A Killing Notion: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (10 page)

I was confusing myself.

The answer, of course, was that I had to get focused. I had to approach helping Shane the way I liked to approach a new garment project. In a perfect world, I tried to work on that design, and only that design, until I had it nailed down. Sure, other typically mindless tasks from other ongoing projects sometimes interfered, but if I could home in on one thing, my brain was usually happier.

Bringing in other full-fledged designs slowed down my process and sometimes it had the adverse effect of muddying the design concepts of each project until I’d lost my way. Danica and Leslie’s dresses were a case in point. Developing Danica’s dress concept had been twice as hard and had taken twice as long because I was
also thinking about Leslie’s. There were times when it couldn’t be helped, but ideally, concentrated focus was better.

I needed to apply that rule to what I was doing for Miss Reba and Shane. I’d gotten all I could from Mrs. Blake, and there was nothing relevant here at Bubba’s, at least not that I could find. There was no picture of the two owners. I still had no idea where Eddy Blake had disappeared to, or why. Or if he was still alive.

The whole situation didn’t set well, but until I could find out more, I would put him on the back burner and move on to another possible suspect, zeroing in my attention.

Otis Levon.

It seemed logical to pay a visit to Mrs. Levon.

Which was exactly what I decided to do next.

Brandi gave up the Levon address a little too easily, I thought, but I was grateful nonetheless. They lived in the country just outside of Bliss city limits. It took less than twenty-five minutes to find the house after only one near death experience, between me and a motorcycle passing on the shoulder. Minutes later and after a brief introduction, Sally Levon opened her door wide and invited me inside. Southern hospitality at its best.

As I followed her inside, I couldn’t help but notice the ill fit of her black pants, the practical, but style-less flats, and the floral blouse topped by a baggy black sweater. This was not a woman filled with confidence, and it was reflected in her clothing.

I’d spent my childhood playing with paper dolls, many old-fashioned ones that Nana color photocopied for me and which I then cut out. Others were perforated, easily punched out from the cardstock, the tabs folded down so I could then hook the clothing onto the paper dolls.

In my mind, I sometimes pictured the people around
me as paper dolls. I would devise a new outfit, fold the mental tabs, and re-dress them with the new outfit I’d devised.

At other times, images simply popped into my head—part of my Cassidy charm—and I knew just what outfit the woman needed in order to reframe the way she thought. In Mrs. Levon’s case, I saw her in fitted slacks that accentuated her shape rather than hiding it. A creamy, lightweight blouse and a semifitted jacket, pinched in at the waist with a band at the lower back that was still casual, yet gave her a more pulled-together look. The jacket would have a floral pattern to accent her tawny hair and fair skin.

If only I could make it for her, maybe she and Otis’s love would strengthen and he wouldn’t sound so surprised when he referred to her as a good woman. Assuming he wasn’t a murderer, that is.

She led me into the small kitchen. It was about half the size of Mrs. Blake’s, which was half the size of Mrs. Montgomery’s, but of the three, the Levon kitchen was the warmest and most welcoming. Red gingham chair cushions sat on top of woven chair seats. A coordinating fabric valance hung from the small window overlooking the postage stamp backyard. Cheery colors and design touches made me want to sit, sip sweet tea, and chew the fat.

Which is just what we did. “I was awful sorry to hear about Mr. Montgomery,” she said after she handed me a supersized aqua blue melamine glass filled with sweet tea. I usually preferred unsweetened tea, but Mrs. Levon was weaving a spell, and sipping sweet tea in her kitchen was the most natural thing to do, and it tasted perfect.

“It was definitely a shock,” I said. “Miss Reba is just so upset. Rumors are flying about her son, Shane, being involved—”

“Which just can’t be true,” she said.

“That’s why I said I’d help. You see, Shane and a sweet friend of mine—her name’s Gracie—are seeing each other. They’re going to homecoming,” I said. Assuming he was released from police questioning before too long. Surely they couldn’t keep him when he hadn’t done anything wrong.

