Pleating for Mercy (24 page)

Even though she’d said my name, she looked at me like she was walking down the cereal aisle at Walmart and had suddenly seen a celebrity. Clearly she couldn’t quite adjust to seeing me out of Buttons & Bows and in the Kincaids’ house.

“Yep, it’s me. I spend most of my waking hours at the dress shop, but every once in a while, I escape.”

“I didn’t know you were invited to this,” she said, redirecting her gaze to the people below us. Either she didn’t want to miss a second of the festivities—which seemed unlikely, since she was hiding up here—or she was a stalker whose prey was on the move.

I took advantage of the bird’s-eye view and did a quick search for Derek. There was no sign of him. I couldn’t imagine he’d miss his brother’s wedding, but the gala? It didn’t surprise me that he hadn’t made an appearance.

“Yeah, well . . .” I stuck an olive from my martini glass in my mouth. Seemed easier than explaining my fast friendship with Madelyn, her husband’s prior commitment, and her last-minute invitation for me to join her. I smiled, pushing my slipping glasses back into place.

“Whatcha doing up here?” I asked, peering over the balcony. From here, it looked like everyone in Bliss was crammed into the Kincaids’ mansion. I couldn’t keep my suspicious mind from wandering. Who among the party guests might have wanted Nell dead?

“I just came up here to get a few minutes of quiet,” she said.

I gave her a sidelong look. What if Karen had killed Nell? I created a quick list in my head of reasons why she might be guilty, wondering at the same time if this was how Sheriff McClaine worked.

Why did people kill? Every TV show and movie focused on one of three motives. Revenge. Greed. Jealousy. Had Karen wanted to get back at Nell for something? From what I’d gathered, they’d been good friends. Greed? Nell owned her shop, but other than that, did she have any assets to speak of? Nobody had mentioned anything, so I doubted it. From what Ruthann had said, Nell’s upbringing wasn’t wrought with riches so she didn’t have anything much to steal. Greed seemed unlikely.

Jealousy, then?

Oh! My heartbeat ratcheted up a notch. What if—

A horn blared from down below, a collective hush falling over the crowd. Keith Kincaid’s voice, projected and tinny, greeted his guests. “I wanna thank all y’all for comin’ out tonight,” he began, slow and lighthearted, just like John Wayne. “I’m gonna cut the bull crap and get right down to it. The Kincaid Family Foundation is in honor of my folks, Justin and Vanetta. They wanted to bring our family together for a common goal, making Bliss, Texas, a town to be reckoned with, and they did just that.”

A raucous cheer went up, drowning out whatever Keith said next. I searched the crowd, looking for the man to go with the voice, finally spotting him in the far corner, a Texas A&M megaphone pressed to his lips. He pushed a button and the horn sounded again, instantly quieting the crowd.

“We know y’all share our values and we thank you for continuing to honor the memory of my folks by donatin’ to the foundation. We couldn’t do what we do without y’all.”

I bristled. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that
my
concerns weren’t the same as the Kincaids’ concerns. Their disapproval of me when I’d dated Derek had driven that point home.

I caught a glimpse of Will Flores. The scowl on his face indicated he might not share the same values as Keith Kincaid, either.

Mr. Kincaid set the megaphone on the built-in bookshelf behind him, interestingly absent of actual books—guess he wasn’t kidding when he scoffed at Miriam’s plans for a bookshop in town—snagged a drink from the portable bar, and was sucked into the crowd.

Karen had zeroed in on someone down below. I followed her gaze and spotted a tall man standing next to Nate. I recognized him from the night Nell died. Ted, Karen’s husband. For a second, I thought I saw Zinnia James as well, but the woman was instantly swallowed up by the crowd so I couldn’t be sure.

As my thoughts circled back to a possible motive for Karen, I automatically went to the lowest common denominator. What if Nell’s secret lover had been Karen’s husband? Or, better yet, what if he was the person she’d met at Reata? Karen had even said that Ted frequented that restaurant.

He hadn’t struck me as the cheating type, but Meemaw had taught me long ago never to judge by appearances. “Look through the eyes,” she’d always said. “Windows to the soul.”

I made small talk with Karen, leaning against the banister, trying to craft a question without being too blunt.

