Taken In (17 page)

Dixie sat up proudly, widening her gaze to include an obviously impressed Charles. But after a second or two in the spotlight, her shoulders slumped once again. “I don’t see how any of that has to do with”—she spread her hands wide—“this.”

“You believed in yourself, Dixie. You believed in what you had to offer people inside and outside the library. And when one door closed, you found another to open.” She reached across the table and nudged Dixie’s chin upward until their eyes met. “I believe in you, too, Dixie. I know you didn’t do this. We
all
know you didn’t do this. And you, more than anyone else, have taught me that rolling over in the face of defeat is not an option.”

“I—I taught you that?” Dixie asked in a voice choked with emotion.

“You did. And it’s why I refuse to roll over and accept this as your fate.” She stood up once again, reached into the box, and extracted another cupcake for Dixie’s now-empty napkin. “You mark my words, Dixie, I’ll have us all back in Sweet Briar before you know it.”

Tori trailed behind Charles as they made their way north from the jail, the speed with which her thoughts were processing failing to translate to her feet.

“I think someone’s gone and gotten herself all pooped out,” Charles declared. He stepped to the edge of the sidewalk and allowed a throng of tourists and businesspeople to pass while he waited for Tori to catch up.

“Who?”

“You, silly.” He rolled his eyes, but any attempt at frustration was quickly offset by the smile that lifted his mouth. “I think Miss Rose would have passed you a few times over by now.”

When she didn’t respond, his smile gave way to concern. “Hey. You okay, Victoria?”

She wanted to say yes, to acknowledge the lift she’d gotten from spending a little time with Dixie, but she couldn’t. So much of what she’d done over the past few days had been a complete and utter waste.

Ahhh yes, square one, a place she hated to be yet seemed to frequent often . . .

“I’m tired, Charles,” she finally admitted, the words tasting a little bitter on her tongue. “Maybe even a little defeated.”

He studied her closely for a moment or two and then hooked his arm through hers, leading her across the street and into a small pocket park with a handful of benches and only a smattering of people actually using them.

“Here. Sit.” He fairly shoved her onto the first empty bench they found and then plopped down beside her with a happy enough sigh. “I have to tell you, Victoria, I couldn’t get out of that room fast enough.”

“Oh?”

His eyes widened just before he waved his hands side to side. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m so so
sooo
glad I finally got to meet Dixie in person. And I think we managed to cheer her up at least a little, wouldn’t you say? But taking natural light out of my day for even thirty minutes is like fitting Judy Garland with Crocs instead of ruby slippers. It just doesn’t work.”

Something resembling a laugh made its way up her throat but stopped just shy of the stage. Instead, she set the day’s paper on the empty space between them and took in the leafy tree above their heads.

Seconds turned to minutes as they sat there, side by side, with Tori staring at leaves and Charles staring at her. Finally he spoke, her lack of anything resembling conversation thus far no match for his exuberant personality. “We’re going to get her out, you know.”

“I’m not so sure about that anymore, Charles.”

There. She’d said it.

“Don’t say that, Victoria.”

Slowly, she turned and lowered her head until her focus was entirely on Charles. “Don’t you see how much time we’ve wasted tracking down people who couldn’t possibly be John’s killer?”

“No.”

“C’mon, Charles. I knew about the ripped scarf in Dixie’s purse. I knew it linked her to the scene of the crime. And in talking it out with everyone back at the hotel, I even knew it had to have been planted there
before
John was actually pushed to his death.” She allowed herself a chance to pause, the laugh that had died short of her lips only moments earlier now exploding with a self-mocking, almost maniacal sound. “Yet never did I make the connection that Dixie would have had to have crossed paths with the person in order for it to be planted in the first place.”

“Cut yourself some slack, sugar. Do you know how many times I had to resemble a blowfish before I realized I was allergic to strawberries? Or how many times I got my lanyard stuck in the register drawer—while it was still around my neck, mind you—before I learned to step back half an inch after making change at the store?” He snapped his fingers in his triangle formation then concluded it with a dramatic lean forward. “Too many.”

She chuckled in spite of her dour mood, although the lighthearted effects were over all too soon. “But those mistakes weren’t a big deal.”

“You say that only because it wasn’t
your
face that grew twenty sizes in a span of ten minutes and it isn’t
you
who is still mocked by their co-workers on a daily basis
three years
later.”

