Fern harrumphed. Trudy didn’t pay her any mind. “That’s a relief. When we heard about the runway, we both thought the Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball was done for. Didn’t we, Fern?”
“Completely.”
“Oh, I understand,” I said, nodding. “But there’s no need to worry. The runway’s gone.”
“How are the rehearsals coming along?” Trudy sounded almost giddy. “I’ve been dying to poke my head in and check them out, but Fern doesn’t think that’s a good idea. Better that I stay out of Zinnia’s way, but we used to be such good friends. I made her gown, you know. Just like I made your grandmother’s—”
“Wh-what?” You could have knocked me over with a feather. They’d made my grandmother’s Margaret gown? I thought Meemaw had made it. “Was it yellow?”
“Oh, yes. Coleta’s was like a gauze-covered sun and Zinnia’s was sky blue.”
“We were just learning back then—”
“Like you are now,” Fern muttered, shooting daggers at me.
“—so it took us months to make a single dress.” She slipped into a dreamy recollection. “We got to where we could make a dress in mere weeks. Satins, silks, and velvets. Every girl wears a corset and bloomer—did you know that? Oh, yes, of course you know that. You’re makin’ two dresses, is that right?”
“Four, actually,” I said, counting Gracie’s into the mix, still shocked that Loretta Mae hadn’t made the dresses I’d found in the armoire.
“That’s just dandy for you. We’ve made… how many, Ferny?”
“Thirteen.”
“Of course. Lucky thirteen,” she said, chuckling nervously, a little vibrato in her voice, which told me she thought thirteen was actually
“Wait. There are only seventeen girls. I saw the list,” Fern said. “Who’s the last dress for?”
There was no fooling Fern; she was sharp as a tack. “That’s actually one of the things I need to talk with you about. There’s been an addition to the Margaret lineup.” I had a flash of my former life in New York. Ah, if the gang at Maximilian could see me now, talking about Sam Houston’s wife, corsets and bloomers, they’d be having full- blown conniption fits. “There was a last-minute addition. Mrs. James was going to help me write the… um…”
“The pedigree?” Trudy prompted.
“Yes, but the whole thing with Macon Vance… Did you hear about that?”
Fern nodded gravely, pointing to the newspaper on the coffee table. Right there on the front page was a picture of Macon Vance, the mischievous hint of a dimple in his left cheek belying the fact that he was dead, with the headline: BLISS GOLF PRO STABBED WITH DRESSMAKER’S SHEARS.
My face turned hot and I looked down at my feet.
“They were your scissors, then?” Trudy asked.
I sort of half nodded, half shook my head, hoping we could get off the topic of murder and back to the festival. I took a sip of my iced tea, cleared my throat, and kept on. “I’m not quite sure how to write it, so I thought maybe…”
Trudy seemed to get that I didn’t want to talk about my scissors and Macon Vance. She tilted her head to one side, her sad frown reaching from her eyebrows to her mouth. “You were never a Margaret, were you dear?”
“No,” I said, clenching my hands together underneath my journal.
“Of course we’ll help you,” Trudy said brightly. I thought I heard Fern growl under her breath. She was a good bit less enthusiastic. “Who’s the new Margaret? I wonder if we know the family.”
“Certainly not, or they would have come to us to make the dress.” Fern chastised Trudy as if she were speaking to a child. “Honestly, Trudy. After Zinnia stabbed us in the back like she did—” She trailed off, her eyes opening wide.
Trudy’s hand flew to her mouth, her fingers fluttering. “Oh, Ferny, you don’t think…”
I looked from one to the other and back again, realizing what they were thinking. “Oh no. No, no.” I didn’t want to believe it could be true, and I certainly couldn’t leave here letting the Lafayette sisters think it was possible. “Mrs. James did not stab Macon Vance.”
Neither one of them looked convinced. “When Zinnia sets her mind to something, nothing gets in her way,” Fern said.
“Right.” Trudy’s back went ramrod straight. “Look at your own grandmother. Why Zinnia nearly broke Coleta and Dalton up more than once.”
I stared at the nodding sisters. Mrs. James had told me how she and my grandmother had been in love with the same man—my grandfather—and that Nana had won his heart the night of the Margaret Ball. She hadn’t mentioned any other love triangle incidents. “She did?”
“Goodness, yes,” Trudy said. She patted her wild updo, as if a single touch could tame the silvery flyaways.
“Before my grandparents were married, you mean.”
“Heavens, no,” Trudy said. “The way I heard the story, your mama was just a babe—”
Fern interrupted, picking up the story as if she and Trudy were one person telling it. “Zinnia and Jeb were havin’ trouble in the baby-making department—”
“Not like their daughter,” Trudy said under her breath.
“—and people around town said she was plumb sure it was Jeb’s fault.”
“Zinnia wanted to have a baby more than anything, so she went to Dalton—”
“Your grandfather,” Fern clarified, in case I didn’t know who she was talking about.
“—and propositioned him. She wanted
“Shockin’,” Fern said.
“Utterly and completely,” Trudy agreed.
“But they didn’t… He didn’t…” My heart had stopped. Surely my grandfather, with his blue plaid shirts and belly hanging over his belt, hadn’t cheated on Nana. “They didn’t…”
Fern shook her head, looking at me like I’d gone cuckoo. “Heavens, no. Have you seen their daughter, Sandra? She’s the spitting image of Jeb.”
Fern piped up. “They’re just rumors. Probably not even true, but you see why there’s no love lost between Zinnia and your grandmother.”
The rift between the two women was like a boulder in my stomach, but I reminded myself that fighting over a man, and even trying to steal him away from another, was not at all the same thing as murder. Mrs. James could be guilty of loving my grandfather, but that didn’t make her a killer.
After Trudy and Fern finished filling me in on the final dress rehearsal, Trudy stood up. “Would you like to see our atelier?”
Like any dressmaker worth her salt, my pulse skittered and I practically flew off the sofa. Seeing another seamstress’s workshop was like crack to an addict. And the Lafayette sisters? From what I knew, they didn’t let anyone into their studio who wasn’t having a Victorian dress made. “I’d love to.”
Trudy’s step suddenly had bounce to it and even the tension Fern had been holding seemed to roll off her as we sidled through the kitchen, into the backyard, across a gravel path, and into a separate building faced with the same pink bricks as the main house. We walked through the sliding glass door and into a dressmaker’s wonderland. Victorian gowns, their hoops making the skirts as wide around as Christmas trees, hung on headless mannequins. “Resplendent” had been one of Maximilian’s favorite words. If he uttered it in your presence about a project you were working on, you could live on the praise for months and months. It was the only word that came to mind as I stared at the array of nearly finished dresses. Fourteen of them.
It felt like a dream room decked out in silks, satins, and velvets. Trains and ruffling, lace and ribbon, beads and sequins. Each gown was a work of art. Inwardly, I gave a huge sigh of relief. The first two dresses I’d been commissioned to make were just as ornate and showstopping as these. Libby’s was simpler. The dress, after all, had to fit the wearer. And Gracie’s? I still hadn’t decided what to do for her. But seeing the Lafayette sisters’ atelier and the presentation of gowns was filling my creative well with bolts of ideas.
“You do it all by hand?” I asked, my fingers floating over a pale rose-colored silk gown.
“Hand-done, each and every one.” Fern pointed to an ivory dress with tulle artfully draped along the bodice line. “You won’t see this attention to detail anywhere else in the country,” she said, exhibiting a wash of beading on one of the gowns. “Each bead is done one by one.”
