A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (30 page)

As Mrs. James read each birth story, the young lady’s beau joined his Margaret onstage. The teenage boys edged up behind me, waiting for their cue. I only half listened to Mrs. James, my mind trying, instead, to make sense of the fragmented conversation we’d just had.

Lightning striking twice. Someone else had said that to me. Recently, too. But who?

“She looks beautiful.”

Will Flores’s voice at my side pulled me out of my thoughts. “Yes, she does,” I said, looking at Gracie. My gaze drifted to Libby. She looked so poised. To think, Macon Vance, her own father, could have destroyed that.

My stomach grew tight as I remembered something. Deputy Gavin McClaine had said Macon Vance was from Amarillo. Mrs. James had just said there’d been some scandal in Amarillo with Mrs. Hughes.

Coincidence? My gut was saying no way.

I still didn’t know what Trudy Lafayette and lightning striking twice had to do with anything.

I tapped my foot impatiently, waiting while Mrs. James read through each Margaret’s pedigree. Each girl stepped forward, one by one, as her beau handed her a yellow rose.

“Darlin’,” Will said, catching Gracie in a hug as she left the stage, “you’re beautiful.”

Duane dropped Libby’s hand as she came up to us. The straight skirt, double rows of ruffles, and the heavily appliquéd bodice with the square neckline perfectly matched the girl and her quiet personality. Sandra glided up next to her, their smiles widening as Steven appeared from behind the backdrop curtain in his Victorian suit. Behind him, the beaus gathered, dressed to the nines in period costumes, waiting to escort the newly presented girls during their first waltz.

Seeing the Allens together—or maybe it was the new ideas percolating in my mind—I was beginning to believe Sandra’s version of things. She and Will both painted less than flattering pictures of Anna Hughes. They couldn’t both be wrong.

“Libby’s gown is wonderful, Harlow,” Sandra said to me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so… so… happy.”

“Well, of course,” Mrs. James said as she passed by, as if it were ludicrous to think it would have turned out any other way. I thought about chasing her down to find out what the Amarillo scandal had been, but she was already surrounded by a group of clucking mamas. I’d have to catch up with her later.

Libby beamed. She
did
look happy. Poised and confident, just exactly what I’d hoped she’d feel after wearing the dress I’d made for her. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks had a rosy tint to them, and she looked like she’d blossomed, breaking out of her caterpillar cocoon, emerging as a colorful butterfly. “I’ll probably never wear this again,” she said, “but I love it.”

Gracie extricated herself from her dad’s hug and whispered something to Libby. They giggled, said, “Ta ta!” in unison and with perfect debutante inflection, and skipped off, giggling and talking before their waltz.

“I need a computer,” I said to Will as the music started again.

Sandra Allen piped up. “Tina Nelson’s the country club’s manager on duty. I’m sure you can use hers. Ta,” she said with a wave of her hand as she and Steven started to wander off. Will and I started backstage, but Sandra’s voice stopped me. “Harlow?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t thank you enough for stepping in and taking care of things for my mother.” She gestured to the stage and the Margarets milling around. “Everything really is perfect.”

I smiled, and thanked her. It
was
perfect, except that Trudy and Fern weren’t there to see the fruits of their labor. Trudy was barely hanging on after being attacked, and there was a killer still on the loose who had used my dressmaking shears as a murder weapon.

We stayed put until the waltz was over and Gracie had been escorted by her last-minute beau, one Jason Boone, off the stage and to her seat in the banquet hall. Will whispered in her ear before joining me at the club’s lobby computer. He stood on one side of me, Josie and her blond-haired, suntanned husband, Nate, on the other. “What are you looking for?” Josie asked.

I’d Googled Anna Hughes, just as I’d done at home, and was scrolling through the entries. “Following a hunch.”

“I hear you got you some smarts,
Ms.
Cassidy.”

We all turned to see Deputy Gavin McClaine amble up to us looking just the same as he ever did in his beige law enforcement clothes. Once again, I tried to get a vision of him in something else—anything else—but came up blank. The man was an enigma… but not necessarily in a good way.

“So you’re Will Flores,” Gavin said. He didn’t offer his hand like a good Southern gentleman. Good manners only went so far, apparently.

Will didn’t offer his either. “Deputy.”

