Maid of Murder

Chapter Forty-Two

My cell rang as I was driving through town. The feeling of Mains’s fingers encircling my wrist lingered as much as I wanted to ignore it.

I plucked the phone off the passenger seat and checked the caller ID. A picture of Bobby’s face rolled its eyes at me on the tiny screen. I smiled as I remembered that I took that picture during a particularly boring faculty meeting the year before.

Bobby’s voice was apprehensive. “I need to tell you something, but you have to promise not to freak out.”

“That’s an encouraging opening,” I said.

“Promise?”

“Okay, I promise, but if this has something to do with Martin Campers’ Week, all bets are off.”

“Must all our conversations revolve around the library?” he asked.

I stopped at a red light. “Nope. Spill it.”

“Bree’s been turned out of her hotel and needed a place to stay.” He took a deep breath. “So she is crashing with me.”

A pause. The light had turned green, but I didn’t take my foot off the brake. The guy in the car behind me honked and saluted me with his middle finger. I rolled the car forward.

“India?” Bobby asked. “Bree told me that the two of you had a misunderstanding over dinner last night.”

A misunderstanding. The woman was carrying a gun. I bit my lip and wondered if I should tell Bobby about the gun. Would it make any difference? Would it change his mind about her?

“Why are you telling me this? You’re your own man; you can spend time with whoever you want.”

“I know that, but things have been weird between us this week and I just thought . . .” He trailed off.

I made another turn onto a commercial road lined with fast-food restaurants, grocery stores, and discount supercenters. “You just thought what?”

“I just thought you should know.”

“Consider it noted,” I said and snapped the phone shut.

My cell rang again, almost immediately, and Bobby rolled his eyes at me again from the screen, but I ignored him. I knew that I would regret hanging up on him later and would have to do some serious groveling to get in his good graces again. However, I’d reached my limit. My first priority had to be Mark.

I turned the car into the parking lot for Topaz Bridal. In the store window stood the exact replica of the wedding dress Olivia had described to me in excruciating detail so many months ago. The antique-white gown was full-length and strapless with thousands of delicate silver stars and a gold sunburst embroidered on the bodice. The waist was so narrow that it crushed the headless mannequin’s Styrofoam innards. The bodice exploded into a full multilayer skirt heavy on taffeta; silver and gold threads wove in and out of the cloud of fabric. In that dress Olivia would be—would have been—breathtaking. I almost walked away.

A bell chimed at my entry. A voice called from the back, “Be with you in a minute.”

I walked around the store. Being so surrounded by wedding gowns and their trappings, my stomach clenched. I glanced at a few price tags and whistled. Each one had the Topaz trademark and a lofty declaration that each gown was one of kind. I glanced at the mannequin in the window. One of a kind, I thought.

If I ignored what the dresses signified—commitment, a lifetime of compromise, companionship in old age—and considered the gowns with a purely artistic eye, Topaz was an amazing designer. I wondered, and not for the first time, why she lived in Stripling. She was obviously talented. Wouldn’t she be more successful in New York, L.A., or Atlanta?

A teenage boy emerged from the back room. He walked with a pronounced slouch and had an unfortunate case of acne.

Topaz followed behind him. “I’ll see you in two weeks for your final fitting.”

The boy grunted and fled the store.

“He’s buying a wedding dress?” I asked dubiously.

Topaz chortled. “No, I do alterations and tailoring on the side. I’m glad you’re here. It’s all ready.”

Ready? I must have looked confused because Topaz said, “You’re here to pick up your bridesmaid dress, aren’t you?”

“Well, I thought—”

“Don’t tell me you’re not going to pay me. I feel horrible about Olivia, but I have to run a business. I’ve spent hundreds of hours on the gowns for the Blocken wedding and that doesn’t include the time I spent on the bride’s gown. And no one wants to pay.”

“No one?”

“Didn’t you see Olivia’s dress in the window? It’s for sale. Apparently, the Blockens are no longer interested.”

“That’s Olivia’s dress?” I asked, hoping that my assumption about the dress had been wrong.

“Of course it is. Every Topaz wedding gown is one of a kind.” Topaz paced around the room adjusting and readjusting gowns every few steps.

“How much?”

She beamed. “Perfect. Follow me.” Topaz led me to the back of the shop and through a heavy curtain that obscured the back room. The room held thick pallets of fabric organized by an expert’s hand shelved along the right wall. White, white, and more white. Each shade of white was one wash darker than the last. I peered through the small doorway into an adjacent room that housed Topaz’s many sewing machines. Several works in progress were pinned to much-abused dress dummies. To my left a long metal rack held dress after dress, all wrapped in plastic. I suspected that my gown was among them.

Topaz sat behind an antique writing desk, pulled a leather ledger from one of its impractical drawers, and quoted a figure. My eyes boggled. My hands shook when I tore the check out of my checkbook. The price was more than two months’ rent for my apartment. Templeton would be living on generic cat food while I would be dining on Saltine crackers for the remainder of the summer.

Topaz thanked me, confirmed the amount, folded the check, and slipped it into her jeans pocket. She handwrote a receipt.

