A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery

A shiver slipped up my spine. “Doctor Hughes? Are he and Anna okay?”

He angled his head down, considering me. “They’re fine. You know them?”

“Just a little. He’s friends with Will, and I met Anna at their house a few nights ago during a… a… a little party.”

He shook his head, the slow blink of his eyes showing his disappointment. “It happened right after that little shindig. Everybody in the damn town was at that party. Makes it pretty tough to gather up any reliable evidence.”

“It was standing room only, that’s for sure,” I said.

He looked me up and down, his eyes taking in my forehead and my mouth, before settling back on my eyes. “Why the devil do you women torture yourselves? You don’t need that garbage. Shaving and waxing and getting your claws painted. Uh uh. I’m with Brad—”

“Brad?”

“Paisley? Thank God I’m still a guy?”

When I raised my brows, he scoffed, but then he leaned forward and sang a few lines. “‘These days there’s dudes gettin’ facials…’”

I bit the inside of my cheek to stop from smiling, managing to feign a puzzled look. I’d heard Brad’s “I’m Still a Guy,” but hearing Gavin McClaine sing it in his heavy Southern drawl was priceless. “Keep going,” I said, holding my finger to my cheek like I had the answer to a test question on the tip of my tongue.

“‘Yeah, with all of these men linin’ up to get neutered, it’s hip now to be feminized. But I don’t highlight my hair. I’ve still got a pair.’” He kept singing, ending with a warbling, “‘Yeah honey, I’m still a guy.’”

He stopped singing and spread his arms wide. Was he waiting for applause? An encore? A pat on the back? I batted my eyelashes. “You’ve still got a pair of what?”

He leaned against the receptionist’s counter. “Funny.”

I laughed. “I’m kidding. I love Brad Paisley. No one’s ever sung one of his songs to me—that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, those uptight New Yorkers where you’ve been living all these years… I reckon they don’t get Brad Paisley or Dierks Bentley or Little Big Town. ‘Boondocks’? Now that’s a great song.”

“It sure is. So is ‘Cowboy Casanova,’” I added, thinking that Gavin could be the poster boy for that Carrie Underwood ditty. He looked the type… all suave and snakelike with his blue eyes.

The interior of the jailhouse had been remodeled, but it still felt old and musty like the song said.

He gestured toward the fabric swatches. “I’m done with those.”

I gathered them into a stack and tucked them back into my tote.

“I hear you and Will Flores are an item. That right?”

I guessed the singing and chitchat were done. “We’re friends,” I said, because saying any more would be stretching the truth.

“Does he know what he’s gettin’ into?”

Jamming my hand on my hip, I stared at him. “What in tarnation does that mean, Gavin?”

He laughed, but it was low and laced with a touch of venom. “All you Cassidys think no one knows about you.” He nodded, his eyes darkening. “We know. All that crazy shit goes on ’round y’all. Goats and plants and I don’t know what your deal is. Your mama might have fooled my dad, but you cain’t fool me.”

My pulse pounded in my temples, but I forced my gaze to remain steady. “My mama isn’t fooling your daddy about nothin’, and I don’t know—”

He held up his hand, palm facing me. “Don’t say it.”

I clamped my mouth shut. Madelyn Brighton had recently—and completely accidentally—snapped some pictures of my yard before and after Mama’s charm had worked its magic. Now I wondered if Gavin—or anyone else—had seen them. The Cassidy women had always flown under the radar with our charms, but maybe we’d been deluding ourselves. Did we only think our charms were a secret, while really, everyone knew?

“Deputy McClaine,” I said, mustering up as much gumption as I could. “My mama isn’t wooing your daddy. In fact, I’d say it’s the other way around. He wants to marry her and she wants to take it slow. So whatever spell you think she’s got him under, you’re dead wrong.”

His jaw clenched, but he didn’t say anything else. “Beth Marie,” he said to the receptionist who was just ambling back to the receptionist counter. “Take Ms. Cassidy to see our murder suspect.”

“Yes, sir.” Beth Marie’s voice trembled, but the tone of the deputy’s voice had lit a fire under her. She moved quicker than a lightning bug, maneuvering her rotund body faster than she had a right to, moving around the desk and heading down the short hallway into the depths of the jailhouse. “Come on this way,” she said over her shoulder.

And without so much as a backward glance at Deputy Gavin McClaine, I followed Beth Marie into the depths of the Bliss town jail.

Chapter 21

Mrs. James, bless her heart, was sitting in her tiny cell, her shoulders hunched against the brick wall. She traced a figure eight on the floor with the tip of her shoes. She wore a pair of navy slacks, flats, and a cardigan. At least the deputy hadn’t made her change into some God-awful orange jumpsuit.

My shoes clacked against the stone floor as I followed Beth Marie down the hallway. Mrs. James pushed away from the wall, brushing her hands over her sweater and patting her hair as if she were meeting me for lunch instead of me visiting her in jail. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, Harlow Cassidy.”

I wished I could say the same about her. She looked haggard, her face drawn and pale, and her eyes rimmed with dark circles. Her skin sagged from the strain of detention.

I forced a bright smile even though the whole place felt like a scene out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Only Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and the dog clasping an iron ring of keys were missing. “I thought you might like some company.”

She pshawed. “I’m a tough old bird, Harlow. It takes more than a dense deputy thinking I’ve committed murder to wear me out.”

I wanted to believe her, but the dullness in her eyes told the truth. Before heading back to her desk, Beth Marie had pulled a chair forward, but I skirted around it, instead standing at the iron bars, reaching my hand through. “Mrs. James, how are you, really?”

She ambled up to the bars, lifting her hands so I could clasp them. “Sweet girl,” she said. Her voice cracked a tiny bit, and her whole spirit deflated. I tried to summon up an image of the perfect outfit to flatter her figure, something that normally just happened, but pixilated pictures bounced around in my head, darting this way and that so that I couldn’t pull one out. I was oh for two in the jailhouse. Maybe the nineteenth-century brick walls were mortared with charm repellant.

“Can I do anything for you? Do you have a lawyer?”

She pulled her hands free, retreating to the rickety cot pushed against the right wall and sitting down.

I sat on the edge of the chair facing the cell.

“I suppose you mean besides Libby’s young man? He’s a bright whippersnapper, if there ever was one. But yes, in all seriousness, Ted Mitchell is working on getting me out of here as we speak. You know Ted, right?”

“Of course.” Hard to forget. He worked for the Kincaid family as their lead council, but he reminded me of Tom Hagan from The Godfather. He was the spitting image of Robert Duval, right down to his balding head, heavy jowls, and blind loyalty. I’d helped his wife put a little spark back into their marriage by designing a dress for her. “I hear he’s good.”

“The best,” she said.

“You’re innocent, so I’m sure you’ll be back home in no time.”

Her eyes flickered with a little light. “You believe I’m innocent?”

“Of course. I know you were with my grandmother when the murder happened.”

Whatever response I’d hoped for, it didn’t come. She just nodded.

“You could tell the deputy,” I said. “Miss June and Nana would corroborate it.”

“A jury can convict on circumstantial evidence,” she said, sighing so heavily that I wondered if she’d really