A Custom Fit Crime

by Melissa Bourbon

  Was any of that enough of a motive for murder, though? I didn’t think so.

  I moved on to the Dallas and New York models who’d come as part of the designers’ entourage. They hadn’t actually been in the shop yet, but could one of them have snuck over from Seven Gables and . . . And what? Beaulieu hadn’t been hit over the head. He hadn’t been startled to death. Could he have been poisoned? That was a possibility. So maybe one of the models had slipped some arsenic, or something, to him somehow.

  Was the fact that they hadn’t physically been at the shop when he died calculated? From my experience, models could be as cutthroat as the mothers of child beauty pageant contestants. Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but pretty brutal. And they weren’t empty-headed. One of them could definitely be a murderer, just as any one of the other possible suspects could have done it.

  Still, I couldn’t fathom a reason why a model would do in a designer, especially before a photo shoot that could gain said model just as much exposure as said designer.

  Which left a small group of people—those closest to me. Orphie’s showing up the night before made her a possible suspect. Nana and Mama—

  My brain hitched, backtracking. Loretta Mae! She was a ghost right here in this house. Which meant she might well have seen something. Something important. Something incriminating.

  Holy smokes, Meemaw could have witnessed a murder. The only problem with this was that Meemaw and I couldn’t communicate very effectively. But it was worth a try. I whispered her name into the empty room.

  Nothing but eerie silence.

  I tried again. “Meemaw?”

  Still nothing.

  I gave it one last try. “Loretta Mae Cassidy, where in the devil are you?”

  Third time was the charm. The latch to the window in the workroom lifted with a creak and the window itself flew open, the sheers billowing from the breeze. In the distance, I could spot Nana’s goats munching on the green Texas grass, but inside, the room took on an eerie chill. Normally Meemaw brought comforting warmth with her, but not right now. The pipes in the ceiling above moaned, the garments hanging from the slats of the privacy screen, including a teal tiki dress of Loretta Mae’s that I’d found in the attic and had hung up for inspiration, swayed, and the shelves against the west-facing wall rocked, the jars of buttons and trims clanking together.

  The air rippled and the faintest hint of a form flickered. I held my breath, watching, waiting, hoping and praying that something would happen, like flipping a switch, and Loretta Mae would come into full focus. But she never quite took shape. This was the way things had been going. My great-grandmother haunted the house, but she couldn’t quite muster a corporeal form, she couldn’t speak, and communication was frustrating, on a good day. But she was still Meemaw, and having her near made me feel as if I were always wrapped up in a toasty wool jacket with a jewel-toned silk lining.

  Even with the unnatural chill in the air, Meemaw was here. “No time to mess around, Meemaw,” I said, cutting to the chase. “Michel Ralph Beaulieu was murdered, although I don’t know how, and I’m afraid . . .” I trailed off, not needing to put into words just what I was afraid of. Meemaw would know. Her charm had been getting whatever she wanted, whether it was some fabric she’d seen online or me and Will Flores to meet and start dating—which we had. There’s no way she wanted me investigated for murder, so I felt pretty sure I’d be fine there, but . . . “It has to be someone who was here in the house or one of the models,” I said. “Doesn’t it?” I rattled off the names of everyone who’d been here that morning including Mama and Nana, although I knew they were off the hook, too. First, they were innocent. And second, Meemaw wouldn’t want them investigated, either.

  The air undulated, a whoosh surrounded me, and the dress form with Mama’s wedding dress spun around.

  I had no idea what that meant.

  “Meemaw,” I said, needing answers. “Did you see anything? Do you have any ideas?”

  If she did, I could tell the sheriff. Mama had told him about her charm. She hadn’t mentioned the fact that all the Cassidy women came back as ghosts, but I felt pretty confident he’d believe me. There’d be no evidence, but it could lead him in the right direction. I held my breath, waiting.

  The dress form spun around again. I stared. “Does that mean you saw something, or you didn’t see anything?”

  It whirled a third time, and then fell still. The dense area of rippling air had vanished, and I didn’t know if Loretta Mae was still here or not.

  “Meemaw?”

  Of course she didn’t answer, but the pipes groaned and it sounded like a drawn-out vowel. Nooo. Nooo. Nooo.

  My shoulders slumped and I perched, deflated, on the stool I kept at my cutting table. So Meemaw hadn’t seen anything. Which meant we were back to square one.

  Chapter 9

  My old farmhouse was quaint and had character, both inside and out. From the kitchen, with its vintage-stamped butter yellow retro appliances and red-and-white-checkerboard curtain under the farm sink, to the long row of possum wood trees lining the driveway and shading the house, not a thing about the place was typical or cookie cutter. Usually I found a sense of comfort in being at home in the farmhouse, but today everything seemed a little off. Not even Gracie standing in front of the red Dutch door, cradling Earl Grey in her arms, looked normal. First off, Earl Grey was a tiny teacup pig, not a little kitten. Next, Gracie’s outfit was all wrong for her. She leaned toward vintage clothing, always wearing something that had years of history embedded into its seams, but not today. She wore a pair of Levis and a store-bought sleeveless blouse, so nondescript that it said nothing at all about her. And clothing, in my opinion, should tell a tale about the wearer. It should set a mood, give perspective, create an image.

