Death Threads (7 page)

“Actually, that’s not quite true, he was here—”

As if Debbie hadn’t said a word, Georgina continued talking, “Somehow he found out about the festival. He stopped by, stumbled across the contest, offered to be a stand-in judge for Martha Brinkman, who has the flu—bless her heart—and was absolutely taken by Margaret Louise’s Sweet Potato Pie.”

Tori clapped her hands together. “Are you serious? Oh how wonderful. I bet Margaret Louise is just beside herself with excitement.”

“She’s a wreck,” Rose interjected from her spot behind the portable sewing machine. “It’s Leona who is beside herself.”

“Leona?” Tori repeated as her gaze fell on her friend.

“William Clayton Wilder is single, Victoria. Single and wealthy.” Rose peered at Tori over the top of her bifocals, her thin lips pursed in a knowing manner. “Though why she’d be interested is beyond me. That man has a reputation for being ruthless with everything from his handling of employees to his unethical publicity tactics.”

“She’s interested because of what you said in the beginning. He’s single and wealthy,” Georgina drawled.

She couldn’t help but laugh as the mayor’s words brought an unmistakable flush to Leona’s cheeks. This was one of her favorite parts of any sewing circle—the playful banter and occasional barbs.

“Did you get his number, Leona?” she asked.

The woman simply shook her head, her attention still trained on the magazine in her hand.

“You didn’t?” Tori gasped in theatrical fashion. “Why, Leona, I’m shocked.”

Slowly, Leona lowered the magazine to her lap. “Have we missed the lesson about southern women respecting their elders, Victoria?”

With a flurry of activity, Rose pushed the wheeled cart that housed the portable sewing machine away from her body and wrapped herself in the baby blue afghan that had been draped over the back of the rattan sofa. “You better bundle up, everyone . . . hell is about to freeze over.”

“Good heavens Rose, what ever are you babbling about?” Georgina asked midstitch.

Pushing her stocking feet into the warm slippers she always brought to every meeting, Rose simply shrugged. “I figure if Leona is admitting she’s old then hell must be freezing over . . . and surely, if it is, we’ll feel some of that chill up here.”

Tori laughed as Leona crossed her arms and turned a disapproving glare on the group’s oldest member. “I never said I was old, Rose Winters. I simply said I was Victoria’s elder.”

“Elder, schmelder. You’re old and you know it.” Rose reached for the cart, pulled it close to the sofa, and hunched over it once again, the bobbin gliding across the flowered fabric in rapid motion. “But you’re in luck. Seems this Wilder fella is in the golden years of his career anyway.”

“Is he really going to write a cover story on Margaret Louise and her recipe?” Beatrice asked. “That’s just so exciting.”

“I agree,” Tori added, her hope for the meeting rebounding with each new word spoken. “But why is she a wreck?”

“Because she has to find a way to make the recipe uniquely southern in order to be eligible for recognition in the magazine.” Debbie’s voice, quiet and shaky, brought a hush to the room. “And since I’ve had virtually no customers in the bakery today, I figured the large kitchen and expansive counter areas might be useful to her as she works through each step of her recipe.”

Beatrice beat Tori to her question. “Why haven’t you had any customers?”

Slowly, Debbie shifted in her folding chair, her hands clasping and unclasping each other as she seemed to struggle with the best way to answer. Finally she spoke, her words every bit as heartbreaking as the hitch in her voice. “I guess for the same reason Suzanna and Jackson were taunted on the playground this afternoon . . . and for the same reason my husband received a death threat in the mailbox today.”

This time Tori’s gasp was anything but theatrical as a chill shot up her spine and through her chest. “Colby got a death threat?”

Debbie nodded as she dropped her hands to her sides and began picking at tiny pieces of lint on her pale peach slacks. “It was the most awful thing I’ve ever read. At first it was kind of written in a rambling . . . strangely whimsical way, bemoaning Colby for making Sweet Briar the laughingstock of the south. But then it simply turned frightening . . .” Her voice trailed off as she stared at the floor beneath her feet.

“What did it say?” Tori leaned forward and stilled Debbie’s hand with her own. “C’mon, Debbie, tell us.”

Debbie slowly looked up, her gaze traveling from face to face around the room before settling on Tori’s. “It said his life as he knew it was about to come to an end.”

“An end?” Beatrice repeated, her eyes round with confusion.

“
His
end,” Debbie whispered.

Pushing the gift bag sample from her lap, Tori left her chair long enough to offer Debbie a hug. “You’ve got to know it was just an idle threat made by someone who’s lashing out in frustration . . . someone who’s not educated enough to vent it in a more suitable way.”

Debbie swiped the back of her hand across her face in an attempt to catch a few unchecked tears. “That’s what Colby said. But how do you explain the lack of customers at the bakery today and the abhorrent way my children were treated on the playground with parents standing nearby? You can’t tell me everyone is uneducated.”

“People are angry, Debbie. And rightly so. I’m angry, too.” Georgina Hayes stopped sewing and leaned back in her chair in much the same way she did at the town’s monthly mayoral meetings. “For longer than any of us have been alive Sweet Briar has been known for its resiliency in the face of adversity. It’s a history that has served us well. Yet, because your husband has writer’s block where his novels are concerned, he’s decided to hone his fiction skills elsewhere and disguise it as truth.”

“He didn’t disguise anything,” Debbie spat through clenched teeth. “He researched everything he wrote. He asked questions. He read books. He spoke online with fire experts. And it killed him to write that piece. But turning his back on the truth simply to save some fairy-tale fantasy would have made him part of the lie.”

With a strong shove, Rose pushed her cart out into the middle of the room and stamped her slipper-clad foot on the ground. “So in order to clear his conscience, Colby tarnished a part of history that has made this town proud? Oh no. Georgina is right. Your husband asked the wrong people. This town was burned to the ground by Yankees. No one—not even the midlist Colby William Calhoun—can change history to earn him the notoriety his books have failed to achieve thus far.”

