Let it Sew (17 page)

Chapter 23

Tori pushed her way through the door and onto the back stoop, the unseasonably warm
evening temperatures instantly making her rethink her initial decision to drive to
Debbie’s Bakery. Granted, winter in South Carolina was nothing like winter in Chicago,
but still . . . mid-seventies were mid-seventies.

Stepping to the right as she reached the parking lot, Tori headed in the opposite
direction of her car, her feet every bit as capable of making the four-block jaunt
as her compact. Besides, a little fresh air was good. Especially in light of everything
she’d learned.

Ethan Devereaux had murdered his father. Of that, Tori was certain.

It was the missing link that made everything else fit together. Now all she needed
was the surefire proof.

She glanced at her watch as she walked, her scheduled meeting time with Frieda still
twenty minutes away. But that was okay. It would give her time to spit-shine her proposed
plan before launching it on the unsuspecting nurse.

From the moment Jerry Lee had left her office, she’d considered all angles, even the
possibility that he’d gotten it all wrong. And then she’d remembered Charlotte’s words—the
words she’d uttered to Frieda again and again during her descent.

I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t stand to lose them both. But I was wrong.

Suddenly, a dying woman’s desperate confession made all the sense in the world. Yes,
Charlotte Devereaux had loved her husband. But she’d also loved her son. And when
she realized what her son had done, she’d been faced with an unthinkable decision—turn
in her son and lose him along with her husband forever, or stay quiet and help him
cover his tracks.

It was a decision the woman had stood by for five years, a decision she’d apparently
come to regret as the end of her life drew near.

Tori slowed her pace as she neared Turner’s Gifts ’N More, a familiar face pressed
against the shop window pulling her out of her thoughts and propelling her into the
here and now. “Kyle?”

Kyle Jordan pivoted his head just enough to allow a glimpse of her face before focusing
on the holiday gift display cleverly arranged for optimal impact. “Hi, Miss Sinclair.”

“Hi, yourself.” She allowed herself a moment to study the little boy, his wide eyes
and freckled cheeks reflecting back at her from a decorative mirror that served as
part of the display. “So what’s in there that’s got you so mesmerized?”

“That,” he said, pointing his finger against the glass.

She moved in behind him for a closer look, confident she’d see a model airplane or
a race car or some other toy that appealed to a boy of Kyle Jordan’s age. Yet try
as she might, she couldn’t find a single item that warranted the look of utter wonder
on the third grader’s face.

“Tell me,” she finally prodded. “Tell me what you see.”

“That!”

She stepped in closer, her gaze following the path made by his finger and coming to
rest on a crystal snowflake that glistened in the last of the sun’s rays. “The snowflake?”

Kyle nodded hard.

“You like snowflakes?”

The pause that followed lasted so long she thought he hadn’t heard the question. But
just as she opened her mouth to repeat it, a second nod was followed by an answer
so quiet she had to strain to hear it. “My mom and dad collected snowflakes together.
They said it reminded them that everyone is different . . . and everyone is special.”

Tori allowed her focus to return to the crystal decoration, the beauty of the snowflake
and the earnestness in the young boy’s voice bringing an unexpected mist to her eyes.
“That’s a lovely thought, Kyle.”

“Every year they found a new one to add to their collection. Some were for hanging
on the Christmas tree, some sat in little holder things on the shelf in my mom’s special
cabinet, and some . . . like that one . . . hung from strings my dad attached to the
ceiling. But that one is the most sparkly I’ve ever seen.”

“It
is
very sparkly.” She looked from Kyle to the snowflake and back again, the delight
in the child’s eyes every bit as mesmerizing as the object that had claimed his attention
with an iron fist.

“Do you think I have enough money to buy it?” he finally asked, fully turning from
the window for the first time since her arrival.

“I don’t know. How much do you have?”

Kyle reached into the front and back pockets of his jeans and pulled out two crinkled
dollar bills and a handful of loose change. After a quick count, he looked up at Tori.
“Two dollars and forty-three cents.”

She didn’t need to see the price tag to know his stash fell much too short. “Kyle,
I don’t think that’s going to be enough.”

“But I know my dad would love it.”

She looked back at the snowflake once again, an idea hatching in her mind in record
time. “I could help you with the rest if you wanted.”

