A Killing Notion: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (17 page)

Helping Hands was the organization Mrs. James had founded to help kids in Bliss. It was a low-mileage foundation. It might be young, but Mrs. James never did anything halfway, and Helping Hands was no exception. She aimed to create friendships among the girls who might be struggling because of their family circumstances. Girls who’d been Margarets or were in the high school honor society could participate as part of their community service, and Mrs. James’s hope was that strong bonds would form between the girls.

From what I’d seen with Leslie, Danica, Gracie, and Holly, Mrs. James was right. Spending time together making their mums had created a bond between them, one I hoped would be long-lasting.

Mrs. James had solicited donations to fund the charity from her husband’s political circles and from her group of wealthy and connected friends. It was growing more slowly than she liked, but it was helping kids, and that was her mission.

I’d brought the materials for the centerpieces of the tables and had arrived a few minutes early to help Mama unload the vases once she arrived. I didn’t have to wait long. Her truck pulled up in the roundabout driveway. She stopped and hopped out, crooking her finger and beckoning to me.

“What in the devil is going on with you?” she asked.

“That’s a nice way to greet your daughter.” I gave her a peck on the cheek anyway.

“All I’m sayin’ is you look like you didn’t get a wink of sleep last night.” She leaned closer, as if proximity could give her some answer to my ragtag appearance. “I called you at home, you know. No answer.”

She looked me up and down. “You’re looking a little worn.”

“Thanks, Mama,” I said with a grimace. But I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass of the front door of the Grange. Truth be told, I
was
looking a little worse for wear. As I’d helped Gracie with her dress the night before, I’d mulled over the letters Miss Reba had given me. There seemed to me to be no question that the final note we’d found in the box was from the killer, and that it was a blatant warning that Eddy, aka Chris, was going to die. I really hadn’t slept after that.

My glasses hid the dark circles framing my eyes, but my cheeks looked gaunt and my hair seemed dull. Even the Cassidy streak of blond seemed darker and less magical.

“Where were you?” Mama asked.

She was no babe in the woods, and she knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, so why she was asking a question she most likely felt she knew the
answer to was beyond me. “I was at the Flores home, Mama, and before you go countin’ your unborn grandbabies, I was helping Gracie with her homecoming dress. All night.”

She cocked a brow. “
All
night?”

“Yes, Mama,
all night
.” Which was why my eyelids were drooping and I felt like the walking dead instead of a spritely thirty-three-year-old dressmaker volunteering to do a good deed for some disadvantaged kids.

“Well, damn, girl, you’re not gettin’ any younger.”

I stared at my mother. “Who
are
you?”

She ignored me. “All I’m sayin’ is that that man has it bad for you, and you have it just as bad for him. I don’t know what y’all are waitin’ for.”

Will and I weren’t waiting on anything in particular, except time. We were still pretty new in the scheme of relationships.

“Not so long ago, you were practically running from the altar,” I said. “Pot calling the kettle black, and all that.”

“Pshaw.” She waved away my argument. She’d married Hoss, so in her mind, whatever hesitation she’d had was old news. “Help me with the vases, darlin’.”

I grabbed a box from the back of her truck and carried it into the Grange, setting it on a portable rectangular table Mrs. James had had set up. Mama put the second box next to it, and one by one, we took out the wide-bottomed glass vases and set them in the center of each plain table.

She’d filled each one with white jointweed and pink starfruit flowers. With their white tablecloths, the mounds of delicate pastel tulle I added, the metallic pink plastic
chargers at each place setting, and the sparkle of the confetti, the tables suddenly looked happy and festive.

“Lovely,” Mrs. James said. She came to stand next to Mama, gazing at the transformation of the room. We talked about the brunch and the food Sandra had made for the event. I imagined the girls at the brunch today would have a heightened sense of romance and anticipation about the dance tonight after eating the finger sandwiches, quiche, fruit, and salad made by my cousin.

Mama gave me a hug, pinching my cheek. “Get some rest,” she said.

“I will.” But I knew I couldn’t really rest until Chris Montgomery’s murder and the attack on Otis Levon were solved. Even if Gavin wasn’t convinced the two were related, I was.

