Elizabeth Lynn Casey - Southern Sewing Circle 08 - Remnants of Murder (2 page)

“She’s done far more than pinch-hit,” she protested before allowing her gaze to revisit the animated pair across the room, the pure happiness on Dixie’s face pushing the dread into Tori’s throat. “There’s no way I could have overseen the floor and the renovations in my office after the fire, or pulled off either of our holiday events, without her.”

“And we’re grateful, Victoria. We really are. But we simply have no room in the budget to keep her on now that Nina is back.”

No room in the budget …

“Maybe we could …” The words died on her lips as reality took root. She knew the library’s finances. She’d personally canceled subscriptions to the major magazines and newspapers in an effort to tighten their belt. She’d seen the ever-decreasing book budget.

Winston was right and she knew it.

“Please express our appreciation when you tell her, Victoria. Perhaps at the next board meeting we can present her with a certificate in honor of her efforts.”

Tori shot upright in her chair, only to curse the move when it netted raised eyebrows from the two women who’d been oblivious to her angst until that moment. “You—you want me to tell her?” she whispered as she spun her chair around to face the wall of windows that afforded a view of the hundred-year-old moss trees that dotted the library grounds.

“We think it would be easier coming from you.”

Easier
, she wanted to shout.
Easier for whom? Dixie or Winston?

“Anyway, have a great day, Victoria, and we’ll be talking again soon, I’m sure.”

She opened her mouth to protest but was thwarted from her efforts by the telltale buzz of a dial tone in her ear.

Winston Hohlbrook had tossed the hot potato into her lap just as the music stopped.

It was up to Tori to break Dixie’s heart.

Inhaling sharply, she looked out over the same grounds that Dixie, herself, had looked out over for more years than Tori had been alive. How did you tell a seventy-year-old woman who’d been ousted from her beloved job—only to be asked back a year later as a part-time employee—that her services were no longer needed?

“Victoria?”

With one last look outside, she sent up a mental prayer for guidance and then slowly spun her chair around to face Dixie.

“Nina and I have just come up with the perfect idea for the high school book club!”

Tori leaned her head against the back of her chair and silently marveled at the changes she’d witnessed in Dixie Dunn since their first-ever meeting two years earlier. Gone was the scowl from the woman’s gently lined face. Gone was the near-constant fist clenching anytime the subject of the library came up in Tori’s shared vicinity. In fact, the unnecessary rush to highlight her many achievements as Sweet Briar Public Library’s first and only until-Tori-stole-her-job head librarian had all but disappeared from Dixie’s daily mantras.

Nina moved in beside Dixie, her woolen hair a perfect casing for her dark, flawless skin. “While I wish I could take partial credit, Miss Dixie is being modest. Juxtaposing the books of today against yesterday’s classics is all her idea.”

“Yesterday’s classics?” she echoed.

Dixie clapped her hands. “We’re going to pick a single genre for half a year. We’ll read three current and hip titles of the kids’ choosing, and three titles of
our
choosing. Classic titles that were all the rage when they first debuted.”

She tried to focus on Dixie’s smile, tried to commend it to memory for that moment when it would surely disappear, but it was hard. The roar in Tori’s ears, coupled with the knot that had magnified tenfold in her stomach, was making it difficult to concentrate on much of anything besides the bomb she needed to detonate.

“I suggested we explore mysteries first. Three modern-day whodunits interspersed with three classics.” Dixie smoothed back a lock of snow-white hair from her forehead then perched her stout frame on the edge of Tori’s desk. “I’m thinking Edgar Allen Poe and Agatha Christie for sure. We’re still debating the third. I think Sherlock Holmes, and Nina thinks we should go with Phillip Mar—”

“Dixie?” she rasped.

The woman’s smile faltered ever so slightly in favor of a raised eyebrow and a worried lip. “Victoria? Is something wrong? You don’t look so good right now.”

