Elizabeth Lynn Casey - Southern Sewing Circle 08 - Remnants of Murder (29 page)

She wanted to protest, to say something, anything to discourage the man’s actions, but she couldn’t. Beau was hurting. Who was she to pretend to know what it was like to walk in his shoes? Just because she craved every physical link she could find to her great-grandmother didn’t mean other people dealt with loss the same way. Sometimes closing memories inside one’s heart was the only way of coping.

“I didn’t do it to be anyone’s hero, Miss Sinclair.”

“Anyone’s hero?” she echoed as voices swirled around them and people parted to begin the task of sprucing up the gazebo and its grounds.

His shoulders hitched upward. “The Nirvana folks, Councilman Adams, his wife … any of them.”

“How would selling your dad’s land make you a hero to the councilman’s wife?”

“She doesn’t have to make any more pies.”

• • •

She tried to concentrate on the painting, tried to
focus on the progress taking shape with each stroke of her brush, but it was hard. On the one hand, she understood Beau’s need to heal, but on the other hand, she couldn’t help but feel bad for the man who’d cared so much about the property he’d lost his life in its defense.

Poking her head around the gazebo post she was painting, she smiled at Milo as he passed by with a wheelbarrow then scanned the grounds for any sign of Granville Adams or his wife, Betty. Everything Milo had told her the previous night had come full circle that afternoon. The promise of a stronger school and better town services at the hands of tourists had really moved the crowd now slapping paint across the gazebo and pulling up weeds from around its base. The councilman had been almost artful in the way he’d taken control of his chief rival’s convenient plant and turned everything negative into something positive. Even as she’d talked to Beau, she’d still heard Granville pontificating about the many ways in which the luxury resort would benefit Sweet Briar.

If he shared the kinds of concrete figures Tori had found during her own research into the financial benefits realized by towns with similar resorts, Granville Adams’s reelection was virtually a done deal.

Resting her paintbrush atop the closest paint can, she excused herself and went in search of Betty Adams. There wasn’t much Tori could do about Beau’s decision. It was his to make. But she could still try to find the person responsible for Clyde’s death among her list of viable suspects.

She spotted the attractive blonde over by the picnic table laden with food for the volunteers and headed in that direction. “Wow, everything looks delicious,” she said by way of greeting. “Painting makes you hungrier than I would have thought.”

Betty Adams smiled warmly. “Grab a plate and dig in. But make sure you save room for dessert. The chess pie and the cherry pie are two of my husband’s favorites.”

Tori made a point of peering at both in an attempt to prolong the conversation. “Do you make a lot of pies?”

“Too many, according to my husband.”

“Okay, sweetheart, my ears are burning.” Granville stopped beside his wife and pulled her close, the smile on his face nearly as bright as the sun shimmering across the tables. “What do I say is too many?”

“The number of pies I make. You tell me all the time they’re going to make you chubby.”

“Going to?”
He laughed. “Darlin’, I think I’m already knocking at that door, don’t you?”

“I plead the fifth.”

Tori couldn’t help but laugh at the comfortable exchange between a husband and a wife who clearly loved each other. She pointed to the pie. “I hear you sent a lot of pies out to Clyde Montgomery the last six weeks or so.”

Betty’s smile disappeared. “I feel so awful for that man. He always had such nice things to say about my pies.”

“He kept you on your pie-baking toes, too, didn’t he?” Granville whispered a kiss across his wife’s forehead. “Every time you made him the flavor he said he liked best, he changed his mind and sent you scrambling back to your cookbooks. Clyde was a funny fellow like that. He had no intention of selling but he had fun toying with me anyway. I swear, I ate more pie over the last six weeks because of that man than I have in the twenty years I’ve been married to Betty.”

Tori grabbed hold of the table’s edge as the ground began to spin. “Y-You …
you
ate those pies, too?” she stammered.

