He took the crystal stemware right out of my hand. “Let me get you a refill, Cassidy. Anyone else?” The Kincaids both shook their heads no and Will sauntered off. Mere seconds later, he was back with a fresh glass of ruby red wine.
I thanked him, scrunching my nose to edge my glasses back into place. Then my stomach rumbled and all I could think was that I should have stayed home because I was much better behind the scenes, dressing people for their parties, than being one of the partygoers myself. Another reason it had been so easy to leave New York.
Keith Kincaid had launched back into talking about the new project he was cooking up with Miriam, shifting Will’s attention again. Which was fine with me. I wanted to find Josie. My stomach growled again, but I ignored it, taking another sip of wine as I looked around. I hardly knew anybody at this shindig. I’d been born and raised in Bliss, but at this moment I felt like a stranger in a strange land.
I scanned the room looking for Karen or Ruthann, or even Zinnia James, the only other people I did sort of know, but I couldn’t spot any of them.
Will’s voice snaked into my consciousness again. “Better slow down there, Cassidy. From the sound of it, your stomach isn’t gonna like all wine and no food.”
I’d hoped no one could hear my complaining tummy, but no such luck. Instead of food, I swallowed my embarrassment. There was something about the sound of his voice that wound right through me and gripped my insides in a bear hug. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I’d heard slow Southern drawls all my life, so I didn’t think it was that. Maybe it was the gritty undertone of his tenor, or the way he somehow infused his words with a smile. Or maybe it was all three converging in a perfect storm.
Whatever it was, I kind of liked the feeling it created inside me.
“Will, my boy, you’re the man for the job.” Keith Kincaid’s John Wayne voice snapped everything back in place, including my fuzzy head. “Let’s talk details.”
He led Will away just as a waiter approached with a tray of appetizers. “Flatiron steak martini, miss?” he asked. I traded my wineglass for a martini glass as he rattled off the ingredients. Toasted juniper berries, Spanish olives, pickled onions, crumbled blue cheese, and thinly sliced grilled flatiron steak.
It could have been Froot Loops, for all I cared. Anything to stop the ruckus in my belly. One bite of the vermouth-marinated steak and my stomach quieted, my head cleared, and I knew I could make it through the rest of the evening.
Will threw me a glance over his shoulder, followed by an apologetic shrug of his shoulders. I responded by fluttering my fingers in a way that said he didn’t owe me a thing. I never expected anything from any man, and I was never disappointed. Early lesson from my father.
“There’s Josie,” Mrs. Kincaid said, pointing to a cluster of people next to the bar.
Josie stood slightly apart from the others, looking drawn and sallow, and like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Worry . . . or guilt? “I’m going to go—”
A familiar-looking woman edged between Mrs. Kincaid and me, cutting me off. “Lori, you look stunning, as always,” she said in a syrupy voice.
“Me?” Mrs. Kincaid pressed her diamond-bejeweled hand to her chest and batted her eyelashes. “Look at you, Helen. You look simply divine.”
I couldn’t place her after a minute or two, so I gave up. Twice I tried to interject, but twice I was cut off. I stood there, half listening, feeling like a third wheel while they chatted, waiting for an opening so I could break away. It was harder than it should have been.
“Such a tragedy,” Mrs. Kincaid was saying.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard,” the woman said. “I can only imagine what you and Keith must have felt. Buddy said . . .”
I tried to catch Josie’s eye, which was impossible since her back was to me.
“. . . paying for the funeral . . .”
That caught my attention. I had figured that without next of kin, Nell would be cremated without a service, which had struck me as so . . . so . . . sad. When I’d heard there would be a funeral, I’d wondered who was footing the bill.
“. . . least we could do for Josie,” Mrs. Kincaid was saying. “She’s broken up over it.”
As the conversation shifted to the church rummage sale, I turned my attention to the details of the room. There was an emphasis on flowers everywhere I looked. Floral upholstery on the overstuffed sofas. Both print and solid-colored pillows with elaborate trim and tassels artfully accented the room.
The women droned on.
“. . . or Nate will bring them by . . .”
“. . . too many dishes and books . . .”
