Rags To Witches Page 17

  “Good boy, Buddy. You earned at least two cans of tuna for saving me,” I cooed at him, backing away into safety. The cat zipped inside with me at the last second, and I shut the door behind us.

  “Why did you risk your life for a scrap of paper?” Uncle Jo asked.

  I moved the stack of books out of the way and dumped the rest of the contents from the envelope onto the rickety table. “Because these are the requests from the night of the wedding reception. It may be absolutely nothing, but at least it’s one more concrete thing to check.”

  The threatening note I’d found under the windshield wiper had felt like a step forward. But unless I wanted to compare it to the handwriting of every single witch in the entire Crystal Coast, it taunted me with the inability to put it to good use to find whoever wrote it. The only positive thing that came out of knowing Harrison’s stalker had been there was reporting it to Ebonee, who passed it on to the lieutenant. I hoped our friends hadn’t noticed the uptick in patrol cars passing by their house.

  Wishing I had Mac’s timeline with me, I sorted through the requests, recognizing the majority of them. The playlist in my head switched with each paper I read as if I were changing the dial on the radio in the truck.

  I got through the entire pile and stuffed them back in the envelope. “Dang blast it, there’s nothing here worth saving. Might as well torch these.” A curl of smoke billowed out of the corner of the envelope I gripped between my fingers until a tiny flame smoldered to life.

  “Wait, don’t burn our entire barn down with your disappointment,” Uncle Jo warned, backing away from me. “And you missed one right at your feet.”

  The ember of my tantrum-induced flame burned out, and I bent down to retrieve the last request. Unfolding the wrinkled piece, I screeched at its simple content. Written in the same cursive script as the warning I’d gotten after seeing Harrison was the title of that one song that didn’t fit with any of the others.

  Dropping the package on the ground, I pumped a fist in the air. “Yes!” I shouted. The precious paper almost slipped my grip in my excitement, and I stopped celebrating to keep from losing it.

  Dad peeked over my shoulder. “Shoulda Known Better. That’s a country song, right? But why are you acting like you just found a winning lottery ticket?”

  I jumped up and down with giggling squeals. “Because this is winning. It’s absolute proof that the person I’m pretty sure spellbound Gloria and tried to hurt or even kill Harrison was there that night.” Holding out the paper for my father and uncle to read, I pointed at the script. “See that cursive? It’s a complete match for the note left on Gloria’s car.”

  “I might be able to see it if you’d quit your bouncin’,” my uncle ribbed me with a little extra twang in his Southern accent. His phone rang, and he switched to his professional voice. “Hello, you’ve reached Josephus Jewell. How may I help you?” After a few nods and uh-huh’s, he pointed his finger at me. “Yes, I can make sure Ruby Mae is with us. I think we can be there within the next hour if that works for you. You, too,” he finished and hung up.

  “Who was that?” Dad asked, picking up the envelope I’d dropped.

  “And why are you volunteering me when I clearly need to contact Ebonee to share my news and maybe take this over to the lieutenant?” I complained, fondling the strip of paper in my hand.

  “That was Robin Westwood. She wants us to come over to her shop. And she wants you there specifically.” Uncle Jo hustled to organize the rest of the contents of the box, nudging me out of his way with his girth.

  The request threw me off. “That’s strange. She told me she was thinking about closing the shop in the next year or so. This is more than a little unexpected. But I guess it doesn’t matter when we give her an estimate.”

  “She doesn’t want an evaluation of her property. The lady said she wanted us to come and claim what we thought we could resell for her at a good price.” My uncle shrugged. “A job’s a job.”

  Not that long ago, I’d sat on her couch while she admitted she was ready. But I figured if she had wanted to move this fast, she would have said so then.

  “What’s got you riled up, butter bean? You’ve got that determined glint in your eyes,” my father stated.

  “You’re definitely going with us, right, Dad? I want to make sure she’s making the right decision before we go taking anything. And that we can do right by her in the long run.” I’d have to have them drive by my house first so I could stash the precious strip of paper somewhere safe before we left.

  “I can if that will make you happy,” my father agreed. “And we’d never take advantage if you think she’s not in her right mind. You go with your gut, and we’ll follow your lead.”

  Nothing about Ms. Robin’s decision sat well with me, and despite the nature of our business, I refused to be a vulture picking over the bones of her business.

  Chapter Twenty

  We arrived at the dress shop forty-five minutes later. Dad and I got out while Uncle Jo drove around the block to find a better parking place for the large work truck. A handwritten sign on the glass door read “Closed.” I tried the handle of the door. Locked.

  Shielding my eyes, I peered inside, curious and worried about what I’d find. All of the dresses hung on the same racks and rows as before. There was no indication why Ms. Robin would be closing her business other than the taped-up sign and the lack of lights on inside.

  I wrapped my knuckle against the glass and stood back, waiting. Movement caught my eye, and I spotted Ms. Robin walking over to let us in. She reached up on her tiptoes to flip the top lock and bent over to unhitch the bottom one. With a light click, she turned the final one by the door handle and gestured for us to come in.

  “I’m sorry to bother you or pull you from another job,” she apologized, allowing us to walk past her.

  My father introduced himself and then my uncle when he sauntered in. The normalcy of the moment ruffled my feathers, and I skipped right past the pleasantries. “I thought you had a plan, Ms. Robin.”

  “Plans change,” she replied, shuffling away with her shoulders stooped as if she carried the weight of the world on them. “After what happened at Azalea’s wedding and Tara losing her mind, I’d rather close now than be disappointed or upset by anything else. I’ve already referred clients who wanted dresses in the near future, and I have one that I’ll finish up today so you can take my sewing machine with you.”

