A minute later she came out from behind the screen practically glowing. “It works!”
“Of course it does.” She went on, raving about how comfortable she was, that she’d still be able to dance, how much better it was than the girdle her mom had bought from Walmart, and how Karen and Ruthann, but especially Karen, were going to flip when they discovered these. “They’re always talking about their tummies. Karen’s got her husband, but Ruthann says she better find herself a man quick before her looks go. And Nell . . .”
Her gaze darkened, but she pulled herself together. “Nell would have loved this,” she finally said. “She was forever complaining about her muffin top. Said there was no stopping it.”
I’d noticed Nell’s midsection. She would have been a Spanx convert for sure. I’d decided long ago that every woman needed to feel good about her body, and if it took shapewear to accomplish that, then so be it.
I spent the next hour measuring Josie’s beautifully compressed curves and going over the final design when she was dressed again. She peered at the sketch I’d done. “I don’t really get the pleating,” she said.
I’d played with our original design and had come up with the perfect dress for her. The pleats ran horizontally. I’d changed the sweetheart neckline to a slightly scalloped cut. It would fit her beautifully, accenting her in all the right places. “The pleats give it structure,” I said. “The sketch is rough, I know, but it’s going to be fantastic, Josie. You’ll look like a princess. Trust me.”
“But strapless?” Her shoulders hunched slightly, as if she was imagining herself in it right this minute, and she couldn’t quite picture it. “Are you sure? I’ll never do it justice.”
I turned her around to face the full-length oval mirror in the corner. “Look at you! You’re beautiful.” One of Meemaw’s maxims came to me, another bit of wisdom I lived by. “This dress is going to complement you perfectly, Josie. It’s not meant to steal the show.”
Her spine straightened and she threw her shoulders back. Bless her heart, she was trying her best to envision it and feel confident. After all, I was a designer. I could see the dress in my mind. It wouldn’t be so easy for someone who didn’t live and breathe fashion, clothing, and design. “So it’ll have beads?” she asked.
“Plenty of sparkle,” I confirmed.
She smiled—an honest-to-goodness grin—for the first time since she’d arrived here this morning. “I trust you, Harlow.”
“Good,” I said just as a knock sounded on the front door.
My ragtag appearance hadn’t improved over the last hour and a half. As I padded toward the door, I made a new rule for myself. Be presentable before I came downstairs, just in case this trend of early visitors continued.
I peeked through the glass of the front door and gasped. Sheriff Hoss McClaine stood there, cowboy hat in hand, toothpick between his teeth, looking like he was ready to hang someone with a brand-new rope.
Chapter 10
I held the door open as Sheriff McClaine stepped inside. He greeted me, raising his bushy eyebrows when he noticed Josie. He nodded to her, a polite Southern gentleman to the core. “Ma’am,” he said, though he stretched the word out until it had an extra syllable and sounded like
She jumped up, nearly crashing into the rustic coffee table. “Did you figure out who did it, Sheriff? Do you know who killed Nell?”
“No, ma’am.”
As he turned those slow roaming eyes of his to the main room of Buttons & Bows, I once again got the feeling that underneath the indifferent gaze, he was a sharpeyed officer of the law. What I couldn’t imagine was what he was looking for.
The front door jerked under my hand, slamming shut, almost of its own volition. I spun around, half expecting to see Meemaw, her iron gray hair piled on top of her head in a loose bun. But of course she wasn’t there. My imagination—or simply the deep-seated wish that my great-grandmother was still with me—was getting the better of me.
His gaze settled on me for a beat before landing back on Josie. “I need ya to come on down to my office, Miss Sandoval.”
She rested her palm against her chest. “M-me?”
“Yes, ma’am. I got a few more questions for ya.”
There it was again, that Southern charm that concealed a razor-sharp knife.
Josie’s left eye twitched and she looked as if she’d been sucker punched and pushed into a hole that she would never manage to claw her way out of. “Do . . . do I have to?”
The sheriff lowered his chin, his jaw working. “No, ma’am, ’course you don’t, but I’d be obliged if you would.”
She reached for her purse and pulled out her phone. “I . . . uh . . . can I c-call Nate?” She tried to punch the numbers, but her hands trembled. Her cell dropped with a dull thud onto the pecan planks of the hardwood floor.
I could feel her panic like it was rising up in me, and I stooped to pick up the phone. If she couldn’t form a coherent sentence in this house, there was no way she’d be able to manage under the manipulative charm of Sheriff McClaine on his home turf.
A sudden pocket of cold air surrounded me, instantly growing warmer as it enveloped my body. I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t let Sheriff McClaine drag Josie out of here, scared half to death. I put my arm around her shoulder, hoping the warmth enveloping me would seep into her. “Why do you need her?”
Hoss McClaine gave me a beady-eyed look. “Like I said, I got a few questions for her, is all.”
I channeled all the gumption I’d had to muster up every day when I lived in New York and leveled my gaze at him. “Can’t you ask your questions here?” I asked, hearing the South creep back into my voice.
His dark brown hair was particularly dull this morning, and his thick mustache and soul patch gave him a weathered cowboy look. He didn’t waver, blast him. “No, ma’am, I don’t believe I can. I’d rather Miss Sandoval come on with me.”
I felt all my Southern roots spread through me as if they were stretching through the soil, searching for water from a long-past thunderstorm. “Well, then, I guess I’ll come along. If it’s all the same to you, Sheriff.” My mama might well be dating the man, but
Josie squeezed my hand. “Would you?”
Wild horses couldn’t have stopped me. Josie needed a friend and here I was. “I was fixin’ to go out for a morning walk, anyway.” The lines on her forehead smoothed and her grip on my hand loosened.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Anytime.”
The Sheriff’s Department, which used to be the old Baptist church, is within spittin’ distance of Buttons & Bows. Once the church had finished its new, modern building just off the main thoroughfare, the city bought the old building, gave it a minor facelift, and moved the city offices into it.
I ran upstairs and changed out of my cutoffs. In record time, I slipped on the first thing I could get my hands on—a prairie dress, belting it on my hips—tethered my hair in two low ponytails, stuck on a cadet hat that I’d made years ago, and pulled on my favorite Frye burnt red harness cowboy boots. “Ready, Sheriff,” I called, hurrying back downstairs. Although what I was ready for I didn’t know.
The sheriff looked me up and down, but whatever he thought, he kept it to himself. Smart man.
Josie was facing the wall that held my display board, her cell phone pressed against her ear.
“Miss Sandoval,” McClaine said, gesturing to the door.
Josie held up one trembling finger as she frantically whispered something into her phone. A moment later she was being ushered out the door, followed by the sheriff. I brought up the rear. I’d barely made it out when the door slammed behind me. All by itself. I threw the house a backward glance, puzzled, but the mysterious happenings were just one more thing I’d have to think about later.
