Elizabeth Lynn Casey - Southern Sewing Circle 10 - Wedding Duress (9 page)

“Because she is.” Tori smoothed the rabbit’s ears back
then watched as they shot straight up once again. “But thank you . . . for looking after Paris these last two days, and for taking care of Leona when she fell. I’m sick at the thought that she was all alone when it first happened but grateful you got here so quickly.”

“It was my pleasure, ma’am.” He reached across the empty space between them and gave Paris a quick scratch along her short neck. “As for you, Miss Paris, with any luck I’ll be seeing you again just as soon as that gorgeous owner of yours is back on her feet.”

Casting a sidelong glance in the direction of the passenger seat, Tori pushed through the guilt to find the smile she owed her fiancé. “I’m very aware of how lucky I am, by the way.”

He stopped drumming his hands to the background beat on the radio and puffed out his chest. “Yes, yes you are.” Then, as quickly as the posturing arrived, it disappeared behind a laugh. “Why are you saying that? What did I do?”

“You understood when I said I needed to pass on our pizza and movie date. And with little more than seconds to absorb the out-of-left-field why.”

“What’s to absorb? Leona is in the hospital. We’d be pretty awful if we reacted to that by ordering a large pepperoni pizza with a side of breadsticks.”

Carefully, she maneuvered the hairpin turn a few miles
outside Sweet Briar and then turned left on Route 25 toward Tom’s Creek. “Still, I know you needed a night to chill.”

“As did you. But Leona didn’t ask to fall and fracture her hip.”

The road twisted to the east and then the south as they approached the town limits of Sweet Briar’s most metropolitan neighbor and the increased traffic that came with the title. “I’m still lucky,” she quipped. “Lucky
and
hungry.”

“I vote we check in on Leona and see if she’s eaten. If she hasn’t, I’ll track down the hospital cafeteria and see what they’ve got.” He pointed toward a large rectangular-shaped blue sign and its telltale white
H
. “Here we go. Looks like the visitor parking is over there to the left.”

She followed his verbal clues and promptly found a spot close to the entrance. Ten minutes later, they were poking their heads inside Room 245.

“Leona?” Tori called. “Are you up for some visitors?”

A rustling of sheets was followed by the sound of a sleepy Leona. “Who’s with you, dear?”

“Milo.”

A second rustling was quickly followed by the distinct sound of a drawer opening and closing and a zipper being opened.

“Leona?”

“One minute. I just need to . . .” Her friend’s voice died out as whatever had been unzipped seconds earlier was rezipped and placed back in a drawer. “You can come in now, dear.”

“Shall I turn on the light?” Tori asked as she led the way into the room with Milo no more than a step or two
behind. At Leona’s garbled assent, she flipped the switch beside the door and blinked at the rapid answer of the fluorescent fixture affixed to the ceiling. “Whoa, that’s bright.”

“Tell me about it.” Leona patted her hair self-consciously as Tori and Milo came into view, her freshly applied lipstick a dead giveaway to the reason behind the zipper sounds. “I spoke with the president of the hospital this morning and made a suggestion or two they might want to implement with their accommodations.”

Tori resisted the urge to roll her eyes and instead took a long, hard look at her friend and the dark circles that lined the underside of her bloodshot eyes. “Leona Elkin, why on earth didn’t you call me when you fell?”

“I
did
call you, dear. You just chose not to call back in the ongoing pack-style punishment being inflicted on me because of something that lasted less than five seconds.”

Ignoring the watered-down version of the truth, she opted to focus on the lesser of two arguments she could wage. “If you’d called me back and told me you’d fallen, Leona, I’d have dropped everything.”

“I don’t believe in begging, Victoria. If you don’t know that by now, you don’t know me at all.”

“You wouldn’t have had to
beg
, Leona. We are friends, aren’t we?”

“I thought we were,” Leona sniffed.

Aware of Milo standing just over her left shoulder, she took a deep breath and moved on to the only thing that really mattered at that point. “How are you feeling? Are you in pain?”

“A bit less now that I’m in one place, but when Sam had to lift me onto the gurney and then from the gurney
to the bed in the ER, it was awful. It was the same when the nurse had to bring me down for the X-rays.”

“You were very fortunate to have an EMT like Sam, that’s for sure.”

