Free Deadly Patterns by Melissa Bourbon Page A

are we looking at?”
    “The heads of the screws.” He pointed. “Look.”
    They looked like ordinary screws to me, and I told him so.
    “Uh-uh. The head of that one,” he said, pointing to the one on the right, “is ground down.”
    To see any better, I’d have to come around to Will’s side, closer to the gaping hole where a railing used to be. Which wasn’t going to happen. Instead, I stayed behind him, putting both my hands on his shoulders. As I leaned down over him, the same warmth I felt whenever Meemaw was near seeped into me. “What are you saying, Will?”
    I felt his body tense, as much from the question as from me being so close to him. The warmth evaporated, replaced by a cold chill. I stepped back, away from the edge of the porch, away from him, away from the loose bracket. I knew what he was going to say.
    “I mean,” he said, standing up, “that this was no accident, and from the way the railing was ripped out with such force, I’d say you’re right. Someone pushed Dan Lee Chrisson to his death.”

Chapter 7
    My friend Josie was perched on the stool in the workroom of Buttons & Bows, her golden olive skin glowing, her walnut hair shimmery. A pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sat on the cutting table next to her. She stared at me, wide-eyed. “Murdered?”
    I dusted the windowsill, waving my duster at the goats lined up at the fence line between my property and my grandparents’ goat farm. Not that they could see this far, but somehow I got the impression that they knew I could see them. “Hoss and Gavin seem to think so,” I answered, “and Will is convinced that the railing was tampered with.”
    “Well,” she said, “if Will’s convinced.”
    We were long past junior high, so I ignored the teasing and continued. “Hoss said there were no fingerprints on the doorknob to the widow’s walk, which is strange. Not even Dan Lee’s were there, and they should have been.”
    She licked a spoonful of ice cream, waiting. “So?” she finally asked.
    “So,” I said, putting the duster in the corner and picking up a piece of fabric and a thick metal washer, “there should have been fingerprints. Dan Lee’s, definitely. Hattie said she’d been out there to look at Christmas lights a few nights back, so hers should have been there. It was wiped clean.”
    “Poor Raylene,” she said, resting her hand on her belly. “I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I might be big as a house, but Nate would never up and leave me and his child.”
    I scolded her with a wave of my hand. “You’re not big as a house,” I said.
    “Um, yes I am, and I’m not going to be in the fashion show.”
    I dropped the heavy washer I’d been turning into a fabric-covered pattern weight and stared at her. “Josie Sandoval Kincaid, what did you just say?”
    “Look at me, Harlow!” She turned, propping her elbows on the cutting table, dropping her head into her hands. “A fashion show? Nothing will look even halfway decent on me.”
    I came around to her and rubbed her back. Pregnancy had made her curvier than she’d been, and she looked vivacious and glowing. “Josie, you’re pregnant.”
    “That doesn’t mean free rein to gain a hundred pounds—”
    “First of all, you haven’t gained a hundred pounds, and second of all, that little baby inside you must just need peanut butter and pretzels,” I said.
    She nodded, barely, but didn’t look entirely convinced. Her cotton maternity top pulled up over a pair of light blue maternity jeans, the dark navy stretchy panel partially exposed. “Whoop, there he goes again,” she said, staring at her stomach as if she had X-ray vision and could see the little baby growing inside her. “It feels like little flutters. Like a butterfly’s inside flapping its wings. Thank God there is a baby in here, or I think Nate would turn his back on me.”
    Oh boy, her insecurity over her changing body was making her loopy. “Don’t be silly,” I said,