Kyle’s body nearly rose up off the sidewalk, only to come crashing back down again.
“I can’t do that,” he mumbled sadly. “Then it wouldn’t really be from me.”

“It would be if the money was yours,” she pointed.

“But it’s not . . . it’s yours.”

Bending at the waist, Tori got down to Kyle’s eye level. “When people do a job for
someone else, they get paid for their work, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was wanting to talk to you about a job anyway. Something really special that
only you can do.”

A flash of excitement lit the young boy’s eyes. “A job? Really?”

“You see, we’re getting ready to have Mrs. Claus at the library so she can read some
special books with the children from Sweet Briar and we need to make sure the children’s
room looks extra special for her visit.” She took a deep breath and plowed on, hoping
against hope her suggestion would put a smile on his much-too-sad face. “Which is
where you come in, Kyle.”

“You want me to make some paper chains? Because I’m not the best cutter in the world.
My strips get all cockeyed.”

She nibbled back the urge to laugh for fear he’d think she was making fun. “Chains
would be great, but I was thinking more along the lines of helping Ms. Davis and me
decorate a Christmas tree with some of the ornaments from the town tree that weren’t
used this year.”

Kyle’s mouth dropped open. “You mean my mom’s ornaments?”

“Yup.”

“B-But won’t Maime get mad?” he whispered, wide-eyed.

“Of course not. How could that make her mad?”

“Because my mom picked them out.”

“Well, that’s a silly reason. Besides, I’ll just tell your dad I need your help with
a project at the library.” Tori straightened and hoisted her purse back onto her shoulder.
“We don’t really have to mention the ornaments at all, if you don’t want to.”

Lunging forward, Kyle wrapped his arms around Tori’s middle and squeezed. “When? When
do I get to help?”

Blinking back the tears that pricked the corners of her eyes, she willed her voice
to remain as steady as possible. After all, the last thing Kyle Jordan needed was
a sniffling librarian on his hands. “Soon, Kyle. Very, very soon.”

Slowly, he loosened his grip around her middle until they were standing separately
once again. He pointed at the window. “What happens if someone buys it before I decorate
the tree?”

“Well, to make sure that doesn’t happen, what do you think of buying it now?”

“Now?” Kyle echoed.

“Uh-huh.”

“But I haven’t decorated yet,” he reasoned.

“True. But you’re going to, right?”

He gave an emphatic nod.

“You promise, right?”

Again, he nodded.

“Then I don’t mind paying you in advance.” Holding her hand outward, she waited for
Kyle to grab it, the answering warmth of his soft skin bringing her close to tears
yet again. “C’mon. Let’s go inside and you can buy your dad that snowflake.”

*   *   *

By the time Tori got to Debbie’s, Frieda was waiting at a high-top table close to
the front window, the nurse’s rail-thin shoulders hunched over a barely touched piece
of chocolate cake.

“Frieda, hi! I’m so sorry I’m late. I ran into a little boy I know who . . .” Her
words petered out as Frieda pushed her plate across the table and released a tired
sigh.

“It’s all right, Miss Sinclair. I knew you’d come. I just hadn’t counted on seeing
him
while I waited.”

Tori slid onto the high-back chair across from the woman and set her purse on the
empty chair between them. “Him? Who’s him?”

“Ethan.”

Swiveling her body to the right, Tori glanced around the bakery, noting the faces
of each and every person either standing in line at the counter or seated at one of
the other high-top tables.

“Don’t bother looking. He left in a huff about ten minutes ago.” Frieda pulled her
plate closer to her spot at the table, only to push it away just as fast. “I guess
he was as disgusted at seeing me as I was at seeing him.”

Tori watched as Frieda picked up her to-go cup with trembling hands and took a long
slow pull of whatever the steaming hot liquid was inside. “Why doesn’t Ethan like
you? You cared for his mother until the day she died.”

She supposed she should feel a twinge of guilt over posing a question that was essentially
rhetorical, since she knew the answer, but still, the reason Ethan gave might not
necessarily match Frieda’s take on the situation.

