Free Taken In by Elizabeth Lynn Casey Page B

say about the scarf?”
    “She couldn’t explain it.” Mentally, Tori revisited the moment she asked Dixie about the torn fabric, the former librarian’s wide-eyed fear rivaled only by unmistakable confusion.
    “Of course she couldn’t,” Leona said.
    “Would you quit talkin’ in circles, Twin? You’re only makin’ things worse.”
    Leona looked from Tori to her sister and back again, before widening her gaze to include Debbie, Rose, and Beatrice, as well. “Dixie can’t explain the torn scarf because she didn’t put it there.”
    And just like that, Leona singlehandedly removed the hammer and nail from Tori’s hand. “It was planted on her,” Tori whispered.
    Slowly, dramatically, Leona rested her hands in her lap. “Exactly. Which means it’s
our
job to figure out who did the planting and why.”
    “But why would someone do that?” Debbie protested through the sudden silence.
    Keeping her focus locked on Leona, Tori gave the answer she should have come to on her own while sitting across a table from Dixie at the police station. “To draw attention away from the real killer.”
    Leaning forward across her lap, Rose buried her face inside frail hands while Beatrice stared off in the distance.
    “How is Dixie holding up?”
    Rose let her hands slip back to her lap as she, along with everyone else, waited for Tori’s answer.
    “She’s terrified, Debbie. Absolutely terri—”
    A strangled sob cut Tori off mid-word. “This is all my fault! I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong and now Dixie feels like a rubber-nosed woodpecker in a petrified forest!”
    Tori blinked once, twice. “Margaret Louise?”
    “It was my idea to get her datin’ again. She tried to argue, tried to tell me she was doin’ just fine with her volunteerin’, but I was sure she was wrong. I was sure she needed a friend to help her with that smile she’s lost little by little over the years. And now I wiped it clear off her face once and for all thanks to my meddlin’.”
    Rose peered down at her lap. “You didn’t meddle alone. I was right there, dirtying up the waters, too.”
    “Me three,” Beatrice said sadly.
    “But it was my idea to get her lookin’ at that datin’ site,” Margaret Louise said. “And it was my idea to make her look like she knew somethin’ ’bout cookin’ besides pourin’ soup in a pot and openin’ a sleeve of crackers.”
    “And it was my idea to help her sound more intelligent since she was spending much too much time blushing the few times they
did
actually interact online,” Rose chimed in. “I should have just minded my own business and let Dixie show her true colors when she was ready to show them.”
    “I don’t know why I thought I could be more charming than Dixie,” Beatrice wailed.
    “Because
I
said you were.” Margaret Louise exhaled a rush of air from between her thinning lips. “Don’t you blame yourself for this mess, Beatrice. You were just tryin’ to help me on
my
quest for Dixie’s true happiness.”
    It was Leona who finally cut through the parade of self-recriminations coming from her sister’s mouth. “I don’t care if you made Dixie sound like the Queen of England, Margaret Louise. None of you were sitting at that breakfast table yesterday morning. None of you were on the receiving end of John’s smile.”
    “But you said yourself he was a con artist,” Debbie reminded.
    “A con artist when there was something to gain from the con.”
    Tori held off any further comments with her hand. “What are you saying, Leona?”
    “I don’t care how Rose or Beatrice or my sister polished up Dixie’s image. She was still wearing a floral housecoat when she met John. And we all know that Dixie can’t get through a conversation without relaying how she got ousted from her job at the library to make room for Victoria.”
    “So?”
    Leona pinned first her sister and then Tori with a pointed look. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know librarians