Deadly Patterns (5 page)

Chapter 6

“Hard to believe Dan’s dead,” Will said as we took the Hulen Street exit off the highway, the windshield wipers barely keeping up as they slapped the rain off the glass.

Gracie sighed from her seat in the extended cab of the truck. “He was a nice man.”

“Did you know him well?”

“I met him a few years back. He did some work with the Historical Society every now and then. A real history buff. Liked the old outlaw stories, just like you,” Will said with a wink.

I angled my chin down and gave him a little smile. “I am kin to Butch Cassidy.”

“That you are.”

I turned, trying not to grimace from the stiffness in my bones. “It’s awfully sad,” I said, returning to the subject of Dan Lee.

“I saw him all the time at the Denison mansion. He was a good worker. Whenever I inspected the historical elements of the house for the city, he was there.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s a shame.”

Will pulled into the parking lot of Heritage Square across from Hulen Mall and parked in front of the Berry Patch. He covered Gracie and me with an oversized umbrella and we hurried inside. Immediately, I felt like a contestant on
Project Runway
. I didn’t want to spend more than a half hour in the store. We also had to stop by J&D Interiors for the velvet upholstery fabric, so the clock was ticking. Will and Gracie trailed behind me, talking about Dan Chrisson’s tragic fall, then shifting to discuss the records Will had been tracking down so the Historical Society could officially include the Denison mansion in the town’s directory of historic buildings.

Just last month Madelyn Brighton, one of my new best friends and the city of Bliss’s official photographer, had taken pictures of my old farmhouse to include in the directory, as well as in a calendar for the upcoming year and a book about Bliss’s history and unforgettable characters. It was rumored that Bonnie and Clyde had hidden out in my backyard after they’d gone on one of their rampages.

Bliss had no shortage of outlaw history, and Dan Lee wasn’t the only one fascinated by it. Folks came from all over to take ghost tours of the historic buildings on the square, and the old outlaws would have a place of honor once the new museum opened in the courthouse.

I hurried up and down the aisles of the store, scooping up a pattern, snaps, buttons, thread, batting to pad Will’s midsection, and other notions for the Santa suit project. I pointed to a bolt of the perfect white fur. “Will you grab that?” I asked Will.

He carried it, along with the black vinyl for the belt, to the cutting area. At the checkout counter, I spied a copy of
Victoria
magazine. The cover’s headline said
HOLIDAY BLISS
in bold lettering. Red drapes created the backdrop and a gingerbread trifle was prominently pictured. Next to it lay an assortment of Victorian-era ornaments and decorations.

Holiday bliss . . . it echoed our hopes for the town festival. An omen? Good fortune? It didn’t matter. The magazine spoke to me, and I couldn’t pass it up. I added it to my pile and, ten minutes later, we left the Berry Patch and headed to J&D’s on Main Street. “What else do you have to do for the fashion show?” Gracie asked once I’d bought four and half yards of red velvet fabric and we were on our way back to Bliss.

“I’m finishing Josie’s outfits,” I said, and then added, “And hoping she doesn’t get any bigger in the next few days.”

Gracie laughed from the backseat. “Holly said she’s ODing on Chubby Hubby.”

I peered at her through the vanity mirror on the truck’s sun visor, a question mark in my expression. Holly was Josie’s niece, but I didn’t get it. Josie was nuts for Nate, but the guy wasn’t chubby, so . . .

“Ben and Jerry’s,” Gracie said, answering my unasked question. “Chubby Hubby. Holly said Josie is dreaming about fudge and peanut butter pretzels.”

“Oh boy.” Good thing the fashion show was just days away or I’d be pulling some all-nighters to make sure Josie’s clothes fit her come runway time. There was only so much waist I could let out to accommodate a growing stomach.

We spent the rest of the ride talking about the Winter Wonderland festival. “I’ll help decorate,” Gracie said.

“That would be fantastic,” I said, making a mental note to myself.

“Is the house all finished, Dad?” she asked. “Did they fix the railing?”

Will darted a glance at me, then at her through the rearview mirror. “Shh.”

“What?” she said, and I could almost hear the shrug of her shoulders in her tone. “I’m just saying. Someone needs to fix it, right?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “She’s right. Let’s stop by, Will. We should make sure it’s repaired before the festival. Either that, or make sure that door is bolted shut. I don’t have a key, but maybe someone’s there.”

