Death Threads (18 page)

Dixie Dunn, the retired former town librarian, claimed one of the two chairs Tori had dragged inside for the evening, the woman’s infamous sharp-tongued motormouth all but silent as she nodded a greeting at Leona, who held court in the plaid armchair that was everyone’s favorite.

For a group of women who normally spoke from arrival to departure, the swollen silence that blanketed Tori’s living room was nothing short of suffocating, the initial greetings between members fading away as the crickets beyond the open windows took center stage.

“Beautiful weather we’re having,” Tori said as she shifted from foot to foot. “The breeze we’ve been getting lately has been so nice, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Rose muttered under her breath as Beatrice shrugged in agreement.

“Miss Anna at the market said a breeze at this time of year is almost unheard of.” She knew she sounded like an idiot, chattering away like some bimbo, but she didn’t care. Mindless chatter was preferable to the kind of morbid silence that hung around them like a black storm cloud. “She said these kinds of breezes usually happen in—” Tori looked over her shoulder in relief as the screen door smacked against its wooden frame, bringing an end to any additional—and relatively ignored—babbling on her part.

“We’re here . . . we’re here.” Margaret Louise, in a charcoal gray polyester warm-up suit, strode into the cottage with a covered plate in her hand and her daughter-in-law at her heels. “We waited until the last possible moment just in case Debbie changed her mind and Jake needed to come along and supervise the brood . . . but no such luck.”

“I know. I’d been hoping just as hard on this end, too.” Tori spun around, covering the distance between them in two long strides. “Mmmm. Is there chocolate in there?” she asked Margaret Louise.

The woman’s eyes sparkled as she headed toward the treat-laden kitchen table in favor of answering.

“Well . . . is it?” She pulled Melissa in for a hug, her words dropping to a whisper. “I’m glad you two showed up. Trying to get a conversation going in this room tonight is akin to torture.”

“A repeat of Monday night, huh?” Melissa stepped back as the embrace ended, her words still a whisper as she continued. “You’d think by now . . . after everything that’s happened . . . they’d give it a rest.”

She peered around the room, her gaze taking in each and every member of the circle. “It’s different tonight. There’s no anger, no fight waiting to be unleashed. They’re just sad.”

“That we can work with.” Melissa squeezed Tori’s hand and then breezed into the living room, her long dirty blonde hair skimming her back as she carried her sewing bag to an empty folding chair to the left of Jake’s aunt. “So I hear you may be babysitting my crew one night soon, Aunt Leona.”

Leona’s eyebrow shot up as she flipped the page of her magazine and peered over the top of her glasses. “Only if I don’t learn how to sew.” Margaret Louise’s twin turned her head ever so slightly and smiled sweetly at Tori. “But I’m learning. Isn’t that right, dear?”

Tori coughed. “You are?”

Leona’s eyebrow rose even higher as her smile disappeared. “I’m learning about buttons, dear. Don’t you remember?”

“Um, uh, we looked at buttons . . .”

“And we spread them on the table and I was instructed in how to thread a needle,” Leona finished with a triumphant swish to her head. “One must start with the basics as you all know.”

“I instructed, Leona, but you—”

The woman waved Tori’s words aside, her fast-on-her-feet reply intended to garner sympathy from the older members of the circle. “Sometimes it’s hard to see through that little hole at the top of the needle. But I’m trying”—she sighed dramatically—“desperately. I so want to learn to sew as beautifully as the rest of you.”

“Oh cut the crap, Leona.” Rose crossed her ankles and straightened the hem of her housecoat around her knees.

“You have no more interest in learning to sew than I have in that garbage you read.”

Leona’s mouth gaped open as Melissa turned and winked at Tori. “See, sadness is workable. Anger is not.”

Seizing the opportunity to get a meaningful dialogue off the ground, Tori dropped into the lone folding chair to the right of Rose. “I imagine we’re all very aware that Debbie is not with us tonight. She is suffering the kind of loss none of us can even begin to imagine. She’s lost her husband in a horrific and senseless act and doesn’t even have the benefit of the kind of closure a funeral might bring.”