Mama left us to the brunch. Just as she pulled out, her truck rumbling away, my cell phone pinged as a text came in. I pulled it out from my bag, read it, and grinned.
Remember the Hill Country
, it said. Will.

The trip to the Hill Country bed-and-breakfast had been pushed to the back of my mind, but now it was front and center again. I texted back.
Counting the days
. I just didn’t know how many days there were left to count before I got to the truth and was able to forget everything and have a weekend getaway with the man I loved.

I tucked my phone away, holding on to Mama’s words.
That man has it bad for you
. Had Eddy had it bad for Barbara Ann at one point? After he met Miss Reba, did his feelings for his first wife change, or did he simply have it bad for two women? At what point did a man decide to cheat—or create a separate identity, as the case
may be—versus being true to his vows and the woman he’d committed to?

Mrs. James interrupted my thoughts. She was in a suit, this one pink with black trim, truthfully more reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy than Nancy Reagan, whom she normally channeled. Her short silver hair was neatly coiffed, and her lipstick muted. She Botoxed and used fillers and looked damn good for her age. Only the papery quality of her skin gave her away, but no matter. She was aging gracefully, if with assistance.

But at the moment, tiny lines ran up and down above her upper lip, a telltale sign of her stress. “One of the servers called in sick,” she said to me.

I hesitated only for a second. The truth was, I’d hoped to sneak in a quick nap before helping the girls get ready for the dance, but instead I smiled and said, “I’ll fill in, Mrs. James.”

She swiveled her gaze back to me, zeroing in on the dark spots I knew were under my eyes. “Darlin’, you’re a peach, but no. You’re working too hard as it is.”

“Mrs. James, I want to help.” And I did. Either I was a glutton for punishment, or I thought I might learn something useful.

She squeezed my arm. “Zinnia. How many times must I tell you?”

“Till the cows come home,” I said with a laugh. “I just can’t do it.”

She pursed her lips, but there was a smile behind them. “I’ll keep trying,” she said.

“You do that.”

“Are you certain about helping?”

I’d done a few stints of waitressing during college. I
could spend two hours schlepping quiche to teenagers and maybe still have time to sneak in a nap afterward. “Yes, ma’am. One hundred percent.”

“You may be crazier than a hornet, Harlow, but you’re a lifesaver.” She handed me two stacks of cards and a few strips of paper. “Libby was supposed to come help with this, but she’s running late and I want her to have a good time today, not be racing around working.”

Libby was my cousin Sandra’s daughter, and Mrs. James’s granddaughter. Bliss was a small town with an intertwined family tree. “Sure thing,” I said, taking the cards.

“These,” she said, tapping the smaller, creased stack, “are the place cards. Put one at each place. Then refer back to the bigger ones and see if there are any special dietary requests.”

“Got it. And these?” I asked, holding up the strips.

“If there’s a dietary request, put the strip at the place. Vegetarian. Gluten-free. Dairy-free. God love ’em, but these girls are persnickety.”

I wouldn’t have thought there were many vegetarians in Texas, the land of cattle and beef, but from the number of strips, it looked like the lifestyle was booming in Bliss, at least amidst the younger crowd. “Any particular arrangement?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned. You decide. Ta-ta!” she said with a wave, and she wandered off to check on the ETA of Sandra and the food.

I didn’t know most of the girls, so I went with random placement. I supposed they could switch them around if they really wanted to sit with someone in particular.

I read each card, placing the corresponding strip, if
there was one, on the center of the charger. One out of three had a request. Poor Sandra. No wonder she was behind.

There were a total of thirty girls. Five tables of six. I had to squint to read some of the writing on the cards. Penmanship wasn’t a class at the school. After some shuffling around, I managed to put Leslie, Danica, Holly, Gracie, and Libby together at one table. I added Carrie as the sixth person.

I only glanced at the cards briefly as I worked, scanning the requests. Danica was dairy-free, and Carrie was vegetarian, but the normal brunch worked for the rest of the girls.

The next hour was spent helping Sandra in the kitchen. She had her red hair pulled back with bobby pins, her lips shimmered with gloss, and she wore a clean white apron. I’d never seen her in a dirty apron, and I wondered if she simply didn’t make a mess when she cooked. Her aprons were like Nana’s pristine white socks, and both were a mystery to me.