In a flash, Nina was back across the room and pouring a glass of iced water from the pitcher they kept on a simple cart in their shared office. “Here, here … drink this,” Nina said as she retraced her steps and deposited the glass on Tori’s desk. “It
is
kind of hot in here today.”

“That’s because Winston and the board are so intent on cutting costs, they won’t even consider letting us run the air-conditioning in here,” Dixie groused. “They’d rather have their employees passing out from heat exhaustion than pay an extra few bucks each day in electricity.”

It was the opening Tori needed, yet still, she hesitated.

Dixie lifted the glass from the desk and held it out for Tori to take, the concern in her eyes bringing a haze to Tori’s. “The way they’re going, it won’t be long before we’ve got no books and no employees, ain’t that right, Victoria?”

She took the glass, only to set it back down, untouched. After what seemed like an eternity, thanks to the pounding in her chest, she met Dixie’s worry-filled eyes. “Dixie, I—I have some bad news.”

Dixie looked from Tori to the glass and back again. “Did something happen with Milo on the phone just now?”

Milo.

For the first time since they’d met, the mere mention of Milo Wentworth’s name failed to birth its usual smile. And for the first time since she’d accepted the handsome third grade teacher’s marriage proposal, she knew there was nothing he could say—and no amount of emotional support or encouragement he could give—that would help her at that moment.

Dixie’s inevitable heartbreak was for her to set in motion. Alone.

She swallowed and shook her head. “That wasn’t Milo on the phone just now. It was … Winston.”

And just like that, any and all concern was pushed from Dixie’s face and stance in favor of something more befitting a person prepared to have a noose looped around their neck. The knowledge was there, residing right alongside resignation and a slow-boiling anger that managed to raise the temperature in the already stuffy twelve-by-twelve office. “He’s cutting me, isn’t he?”

At Tori’s silent nod, Dixie pushed off the desk and made a beeline for the cabinet that had been cleared for the sole purpose of giving the former librarian a place to house her personal belongings while working at the library during Nina’s absence. One by one, the woman removed her things—her purse, her lunch bag, and the stack of books she’d set aside for the next toddler story time.

Nina shifted from foot to foot, clearly confused. “Victoria? What’s going on? Where’s Miss Dixie going?”

She opened her mouth to answer but closed it as Dixie slammed the cabinet door and turned. “I’m going home, Nina. Winston and the board no longer believe I’m needed here.”

Nina’s hands moved from her face to her hips. “Not needed here? What are you talking about? Of course you’re needed. Look at everything you’ve done while I was home with Lyndon …” The words disappeared momentarily behind lips that were suddenly pursed. When Nina spoke again, her self-discovery was aimed in Tori’s direction. “Wait. They’re doing this because I came back from maternity leave, aren’t they?”

“They’re doing this because they’re cheap. You coming back from maternity leave just gave them a way to cover that fact.” Squaring her shoulders against the tears Tori detected in her voice, Dixie lifted the stack of picture books shoulder-high and nudged her chin toward the door. “I’ll set these up on the counter when I leave. They’re good choices for the next story time.”

Tori blinked against the prick of tears she felt burning in the corners of her own eyes. “You could still read to the little ones like you did before Nina went out on bed rest. In a volunteer capacity …”

“No.”

She cast about for something to say to the emphatic response she hadn’t expected, but came up empty. Dixie was hurt. And Dixie was angry.

With good reason.

“M-Maybe I could talk to Duwayne tonight and see if his mom might want to scale back her time with Lyndon to three or four days a week, instead of five. Then Duwayne and I could hire you to take care of him on the other day or two.”

This time, when Dixie declined, she did so with a gentle squeeze of gratitude on Nina’s arm. “Duwayne’s mama has been waiting a long time to be a grandma. She don’t need me coming along and taking away her time with that precious baby of yours.”