Nate straightened up, his left arm draped comfortably
around Josie’s shoulder, the other extended. Breeding had been drilled into him by Lori Kincaid, society matron extraordinaire.

“Gavin. Heard you were back in town,” Nate said, his chin dimple looking more pronounced than usual. Where Will was more ruggedly attractive, and Gavin was kind of badass good-looking, Nate was a classically handsome man. Together, he and Josie would make beautiful babies.

“With bells and whistles,” Gavin said. “Wouldn’t miss such a highfalutin shindig.”

“Look!” Finally, the Amarillo scandal involving Anna Hughes loaded onto the computer screen. They all leaned in to read the
Amarillo Globe-News
article. The deputy’s breath hit the back of my neck. “So the woman died,” he said a few seconds later.

Josie grabbed my arm. “‘Paralysis at the wrinkled area is caused by injecting the neurotoxin, but apparently also caused paralysis of the respiratory muscles and dysphagia—’”

She looked up at Nate. “Trouble swallowing, I think,” he said.

“‘—which led to pneumonia and fluid in the lungs. The incident ended in the death of Louisa Renee Babcott. No charges have been filed and the death has been called a tragic accident.’” She shook her head sadly. “Is that what happened to Trudy Lafayette? Oh, gosh, she’s not going to die, is she? Is her throat paralyzed?” She’d gone a little green as her hand fluttered to her face, then her throat, as if she’d had the treatment and was feeling the infected areas.

I gasped, as all the threads came together into a solid strand. Just like Mrs. James had done when she’d told me
about the Amarillo scandal. Lightning doesn’t strike twice.

Or does it, when the same doctor is involved? Meemaw had been trying to tell me. She’d known about it. That’s why she’d gone to the Hughes’s party. I pieced together my thoughts. “Maybe Macon Vance and Anna weren’t having an affair at all.” I snuck a look around, making sure Anna hadn’t suddenly materialized to eavesdrop, then dropped my voice to a whisper. “Maybe he was blackmailing her, too, but over
this
.” I tapped the computer screen.

The deputy already had his cell phone out, thumb hovering over the
SEND
button. “Go on.”

“They’re all three from Amarillo. If Macon Vance remembered the scandal, maybe he was trying to get hush money out of her so he wouldn’t blow the lid on them and ruin Buckley’s practice in Bliss.”

As the deputy pressed
SEND
on his cell phone, retreating to a quiet corner of the lobby, I backed away from the computer, grabbed my cell phone and Will’s arm, and ran outside to call Fern Lafayette.

I paced up and down the cement slab in front of the country club’s automatic sliding doors. They zipped open, then closed, open, then closed. “How’s Trudy?” I asked Fern when she answered the phone.

“The doctor’s here now,” Fern said. “Hold the line for a minute.”

The doctor had been there when I’d left and that had been hours ago. Presby had good service. I heard a man talking to Fern, but the voices both became muffled as the automatic doors zipped open again and Deputy McClaine stepped outside. “Anna Hughes has an alibi for Vance’s murder,” he announced. “Seems she was in Dallas picking up her son’s Victorian britches.”

My face fell. “Oh.”

“And during the attack on Miss Lafayette?”

“We’re checking it out now, but twelve women at a neighborhood bunco party is a pretty tight alibi, so there you go.”

I began pacing again, pushing against the thickening wall of humidity. “If it’s not Anna, then who?” I muttered.

Fern’s voice on the other end of the cell phone caught
me by surprise. “He said the police don’t have any clues about who might have broken into his house—”

I stopped short, barreling right into Will. “What?”

“What? What? Harlow Cassidy, has your mind gone soft?”

“Doctor Hughes!” I whirled around and flung my arms out, nearly sending my cell phone flying. “But he’s here, isn’t he?”

“I saw him before the waltz started,” Will said, but Gavin shook his head. “He left just after.”

Oh Lord. If Macon Vance blew the whistle on what had happened in Amarillo, Buckley’s reputation in Bliss would have been blown to bits. He was the one who’d silenced the golf pro. And if Trudy had pieced it all together, the doctor wouldn’t let her live to ruin his life. “It’s not Anna,” I breathed. The words caught in my throat. “It’s Buckley. Where is he now?” I said into the phone.

