Authors: Melissa Bourbon
Georgia Emmons and her husband lived in a modest brick and stone house in the Ranch Hills neighborhood in Bliss. The yard was trimmed and tidy, two rows of manicured hedges lining the walkway to the front door. Inside was just as neat. “Refined” was the best way to describe Georgia’s taste. The sofa and chairs were covered in high-end fabrics. The coffee table and curio cabinets were made from a rich mahogany wood, polished to a high sheen, the glass cutouts crystal clear and without a single fingerprint or streak.
I tended toward rustic and old-fashioned for my own home, but I could appreciate the look Georgia had gone for. It fit her and her coiffed image. As we walked toward the dining room, I saw the other Red Hat ladies and their husbands. It looked like Will and me, and Megan, Todd, and Jessie Pearl, who hadn’t yet arrived, were the stragglers. Everyone else was here, including the invited guests, Jeremy Lisle and Pastor Kyle. The whole cast of suspects in Delta’s death, at least as far as I’d been able to surmise. I suddenly felt as if I were in an Agatha Christie book. I wanted to flip to the front page and see the write-ups of each person. Would it help me understand any of them any better?
Will and I passed a curio cabinet lined with trophies,
brochures, sashes, and tiaras. Beauty pageant paraphernalia, courtesy of Georgia Emmons’s lifetime spent in competition. I pulled Will to a stop so I could take a gander. From the looks of it, she’d competed in pageants her entire life, beginning with a Miss Texas Child when she couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, and ending with the Ms. Senior Texas America Pageant just last year where she’d been first runner-up. I never watched beauty pageants on TV, so they were far outside my radar, but I couldn’t help but admire Georgia for her accomplishments.
“It was quite a competition last year,” a voice said from behind us. Georgia appeared, continuing to speak. “Myra Blanton’s been part of the pageant behind the scenes for twenty years. She’s competed before but took quite a few years off. Came back this year and took the whole shebang.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t win,” I said.
Where most women I’d encountered might have shrugged or frowned, Georgia’s smile grew. “It happens.”
Something about her smile sent off a warning signal in my brain. She was practiced at hiding her true feelings.
“So you’ll compete again this year?” Will asked.
She looked up at him, her smile broadening. “Without question,” she said as she held her hand out to him. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Georgia Emmons.”
“Will Flores,” he said, taking her hand. “I’d say you were robbed last year. I can’t imagine Myra Blanton holding a candle to you.”
I stifled a grin. Will was charming, and first runner-up to Ms. Senior Texas America or not, Georgia Emmons wasn’t immune. She fluttered her eyelashes, glancing away coquettishly. With her dropped-ruffle apron over a solid red knit
dress, she looked radiant. She was all glamour, and right now she was in top form. “You’re awfully kind to say so, Mr. Flores. I learned long ago that you have to deal with ups and downs in the pageant circuit. That being said, I will admit that it’s never easy to lose. If there’s something I want, I’ll fight for it.” She winked at Will. “Myra had better watch her back.”
A chill went up my spine, and for a split second, I wondered if Delta and Georgia had ever been on opposing sides of anything.
“My word, where are my manners?” she said suddenly. “You both need a glass of wine. Or would you prefer beer?” she asked Will, cocking her head slightly. She was an expert at flirtation. I was sure I could learn from her, if flirting were on my list of things to master. Flutter the eyelashes. Cock the head. Smile slightly. Brush your fingertips over the man’s sleeve. All things Georgia had done in the past couple of minutes while talking with Will and me. I was included in the conversation, but Will was the focus.
“A beer would be great,” he said. His smile was sincere, but he’d put a bit of restraint into it. He wasn’t encouraging Georgia, harmless as she seemed.
She turned, flagging down a tall, silver-haired man sporting a thick mustache. “Wayne, be a doll and get this young man a beer.”
Wayne nodded obligingly, altering his course to the dining room and heading to the kitchen instead. “Red or white?” Georgia asked me.
“Red, please,” I said. She disappeared into the dining room, returning a moment later with a wineglass just as Wayne came in from the kitchen carrying a green glass bottle of beer.
