A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (20 page)

Her hand fluttered up, her bony finger dabbing under each eye. “Lord, child, you are a blessing.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said with a little laugh. “Meemaw taught me to sew. It’s all I know how to do.”

“You bring people joy. It’s the Cassidy way.”

Something in her voice made goose bumps rise on my skin. For the second time in less than an hour, I was pretty sure that the Cassidy secrets weren’t so secret after all. Zinnia and my grandmother had been good friends once upon a time. Had Nana told Mrs. James about the family charms?

“I’d love a Harlow Cassidy creation,” Mrs. James said, interrupting my thoughts. She pushed herself off the cot and shuffled over to the bars, reaching into the bag of swatches I handed her. She seemed to keep returning to
one above the others—a pale blue voile, the cotton fabric the exact color, I realized, of the Margaret gown she’d worn so many years ago.

“There were three Margaret gowns in Meemaw’s armoire. Who wore the green one?” I asked, the question rolling off my tongue before I could even gather why I’d asked it.

She hesitated for a moment, taking hold of the iron bars, looking like she wanted to rattle them, demanding her release. Her gaze bore into mine, the blue of her eyes deepening until it was the color of the ocean. “Eleanor Mcafferty.”

My mind swam as I tried to unravel all the threads knotted up in my mind. “So you, Mrs. Mcafferty, and my grandmother were Margarets together?”

She nodded, her knuckles turning white from her tightening grip on the bars.

“And Mrs. Mcafferty wore the green dress?”

“Yes. It was lovely on her, too. I’ll never forget the day we tried them all on. Ellie’s was the only one that was authentic. A bit of their family history, as it turns out. I could tell your grandmother wanted the green one instead of the one Trudy and Fern Lafayette had made for her, but Loretta Mae wouldn’t hear it. She said that each dress had a history, and that it belonged to a particular person. The yellow one was made especially for Coleta, and it would carry her history.”

Except my mother and I had never been Margarets so the history had been trapped in the seams of the gown forever.

“I knew the blue one was mine. Trudy and Fern made it just for me.”

My pulse ratcheted up. Dressmaking had a way of doing
that to me. “Where did the green gown come from?” I asked, my head fuzzy, my thoughts disjointed.

“Loretta Mae told us that Etta Place wore it. Ellie fell in love with it the moment she saw it. She tried it on and your great-grandmother took one look at her and said things were as they should be; it belonged to her. That irked your grandmother, Coleta, to no end. She loved that dress.”

Was that part of why Meemaw tried to keep the dresses from me? Did she not want to dredge up old memories for Nana?

I believed exactly what Meemaw believed: that every piece of clothing made for a person carries history in every stitch and seam. What did a tear and ripped threads mean to that history? Was it a metaphor for a damaged life? “What happened that night?” I asked. “Why is the green dress torn?”

Instead of answering, she said softly, “We’re all the same underneath, you know.” She pointed her manicured finger to herself, then to me. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

I felt myself go blue in the face trying to get Mrs. James to spill what she knew, but the woman was as stubborn as a mule. “You need to ask your grandmother, Harlow. It’s her story to tell, not mine.”

“She doesn’t want to talk about it,” I said.

She wouldn’t budge, and finally I gave up.

As I gathered up the swatches, I tried to understand what she and her family were going through. Mrs. James’s daughter Sandra had looked worse than her mother did, as if she’d suffered a one-two punch. Having your mother in jail had to be one of the worst things a person could experience. Only having it be your child would be worse.

The thoughts triggered a chain reaction of ideas in my mind. The argument between Mrs. James and Macon Vance that day at the club. Meeting Sandra and Libby, then meeting Steven Allen, Libby’s father. Their images flashed like scenes from a movie. Libby didn’t look like Steven, with his pointed nose.

I pictured the faintest smile on Libby’s face and the tiny dimple that formed. Just like the picture in the newspaper of Macon Vance…

Oh no. Had he putted a few rounds with Sandra Allen?

“Harlow?” Mrs. James said, her eyes narrowing as she peered at me through the bars of her cell.

A snippet of something else Mrs. James had said to the golf pro the day they’d argued surfaced in my memory.
It is not your daughter coming out.
I suddenly understood what she’d been saying. He may have
fathered
a child, but he hadn’t
raised
her.

