Free Pleating for Mercy by Melissa Bourbon

muffin top. Said there was no stopping it.”
    I’d noticed Nell’s midsection. She would have been a Spanx convert for sure. I’d decided long ago that every woman needed to feel good about her body, and if it took shapewear to accomplish that, then so be it.
    I spent the next hour measuring Josie’s beautifully compressed curves and going over the final design when she was dressed again. She peered at the sketch I’d done. “I don’t really get the pleating,” she said.
    I’d played with our original design and had come up with the perfect dress for her. The pleats ran horizontally. I’d changed the sweetheart neckline to a slightly scalloped cut. It would fit her beautifully, accenting her in all the right places. “The pleats give it structure,” I said. “The sketch is rough, I know, but it’s going to be fantastic, Josie. You’ll look like a princess. Trust me.”
    “But strapless?” Her shoulders hunched slightly, as if she was imagining herself in it right this minute, and she couldn’t quite picture it. “Are you sure? I’ll never do it justice.”
    I turned her around to face the full-length oval mirror in the corner. “Look at you! You’re beautiful.” One of Meemaw’s maxims came to me, another bit of wisdom I lived by. “This dress is going to complement you perfectly, Josie. It’s not meant to steal the show.”
    Her spine straightened and she threw her shoulders back. Bless her heart, she was trying her best to envision it and feel confident. After all, I was a designer. I could see the dress in my mind. It wouldn’t be so easy for someone who didn’t live and breathe fashion, clothing, and design. “So it’ll have beads?” she asked.
    “Plenty of sparkle,” I confirmed.
    She smiled—an honest-to-goodness grin—for the first time since she’d arrived here this morning. “I trust you, Harlow.”
    “Good,” I said just as a knock sounded on the front door.
    My ragtag appearance hadn’t improved over the last hour and a half. As I padded toward the door, I made a new rule for myself. Be presentable before I came downstairs, just in case this trend of early visitors continued.
    I peeked through the glass of the front door and gasped. Sheriff Hoss McClaine stood there, cowboy hat in hand, toothpick between his teeth, looking like he was ready to hang someone with a brand-new rope.

Chapter 10
    I held the door open as Sheriff McClaine stepped inside. He greeted me, raising his bushy eyebrows when he noticed Josie. He nodded to her, a polite Southern gentleman to the core. “Ma’am,” he said, though he stretched the word out until it had an extra syllable and sounded like MAY-um .
    She jumped up, nearly crashing into the rustic coffee table. “Did you figure out who did it, Sheriff? Do you know who killed Nell?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    As he turned those slow roaming eyes of his to the main room of Buttons & Bows, I once again got the feeling that underneath the indifferent gaze, he was a sharpeyed officer of the law. What I couldn’t imagine was what he was looking for.
    The front door jerked under my hand, slamming shut, almost of its own volition. I spun around, half expecting to see Meemaw, her iron gray hair piled on top of her head in a loose bun. But of course she wasn’t there. My imagination—or simply the deep-seated wish that my great-grandmother was still with me—was getting the better of me.
    His gaze settled on me for a beat before landing back on Josie. “I need ya to come on down to my office, Miss Sandoval.”
    She rested her palm against her chest. “M-me?”
    “Yes, ma’am. I got a few more questions for ya.”
    There it was again, that Southern charm that concealed a razor-sharp knife.
    Josie’s left eye twitched and she looked as if she’d been sucker punched and pushed into a hole that she would never manage to claw her way out of. “Do . . . do I have to?”
    The sheriff lowered his chin, his jaw working. “No, ma’am, ’course you