Free A Fitting End: A Magical Dressmaking Mystery by Melissa Bourbon Page B

healthy swig of the drink Will handed her seemed to spread through her like wildfire. Her eyes went from glazed to flashing in a split second and she snapped her hand away from mine. She sat up straight and took another sip. “It’s that damn golfer,” she said, sucking her lips over her teeth after she spoke. “Macon Vance.”
    Will sat back down, stroking his goatee. “Did you know him?”
    “Know him?” She looked at Will as if he’d suddenly sprouted pig’s ears. “No. Not at all. That is, of course I saw him around the club, but no, I didn’t
know
him. No,” she added, a touch more thoughtfully. “No,” she repeated hoarsely, “and I didn’t
want
to know him.”
    “What did you want to tell me, Mrs. James?” I asked, wanting to cut to the chase. This conversation was getting us nowhere mighty fast.
    “I’d say that I’m in a heap of trouble.” She looked at Will, eyeing him suspiciously for a moment before blinking and shifting her gaze to me. “I can trust you, I suppose? Of course I can. That’s why I came here,” she mumbled to herself.
    We waited, again, for her to keep talking, but criminy, she was taking her sweet time—which went against everything I knew about Mrs. Zinnia James. In the short time I’d known her, she’d been brutally honest. So why the sudden closed lips?
    She’d come here, I reminded myself, so I had a free pass to pry. “You said that everything was wrong. What’s everything?”
    She lifted her lemonade cooler to her mouth and knocked back the last of it. “It’s all gone to hell,” she finally said.
    “What has?”
    “My granddaughter’s future—”
    My eyes flew open wide. “Why? The sheriff isn’t shutting down the pageant, is he?” The streetlights had been adorned with festival flags and the invitations had been sent out. The catwalk was up. The lights were situated. Heck, even the bubble machine was all set. The debutantes would be devastated if the event were canceled. The Margaret Moffette Lea Pageant and Ball was a Bliss institution. A tradition akin to Fourth of July, Blue Bell ice cream, and pecan pie. Not to mention the investment I’d already made in the dress pulley contraption Will had installed. I didn’t have another wedding dress lined up yet. The commission from Libby’s dress was meant to pay for the pulley. I tossed up a silent prayer.
    “No. Goodness, no.” She looked at me like I’d plumb lost my mind.
    Which is exactly how I was looking at her. “Then what
is
it, Mrs. James?”
    She stood up, did a slow loop around the kitchen, her heels clicking against the tile, then turned to face us. “The other day at the club,” she said to me. “You told me you weren’t there, but you were.” My jaw dropped open, but she continued before I could stammer out an excuse for lying to her. “The day you left your sewing bag.”
    “Y-yes—”
    “You didn’t wait to talk to me—”
    “You were… busy.”
    “Busy,” she repeated.
    I nodded my head. “Busy.”
    “So you heard?”
    I nodded. We couldn’t have blocked out the argument if we’d tried.
    “You were with the newly minted Mrs. Nate Kincaid, correct?” she continued.
    I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Yes.” I’d told the deputy and the sheriff that I’d been there with Josie Kincaid. I tried to shove away the fact that I’d omitted the argument from the story I’d told, but from the tight expression on Mrs. James’s face, I suspected Josie hadn’t left out that tidbit.
    She muttered under her breath, “She mentioned to the deputy, apparently, that she’d overheard a bit of a kerfuffle that morning.”
    I wasn’t at all sure if the unspoken accusation that Josie had spilled the beans about something she shouldn’t have was real or my imagination. Either way, I was tongue-tied. There
had
been a kerfuffle, and we
had
overheard it. It wasn’t hard to put one and one together.
    “Were you with Macon Vance?” Will asked.
    I waited on the edge of my