Sensing the question on the tip of Nina’s tongue, Tori rose from her chair and made her way around the desk to stand beside Dixie. “But what will you do?”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure Dixie was going to answer, the woman’s initial anger all but gone, and in its place the kind of intense sadness that threatened to smother them all. “I guess I’ll do what Winston and the board intended for me to do when they cast me aside two years ago for you, Victoria.”

She tried not to take offense to the stinging nature of Dixie’s words, tried to rationalize them as a knee-jerk response to current circumstances rather than a total reversion of the friendship they’d managed to forge, but her own heartache over what was happening made it hard to dismiss the latter as a possibility.

Nina reached out, took Dixie’s hand in hers. “And what was that, Miss Dixie? What did they intend for you to do?”

“Go home and wait.”

“Wait? Wait for what?” Nina asked.

Bracing herself for the answer she knew was coming, Tori grabbed the glass from the top of her desk and took a fortifying gulp.

Here it comes …

Dixie extricated her hand from Nina’s hold and crossed to the door, stopping as she reached the hallway beyond. “To die, of course.”

Chapter 2

Tori transferred the plate of homemade brownies
to her left hand and pulled open the screen door with her right, any apprehension regarding manners bowing in mercy against the definition of futility.

It didn’t matter how long she stood there, knocking. It didn’t matter how many times she cleared her throat or coughed a cough she didn’t need to cough. Margaret Louise Davis wasn’t going to be answering the door anytime soon.

And it wasn’t a surprise.

Knocks on her friend’s door routinely went unheard over the near constant giggling and squealing that wafted onto the front porch at virtually any hour of the day. The sound reminded Tori of her own childhood and the countless hours she spent learning to sew under the loving tutelage of her late great-grandmother.

Stepping into the entryway and then the kitchen, she stopped and inhaled the very essence that was Margaret Louise, a much-needed smile inching across her face as she did.

“Miss Sinclair! Miss Sinclair!” Lulu Davis, Margaret Louise’s fifth grandchild, hopped down from her spot between one of her brothers and one of her sisters, and raced over to Tori, her long dark ponytail swaying across her back. “Miss Sinclair, you’ve got to come see! Mee Maw is letting us invent a cookie or cupcake recipe for her new book!”

Tori set the covered plate on the nearest counter then threw her arms open wide. “What? No hug?”

Lulu’s large brown eyes dropped to her flour-doused hands before taking in Tori’s white eyelet shirt and petal pink capris. “But I might get you all messy.”

“A fair price for a Lulu-hug, if you ask me.” Bending forward, Tori wrapped her arms around the child and whispered a kiss across the top of her head. “Now that’s more like it,” she teased before stepping back and gesturing toward the table. “So you’re experimenting, huh?”

“Yup. C’mon, I’ll show you.” Pivoting in her white and purple sneakers, Lulu led the way back to her brothers and sisters. On the far end of the table was Jake Junior, the oldest of the Davis brood. The opposite end played host to Molly, the strawberry blonde who’d recently relinquished her role as youngest upon the arrival of her baby brother, Matthew. Sandwiched between them were Sally, Tommy, Julia, Kate, and a still-standing Lulu. “Mee Maw said we could have a recipe in her book if we can make it extra yummy.”

“
And
if we can all agree,” Jake Junior reminded as he scooped up a handful of yellowish-colored morsels and sprinkled them into a bowl. When he was done, he grinned at Tori. “Which Mee Maw says is like waitin’ to find gold at the bottom of Molly’s sandbox.”

Lulu slid back into her chair and pointed at various bowls set up around the table. “Mee Maw gave us all kinds of chips—light chocolate, dark chocolate, peanut butter, and butterscotch. And we’re supposed to see what will make our cookies or cupcakes best.”

For several moments Tori simply stood there and watched, the concentration and determination on the faces assembled around the table temporarily lifting the cloud that had hovered around her ever since Dixie had walked out of the library with a broken heart six days earlier.

Since then, she’d called her friend twice a day in an attempt to maintain contact. But each time she did, her call went straight to voice mail and was not returned. The worrier in Tori was on alert.