Georgia led us into the living room, calling to the rest of the Red Hat ladies, their husbands, and the guests to join us. Megan, Todd, and Jessie Pearl had arrived right behind us, and when everyone had gathered and Jessie Pearl was settled in a chair, Georgia cleared her throat, garnering everyone’s attention.
“I’d like to thank you all for starting this progressive dinner with us tonight. Wayne and I welcome you to our home.” She paused, in what I judged to be a practiced move from her years of public speaking. “I’d like to take a moment to remember Delta,” she continued.
I’d been wondering whether anyone would talk about Delta, or if her friends would want to stifle the emotions that might come from talking about someone they’d so recently lost. I’d hoped for the former. It was as if Georgia had read my mind, bringing her up right at the beginning of the evening’s events.
“This dinner was her idea,” she continued. “She may not be here to enjoy it with us, but I’d like to honor her by raising our glasses in her memory.”
She lifted hers. One by one, like a wave, the other Red Hat ladies, and then everyone else, raised theirs. “To Delta,” Georgia said.
The two words echoed in the room as everyone repeated them. “To Delta.”
Eyes sparkled with newly formed tears. A few of the women sniffled, the loss suddenly fresh again. But no one said anything. Just when it felt on the verge of becoming awkward, Coco stepped forward, coming to the front of the room to stand next to Georgia. “I think it would be a lovely gesture if each of us took a moment and remembered something about Delta, and then shared it.”
The group gave a collective nod. “She was a good friend,” Randi said. She was divorced and had come to the dinner alone. She stood next to Jeremy Lisle, and I couldn’t help but noticing they looked like they’d make the perfect couple, him with his cool Vin Diesel/Bruce Willis vibe going on, earring in one lobe, and casual shirt undone at the top, her with her spiky silver hair, three inches of jangly bracelets, and long, flowing gauzy skirt that was a throwback to the 1970s.
“You know, Delta refused to take my yoga class,” she continued. “Said she was too heavy to do all those crazy bends and positions.
Everything I have will fall right out
, she told me. I thought that was an excuse, and for a while, I was offended. But then I told her I wanted to find a renter for the apartment above the studio. Before I could blink, I had a tenant. Your friend, Rebecca,” she said to Megan and Todd, but then she frowned. “’Course, she moved out a few days ago, so if anyone knows someone who needs a place to stay . . .”
Megan frowned. I remembered her saying she’d been trying to get in touch with Rebecca on her cell phone, but to no avail. Now we knew the reason, but why would she have left so suddenly?
I didn’t have time to ponder it. A few people laughed, and Randi blushed, continuing. “Delta didn’t always know how to show it, but when it came down to it, she was a good friend.”
“Hear, hear,” one of the men in the room said.
Everyone raised their glasses again and drank, and then Cynthia stepped forward. “Y’all know that Delta and me, we go way back. We were in kindergarten together. Besides her family, I think I must have known her better than anyone here.”
I shot glances at Coco, Sherri, who stood in the back of the room, Jessie Pearl, Megan, and Todd. There wasn’t a dry eye among them. Georgia’s toast to Delta and Coco’s request to honor her sister were both heartfelt and healthy, but I could see the emotion flooding the people who’d loved Delta, and my heart ached for them. Losing someone you loved was hard enough. Losing someone as complicated as Delta was probably harder because your own emotions were that much more complex.
“We had a love-hate friendship,” Cynthia continued. She gave a staccato laugh. “But good God, I loved that woman. She’d give you the shirt off her back, if you needed it.”
Everyone in the room nodded, confirming that Delta would do anything for them.
“She was always there for me,” Cynthia continued. “Sure, she might have grumbled about it, but I knew I could count on her for anything. Anything,” she repeated. She looked at the ceiling for a few seconds, her eyes glistening. “We needed someone to fill in for Jacob at the church when he fell ill, oh about four months ago. Y’all remember that?”
About half the group nodded, so Cynthia seemed to feel
the need to explain further. “He does our bookkeeping. Got sick, then came down with pneumonia. Almost didn’t make it. He was in the hospital for, goodness, a month? Maybe six weeks? Well, I mentioned to Delta that I needed someone to help out, and she didn’t hesitate. She sent me Todd.” She paused, nodding to Megan and her husband. Megan smiled up at him, leaning against his arm. “He’s a jack of all trades. Came right in and took over for Jacob until Delta . . .” Cynthia’s face grew tense. Memories of a lost loved one were tricky. They filled you with warmth and a sense of happiness on the one hand, yet at the same time, they brought the grief right up to the surface.
