Before she could form a single complete syllable, Gracie and Holly bounded into the front room. Holly plopped down next to her mom. “I’m hungry.”
Miriam snapped her mouth shut and just like that, the moment was gone. “You can eat at the bead shop after the funeral,” she said.
“But—”
Miriam leveled a look at her daughter—one eerily similar to her mother’s—that stopped Holly cold but propelled me into action.
“I’ll get them something.” Practically catapulting off the couch, I ran into the kitchen, feeling like a rodeo cowboy wrestling a steer. I was scrambling to rope and tie Miriam so she’d cough up the name of a killer. I spilled crackers onto a plate next to a couple spoonfuls of Nana’s spicy pecan goat cheese, and threw a bowl of red grapes on the table. “Something to tide you over,” I called to the girls, but it was dead quiet.
I peeked into the front room.
No Miriam. No Holly.
Leaving the plate on the table, I dashed down the three steps leading from the kitchen to the front room. “Where’d they—”
Gracie pointed to the open front door. “They just up and left.”
No! I skidded across the hardwood floor, grabbing the door before it slammed shut. Holly was already at the sidewalk, walking in the direction of the square. “Wait!” I bounded down the porch steps two at a time, flying over the flagstone walkway, almost colliding with Miriam at the arbor. White flower petals showered over us in a frenzy.
“I didn’t . . . measure . . . Holly,” I said as I tried to catch my breath. Years of walking everywhere in Manhattan had kept me in shape. But a few short months of chicken-fried steak and queso had already reversed the effects and I was exhausted by the effort of chasing after her. “I can’t make her a dress for the wedding if—”
She shot a quick glance at her daughter before looking me square in the eye. A spark of determination flickered. “Forget I said anything, Harlow. I’ll take care of everything.”
Before I could react, she ran down the sidewalk. Within seconds, she and Holly had turned the corner and disappeared.
When I got back inside the shop, the things she’d said, as well as the things she hadn’t said, came together in my mind. She knew who the killer was, but believed she would be endangering her daughter if she said anything. She wouldn’t go to the sheriff.
Who had Miriam been about to call out as the killer? I parted my lips, pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth just like she’d done. “N-N-N-N.” I made the sound over and over again. And then I uttered a name.
My skin pricked with the sensation of a thousand needle jabs. One of the names I didn’t want to hear. “Nate,” I said under my breath just as the click of footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor behind me.
Chapter 38
“What got her all riled up?” Will asked as he sidled up next to me.
“Nell’s”—
“That woman’s gotta get her own life,” he said under his breath.
I shot him a look. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she’s too worried about that damn family of hers and what they’ll think to live her own life.”
He sounded a little bitter. I flicked my finger at him, then toward the window. “Did you and Miriam ever . . . Were you, you know, together?”
He gave me a long, searching look. “Now why would you ask that?”
“Just curious.” I hooked my thumbs in the belt loops of my jeans. “Gracie mentioned that Miriam and Holly stayed with you for a while after her divorce, so I thought—”
“So you thought there was something between us.”
I nodded. “Was there?”
“I’m curious why you’re curious,” he said, a hint of a grin pulling up the corner of his mouth.
“Gracie and Holly are best friends and they stayed with you, but you hardly said two sentences to Miriam when she came in. I was just wondering why.”
He didn’t answer right away, and when he did, his voice had dropped so Gracie and my mother wouldn’t overhear. “Let’s just say that the Kincaids are not my biggest fans. Miriam can’t ever decide if she should listen to her parents about her friends or make up her own mind. When her mother threw a fit that they’d stayed with us, she took Holly and left and Gracie didn’t see her for a long time. I managed to make her see that the girls’ friendship had nothing to do with her parents, but now I just try to make it easy on her. If she doesn’t get into it with her parents, Gracie and Holly can be friends and everything’s good.”
“But Mr. Kincaid acted like you and he were thick as thieves last night.”
“‘Acted’ is the key word. They can put on a good show, Cassidy, and they do—when they want or need to.”
“But why wouldn’t they want you helping their daughter when she needed it?”
“Their married daughter staying with a single man who already had one child outside of marriage? Not good for the Kincaid reputation.”
Exactly what Zinnia James had said.
“So you and Miriam were—”
“Friends, Cassidy. I do what I have to do to stay on good terms with people I do business with. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I haven’t made mistakes, but I’ll always do an honest day’s work and I’ll never betray the people I love.”
I could feel his hackles rising with every word he spoke, but he kept his voice calm, steady, and matter- offact.
“I don’t work with people I don’t trust and respect. Will I help Keith Kincaid with this bookstore idea? Of course. I work for Bliss, and his business is with the historical society, not me personally. But will I travel to Timbuktu, or wherever, and import God knows what for God knows who, just to pad my stock portfolio? Hell, no. I do some work with Nate at the foundation. Him, I trust.”
I was at an impasse. Will trusted Nate Kincaid, but Miriam had been about to name him as Nell’s murderer— hadn’t she? Their contrasting opinions tumbled around in my mind and I didn’t know what to think.
He held out a wrinkled sheet of yellowed paper. “I found this,” he said.
As I took it from him, the paper curled up on itself, crackling as I unrolled it and held it open.
The writing was spidery and looked rushed, and a few of the letters had been dropped from the words. Clearly a man’s handwriting. As I read it, Meemaw’s voice echoed in my head alongside mine.
It was signed “RP.”
The small hairs on the back of my neck stirred. It couldn’t be. “Wh-where—”
“Did I find it?” he finished.
I nodded, shoving my glasses up the bridge of my nose before I unrolled the paper and read it again.
He pointed to the workroom. “There should have been a dowel on the leg that came off of that shelf. There wasn’t. That whole thing’s just been sitting on that loose ball of wood, no dowel, because that paper”—he tapped the top of the sheet—“was shoved inside the hole.”
Every bit of breath left my lungs. The round leg had flown off when Nell was in the workroom, right before the jars of buttons fell. The whole scene had Meemaw written all over it. She had
