A Killing Notion: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery (8 page)

My dining table had been doubling as a workstation pretty much since I’d moved into the house at 2112 Mockingbird. Thanks to the four teenage girls, now the workspace was spilling into the rest of the kitchen. Half-made mums, strands of ribbon, and small trinkets littered the entire dining area, while lengths of discarded grosgrain coiled like small snakes on the kitchen floor.

As I sewed in my workroom, I listened to the girls’ chatter. Holly, Danica, and Leslie worked hard to bolster and distract Gracie. Gracie, for her part, was trying like the dickens to be positive. She was a born and bred Southern girl, which meant, just like the rest of us, she’d been raised to keep a smile on her face, hide whatever might be bothering her, and act like a lady. These tenets were the core beliefs behind the Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball, an annual event that wasn’t quite a debutante ball, but was pretty darn close. Gracie had been part of it recently and had learned the lessons well.

If I looked at her long enough, I could see her lower
lip droop and tremble, but for the most part, she was keeping it together.

The pizza arrived, and I made a pitcher of lemonade and set out a few cans of soda. Holly, Danica, and Gracie each took one piece at a time of the pizza, but Leslie took three, eating quickly, almost as if the food might disappear and she’d be left with nothing. The response of someone who had gone without food, I reckoned.

“He has his mom,” Danica was saying. “That’s more than you or I have.”

She was right about that. Gracie’s mom had taken off a long time ago and she’d been raised by her dad. He’d done a great job of rearing a strong, confident young lady, even if she was burying her true feelings at the moment. When we were alone, I hoped I could get her to let down her defenses and fess up to what she was going through.

I still didn’t know Danica or Leslie’s whole story, but I’d worry about that later. For now, my focus was on Gracie.

“My dad said you went to Bubba’s,” Gracie said, swallowing a bit of pizza and washing it down with a gulp of lemonade.

“I did. Here and the one in Granbury.”

“What did you find out? Do you have a lead?” Her voice rose, her anxiousness to get answers and help Shane lighting all of her nerves. She was like a ball of energy.

I waved my hands so she’d simmer down. “I talked to a guy named Otis. He didn’t say much,” I said, not mentioning his suggestion that Shane and his dad didn’t see eye to eye on things. “He did mention that Mr.
Montgomery spent the night at the shop in Granbury sometimes.”

The girls all looked to Gracie as if she could corroborate the story. She nodded. “Shane said that, too. His dad would work late and just stay the night instead of driving the narrow country roads in the dark.”

“And yet that’s how he died,” Danica said, shaking her head, her voice sad. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

There was no response. The girls just dipped their chins toward their chests, taking a moment of silence.

“My dad wasn’t home half the time, either,” she continued. She was trying to draw a connection between her and Gracie. Despite the trauma of losing her own parents, she was compassionate and wanting to make her new friend feel better.

“If Shane didn’t do it,” Leslie said, “then who did? Why would anyone want Mr. Montgomery dead?”

That was a very good question. I listened to them talk, hoping to glean some tidbit of information to help me decide if any of my theories had any merit.

“Maybe Teagen did it,” Leslie said. “Maybe she secretly hates her brother and father. She killed her dad and set up Shane—”

“Stop!” Red splotches appeared on Gracie’s neck and her temples pulsed. “Teagen didn’t kill her father any more than Shane did.” She dropped her half-eaten piece of pizza and buried her head in her hands.

Leslie froze, her eyes wide with shame. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Maybe it was that guy you met, Otis,” Danica suggested.

We all looked at her, letting this sink in. “But why would he kill Mr. Montgomery?” I asked.

Her brow furrowed, her jet-black hair falling over her eyes. “He worked for Montgomery, right? Maybe he was stealing from his boss, or maybe Mr. Montgomery was going to fire him?”

Leslie flattened her hands against the tabletop. “Or maybe,” she said, “this Otis guy was having an affair with Mrs. Montgomery.”

“Shane’s mom was
not
having an affair,” Gracie said.

“How do you know? If they were, it would be a secret. It’s not like people go around talking about their affairs. And if they were, it would be motive, right? Could have been Otis
or
Mrs. Montgomery. Or maybe,” Leslie continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial tone, “it was both of them together.”