Sandra had prepared delicate green salads topped with strawberries and almonds. “This is the first course,” she said as she added a lavender pansy to the top of each mound. “The flower’s edible.”

Sandra couldn’t make plants grow like my mother could, but she knew the meaning behind flowers and somehow her charm was related to those meanings.

“Don’t pansies have to do with people from your past?” I asked.

She nodded. “Remembrance. But they also mean togetherness. As in friendship.”

Ah, that made perfect sense. So when the girls ate the
petals from the pansies, the friendships they were developing would grow stronger. The charm was so similar to mine, yet far more focused. I didn’t know what I was sewing into the seams of the clothing I made, only that deep desires would be realized. If Sandra wanted someone to feel something specific, she could use a food’s properties to tailor responses and enhance emotions.

It was a nifty component of her charm that I sometimes wished I had. Then again, there was something exhilarating about the unknown, and wondering how my magic had impacted someone’s life. If it had a negative effect, I think I preferred not knowing.

The girls started arriving a short time later. They milled around, gossiping, describing their homecoming dresses, and talking about the parade, the game, and the homecoming court from the night before. Girl after girl after girl congratulated Carrie as the homecoming princess, giving her hugs and supportive pats on the back, but something was wrong. I’d only seen her a handful of times, but Carrie normally had an easy air about her. Right now, though, her dimpled smile and the glow in her cheeks were gone. The dark circles under her red-rimmed eyes looked worse than mine, and her skin was pasty. I circulated in the room, carrying a tray of iced tea and water glasses, passing them out to the different groups of people, glancing back at Carrie.

I walked the perimeter of the room, listening to snippets of conversations. Leslie was describing her confetti-colored dress to Carrie, and then Danica gave a rundown of her tangerine bubble dress with the custom beads.

“It sounds beautiful,” Carrie said, but her voice cracked. It was a reminder that what Shane and Gracie
were going through, what the Montgomery, Levon, and Blake families were experiencing, affected others in the community, too. There was a murderer in Bliss, and that had to scare everyone.

“I’ve been to two proms and three homecomings,” Carrie continued. “Granbury, well, they just don’t have a custom dressmaker in town.” She laughed, her dimple materializing, but the sound was hollow. Forced. She was trying hard to control whatever emotions she was experiencing. Poor thing.

The other girls laughed, but Carrie had stopped, her smile drooping.

“Ladies.” Mrs. James’s voice interrupted the girls’ conversations. The girls in the room seemed to swivel in unison to face their benefactor. Someone started to clap, and before long, the entire room of thirty girls was clapping, honoring her.

Mrs. James was usually cool as a cucumber. She was a politician’s wife and had been around the block enough times to know how to school her emotions. But this group of girls had gotten to her. Her cheeks turned as pink as her suit and splotches of red marked her neck just under her collar.

After a minute, the applause died down and she cleared her throat. “I appreciate that,” she said to the girls. “As many of you know, I’m married to Jeb James, state senator.”

A few of the girls nodded, and she continued. “But as a girl, I wasn’t always able to do the things I wanted, and believe me when I say that I had plenty of help along the way. I grew up here in Bliss, on the other side of the tracks, you might say. Do y’all know what that means?”

She paused. Some of the girls dipped their heads. Leslie and Danica, as well as a few others, nodded.

Mrs. James explained to the rest of them. “It means not having the things you need, let alone the extras in life. I mean the things you
want
.

“Helping Hands is meant to be just what the name says—hands that can help. A group that supports you, without judgment. It’s about you, for you, for your here and now and for your future. It’s thanks to the wonderful women of Bliss—”

Mrs. Abernathy, my grandmother, Mama, Mrs. Mcafferty, and several other women seemed to appear out of nowhere. They stepped out of the shadows and formed a wide circle around the girls. Mrs. Abernathy held a mound of something in her arms. She began to unfold it, holding one end while passing the mound to Nana. Nana unwound more of it, and I realized it was netting. Mrs. Mcafferty took the ball of netting, unwinding it and handing it off. On and on it went. Clear across the room, Sally Levon appeared at the circle. She was pale, and I could see her red nose and glassy eyes from across the room. Her husband had been gravely injured, but she was here supporting her daughter and the girls of Helping Hands.