Setting her cup down, Frieda slumped in her chair and sighed. “Not terribly long after
Mr. Devereaux disappeared, or at least everyone thought he’d disappeared, Mizz Charlotte
was told by her doctor that she was developing Alzheimer’s. Knowing what she was up
against, she decided to hire a full-time nurse who would look after her. After interviewing
a few different candidates, she asked Jerry Lee if she could steal me away from the
center. At first he was hesitant, as we’d just gotten the health room open and he
liked have a registered nurse volunteering, but when I assured him I’d stay on as
a volunteer set of eyes over any other volunteers he might bring in in that capacity,
he was okay with it. He understood that I needed a paying job and he gave me his blessing.”

Tori’s eyes drifted off Frieda’s face long enough to take stock of the chocolate cake
and the fact that half remained. She licked her lips.

“So I started working with Mizz Charlotte and everything was fine. She was a real
treasure. Brian, too. But Ethan, he expected everything for nothing. He’d make a mess,
he’d look to his mother to clean it up. He wanted something, he expected his mother
to hand him the money to buy it. The one thing she wouldn’t do for him, though, was
hand over the reins of the company. She said she couldn’t, that it was Parker’s to
hand over.”

All thoughts of chocolate cake disappeared as Frieda’s words sank in, their meaning
assimilating its way through her lips. “Maybe that was her way of striking back at
what Ethan had done. Because without a death, the company ran as if he was still alive.”

Frieda’s head tilted a hairbreadth to the right. “Why would Mizz Devereaux have to
strike back at Ethan?”

“For killing her husband.”

Chapter 24

“I suppose I shouldn’t feel right about letting my-self into Mizz Charlotte’s house
without permission, but the way I see it, she was trying to tell me what happened
with Parker for weeks and I owe it to her to see it through to the end, don’t I?”

Without waiting for Tori’s answer, Frieda inserted her key into the side door and
pushed, the smell of closed-up house assailing them where they stood. “See? I told
you, Miss Sinclair, Ethan does nothing. He doesn’t cook for himself, he doesn’t clean
up after himself, and he most certainly wouldn’t open a window with his own two hands.
In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that he yearned for the day his mother didn’t
control his money, I’d point to all of this as a reason why Ethan couldn’t possibly
have killed his dad. He was too lazy.”

She followed Frieda into the butler’s pantry and set her purse on the counter. “So
how did you finagle it so we could be here when he wasn’t?”

Frieda moved through the house flipping on light switches and shaking her head at
the disarray they found in each room. “It was easy. He takes boxing lessons every
Thursday evening from six to eight. So as long as we’re in and out by seven thirty,
he won’t have any idea we were here.”

“And the people who help with Brian?”

“Ethan has cut their hours down to nothing,” Frieda explained, “which is why Brian
is spending the evening at the Devereaux Center with Jerry Lee.”

Halfway down a back hallway, Tori nearly ran into Frieda when the woman came to an
abrupt stop outside the large paneled room with the all-too-familiar fireplace adorned
with framed photographs atop its wide mantel. It made perfect sense that every brick,
every picture, every knickknack was there just as Charlotte had drawn nearly every
day for the last two weeks of her life, but still, it was unsettling.

Tori stepped around the nurse and into the room that had once been Parker Devereaux’s
study before becoming an almost prison for his wife. Slowly, she made her way toward
the upholstered recliner situated just left of center on a small hooked rug roughly
eight feet from the fireplace.

“I—I don’t want to be in here anymore,” Frieda said, her voice breaking. “When I think
of all those times she tried to tell me about Parker . . . and how I hushed her words
away as if they were nothing more than jibber jabber . . . I hurt all over.”

She braced her hand on the back of Charlotte’s chair and glanced over her shoulder
at the woman still frozen in the doorway. “It wasn’t your fault, Frieda. You didn’t
know.”

“I failed her, Mizz Sinclair. She trusted me with something she’d kept secret for
five years and I failed her.”

“It’s not too late to hear her words, Frieda. That’s why she drew them in the notebook
you gave her. She’s still talking to you through them.”

Rounding the back side of the chair to the front, Tori backed her leg up against the
edge of the chair and lowered herself onto it, the sketches she’d seen in Charlotte’s
book springing to life right before her eyes for the second time since the woman’s
death. “Wow. Even having sat here before, it’s still shocking . . . like I’m sitting
smack dab in the middle of her drawings.”