Leona’s left eyebrow inched upward. “You know Sam, dear?”

“I met him this evening. He’s how I learned you’d fallen.” Tori lowered herself to the edge of Leona’s bed, only to jump back up in reaction to her friend’s wince. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Leona’s eyes drifted closed for a few seconds then opened slowly. “My pain just then had nothing to do with you, Victoria. Sit. Please.” Then, gesturing toward the chair on the opposite side of her bed, she mustered a pain-free smile and a seductive blink for her male visitor. “Milo, how sweet of you to come.”

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be right now, Leona.” Milo looped around the bottom of the bed and took the seat reserved especially for him. “And just so you know, my neighbor is looking after Paris while we’re here.”

“Your neighbor?”

Tori perched a bit farther from Leona’s leg and reached for the woman’s hand. “Sam’s work schedule the next few days would have made it hard for him to care for Paris, so I took her. Once Milo and I get back this evening, I’ll retrieve her from the neighbor’s house and bring her home with me.”

“Thank you.” A rare burst of uncertainty had Leona picking at the fabric of her hospital blanket. “I miss her terribly.”

“As I’m sure she misses you.”

“Where did you see Sam?” Leona asked after a dramatic pause to wipe at her eyes.

“At your condo. He came by to get some treats for Paris.”

“Hmmm. So not only is he attractive and strong, he also follows directions. Very nice.” Leona snuggled her head back against her pillow and again closed her eyes, this time opting to leave them that way while she continued talking. “He’s going to take me to dinner once I’m back home.”

“When will that be?” Tori asked. “Sam said you had
surgery
?”

“I had a pin put in my hip but I’m told I should heal nicely. Unfortunately, with my incredibly unfair placement on everyone’s most hated list, I will probably be going to rehab for a while before I can go home to Paris.”

“Rehab?”

Leona’s never-before-seen mascara-less lashes parted to reveal hazel eyes that seemed more stricken than dramatic. “The doctor insists that I will need a little bit of . . . help . . . for a few days, while I recover.”

“Oh, Leona, I think you’re going to need help for more than a few days,” Milo interjected. “One of my mom’s friends broke her hip last year and it didn’t go very well.”

“I didn’t break my hip. I merely fractured it.”

“But you’re also sixty-five, Leona,” Tori protested, earning herself a death glare in the process.

“Do you know what I was doing when I fell, dear?”

She rewound her way through her evening until she was able to recover something that sounded vaguely familiar. “Um, something with a footstool, I think?”

“It was a stepper, Victoria. As in, a piece of workout equipment that one uses to
work out
.” Leona softened her gaze as she swung it toward Milo. “I will rebound from this like any other
forty
-five-year-old would.”

“You still had major surgery, Leona,” Milo reminded her not unkindly. “Which means you need to take things slow in order to fully rebound. Go too fast and you’ll only hamper your recovery in the long run.”

“I have to get better quickly. For Paris. And Sam.”

Tori tried to stifle the laugh before it made its way past her lips, but she wasn’t entirely successful. “S-Sam?”

“He’s smitten, dear.”

It was a sentiment she couldn’t argue, not after hearing the worship the EMT had for the woman. Instead, she asked, “If someone was at your home with you, could you go there instead of a rehab facility?”

“I could. But other than Paris, I have no one.”

“You could ask Margaret Louise.”

Leona lifted her chin to afford her fully opened eyes a view of the ceiling, shaking her head as she did. “You saw my sister the other night. She despises me.”

“Stop it, Leona. Margaret Louise doesn’t despise you. She’s just upset over what you did to Rose.”

A flash of pain skittered across Leona’s face followed by a heartbreaking groan.

“Leona?” She reached for her friend’s hand again and held it tightly. “Are you okay? Should I get a nurse?”

“No. I—I’ll . . . be fine. I’d rather take the pain meds a little closer to bed.” Two deep breaths later, Leona was in command of the conversation again. “I won’t be asking my sister for help.”

“I could help,” Tori whispered.

“No. You’re getting married in ten days.”

“But I don’t want you going to a rehab facility,” she protested.

“What other choice do I have, dear?”

Milo rose to his feet, retraced his original steps, and came to stand beside Tori. “You could hire someone to stay with you for the first week or so. Someone who can help you get in and out of the shower, in and out of bed, and whatever else you need.”

