Pleating for Mercy (12 page)

I was definitely not a goat-whisperer.

“Let’s go home,” I cooed, but Thelma wagged her head.

I tried a few more times, finally giving up and backing away. I couldn’t leave her here. She’d destroy the flowers for sure. But I couldn’t get her to move.

The front door creaked open, the faint jingling bells dinging as it banged shut. Will sauntered across the porch, a length of rope swinging from his right hand. He didn’t even bother hiding his amusement. “Need a rope, darlin’?”

Darlin’? My blood boiled. I was not his darlin’. I was
nobody’s
darlin’. “No, thanks, cowboy,” I said, regretting my pride. That rope would come in handy.

I stroked Thelma’s neck again, scratching at the Fu Manchu beard under her chin. “Come on, girl. Let’s go.”

She cocked her head and looked up at me. I couldn’t see the rectangular pupil, but her usually soulful black eyes looked like she was plotting something. She suddenly kicked her hind legs and took off, scooting across the front yard, past the archway, to the street. I sped after her, snatching the rope from Will’s hand as I passed him.

He didn’t say a word, just released it to me as I kept on the chase, my skirt slapping around my legs as I ran after the ornery goat.

Thelma turned around, darted past me, and trotted back to where she’d been a minute before. She stopped, cocked her head, and gave me a penetrating look that seemed to go straight into my soul. With a start I realized she was standing in the exact spot where Nell’s body had lain. Before I could grab her, she bolted again, charging through the yard, slowing to scratch her body against the low, jasmine-covered fence.

I tiptoed up to her and before she could dodge me again, I slipped the rope through her collar, grabbed both ends, and tugged at it. “Come on, Thelma, move,” I said. She followed, but I’d made it only a few steps when something reflected in the sunlight.

Holding tight to the rope, I bent down.

“What’s that?” Will’s voice was directly behind me now.

He was not going to leave, was he? Mentally, I shook a fist in the air at Meemaw, wherever she was, but in reality, I lifted the object for him to see. It was a small handheld mirror. And it had definitely seen better days. The glass was scratched like someone had taken a knife to it, the plastic handle worn and smudged.

How long had it been buried under the foliage of Meemaw’s yard?

“Thelma Louise! You naughty girl.” Nana barreled toward us, her straw cowboy hat tipped back on her head. Her outfit, from her Wrangler jeans to her pink-and-gray plaid shirt, looked like it had come straight out of a Drysdales catalog.

Thelma Louise gave Nana a contrite look. The jig was up. “Someone took the bungee cord off the gate,” Nana said. “Without it, Thelma Louise can open the latch, no problem. She’s the smartest of the bunch,” she added, a touch of pride in her voice.

I handed her the rope. Wagging my finger at Thelma Louise, I chided, “Don’t do that again, you hear me? I have some dresses to make. No time for your shenanigans.”

The doe ignored the scolding, instead giving me that penetrating gaze again. As I watched Nana lead her back to her farm, I wondered how smart goats really were.

By two o’clock, I’d placed a rush order on fifteen yards of Diamond French silk and the other fabrics needed for the bridal dresses,
and
I’d searched every corner of Buttons & Bows, including the attic, looking for any piece of trim, cording, or braiding that might have left the odd strangulation markings on Nell’s neck.

Nothing came even remotely close.

Despite leaving a message for Josie, I hadn’t heard from her since I’d left her with Nate at the Sheriff’s Department. I directed all my restless energy on the muslin mock-up of her gown.

Then I finalized my sketch for Karen’s dress—a flirty black number with just enough flare to be fun. She seemed buttoned up, not the fun-loving type. If I made her the right dress, maybe she’d let loose at the wedding a little bit and really enjoy herself.

Will Flores gathered up his things after patching the gouge in the wall left by the rogue shelf leg. He pointed to the shelf itself. “Nice fix-it with the bricks.”

I thanked him and he left.

We hadn’t gotten off on the right foot and now he was trying to make nice. Yes, I’d freaked walking in to find a strange man in the house, but maybe I’d overreacted.