“. . . whatever’s left to the 4-H for the girls to practice with . . .”
Mrs. Kincaid had a thing for dried flowers. Arrangements decorated the fireplace mantel, the center of the glossy mahogany coffee table, and a matching side table in the corner of the room. She should donate one of those to the rummage sale, I thought. Or all of them.
“. . . nice to have the Lincoln,” the woman was saying. “Buddy won’t let me buy a new . . .”
Cars? I had to escape. Now. “Excu—” I started, but Lori Kincaid tittered. “You know Keith’s rules. No exceptions. The Lexus comes home to mama tomorrow.”
Lincoln and Lexus. Those were two car makes I would never own. I had Meemaw’s beat-up old Ford pickup, but with a dead battery, it didn’t do me any good. In a pinch, I had a bicycle, but I’d spent enough time in New York that I preferred walking anyway.
I debated my options: stay put or slowly walk away. Finally, I realized I might never find a pause in their conversation. “Ahem.” Clearing my throat seemed like a cliché, but it worked. Mrs. Kincaid stopped talking about who could drive which car and they both focused on me. A lightbulb seemed to go off in Mrs. Kincaid’s head. “Oh, my stars, I do apologize, Harlow,” she exclaimed a little overzealously. “Helen, you were asking about the dressmaker.”
“I was,” she said in true East Texas form. “Was” became waaa-uz. She tilted her chin down, eyeing me through her lashes. Just like everyone else in town, Helen gave me a good once-over, from the streak in my curly Cassidy hair to my zipper-adorned heels. “Is this . . . ?” “This” sounded like the-is.
Mrs. Kincaid beamed, looking like she’d discovered her own personal diamond in the rough. “Yes, it is. This,” she said, sweeping her arm toward me, “is Harlow Cassidy. Harlow,” she said, “meet Helen Abernathy.”
Of Abernathy Home Builders. Another high-powered Bliss woman. So why did they both come off as mere seconds to their husbands? “Nice to meet you,” I said, holding my hand out.
“I hear you’re making all the dresses for the wedding of the year,” Mrs. Abernathy said, leaving my hand dangling.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, lowering my arm. “I—”
She cut me off, saying, “I seem to recollect Miriam taking sewing lessons once upon a time.”
Mrs. Kincaid scoffed. “Once upon a long time ago. That machine hasn’t seen the light of day in years. She thinks Holly might take it up one day. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“A bit of good fortune for you that there’s a dressmaker in town now.” Mrs. Abernathy turned back to me with a thin smile. “Coleta Cassidy’s granddaughter, come back home to roost. Your grandmother and I go way back, you know. We were in school together.”
A lot of people went way back with Nana, I was discovering. Mrs. Abernathy. Mrs. James, the senator’s wife. Nana had some highfalutin friends once upon a time.
I gave a polite response, sneaking a glance at the bar. The spot where Josie had been standing was filled with a new group of people. Drat.
“Harlow?” Mrs. Kincaid snapped.
“I’m sorry. What?”
Helen Abernathy pinched her lips, but repeated the question she’d apparently asked me. “Maybe you can get your grandmother to sell that land? It’s prime location.”
I caught a glimpse of Josie heading upstairs.
“She, um . . .” I inched away from them.
“You know the city wants to build a park there.”
“Over her dead body, she always says.” Mrs. Kincaid and Mrs. Abernathy didn’t get the joke. I wiped the smile off my face. “She’s not selling.”
“All those goats,” one of them said.
“It’s a crazy hobby,” the other responded.
“It’s not a hobby,” I said, keeping one eye on the stairs, but Josie wasn’t in sight anymore. “I’m sorry. If you’ll excuse me,” I said, backing away.
I left them muttering about Nana’s goats and the value of land off the square. Weaving through the mess of people, I dashed up the stairs as fast as my three-anda-half-inch heels would take me.
It wasn’t until I was at the top that I remembered where I’d seen Mrs. Abernathy before.
In Buttons & Bows, alongside Zinnia James, balking when Nell had held up my Escher-inspired black-and-white textile dress.