“We don’t have to, Cassidy,” Will said.

“I’m fine.”

“You had a big scare. If you’re not up to it—”

I gritted my teeth, twisting in my seat enough to face him. It was the best I could do under the circumstances. “Will Flores, I am not an invalid. It was an accident, the hospital released me, and I’m just fine, thank you very much, so if you’ll stop pussyfooting around me and acting like I can’t do anything, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

He arched an amused eyebrow at me and I took stock. With my glasses, curly long hair with the crazy blond streak in it, and yoga pants, I was hardly the epitome of a tough Texas woman. But he just nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am,” not bothering to hide the little half smile tickling his lips.

A few minutes later we took the first Bliss exit and drove down a country road leading to town, finally passing through the square with its quaint shops. The Opera House, Villa Farina—the best Italian bakery this side of the Rio Grande, Seed-n-Bead—the bead shop Josie owned and operated, Two Scoops—the old-fashioned ice cream parlor with red and white awnings and curlicue chairs, and a little antique shop were only some of the businesses ringing the courthouse in the center of the square.

I breathed in the scent of the small town. The rain had finally stopped and the blue sky brightened the whole place. Visiting Fort Worth, or Dallas, or even Austin, where I’d gone to college, was a treat, but being back in Bliss made me realize just how much the little town had become home to me again.

Two minutes later, Will parked behind a ragtop Jeep on Mayberry, right in front of the Denison mansion. On the wet sidewalk, Gracie tilted her head back to look up at it. “Is that where you fell from?” she asked, pointing to the far right corner of the roof.

A shiver wound through me at the visual reminder, but I threw my shoulders back with as much strength as I could muster and anchored my sore body, planting my feet on the ground. “Sure is,” I said. I led the way through the little gate and up the porch steps, trying the handle on the front door. Locked.

“I was afraid of that. No one has any reason to be here.”

But Will had pulled out his key ring and slid a key into the lock.

I stared. “How did you . . . ?”

“The city offices have keys to all the houses on the historical registry.”

That one simple sentence sent my mind into a tizzy. The sheriff and deputy had said the screws on the railing might have been tampered with, which meant someone must have been able to come in and out of the house. Who else had a key? I ran through the possibilities. The workers on the construction crew had to be able to get in and out. And I remembered Hattie bursting in that day. Calling down to someone on the sidewalk. Pocketing her keys.

My heart thumped in my chest. The deputy had his eye on Raylene, but Hattie’s last remark to Dan Lee shot to the front of my mind.
Mark my words, Dan Lee—hurting Raylene was a mistake.
Could Hattie have come into the house without her husband and loosened the screws of the railing on the widow’s walk? Did she want to get back at her sister’s ex-husband that badly?

Will held the door open and let Gracie and me pass into the foyer as he said, “You’re off on a rabbit trail again, Cassidy.”

I blinked, coming back to the moment. “Hattie has a key.”

“Right.”

“But why?”

He gave me a look like I’d lost my marbles, but answered anyway. “Because they did the restoration. Helen Abernathy has one, too, since Abernathy Home Builders did the renovations.”

Another memory flashed in my mind. Mrs. James and I had had to wait for Helen Abernathy to show up before we could get inside the Denison mansion because—“Mrs. James lost her key.”

“Right,” Will said again. “She came by my office a few days back to see if we had an extra copy.” He pulled a small paper envelope from his pocket and held it up. “Had one made for her, but I haven’t seen her to give it to her.”

“Maybe she didn’t lose her key,” I mused. “Maybe it was stolen. Which means maybe the sheriff is right. Maybe the screws really were loosened on purpose.”

“Or maybe she really did lose the key and nothing sinister is going on,” he said as he closed the door.

“Maybe.” But I suddenly didn’t think so. Still, it didn’t hurt to look at the other possibilities. “Did Helen Abernathy know Dan Lee Chrisson?” I asked.

“Why?”

I pushed my glasses up to the top of my head. “If the sheriff is right, someone had to loosen the screws—”

“Hoping that Dan Lee would just happen onto the widow’s walk, lean against the railing, and fall to his death? Not really a foolproof plan, if you ask me.”

He had a point, but I still felt as if I were on to something. I couldn’t think of a single reason why Helen Abernathy would want Dan Lee dead, though. The man had lived and worked in Bliss, but as far as I’d heard, he hadn’t ruffled any feathers.