As I stood up on shaky legs, a few more threads of the mystery unraveled. I moved toward the bars, stringing my tote bag over my forearm, then gripped the bars, my skin suddenly clammy, my head dizzy as I tried to figure out what this meant. I studied her.

Mrs. James looked at my face and staggered back, collapsing on the prison cot, and I knew.

“It’s Libby, isn’t it?” I finally said, unraveling the thread that made the most sense. “Macon Vance was Libby’s father.”

“Did he have a blood test done? Did he get a sample of Libby’s DNA?” Josie asked, sounding like a detective. She leaned back on the couch, a glass of sweet tea in one hand, my lookbook in her lap, staring at me.

I sat on the settee, the green silk gown Eleanor Mcafferty had worn as a Margaret—the same dress her granddaughter would wear in less than a week’s time—draped over my lap. I pushed the fine size 9 needle through the silk fabric, carefully repairing the torn armhole seam. If only I could absorb the history of the dress by holding it, but my charm didn’t let me do
that
. “He told Mrs. James that he did but she said she never saw the proof.”

Josie looked thoughtful as she sipped her tea. “So let me get this straight. Sixteen years ago, Sandra James had a fling with Macon Vance. She got pregnant, but Macon had already moved on. She ended up marrying Steven Allen, who’s raised Libby as his own.”

“Right.” I tied a knot, snipped the thread, and began repairing a different area of the tear. “According to Mrs. James, Sandra never told anyone the truth, least of all Macon.”

“So how did he find out?
When
did he find out?”

The questions launched a whole new set of concerns in my mind. My pulse throbbed in my temples. Could
Sandra
have killed Macon to keep her secret? Could she be filled with guilt over the fact that her mother was taking the fall for her crime? “Mrs. James doesn’t know. He came to her about a month ago, she said, claiming to be Libby’s biological father.”

“Blackmail?”

I pointed my needle at her. “Yes, that’s what I was thinking, too. It wouldn’t look good for the married daughter of a conservative Texas senator to have a child by some other man, right?”

“So did Mrs. James pay him off?”

Before Mrs. James had been able to tell me anything more, Deputy McClaine had shut down the visit, unceremoniously ushering me out of the jailhouse. I’d spent the night tossing and turning, trying to forget that I’d overheard her tell Macon Vance that he’d regret it if he didn’t leave, and wondering if I could still believe she didn’t kill him, alibi or no. Did whatever history they had together mean Nana might lie for Zinnia James? “Remember that day at the club? Mrs. James told him their business was done. What if she was talking about blackmail? What if she
did
pay him off, but he was coming around wanting more?”

I finished the armhole repair, tied off the thread, and jabbed the needle into the pincushion on the coffee table.

“She didn’t say anything else?”

I’d replayed the conversation in the jailhouse over and over, but nothing else Mrs. James had said seemed relevant. Without warning, the pages of the lookbook in
Josie’s lap rustled, gently at first, then with vigor. “What the…” Josie pushed the book off her lap. It landed on the floor with a thud, but the cover flung open and the pages fanned out frenetically.

I started, forcing myself not to jump off the settee and grab up the lookbook. Meemaw was trying to tell me something, but how could she, right here in front of Josie?

I peered at it, trying to see the page, the outfits, and figure out what the message was.

“Harlow, did you hear me?”

I snapped my gaze away from the book. “What?”

She bent down, flipped the cover shut on the lookbook, and picked it up, quickly dropping it on the table as if it were a smoking gun. She pushed it toward the center with her fingertips, scootching to the corner of the couch to get as far away from it as she could. “This house is haunted, you know that?”

“Whaa—?” The word stuck in my throat. I swallowed, trying to set it free, but my ricocheting thoughts stopped me cold. First Madelyn, then Gavin McClaine, and now Josie. The pressure of keeping my family’s secrets was weighing on my soul. Maybe I should have a coming out party and get it over with.
Yes,
I could announce with a flourish.
We’re all charmed. It started with Butch Cassidy’s daughter and continued with every woman born in his line. No, no, no, we’re not witches,
I could say.
It’s more like we’re enchanted.

“Remember at Halloween?” she said again. “All the kids used to joke around that Butch Cassidy’s ghost was hiding upstairs with the Sundance Kid, their pistols pointing at the front gate through the attic window. Anyone who went trick-or-treating here was taking their life in their hands.”