“Are there people who
do
that sort of thing?” Leona asked.

“Sure.”

Tori looked up at Milo. “You mean like an in-home nurse?”

“She could get someone like that, I guess. But I’m thinking more along the lines of someone who can simply be there with her, morning, noon, and night, until she’s okay to be on her own again.”

Leona pulled her hand free of Tori’s and reached for a small pad and pen on the wheeled nightstand to her left. “Where would I find someone like that?”

“We could ask Beatrice,” Tori suggested suddenly.

“She has too much on her mind, dear.” Leona uncapped the pen and hovered it above the paper. “I think I’ll call the chamber of commerce first thing in the morning. If there is someone who fits the bill, they’ll—”

A second, longer grimace of pain stole the rest of Leona’s sentence and brought Tori to her feet. “Okay, I can’t handle seeing you in this kind of pain any longer. I’m getting the nurse.”

Tori stopped in the doorway of the children’s room and took in the face of each and every two-year-old seated atop a carpet square listening to the antics of a little brown mouse. In their expressions she saw the same wonder that had drawn her to books as a small child and still kept her enthralled as an adult.

“I can’t help but wish I was two again. If I was, Miss Gracie would still be alive.”

Startled, Tori pushed off the door frame and glanced over her shoulder to find Beatrice standing mere inches away. “Oh. Beatrice. I didn’t see you standing there,” she whispered as she took hold of the nanny’s arm and led her across the hall and into her office, where they could speak without disrupting Nina’s story time. “How are you doing, sweetie?”

“I’ll be better when I bloody well know the truth behind Miss Gracie’s fall.”

“You still think someone else was involved?”

“I don’t
think
it, Victoria, I
know
it.” Beatrice’s focus drifted back across the hall, only to return to Tori with raw intensity. “Especially after what Kellie said.”

“I heard about that from Milo. But I don’t understand how Kellie’s recollection proves anything.”

“If Kellie had heard her yell, ‘no,’ I might be able to consider it an accident. But she yelled, ‘stop.’”

“I don’t understand.”

Beatrice paced from one end of the office to the other, frustration fairly dripping from her pores. “If you were falling, what would you yell, Victoria?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know I’d yell anything.”

“I think I’d yell for help. But that’s not what Miss Gracie did. She said, ‘stop.’” Beatrice paused mid-step and turned to face Tori. “People only say ‘stop’ to someone else—stop talking, stop hitting, stop being mean, stop
pushing
.”

She felt her head jerk backward from the punch of Beatrice’s words and the barrage of recent conversations they recalled . . .

“Stop it! That’s my book!”

“Stop trying to plead Leona’s case. She got herself into this mess . . .”

“Stop it, Leona. Margaret Louise doesn’t despise you . . .”

She covered her mouth with her hand as more and more conversations utilizing the word
stop
played their way through her thoughts, each and every instance involving another person.

Was Beatrice right?

“Wow. I—I don’t know what to say, Beatrice.”

“Say you think there’s a chance she didn’t fall. Say you think there’s a chance someone pushed her down that staircase.”

Ten minutes earlier, her answer to her friend’s plea would have been very different. But it wasn’t ten minutes earlier.

Tori swallowed against the lump slowly rising in her throat and let the edge of her desk serve as a prop for legs that were suddenly weary. “Let’s say you’re right, Beatrice. That someone pushed Miss Gracie down those stairs. Who would want to do that? And why? She’d only been in town for thirty-six hours at that point, right? Is that really enough time to cultivate a murderous enemy?”

“I think that would depend on the why, wouldn’t you say?”

She took a moment to study the young nanny and the fiery determination that lit the young woman’s normally dull eyes. “You’re convinced she was murdered, aren’t you?”

“I bloody well am.”

“Do you have any suspects?”

“One.”

“And that would be the nanny she replaced, yes?”

“Cynthia Marland,” Beatrice confirmed. “She was furious over being fired by Mrs. Brady. She honestly believed that Reenie’s seizure at school wasn’t her fault and that she should have been given another chance.”

“Why? So she could kill the child next time?” Tori mumbled.

“Precisely what Mrs. Brady was trying to prevent.”

“But if Cynthia was fired, would she have even
been
at the Bradys’ house when Miss Gracie fell?”