  But it was Gracie’s expression that made me stop short—and the tingling of my temple where my normally coppery-tinged auburn hair sprouted a blond streak.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She stared past me and into the front room of Buttons & Bows. “They’re too tall.”

  “What’s too ta—?” I turned, the rest of the sentence falling unspoken from my lips. Ah, not what, who. The models. They’d shown up, whooshing in as if they were entitled to my Southern hospitality. “We’re stuck in this town for a while,” one of them had said, “so we came here.”

  “Height. It’s an unspoken prerequisite. Most of the models I fitted at Maximilian were five ten.”

  She stroked Earl Grey, a slight frown on her face. “Guess that’s out as a future career.”

  “Did you have dreams of becoming a model?” She was a beauty with her clear olive skin, her streaked mahogany hair, and her sixteen-year-old innocence, and she’d planned on modeling my designs for the photo shoot. Her dad was just over six feet, but however tall her mother was kept her eye-to-eye with me. It wasn’t unheard of for a model to be five seven, but it wasn’t the norm. And truthfully, I had higher aspirations for her. The life of a model wasn’t as glamorous as people thought.

  “No. Just marking things off the list. No modeling. Check.”

  I’d let the models mill around the workroom and now they were trying on the designer outfits, completely absorbed in their task. I’d caught a few snippets of their conversation. The one named Esmeralda kept her voice low, but loud enough to hear. “Beaulieu promised I’d be the top model for his line. I had to fly into New York from London and then to Dallas.” She looked around the shop. “Then the drive here with the rest of them. What was he thinking?”

  A second New York model who went only by Barbi nodded as she piled her hair atop her head. “I hear you. At least we get a chance to look at Midori’s clothes up close. She normally doesn’t let anyone near them. Better hurry before those Dallas girls come back.”

  Those Dallas girls
. There was a natural rivalry between the models. The New York models disappeared into the workroom and I turned back to Gracie.

  “I could be a vet,” she said, tickling Earl Grey behind the ears.

  “Yes, you could.”

  She hadn’t been around much lately, what with the wedding and the article looming and taking up so much of my time, so I jumped at the chance to get a pulse on how she was doing. Discovering you were a descendant of Butch Cassidy and Etta Place via an affair from a long time ago couldn’t be easy. Discovering that you had a magical charm?

  Tough for anyone, let alone a teenager.

  “Gracie,” I said, treading carefully. “We haven’t had a chance to talk lately about your . . . about the . . .”

  She put Earl Grey down, who promptly scampered off into the laundry room off the kitchen, and lifted her gaze to mine. “About the whole magic charm thing?”

  She hadn’t belted the words out, but I glanced over my shoulder anyway. The models were still in the workroom. “Something’s wrong with these. The hem’s uneven,” one of them was saying.

  “Beaulieu’s so much better,” the other one replied. “He shouldn’t have died.”

  I agreed. He should not have died. Everyone seemed to agree with that, yet someone had most likely killed him.

  The models lowered their voices as they continued looking at Beaulieu’s garments. They were so young, in their midteens, if they were a day, so probably completely oblivious of what Gracie and I were talking about. But to be sure, I edged closer and lowered my voice. “Is it getting any easier?”

  Gracie’s charm was still developing. She’d discovered hers much earlier than I’d discovered mine—which had been just a few months ago. But I’d grown up hearing about the Cassidy legacy. She hadn’t.

  “Not really.” The pallor of her face changed, just barely. It was as if a sheet of gauze had covered her, muting the light in her skin.

  The truth hit me between the eyes. “You see images now all the time, don’t you?”

  Her lower lip quivered, and she nodded. “All the time,” she whispered in a shaky voice.

  I waved my hand up and down in front of her, as if I were getting ready to utter a spell. “Which is why you’re wearing jeans and that top?”

  Her chin dipped down again. “I—I can’t touch anything old. If I do, I just g-get these flashes of people.”

  “You can’t control it at all?”

  This time she shook her head. “If I’m tired, it’s, like, worse, you know?”

  “Worse how?” I wanted to understand, but I needed more detail than what she was giving me. I’d seen her touch a vintage dressing gown at the old Denison Mansion, had seen her react to whatever she’d seen. She’d known who that dress belonged to just from one touch to the fabric. That had been my first clue that she was charmed.

  She drew a circle on the floor with her toe. Nerves. I recognized the signs. Working with nervous brides, new models, plump women wanting to look their best in the outfits I designed for them all brought out similar gestures. “It’s like I see clips from a movie, but they’re all choppy and broken. Like the old black-and-white ones you see on TV sometimes? You know what I mean?”

  “Exactly.” The Cassidy charm wasn’t refined. Mama’s weeds often grew bigger than her flowers, and they responded to her emotions, doubling in size when she was happy or excited, withering when she was angry or sad. Nana’s ability to communicate with her goats had helped the locals, once or twice. Will had come to her when he’d had trouble with one of his, for example, but on a daily basis, Nana and her goats didn’t help anyone, and her herd got her into heaps of trouble. Goats, after all, will be goats.

