A Custom Fit Crime (23 page)

Two clanks
.

And a creak from behind me. Will was back from his search upstairs. When I turned, he was staring at me, his eyes darting around, but the pipes had gone quiet.

Will hadn’t really seen Meemaw in action, and seeing it was a lot to take in. Gracie had sensed Loretta Mae’s presence but hadn’t put two and two together yet. One thing at a time.

“It’s her? She’s here?” he asked, his gaze on the ceiling.

So now seemed like the moment it would all become real for Will.

“Yes.” I looked up at the ceiling, too. The chances were good that Meemaw had already vacated the pipes, and even if she were still there, I had no idea if she could see through walls. Or even if her senses worked that way. Maybe she hadn’t even known it was happening, and by the time she realized something was going on, the culprit was already gone.

“Did you find anything upstairs?” I asked him.

His attention was split between his curiosity about Loretta Mae and the ransacking, but bless his heart, he rallied and focused on my question. “It’s a mess.”

“Orphie’s book!” I’d forgotten to ask her if she’d actually mailed it yet, and now I worried that it was gone.

I hurried past Will and double-timed it up the stairs. He was right behind me. I turned left at the landing and went down the hall and past the table. The bowl of handmade felt beads was overturned and the drawers were pulled out, the contents riffled through. I glanced at my room as I passed. The dresser drawers had been yanked out, clothes strewn about, and the bed pushed out from the wall and the quilt pulled half off.

We continued down the hall, stopping at the guest room Orphie was using. Her suitcase had been upended, all her clothes scattered on the floor. I searched, quickly looking through the drawers, under the twin bed, and under the piles of her clothes. No book. “It’s not here.”

Will leaned back against the doorjamb. “Why is that book so valuable?”

I sank down on the bed, my thoughts racing. “It’s got his drawings, designs, and notes. Another designer could use it all to create a collection.”

He came and sat down beside me, his presence just as comforting as the cocoon of warm air that Meemaw typically brought with her. “So either Orphie or Beaulieu had to have told someone that she had the book,” he said.

I’d been thinking the very same thing. “But who?” I mused aloud. “And why would anyone else care?”

“Don’t touch anything,” Deputy Gavin McClaine told me when I called him from the phone in my bedroom. “I’m on my way.”

“Yes, sir,” as I hung the receiver back in its cradle.

I turned in a circle, taking in the mess. “I can’t clean it up yet.”

I sidled up to Will, wrapping my arms around him. I tried to stay away from Will when we were at my house, what with Meemaw around all the time, but I could hear a vague clanking from downstairs, so she was busy at the moment. “Can’t clean. Can’t work in this mess.”

He flashed a wicked grin. “I can think of a thing or two to keep us occupied.”

I was wearing flats, so I stood on my tiptoes, bringing my lips to his. Ah yes, just as comforting as a blanket of—

Warm air. It encircled us, weaving through the safe gaps between our bodies. I felt pressure as the air seemed to grow denser. Meemaw was pushing us apart—

Or was she? The space between us grew cool, the warm air circling around our bodies and forcing us together until we were as close as we could be.

Meemaw! She wasn’t trying to keep us apart; she was trying to force us together. That rascal. She wanted to expedite my relationship with Will.

And Will was all for it. He lowered his lips to my neck, his warm breath making my skin sizzle.

My thoughts turned fuzzy as his hand slid to my lower back and with the tiniest amount of pressure, he urged me even closer.

But in the back of my mind, I knew Meemaw was around, Orphie was in a hospital bed, Beaulieu was dead, and a murderer was loose in Bliss. I managed to gather my thoughts enough to utter Will’s name.

“Hmmm?” he responded before finding my lips.

“Loretta Mae is—”

He drew his head back, a faint smile playing on his lips. “She’s here?”

I nodded. “Do you feel that warm air?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Thought your heater was faulty.”

“Nope, that’s Meemaw.”

“It felt like it was pushing us together,” he said, drawing me close again. “She knows what she wants.”

“Yes, she does,” I said, sinking in to him again. Even with the horrible things happening around us, being with Will made me feel as if everything would turn out all right.

“And didn’t you say what Loretta Mae wanted, Loretta Mae got?”

“Mmm-hmm.” That was her Cassidy charm. Sort of a powerful catchall, and she was going strong with it at the moment.

