“Well, are ya waitin’ for a written invitation?” Mama demanded, but there was a little gleam in her eye and I suspected she was playing up how aggravated she was for my benefit.
The sheriff flipped a page in his notebook and tapped his pen against it. “Where were you earlier tonight?” He scanned the porch with lazy eyes, but I knew they were taking in every last detail, right down to the spool of azure thread sitting on the white-painted window frame and my sketchbook on the little table between Mama and me, opened to the drawing of Josie’s wedding dress.
“I’ve been here all day. Mama’s been here since, what . . .” I looked at her. “Seven forty-five?”
“Sounds about right,” she said.
I’d put a little extra emphasis on the word “Mama,” but he didn’t react. Cool and collected—that was Hoss McClaine. Which just made me wonder what in tarnation Mama was doing sneaking around with him in the first place. She deserved somebody who’d take her out on the town—or at least on the town square. Hiding—whatever it was they were hiding—wasn’t enough for Tessa Parker Cassidy. She deserved better.
He lifted his gaze to me. “What were you doing here with your mama, Harlow, while Nell Gellen was being strangled in your yard?”
From the tone of his voice he may as well have been commenting on the lovely weather we were having. It couldn’t be more than seventy-five degrees, a beautiful, mild Texas night in April. But even though his voice was calm and he tipped his cowboy hat back all casuallike, I got the feeling he was suggesting something else, like maybe I had something to do with Nell Gellen being—
It took a few seconds, but I finally found my voice. “She was strangled?”
He gave one slow nod. “By the looks of it.”
“She was waiting on me!” Josie blurted, stumbling up the porch steps and tripping on the last one. I lunged from my rocker and caught her, stopping her from landing on her knees on the splintered wood. “I’m getting married and Harlow’s making my dress,” she said as I pulled her up. “Only . . . only . . .” She sobbed. “Only not Nell’s dress now . . .”
Time was on the sheriff’s side. He waited while Josie dried her tears, and then he continued calmly as if there hadn’t been a break in the conversation. “What time did y’all leave the shop here?”
“Nell drove me home around four o’clock,” Josie said.
“Ruthann and I left together right around the same time,” Karen added from the bottom of the steps.
“That’s Ruthann McDaniels?”
A small-town sheriff tended to know everyone. Hoss McLaine was no exception.
Karen nodded. “That’s right.”
“And none of you saw Ms. Gellen after that?”
“She dropped me off at home,” Josie said. “That’s the last . . . the last . . . the last time I saw her.” She broke down with another sob. “W-we were supposed to meet b-back h-here.”
Karen held a clump of tissues to her face, quietly crying. With my peripheral vision, I saw that Madelyn Brighton had made her way around Nell and was now crouched on her other side. Every few seconds, a flash of light lit up the already artificially bright yard. All I could think of was that Madelyn was going to end up winnowing down seven hundred corpse shots of Nell.
We all turned as a car screeched to a stop just behind the sheriff’s car. I couldn’t see the make, but by the sound it made, even when coming to a quick stop, it had to be expensive. A woman hurried through the flower- covered arbor. “Josie?”
Mrs. Lori Kincaid, Nate’s mother. She’d changed clothes since her visit to the shop this afternoon. Gone was the sophisticated cream-colored sleeveless summer frock she’d been wearing. It had been replaced by gray slacks, a white oxford blouse, and a prim cardigan. This was a rich woman’s
She put a comforting arm around Josie’s shoulders. “Come on, now, pull yourself together.” It was a gentle command, and it did the trick. Josie gave a final sniffle, wiped her eyes, and stood stoic.
Impressive.
“This here’s a crime scene, folks.” Sheriff McClaine’s accent was thick, like gravy on biscuits.
“Not to mention a private property,” Mama added stiffly. She didn’t like all these people hovering around her childhood home.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the flower head on a weed waving in the yard, growing before my eyes. I flashed a quick look at my mother. “Stop it!” I hissed.
She frowned at me. “What?”
I jerked my head to the right. She stuck her chin out and narrowed her eyes like she was trying to figure me out. “You have a twitch, Harlow Jane. What’s wrong with your neck?”
“Nothing’s wrong with my neck!” I lifted my chin this time, trying to get her to look at the garden without alerting anyone else.
She finally looked in the direction of the two-foot-tall black sunflower and the cluster of weeds surrounding it. Her eyes grew round. None of that growth had been there moments before.
“Mama,” I whispered, a good warning in my voice, “you pull it together.”
“Ohhhh,” she murmured. She fisted her hands and relaxed her face. I looked back at the weeds. They were still . . . and didn’t seem any taller. She’d gotten it under control, but not before another flash of light from Madelyn Brighton’s camera went off.
“Miss Sandoval,” I heard the sheriff say, “would you step over here?”
Josie looked at Mrs. Kincaid for reassurance, her brown eyes rimmed with red. Nate’s mother nodded. “Okay,” Josie said, but she looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
“Where’s her fiance?” Mama mused as Josie stumbled down the porch steps and over the flagstone path away from the little group gathered on and around the porch.
Good question.
The sheriff turned back to me. “We’ll need statements from all of you,” he announced to the group. To me, he drawled, “I’ll need to ask you a few more questions, and we’ll be searching the premises. A deputy’ll be up here in a minute. The rest of you,” he said with a wave of his hand, “go out the way you came and give your names and contact information to the deputy with your statement.”
He flagged down a woman dressed in an identical beige uniform, minus the off-white cowboy hat, and gestured to her. She nodded at him, took out a small pad of paper, and intercepted Karen and her husband as they headed toward the sidewalk.
Mrs. Kincaid threw a look over her shoulder, her gaze seeking her future daughter-in-law. “She’s had a terrible shock. It was her maid of honor. What’s he asking her?” she demanded when she got to the deputy.
“It’s routine, ma’am,” the deputy said.
“Routine.” She scoffed. “It’s not like she had anything to do with this . . . this . . .” She waved her arm toward Nell’s body. “With
“Like I said, it’s routine,” the deputy said. “Now, if I can get your name and address.”
Mrs. Kincaid’s voice turned curt. “Mrs. Keith Kincaid,” she said, then rattled off her address.
The deputy didn’t seem fazed by the fact that she was talking to a member of Bliss’s founding family. She wrote the information in her notepad. “Thank you. Now, if you’ll wait for your son’s fiancee outside the gate, we’d certainly appreciate it.”
“You’d best find out who did this,” she challenged, wagging her finger at the deputy.
“We’ll do everything we can.”
The breeze kicked up as Mrs. Kincaid glided through the arbor, turned left on the cracked sidewalk, and waited at her car for Josie.
From where I stood, I could hear the gruff rumble of Hoss McClaine’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words.
“I was coming back to do measurements,” Josie said, and I could picture her putting her hand on her heart as she spoke.
The sheriff’s voice was muffled, but Josie’s grew louder. My skin turned cold as she said, “She was dead when I got here!”
I perched on the edge of the rocking chair, my chin on my fist, trying to keep my worry at bay. Mama sat next to me. We both tried to ignore the commotion in the street with neighbors and passersby stopping to stare.