Step by step, Frieda made her way into the room, stopping to the side of Tori’s chair.
“Mizz Charlotte noticed everything. Every crack, every spill, every fleck of dust
that didn’t belong, and I knew that. Yet I failed to recognize that when it mattered
most.”

Tori rested her head against the seat back and imagined the dozen or more pictures
Charlotte had drawn looking at that same mantel, day after day, including the rolled-up
sketch Frieda had placed on the end of it in the event Ethan came to visit his mother.

“So she showed you the picture of the library grounds with the patch of earth marked
by an X of sticks, right?” Then without waiting for confirmation, Tori continued,
the events of Charlotte’s last few weeks on earth playing out her mouth. “She hands
it to you and you don’t understand the picture. So she says her son’s name again and
again until you promise to give it to him . . .”

Frieda wandered over to the fireplace, the sound of her soft-soled shoes muted by
the hooked rug. “I knew it was a building, of course. Even figured it was one here
in town based on the way she enjoyed sketching her way through Sweet Briar, but I
didn’t know which one and I didn’t think it was any more significant than”—Frieda
gestured her hand toward the half-dozen frames lined up across the mantel—“the rest
of these.”

Anxious to steer Charlotte’s confidante toward action and away from further self-recrimination,
Tori prodded on. “Okay and then what?”

“Then I put it right here.” Frieda pointed to the fateful spot at the end of the mantel.
“After I set it down, Mizz Charlotte repeated Ethan’s name one more time, to which
I promised—one more time—that I would make sure he got it the next time he came in
to see her. Only he never came in after that.”

She looked at the spot Frieda indicated and imagined the paper just as it had appeared
in the sketches—each daily drawing a testament to Ethan’s lack of concern for his
mother’s declining health. It was sad, really. Pathetic, even.

“So where is it now?” she finally asked as the image in her head skipped ahead to
Charlotte’s last drawing, the one that had sent Margaret Louise, Leona, and Tori out
into the middle of the night with shovels.

“Where is what?” Frieda slid her hand down to the end of the mantel and then tucked
it into the pocket of her thin cotton smock.

“The picture.”

Frieda turned to look at Tori. “You saw it, remember? It’s how you knew to dig up
that spot at the library in the first place.”

“No. Not the one showing Ethan’s picture after it had fallen down onto the hearth.
The other one. You know, the actual picture she wanted you to give Ethan.”

Frieda drew back, her eyebrows dipping downward. “The picture for Ethan? Why . . .
I don’t know.” Spinning on the balls of her feet, Frieda backed away from the fireplace
to afford a clearer view of the empty hearth. “I didn’t notice it being gone until
a day or so after Mizz Charlotte’s passing, but I didn’t give it much thought.”

Pushing off the chair, Tori joined Frieda in front of the fireplace. “Did you see
it later that day? Maybe put it back on the mantel?”

Confusion cast a shadow across the woman’s dark features. “She drew the picture in
the evening, I think. And then, the next day, when I would have noticed that the picture
had fallen, I was mourning Mizz Charlotte’s passing, making phone calls, and trying
to come up with the best way for Mr. Sweeney to break the news to Brian.” Frieda’s
face crumpled at the memory, prompting Tori to drape an arm around the woman’s slight
form. “I guess, in all the chaos, someone just picked it up and tossed it out, not
realizing what it was.”

“No worries. We know what the picture was thanks to Charlotte’s last drawing and that’s
all that matters.” She heard a clock chime in the distance and knew their window was
closing. It was time to stop woolgathering and get to the reason for their mission.
“Frieda, is there anywhere you can think of that Charlotte might have kept personal
papers?”

“In a drawer in her room.” Frieda disengaged herself from Tori’s arm and strode across
the room toward the hallway. “If there’s a legal document to be found, it’ll be there.
C’mon, I’ll show you.”

They made their way through the rest of the lower level to a grand staircase and a
closed doorway just beyond. “That used to be Ethan’s room. But about six weeks before
Mizz Charlotte passed, she had a fall on the stairs on the way up to her room. She
was okay, thank heavens, but it underscored the need to keep her downstairs, where
the chance for future falls could be minimized. When I first suggested it, Ethan refused.
But when I pointed out he could have his mother’s suite instead, he stopped protesting.
Though getting him to remove all of his stuff was an ongoing battle.”