I shifted in my seat, trying to figure out how to interject. “Have you met Otis from Bubba’s?” I asked Leslie.

“No.”

“Have you met Reba Montgomery?”

She shook her head. “No.”

I thought about Otis’s grease-stained coveralls with the name patch and his slicked-back hair; then an image of Miss Reba came to me with her sweater sets, fashion scarves, and blingy jeans. “I don’t really see them together as a couple.”

I didn’t mention the fact that I couldn’t see Miss Reba as an adulterer at all, with Otis or anyone else. The idea of Miss Reba sleeping with another man while her husband spent his nights in Granbury after a long day of work didn’t sit well.

Still, I couldn’t discount it as a possible motive, and as much as I liked Miss Reba, I knew that how she presented herself to the town of Bliss might not be anywhere close to who she really was. Anyone was capable of anything. Even adultery. And worse, even murder.

*   *   *

The next morning, Buttercup bounced along the bumpy country roads and before long I was back in Granbury and parking in front of Mrs. Blake’s mobile home. Things felt different since the last time I’d been here. The Mustangs looked forlorn and unloved. The thatch of grass and flowers had turned scraggly and brown.

I’d come alone this time, hoping Mrs. Blake might be more open to talking without Will looking on. She answered the door after the first knock, as if she were waiting by the door, on edge for some bad news to be delivered. Her skin was sallow, her eye sockets sunken and dark from lack of sleep and worry. “No sign of your husband?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not a word.” Any trace of anger was gone and all that remained was the fear that maybe Eddy Blake wasn’t going to be coming home.

“Did you report him missing?”

She slow blinked instead of nodding, but the message was clear. She’d reported it, but there’d been no luck in finding him. Anybody who chose to disappear simply could, and it seemed as if Eddy Blake didn’t want to be found.

“I have his phone,” I said.

Instead of blocking the entrance to her home as she’d done last time I’d been here, she stepped back and ushered me in. A pall of grief infused in the walls and linoleum of the small house. A lost daughter. A missing husband.
Mrs. Blake had experienced too much sadness. She was living the same experience as Miss Reba, the details of the losses slightly different, but the emotions the same.

My gaze was drawn to the framed photos on the small table just inside the door. It was a shrine to the red-haired girl smiling in the large center frame, the rest of the smaller photos showing the mother and daughter at a park, standing in front of a Christmas tree, and with the girl as a toddler.

Something about the pictures bothered me. I looked at each of them again, studying the smiling faces, and then it hit me. Eddy Blake wasn’t in any of them. “Is your husband always the photographer?” I asked.

She looked at the array of photos and nodded. “He doesn’t like to be in front of the camera. Doesn’t like to have his picture taken at all. Told me he wouldn’t be one of those men who have their faces on display on park benches, billboards, or even at his own funeral.”

“Maybe that’s a male thing,” I said, remembering the pictures I’d seen at the Montgomery house. The photos had been of Teagen and Shane, a few with Miss Reba, but I couldn’t remember any of them showing Chris Montgomery.

The hairs rose on the back of my neck. Something was off; I just couldn’t put my finger on what. I looked around the living room. The place was small, but clean and kempt. Mrs. Blake’s distress over her missing husband hadn’t stopped her from keeping things picked up. She was like me. Nervous energy always meant I had a clean house.

I plunged my hand into my bag to retrieve Mr. Blake’s cell phone. A question crowded into my head. The home
number on the phone rang the Montgomery’s house. “Did your husband and Chris Montgomery always get along okay?” Teagen had said her dad was a prankster and played jokes on his friend, but the families didn’t mingle. The wives didn’t know each other. Did Chris Montgomery and Eddy Blake really have an easy, joking friendship, or could that be completely wrong? Maybe Eddy had disappeared because he’d killed his business partner. Maybe they hadn’t gotten along at all.

“As far as I know,” she said. “They mostly stayed in their own shops, so it’s not like I saw them together, or anything. But I’d say that, yes, they get . . . er, got along fine.”

“But they each did go to the other’s store sometimes, right? I heard Mr. Montgomery came here and spent the night at the shop sometimes. Same for Eddy?”

