Free A Custom Fit Crime by Melissa Bourbon Page B

“I’m going to find Earl Grey,” she said, and then she turned and was gone, beating a quick path to the kitchen. A few seconds later, I heard the Dutch door squeak open and then slam shut. I could hear the low rumble of Orphie’s and Nana’s voices, but I tuned them out as I flipped open my sketchbook. Inside was an eclectic jumble of drawings and swatches and commentary about the designs I’d dreamed up. At the end were a few pages of notes I’d taken about the other untimely deaths that had occurred in Bliss recently.
    Gracie had planted a seed, and now I couldn’t shake it from my mind. Michel Ralph Beaulieu had died right here in my house. I’d already told the sheriff that Beaulieu had disparaged my town, my shop, and my designs. People had killed for less, I’m sure. How long would it take before the sheriff—or his overzealous deputy of a son—turned his attention my way, in earnest? I was sure they’d figure out the truth sooner or later, but why not help them with it?
    I racked my brain, trying to remember all the details of that morning. It came to me in bits and pieces rather than replaying as in a movie. The whole group swooping into the shop. The underlying competition between Beaulieu, Midori, and me. The article. Snapshots flashed through my head. My steamer. The dress forms. Mama’s wedding dress. Lemonade. Maximilian’s design book. They were like pieces from different puzzles, and no matter how I turned them over in my mind, they weren’t going to fit together in any semblance of order.
    I went through the possible suspects one by one. Lindy Reece and her notebook. Quinton and his camera. Both worked for D Magazine and wouldn’t be likely to have a grudge against Beaulieu—none that was obvious, anyway. Jeanette and Midori. Both of them could have sketchy motives. Jeanette had taken the brunt of Beaulieu’s daily wrath, while Midori, I knew, had struggled to find her footing in the U.S. fashion world. Her connections to Japan were still strong and Beaulieu hadn’t had any qualms about pooh-poohing her design aesthetic, but she’d found success nonetheless.
    Was any of that enough of a motive for murder, though? I didn’t think so.
    I moved on to the Dallas and New York models who’d come as part of the designers’ entourage. They hadn’t actually been in the shop yet, but could one of them have snuck over from Seven Gables and . . . And what? Beaulieu hadn’t been hit over the head. He hadn’t been startled to death. Could he have been poisoned? That was a possibility. So maybe one of the models had slipped some arsenic, or something, to him somehow.
    Was the fact that they hadn’t physically been at the shop when he died calculated? From my experience, models could be as cutthroat as the mothers of child beauty pageant contestants. Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but pretty brutal. And they weren’t empty-headed. One of them could definitely be a murderer, just as any one of the other possible suspects could have done it.
    Still, I couldn’t fathom a reason why a model would do in a designer, especially before a photo shoot that could gain said model just as much exposure as said designer.
    Which left a small group of people—those closest to me. Orphie’s showing up the night before made her a possible suspect. Nana and Mama—
    My brain hitched, backtracking. Loretta Mae! She was a ghost right here in this house. Which meant she might well have seen something. Something important. Something incriminating.
    Holy smokes, Meemaw could have witnessed a murder. The only problem with this was that Meemaw and I couldn’t communicate very effectively. But it was worth a try. I whispered her name into the empty room.
    Nothing but eerie silence.
    I tried again. “Meemaw?”
    Still nothing.
    I gave it one last try. “Loretta Mae Cassidy, where in the devil are you?”
    Third time was the charm. The latch to the window in the workroom lifted with a creak and the window itself flew