Pleating for Mercy (20 page)

Within minutes, Ruthann was behind the screen, shimmying into her body shaper, a style that hit just below her breasts. The result would be the illusion that there was a bit more in the bust than there actually was. Ruthann was gazelle-like, all limbs and very graceful, but she didn’t have any extra padding. Anywhere.

The dress I’d designed was a perfect match for her. The full skirt would hint at curves. The vertically pleated tube bodice with the fitted sash just under the breasts would substitute for cleavage. I helped her slip into the dress, checking the fit and the length, then finally marking the back closure so I’d know exactly where to place the zipper.

When I released her, she glided over to the full-length mirror, did a one-eighty, and froze as if she’d looked into Medusa’s eyes.

Oh, God, she hated it. I’d stayed up most of the night and had felt my energy flow right into the fabric as I’d sewed. I didn’t know Ruthann, but I’d been sure this dress would make her feel more feminine and powerful than she’d ever felt before.

“Ruthann?” I moved closer until I stood behind her, slightly to one side. I looked like I’d stayed up all night. My hair, pulled into my usual two low ponytails, looked dull and lackluster. Even the blond streak had lost its shimmer. The bags under my eyes were smoky gray and my skin looked sallow.

Ruthann, on the other hand, looked like she’d been lit up from the inside by a firefly. The strong olive green chiffon made her skin sparkle with life. Effervescent. There was no other way to describe how she appeared.

“How?”

This was my first made-to-order dress. It was almost completed. A simple bridesmaid’s dress and I’d botched it. “How what? You don’t like it?” I hurried on, hoping to convince her this was better than what we’d originally discussed. “I know we talked about a sheath. And you wanted that wraparound dress, but Ruthann, this . . .
this
is
you
.”

I held my breath, waiting for her to say something.
Anything
. Then the corners of her mouth lifted and her lips parted. She plucked the fabric on either side, holding it out like she was ready to curtsy. And her face lit up further. “How did you do this? It’s . . . it’s . . .” She trailed off, and spun around, gazing over her shoulder at the unfinished back of the dress. “It’s absolutely perfect.”

My skin pricked with excitement and my knees buckled with relief. I stepped back, letting her absorb her reflection. I didn’t cry easily, but when I saw how thrilled she was, my eyes blurred and I came awful close to tears.

After a moment, I turned a critical eye to my construction and design. I jotted a few notes in my sketchbook, reminders to check the measurement from waist to hem all the way around the full chiffon skirt and the silk skirt underneath. They needed to be exactly the same so that one wasn’t longer or shorter than the other.

“How did you do it?” she asked again.

“I’ve had a lot of training,” I said after I was satisfied that I knew exactly how I would finish Ruthann’s dress. “I worked with Maximilian for a long time. Graduated with a degree in fashion design—”

“No.”

I glanced up from my sketchbook.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said, brushing a tear from her cheek. “Do they train you to make a person feel different?”

“What do you mean?”

A few strands of her hair had slipped from her bun, softening the hard lines of her face. She shook her head, glanced up at the ceiling. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like you always see yourself one way. The tall girl sitting home alone instead of going to prom. I never even had a homecoming mum.” She spun around again and for a second I thought she was picturing the oversized Texas version of a corsage. Then I saw her face and realized she was gazing at her reflection as if it was the first time she was seeing herself.

To say I was flabbergasted would be an understatement. Shocked. How could someone as stunning as Ruthann have grown up thinking she was an ugly duckling?

If I reached out, I felt sure I’d be able to touch the emotion pouring out of her. I suddenly realized why I hadn’t liked the wraparound dress design for her. The idea of crisscrossing two pieces of fabric over her body felt like I’d be constricting her. All the feelings she was experiencing at this very moment had been bottled up inside her forever. A wraparound dress would have kept them sewn up tight. But this dress freed them instead.

“But now?” she said, looking at me in the mirror. “Who cares about a silly mum? All those people who thought I was stuck up won’t believe it. It’s like you knew just what I needed.”