Though there’d been no more conversation about me teaching his little girl how to sew, I felt a fissure of guilt opening up over it. Loretta Mae had made a promise. There was no way I could not honor it. I just had to get through sewing the wedding gown and the bridesmaid dresses first.

My little dressmaking shop felt suddenly quiet without him rattling about. I was left thinking about Loretta Mae, the shoes by the front door, and how Will had remarked that I had a ghost hanging around. I was pretty sure he was right. “You’re here, aren’t you, Meemaw?”

The wind seemed to moan, and it almost sounded like someone said, “Yes,” only there wasn’t any wind today. The air outside was still.

I stepped back from the dress form, setting my pincushion down on the cutting table. Slowly, I turned around, looking for a sign. “Meemaw?”

The air outside seemed to sigh and murmur in response, the green spring leaves on the tree branches brightening. Every creak of the old house was magnified. Even the silence was deafening to my ears.

My imagination was definitely getting the better of me.

I turned back to Josie’s muslin sample, but a movement by the front door, followed by a shuffle, made my breath catch. I’d left the shoes in the odd footstep pattern I’d found them in earlier, but now the two pairs of flip-flops were side by side, in another pattern. One black, one brown, one black, one brown.

My heart skittered. It had to be her! Meemaw was forever wearing two colors of socks, two different shoes, mismatched gloves. “All to go with my eyes,” she’d say. She had one blue eye and one brown eye, something, thankfully, I hadn’t inherited.

“Meemaw! Is that you?”

From the coffee table, the cover of my lookbook flipped open. The pages snapped back and forth, like someone was frantically searching through them. I lost my breath as I watched. Would this be happening if Mama were here, or Will Flores, or anyone else? Or was this haunting encounter for my eyes only?

Finally, the fanning pages settled down. The book lay open on the table next to the embossed box I’d brought back from Chinatown in New York.

I slowly walked toward the couch, glancing over my shoulder, half expecting to see a ghost hovering behind me.

“How . . . ?”

No answer.

I caught sight of my reflection in the antique oval floor mirror. My shoulders were hunched and my face was pale. “It’s Loretta Mae,” I muttered, trying to stay calm, “not Freddy Krueger,” but my heart still thundered like it was ready to beat right out of my chest.

“Meemaw?” I whispered, but there was no response. Perching on the edge of the couch, I gingerly pulled the lookbook toward me.

It was open to the beginning of my Southern Industrial collection, a look I’d envisioned while working on Maximilian’s urban chic line a few years back. The Southern Industrial collection was a combination of feminine fabric and edgy details: a ruffle thrown in to balance the hard lines or a custom-designed floral fabric with an angular black belt. My small-town sensibility always crept in.

I read the introduction text.

I didn’t need any more proof that Meemaw was right here by my side.

 

For an hour, Meemaw and I did a little get-to-know-you dance. Of course we already knew each other, probably better than anyone else ever could, but with her being an invisible ghost and me, well,
not
, it seemed a good idea to learn how to communicate more effectively.

I moved an object and she moved it back. “I miss you, Meemaw. Why’d you have to go?” I said aloud, though my thoughts were more self-chastising.
Why hadn’t I come back sooner? Why had I been so foolish?
I was full of whys and why nots, but none of them really mattered at the moment.

The pages of several magazines on the table flipped back and forth on their own. It took me a minute, but I’d finally realized she was trying to communicate with me. It took a while longer to piece together her response.
I’m here with you now, sugar
.

Yes, she was, and it was as though a weight I hadn’t even known I’d been carrying was suddenly lifted off my shoulders. I felt lighter. Freer. Like running my dressmaking shop and boutique in this house on Mockingbird Lane really was what I was supposed to be doing. It felt as though a sun-soaked cotton sheet, pulled straight off the clothesline outside, had been carried in by a breeze until it floated down over me, warming me to the bone.

We went back and forth, with me posing questions and her flipping the magazine pages until I could puzzle out her responses.