With a quiet hand, Frieda opened the door and stepped inside, her shoulders slumping
fast. “I still can’t believe she passed when she did, though having her go in her
sleep was better than the alternative.”

Under any other circumstance, Tori would have let Frieda talk, knowing the woman’s
grief was still so raw. But she couldn’t. Not now and not there anyway. Ethan was
due back in less than forty minutes and they still had so much to do. “Where are her
papers? We need to hurry.”

“I think most of them are in her nightstand drawer, which she kept under lock and
key.”

“You have the key?” she asked quickly.

Frieda smiled. “I don’t have the key but I know where she kept it.”

Lifting a compact from the nightstand beside Charlotte’s bed, Frieda flipped open
the compartment usually reserved for a flat brush and retrieved a key instead. “We’re
looking for anything that would indicate Parker’s intention to turn control of the
company over to Brian in the event of his death, yes?”

“Yes,” Tori confirmed.

“Well, I’ll check the drawer and you can check her secret box.”

“Her secret box?”

Frieda braced herself against the edge of the bed with one hand and slowly lowered
herself onto her knees. Once there, she lowered her body still farther to peer under
the bed and retrieve a lavender shoebox-sized box. “She showed me what was inside
once—mostly pictures and notes from her courtship with Parker along with a few of
Brian’s little surprises. But”—Frieda rose to her feet once again—“who knows? Maybe
you’ll find something useful.”

Tori settled on the bed beside the box and lifted the lid, Frieda’s words settling
in her thoughts. “Brian’s little surprises? What does that mean?”

Frieda’s laugh echoed softly against the walls of Charlotte’s room. “Brian liked to
bring his mom presents. Things he found around the house mostly. Like a cat bringing
its owner a mouse. He’d bring her my glasses, one of his live-in aid’s socks, even
Ethan’s journal from time to time. Most of the time, she tracked down the owner fairly
quickly. But sometimes, when it was something like a dropped flower petal or a misshapen
piece of candy, she’d put it into her box simply because it made her smile.”

Sure enough, the box contained an assortment of odds and ends as well as a stack of
letters tied together with a simple red bow. “Those were Mr. Devereaux’s love letters
to Mizz Charlotte when they were courting,” Frieda said before opening the nightstand
drawer and removing a hefty file of personal papers. “Mizz Charlotte often said that
Mr. Devereaux was a saint for marrying her, but that by doing so, she knew he truly
loved her.”

Tori reached into the box, pulled out the bow-tied stack of letters, and ran the fingers
of her free hand across the top, the slightly yellowed envelopes a testament not only
to their age but to the history they held inside their flaps. “Do you really believe
she loved him?”

Frieda dropped the document she was skimming onto the bed. “Without a doubt. Which
is why, if she knew about his death as we knew she did, there must have been a very
good reason she kept quiet.”

“Like protecting her son?” Tori quipped before looking down into the box once again.
“Oh, wait—there’s another letter. Or maybe just a piece of paper . . .”

Sure enough, near the bottom of the box was a folded piece of thick linen paper that
had been ripped from a notebook of some sort.

Frieda leaned in for a closer look. “I don’t think she ever showed me that one before.”

Lifting the paper from the depths of the box, Tori slowly unfolded it to find small
masculine writing void of any punctuation beyond the bare minimum.

Dear
Journal
Dad,

I’m not sure if I should call you Dad any longer or if I should just call you Parker
because the man I knew never would have hurt Mom the way that you did. I told Mom
it didn’t matter, that we didn’t need you but that was a lie. Mom needed you and now
I need you. Mom is dying. I don’t know how long she has because I don’t ask. But I
know it will happen whether I ask or don’t. I don’t know how to care for Brian, you
always made it look easy. And I don’t know how to run a company. I know you were tired
of cleaning up after me all the time and I know you don’t want to do it again, but
if I mess this up, Brian will be hurt and then everything you promised for him will
be a lie.

Please come home. I need you.

Ethan

She finished reading, only to start from the top once again. Line by line, she read
the words of a man who truly didn’t seem to know his dad was dead. And if he didn’t
know, then everything she’d been so sure of in regards to Parker’s death was wrong.

Dead wrong.