I knew it now, but it had been pure instinct—and the fabric had led me. “I guess it’s like women’s intuition,” I said with a smile. To make people feel the way Ruthann felt at this very moment.
This
was what Meemaw had taught me and
this
was why I’d wanted to design clothes.

“I wish Nell could have felt this way,” Ruthann said, her voice simmering with regret.

“You don’t think she did?”

Another strand of hair fell from her bun. “I know she didn’t. If she just could have . . . maybe it would have been different for her.” She turned her back to the mirror. “What kind of dress would you have made her?” she asked.

She’d died before I’d had a single idea that seemed to fit. “I honestly don’t know. I couldn’t get an image of her. It’s almost like I—” I broke off, a cold chill sweeping over me. It was almost like I’d known she wouldn’t be alive long enough to wear a dress I designed.

“She was such a wild child, you know. So much fun. She liked things that were colorful and vibrant.” Ruthann’s voice drifted into remembrance. “She always wore things that made people do a double take, but she wasn’t really like that on the inside.”

I knew people often projected one thing while inside they were something entirely different. I’d only seen Nell in her cutoffs and knotted plaid shirt, but she was a businesswoman. She had to have been smart, committed, and savvy to make her shop stay afloat. There had definitely been more to her than met the eye. “How long did she own the shop?”

“She only bought it about six months ago. She was really frugal. Always saving, you know? She rented, and the landlord finally made a deal with her.” She shook her head. “It’s so unfair. Just when everything was starting to go really well . . .”

I unpinned the back of her dress and she slipped out of it with a fond glance at the garment.

I hung her dress on the second dress form in the workroom. “I heard she had a will,” I said as Ruthann disappeared behind the privacy screen.

Like a jack-in-the-box, her head popped out from behind the screen. “No, she couldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

A look of hurt came over her. “I guess I just thought she would have told me something like that. We shared everything.”

“That’s right—you two were close.”

She smiled. “Yes, we were.”

“Ah, well, who knows if it’s true,” I said.

“Oh, it probably is,” she said quickly. “Nell was very shrewd. She knew exactly what she wanted and she worked hard to get it. I can see her not wanting to leave anything to chance, especially considering her upbringing.”

I stayed busy at the dress form, needle and thread in hand, finishing the slip stitch on the sash. I slid the needle through the fabric, gliding it along the inside fold and sliding it back out. “Did she have a boyfriend?”

Josie had filled me in on Nell’s self-destructive love life, but Mama’s take on it was that things had been looking up. But by all accounts, she had a good business mind. Surely the two sides of Nell could be knitted together somehow.

“Oh, she was in love.”

I jerked and the needle pricked my thumb. “She was?” I said, pressing my thumb between my lips to soothe the biting pain.

“She wasn’t telling people yet. Afraid she might jinx it, I think,” Ruthann said from behind the privacy screen. “I only found out by accident.”

“But I thought you two were best friends.”

She reemerged, back in her white capris and floral top, the strands of hair framing her face giving her an ethereal look. “We
were
good friends, but Nell didn’t get real close to anyone. I think I felt closer to her than she felt to me or to Karen, or even Josie. It was like she always had on battle armor, you know? Like she had to protect herself from being hurt.”

From what little I knew of Nell, that made perfect sense. “How’d you
accidentally
find out she was in love?”

She looked through the French doors at the empty front room. No one had come into the shop all morning. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked.

I nodded. “Of course.” Unless it was about Nell’s murder, but surely that was understood?

“She was pregnant.” She breathed out a heavy sigh of relief and her shoulders relaxed. “There, I said it.”

Blood surged through my veins, my heart suddenly constricting. “Pregnant?”

“Pregnant.”

“How far along?” I asked, remembering the slight pooch I’d noticed in Nell’s belly. And I had overheard Ruthann and Karen talking about Nell getting sick. It all fit.

“Around fourteen weeks, I think.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But honestly, I’m not sure. She wouldn’t give me any details. Just said she was in love and this time it was going to work out.”

“This time?”

“She’s had a lot of near misses. And some not so near misses. But she said this guy was the one.”