  And then there was me. When I made a garment for someone, what they wanted—whatever they’d hoped for—came true. It was as if I had a magic wand and was able to wave it around above a person’s head, saying, “Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!” and then, voilà ! I cast a spell. Only it wasn’t always so easy. If someone wanted something unethical or sinister, I couldn’t stop that dream from coming true. I didn’t have a charm for that.

  But I had an idea about how to help her adjust to her charm. Since she couldn’t wear her treasured vintage clothes at the moment, I’d make her something retro, stitching my charm into the seams. Whatever Gracie wanted, once she wore the outfit, would happen, and I’d lay money down that what she wanted was to be able to manage her charm.

  We talked for a little while longer and I reassured her that she’d adjust and things would get better. “I hope so,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “What am I working on today?”

  Gracie had become my apprentice. Sewing, tailoring, and design came naturally to her, and she came several days a week after school to hone her craft.

  “I’m making a fitted jacket for Mrs. James,” I said, heading with her to the workroom. “I’d like you to work on the darts. After that, we’ll be adding a houndstooth lining.”

  “They’re awfully quiet,” Gracie said as we approached the workroom.

  The French doors were closed—not how I’d left them. “They certainly are.” They’d asked to look at the dresses they’d been brought out here to model. “We’ll never get to wear his clothes again,” Barbi had said, her lower lip pushed out in a pout.

  I hadn’t seen the harm in that, but now, as I yanked open the French doors, they jumped in unison, hands pressed to their chests in surprise.

  Gracie and I stared at them in their half-dressed state, but that wasn’t the alarming part. No, what had me tongue-tied was the fact that they were trying on Midori’s designs.

  An invisible force pushed me forward. It was enough to help me find my voice again. “What in tarnation are you doing?” I demanded.

  Esmeralda said, “W-we saw them just hanging there—”

  “Hanging there in the garment bags, you mean?” I challenged.

  “We just thought we could try them, like, real quick.” The dress Barbi had on hung lopsided on her frame, the hem on one side dragging on the hardwood floor.

  “You cannot just come in here and act like you own the place,” I said tightly. “Take them off.”

  Barbi got the picture. She began stripping off the color-blocked dress. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Cassidy. I didn’t mean . . . I won’t do it again.”

  Esmeralda blew an adolescent raspberry from between her lips. “This stuff’s too old for us, anyway. Zoe must have one leg longer than the other. Stupid dress,” she muttered.

  Barbi scoffed. “Yeah, the fit sucks. She’s way overrated.”

  Enough was enough. “Girls,” I said, channeling my authoritative voice, “you have five minutes to get my workroom cleaned up and get those clothes back in their garment bags.”

  “Chill out, Harlow—”

  My blood had been simmering just under the surface of my skin, but now it revved up to boiling. “Esmeralda, don’t tell me to chill out when you are messing with expensive clothes that don’t belong to you.” I looked her up and down. “Even if it does hang oddly.”

  They stared at me. “We’re just—”

  “Uh-uh.” I wagged my finger at them just the way Meemaw used to do to Red and me when got into trouble. “Take. Them. Off.”

  “Let’s just go,” Barbi said under her breath to Esmeralda.

  Esmeralda’s pointed jaw pulsed and her lips drew into a thin lin
e. She hesitated, looking as if she was ready to refuse, but then she waved one hand in the air and lifted her chin defiantly. “Fine. You’re way too serious.”

  Sympathy for rail-thin übertall women who complained about things not fitting? I shook my head. No one was ever satisfied. One of my missions with fashion design was to help women see themselves as beautiful, no matter their shape or size. I designed for the everyday woman, not some unrealistic idealized version. Another reason why Bliss was where I belonged.

  I wasn’t sure if I was a keen observer of human nature, but the Dallas models hadn’t come to play dress-up with Beaulieu’s clothes, and my esteem for them went up a notch. It took Esmeralda and Barbi almost fifteen minutes to put things to right in my workroom. They finally left, still mumbling under their breath. “His stuff blows the rest away,” one of them said. “Totally. They fit, for starters.”

  Gracie set to work on the darts and I took a few minutes to think about what I’d make for her to help her find some peace. Later I’d study my favorite sewing blog, Gertie’s New Blog for Better Sewing. It was one of my go-to spots on the Web. Gertie’s personal passion for all things vintage was perfectly aligned with Gracie’s, so I knew I’d find inspiration there.

  But before I could do that, I had a long list of other tasks to work on, starting with the beading on my mother’s dress.

  Chapter 10

  Loretta Mae had been a big proponent of the family meeting. Whenever there was anything to discuss, the Cassidy clan would get together in the gathering room of the yellow farmhouse—which was now the front room of Buttons & Bows—and discuss whatever needed to be discussed.

  Spending an hour working on embellishments for my mother’s dress didn’t do anything to take my mind off Beaulieu’s death, and I had a hankering to call a meeting to talk it all through. Who would have wanted him dead, and why?