“I’m sorry, Charles. I don’t mean to make light of what you said. I’m just feeling pretty stupid about all the brain power I spent thinking the guy from the cupcake store and Caroline Trotter were actually legitimate suspects in John’s death.” She lurched forward on the bench and caught her head inside her hands. “Ugh. Ugh. Ugh!”

“And they’re not suspects now because why?”

She dropped her right hand and tilted her head to afford a view of her companion. “Because Doug never came in contact with Dixie. And we have no reason to think Caroline did, either. All we’ve got is Ms. Steely Eye . . . who doesn’t have a name or anything else that will help us track her down.”

“What makes you think she couldn’t have come in contact with Doug?”

“Because she wasn’t with us when you took us to CupKatery that first time. She was already in jail because John was already dead, remember?” She heard the frustration in her voice and knew it was aimed at herself every bit as much as it was Charles. “That, coupled with the fact he was visiting another one of the shop’s locations in Connecticut when John was killed, makes his inclusion on our list an act of futility if not out-and-out stupidity.”

Charles squared his back with the bench and crossed his legs at the knees before shaking his head so hard she swore the leaves above their head rustled in response. “Oh no it doesn’t.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, first”—he held up the index finger of his left hand—“there’s your notion that Dixie didn’t cross paths with Doug.”

She felt her left brow arch. “Because they didn’t. She and John only had one date—for breakfast at the Waldorf.”

“It may have started with breakfast, Victoria, but that doesn’t mean it stopped there.”

She grabbed the next digit on his hand as he began to raise it and held it down. “No. Not yet. The limo picked us up to go to the studio that day at one o’clock.”

“So? When did she meet John?”

Tori thought back to the day that had started so magically and tried to remember. “I don’t know, nine, I think.”

“When did the spying begin?”

“Nine-thirtyish. Maybe ten.”

“And end?”

She pulled her hand from Charles’s and let it fall back to her thigh. “I don’t know, Charles. We were there for fifteen minutes maybe?”

He smiled triumphantly. “Which means they were out of there by ten thirty at the latest. That left them two hours to go across town. More than enough time to become acquainted with CupKatery’s many flavors.”

“Across town? Who said they went across town?”

“
Dixie
did, that’s who.”

Pivoting on her backside, Tori hiked her upper leg onto the folded newspaper between them. “No she didn’t.”

“Don’t you remember what she said when John bumped into Steely Eye on the street outside the hotel but didn’t seem to know her?”

“No . . .”

“She said they were hailing a cab across town. From the Waldorf, your hotel would be
downtown
, not
across
town.”

Tori stared at Charles as he continued calling attention to details she’d completely missed in her jailhouse funk. “And when you started to tell her where CupKatery was, she cut you off, saying she already knew.”

“She did?” she asked around a hard swallow.

“You betcha.”

The excitement she felt building dissipated just as quickly as she moved on to the second reason Doug couldn’t be involved. “None of this matters when you consider the fact that this guy wasn’t even in the state when John died.”

It was Charles’s turn to laugh. “You haven’t looked at a map recently, have you, Victoria?”

“A map?”

He reached into his back pocket and whipped out a handheld device. Then as she watched, he hit a few buttons, made a few faces, and then held the colorful screen across the space between them. “Connecticut is a relatively small state, as you can see. No matter where in the state you might be, you’re no more than two hours from the city.”

“He was in Danbury.”

“Even better. That’s an hour. An hour and ten minutes, tops.”

She looked from Charles to the screen and back again, the meaning behind his words hitting her square between the eyes. “So even if he was visiting another location, he could be back here in little to no time . . .”

“To borrow one of my favorite catchphrases from Margaret Louise, you’re darn tootin’ he could.”

“But it was a
woman’s
scarf that was in Dixie’s purse,” she mused as much for clarification as a point of contention. “We can’t forget that.”

“If Doug did it, it was out of revenge . . . for his mother. Maybe it was
her
scarf.”

She shook her head in amazement, the man’s hypothesizing not only keeping Doug on the list but possibly even moving him to the top. “Wow. You’re good, Charles. Real good.”

Charles postured and preened under the praise then addressed yet another of Tori’s earlier worries. “And as for Caroline Trotter, we don’t know whether Dixie came in contact with her or not. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But in the event she
did
, the timing of Caroline’s disappearance off the face of the earth certainly calls for a little added investigation.”

Just like that, all mental chastising ceased.

Charles was right. Scratching anyone off their already too-short list was far too premature.