“Looks to me like she wants us together.”

“Mmm-hmm.” There was no question about that.

“So there’s no point in fighting it.”

“There’s not,” I said, my voice a mere breath against his skin.

His lips traced along my jaw, nuzzling into the crevice of my neck again. My hands cupped his shoulders as my knees turned weak.

“Then maybe we should skip ahead and . . .” He trailed off, pulled away, and looked up at me.

“And what?” I asked, a sudden nervous pull low in my stomach.

His smoky blue eyes met mine, that half smile hovering on his lips as though he was up to no good. “I love you, Cassidy.”

He backed me up against the wall, lowering his lips to mine, kissing me as if he wanted to burn this moment into his mind for always. “I want to be with you every day,” he said, his voice low and deep in his throat.

My heart thundered in my chest. I thought I knew what was going on in his mind, but I couldn’t be sure. He knew everything about me. He knew about the Cassidy charm. About Meemaw. About Gracie and her charm. He knew . . . and he was still here.

Loretta Mae knew how to pick them.

His hands slid to either side of my face, his fingers threading through my hair as his kiss deepened. The air around us had turned normal. Meemaw was gone. Giving us our privacy, thankfully.

I lost my breath and if he hadn’t been holding me, I would have collapsed to the floor. “I . . . I love you, too, Will.” And I did. I hadn’t realized it until the words left my lips and floated upward like rose petals on a soft breeze. “I love you, too.”

While we waited for the deputy to show, I called Seven Gables. I had a meeting scheduled with Lindy Reece in just a little while, but didn’t want to ask Raylene or Hattie about Orphie’s visit to the inn this morning in front of her.

Hattie answered the phone with a clipped “Seven Gables.”

“Hattie, it’s Harlow.”

“Is the weddin’ on or off?” she demanded.

“Far as I’m concerned, it’s still on.” She hemmed and hawed, but I got right to the point of my call. “My friend Orphie said she came by the inn this morning.” I’d seen her drive off, in fact. I’d racked my brain, trying to remember who I’d seen and what they’d been doing. Esmeralda had had a cup, and Jeanette had been carrying a plate. Either one of them might have had the opportunity to doctor the food Orphie’d had. Lindy and Midori had been there, too, so truly, it could have been any of them.

“Yep, that’s right, for tea and scones. That journalist had me set the table and answer the door, even, all formal-like.”

So Lindy had arranged the meeting. “What about the others? The models or the designers, were they around while Orphie and Lindy talked?”

Hattie paused for just a second before responding, “I reckon so, Harlow, though I don’t recall specifically. I think they were all in and out. They act like they own the place, wandering around at all hours, demanding special food and scented linens. Good grief, I’ll be glad when they all go back to wherever they came from.”

“Aren’t all guests demanding like that?” I asked her. Seemed to me that if you owned a bed-and-breakfast, you’d best get used to having people around your house.

“To a degree, but not as bad as all these women. The man, at least, is quiet. He don’t hardly say a word, and don’t hardly show his face, but tell me this: Who needs blenders and mini choppers and all the M&Ms separated from the trail mix?”

I took a guess. “The models?”

“All the M&Ms removed from the trail mix,” she said again, as if I hadn’t really understood what she’d meant the first time. “Red, green, blue, yellow . . . every last one.”

I couldn’t help her understand the mentality of models who hardly ate or their eccentricities, so I didn’t try.

A car pulled up outside, so I hung up with Hattie, shrugged at Will, and watched as Gavin opened the door and stood in the threshold of Buttons & Bows, legs spread, engineer boots planted heavily on the pecan flooring, hands on his hips. “Did I, or did I not, tell you not to touch anything?”

I folded my arms over my chest, possible responses circling in my mind.

I’m sorry!
But Gavin wouldn’t take my apology.

I didn’t!
But that wouldn’t fly because the downstairs was entirely picked up, everything put right, not a spool of thread or bolt of fabric out of place. The busy noises Will and I had heard from upstairs had been Meemaw’s cleanup efforts. I knew she could wreak havoc with the quick flick of her invisible wrist, but I hadn’t known she could do the opposite and clean up.

Now I did.

My ghost of a great-grandmother did it!
Definitely not something I could say.