“Sure, but mostly they handled their own stores. Eddy’s place is here in Granbury, and Chris managed Bliss.”

Something else I’d been thinking about popped back into my mind. I’d already checked with Gavin and as far as anyone knew, there wasn’t a will. Which meant probate, and ultimately a determination of ownership going to Miss Reba and her children as the next of kin.

But what if there
was
a will? And what if that will bequeathed the actual ownership not to Miss Reba, but to Mr. Blake?

I made a mental note to talk to Otis about it. I knew Gavin probably already had, but as Meemaw said, you got more bees with honey, and I was definitely sweeter than the deputy sheriff.

“Do you go to Bubba’s very often?” I asked, this time meaning the shop here in Granbury.

She half shook, half nodded her head. “Occasionally. I used to go more often than I do now.”

“See, this is why I was wondering if Chris and Eddy got along. Don’t you think it’s strange that you never met Chris?”

Now she fully shook her head. “No. Eddy doesn’t like to mix home and business. When I come, we usually go sit at the picnic table outside. And it’s not like I go often. An auto shop isn’t where I want to spend my time. I stayed away in the heat of the summer, and in January on through early March. The window of nice weather is pretty small in Texas, I’m sure you know.”

“I sure do,” I said. Most people thought Texas didn’t get all that cold, but they were wrong. The temperature dropped below freezing a good many times during the winter, and we even got snow flurries on occasion. And during the summer, thunder and lightning storms released the humidity that hung heavy in the air, often helping drop the temperature from 100 degrees to a more tolerable 90. But no matter how you sliced the pie, it was hot, and often miserable.

I revisited the thing that had been bothering me since Mr. Montgomery’s funeral. “What about company gatherings? Do y’all have those?”

“The holiday parties are usually separate for the two shops. The people here don’t know the people in Bliss. Eddy always manages to go down there and make an appearance, but Chris never did come our way, which I didn’t like. If Eddy could do it, he ought to have been able to, too, right? One-sided partnership, if you ask me. Eddy deserves the business. I want him to buy out Chris’s
wife, but of course I haven’t had a chance to tell him that.”

No, because he hadn’t been home. Whenever he finally did show up, I didn’t envy him. I got the impression that Mrs. Blake wasn’t going to let him off the hook too easily at this point.

Once again, I started to hand over the phone, but for the second time, I stopped. I wished I could put my finger on what was troubling me. Meemaw and I had spent long, lazy summer afternoons creating collages on squares of watercolor paper. Most of the time I found inspiration all around me, particularly with scraps of French fabrics, bits of lace, and figures I’d drawn on text-heavy scrapbook paper. But once in a while, I looked at a page and didn’t have a clue what to fill it with. That big question mark I’d felt in those moments was just what I was feeling now. My mind was drawing a big blank.

With my hand curled around Eddy Blake’s cell phone, I let my gaze wander the house again. On a back hallway wall, I saw another grouping of photographs. “Mrs. Blake,” I said before I could even think, “could I use the restroom?”

“Down the hall to the right,” she said. “I’m going to make a cup of coffee. Do you want one?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

“Milk? I only have coconut milk, if that’s okay.”

“Sure,” I said absently, heading off in the direction of the bathroom before she changed her mind and kicked me out. She didn’t know me from Sam Houston, after all.

In three steps, she was in the kitchen, removing a sealed carton from the refrigerator, coffee from a can, and pouring water into the receptacle of a Mr. Coffee
machine on the counter. I turned and a few seconds later, I was halfway down the hallway. I looked over my shoulder. She had her back to me as she pulled two mugs from the cupboard to the right of the sink. I hurried past the bathroom door, stopping when I got to the pictures on the wall.

The first several weren’t all that different from the ones in the nonexistent entry. They were all of mother and daughter, one or two of just daughter, but once again, it appeared that Mr. Blake was the photographer.

A wedding photo caught my attention at the edge of the collection. I checked on Mrs. Blake again, but I needn’t have worried. She was sitting at the small, round dining table, her head down and resting on her crossed forearms.

If she minded me looking at the family pictures, she wasn’t saying. Not that she would mind. She’d hung them on the wall in the first place, after all. It wasn’t as if I was digging around or intruding where I didn’t belong.