She cupped her hands around her glass, listening intently, as if she didn’t have a single thing in the world to do other than sit here with me in her kitchen and gossip. “Bless their hearts. We have two kids who just started at Bliss High. They’ve been fillin’ me and Otis in on everything. I can’t imagine what those two are goin’ through. Poor Shane.”

“They’re struggling,” I said.

“And poor Barbara Ann. She must be worried sick about Eddy. I understand that he’s grievin’, but he’s takin’ it too far now.”

I’d wanted to get the lowdown on Otis, but I’d file away any information she gave me about Eddy Blake, too. “She’s taking it pretty hard. I was over there a little while ago, and she still hasn’t heard from him.”

“I’m sure they have their problems, but he’s always been a spitfire” she said, looking at her hands wrapped around the bright pink plastic glass. “Somehow, I thought they’d make it. Him just goin’ off doesn’t seem right. I just hope he can get done with his grievin’ and move on.”

“You’ve known him for a long time?”

She smiled and small lines formed around her eyes
and curved around the corners of her mouth. “Oh sure, feels like forever. Eddy hired Otis back when he first opened the store in Granbury. Otis helped him open the second store in Bliss. He moved over there to help Mr. Montgomery when he bought into the business.”

I absorbed everything she was saying, finally putting a timeline to the two stores and how Chris Montgomery came to be part of it. Chris Montgomery came into Bubba’s around the same time he met Miss Reba. “Is that when Otis bought into the stores, too?”

Her grip on her cup tightened. “It took Eddy and Chris Montgomery a good long while to offer Otis ownership. They thought five percent was enough.” She scoffed, her cheery disposition fading instantly. “Not nearly enough, not after everythin’ Otis did to open that Bliss store. Not after all the back and forth he does workin’ both stores. If anyone needs anythin’, they call Otis.”

“Does he inherit more now that Chris Montgomery is dead? Brandi, in Granbury”—I added, in case she didn’t know all the workers—“said he did.”

“Him and Eddy both put Otis in their wills. When I first heard that, I thought it was plain stupid. After all, Eddy’s young. Same age as me and Otis. I think Mr. Montgomery’s around the same. A little older, maybe. I figured Otis wouldn’t ever see any of that ownership, but I guess I was wrong.”

I guess she was. Maybe I was, too. Instead of gathering evidence against Otis, I was beginning to think I might want to add Sally Levon to the suspect list. She clearly had a thing or two to say about her husband’s business partners.

“Were they close, the three of them?” I asked, wanting to keep her talking.

“Eddy and Otis were,” she answered.

I waited to see if she’d say more, itching to prompt her with another question. Instead, I stayed quiet.
Just listen.
Meemaw’s advice came in handy on a daily basis.
People will talk to fill the silence.

She was right. It took about thirty seconds before Sally Levon pushed her chair back and stood. “I can show you,” she said.

I started to stand, but she stopped me with her hand. “I’ll be right back.”

I sat back down as she disappeared down the narrow hallway. She was back before I could say Texas Longhorns, a hefty photo album in her arms. She plopped it down on the table in front of me, flipping to the center of the book, going back and forth a few pages. One featured a row of cars that looked as if they had been painstakingly restored. “Those are Eddy’s Mustangs,” she said.

Finally, she stopped at a section of pictures of people at a picnic. “This is what Bubba’s used to be like,” she said. “The early days, that’s what I call it. This was when it was just Eddy and Otis. When Chris Montgomery came into the business, it all changed.”

I looked at the smiling faces in the photos. Otis, looking much younger and thinner, his hair shorter and slightly spiked in the front, was the subject of the first two pages.

The next shot was of a larger group. “That’s the whole crew from Bubba’s,” she said.

“The Bliss store wasn’t open yet?” I asked, trying to get the timeframe right.

“No, it opened about a year later.”

Otis had his arm around Sally in her jean shorts and
cotton plaid snap-front shirt. It was tied in a knot above her waist. Their heads were thrown back and they were laughing. It was a nice shot.