“Chief Dallas is working day and night to find Colby and the person who did this to him. And the council will see to it that he has all of the resources he needs to that end,” Georgina said as she pulled her straw hat from her head and placed it on her lap. “It doesn’t matter what happened those last few days. Sweet Briar has rebounded from tough times before and we will again. Debbie has been a member of this town since she was born. If for no other reason than that, we’ll find him and bring him home so his wife and children can give him a proper funeral.”

It wasn’t exactly the sentiment Tori had hoped for, but she’d take it. For now. If all she could get from the circle at the moment was support for Debbie and the kids, it would be enough. The apologies for their behavior toward Colby could come later.

“So what are we going to do? For Debbie and the kids?” Tori looked from one circle member to the next, her gaze coming to rest on her former nemesis, Dixie Dunn. “Dixie? Any ideas?”

The seventy-something woman with the short crop of white hair nodded slowly, the excitement she got from being front and center of any occasion shining forth in her eyes. “I think we should each make a point of stopping by her home over the weekend and offering our sympathy.”

Margaret Louise perched on the armrest of her twin’s chair, her head shaking side to side. “She’s not stayin’ there. Her mama insisted she and the children come out to her place . . . in case whoever hurt Colby feels there’s more work to be done.”

Rose gasped. “Surely she doesn’t think anyone would hurt Debbie and those children?”

Margaret Louise shrugged. “Why wouldn’t she? Whoever did this to Colby ain’t someone who’s in their right mind to begin with. Sane people—no matter how angry they may be—don’t waltz into innocent people’s homes and destroy lives.”

Heads nodded around the room, the effect similar to that of a spectator-induced wave around a packed stadium of excited fans.

“So do we call on Joyce’s then? And do as Dixie suggested?” Beatrice looked up from her lap long enough to wage the inquiry before looking back down, her soft British accent a stark contrast in a room of southerners.

A few heads nodded, but most remained noncommittal, as if the change in Debbie’s residency prevented them from thinking or forming an opinion. After several long moments, Margaret Louise finally spoke, her loud boisterous voice quieting the crickets. “I say we get her business back on track. Colby bein’ gone is somethin’ we can’t fix no matter how much any of us wish we could . . . and I’m quite certain”—she glanced slowly around the room, her eyes making direct contact with each and every member of the circle including Beatrice—“we all wish that, don’t we?”

More heads nodded grudgingly as Margaret Louise continued, “But standin’ by, day after day, as her once thrivin’ business remains closed is simply inexcusable. We’ve been friends for years now. We’ve seen Debbie and Melissa through births, Tori and Georgina through the aftereffects of Tiffany Ann Gilbert’s murder, Rose through her cataract operation, and Dixie through the adjustment of retirement. Why should runnin’ Debbie’s Bakery while she’s mournin’ be any different?” The woman reached up and unzipped her charcoal gray lightweight jacket to reveal a tired white T-shirt below. “I already help Debbie with much of the bakin’ anyway, so I’d just continue doin’ what I do. And I know that Emily, our part-time girl, is chompin’ at the bit to get back to work, too. We’d just need a little help, which is where all of you could come in. Those of you who aren’t workin’ . . . like Rose and Dixie and Leona—”

“I work!” Leona interjected. “Have you forgotten about the little matter of the antique shop I own?”

“It’s only open three days a week, Twin. I’m referring to the other four.” Margaret Louise wiggled out of her jacket and draped it over the back of the love seat. “The point I’m tryin’ to make is that we can all find some time to help.”

Tori jumped up from her chair. “And I could help out on my days off from the library. Oh, Margaret Louise, I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

“So do I.” Rose’s voice, frail but firm, filled the room with an unmistakable show of support. “It’s what friends do.”

“True honest-to-goodness friends?” Beatrice asked quietly as she peered up at the group through her thick lashes. “Or the kind of friends who treat each other dreadfully when the wind shifts direction?”

Rose lowered her chin to her chest. Georgina followed suit.

“I held my tongue the other night but I’ve not seen a group of women treat a so-called friend in quite the way you all did Monday night. I rather felt as if I was at a lynching.” The young girl’s face flushed pink as she dropped her head back down, her honest and audible assertion surprising even her.

For a moment no one spoke, Beatrice’s words hanging in the middle of the room, namelessly shaming those who’d earned them.

