“We’re not witches, Madelyn.”
“No, no, of course not,” she said, watching as I absently picked up my happy red scissors, the blades sliding open and closed with a smooth, slick sound.
“And to be honest, I don’t know how it works—”
“Works?”
“Worked,” I corrected, darting a glance at her, hoping I hadn’t clued her in that Meemaw was still up to her old tricks. “She could never explain it. It’s the same with my mother and grandmother. It’s like they have some emotional connection to the world. Their thoughts and emotions float off into the universe and connect with something. For Meemaw, what she wanted came true. My mother’s emotions are tied in to things that grow. Could be weeds, flowers—could be anything. For my grandmother, it’s the goats.”
“Then it skipped a generation with you?”
I started cutting, carefully slicing through the two layers of silk. Since I was old enough to understand about the charms of the Cassidy women, I’d felt I’d missed out on something big, had done something wrong that prevented me from having a gift, or worse, was just not worthy of the charm.
But now that I knew Meemaw was with me, and apparently I was the only one she could communicate with, I felt revitalized. I was a Cassidy woman, through and through. “I guess so,” I said, but I smiled inwardly. She sighed, disappointed. She asked a few more questions before we fell silent.
After a few minutes, I said, “Let me ask
“Anything.”
I held my scissors. “You’ve been in Bliss for a few years now, right?”
“Three and a half. Bill grew up here. After Oxford, he wanted to come back home.”
Bill Brighton. That name did not ring a bell.
“And you seem to be in the thick of things, what with your photography and journalism and work with the sheriff’s department and the city.” I set the scissors on the table and turned to face her. “Who do
Chapter 27
“That woman turned heads,” Madelyn said after she took a minute to ponder my question.
Between Josie, Karen, Ruthann, and Zinnia James, I’d heard plenty about Nell, but I was curious what Madelyn thought.
“Turned heads? What do you mean?” I’d moved to the dress form I’d adjusted to reflect Josie’s measurements. Piece by piece, I began pinning the bodice together, mentally fast-forwarding through the darts for her bustline and pleats for shape and structure.
“I took a bead-making class from her a few months ago,” Madelyn said.
“I think everyone in town took bead-making from her.”
“It’s something to do.”
“That’s true. I used to climb the water tower. Might have stayed out of trouble if I’d had beads.”
Madelyn laughed. “I can’t picture you in trouble, Harlow.”
“That’s why I got away with it,” I said with a wink.
“Nell couldn’t get away with much. I could always tell when something was on her mind.”
“How?”
Madelyn drew her bottom lip into her mouth and clamped her upper teeth down. “She’d chew her bottom lip, like this,” she mumbled. “Like it was a good hunk of Turkish Delight.”
I wasn’t sure what Turkish Delight was, but I got the picture. I knew Madelyn must have some insight on Nell. Being a writer and photographer made you a student of human nature, just like fashion design did.
It was my job to create the perfect garment for a person, to see beyond what she imagined an outfit could be, to bring out her inner beauty through what she wore. In order to do that, I had to study human nature, too.
“Do you think she had a man on her mind?” I asked her.
The house creaked, like it was settling after an earthquake. Except Texas doesn’t have earthquakes and I figured that any settling the old farmhouse was going to do had happened decades ago.
Madelyn didn’t pay the sounds any mind. “Could be. I didn’t know her well enough to say. But I bet if we nosed around,” she said, then pointed her finger back and forth between us, “we could figure out who killed her.”
The lights flickered and one of the dress forms lurched forward. Madelyn gasped. “Bloody hell, what the devil’s going on?”
I was getting tired of explaining that it was an ornery old house, but what choice did I have? Better than explaining it was an ornery old ghost, I suppose.
Did Meemaw’s ruckus mean she wanted me to work with Madelyn? I edged a tentative toe forward. “We might could at that,” I said, gasping the moment the words left my mouth.
I giggled. I hadn’t combined “might” and “could” in a sentence since before I’d lived in New York, but it felt good, like coming home. Like skinny-dipping in the lake. Or standing on top of a water tower, arms spread wide, yelling, “Yeehaw!”
Madelyn grinned. “What’s so funny?”
I gave a final gleeful hoot. “I was just thinking that it’s good to be home.”
Her smile waned. “I bet.”
“Do you miss the UK?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “I miss my mum and dad. My sister had a baby. I haven’t met him yet.”
With sudden clarity, I realized that her clothes reflected her loneliness. Maybe she filled her time with so many different things so she wouldn’t think about being homesick. She needed color. Something a little more fun that would add a touch of sparkle to her life here. “Do you think you’ll ever move back?”
She cupped one hand behind her head, scratching her scalp. “It’s hard to say. Bill’s quite happy at the college. It’s not easy finding a position. One day at a time, we always say.”
“Well, maybe your family will come here for a visit.”
She waved away the idea. “It’s so bloody expensive, overseas travel. Not likely to happen anytime soon.”
A few minutes later, we were back to the original subject. I filled her in on the theories I’d formulated so far. “So it could have been Josie, or Nate. They both have possible motives. And then there’s the possibility that the murder weapon was taken from my shop, but so far I haven’t seen anything that could leave those strange marks on Nell’s neck.”
“You’re assuming her murder is directly related to whatever relationship she may have had with Nate, past or present, but what if it’s not? What if that was long over and is now serving as a distraction—a sort of organic red herring?”
“Then who would have wanted to kill her?”
Madelyn shifted uneasily. “And why?”
It was clear we had our investigative work cut out for us.
Chapter 28
That night, sleep completely escaped me. Mama and Gracie had both stopped by in the afternoon. I’d worked for hours on the bridal gown while they worked on the linings for all the dresses. Long after they left, I kept going. By one in the morning, my fingers felt numb and swollen, incapable of holding a tiny needle anymore.
In bed, I mulled over the list of people who’d been in Buttons & Bows the day Nell died. Anything to point the finger at someone other than Nate or Josie.
Josie and her bridesmaids had been there, of course. And Mrs. Zinnia James and her friends. Josie’s mother had stopped by with Josie’s aunt. And Lori Kincaid had come in with Nate. Had Miriam been there, or not?