“I wish I’d had some time with Dixie when she got back from her date. But we had to leave for the show less than fifteen minutes later and things were a little harried to say the least. Maybe if they hadn’t been, and we’d had time to talk, I’d know more about where she and John went after breakfast . . .” She let her foot drop back to the ground and retrieved the paper from the bench. Tucking it under her arm, she stood and offered her free hand to Charles. “C’mon, it’s been a long day. I think we need to call it quits for now or the crew will be sending out a search party the likes of which this city has never seen.”

Charles took her hand and allowed her to pull him to his feet. “I’ll walk you back to your hotel, but you have to promise me you’re going to find a way to relax until we pull out our magnifying glasses again in the morning.”

“I’m sure I’ll be talking to Milo before I go to sleep—that’ll help a little.”

He draped a casual arm across her shoulders and they started walking, the occasional blaring horns and airbrakes of passing busses doing little to drown out his displeasure. “While I’m certain a phone call with your man might make you smile for the ten minutes you’re talking, sugar, I’m talking about the kind of relaxation that gets inside your soul.”

Stopping, he turned to face her. “It’s the only way you’re truly going to be able to help Dixie.”

She followed what he was saying but couldn’t make it fit with her current reality. “I get what you’re saying, Charles, I really do. But it’s hard to find that when everything around you is strange—the room, the building, the city, the people.”

“Then focus on the thing that can lift your spirits and get you back on your feet no matter where you are.”

And then she knew.

It didn’t matter if she was in Sweet Briar, South Carolina, or New York City. It didn’t matter if she was sitting in her armchair at home or on the edge of a bed in a fancy hotel room. When she held a needle and thread in her hands—and surrounded herself with her closest friends—peace and a clear head were hers for the taking.

It was as it had been since she was eight years old and her great-grandmother had handed her a needle and a spool of thread of her own for the very first time. Something about making a shirt or hemming a pair of pants or creating soft-sided menu items for a child’s pretend store or restaurant was like no other therapy she could imagine—except perhaps reading.

But while books provided a way to escape chaotic moments in life, sewing helped Tori deal with them by clearing her head and allowing her to think with an open mind—two things she desperately needed if she was going to be successful in freeing Dixie.

The events of the past few days had made it next to impossible for Tori, Rose, Margaret Louise, and the rest of the sewing circle to work on the zipper flower pins Georgina was counting on as welcome gifts for next month’s First Annual Mother’s Day Picnic on the Green. They’d packed the necessary supplies for the sewing portion of the pins in one suitcase when they left for the city, but it had remained mostly closed since their arrival, their group time thus far focused on trying to figure out who killed John rather than converting zippers into floral masterpieces. It was a decision that had proven to be a mistake, if the restless atmosphere and short-fused tempers she’d returned to thirty minutes earlier had been any indication.

Now, as some hands guided scissors through zippers while others sewed, the sense of normalcy they’d all been craving was theirs for the taking. And it felt good, real good.

Tori looked up from the flower base she was forming and took a moment to study each of her friends as they worked.

Margaret Louise smiled broadly as she whipped her threaded needle in and out of the zipper pieces to form a petal . . .

Beatrice cut a piece of felt to form the flower base for the pin taking shape beneath her capable hands . . .

Debbie leaned over Rose’s frail shoulder, watching as the most skilled seamstress of the group talked her through the lone sample . . .

Tori shifted in her seat to afford a better view of Leona, a smile igniting across her face as she did. For even though Leona’s hands held a travel magazine instead of a needle and thread, being around the others as they sewed seemed to hold a therapeutic benefit for the self-proclaimed beauty queen as well.

“Boy, this feels good, doesn’t it?” she asked no one in particular as she returned her visual focus to her own flower pin. “Like maybe everything isn’t so bad after all, you know?”

“Dixie is still in jail,” Rose groused as she set the sample back down on the coffee table and moved on to another pin.

“I know that, Rose, and I haven’t forgotten that fact for a minute.” Tori gazed down at the petal in her lap and found that she was pleased with her first attempt. “But something about sitting here, working on a project together like we would if we were back home, gives me hope that we’re going to figure this out soon.”

“The trip wasn’t all bad,” Margaret Louise reminded them in her usual cheery way. “We did get to be on
Taped with Melly and Kenneth
 . . . and ride ’round in one of them fancy limousines.”

Beatrice jumped on the positive-thinking bandwagon with both feet. “And watch the Central Park zookeepers play with the sea lions!”