Rose was the first to speak, her admission of guilt honest and forthright. “You’re right, Beatrice. I’ve taken issue with Leona for her lack of loyalty to Victoria when she needed it most. Yet here I am, just as guilty as she was. Only instead of forsaking Debbie for a man, I forsake her for pride . . . the town’s pride.”

Leona’s chin jutted into the air only to lower just as fast as she swiped at a tear behind her glasses—a tear that seemed to be shared by just about everyone in the room.

Swallowing over the lump in her throat, Tori clapped her hands. “Then it’s settled. We’ll get Debbie’s Bakery up and running until she’s ready to take it over again. Margaret Louise, can you make up a schedule for us?”

“I most certainly can.” The woman pushed off Leona’s armrest and gestured toward the kitchen. “I have some powder-topped chocolate bars I’d like everyone to try before we get to the reason for this extra circle meeting. I noticed Tori has plates and cups set out so go on.”

As everyone filed into the kitchen, Margaret Louise took hold of Tori’s arm and tugged her into the sewing alcove on the opposite side of the living room. “How’d it go?”

She pulled her gaze from the stack of fabric squares she’d set out beside the sample gift bag and looked a question at her friend.

“I saw his card on your counter. You reckon he’s involved?”

“Wh-what?” And then she knew. She’d stopped by the cottage after her appointment with Harrison James, her nerves too frayed to go straight back to work. She leaned against the sewing table as Dixie and Rose returned to the room, their china dessert plates—borrowed from Leona for the occasion—brimming with an assortment of treats guaranteed to elevate their sugar level into dangerous numbers. “He’s angry, Margaret Louise . . . really, really angry. But I don’t know if it was just the angry display of someone with a hot temper, or if it was the angry display of a guilty man.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him. I’ve always wanted to tail someone like they do in the movies,” Margaret Louise said as she rubbed her hands back and forth against each other. “He probably wouldn’t recognize your car since you walk almost everywhere you go.”

Tori nodded. The woman had a point. But still, Harrison James was one of several suspects. Carter Johnson and Dirk Rogers were in need of some investigating as well. By someone who didn’t go on fishing trips with them. . . .

“What are you two talking about over there?” Rose asked, her voice a playful accusation.

“Can I tell ’em?” Margaret Louise asked.

“Tell us what?” Dixie asked as she reclaimed the same wicker chair she’d had from the start. “What’s going on?

Tori felt the corners of her mouth inching upward. “First things first. When everyone’s had a chance to get their treats, I want to tell you my idea for a group project.”

Leona pointed at her sister as she, too, rejoined the group, one small cookie on her plate. “That look on my sister’s face is not because of some project. She looks like she’s going to burst in two . . . and she only looks like that when Melissa is pregnant . . .”

All eyes turned to Margaret Louise’s daughter-in-law who shot her hands in the air and shook her head emphatically. “Oh no. Seven’s enough.”

“Well, if that’s not it, then she’s got news,” Leona said. “So let’s have it.”

Margaret Louise nearly skipped back to her spot on the edge of Leona’s chair, her teeth clamped down on the smile that threatened to rival the trio of sixty-watt bulbs that lit Tori’s living room. “Civic duty first, ladies. Civic duty first. So tell us, Victoria . . . how can our circle help?”

Leona rolled her eyes before taking a dainty bite of her oatmeal cookie. “Yes, dear, please do.”

Shaking her head, Tori grabbed hold of the fabric with one hand and the gift bag with the other. “Have any of you been out to the nursing home recently?”

Each and every head in the room shook in reply.

“Well, I have, and their on-site library is simply inadequate.”

“People donate what they can,” Dixie offered before taking a bite of Margaret Louise’s powder-topped chocolate bar. “If I remember correctly, they have almost an entire wall of shelving filled with donated books in their common area. Has that changed?”

“No. It’s still there. But as you pointed out, Dixie, those are books that have been donated, mostly by people looking to clear a spot in their personal inventory.” Tori sat on the edge of an empty folding chair and set everything on her lap. “Which means old books. And if you’re an avid reader as we all are in this room, you know that there are some amazing titles that have hit the stands in the past decade—in all genres across the board.”