I waited for her laugh, but it didn’t come. “I never knew that,” I said, my stomach coiling.

“Yeah, well,” she said, waving away her own fears. “It’s an old house. Lots of drafts and creaks.”

“Sometimes they keep me up at night,” I said, making myself giggle lightly. Of course, it was the truth. Meemaw, the ghost, was like a cat. She prowled the hallways in the dark, scaring me half to death whenever she’d settle down near me, startling me awake by gently stroking my hair with an invisible hand.

Josie and I made awkward, idle chitchat as I tidied up my workroom, adjusting the size of my most utilitarian dress form so I could make any other minor alterations to Gracie’s gown. I yanked down the pulley contraption and made another inspection of Libby’s dress, bustling the back before releasing the lock and letting it slowly return to its place at the ceiling.

Josie gazed in awe at the device. “You’re a clever woman, Harlow,” she said before she left.

I shut the door behind her, trying not to dwell on her skittish backward glance as she hurried down the porch steps and across the flagstone path. Instead, I wondered if I was clever enough to figure out what had gone on among my grandmother, Mrs. James, and Eleanor Mcafferty so many years ago, and how it was connected to what was going on today.

As soon as the garden gate closed behind Josie, I rushed to the lookbook, still on the coffee table, and flung it open, flipping through the pages until I found the one I was sure Meemaw had opened it to earlier. If this was a message, I didn’t understand.

“Meemaw?” I looked around, but there was no sign of her. The pages held pictures, sketches, and details of a
special collection I’d designed on my own time while I’d worked for Maximilian. I’d ordered all my fabrics from Emma One Sock, a one-stop online shop for designer fashion fabrics, had used a selection of middle-aged women in my SoHo neighborhood, and had created an artsy collection with Marrakesh-style two-toned caftans, hooked-back tunics, and relaxed caravan pants. SoHo Chic for women who wanted to grow older with grace.

Finally, unable to decipher the message—if there even was one—I closed the book, got up, and headed back into the workroom. “I don’t understand, Meemaw,” I muttered as I pulled out my pattern paper, measuring tape, ruler, and Mrs. James’s measurements. I’d made her an outfit for a summer fund-raiser a while back. If anything, she’d lost a few pounds in the last couple of days, but that was easy enough to work with. It was easier to take something in than make it bigger.

I still didn’t know what Meemaw was trying to tell me. I didn’t know what could have happened with Nana, Mrs. James, and Eleanor Mcafferty that would have resulted in a torn gown. And I had no way of helping Mrs. James get of jail other than to make her the perfect outfit and hoped things improved from there.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

I dove headlong into a tiered dress for Mrs. James. I studied my sketch, tapping the end of my pencil against my cutting table, erasing, redrawing, and erasing again. The bodice was all wrong. I’d started with a scoop neck, something different from the typical button-up blouses the senator’s wife usually wore. But after seeing one of the SoHo Chic designs, I realized that she wore them because they flattered her, and I switched to a faux wraparound bodice attached to a three tiered skirt. A ruched, banded waist, lined bodice, and zip back finished it off.

“Huh.” The sound of my voice seemed to bounce off the dress form in the corner, off the corkboard with sketches I’d done and wanted to make into samples, off the Mason jars filled with buttons and ribbons. Here I’d thought Meemaw was trying to give me a message about the murder, but now I knew it had been about the dress for the senator’s wife. How Loretta Mae had known I couldn’t quite envision Zinnia James’s perfect outfit, I didn’t know, but it was clear in my head now thanks to her.

My mind wandered as I shaded in the design with a blunt blue colored pencil. I ran through my to-do list:

1. Write Gracie’s pedigree.

Now that I knew what her family history actually was, it had me in a bit of a quandary. What had Macon Vance said to Mrs. James? Something about forging credentials like a lawyer who hadn’t passed the bar. He’d compared it to a Margaret with no pedigree—like his daughter, Libby.

“No wonder she doesn’t look anything like her father,” I muttered. “Poor Libby. Poor Steven.” I sighed. “Poor Macon Vance.” Had he wanted to know his child, or had he wanted money? Either way, he hadn’t deserved to die the way he had.