She shook her head, just barely, and then raised her glass. “To Delta.”
Once again, everyone echoed the sentiment. “To Delta.”
“You know Iris, my Golden Lab?” Bennie asked, moving forward to take Cynthia’s place at the front of the room.
Aside from Will and me, everyone nodded.
“She’s an escape artist, right? She gets up on her hind legs and bats the latch of the back gate and gets out. About three weeks ago now, she got out while I was at the market. When I got home, there was no sign of her. No one saw her. She was just gone. I called all y’all, remember?”
This time, everyone except Will, me, Jeremy Lisle, and Pastor Kyle nodded.
“Y’all came, and I appreciate that. More than you know. But it was Delta who organized things. Called Anson to help. Megan and y’all helped, too,” she said, looking at the family. “But she didn’t stop there. She organized the area by grids and sent people to search in specific places. We found Iris all
the way down at FM 2951.” Her chin quivered. “If not for Delta, I don’t know if we would have found her. We all know she was going through something these last few months. She wasn’t quite herself.”
A low murmur of assent went through the room, and Bennie continued. “But she was still Delta, and she’d have done anything to help any one of us.” She raised her glass. “To Delta.”
“To Delta,” the group echoed.
One by one, each person told a similar story about Delta and their friendship with her. By the time Megan and Todd spoke, my head was spinning. The stories painted such a drastically different picture of Delta than what I’d known of her for most of her life. She was loved—of that, there was no doubt.
I thought about what Meemaw had always said. People are not always what they seem. Usually, I interpreted that to mean that the goodness people showed often masked something darker. But with Delta, it seemed to be the opposite. The grumpy, cranky, irritable Delta I’d seen masked the goodness she’d clearly had in her and had showed to everyone else. She’d helped her friends in multiple ways.
I thought back to when Delta had first asked me to make the aprons. She’d been boisterous and had come close to being rude. At the time, I’d thought her friends had been frustrated with her, and maybe they had been, but they knew that to be the cantankerous side of their friend, not the
only
side of her. They also knew she had a lot of bark, especially lately, but maybe her bite wasn’t all that vicious.
The question that I kept coming back to was why had she
become so curmudgeonly? Bennie had said she’d been different lately. What had happened to change her? She had a husband who appeared to love her, a healthy, happily married daughter, Jessie Pearl was as fiery as ever, and she had two sisters, who, despite their differences, knew that everything always came down to family. What more could she have wanted?
Sherri had been hanging back, her eyes glistening, her lower lip trembling. She hadn’t worn her apron, I noticed. I wondered how long the Cassidy magic worked in the garments I sewed. If it wasn’t worn right away, would the person’s dreams be realized? I had no idea, but Sherri looked like she could use a bit of help right about now.
I grabbed Will’s arm as Sherri suddenly dragged her fingers under her eyes and propelled herself to the front of the room. A crazy look had come over her. “What’s she doing?” I whispered, although, of course, he had no more idea than I did.
We watched as her eyes narrowed. She looked at each and every person in the room in turn. A chill ran through me as she met my gaze, but it passed as she moved on to the next person.
“Sherri?” Coco moved toward her sister, her arms outstretched. “Come on, darlin’.”
But Sherri shrunk back from Coco, shaking her head. “I’m gonna have my say,” she said. She paused, as if she were garnering strength or gumption. Or maybe both. “Someone in this room,” she said, her voice icy and accusatory, “killed my sister. I know it, and you know it. You’d best be scared, because”—she paused, looking at me—“we
will
bring you to justice.”
The chill that had vanished came slithering back over my skin. What in tarnation had come over her? Everyone in attendance looked shocked, but not a single one revealed themselves as a killer with a sneer.
Unfortunately.
I agreed that the killer was probably in the room. Truthfully, it could be any of them.
Before I could ponder that any further, Sherri was talking again. “The dinner must go on, but I refuse to stay in the company of a killer . . . whoever you are.” And then, without another word, she turned on the heels of her flats and marched out the front door.