Turned out I didn’t have to make the effort. After a minute of awkward starts and stops, she ripped her attention away from the crowd downstairs and looked at me. “I . . . I don’t know what to do, Harlow.”

“About what?”

She looked over her shoulder at the deserted landing and hallway, then back over the banister. We were completely alone. “The sheriff questioned Ted today about Nell.”

“Your husband.” I kept my voice steady and my face still, but maybe my rogue thought wasn’t so far off.

She nodded. “This is Bliss. Nothing stays quiet for long. People are going to find out. What if they think he had something to do with it? It could ruin him.”

At least now I knew why Karen was dressed to disappear and was hiding upstairs. She was already afraid the gossipmongers of Bliss had turned their forked tongues her way. “Why would they think that, Karen?” I replied. “It was probably routine. I mean, when was the last murder in Bliss? Probably eons ago. So this is a big deal. They’re probably questioning everyone who knew Nell.”

“No,” she blurted. Her eyes welled with tears, her lower lip trembled, and her whole body seemed to quiver. “He . . . he saw her. Just . . . just before she died.”

Whoa
. “He did?” I flashed back to the night of the murder, when Josie, Mama, Karen, and I had all been questioned by the sheriff. He’d asked if any of us had seen Nell after she’d left Buttons & Bows. All of us had said no. Karen’s husband hadn’t been with her at my shop—the reason, I guess, the sheriff hadn’t even asked him if he’d seen Nell. The question, then, was why hadn’t he offered up the information?

“Nell wanted to revise her w-will—”

“Wait. So you knew she had a will?” But Ruthann hadn’t.

She nodded. “Ted did it for her.”

“Your husband’s a lawyer?” Now I was up to speed. It looked like Nell had used her friends for very specific things. Ted must have been the lawyer Gina had seen Nell with at Villa Farina.

She nodded. “He doesn’t even do wills and trusts. Strictly oil and gas. But she asked me for his help. He . . . he only did it as a favor. He met her that night at Seed-n-Bead so they could go over the final document, but . . . but . . .”

I put my hand on her shoulder. Her body stopped shuddering, her tears subsiding. “But what?”

“There was no one to witness it,” she said, looking completely devastated.

“Who was supposed to?”

“I have no idea. She wanted me to convince Ted to help her, but she didn’t tell me any more than that. But, see, he’s a lawyer. He should have made sure there was a witness, right? So why didn’t he?”

It wasn’t hard to read between the lines. What she
really
wanted to know was if her husband and Nell were working on the will at all, or had their
meetings
turned personal? She looked at me like I might be able to help her make sense of things, but I couldn’t.

“Have you asked him?”

“I tried.” She lowered her voice, darting another furtive glance over her shoulder. We were still alone. A hint of anger crept into her tone. “He turned it all around, like I was trying to tell him how to do his job, and how dare I doubt him. I want to trust him, but why wouldn’t there be a witness when they were meeting to sign the will so she could leave everything to her bab—?”

She broke off before finishing the word, but too late for me not to fill in the blank. To her
baby
. So Karen knew about Nell’s pregnancy.

“I presume the will’s not valid.”

“Not if she never signed it.” She spoke sharply now, unloading everything she’d been keeping bottled up inside. “They met a bunch of times to work on it, but when I asked him about
that
, he said I was being selfish, that he was just doing his job and helping
my
friend.”

What if Ted was the father of Nell’s child and she’d turned to
blackmail
? That was something I hadn’t considered. If Nell had threatened to spill the beans about their illicit affair, would Ted have killed her to silence her? A sullied reputation in a small town would be hard to live down.

I mentally penciled Ted—and Karen—onto my list as suspects. Of course, all I had was a bunch of meaningless theories. With no proof, none of them would hold water.

Oh, how I wished I’d known Nell. Even one close glimpse into her life could have told me so much about who she was and what she was up to.

One thing was clear. If both Karen and Ruthann knew about the pregnancy, chances were others did, too.

“If there’s anything I can do . . .”

But Karen had her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clenched around the banister. Her anger was melding with fear that her husband had betrayed her. Tears were threatening and she was doing everything she could to ward them off.