“Rose!” Tori heard the anger in her voice yet did nothing to quell it. As much as she adored the prickly older woman, there was no denying the simple fact that she was not only out of line but being unnecessarily cruel.

“Victoria, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have come, I see that now. But Colby insisted. He said my friends would stand by me until the storm passed.” Debbie quietly folded the pattern she’d brought and placed it into the large straw bag propped against the legs of her chair. “I guess he was wrong.”

“Debbie, wait. It’s only been a little over twenty-four hours. Everyone is still in shock. No one means any harm.” Tori looked around the room for backup, her gaze desperately seeking some sort of reassurance from Leona or Beatrice or even the strangely quiet Dixie Dunn. But no one responded, no one met her gaze. Turning back to her friend, she squeezed Debbie’s hand and offered another hug, her lips brushing the woman’s ears as she spoke quietly into her ear. “I’m sorry, I really am. If it matters, I respect Colby for standing by his convictions. And I truly believe everyone will come around . . . in time.”

“They know where to find me when they do.” Debbie hiked the strap of the straw bag onto her shoulder and headed toward the doorway that led to the hall. As she reached her destination, she turned and offered a shaky smile in Tori’s direction. “Thank you, Victoria.”

And then she was gone, audible sighs of relief filling the room in her wake.

Turning toward her sewing buddies, Tori worked to keep the anger from her voice. “I won’t stand here and pass judgment on any of you for what just happened. I’m not from Sweet Briar . . . I didn’t grow up here . . . I don’t have grandparents and great grandparents who grew up here . . . but what I do have is a friend—a friend to all of us—who just left because she was made to feel unwelcome.” Slowly, she let her gaze take in each woman in the room—Georgina, Rose, Beatrice, Dixie, and Leona. “And while I haven’t done any research of my own to see where the truth lies, I do know that everyone here will come to regret how that woman was just treated. And when you do, I hope you do everything in your power to make it right.”

Stuffing her sample into her tote bag, Tori retrieved her sewing box from the side table and set off in search of Debbie. As she reached the doorway to the hall, she turned around, her voice quiet but steady. “I’ll see all of you next week. I just want to make sure Debbie gets home okay tonight. I didn’t see her car when I pulled up so I’m guessing she and the kids walked.”

“Victoria?”

Slowly she swung her gaze toward the woman who had hurt Debbie the most. “Yes, Rose?”

“That threat wasn’t the work of an uneducated person. It was the words of someone who’s positively furious. And when folks are that angry, they don’t think as clearly as they should.” Rose pulled the afghan snug against her body as she pulled the cart close once again. “See that she and the children get home safely—and wait until they’re inside before you leave.”

As much as she enjoyed Debbie’s children, she was glad they were staying at Melissa’s for another hour or so, their attention captivated by a game of chase with Jake and the kids. They needed that time with friends as badly as their mother needed to vent in peace.

Tori drove slowly down the streets of Sweet Briar, her tiny four-door compact easily skirting the occasional street-parked car. “So things were pretty bad at the bakery today, huh?” She maneuvered around a group of kids playing a postdinner game of kickball in the middle of the street and then turned to look at the woman in the passenger seat.

Debbie Calhoun was a pretty woman. Her pale blue eyes sparkled nearly twenty-four/seven, providing a perfect accompaniment to the ever-present smile that graced her face. Even now, with the weight of the world on her shoulders, she still managed to emit an aura of contentment to all but the truly observant. Barely in her midthirties, she not only managed to flawlessly juggle motherhood to Suzanna and four-year-old Jackson with her roles as business owner and doting wife, but also found a way to make it look easy. In short, she was the kind of perfection that normally brought out the claws in other women. But even that, she managed to overcome by simply being herself—sweet and genuine.

Which is why it broke Tori’s heart to know that deep down inside Debbie Calhoun was hurting.

“I didn’t have a single dine-in customer all day,” Debbie said with a shrug as she traced the edge of her seat with her finger. “In some ways it was good—it gave me a chance to get caught up on the books. But it also meant a lot of food got wasted.”

“But you had some people purchase items to go?” Tori turned onto Main Street and headed west, the businesses surrounding the town square closed for the night.

Again Debbie shrugged. “That part is actually kind of funny . . . the customers I know best—the ones I call regulars—avoided the bakery like the plague today. Yet the one person who has never liked me, showed up.”

Pulling her gaze from the darkened windows of the library as they passed, Tori focused instead on her friend. “There’s actually someone in this town who doesn’t like you?”

“Don’t sound so surprised, Victoria. I’m sure there are many more where Ella May Vetter comes from. She’s just one who’s never bothered to disguise it.”

“Ella May? Really? I’m surprised.”

“Me too. We never had a run-in, never had any conflicts . . . yet, still, if we’re in the same place at the same time she’ll act as if I don’t exist. The rest of the circle finds it funny.”

“Why do you think she doesn’t like you?”

Debbie leaned her head against the seatback and sighed. “The only thing I’ve been able to figure is she must have overheard the circle making comments about her somewhere along the way. Because, aside from sewing and talking, sharing Ella May Vetter oddities is a favorite pastime for many of our friends.”

Tori nodded her head as she turned onto Picket Way enroute to Debbie’s home on Tulip Lane. “I’ve kinda picked that up. Although, to be honest, the first I heard of her was just last week at the library. They were going on and on about her—”

“Man,” Debbie supplied. “I know. It’s the one subject all Ella May stories eventually lead to. Which is why Rose and Leona and Dixie and the rest of them would have been absolutely beside themselves this evening if they’d been a little friendlier to me.”