Elizabeth Lynn Casey - Southern Sewing Circle 08 - Remnants of Murder (22 page)

“We did it, Victoria!”

Tori looked up from the spreadsheet outlining the board’s proposed budget for the second half of the year and eyed Dixie curiously. “We did it?”

“We set the wheels in motion and it actually paid off.”

Dropping her pencil onto her desk, Tori leaned back in her chair, her patience worn thin by the board’s ever-shrinking wallet. “Dixie, I’m sorry, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about right now.”

Dixie swaggered back a step, her eyes widening. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?” She heard the impatience in her voice, knew it was something she needed to rein in, but it was hard. Her day would have been long even if Milo had returned any of the four messages she’d left on his voice mail. It had been torturous without.

“We were right. About Clyde. He was poisoned.”

She leaned forward as Dixie’s words hit their mark. “Are you serious?”

Dixie crossed the room to the folding chair across from Tori’s desk and sat down, the animation on her face unmistakable. “I just got off the phone with Georgina not more than twenty minutes ago. The coroner put a rush on the report and it was exactly as we suspected.”

“Arsenic?”

“Arsenic,” Dixie confirmed with a side order of smugness. “And I have to tell you, Georgina is absolutely fit to be tied.”

Tori pushed back her chair from the desk and rose to her feet, the lack of patience she’d been dealing with all afternoon finally exploding in anger. “How on earth can she be mad? Does she honestly think it would be preferable to have a murderer walking the streets of her precious town? Does she really think that would be good for Sweet Briar and her mayoral image?”

Dixie sputtered, stopped, and sputtered again. “Good heavens, Victoria! What on earth has gotten into you?”

“What’s gotten into
me
? Nothing. Except I’m angry that somehow I’m the bad guy because I think murder is wrong. That putting stock in what’s real over some all-important image is seen as annoying or meddlesome.”

“She’s not angry at you, Victoria. Not anymore anyway.”

Like a balloon pricked with a pin, Tori felt the fight leave her body. She dropped back into her chair and stared down at her lap. “Then what is she fit to be tied about?”

“That someone in her town could be so desperate to increase their business they’d resort to murder to make it happen.”

She reached onto the desk and retrieved her pencil. Twirling it slowly between her fingers, she addressed the gaping hole in Dixie’s statement. “And if it’s someone who sits next to her at a town meeting each month?”

“I think Georgina would take that even harder.” Dixie stood and made her way over to the door. “Either way, though, I think you should prepare yourself for a good deal of wrath until this whole business is settled.”

“Wrath?”

“That’s right, wrath. You poked a stick into a hornet’s nest, Victoria. You can’t do that and expect not to have a few of those hornets coming after you.”

And just like that, her fellow stick poker disappeared down the hallway, the telltale click of the back door leaving Tori to her spreadsheets and her new reality. Surely Dixie had to be exaggerating things a bit, didn’t she? But even as the question circulated her thoughts, she had a sneaking suspicion she knew the answer.

Sweet Briar was a small town. The vast majority of the people who lived inside its borders had been born and raised there just like their parents and their grandparents. Ties ran deep in an environment like that. Loyalty even deeper.

The chirp of her phone brought her back to the moment and she peeked at the display screen.

Leona.

She considered giving voice mail the honor. After all, she had more than enough on her plate without adding unsolicited makeup tips and Milo advice to the mix. Then again, maybe venting her many frustrations to her self-appointed life coach would be a step in the right direction. Lord knew, keeping everything pent up wasn’t doing her a whole lot of good …

She snapped open the phone and released the breath of air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “How are you Leona?”

“Well, that depends on whether you want the answer I’d have given
before
the round of threatening phone calls that came into the antique shop … or
after
. Because there will be a difference.”

“Threatening phone calls?” she echoed over the sudden roaring in her ears.

“Technically I’m not sure four-and five-word sentences followed by angry hang-ups truly qualify as a phone call, dear, but we’ll call them that for simplicity’s sake.”

“Tell me, Leona.”

“Paris, stop! Stay away from that plant right now!”