“You bet I did,” Granville said, patting his stomach as he did. “Sitting with him over pie was the only time that old codger would hear me out. Not that it did any good.”

Chapter 29

Tori was onto her sixth placemat of the night when
she laid down her needle and thread and moaned in frustration. “
Ugh!
Why can’t I figure this out?”

Lowering her travel magazine to chin level, Leona rolled her eyes skyward. “Victoria, it’s not difficult. Every woman’s closet needs twelve basic items. Have those, and you have your starting point.”

“Good Lord, Leona, what are you babbling about now?” Rose groused from her spot beside Paris and Patches. “Can’t you see Victoria is upset?”

Leona leaned across the pair of armrests separating her wingback chair from Rose’s couch and gently stroked Paris. “Every woman needs a little black dress—or LBD, for those in the know—a black blazer, a white button-down shirt, black dress slacks, a knee-length black skirt, a classic beige trench coat, dark denim jeans, black pumps, a white and black cardigan sweater, a black leather bag, a set of pearls, and diamond stud earrings. If you left your home for more than just gardening and sewing, you old goat, you’d know these things.”

“My wardrobe is just fine.” Rose ran a shaking hand down the front of her sweater-clad body. “I don’t own a single thing on that list of yours and I’m doing just fine.”

“And it’s a good thing you feel that way, Rose, because if it weren’t for you, I’d still be stuck on a name.”

“A name for what?” Debbie looked up from her own stack of placemats long enough to address Leona without breaking a pace that had her matching and surpassing Tori’s total by two.

“The faux pas segment of my cable TV show.”

Needles dropped around the room as seven sets of eyes came to rest on a very smug-looking Leona.

“Say that again,” Dixie demanded.

Leona uncrossed her ankles then recrossed them the opposite way. “The faux pas segment of my cable TV show.”

Margaret Louise smacked her hand across her thigh and snorted back a laugh. “Twin, you’re fuller than a tick that’s been suckin’ on a dog all day.”

“I am no such thing.” Leona’s chin rose into the air but not before shooting her sister a glare to end all glares. “You seem to think you’re the only one who has plans, Margaret Louise. But you’re not. And unlike you, I’ve already got a taker for
my
idea.”

“Does this taker know your shirt is missin’ a few buttons?”

Beatrice flipped her placemat over on her legs and continued sewing, her English accent a perfect accompaniment to her shy nature. “Her shirt doesn’t have any buttons.”

“Don’t pay my sister any mind, Beatrice. I certainly don’t.” Leona waved her hand in the air then retrieved her magazine from her lap and buried her face behind it once again. “I’m done talking.”

“If only we could believe that,” Rose mumbled amid the stunned silence blanketing the room. “In the meantime, before she changes her mind, perhaps Victoria could finish the sentence she was trying to share when Leona cut her off in the first place.”

She looked from Rose to Leona’s magazine and back again, her friend’s cable TV show announcement sounding eerily familiar against a backdrop that reminded her of yet another conversation she’d been too busy and too harried to revisit. “I, uh …”

Debbie grabbed the next precut piece of fabric from the pile beside her arm and began to stitch the edges, her needle dashing in and out of the material in record speed. “You said there was something you couldn’t figure out.”

Dropping her head against the back of Leona’s love seat, Tori moaned a second time. “I thought for sure Granville Adams was behind Clyde’s murder. But I was wrong.”

“Councilman Adams is a good man,” Georgina countered. “The majority of people in this town are, Victoria.”

“
Someone
killed him, Georgina. The autopsy proved that.” Dixie tossed her contribution onto the growing pile of completed placemats and rose to her feet, her floral housecoat shifting into place around her knees. “There’s still Emma.”

Debbie’s head snapped up. “Emma? What about Emma?”

She tried to catch Dixie’s eye, tried to ward her off a subject that would only sir up ire around the room, but it was no use. Dixie’s back was to Tori. “Emma makes your scones, right?”

