A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery

“Yet you brought your sewing bag. With scissors. Why? Did you think you were going to sew something? Did she give you the impression she needed you to sew something?”

“No, I’d just come from doing some alterations, but—”

I stopped as his eyes narrowed. He tilted his head to one side. “Mighty convenient, don’t you think?”

“Mrs. James is a good woman,” I said. I had to stop myself from wagging my finger. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Gavin McClaine.”

“Was I talking about Mrs. James?” he said, accusation lacing his voice.

I gulped, his meaning loud and clear.

“Why’d you leave the bag?” he continued.

“I… um…” I bit my lip. What I’d said so far had come out all wrong.

“Harlow,” he pressed, adjusting his hat lower on his forehead. “Answer the question. Why’d you leave the bag?”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I put it down while I was looking at the catwalk. Mrs. James was… um… she was busy.” The argument she’d been having with… with… Oh, Lord. She’d been arguing with the golf pro. Who was now dead. My skin turned clammy. This was not good. “I, um, I decided I’d catch up with her later and I left.”

“And the bag…,” he said, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging there.

“I forgot about it.” I pointed to the spot where I’d left it. “I set it down, was looking around, and I forgot.”

It might have been the truth, but he wasn’t done asking questions. “Did she specifically ask you to bring your scissors?”

My skin pricked and dark swirls danced behind my eyelids. So now we were talking about Mrs. James. “No, of course not. She didn’t ask me to bring anything. It’s a sewing bag. I always keep a pair of scissors in it.”

“Uh huh.”

My mind suddenly reeled back to the moment I’d seen Josie’s maid of honor dead in my front yard. To being questioned. To the horrible feeling of being a suspect in a murder investigation. Criminy. Was I a suspect? And had I just made Mrs. James a suspect? “Neither one of us had anything to do with this,” I said, defending Mrs. James even though the tiniest bit of doubt crept through me. She hadn’t looked herself yesterday. Surely it wasn’t because she’d been about to take someone’s life. Right?

“Does she know what you keep in your sewing bag?” he repeated.

“She’s never seen my sewing bag, so she wouldn’t know what I keep in it,” I snapped. “And she didn’t ask me to bring it.” Gavin McClaine was as unrelenting as his dad had been when I’d been busted breaking and entering at the Grange Hall when I was sixteen. He didn’t care that I’d just been trying to recover our school’s mascot costume—a massive bronco—that my brother Red had taken. When it came to high school football in Texas, a prank was sacrilege. You just didn’t mess with football.

He ignored my frustration and went on. “What was Mrs. James busy doing? Why didn’t you meet with her?”

I hesitated, my sails deflating. I liked Mrs. James, but the fact was, I didn’t know her very well. What if… “I don’t know,” I finally said. “She was, um, talking to someone. I figured I’d catch up with her later.”

“Uh huh. Who was she talking to?” His miniature pencil scratched against the notepad again.

“I couldn’t see. I didn’t want to interrupt—”

“But she asked you to meet her.”

“But she was busy—”

“And you couldn’t see who was she talking to?” God, he had a bad habit of interrupting me.

I shrugged. “No, Gavin—”

“Deputy,” he corrected.

I rolled my eyes, but not before he saw. I was not scoring any points with Deputy Sheriff Gavin McClaine. “Deputy,” I said. “I couldn’t see.” I pointed to beyond the bubble machine. “They were back there and I was out here.”

He clearly didn’t like my story, but after a few more questions, he finally let me go. I caught a glimpse of Macon Vance’s muddy shoes—still on his feet—as I left. Only one thought circled in my mind. Could Mrs. James have done this?

Chapter 6

Another murder in Bliss. Not so blissful, I thought. I parked my old jalopy of a pickup truck in front of the Italian pasticceria, Villa Farina, on the square. Bobby Farina was a third-generation baker who lived out his family’s tradition of producing delectable Italian mini pastries, but today what I needed was an iced coffee. My stomach was still churning from seeing MaconVance’s dead body. Butter and sugar might do me in.

Lord almighty, I really had brought the violence of New York City back with me to Texas.

Gina, the college student who seemed to live at Villa Farina, was like a sight for sore eyes. Her two-toned black-and-red hair was pulled back into a ponytail, little curls sticking to her hairline from the early-morning heat and her proximity to the kitchen, where hot ovens were going throughout the day. The buildings on the square were old, drafty as hell, and inefficient as all get-out. “Y’all are up and out early this mornin’, Harlow.”

Gina’s looks belied her soft nature. Drop her in Jersey City and she’d fit right in… until she opened her mouth to speak and her Texas quirk came out. “Y’all” was her standard word, something only a true Southerner could understand. “I’ve been over to the country club.” I leaned in, a thread of guilt winding through me. I wasn’t an inherently gossipy person, but anxiety at another murder in Bliss had formed a knot in the center of my gut and telling someone else about it might help unwind it. “There was a murder.”

“No,” she said, her voice barely a breath. She glanced over her shoulder, then over mine. No one was in line behind me. “Who?” she asked.

“Macon Vance—”

She gasped. “The golfer? N-no, really?” Her already pale face drained completely.

I nodded. “The place was a madhouse. The local news was there, and tons of looky-loos.”

Her voice dropped to a low whisper. “How?”

I lowered my voice to match hers. “He was stabbed.”

Her hand went to her heart and she turned a little green. “Did they arrest anyone?”

“Not yet,” I said, secretly praying Mrs. James and I would steered clear of the county jailhouse.

She sucked in a deep breath, recovering her nineteen-year-old composure. Death was hard to take, I thought, no matter the age. “A lot of suspects, I bet.”

I blinked. “You think?”

Instead of answering, she waved another clerk over. “I’m gonna take five. Can y’all cover for me?”

The teenage boy smirked. “Yeah, Gina, I think I can handle the crowd.”

Right, since the crowd was all still at the country club.

Gina rolled her eyes as she came around the end of the glass pastry-case counter. She grabbed my arm and dragged me to a little round table in front of the cafe. She snuck another look around the bakery before focusing on me. “You never heard the gossip about him?”

I shook my head. I’d been back in Bliss for a few months, but it took more time than that to get caught up on the rumor mill.

One side of her mouth angled down in a lopsided frown. “The way I hear it around here is that he makes—I mean, made—a lot of lonely housewives happy and a lot of absent husbands less missed.”

“Ah,” I said, a lightbulb going on above my head. “So Macon Vance was a golf pro in the”—I cleared my throat—“tennis pro sense. Got it.”

“Everyone knows it.”

I looked around the shop. Did they all know about Macon Vance’s extracurricular activities? And if they did, why hadn’t he been run outta town on a rail?

There were a few familiar faces, some of whom I’d seen at the Kincaids’ big fund-raising gala a few months back. I recognized Mrs. Eleanor Mcafferty, streaks of blond highlights prominent in her severely pulled back hair,