Chapter 33
I didn’t find Josie, but I did find Karen. She was leaning against the banister overlooking the gathering room, watching the people below with the focus of a master artist committing a scene to memory so he could interpret it on canvas later. She wore navy slacks and a conservative powder blue blouse and looked more business casual than glitzy. Not the right choice for an evening with the first family of Bliss.
My little pep talk hadn’t worked.
She jumped when I greeted her, clutching her hand to her heart. “Oh, God, you scared me, Harlow.”
Even though she’d said my name, she looked at me like she was walking down the cereal aisle at Walmart and had suddenly seen a celebrity. Clearly she couldn’t quite adjust to seeing me out of Buttons & Bows and in the Kincaids’ house.
“Yep, it’s me. I spend most of my waking hours at the dress shop, but every once in a while, I escape.”
“I didn’t know you were invited to this,” she said, redirecting her gaze to the people below us. Either she didn’t want to miss a second of the festivities—which seemed unlikely, since she was hiding up here—or she was a stalker whose prey was on the move.
I took advantage of the bird’s-eye view and did a quick search for Derek. There was no sign of him. I couldn’t imagine he’d miss his brother’s wedding, but the gala? It didn’t surprise me that he hadn’t made an appearance.
“Yeah, well . . .” I stuck an olive from my martini glass in my mouth. Seemed easier than explaining my fast friendship with Madelyn, her husband’s prior commitment, and her last-minute invitation for me to join her. I smiled, pushing my slipping glasses back into place.
“Whatcha doing up here?” I asked, peering over the balcony. From here, it looked like everyone in Bliss was crammed into the Kincaids’ mansion. I couldn’t keep my suspicious mind from wandering. Who among the party guests might have wanted Nell dead?
“I just came up here to get a few minutes of quiet,” she said.
I gave her a sidelong look. What if Karen had killed Nell? I created a quick list in my head of reasons why she might be guilty, wondering at the same time if this was how Sheriff McClaine worked.
Why did people kill? Every TV show and movie focused on one of three motives. Revenge. Greed. Jealousy. Had Karen wanted to get back at Nell for something? From what I’d gathered, they’d been good friends. Greed? Nell owned her shop, but other than that, did she have any assets to speak of? Nobody had mentioned anything, so I doubted it. From what Ruthann had said, Nell’s upbringing wasn’t wrought with riches so she didn’t have anything much to steal. Greed seemed unlikely.
Jealousy, then?
Oh! My heartbeat ratcheted up a notch. What if—
A horn blared from down below, a collective hush falling over the crowd. Keith Kincaid’s voice, projected and tinny, greeted his guests. “I wanna thank all y’all for comin’ out tonight,” he began, slow and lighthearted, just like John Wayne. “I’m gonna cut the bull crap and get right down to it. The Kincaid Family Foundation is in honor of my folks, Justin and Vanetta. They wanted to bring our family together for a common goal, making Bliss, Texas, a town to be reckoned with, and they did just that.”
A raucous cheer went up, drowning out whatever Keith said next. I searched the crowd, looking for the man to go with the voice, finally spotting him in the far corner, a Texas A&M megaphone pressed to his lips. He pushed a button and the horn sounded again, instantly quieting the crowd.
“We know y’all share our values and we thank you for continuing to honor the memory of my folks by donatin’ to the foundation. We couldn’t do what we do without y’all.”
I bristled. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that my concerns weren’t the same as the Kincaids’ concerns. Their disapproval of me when I’d dated Derek had driven that point home.
I caught a glimpse of Will Flores. The scowl on his face indicated he might not share the same values as Keith Kincaid, either.
Mr. Kincaid set the megaphone on the built-in bookshelf behind him, interestingly absent of actual books—guess he wasn’t kidding when he scoffed at Miriam’s plans for a bookshop in town—snagged a drink from the portable bar, and was sucked into the crowd.
Karen had zeroed in on someone down below. I followed her gaze and spotted a tall man standing next to Nate. I recognized him from the night Nell died. Ted, Karen’s husband. For a second, I thought I saw Zinnia James as well, but the woman was instantly swallowed up by the crowd so I couldn’t be sure.