The roaring took a sudden and decisive shift in favor of complete and utter silence. Had she heard correctly? Had Leona just snapped at Paris?

“L-Leona? Are—are you okay?”

“That rabbit is driving me nuts!”

That rabbit?

Uh-oh.

“Leona, talk to me,” she pleaded. “You and I both know you’re upset about something that has absolutely nothing to do with Paris.”

The gasp in her ear told her that Leona’s brain and mouth had finally connected. “Oh Paris, my precious angel, Mommy is so sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong, sweetheart. It was … it was Victoria’s fault.”

“
My
fault?”

This time, any and all snapping was unleashed in her direction. “Yes,
your
fault. If you hadn’t insisted on coming to my meeting on Monday morning, they wouldn’t be lashing out at me for this ridiculous need you have to play detective all the time,” Leona thundered. “I tried to take you under my wing when you got here, tried to teach you about posture and makeup and men. But did you listen? Of course not. And where has that gotten you, Victoria? I’ll tell you … it’s gotten you nowhere. Your incessant snooping has earned you the kind of black circles no under-eye concealer will ever be able to cover. And your need to be in on everything happening around you has made you inattentive to the one man on earth who actually knows how to treat a woman. If you regret nothing else in your life, Victoria, I can promise you will regret pushing Milo Wentworth out of it.”

• • •

Tori moved down the sidewalk in a veritable daze,
Dixie’s warning about hornets and Leona’s anger-filled tirade replaying themselves in her mind again and again. In just a handful of months she’d managed to go from being the lone exception to the town’s outlook on Yankees to the primo example of why Northerners could never be trusted.

To pretend it didn’t hurt would be futile.

She was Sweet Briar’s most hated person at the moment and there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it, short of launching a campaign designed to question the coroner’s credentials. And why would she? The truth was the truth. Pretending it away for the sake of image or false peace was fundamentally wrong.

Squaring her shoulders, Tori turned left onto Maple Avenue and followed the fence line that bordered the eastern edge of the Green, the muted white gazebo in the distance bringing a smile to her lips despite the paint job it sorely needed. Once the perpetrator was found and brought to justice, everything would be fine. It had to be.

The sound of approaching footsteps derailed her thoughts and she glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, hi there, Carter. You certainly picked a great night for a run.”

The diner owner stopped mid-step, made deliberate eye contact, and then turned around, the slap of his running shoes against the concrete disappearing as the distance between them grew.

Finding her breath, she resumed her walk, the obvious snub weighing heavily on her shoulders. Maybe he realized the time? Maybe his line of vision had nothing whatsoever to do with his thoughts?

When she reached the next corner, she turned left again, the shops that lined this particular end of the Green springing into view. As if guided by some sort of inner autopilot, Tori stopped outside Shelby’s Sweet Shoppe and glanced at the extensive display of candy visible through the front window. Caramels, truffles, chocolate-covered pretzels, dark chocolate turtles, and a dozen or so different sinful treats lined the tiered shelf with the lone goal of weakening the willpower of even the most seasoned window-shoppers.

With barely a moment’s hesitation, she gave in to the demands of her stomach and climbed the steps to the front door. Chocolate had certainly helped cure its fair share of doldrums in the past; there wasn’t any reason to think it couldn’t do the same now.

A step away from the front door, Shelby appeared behind the glass, her gaze mingling with Tori’s for a full twenty seconds before the open sign was flipped and the shade drawn. Confused, Tori noted the shop’s hours listed to the left of the door and compared them to her watch.

There was no longer any doubt.

The hornets were angry.

Officially deflated, she descended the steps to the sidewalk and headed toward home, her hand instinctively feeling around in her purse for her cell phone. She needed Milo. Needed to hear his voice. Needed to feel his warmth. Needed the reassurance his unwavering support always provided.

Milo …

The mere notion of the man she’d be marrying in less than six months lightened her steps. Pressing the top number on her speed-dial list, she allowed the subsequent ringing to steady her breath and calm her nerves. Milo would know what to do. He always knew what to do …

But as three rings turned to four, and four rings turned to five, any hope she’d foolishly allowed herself to feel fell away, leaving her exhausted and sad.

