given up hope, “and that’s all they have.”
So she didn’t want to talk about her alibi. “Ted Mitchell’s the best. You said so yourself.”
“He is, but my dear, we must find the real killer, and I suspect the police are not even looking.”
I had more faith in Hoss McClaine than that. He was good at his job and he took justice seriously. But if she wasn’t willing to help herself, then she was right. The best way to prove her innocence was to find the real killer. “All anyone seems to know is that Macon Vance had a lot of girlfriends—”
“An understatement. From robbing the cradle to cougar-hunting, he definitely had his share.”
I remembered what Gina had told me the day Macon Vance had been found. Stopping him from revealing the truth—that he’d fathered a child—was strong motive for murder. Something about my conversation with Gina had raised a red flag; I just hadn’t been able to put my finger on what bothered me. Mrs. James’s comment, though, brought the flag front and center in my mind, with the answer right alongside it. Two women had been at the bakery that morning, and Gina had looked their way and said, “She’s too old.” Both women were well past their childbearing years. Macon Vance had been in Bliss for sixteen or seventeen years, so any child would be younger than that. I’d recognized one of them as Mrs. Eleanor Mcafferty, who I now knew was the grandmother of…
“Gracie,” I whispered.
“Will Flores’s girl?” Mrs. James stared at me. “What about her?”
I shook my head, fingering the fabric swatches. “I was just thinking. Mrs. James, you know almost everyone in town.”
“I’m a senator’s wife. Comes with the territory. Although there are plenty of people I’d rather not know.”
“I heard that Macon Vance had a child—”
Mrs. James gasped, the color—what was left of it—draining from her face. “Where did you hear that?”
“A friend of mine overheard him talking about it on the phone. Could it be…?”
“Grace?” She shook her head vehemently. “With Eleanor? Good heavens, no,” she said. “She’s well past her child-bearing years.”
“Not Eleanor. Her daughter, Naomi.”
She stared at me. “How do you know about Naomi?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Will told me. Gracie found out who her grandparents are.” Now I stared at her. “You knew?”
“I’m one of the few, I’m sure. I saw Naomi in Bliss the day she left that child with her father. She’d been gone for so long, no one ever thought she’d come back, and she so rarely does. She’s in and out, hardly letting anyone catch a glimpse of her. Bless her heart. Eleanor thinks Naomi gave the child up for adoption. It’s torn me up inside knowing she has a granddaughter right here, but it’s not my secret to tell.”
Mrs. James held too many secrets for people, it seemed.
She blew out a heavy breath and looked to the ceiling of the cell, looking like she had a basket of bricks on her shoulders.
“That man didn’t father a child with Eleanor Mcafferty,” she finally said after a good thirty seconds of silence, “but I’m sorry to say that he did have an affair with her.”
The fact that even Bliss’s so-called best families had sordid secrets was interesting. Could Eleanor Mcafferty have stabbed Macon Vance? Maybe he’d been blackmailing her about their affair.
I remembered what Steven Allen had said outside Will’s house before we’d gone into the Hughes’s cosmetic party. Macon Vance had gotten around with more than Eleanor Mcafferty. “The golf board was always split on whether or not to rehire him, right? There were plenty of people who didn’t like him.”
Mrs. James crossed her legs, one foot shaking back and forth. “The board is always split. Half have always been firmly against him, believing he was a bad influence in the community and caused more harm than good. The other half wanted the status he brought to the club as a former pro-circuit player. The board went in always knowing who was going to vote which way. The newest member is always the wild card and the half that wanted Vance gone kept waiting for someone to come on who’d side with them.” She shook her head. “If only it had happened that way, he’d have left Bliss, and he would still be alive. Don’t let’s talk about this anymore. Ted Mitchell is doing what he can.”
As the conversation shifted to the pageant, I had a fleeting thought that maybe one of the club’s board members could have taken the scissors to Macon Vance. Something to consider, and a better option than Gracie’s newly discovered grandmother being the murderer.
“I brought some fabric samples for you to look at,” I said when I was done giving her an update on the Lafayette sisters and the pageant, hoping a new dress would bring some color back into her cheeks, as well as be her get-out-of-jail card. The colors and garment images in my head began running together, the pixels tightening until one color became prominent, one design front and center. “I thought I’d make you a dress to wear to the Margaret Pageant.” I didn’t have time to, really, but I
Her hand fluttered up, her bony finger dabbing under each eye. “Lord, child, you are a blessing.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said with a little laugh. “Meemaw taught me to sew. It’s all I know how to do.”
“You bring people joy. It’s the Cassidy way.”
Something in her voice made goose bumps rise on my skin. For the second time in less than an hour, I was pretty sure that the Cassidy secrets weren’t so secret after all. Zinnia and my grandmother had been good friends once upon a time. Had Nana told Mrs. James about the family charms?
“I’d love a Harlow Cassidy creation,” Mrs. James said, interrupting my thoughts. She pushed herself off the cot and shuffled over to the bars, reaching into the bag of swatches I handed her. She seemed to keep returning to one above the others—a pale blue voile, the cotton fabric the exact color, I realized, of the Margaret gown she’d worn so many years ago.
“There were three Margaret gowns in Meemaw’s armoire. Who wore the green one?” I asked, the question rolling off my tongue before I could even gather why I’d asked it.
She hesitated for a moment, taking hold of the iron bars, looking like she wanted to rattle them, demanding her release. Her gaze bore into mine, the blue of her eyes deepening until it was the color of the ocean. “Eleanor Mcafferty.”
My mind swam as I tried to unravel all the threads knotted up in my mind. “So you, Mrs. Mcafferty, and my grandmother were Margarets together?”
She nodded, her knuckles turning white from her tightening grip on the bars.
“And Mrs. Mcafferty wore the green dress?”
“Yes. It was lovely on her, too. I’ll never forget the day we tried them all on. Ellie’s was the only one that was authentic. A bit of their family history, as it turns out. I could tell your grandmother wanted the green one instead of the one Trudy and Fern Lafayette had made for her, but Loretta Mae wouldn’t hear it. She said that each dress had a history, and that it belonged to a particular person. The yellow one was made especially for Coleta, and it would carry her history.”
Except my mother and I had never been Margarets so the history had been trapped in the seams of the gown forever.
“I knew the blue one was mine. Trudy and Fern made it just for me.”
My pulse ratcheted up. Dressmaking had a way of doing that to me. “Where did the green gown come from?” I asked, my head fuzzy, my thoughts disjointed.
“Loretta Mae told us that Etta Place wore it. Ellie fell in love with it the moment she saw it. She tried it on and your great-grandmother took one look at her and said things were as they should be; it belonged to her. That irked your grandmother, Coleta, to no end. She loved that dress.”
Was that part of why Meemaw tried to keep the dresses from me? Did she not want to dredge up old memories for Nana?
I believed exactly what Meemaw believed: that every piece of clothing made for a person carries history in every stitch and seam. What did a tear and ripped threads mean to that history? Was it a metaphor for a damaged life? “What happened that night?” I asked. “Why is the green dress torn?”
Instead of answering, she said softly, “We’re all the same underneath, you know.” She pointed her manicured finger to herself, then to me. “We’re not so different, you and I.”
I felt myself go blue in the face trying to get Mrs. James to spill what she knew, but the woman was as
