Let it Sew (6 page)

“Mizz Sinclair? Is there something wrong?”

She stared down at the sticks lying crisscross beside a familiar tree and then up
at Debbie, the confusion she saw in her sewing sister’s face quickly pushed aside
by the horror Tori knew was mirrored in her own.

Chapter 6

If she weren’t so worried about what they might find, Tori would have been hunting
around for a camera, determined to have photographic evidence of Leona Elkin in galoshes
and rubber gloves. But she was, so she wasn’t.

Instead, she worked to steady her breath amid the growing complaints taking place
just on the other side of her desk.

“These—these boots are horrid,” Leona groused as she untucked her pant leg from her
left boot, only to retuck it once again.

“You don’t have to wear boots at all, Twin.”

Leona pinned Margaret Louise with a glare to end all glares. “Then what do you propose?”

“Wear your fancy heels and resign yourself to gettin’ ’em dirty while we dig, or stay
here and wait for us to tell you what happened.” Margaret Louise pulled her work gloves
higher on her thick wrists and grabbed the series of shovels she’d propped against
the wall of Tori’s office. “Tori . . . here’s your shovel. Jake says it’s a good one.”

She swallowed against the lump that had taken up residence in her throat since the
moment she saw Charlotte’s sketch, the possible implication of the crisscrossed sticks
making her more than a little nauseous. “Did you tell Jake why you needed them?”

“No. I figured there’d be time ’nough for that if we find somethin’.” Margaret Louise
grabbed hold of her own shovel and gestured toward Leona. “So what’s it gonna be,
Twin? You in or you out?”

Leona hijacked her sister’s shovel and made her way toward the door, her shoulders
squared beneath her teal-colored cardigan. “I’m just glad Paris is with Rose and Patches
this evening. Something like this could give my sweet baby nightmares.”

“We don’t know that we’re even going to find anything, Leona.” But even as she spoke
the words aloud, she knew they were wrong. Charlotte Devereaux was the queen of details.
If a brick was cracked, she drew it. If a window was broken, she included it. And
while there were no actual sticks beside the tree when she returned to the library
that afternoon, the likelihood they’d be there from one day to the next was essentially
nil.

The picnic tables outside the library were used by visiting school groups, reading
senior citizens, and hungry library employees determined to get a little fresh air.
The tree in question was beside the tables.

“I don’t mean nightmares over what we’ll find,” Leona snapped. “I mean nightmares
over seeing her mama dressed like this.” Leona motioned toward her getup with her
non-shovel-holding hand. “I haven’t worn something like this since . . . since
never
.”

Margaret Louise’s hearty laugh bounced off the walls of Tori’s office. “No one told
you to wear a trench coat, Twin. Or a hat with a flashlight, either.”

“I’m being prepared,” Leona protested.

“Prepared for what exactly? A landslide?”

“Oh, shut up, Margaret Louise!”

It felt good to laugh even if the moment was short lived. “Ladies, ladies. Really.
However you want to dress is fine.” Tori made her way over to the door and flicked
off the overhead light. “With any luck, we’ll dig and find nothing.”

She led the troops down the hallway and toward the library’s back door, the shovel
from Margaret Louise’s son in one hand, Charlotte’s sketchbook in the other. She knew
the marked spot well. In fact, the picnic table that resided beside it had been the
sight of lunches with everyone from Margaret Louise and her granddaughter Lulu, to
Milo and his mother. Its location provided shade in the summer as well as a bit of
privacy from the curious eyes of passing pedestrians.

“Maybe some kid put those sticks under the tree as part of some game right before
Charlotte sat down to sketch. Did you ever think of that?” Leona posed as they exited
the library and walked around the west side of the building.

“I did. And I hope that’s the case.” She shone her handheld flashlight at the ground
beneath their feet and continued on. “But I need to know for sure. Especially since
the sticks are drawn quite differently than everything else in the picture, almost
as if they were an afterthought added for effect.”

“Does Milo know about this?”

She winced as first Leona, and then Margaret Louise, ran into her from behind. “Victoria!
Why did you stop?” Leona hissed. “You made me chip a nail.”

Turning, she shone the flashlight onto Leona’s chin. “In answer to your question,
Leona, Milo does
not
know. There’s nothing
to
know until we dig. Which, as you’ll notice, we haven’t done yet because . . .” Aware
of the tension building in her shoulders, Tori let her words trail off as she began
walking once again.