Beatrice fidgeted with the hem of her blouse only to release the fabric from her fingers with a determined shrug. “She wasn’t invited, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.”

“Did anyone mention seeing her?”

“I haven’t asked yet. But the only people that could tell me would be the one or two nannies from the Nanny Go Round Agency, who wouldn’t tell me even if I asked.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because they’re afraid I’ve started a trend toward British nannies. Which is silly, of course. If there’s a trend, it’s in the Nanny Go Round Agency having inferior nannies.”

“Are the nannies from this local agency really that bad?” Tori asked.

“I can only say that the families who employ help from Nanny Go Round get what they pay for.”

“These nannies come cheap?”

“If the paychecks I’ve seen at the park are any indication, they make little more than a pittance.”

Tori drew back. “Then why do they do it?”

“The perks, I suppose. A bedroom in a fancy house . . . use of a car . . . that sort of thing.” Beatrice shoved a piece of her hair off her face. “From what I have been able to gather, it’s a way to live like they haven’t and probably never will on their own.”

“And that’s the case with Cynthia, as well?”

Beatrice crossed to the window and looked out over the library grounds. “You know those houses you pass as
you head out on Route 25? The very last ones before you leave Sweet Briar town limits?”

She mentally put herself on the road that led to Tom’s Creek and willed herself to see her surroundings rather than the road itself.

“There’s about a half dozen or so of them there on the left and—”

“Wait,” she said, crinkling her nose. “You mean those dilapidated ones? With the appliances and stuff on the front porches?”

“Cynthia lives in the green one with her parents. Her grandparents live in the brown one, her older brother and his girlfriend in the yellow one, and some other sort of relative in the blue one. Some of the other nannies live on that same street, too.”

Tori drummed her fingers against the cool metal of her desk as she tried Beatrice’s words on for size. “So living in a home like the one Mr. and Mrs. Brady own is literally like being in a different world.”

“One she wasn’t too keen on leaving.”

“What you’re saying doesn’t make sense, though.”

Beatrice turned. “Why not?”

“Hear me out, okay?” Pushing off the edge of her desk, Tori wandered over to the drink station she and Nina had set up on a cart by the door and held out a bottle of water to Beatrice. When the nanny declined, she twisted off the cap and took a quick sip. “You were the one who suggested Miss Gracie to the Brady family, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then it stands to reason that any resentment Cynthia felt would be aimed at
you
, not Miss Gracie.”

“And that is why she followed me and Luke around—
to the park, the school, the market, and on walks. But once Miss Gracie was actually here, no amount of bullying would put Cynthia back in the Brady home. Only Miss Gracie’s death could do that.”

“In her dreams perhaps.” Tori took a second, longer sip, then recapped the bottle and set it on the cart next to the coffeemaker.

“No, Victoria. In reality.”

She froze as her friend’s words took root. “Wait. Are you saying Cynthia is working for the Bradys again?”

“She showed up Tuesday morning, offering to help bridge the gap until they found a replacement for Miss Gracie.”

“And did they take her up on the offer?”

“I don’t know,” Beatrice said. “I couldn’t listen to talk of replacing Miss Gracie. It was far too painful.”

Tori tried to think of something to say, something that could erase the grief from Beatrice’s face while simultaneously giving the young woman solace, but she came up empty.

“Tell me you see what I see,” Beatrice implored. “Tell me you think Miss Gracie’s fall wasn’t an accident.”

Tori retraced her steps back to her desk, only this time she went straight for the notepad and pen she kept in her top drawer. “I can’t deny this whole business with Cynthia feels off.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll make a call or two this afternoon.” She retrieved the notepad, flipped past the pages devoted to the remaining items on her wedding list, and stopped on the first empty page she could find, her mind instinctively prioritizing the things they needed to do even before the tip of
her pen had made so much as a dot on the paper. “Maybe try to see what I can find out about the Nanny Go Round Agency and its hiring practices.”

A half sob, half laugh echoed through the room as Beatrice lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Tori’s neck. “Oh, Victoria, I knew you’d see it my way. Thank you! Thank you for helping me catch Miss Gracie’s killer. You are truly a wonderful friend.”

As if guided by some unseen force, Tori’s gaze left the notepad and traveled across the room to the wall calendar and the multicolored circle that was now just nine days away . . .

No, I am truly an idiot.