Before I let my imagination run wild, I went ahead with another question. “But why was it a secret?” I asked.

“It wasn’t, I guess. Not exactly. She just wanted to tell everyone in her own way. She’d been planning to make the big announcement at Josie and Nate’s rehearsal dinner.”

“Wouldn’t Josie have minded her stealing the spotlight? I mean, someone else’s wedding festivities doesn’t seem like a very good time to make a personal announcement.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too, but she said Josie wouldn’t mind at all. She was the maid of honor, right? I guess she’d know.”

Ruthann left the shop a few minutes later, but my conversation with her stayed with me long after she’d gone. I didn’t know if the sheriff knew about Nell’s pregnancy, but somehow he’d zeroed in on the two people I kept coming back to as I talked to Nell’s acquaintances. Nate Kincaid and Josie Sandoval.

The scenarios clouded my mind and distracted me from my work. Nate had confessed to a past relationship with Nell. What if it had been more present than past, and what if
he
was the father of the baby? If he’d gotten wind that Nell was going to make the announcement at the rehearsal dinner, not only about their clandestine affair but about the pregnancy, how far would he have gone to try to stop her?

On the other hand, what if Josie had discovered the affair and the pregnancy? Would she have killed Nell in order to preserve the happily-ever-after she wanted so badly?

I knew that anyone who had been in Buttons & Bows the day Nell had died could have taken some random piece of trim and later strangled Nell with it. Nate and Josie had both been there.

I sank onto the couch. My temples throbbed from thinking about the murder investigation. “What am I supposed to do now?” I moaned, dropping my head to my hands.

“Do about what?”

My gaze snapped up.

Three inexplicable things hit me at once. One: Will Flores stood just outside the door, which was slightly ajar. Baffling, since I could have sworn I’d closed it. Two: The bells hadn’t jingled, yet there it was, open, and there
he
was, looking at me like I’d lost my marbles. Three: And sitting right in front of me on the coffee table was a container of ibuprofen.

As Will Flores tackled the pipes under the kitchen sink, I finished the zipper on Ruthann’s dress and started doing the final measurements from waist to hem. One dress down wasn’t quite one-third done with the bridal dresses. Josie’s gown counted as double. At least. But it was progress, and with Nell’s funeral tomorrow and the wedding just a week and a half away now, the clock was ticking.

Unless, of course, the bride—or the groom—was guilty of murder. That could seriously thwart Josie’s plans to move forward with the wedding.

I’d opened the windows that morning, hoping the spring breeze would clear my head. But it still felt weighted down, like the thick humidity of summer had already descended and was especially concentrated around 2112 Mockingbird Lane in general, and me in particular. “I should just go talk to the sheriff,” I muttered.

“You make a habit of talking to yourself?”

I jumped, whirling around. Will stood at the threshold of the French doors, carrying his toolbox with one hand, scratching his head under his cowboy hat with the other. “I’m just wondering if that’s what I can expect from Gracie after she’s been here with you for a while. People’s peculiar little quirks tend to rub off on one another when they spend time together.”

I bristled, dropping the measuring tape I’d been holding. It looked like a pale lavender snake slithering across the hardwood floor. Heat rose from my core until I was sure my neck was splotched red. I mustered up my best Southern affect, threw my hand on my hip, and drawled, “Well, I am Loretta Mae’s kin, and you know the apple don’t fall far from the tree.”

He let his cowboy hat drop back onto his head. “That a fact? In all the times I’ve been here, I don’t think I ever heard Miss Loretta Mae talking to herself.”

That’s because she didn’t, actually, but I couldn’t tell
him
that. “Your daughter will be just fine,” I said. Then changing the subject, I said, “She’s a fast learner. Who taught her to sew, anyway?”

“A friend,” he said, but the way his eyes darkened and the sharpness of his answer made it clear this was not a subject to pursue.

Maybe I’d have the chance to ask Gracie more about it sometime. “So what’s the verdict on the pipes?” I asked as I wound up the measuring tape.