“What she’s too polite to say, Twin, is butt out.” Margaret Louise huffed and puffed
across the library grounds until they came to the spot featured in Charlotte’s drawing.
“If Victoria chooses to keep secrets from Milo, that’s her choice, not yours.”

She stopped again. “I’m not keeping secrets, Margaret Louise. Milo left right after
school today to visit an old friend in North Carolina. I’ll tell him when he calls
tonight.”

“Men want to hear what you’re wearing when they call. They want to hear that you miss
them. They want to hear what you’ll do when they return,” Leona spouted in full lecture
mode. “They don’t want to hear that you’ve been traipsing around in the dark, digging.
It’s not the least bit enticing.”

“Neither is the cricket that just landed on your sleeve, Leona.”

She knew she shouldn’t have said it, but the sight of the always regal Leona Elkin
hopping around in galoshes and a flashlight-mounted hat was simply too good to pass
up. So, too, was the sound of Margaret Louise’s ensuing belly laugh.

“Now, can we do what we need to do and be done with it, please?” Without waiting for
an answer, Tori resumed her stride, the tree in question no more than thirty feet
away.

When they reached their digging spot, she propped her shovel against the trunk of
the tree and set the sketchbook on the picnic table before addressing the sturdier
of her cohorts. “Margaret Louise? Can you give me a hand with this table?”

“You’re darn tootin’ I can.”

“If Charlotte was so detailed with her pictures, why isn’t the table in it?” Leona
challenged.

It was a point Tori hadn’t considered and it gave her pause. “It’s not in the framed
drawing Frieda gave me, either.”

“It wasn’t in your picture, Victoria, because there wasn’t a picnic table here then,”
Margaret Louise interjected. “As for the one in the book, my guess is she used your
framed sketch as her guide, seein’ as how she ain’t been out of her home in years.”

On the count of three, they moved the picnic table a solid six feet to their left
then grabbed hold of their shovels once again. “Are you ready, ladies?” she asked
over the sudden roar in her ears.

“Ready.” Margaret Louise glanced right. “Twin?”

Leona merely nodded, her chin still jutted forward in protest of the cricket incident.

“Okay, let’s go.” Tori pushed the shovel into the ground, the rain-moistened earth
giving way easily beneath her foot. Shovelful by shovelful they dug, each new scoop
of dirt revealing nothing more than an occasional earthworm.

Despite being firmly in her sixties, Margaret Louise was a veritable workhorse, her
contribution to the growing mound of dirt behind them every bit as large as Tori’s.
Leona, on the other hand, stopped every few seconds to offer an “eww” and an occasional
“ick.”

But still they dug.

And dug.

And dug.

“Are we hoping to get to China?” Leona whined. “Because if so, might I suggest a wonderful
little restaurant in the middle of a darling little Chinese town I visited about ten
years ago?”

Tori stuck the end of her shovel into the ground and leaned against the handle as
all of the tension and all of the fear she’d been harboring throughout the afternoon
and evening drained out of her psyche. “How about we stay right here in Sweet Briar?
No restaurant anywhere can beat Margaret Louise’s cooking anyway.” She turned to Leona’s
sister. “You can stop digging now. There’s nothing here.”

As if Tori hadn’t uttered a word, Margaret Louise continued, the pace of her task
increasing with each noticeable rise of her eyebrows.

“Margaret Louise? Is something wrong—”

The grandmother of seven stopped digging and bent down, her pudgy hand sifting through
the dirt to retrieve something small, flat, and rectangular.

“Margaret Louise? What is that?”

“I’m not sure . . .” The woman’s words petered off as she flipped the item over. “Good
heavens, what on earth is this doin’ here?”

Moving in, Tori craned her neck around Margaret Louise’s shoulder to find a decades-old
wedding photograph that had been laminated for safekeeping. “A wedding picture?”

Margaret Louise relinquished custody of the picture and resumed the task of digging,
her voice peppered with huffs and puffs. “You realize who that is, don’t you?”

Tori looked again at the photo, the identity of the bride and groom a complete mystery.

Leona picked her way around the outer edge of the hole and plucked the picture from
Tori’s hands, only to make a face at the dirt it contained. “That’s Charlotte. Looking
rather plump for someone so young and in a wedding dress, I might add.”