It took a good couple of minutes for her lips to turn pink again and for her face to relax.

“So what’ll happen to the store now?” I asked.

She sighed, that lower lip starting to twitch again. “We . . . we were partners,” she said, her voice so low I almost didn’t hear.

“You and Nell? In the bead shop?”

She nodded. “She’d been saving forever, but wasn’t making much headway. She asked me if Ted and I would help her. She promised she’d be able to pay us back in just a few months.”

“But she didn’t?”

“She kept saying she wasn’t quite ready, that she needed a little more time. I think Ted realized she didn’t really have the money. He was furious.”

I took this all in, mulling it over. From what I knew, murder was usually an act of passion brought on unexpectedly. Karen and Ted each had another possible motive. Either one of them could have snapped.

“How was Nell planning to get enough money to pay you back? Was business really good?”

“She was always in the middle of some scheme or plan. All she’d tell me was that she was getting her happily-ever-after. Said I’d find out the rest soon enough, along with everyone else. Whatever she was up to backfired this time.”

The announcement at the rehearsal dinner. “Guess it did.”

She let out a biting little laugh. “Some happily-ever-after.”

I wasn’t quite sure if she was talking about Nell’s happily-ever-after or her own. Neither one had ended as planned. Nell was gone and Karen’s marriage had some big ol’ red flags flying over it. She was back to staring over the banister at the party scene below. I left her alone with her complicated grief and went off in search of Josie.

I’d started at the far end of the hall and had almost finished looking in each and every bedroom, but the brideto-be seemed to have vanished. This soiree was a far cry from the high school parties I remembered, where hormonally charged teens looked for any available room to get, er, rowdy in.

A sewing machine sat on top of two clear plastic bins in the corner of one room. I couldn’t resist sneaking in to take a peek. It was a midrange Pfaff with enough bells and whistles to keep a girl happy for a long time. The bins were full of notions and trims, patterns and fabrics. A few pillow forms were compressed inside. If this was Miriam’s and she never used it, I wondered if she’d sell the whole kit and caboodle to Will so Gracie could sew at home.

I made a mental note to ask her about it, shut the door, and whirled around . . . plowing right into a pair of strong arms, my hands pressed firmly against—

“Cassidy, what are you doing?”

Will.

“Will Flores,” I said, surprised by the warmth he sent swirling through my body. “Are you following me?”

“I’m not, Harlow,” he said, quirking a smile, “but I am curious to know what you’re doing up here.”

I barely knew Will, and to hear him using my first name seemed . . . intimate and unfamiliar. I pushed away from him, a little whopper-jawed by how I felt. “I was looking for Josie,” I said. “I saw her come up here. I wanted to see if she’s okay. Since Nate’s . . .”

I hesitated. For all I knew, Will and Nate were old friends. And since one of the scenarios for Nell’s murder put Nate as the killer, talking to one of his friends about it probably wasn’t a good idea.

“Nate’s what?”

“I was just wondering how long you’ve known the Kincaids.”

He folded his arms over his chest, studying me. “Uh-uh. You’re not getting off that easy, darlin’. Answer me this: Do the ghosts follow you everywhere you go?”

I started. Did he know that Meemaw’s ghost seemed to be hanging around my house? Had Gracie told him something? “Well, of course not,” I said, waving away the very idea with an idle laugh. “I’m just looking for Josie.”

I started back down the hallway to where I had last seen Karen. Will stayed right beside me. It hadn’t escaped my notice that he hadn’t answered my question. “So, are you friends with Nate?” I asked.

“I know him.”

The hallway and landing were empty. Maybe Karen had gone back downstairs. We stood side by side at the banister. Down below, people spilled out the French doors onto the stone-and-brick patio. There was no sign of a distraught brunette in polyester pants. Maybe she and Josie were comforting each other.

A willowy blonde glided through the room, stopping to chat with a few people before moving on to the next group. Ruthann. It wasn’t her party, but it might as well have been. She looked like the quintessential hostess, ready to meet and greet her guests, throwing out her naked left hand to be kissed, the only adornment sparkling from her right hand. She was clearly available, and every man’s gaze was instantly drawn to her. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. Did she know she was the most beautiful woman in the room?