I finally asked her the question that had been on my mind since I’d learned I’d inherited her house. “Why’d you leave this place to me?”

Everything was quiet. The window sheers hung limply. The leaves on the trees and the flowers outside were motionless. Every cell in my body constricted. I’d had her back in my life for less than an hour. She couldn’t be gone already.

Finally, the corner of a magazine page fluttered. Slowly, as if it were made of lead instead of paper, it turned. I exhaled and the tension I’d built up in the last sixty seconds released with a burst. She was still here.

The pages gained momentum, flipping back and forth until Meemaw apparently found the word she was looking for. I didn’t know which word on the page she wanted me to read, but a drop of water suddenly fell on the glossy paper. Moisture spread, encircling the word “wanted.”

There was no rain. I didn’t have a leak. So where had the tiny drop of water come from?

Page by page, she communicated the answer to my question.
Wanted you home where you belong.
Another drop fell, the moisture spreading across the page, and in that moment, I realized it wasn’t water or rain or anything else making the droplets. They were Meemaw’s tears.

She spelled out the rest of her message.
And you know I always get what I want.

“I’m here,” Mama said as she burst through the front door of the shop. Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail, her sunglasses perched on top of her head, and her cheeks were flushed. This time she carried a terra-cotta pot. A sad-looking orchid drooped despite the stake holding it up. “I brought this, just in case,” she said when she caught me frowning at it.

I swallowed the last bit of the smashed lemon cream puff I’d finally remembered and rescued from the bakery bag. “In case what?”

She held the pot tighter. “When you called, I could tell somethin’ big’s goin’ on. Better that my energy go to this plant than to the weeds outside.”

My mother had never been a planner, least of all where her charm was concerned. Carrying a plant with her so she could direct her energy was real progress. Particularly in light of Madelyn Brighton’s photographic proof that something was fishy with the foliage in my yard.

“Now, where’s the fire?” she said, setting the pot down on the coffee table.

Before I could respond, Nana crashed through the kitchen door and barreled into the shop. “I came as fast as I could. It’s a full moon tonight and Thelma Louise and Junebug are downright rascally. I’ve had to give ’em both a good what-for.” Even her rushed words sounded slow-paced with her drawl. She looked at me, then at Mama and her droopy orchid. “What’s goin’ on?”

I sat them down and filled them in on Josie being taken in for questioning, Madelyn’s pictures, the strange pattern on Nell’s neck, and the sheriff’s people searching Buttons & Bows. I wanted to keep Meemaw to myself a little longer, even just a few hours.

A clatter came from the workroom. Maybe she had other ideas. I spun around and started to say,“Meemaw?” but stopped myself just in time.

The noise vanished.

Mama and my grandmother hadn’t heard a thing. “Ladybug,” Nana was saying, “they can’t possibly think you had anything to do with that poor girl dying. Why, you didn’t even know her. It’ll be fine.”

I sank back against the sofa, pushing my glasses to the top of my head and pinching the bridge of my nose. The dress form with the muslin sample of Josie’s dress beckoned me and Nell’s murder weighed heavy on my mind. I still hadn’t heard from Josie. I wondered what else could happen to turn this day topsy-turvy.

A light swishing sound came from the workroom, like there was a tornado slowly tunneling right inside the house. “Thelma Louise?” Nana shrilled. She jumped up, making the terra-cotta pot with the orchid teeter as she raced through the French doors.

I grabbed the pot to stop it from falling. “It’s coming from outside,” I hollered.

She stopped short, turned on her sock feet, and hurried past me, straight into the kitchen. Mama was on her heels. It wasn’t Thelma Louise, or Junebug, or any of Nana’s goats. I knew that, but I wanted at least one more minute alone with Meemaw before I had to share her. I held open the door to the back porch and the two of them skipped down the steps and into the backyard, spinning around, looking for a goat that wasn’t there.

I stayed inside.

For a second I thought I’d imagined the ruckus, but then a movement next to the stove caught my eye. “Meemaw?” I whispered, afraid that if I spoke too loud the nebulous glow in the corner would spook and vanish.