“You can change behind that screen there.” She pointed to a paisley-patterned screen in a small corner of the room.

“Excuse me?”

Topaz glanced at her watch. “I have time for your final fitting.”

“Fitting?” I was slow to catch on.

“Of course I can’t let you buy the dress without trying it on first.” She pulled a plastic-wrapped gown from the rack and handed it to me. Déja vu.

I held the garment bag at arms’ length. “Really, Topaz, I trust your expertise. I’m sure it’s a perfect fit. I know you’re very busy. Summer is the height of wedding season, right? I don’t think—”

She pointed, and I ducked behind the screen with the garment bag. Remembering my temporary blindness, I didn’t look directly at the dress while I put it on. This time it zipped up without a hitch. I walked out from behind the screen. The hem of the skirt brushed hardwood floor.

Topaz placed a stout pedestal in front of the unforgiving three-way mirror. Moors during the Spanish Inquisition never faced such a horror.

“Arms out,” Topaz directed.

Three sharp pins glistened in the right corner of her mouth. I unlocked my knees and shifted my feet on the small pedestal, intended for someone with a shoe size smaller than ten.

The gown’s painful golden color against my pale skin, my genetic destiny passed down by Celt and Fin bloodlines, remained hideous, but it did fit, or at least I thought it did until I saw my reflection in Topaz’s torture chamber. The three-way mirror was merciless and considered my figure from the worse possible angle. I closed my eyes.

“Were you surprised when Mrs. Blocken asked you to bring the bridesmaids gowns to her house on the Fourth?” I asked.

Topaz snorted.

“She can be demanding.”

“You could say that.” Topaz circled me like a lioness contemplating a baby zebra.

I shifted my clown feet and nearly fell off the tiny pedestal.

“Stop moving.”

“Sorry. Did you notice anything strange at the picnic?”

“The only strange thing I saw was your brother crash the place. This is about your brother, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But after we left, what happened? Anything that you can tell me might help. I know Mark’s innocent.”

“You’re a nice girl, but I can’t discuss my clients if I want to pay the rent.” She stepped back. “You can get down now. The dress is a perfect fit.”

Not according to the three-way mirror, I thought. “You mean your former clients. You said Mrs. Blocken refused to pay for Olivia’s dress.” I stepped off the pedestal. My feet sang the Hallelujah Chorus.

“Go ahead. I know that you’re dying to change.”

I leapt behind the Chinese screen. “Mrs. Blocken hates Mark and me—that has to give us some credibility.”

I tugged at the zipper and sighed with relief when it gave way. I put on my own clothes as quickly as possible. Why anyone would wear a bridesmaid’s dress when there are T-shirts and jeans in this world, I would never know.

When I emerged, Topaz was sitting behind the desk. “I wish I could help you, I really do, but nothing happened after you left. The group was shocked, but that’s no surprise. Lady Blocken put a stop to that fast. I took O.M. upstairs for her fitting, and that was the end of that. While I was in the upstairs hallway, I heard some debate as to whether you”—she gave me an apologetic smile—“should still be a bridesmaid. Olivia was determined that you would be. She didn’t seem to be overly concerned about seeing your brother. I remember Kirk was pretty fired up about it, but Olivia said not to worry.”

“What about Dr. Blocken or Bree?”

Topaz thought for a minute. “Olivia’s father didn’t really react. He sat off away from the group with some book that made Moby Dick look like a thriller. Bree’s behavior didn’t change at all. She ran around the room being annoyingly helpful. I finally had to make up something for her to do so that she’d leave me alone during O.M.’s fitting.”

“Did Olivia order the dresses from you?”

“The Fourth was the first day I ever saw Olivia, although I spoke to her on the phone a few times, for measurements and things. All of the business went through her mother. From now on, I’m getting the money up front. I had a commission contract with Regina to design that dress. I suppose that I could sue her for breach of contract. But I know she’d bury me with some high-priced lawyer.”

I made sympathetic noises. Topaz zipped my bridesmaid’s gown into its dress bag and handed it to me. “Know any good lawyers, cheap?”

I gave her Lew’s name.

She wrote his name in her ledger. The bell chimed. I peered through the sheer curtain.

“She never tried it on, you know.” Topaz spoke, barely above a whisper.

“What?” I asked, thinking I misheard her.

“Olivia never tried on her wedding dress.”

Topaz put on her customer service face and stepped through the curtain into the showroom. I followed with the garment bag draped over my arm

A girl in her early twenties and a dour-looking woman stood by the mannequin wearing Olivia’s dress. “Oh, look at the bodice. It’s perfect. You know I love suns and moons,” the girl gushed.

The older woman teared up. “This is the one. Oh, honey, you’ll be breathtaking.”

Topaz smiled brightly at the pair. She turned to me. “India, thanks for coming in. You might want to buy some form-shaping lingerie for that dress.”

From my car, I watched Topaz remove the mannequin from the display window. The girl jumped up and down excitedly and the older woman sobbed.

I wiped the moisture from my cheeks and backed out of my parking space.