As my thoughts circled back to a possible motive for Karen, I automatically went to the lowest common denominator. What if Nell’s secret lover had been Karen’s husband? Or, better yet, what if he was the person she’d met at Reata? Karen had even said that Ted frequented that restaurant.
He hadn’t struck me as the cheating type, but Meemaw had taught me long ago never to judge by appearances. “Look through the eyes,” she’d always said. “Windows to the soul.”
I made small talk with Karen, leaning against the banister, trying to craft a question without being too blunt.
Turned out I didn’t have to make the effort. After a minute of awkward starts and stops, she ripped her attention away from the crowd downstairs and looked at me. “I . . . I don’t know what to do, Harlow.”
“About what?”
She looked over her shoulder at the deserted landing and hallway, then back over the banister. We were completely alone. “The sheriff questioned Ted today about Nell.”
“Your husband.” I kept my voice steady and my face still, but maybe my rogue thought wasn’t so far off.
She nodded. “This is Bliss. Nothing stays quiet for long. People are going to find out. What if they think he had something to do with it? It could ruin him.”
At least now I knew why Karen was dressed to disappear and was hiding upstairs. She was already afraid the gossipmongers of Bliss had turned their forked tongues her way. “Why would they think that, Karen?” I replied. “It was probably routine. I mean, when was the last murder in Bliss? Probably eons ago. So this is a big deal. They’re probably questioning everyone who knew Nell.”
“No,” she blurted. Her eyes welled with tears, her lower lip trembled, and her whole body seemed to quiver. “He . . . he saw her. Just . . . just before she died.”
Whoa. “He did?” I flashed back to the night of the murder, when Josie, Mama, Karen, and I had all been questioned by the sheriff. He’d asked if any of us had seen Nell after she’d left Buttons & Bows. All of us had said no. Karen’s husband hadn’t been with her at my shop—the reason, I guess, the sheriff hadn’t even asked him if he’d seen Nell. The question, then, was why hadn’t he offered up the information?
“Nell wanted to revise her w-will—”
“Wait. So you knew she had a will?” But Ruthann hadn’t.
She nodded. “Ted did it for her.”
“Your husband’s a lawyer?” Now I was up to speed. It looked like Nell had used her friends for very specific things. Ted must have been the lawy
er Gina had seen Nell with at Villa Farina.
She nodded. “He doesn’t even do wills and trusts. Strictly oil and gas. But she asked me for his help. He . . . he only did it as a favor. He met her that night at Seed-n-Bead so they could go over the final document, but . . . but . . .”
I put my hand on her shoulder. Her body stopped shuddering, her tears subsiding. “But what?”
“There was no one to witness it,” she said, looking completely devastated.
“Who was supposed to?”
“I have no idea. She wanted me to convince Ted to help her, but she didn’t tell me any more than that. But, see, he’s a lawyer. He should have made sure there was a witness, right? So why didn’t he?”
It wasn’t hard to read between the lines. What she really wanted to know was if her husband and Nell were working on the will at all, or had their meetings turned personal? She looked at me like I might be able to help her make sense of things, but I couldn’t.
“Have you asked him?”
“I tried.” She lowered her voice, darting another furtive glance over her shoulder. We were still alone. A hint of anger crept into her tone. “He turned it all around, like I was trying to tell him how to do his job, and how dare I doubt him. I want to trust him, but why wouldn’t there be a witness when they were meeting to sign the will so she could leave everything to her bab—?”
She broke off before finishing the word, but too late for me not to fill in the blank. To her baby. So Karen knew about Nell’s pregnancy.
“I presume the will’s not valid.”
“Not if she never signed it.” She spoke sharply now, unloading everything she’d been keeping bottled up inside. “They met a bunch of times to work on it, but when I asked him about that, he said I was being selfish, that he was just doing his job and helping my friend.”
What if Ted was the father of Nell’s child and she’d turned to blackmail? That was something I hadn’t considered. If Nell had threatened to spill the beans about their illicit affair, would Ted have killed her to silence her? A sullied reputation in a small town would be hard to live down.
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