So I kept quiet.

He knocked the rim of his cowboy hat back with his knuckles. “Ransacked, eh?” he finally asked, his voice tight, his lips tighter still.

“Yes.”

“Anything missing?”

“The book. Maximilian’s book,” I said. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure it had been stolen—again—but we definitely hadn’t been able to find it among Orphie’s things.

The three of us fell silent, not at all sure what the missing book meant. My thoughts were laced with the expression of love Will and I had just shared, and Gavin had arrived one second later, bursting into Buttons & Bows with guns metaphorically blazing.

“How’s Orphie doing?” I asked.

“Hangin’ in there,” he said. He looked down as he shuffled his boots on the floor.

I forced my eyebrows to stay put. Orphie and Gavin. I was getting used to the idea, and just like everyone else, they both deserved their slice of happiness. I’d just never imagined it would be with each other.

I spent the next thirty minutes showing Gavin the upstairs, which Meemaw hadn’t cleaned up yet. He didn’t unearth anything new to point him in the direction of the culprit. “I’ll get someone in to dust for fingerprints,” he said, but he sounded skeptical that it would yield the identity of whoever was behind this, so I just nodded.

Gavin left and not two minutes later, Gracie flounced into the shop looking more rested than I’d seen her in months. “I’m here to help,” she announced. “Those dresses aren’t going to finish themselves.”

“Did you turn middle aged overnight?” I said with a laugh.

“That’s what a good night’s sleep does to me, I guess. I slept, like, eleven hours!”

I gave her a hug. “So glad, darlin’.” I paused for a split second as I heard my mother’s words come from my mouth. Bliss, right down to the Southern-speak, was part of me just as surely as I was part of it.

“Eleven hours,” Gracie said, breaking away from me and throwing her arms around her dad.

“They did you some good,” he said, ruffling her hair.

After Gracie was situated in the workroom, I glanced at my watch. Lindy had scheduled an interview with me. I had plenty of time to do that—find out more about Orphie’s meeting at Seven Gables, and get back here to work on the final wedding preparations.

I grabbed my purse, the keys to the truck, and told Will my plan. Three little words still floated in the air between us, bolstering me up and filling me with hope. Love. I’d wondered if I’d ever find it, and now I had. “Be careful,” he said, brushing his lips over mine.

I needed to put everything right for Mama and Orphie, both, but I’d be extra careful. And with any luck, we’d be able to finish what we’d started upstairs.

Even Madelyn Brighton’s yelp in my ear sounded British. “That’s huge, love!”

The distinct heat of a blush spread to my cheeks, and not even the air rushing through the open driver’s-side window of my truck could cool me down. “I know. He’s the one,” I said.

She yelped again, louder this time, so I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “It’s fate. You two are meant to be together. Next, he’ll be asking you to marry him.”

I could picture her grin, her brown, gold-flecked eyes sparkling, but her statement gave me pause. If Meemaw hadn’t wanted us together, I wondered if we’d still have found each other. It was my one hesitation. How much magic was involved in my relationship with Will and was it really destiny, or was it otherworldly intervention?

“Harlow, you’re soul mates. I know that just as surely as I know Billy and I are. Will and Bill. We each have our own Williams.”

I had to laugh at that.

Madelyn’s husband was a homegrown Texan who’d gone to Oxford, met Madelyn, and come back home with her. To say they were an atypical couple was an understatement. Billy, as she called him, was over six feet, wore wire-rimmed glasses, had pale, creamy skin, and looked like a walking scarecrow. Madelyn was pure Brit with a thick accent and quirky humor. She was a good six inches shorter than Billy, and the colors of their skin next to each other were like day and night. She had a fresh, Halle Berry haircut that clung to the lovely shape of her head, but she was full-figured instead of waif thin, and never went anywhere without her camera.

We’d become fast friends, in part because she was a self-proclaimed magic junkie with a penchant for all things supernatural or inexplicable. The Cassidys fell into those categories. She knew my family secrets, and like Will, she didn’t care. In fact, she was enthralled by them and always wanted to see and know more.

“What about Gracie? You’re like a family, you know. I guess you are family, quite literally,” she said, “but, you know, if you and Will are to have a future, you’ll
really
be family.” She rattled on, barely taking the time to draw breath in between.