ins and an assault. He never did say
“We’re lucky,” Fern said. “An old friend of ours died from a mistake like this. It’s why I never use the stuff, and Trudy’s always careful to use low dosages. She always says lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. Guess she was wrong about that.”
Trudy harrumphed from the bed. “I am wite hewe.”
She might be right there, but I could barely understand her. “Trudy, I’m so sorry.”
“Why you sowwy?” she asked, her voice slow and muffled. “You do’t. Get wid of a dwessmaker?”
I made sense of her words in my head, stunned when I realized what she was accusing me of. “Of course I didn’t do it!” Gone was the sweet Trudy from our first meeting. Bitter Trudy had taken her place—not that I blamed her after all her suffering, but still…
“It went to her brain. She’s not thinking clearly,” Fern said after a while. She and I did our best to make light conversation and to calm Trudy down. After about ten minutes, the poor thing drifted off into dreamland.
“She slept through it?” I asked Fern quietly.
“Yup. We were both drugged,” she said with a hiss. “Near as I can tell, it had to be while we were at the country club doing final fittings for the Margaret gowns and the beaus’ suits. Sheriff thinks it was in some lemonade we drank. Whenever the break-in happened, we were dead gone.”
A visible shudder went through Fern. “Doctor thinks she’s gonna be okay, but it’s been touch and go. Respiratory paralysis.” She sank down into the chair at the side of Trudy’s bed. “Headaches are a small price to pay if this is the option,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Fern, squeezing her hand.
She gazed up at me, her eyes tired, her face drawn. “Would you finish the Margaret fittings for us?”
I knew how much asking that simple question cost her. To be left out of the pageant after Mrs. James had me ask them to help again had to leave them both feeling empty.
“Just until you’re able to come back,” I said. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
She looked at Trudy’s puffy, caricature-like face, frowning. “I don’t think I can do that,” she said, “but I’ll try not to.”
Chapter 26
I spent the next five hours at the country club. Fern had given me Trudy’s moleskin journal for reference so I could help match dresses to the girls who were supposed to wear them. Inside were all Trudy’s scribbling, sketches, and notes about each and every Margaret gown for this year. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I planned to go through the gowns, compare notes to the drawings, and use a stickpin to affix a small slip of paper with a girl’s name to her corresponding dress.
Josie would be there to help me. She’d called every girl on the list and summoned them back for a second go at the dress rehearsal. We would start first thing in the morning. The last things I needed to do were finish up the loose ends on Gracie’s dress and write her pedigree. Which meant calling Will and Gracie to have them meet me back at Buttons & Bows, with Gracie’s hair done up and ready to be photographed. The whole packet of photos and Margaret bios had to be off to the printer first thing in the morning for a rush job.
“Why did Mrs. James wait until the last second to print the pageant brochure,” Josie asked. I had the Lafayettes’ notebook under my arm and my purse over my shoulder as I sucked on a bottle of water. The storm had blown through, the sky was blue, and the temperature had dropped by at least fifteen degrees. No more humidity. No more sticky skin. Now, if it would just hold until after the pageant… just twenty-four hours.
I’d asked myself the same question. “To accommodate last minute changes, I guess,” I said. Whatever the reason, I was just glad Gracie’s picture and write-up would make it into the booklet.
The town’s festivities had already begun. The streets just off the square were cordoned off in preparation for the parade. Bliss Park was buzzing with food vendors, stages set up for music performances, and games for kids. The activities were winding down for the night as dusk settled in, but by morning, the place would be one big party. The whole event would culminate with the pageant and ball at the country club on Saturday night.
A cold sweat dotted my forehead. And I’d thought the pressure of pulling off a wedding gown and three bridesmaids dresses in a short span of time was overwhelming. That paled in comparison to this. Three custom period gowns was a big deal, not to mention sprucing up and altering another gown.
Add Mrs. James’s tiered blue dress to the mix, and I’d been sewing my fingers to the bone. But most of my angst was coming from running the show. Mrs. James hadn’t called me or shown up at the country club since the deputy had sprung her from the jailhouse. It was up to me to make sure all the girls in the pageant, including those who’d be wearing Lafayette gowns, were taken care of, and that everything went off without a hitch. If Macon Vance wasn’t already dead, I would wonder if he was working behind the scenes to sabotage the whole production.
Josie headed home to her husband, and I drove straight back to Buttons & Bows. As I pulled my truck up the long driveway on the left side of the house, I saw Madelyn Brighton sitting on one of the white rocking chairs on the porch. Her camera bag was on the little table beside her, but she peered through the viewfinder of her Canon, snapping pictures of something in the yard. My pulse skittered. The last time she’d taken pictures of my yard, she’d captured photographic evidence of Mama’s green thumb in action. First there were no flowers; then there was an abundance.
I threw the truck into PARK halfway up the driveway, cut the rumbling engine, and climbed out. “Whatcha doing?”
Madelyn swung her head in my direction, still looking through the viewfinder of her camera, and depressed her finger. “Just warming up.”
“Taking pictures isn’t like playing a game of soccer,” I said, opening the little side gate and picking my way through the thicket of bluebonnets.
“They’re not in season, you know.” Madelyn’s British accent made everything she said sound so sophisticated, especially compared to the typical Southern drawl ninety percent of Bliss residents had.
I looked down at the stems of bold indigo petals. “Mama’s been here.”
“Yes, she was. We had a nice chat before the sheriff whisked her off for a late dinner at Buffalo Joe’s.”
“The best barbeque in town.”
“You’re the third person who’s said that. I do believe we should try it.” She set her camera down and whipped out her cell phone, slid the lock screen free with her thumb, and started typing on the touch pad with her thumbs.
“Are you texting Bill?” Madelyn had met Bill Brighton, a Texas native, at Oxford, but they’d moved back here when he’d taken a job at the University of North Texas.
She nodded. “He’s been working so many bloody hours,” she said, “but after I’m done photographing the pageant, we’re taking a week off together. We’d like to go to the Hill Country for a little getaway.”
“Wimberly,” I said immediately. It was the one place Mama used to take Red and me on vacation when we were kids. She didn’t like to venture far from Bliss, but Wimberly was close enough that we could go to Schlitterbahn, the water park in New Braunfels, see the River Walk and the Alamo in San Antonio, visit UT Austin, which we’d both ended up attending, and raft down the Brazos.
“Stay at Creekhaven Inn. It’s right on Cypress Creek and just a stone’s throw to the village square. You can walk, see the ancient cypress trees, visit the wine country. It’s perfect.”
She typed herself a note on her phone, tucking it into her pocket when she was finished. The next second she was back to pointing her camera and clicking. “You’d best keep your grandmother’s goats away,” she said, aiming her camera at the fence behind me.
Oh no. Thelma Louise, along with Farrah, another of Nana’s escape artists and the prettiest Nubian of the herd, stood near my truck, poking their heads through the horizontal slats of the fence. Summer rain kept their pasture nice and green, but any goat would choose the succulent bluebonnets over grass.
“Shoo!” I retraced my steps, trying not to crush the pretty little flowers. Nana’s goats helped keep the weeds in check if Mama’s gift got out of control, but the buffalo clover, as some Texans called our state flower, was like a vibrant blanket of blue and I didn’t want it eaten away by the pesky goats. “Go on,” I said, waving my arms and stomping my feet as I reached the fence.
Farrah scooted away, but Thelma Louise just gazed up at me with her golden eyes. Her black-and-brown