Gracie prowled around, peeking into the parlor, running her fingers over the diamond-shaped fabric pieces of a neatly folded antique quilt done up in a Lone Star pattern. She moved on to the secretary desk, rolling up the cover and riffling through a stack of old books.

“Gracie,” Will said with a hiss.
“No toques
.
”

My high school Spanish was rusty, so I didn’t know what he said, but Gracie snatched her hand away from the books as if her fingers had burned from their touch. Her shoulders lifted and her cheeks tinged pink. “Sorry. All this old stuff is just so . . . so cool.”

She was right, only I couldn’t appreciate the intricacies of the antiques and the history of the house at the moment. My thoughts were crowded with the nightmare of the fall from the roof, and worse than that, I worried that the loose railing had been intentionally tampered with. But Will was right. Loosening screws on a railing was hardly a foolproof plan for murder, unless—

I gasped. “What if someone pushed him?”

Gracie whirled around, but Will held his hand out to her. “Just simmer down.” He turned to me. “You’re assuming the sheriff and deputy are right. That someone tampered with the railing. But that doesn’t make sense.”

I didn’t agree. “It does if they planned to sneak up behind him and give him a good shove.”

His eyebrows pulled together, and I could tell he couldn’t argue that point. “Okay, but Dan Lee was a pretty decent guy, far as I know. Why would anyone do that?”

It all came back to motive. Who would have wanted him dead? Other than Raylene and maybe Hattie, neither of whom I wanted to believe could have been involved, no one had a reason to kill Dan Lee. At least none that I knew of. I had no answer to Will’s question.

Gracie had gone pale, so I pushed the thought of murders and motives out of my mind and turned to her. “You’d love this old dressing gown I saw yesterday.” I ushered her toward the stairs, gritting my teeth against the stiffness in my body and the sore spots where bruises ran up and down my side, using the handrail to climb up behind her.

Will was suddenly right beside me, his hand on my lower back. “Cassidy,” he said softly, “you sure you want to go up there after what happened yesterday?”

“I’m not going onto the widow’s walk. I’ll never trust another railing,” I said lightly, trying to make it sound like a joke. But it came off tinged with fear, and I wondered how much truth was behind the words.

As I blinked, I suddenly saw myself on the widow’s walk again, and then I was falling, falling, falling. I stopped for a second in alarm and put my hand on Will’s arm, looking up into his smoky blue eyes. “Would you check the railing on my porch? Make sure it’s not going to split in two like the one here?” There were steps leading up to it and it wasn’t high off the ground, but I was spooked.

He laid his hand on mine and squeezed. “No problem.”

At the landing, I led Gracie and Will to the bathroom with the claw-foot tub. Behind the door I pointed out the silk dressing gown. Gracie brushed her fingers over the skirt, closing her eyes. I’d done the same thing, wanting to isolate just my sense of touch as I felt the quality of the fabric. She angled her head slightly, a strand of her dark hair tumbling down her forehead. I watched her, amazed at how attuned she was to the fabric. Her eyelids fluttered as if she could absorb the history of the garment just by touching it. “I can almost see who wore this,” she said softly.

Will nosed around the bathroom, finally gesturing to me that he was going to wait in the hallway.

“Did it belong to the woman who owned the house?” Gracie asked as he started to leave. Her question made him stop.

“Which owner? There have been a few.”

“There have? I thought Justin Kincaid won the deed to the house in a poker game,” I said.

Will leaned against the doorjamb, hands in his jeans pockets. “Right. So there was Vanetta and Justin Kincaid, but before that was Pearl and Charles Denison. They were the first owners. Far as I remember, the Kincaids let Jeb James’s grandmother live here for a spell. The senator lived with her as a boy. Or so the story goes.”

I stared at Will. I’d been in this house a handful of times, most often with Zinnia James, and she’d never mentioned that her husband had lived here as a child. More secrets. It seemed I uncovered one everywhere I turned. Bliss was bursting with them.

Gracie’s fingers tightened on the silk skirt. “This dressing gown belonged to Pearl,” she said. “I’m sure of it. She was the first owner, right? So it has to be hers. I can almost picture her in it,” she added, her eyes fluttering closed, a slight smile curving her lips.