At the sound of his recorded voice, she snapped the phone closed in her hand. She’d left four messages already. If he wanted to call, he would.

Your need to be in on everything happening around you has made you inattentive to the one man on earth who actually knows how to treat a woman.

The memory of Leona’s words extracted a sob from deep inside her chest and forced her from her intended path in favor of the nearest park bench. She sunk onto the wooden seat and pulled her knees to her chest. For the first time in a very long while, she was at a complete loss on what to do and where to turn.

“Miss Sinclair! Miss Sinclair!”

Lifting her chin from her knees, she turned toward the familiar voice that managed to muster the lone smile she didn’t know she had left. “Lulu!”

She let her feet drop to the ground as she spread her arms wide for the hug that was mere steps away. Lulu didn’t disappoint.

“Oh sweetie, you have no idea how good it is to see you.” When the child finally loosened her hold on Tori’s midsection, Tori tapped the child’s nose with her finger. “How did you know I needed a Lulu hug just then?”

Lulu’s large brown eyes swept across Tori’s face, followed by a distinct nibbling of her lower lip. “You look sad, Miss Sinclair.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sad, sweetie. In fact, right this minute, I can honestly say I feel happy.”

Spinning around, Lulu backed her knees against the bench and plopped down next to Tori, her still-short legs dangling above the concrete below. “But you didn’t have that big smile you always have when I first saw you. Are you sick?”

She captured the end of the little girl’s long braid between her fingers and held it across her upper lip like a mustache. “No, Detective Davis, I’m not sick.”

“Did someone rip one of the library books?”

Tori took a moment to drink in all that was good about Lulu. The fact that colds and ripped books were Lulu’s go-to reasons for why a person might be sad spoke to the innocence Melissa was working hard to preserve for all eight of her children. She released her hold on Lulu’s hair and watched it fall back into position. “Nope, no ripped books.”

“Then why are you sad?”

She opened her mouth to dispute the question once again, but knew Lulu was too smart to buy what she was selling. What to tell her, though, was the problem. Finally she settled on a generic version that would make sense to a fifth grader. “Have you ever done something you thought was right, only to have people get upset with you?”

Lulu scrunched her face in thought. “Well … one time, I guess. I think I was six. Mama left the stove on when she went to check on Sally. The fireman who visited our school told us never to leave the stove on ’cause it could start a fire.” Lulu pointed her toe at a twig and tried to lift it with the top of her flip-flop. “So I pushed a chair over to the oven and shut it off.”

“Okay …”

“Mama got mad when I told her what I did. She said I should have told her … or Daddy … or Jake Junior.”

“Did that make you sad?” she asked.

Lulu nodded quickly. “I was only trying to help.”

“Well, that’s how I feel right now. I’ve been trying to do the right thing yet somehow it’s still wrong.” She knew she was oversimplifying things, but the analogy worked for present company. Bobbing her head to the left and then the right, she allowed her gaze to travel over Lulu’s head to the playground just beyond the bench line. “Who are you here with, sweetie?”

Lulu pointed toward the line of swings on the far side of the monkey bars. “Jake Junior and Sally. They said they’d come say hi after they finish their race.”

“Who do you think is going to win?” she finally asked.

“Sally. She might be littler than me, but she can pump her legs better than any of us. Even Mee Maw says so.”

“Mee Maw, huh?” At Lulu’s nod, Tori laughed. “That Mee Maw of yours is one smart lady, you know that?”

“Mee Maw knows all sorts of things,” Lulu boasted. “And you know what? She says the sun don’t shine on the same dog all the time, Miss Sinclair.”

“It doesn’t?” She took one last peek at the competition taking place on the other side of the playground then returned her focus to the dark-haired girl on the bench.

Lulu cocked her head to the side and peered up at Tori. “But she says that’s okay ’cause even a barren apple tree can give you shade.”

Realizing the tears she’d been holding at bay all evening were no more than a few blinks away, she pulled the little girl close, reveling in the sweet goodness that was Lulu Davis. “Does Mee Maw have any sayings about being lucky?”