’s clicking, or for some other sign that Meemaw heard me. The tsk, tsk, tsk I’d imagined a minute ago was back to a steady click. The rotation of the fan’s blades sent the air whooshing down, ruffling the hair that had slipped out of my two low ponytails. I tucked a wayward strand behind my ear, impatiently adjusted my glasses, and did a clumsy pirouette as I searched the room again.
Still no sign of my ghostly great-grandmother. Great. When I needed her, she was nowhere to be found. “This is getting aggravating, Meemaw,” I grumbled, “and I don’t have time for it.” Trudy and Fern had put their trust in me to take over their final fittings. Mrs. James had come to me to take over her role as the pageant’s coordinator.
I hoped that Meemaw might take pity on me and show herself. No such luck. I was still alone, and completely at a loss. My thoughts ran a little wild as I started my search again.
The Art Nouveau–style magazine rack I’d brought back with me from my one trip to France caught my eye. It sat next to the plush red velvet settee, hand-painted flowers cascading down the avocado green front. I flipped through the fashion and home decor magazines standing upright between the wrought-iron frame. I hadn’t put the notebook in the rack, but maybe Meemaw was playing games and had slipped it between the glossies.
One look proved that she hadn’t.
The rumble of an engine came from out front. I pulled back the sheers to see Hoss McClaine’s black SUV, HOOD COUNTY SHERIFF emblazoned on the side, pull up in front of the house. Mama popped out of the passenger side before Hoss could amble around to open her door for her. Mama was not one for pretense or social expectation. Her voice carried through the screen door. “I’m perfectly capable of openin’ my own door, Hoss McClaine, thank you very much.”
“Good Lord, woman,” he drawled. “It ain’t a crime to let me do somethin’ for you.”
“You do plenty,” she said, giving him a flirty wink. “Ain’t nobody who can…”
I dropped the sheers and covered my ears real quick. I didn’t want to hear what Hoss McClaine did plenty of.
I kept searching the boutique while they took their sweet time coming up the flagstone walkway. If I couldn’t find Trudy’s notebook, I’d have to call up Fern Lafayette, and that was not at the top of my list of things I wanted to do. She needed to be with Trudy and didn’t have time to even think about the Margaret dresses. Not to mention the fact that me losing the notebook wouldn’t instill a lot of confidence about my ability to take their place in the final preparations.
Finally, I heard the thump of Mama and Hoss’s footfalls as they climbed the porch steps. The screen door opened with a squeak and I turned to greet them. “You two are up and out early.” I kept my voice light and bright. No point in worrying Mama.
“Thought you might need some help this morning,” she said. She looked around, then settled her narrowing eyes back on me. “Looks like you’ve been and gone and come home again. What did you lose?”
The hairs on the back of my neck went up. Reading minds was not her Cassidy charm. “What makes you think I lost something?”
“It’s as clear as day,” she said, pointing to the magazine rack with the glossies leaning forward, buttons and fabric swatches from the embossed metal box scattered on the coffee table, the lookbook tossed on the paisley couch, and the pattern pieces for Mrs. James’s dress tossed haphazardly on the floor. I liked things relatively neat and orderly, and there were plenty of signs, I realized, showing that I was not in control at the moment.
The concern in Mama’s eyes opened up a floodgate. “Mrs. James asked me to take over for her at the pageant. So I am, but then Fern Lafayette gave me her sister’s notebook with all their dress notes and fitting information because Trudy’s in the hospital, and there’s a dress rehearsal right now at the country club and the pageant’s tonight, but the girls aren’t even in their dresses because I can’t find Trudy’s notebook and without it, I’m totally lost.” I gulped in a big breath of air, heaved it back out in a loud sigh, and sank down onto the love seat.
I felt relieved at having unloaded the weight on my shoulders, but Hoss, from the puzzled expression on his face, looked like he was completely lost. “But she’s doin’ better, isn’t she?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. Growing up in the South meant you were taught to say “yes, sir” and “yes, ma’am” to every adult you came across. My old habits had died a painful death in the fashion world. Eyebrows had been raised at me, snickering went on behind my back, and I’d been out and out laughed at by New Yorkers when I’d said “sir” and “ma’am,” but back in Bliss, it was easy to slip back into it.
“Poor thing.” Mama sat down next to me, taking my hand in hers and giving it a good squeeze. “They’re both getting up there in years. I still can’t believe someone would do that to her. Hoss told me what happened,” she said. “Loretta Mae always told her she was playing with fire, poisoning herself like that. Trudy wouldn’t ever listen. It helped those headaches, and that made it worth it.”
I shuddered just thinking about the havoc going on under Trudy’s skin. “But I heard Meemaw thought about doing it,” I said.
Mama recoiled. “Loretta Mae wouldn’t ever do such a thing. You know how she felt about that stuff. Every wrinkle tells a story, and all that? She wanted Trudy to give it up.” She paused, pressing her index finger to her cheek, thinking. “Now, Harlow Jane, where m
ight you have put that notebook, hmm?”
“I’ll find it.” As I kept looking, I asked, “So nothin’ new?” My brows furrowed the moment I heard the dropped “g” when I’d said “nothing.” The thing about being around Southerners is that it’s mighty easy to pick up the accent.
“Nothin’ to write home about. Macon Vance was a far cry from squeaky clean. More ground in dirt, from what we’ve gathered. Money coming in from quite a few sources—”
“He was a savvy blackmailer,” Mama said. “Had an affair, then took the woman for a truckload of her husband’s cash.”
So Gina from Villa Farina had half the story right. Seemed everyone knew Macon Vance was a player, but not so many people knew he supplemented his income with the proceeds of his extracurricular activity.
I retraced my steps, yet again, but this time out loud. “I got home. Madelyn Brighton was waiting for me. Will and Gracie Flores came over so Madelyn could take Gracie’s picture in her dress for the Margaret brochure.” Assuming I wasn’t losing my mind and that I had, in fact, brought it into the house like I thought I had, what could have happened to it?
I remembered something. “Oh my gosh! Thelma Louise and Farrah!” I’d had to chase the goats out. Had the notebook been under my arm? Good Lord, had I dropped it without even realizing?
Without another word, I raced to the front door, pushed open the screen, and took the porch steps two at a time. The door squeaked open and banged closed behind me. “What on earth are you doin’?” Mama asked.
I stopped scouring the ground and looked at Mama. She stood on the porch, arms folded across her chest, watching me like I’d gone completely off my rocker. “Looking for Trudy’s notebook. Nana’s goats escaped yesterday. Maybe I dropped it when I was shooing them away.”
But even as I said it, I knew that the goats, at least in this instance, were innocent. I walked every inch of the yard, though, just in case. I stumbled across one of Meemaw’s ratty old sun hats, a fallen birdhouse, and another thatch of bluebonnets, but not Trudy Lafayette’s notebook.
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