“Don’t forget those cupcakes yesterday.” Debbie worked her petals to form a perfect flower and held it up for all to see while she revisited CupKatery with her words. “They’ve made me want to get into the kitchen as soon as we get home and experiment with a few cupcake flavor variations of my own for the bakery.”

Rose stilled her scissors-holding hand above the next zipper and looked up. “I just wish Dixie could have some memories from this trip, too, the way it was supposed to be.”

“She had herself a hoot when we were tapin’ the show.” Margaret Louise leaned forward across the coffee table and took a closer look at Rose’s sample. “And even if it ended badly, I know she felt like a princess on her breakfast date accordin’ to that smile she had while she was eatin’ and chattin’ with John.”

Tori waved her needle above her petal. “Which reminds me of something I wanted to ask all of you.”

Five sets of eyes turned in her direction, waiting.

“I was so busy getting ready for the taping that day that I never got to hear all the details of Dixie’s date with John. And then, after the show, I headed out with Margaret Louise and Leona almost immediately, only to discover John had been murdered.” She looked from Rose to Beatrice to Debbie to Margaret Louise before landing on Leona. “Did she tell any of you about everything they did?”

Five heads began to shake simultaneously with Beatrice adding a little commentary in her British accent. “I guess we were all so bloody excited about the show that we didn’t ask more than whether she had a good time. And then, after the taping, while the three of you were at the crime scene, Dixie was off getting her hair done for a dinner date that never happened.”

“Why are you asking?” Debbie inquired. “Does it really matter?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe. Maybe not.”

*   *   *

She held the phone to her ear even after her nightly call with Milo was over, the memory of his voice, coupled with the good that had come from an evening of sewing, slowly falling prey to a reality she could no longer keep at bay.

Dixie was still in jail.

And until they found John’s real killer, she might very well remain there until a trial could get under way.

Turning her head toward the snoring on the other side of the room, Tori couldn’t help but marvel at the way Margaret Louise seemed to be able to compartmentalize her life. It wasn’t that the grandmother of eight never had any worries, because she did. But somehow Leona’s twin sister was able to deal with them in a way that didn’t impact her sleeping, her eating, or her mood overall.

It was a way of living that Tori needed to learn.

Someday, anyway.

She looked back toward the ceiling and exhaled a burst of air through pursed lips. Nope, someday wasn’t
that
day . . .

Snapping her phone closed, she set it on the nightstand between the two beds and swung her legs over the side of the mattress. She’d done the stare-at-the-ceiling thing the past four nights, and she knew firsthand that it didn’t entice sleep to her doorstep. In fact, all it really did was make her head hurt.

With one last glance at the sleeping mound that was Margaret Louise, Tori inched her feet into her slippers and padded into the empty sitting area. She could make a few more zipper pins if she wanted . . . or watch a late-night movie on the flat screen . . . or even read a few chapters in Rose’s prized copy of Gavin Rollins’s book . . .

But no matter how many options she entertained, the one least likely to invite sleep was the one she couldn’t seem to dismiss. Especially since the shaft of light spilling out from beneath the appropriate door called to her like a beacon in a storm.

“Rose?” she whispered against the door. “Rose? Are you still awake?”

A grunt and groan followed by a distinct shuffling sound yielded the result Tori sought, even if the face that accompanied it looked more than a little grumpy. “Good heavens, Victoria, don’t you ever go to sleep?”

She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, yawning and nodding as she did. “I could ask you the same thing, you know.”

“I’m old. I have bladder issues. What’s your excuse?”

“Margaret Louise snores.”

Rose shuffled slowly across the room then lowered herself onto her bed. “So you want to sleep in Dixie’s bed?”

It would have been so much easier just to nod, to climb under the neatly placed sheets and revel in the chance to sleep in silence, but to do so wouldn’t be entirely honest. Especially since the notion of sleeping in Dixie’s bed hadn’t crossed her mind until that moment.

“I guess . . . maybe.” She stepped toward the empty bed then stopped. “No. That’s Dixie’s.”

“She’s not using it.”

“I know. But she should be.”

A rush of silence gave way to the sound of Rose’s hand patting the edge of her own bed. “Come. Sit here beside me for a moment.”

Dutifully, she did as she was told, the tightening of her throat making it difficult to speak.

“I may be old, but I’m not dumb.” Rose nestled her head against her stack of pillows and reached for Tori’s hand. “I’m worried about her, too, Victoria.”

