Pleating for Mercy

Without another word, he burst through the door.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Sheriff McClaine bellowed.

The door slammed and I was alone in the hall. I listened to see if I could gauge how Josie was holding up, but the voices were muffled. Nothing to do but go and open the shop. Not that anyone would be there waiting for custom couture.

Footsteps sounded behind me, then stopped. I looked over my shoulder. Madelyn Brighton stood halfway down the hallway, staring at me as if she could read my every thought. From out of nowhere, a vision appeared in my head. She was wearing a skirt that hit just at the knee, made in a bold print, a light-weight denim jacket, and a homespun scarf.

Behind her was a misty form—just like the one on the edge of the photo she’d shown me.

The vision disappeared with a pop.

Something was definitely amiss in Bliss.

Chapter 13

The town square in Bliss, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, looks like it came straight out of a movie set. With its hundred-plus-year-old limestone courthouse smack in the center and quaint restaurants and shops circling the perimeter, it was easy to see why people might come back home to roost. Or land here later in life and decide to stay.

It took me just eight minutes to walk from the Sheriff’s Department to the square. One more block and I’d be home. First order of business? Scour Meemaw’s boxes and jars of trims looking for anything that might create the odd pattern left on Nell’s neck. I prayed I wouldn’t find a thing, which would mean whoever killed Nell used cording or trim from somewhere else, not from Buttons & Bows.

My shoulders drooped. So many people had been in the shop the day Nell had died. The place had been chaos. It would have been easy for someone to pocket a random piece of trim with no one the wiser.

My pace slowed as I passed the ice cream parlor, a throwback to the early twentieth century, before Baskin-Robbins and Cold Stone Creamery existed. The red-and-white awning and matching interior of Two Scoops was enough to make a girl feel like she was five years old and clamoring for a double-dip cone.

Bliss was waking up. When I’d left the shop with Sheriff McClaine and Josie, only the birds and insects had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. Now cars were parked, angled in, at Villa Farina. People spilled out onto the sidewalk as they sipped their coffee and tea and wallowed in carb heaven.

In the short time I’d been back in Bliss, the Italian Pasticceria had become one of my favorite places on the square. Villa Farina, owned and operated by pastry chef Bobby Farina, a third-generation baker who’d moved to Bliss with his wife, Colleen, carried on the family tradition of mini Italian pastries just like the original bakery in New York. I’d never been to the New York store, but I could live happily in the Bliss establishment. From cannoli to sfogliatelle, superthin layered dough with light orange-ricotta filling, everything chef Bobby made could bring a grown man to tears.

Like a fish being caught on a line, I caught a whiff of roasted coffee beans and I was hooked. A shot of caffeine. Just what I needed. I followed the ribbon of scent, hurried across the street, cut in front of the courthouse, crossed the opposite street, and shambled into Villa Farina.

Once inside, I sucked in the deepest breath I could muster. It was April, warmer today than it had been all week, but the weather didn’t make a lick of difference to me. I could drink a hot cup of joe on a sweltering day just as easily as I could in forty-degree weather. Ground beans and warm pastries soothed my soul.

I waited in line. Gina, a college student who worked for Farina’s and looked like a tough Jersey girl with her two-toned black-and-red hair, was all country on the inside. “Morning, Harlow,” she greeted when it was my turn, her voice pleasantly husky like Taylor Swift’s. “I’d ask if you want the usual, but y’all always get something different.”

Gina used “y’all” to refer to one person or a group of people. Still, I glanced over my shoulder to see if this time someone else was behind me.

No. I was at the end of the line. One of these days I’d stop looking.

“I have to try one of everything before I can decide what I like best,” I said.

“What’ll it be today?”

I took it all in, finally deciding on a pasticciotti. She put the cream puff on a thick white plate, added a fork, and went to work making my cinnamon dolce latte.

My name is Harlow Jane Cassidy and I’m a carb addict.

“Sad about Nell,” Gina said over her shoulder. “I heard they brought Josie Sandoval in for questioning.”

Bad news traveled fast in a small town. “Sheriff McClaine had a few questions for her. Since she discovered the body and all.” I threw in the last part to give some context to Josie’s questioning. Villa Farina was the gossip hub of the square. Hopefully Gina would spread my explanation and suspicion about why Josie was questioned would be defused.

She finished foaming my milk and poured it into the espresso she’d brewed. “Is she, gonna, like, inherit Seed-n-Bead?”

I stared at Gina’s back, speechless for a second. First, because to inherit something required that there be a will, and I hadn’t marked Nell as a planner. Second, it hadn’t occurred to me that Nell and Josie were that close. Friends, yes. Coworkers, also yes. But businesses were passed from generation to generation within a family.

“Why on earth would Nell leave her business to Josie?” I asked when she came back to the counter with my coffee.

Gina shrugged. “Way I heard it, Nell didn’t have anyone else. Might as well leave it to Josie. They were close, far as I could tell.”

I laid six dollars and some change on the counter to pay for my morning calories. “Yes, but do you think Nell had actually made a will?” That took a lot of forethought. “I only met her once, but she didn’t strike me as the type.”

Through the small windows of the swinging doors, I could see Bobby rolling out some pastry dough. A new confection to add to the day’s offerings. Colleen came through the doors carrying a tray loaded down with a fresh batch of eclairs. A line had started to form behind me. Gina leaned over the counter, all cloak-and-daggerlike, and whispered, “I know she did. She’s been in here with her lawyer.”

“So?”

“Just last week,” she said conspiratorially.

That was interesting, but . . . “Okay, but they could have been discussing anything,” I said, scooting over so the man behind me could place his order.

“Uh-uh.” Gina rang him up and grabbed him a fresh eclair. “They were definitely talking about her will. I didn’t hear the details, though. Whatever she decided, he didn’t think it was a good idea.”

Gina took the man’s money and handed him his plate, going straight to work on his coffee order. “They went back and forth for a while.” She talked louder over the whir of the machine as she heated the milk. “She seemed pretty determined to do what she wanted from where I was standing. Which was right here,” she added over her shoulder.

I scanned the cafe portion of the bakery. Three small round tables sat in the center and either side wall had three square tops. There was no way Gina would have heard a conversation that took place at one of the front left tables. “Where did they sit?”

She pointed at the table closest to the counter, right next to us.

Huh. So Gina had heard their conversation. I didn’t know what it might mean, but the fact that Nell had drafted a will just a week before her murder seemed suspicious.

I had Gina put my lemon cream puff in a bag and left, realizing I should have asked who Nell’s lawyer was. I peeked back in the bakery, but the line was already out the door. I was not Nancy Drew, I reminded myself. I’d just pass the information on to the sheriff and let him deal with it.

I started to turn left so I could take Mockingbird Lane all the way home, but stopped in my tracks. Seed-n- Bead was right next door on the right. I did an abrupt change of direction and stood in front of the bead shop. I’d