I studied the rest of the faces, not recognizing any of them. A group in the foreground was in sharp focus. In the background, there were a few people scattered here and there. I glanced at them, returning to the group in front, but a faint feeling of recognition drew me back to the blurred images.

I studied the woman first, and after a few seconds I realized it was Barbara Ann Blake. “Were the Blakes married in this?” I asked, pointing to Mrs. Blake.

“Sure. They were married a good two or three years before then, I’d say. Now there is a couple in love. She’s got to be worried sick about Eddy. If she doesn’t do it,” she said, tapping her fingers against the table, “I’ll wring his neck myself whenever he gets himself back here.”

“Is one of these men Mr. Blake, then?” I came back to the people in the foreground, looking for the dark hair I’d seen in the wedding picture at the Blake’s house. I’d only seen a partial profile, since in the picture he was nuzzling his new wife’s neck, so really, there was no way I could tell which one was Chris Montgomery’s business partner.

I pushed my glasses more firmly in place as she took a closer look at the photo. “Right there,” she pronounced, putting her finger on one of the blurred people in the background.

I pulled the book closer, lifting it to deflect the slight glare from the window. And then I caught my breath.

It couldn’t be.

But it was. Oh, it definitely was.

“Oh my gosh,” I muttered.

Eddy Blake wasn’t out on some bender, drinking away his sorrow at having lost his friend and business partner. And he wasn’t dead because Otis—or anybody else—had killed him, too.

No, the man Sally pointed to, the one she identified as Eddy Blake, was the man I’d known as Christopher Montgomery. Eddy hadn’t come home to his wife because he was dead, too.

The ride into town had never felt longer. My head spun with the knowledge that Eddy Blake and Chris Montgomery were the same man. It didn’t seem possible, but it had to be.

I headed straight for my mama’s house, a large country lot with a log cabin–like house, fauna and flora in abundance everywhere you looked. Just as expected, I found her in her cedar slope-roofed greenhouse out back, her favorite place to be.

She’d added it to her backyard more than ten years ago. I liked to joke and say it was her home away from home since she spent more time in the little outbuilding than she did in the main house. The small structure was tricked out with electricity, water, and rows of benches for her plants, sitting squarely on a cement pad.

Mama’s charm worked year-round, and the greenhouse was like her cauldron. I leaned against the doorframe and filled her in on my theory.

She brushed a stray lock of hair away from her eyes, folded her arms, one hand still holding a pair of clippers, and listened. When I was done, she arched one brow and said, “A double life, darlin’, are you sure?”

I couldn’t blame her for asking. Sure, scenarios like this were in Lifetime movies, but did they honestly happen in real life?

It did sound crazy when I said it out loud, but the bottom line was that I couldn’t change the facts. “It was him, Mama, I’m one hundred percent sure of it.”

She put down her clippers and peeled off her gardening gloves. Her shiny gold wedding band glistened as it caught the light. I still found myself smiling when I saw the ring and thought about how happy she was. She’d come mighty close to not marrying Hoss McClaine, the cowboy sheriff of her dreams, but my charm had worked its magic, she’d seen the light, and the rest was history.

“So let me just see if I have this straight,” she said. Around her, the plants lined up on the shelves of the greenhouse seemed to stand a little perkier, as if they were ready to listen to her recount the story. “You’re saying that Eddy Blake, owner of the original Bubba’s in Granbury, and Christopher Montgomery, co-owner of both Bubba’s shops and husband to Miss Reba, were one and the same?”

“That about sums it up, Mama.”

She picked up a galvanized watering can and sprinkled the flowers. “And what’s your theory as to why he would do such a low-down dirty thing to both those women, darlin’?”

I ran my finger along a purple petal of a nearby flower. I’d been pondering this very question, and the answer I’d
come up with was simple, and it was also the only thing that made sense. “I think he fell in love with Miss Reba, but he still loved Barbara Ann, so instead of forgoing his new love or saying good-bye to his original love, he decided to have his cake and eat it, too.”