Tori stared at Leona.
“Charlotte?”

Leona pushed the picture back in Tori’s hands then wiped her own on her trench coat.
“Yes, Charlotte. You know, the woman responsible for us being out here in the first
place.”

A strangled cry made her turn in time to see Margaret Louise jump backward in their
makeshift hole, the woman’s moonlit eyes wide with fear.

“Margaret Louise? What’s wrong?”

“I—I think I found somethin’.”

Leona rolled her eyes. “It’s probably just Papa Earthworm getting ready to seek revenge
if we don’t quit annihilating his children.”

“I—I think it’s somethin’ else. Somethin’ bigger.”

Shaking off the sudden onslaught of trepidation, Tori moved in with her shovel, the
color variation Margaret Louise had unearthed both beckoning and shooing at the same
time.

“M-Maybe we should call Chief Dallas,” the grandmother of seven suggested by way of
raspy whispering.

“It’s not worth bothering him until we know there’s even something worth bothering
him over.” Slowly, carefully, Tori moved the tip of her shovel out eight inches and
carefully pushed inward, her hand lifting the dirt upward to reveal the sole of a
shoe.

A
dark brown
leather shoe.

*   *   *

They sat side by side across the library’s stone steps, watching as volunteers from
the Sweet Briar Fire Department uncovered more items from the hole, the crew’s progress
illuminated by a large portable light that had been brought in for the occasion.

“Did you give Chief Dallas the photograph?” Leona asked from her spot between Tori
and Margaret Louise.

Tori nodded.

“And the shoe? What did they say about the shoe?”

“He got men out here to dig, didn’t he?” Margaret Louise hooked her right arm behind
her head and stretched then repeated the same maneuver with her left arm. “Obviously
he thinks we found a grave.”

A grave . . .

Shivering, Tori squinted against the near-blinding effects of the high-powered light
and watched as one man signaled to the others to stop. Then, moving as one, they all
stepped forward and looked down. “Uh-oh,” she whispered.

Margaret Louise dropped her hands back to her lap and bobbed her head to the side
to afford a better view. “Sure looks like they found somethin’ else, huh?”

Again Tori nodded.

And swallowed.

“You know,” Leona remarked, “finding that wedding picture isn’t really so surprising.
The one and only time I allowed myself to get hurt by a man, I took every picture
I had of the two of us together and tossed them in the fireplace. Watching them burn
was . . . cleansing. Freeing.” Leona reached up, switched off her hat-mounted flashlight,
and set the contraption on the step below her feet. “I imagine burying some of his
things would have worked, too.”

“Oh. Oh. Fred’s bendin’ over. He—he’s pickin’ somethin’ up.” Margaret Louise paused
her play-by-play just long enough to lean forward and groan. “You wouldn’t happen
to have binoculars in your office or anything, would you, Victoria?”

Keeping her full attention on the Sweet Briar fire chief, Tori matched Leona’s lean
and raised it with a stand. “It looks like some sort of metal plate and”—she rose
up on tiptoes—“rod.”

“I bet Charlotte shoved some of Parker’s favorite things in a box and buried them
where she wouldn’t have to think about them,” Leona declared. “It makes all the sense
in the world.”

“Buryin’ ’em outside the library makes sense, Twin?”

Leona’s chin jutted upward. “Burying them on her own property would have been bad
for her home’s feng shui.”

“Dixie
did
say that Parker loved the library. Assuming that’s true, maybe Charlotte decided to
bury his stuff here as a sort of retaliation.” But even as she posed the possibility,
Tori found the notion to be a stretch. Granted, she had never met Charlotte Devereaux,
but the one commonality between everything she’d heard was that the woman had adored
her husband to the very end.

Adoring wives, whether scorned or not, didn’t bury their husband’s things in the ground.
They kept them close, along with the never-ending hope that the object of their affection
would one day rise from the dead or find his way home again after his meandering ways.

“I’ll be right back,” she mumbled into the night. Slowly, she descended the steps
and headed toward the diggers.

As she approached, Chief Granderson broke free of the men and climbed out of the hole,
holding her at bay some ten feet out. “So what made you start digging tonight?”

She considered telling him about Charlotte Devereaux’s sketch but knew it wasn’t the
time. That would come later. “A hunch.”