“She seemed so defeated when I saw her today.”

“Can you blame her?”

“No, of course not, Rose. But this whole trip was supposed to be special—a real once-in-a-lifetime, dream-come-true kind of thing.”

“Life plays tricks sometimes, Victoria. Cruel tricks.”

Something about the elderly woman’s voice sent a chill through Tori’s body. “Rose? Are you doing okay?”

“Like you, I wanted this trip to be special. Something I could draw on for strength and happy memories at the end.”

She froze in place. “End? What end?”

Rose released Tori’s hand and gestured down at her sheet-covered form. “Victoria, you’re a bright young woman. You know I’m starting to run down.”

“No, you’re not. You’re just tired is all.” She blinked back the tears that burned the corners of her eyes and pushed off the bed as a way to keep them at bay. “We’re all tired, Rose. Being away from home like this, with the stress of everything going on, is exhausting.”

She felt Rose watching her as she paced between the beds but refused to meet her eyes. If she did, she ran the risk of sobbing uncontrollably.

“It’s more than the stress of Dixie. It’s my age . . . my body . . . my everything. My clock is running down.”

“Then we’ll wind it back up again as soon as we get this Dixie nonsense taken care of, Rose.”

“How do you propose we’ll wind it back up?”

She risked a peek at her friend. “With rest.”

“I can rest when I’m dead!”

“But you have to rest. You have to take it easy. The doctors have told you this over and over.”

Rose beckoned Tori back to her side, a shaky smile playing at the corners of her thinning lips. “Which brings me back to one of life’s cruel tricks. When you’re young and have all the time in the world, you don’t need to rest. When you’re old and your time is limited, you don’t want to waste any of the time you have left resting . . . but you have to.”

For a moment, she was by her great-grandmother’s bedside, looking down at the woman who had taught her so much about life—the importance of honor, the joy of hard work, the simple pleasure of loved ones. And just like she’d been back then, she wasn’t ready to say good-bye.

“Is there something you haven’t told me, Rose?”

“You mean like whether I’m sick or something?”

She worked to steady her breath. “Yes.”

“Other than the arthritis, I’m fine. I just know my body is telling me I don’t have a lot of years left.”

Tori’s sigh of relief echoed around the room. “Well, tell your body it has a wedding to attend in a few months, and a dress to button up for the bride, and an honorary grandchild to hold when that day comes, and a garden to help me plant, and—”

“I get it. I get it.” Rose’s laugh was weak, yet no less beautiful, and it warmed Tori’s heart just to hear it. “I want to be there for all those things, too, Victoria. More than you can imagine.”

She leaned forward along the edge of the bed and whispered a kiss across the woman’s head as a single, defiant tear made its way down her cheek. “Oh, trust me, Rose, I don’t have to imagine. For either one of us.”

Rose reached up, wiped the tear from Tori’s face, and then slowly closed her eyes. “I know you were upset with yourself earlier for not having time to hear about Dixie’s date before everything turned sour, but maybe some of those things over there will fill in the blanks.”

She straightened up, her gaze following the path indicated by Rose’s finger. “Things? What things?”

“Over there, on the dresser.”

Rising to her feet, Tori made her way around the foot of Dixie’s bed to the dresser on the opposite side of the room.

“It looks like they went to the zoo, just like we did.”

“The zoo?” And then she saw it. A souvenir picture of Dixie and John in a tiny Central Park Zoo frame shored up Rose’s words.

“I haven’t seen Dixie look that happy since Franklin was alive.”

Somewhere in her head, she knew Rose was talking, maybe even registered some of what was being said, but the bulk of her attention was on the photograph. Dixie’s smile was breathtaking, but so was John’s. For as smitten as Dixie obviously was with him, he seemed to share that same intense feeling for Dixie.

“I don’t care what Leona says, Victoria. Maybe he was a con man. Maybe he took advantage of women on a daily basis in the hopes of living large off someone else’s money. But Dixie was different. She reached him on a different level.”

She plucked the frame from the dresser and pulled it close as Rose continued, the elderly woman’s assessment of the photograph a near perfect match of Tori’s. “You can see it in his eyes. No one can fake that.”

A mixture of relief and dread welled up inside her and she set the frame back down, her gaze coming to rest on a familiar logo peeking out at her from underneath the simple gold earrings she’d leant Dixie for the date. “Rose? Is this your napkin over here?”