“Yes …”

“Clyde had those scones sometimes two and three times a week depending on when his son was in town.”

“So …”

“It was something he’d been doing since his wife died four years ago.”

“I’m aware of that, Dixie.” Debbie’s latest contribution to the growing placemat pile sat, untouched, on her lap. “What I don’t understand is what that has to do with Emma.”

“Maybe she put arsenic in Clyde’s scone.”

Tori closed her eyes and waited for the chorus of gasps that were sure to follow.

“
Arsenic?
In
Clyde’s scone?
” Debbie pushed her placemat from her lap and met Dixie in the center of the room, the twinkle that usually lit the bakery owner’s eyes nowhere to be seen. “First, Emma is a good girl. She is kind and sweet and way too sensitive to even think about hurting someone like that. And secondly, in order to poison Clyde, she’d have to have known the kind of scone he’d be eating in advance.”

Tori’s eyes flew open. “And she didn’t?”

“No. Beau decided on the spot each and every time. It was part of a game he played with his father.”

She felt Georgina’s I-told-you-so glare before their eyes officially met but it didn’t matter. No look, no words could ever make Tori feel guiltier than she did at that moment. She knew Emma. She knew Emma wasn’t capable of harming someone. It wasn’t in the girl’s DNA.

“I’m sorry, Debbie.” It was all she could manage to say over the sudden roar of humiliation in her ears.

Leona lowered her magazine once again. “It seems to me that the most viable suspect would be the person who stands to gain in the immediate. Tomorrow can change for all sorts of reasons. But today is as close to definite as it comes.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, a resort company can sign on the dotted line, but I would imagine it would take a while for something like that to be built.” Leona tilted her head in the mayor’s direction. “Isn’t that right, Georgina?”

“The Nirvana people said it would take roughly two years from purchase to open, maybe longer.” Georgina took the next square of fabric from the precut pile and swapped red thread for blue. “During that time they’d have to clear the land, bring in the necessary utilities, meet all the zoning and code requirements, submit a final proposal, build, decorate, and hire. None of which can happen overnight.”

“Which means things can happen along the way to slow the process or render the whole thing a horrible business decision.”

“Where are you going with this, Leona?”

“Who stood to gain from Clyde’s death in the immediate?”

“Beau.”

Tori spun her head in Dixie’s direction. “Dixie?”

“I would imagine selling Clyde’s land is going to make Beau a pretty rich man,” Dixie said, looking out Leona’s window and into the gathering dusk.

“But he’s only selling the land because the memories are too painful.”

“Who told you that?” Leona asked.

“Beau did.” But even as the words left her mouth, she realized how naïve she sounded, how duped she’d allowed herself to be. “But Dixie”—she pleaded—“even
you
said Clyde’s rapid decline first reared its head in late February or early March … which was about the time Clyde told Councilman Adams and the folks from Nirvana that he was not going to change his mind about selling.”

“Wouldn’t Beau have known that, too?”

She met Georgina’s eye. “Of course, but he wasn’t part of the money talks.”

“I reckon the kind of money Clyde was turnin’ down would have come up over tea and scones at some point, don’t you?” Margaret Louise posed.

Tea and scones …

“Oh my God, it was the tea …” she whispered beneath her breath, the enormity of what she was saying making her sick to her stomach.

If anyone in the room heard her, they didn’t let on.

“Why, now that I think ’bout it,” Margaret Louise continued, “Kate mentioned Clyde throwin’ out charts and stuff all the time, remember?”

“But when Beau came to see me at the library that day, I showed him the research I’d done on the kind of money a luxury resort could mean to Sweet Briar and he said he hadn’t seen any of it.” Tori knew she sounded like an idiot, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. How could she have been so incredibly blind?

“Maybe he didn’t,” Leona drawled. “What the town stands to gain or lose wouldn’t really be any of Beau’s concern, now would it? The second he sells he can take his windfall and head on back to Texas without a care in the world.”