Fern hesitated, and I knew she was trying to figure out what had me all worked up. “He just left. Goin’ back to the pageant to see his boy. Why?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there, Fern, but don’t leave Trudy alone.”

I told Deputy Sheriff McClaine that Buckley Hughes was on his way back to the country club. In seconds flat, the deputy had texted God knows who, and was on his phone, alerting the rest of Bliss’s law enforcement team, bringing in the cavalry to stake out the club.

“I’m going to check on Trudy,” I said. The deputy nodded, waving me off as he filled in the sheriff.

Will dug his key out of the pocket of his black slacks. “Let’s go.”

We raced to the parking lot. I had anticipated being
able to go home to change before the big pageant, but that also hadn’t happened. Now I was grateful for my flats, capris, and chiffon summer blouse. I was no track star, but I managed to stay with Will. He deactivated the alarm and unlocked his truck’s doors without breaking stride. That was more coordination that I could have mustered. And keeping a car in the right lane? There wasn’t a chance I would have been able to drive in a straight line.

Will revved the engine, backed out, and in seconds flat, we were barreling off the golf course property, down the country road, and heading straight for Presbyterian Hospital.

“I can’t believe Buckley could do this. You really just can’t ever know a person, can you?” Will mused. He pressed a button on the elevator control panel and the doors slid closed. I explained everything to Will during the NASCAR drive to the hospital, including the fact that Macon Vance was Libby’s father and that he was apparently a serial blackmailer, but he was still having trouble accepting it all.

“But it makes sense,” I said. “They’re both from Amarillo. Maybe it took a while, but Vance must have realized that Buckley was the same doctor who’d been accused of malpractice in the Panhandle. A woman died. That’s a big deal. Who in their right mind would get Botox treatments from a doctor who’d killed a woman getting the same treatment?”

“What about Trudy? She couldn’t have known.”

I’d been wrestling with that. “I don’t think she did. She just thought Anna and Vance were having an affair.”

We watched the buttons light up as we ascended, stopping to take on passengers on the fifth floor.

“But there’s no proof of any of it,” he muttered. “He might get away with it.”

If he’d managed to turn out Trudy’s lights, he just might.

“What if we’re too late? He might could have done it already,” I said, the sound of my thumping heart drowning out everything else.

“As long as he wasn’t alone with her, he couldn’t have hurt her.”

“Murdered her,” I corrected, shuddering at the idea that Trudy had very nearly been killed.

The passengers on the elevator sidestepped away from us, glancing at each other with raised eyebrows. I had to admit, murder wasn’t your typical elevator conversation.

I held on to a strand of hope. I’d seen Trudy earlier. She’d been fuzzy, but talking. And Fern wasn’t leaving Trudy’s side, so the doctor wouldn’t have had an opportunity to do anything more to her. Surely that meant she’d be fine. My insides had twisted into a thousand knots. “But why would he have come if it wasn’t to make sure he finished the job? That was bold,” I mused.

He didn’t have a chance to answer me. The elevator stopped on the eighth floor, the doors opened with a
whoosh
, and we stepped out. I checked the hallways, feeling very spylike. Nurses walked from a room to the nursing station, taking care of patients. Other than their bustling, the floor was quiet.

“She’s in 21A,” I said, channeling the nurse’s focused attention and hurrying toward Trudy’s hospital room.

But Will pulled me to a stop. “You can’t go barging in there, scaring them half to death. You’re not the sheriff, Cassidy.”

No, I was just a dressmaker. “Right. Be calm.”

I left him pondering that. There was no time to waste. I just prayed we weren’t too late.

I sucked in a deep breath, stopped in front of room 21A and pressed my ear to the door. To make sure Buckley really was gone. Or to hear Fern and Trudy talking. Either one would have eased my mind. Instead there was complete silence. My heart sagged. Did that mean…

Will reached down, cranked the handle down, and pushed the door open.

As we walked in, a man turned to face us. I drew in a sharp breath. It wasn’t Buckley Hughes… it was his son, Duane.

Fern slouched in a chair in the corner of the room, a knot on her forehead, blood trickling down her temple, and thick shards of broken green glass mixed with bent flower stems scattered on the linoleum floor.

Duane was hunched over Trudy, syringe loaded and pricking into her skin, his head cranked to the side as he stared at us. The next instant, he reacted, jabbing the syringe toward us as if it were a switchblade.