Mama stared at a lush fern for a good long while. Before my eyes, the tips of the fern’s leaves browned and the fronds began to droop. “I found myself a good man, Harlow, but dang it all, some men just can’t do right by the women who’ve stood by them.”

I knew she was thinking about my daddy and how he’d turned tail and run when he’d seen the Cassidy magic firsthand. “Mama,” I said, breaking her trance.

She blinked, registering the browning fern, and dropped her hands to her sides. Three deep breaths and a good shaking of her arms and hands released the burst of anger she’d been feeling, and the fern started to recover.

I continued with my theory. “From what I’ve gathered, he was Eddy Blake before he became Chris Montgomery,” I said.

“What makes you think so?”

“Otis and Sally. They knew Eddy and have been around since Bubba’s in Granbury opened. Chris Montgomery joined the business later, sometime after the Bliss Bubba’s opened.”

“So it really was because he fell for Miss Reba.” Mama snipped away at the newly dead bits of the fern, shaking her head. “If he weren’t already passed, he should be strung up by his toes. Those poor women.”

“Do you know how Miss Reba met him?” I asked.

Mama stopped clipping and perched her backside on
a stool. She brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen onto her forehead. “You know, I don’t rightly remember, Harlow. Reba can tell a good tale, but I don’t know that I ever heard that story.”

I recounted what Miss Reba had told me at her husband’s funeral about meeting him when she went into the Bliss Bubba’s for a service, and how he’d swept her off her feet, taking her to Porterhouse on Vine, then to Dairy Queen. “She told me he was a real spitfire. Sally Levon described Eddy the same way. I know I’m right, Mama.” I pressed my palm to my chest. “I
know
it.”

I took my thinking a little bit further. Living a double life was risky under perfect circumstances, but hiding the truth from everyone in two towns so close together? Would that even be possible? He had to have had help. And there was only one person I could think of who was in a position to help both Eddy and Chris.

Otis Levon.

I’d been pondering a motive for Otis that had to do with ownership shares of Bubba’s. If he
did
know the truth, he’d had a lot of leverage and power over his boss.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that Otis had to have been in on the secret. He’d admitted that he’d known both men. He worked at both stores. How could he
not
have known the truth?

The what-ifs started rolling into my brain.

What if Eddy/Chris had offered to buy Otis’s silence with part ownership in the business? Of course five percent ownership was hardly enough to keep anyone silent for long.

What if Otis had tried to blackmail Eddy/Chris, something had gone wrong, and Otis had killed his boss?

Or, what if Eddy/Chris had agreed to add Otis to his will, and that had been enough of a motive to kill?

What if
I was just whistling Dixie?

“But I’m not,” I said under my breath.

“You’re not what, Harlow?” Mama said. She’d picked up her gardening shears again and had started trimming back a miniature rose bush.

“Woolgathering?”

My head shot up at the sound of Hoss McClaine’s slow Southern voice and the crunch of gravel under his boots.

“More like snake hunting,” I answered, glad it was Hoss I would be telling my story to, and not Gavin. They were both stubborn as all get-out, but the elder McClaine, while curmudgeonly, was more levelheaded than his son. Gavin had some big law enforcement shoes to fill, and sometimes he tried just a trifle too hard.

I proceeded to retell my theory about Chris Montgomery and Eddy Blake, their double life, two wives and families, and my suspicion that Otis Levon knew the truth and had helped his friend keep up the ruse.

Hoss was silent for a good long moment, and then simply nodded. “Interesting,” he said. After another beat, he added, “Good work, Harlow.”

A compliment from Hoss McClaine wasn’t given easily, and didn’t happen often. I dipped my head and almost felt an
aw shucks
coming. Instead, I smiled and said, “Thanks, Sheriff.”

But no matter how proud I felt of what I’d
discovered, it didn’t change the fact that two women’s lives were not what they seemed, that two kids would soon learn that their father had also belonged to another child, and that someone had likely killed him because of the duplicity.