  I gasped at her final edict. When she’d spoken about the machine before, it was like it had become an extended part of her. Now, she wanted us to amputate it from her life.

  “Who’s Tara?” Dad whispered to me.

  “Her assistant,” I explained, wanting to get back to the problem at hand.

  Ms. Robin jolted when she heard my reply. “Not anymore. Tara quit on me in a fit of what I can only describe as lunacy. She’s always been a bit more emotional, but she had some decent skills. I thought she wanted to pursue a career in fashion, but nobody will work with her after this. I’ll make sure of it.”

  A tense silence followed her passionate tirade. My uncle took the opportunity to walk around the showroom, sizing up the inventory. Dad ran a finger down the back of my hand in encouragement and joined his brother to give me space.

  “I thought you liked Tara. What happened to change your mind?” I pushed in a quieter voice.

  “This.” The woman turned her head so I could see the left side of her face. A dark bruise marred her cheek. “One second, I was comforting her because she fell apart after she told me she was quitting. And then she snapped at me, demanding that I give her my sewing machine because I’d promised to help her step up in her career. I thought she was kidding, so I laughed. I never saw her fist coming or I might have taken the first shot.”

  “Ms. Robin!” I exclaimed.

  “I’m from New York. I know how to handle myself,” she sniffed, her fingertips brushing her swollen cheek. “I told her I would report her to the police for ass
ault and battery, and that scared Tara enough to realize what she’d done. She fell to her knees and begged me not to do it. Said that everything in her life was going wrong, and that she didn’t know how to fix it. At that point, I figured her problems were her own, and I asked her to leave.”

  My dad sidled up to listen in, and I continued. “Did she go, or did you have her arrested?”

  “She left.” Ms. Robin dropped her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “I thought I’d feel better after it happened, but I just can’t shake the feeling that I should have found a way to get through to her. To try and help.”

  I stroked her arm in sympathy. “Some people will say they want help but can’t accept it.”

  The designer considered my words, looked up at the ceiling, and groaned. “I tried calling her,” she admitted. “But she’s not picking up anymore. As far as I know, she’s gone.”

  Uncle Jo joined us and coughed a couple of times. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m a little parched. I don’t suppose you have any libations?”

  Abhorred at her lack of manners, Ms. Robin rushed off to fetch us all some water bottles. I turned to my uncle to question the lie. “Okay, what was that all about?”

  He placed his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “This is a rare occasion where I have to admit I might be wrong. She definitely went through something recently, and it’s possible she’s going to regret any decision she makes while under duress.”

  “That bruise looks bad, but I’ll bet it looks worse in the light,” Dad grumbled. “Did she have it checked out?”

  “It’s just a little swollen, Mr. Jewell,” the designer replied with our drinks in her hands. “A bag of frozen peas and a stiff cocktail was the only treatment I needed. And I know you think I might be crazy to make such an impetuous decision to close shop, but I promise you, the only thing the whole incident did was change the when of it all.”

  “Are you sure?” I double-checked. “We can always take a look at what you have now and come back later.”

  She shook her head. “You might as well be making your offer to a brick wall. When I make up my mind, that’s it. Kinda like how I gave up New York and came down here in the first place. I up and left without warning to claim my Buster and move here. Best decision I ever made. My gut tells me this one will be, too.”

  I opened my mouth again, but my father tapped my arm to stop me. “Then can you walk us around and give us an idea of your expectations? I hate to admit it, but I don’t think selling your creations in our barn would be the smartest choice.”

  “I’ll be responsible for what I want to do with my creations. Maybe have a blowout sale so local brides can find their dresses at a discount. Especially those who, as I heard it, caught a wedding bouquet recently.” She beamed at me, a little of her old self seeping back in.

  “It was a total set up,” I complained when my father and uncle joined her in teasing me about becoming a bride.

  “Follow me to see the rest of my property. It used to be a separate business back in the day, but I bought it and turned it into storage and my workspace.” She pointed out a few items like naked mannequins and some empty clothes racks we could haul away today.

  For such a small operation, Ms. Robin possessed a lot of stuff. Lucky for us, she liked to be organized, making it easy for us to start a list of potential items. She got caught up in explaining the different kinds of fabric and how each of them would drape differently off a body.

  “How long does it take you to make a single dress like Azalea’s or Gloria’s?” I asked, touching the end of some soft satin fabric.

  Ms. Robin’s eyes twinkled. “I loved working on Azalea’s dress. That lovely shade of blush went perfectly with her skin tone. I shouldn’t admit this, but I liked helping her rebel a little against her mother after some of the stories that poor girl told me. But it took me the better part of seven months.”

  I hated the thought that Azalea’s dress was folded up somewhere catalogued as a piece of evidence when the new bride wasn’t even the one who did anything.

  “What about the bridesmaids’ dresses? How long did Gloria’s take?”

  “That style isn’t custom since we used an existing pattern. Pieces like hers require a choice in color and some measurements to be put together,” the designer explained. “Tara worked on those dresses. Which is another reason I’m closing down. With little time to train a new assistant, I don’t have anyone else to help, and I’m a little too old to try and do everything myself.”

  My heart pounded in my ears. “I’m sorry, but did you say Tara made Gloria’s dress?”

  Ms. Robin caught the change in my voice. “Did she do something wrong to it? I’d hate to think that her emotions got in the way of her work.”

  A wave of dizziness hit me as I made an important connection. I reached out to steady myself against a workstation. “No, Gloria’s dress seemed fine.”

  The designer blew out a breath of relief. “Good. I worried a little when I caught Tara working on it at the last second. Somehow, I’d left the door unlocked to my private work area, and she was using my sewing machine, claiming the one she typically used wasn’t working and she needed to fix the hem.”

  Her words barely registered with me as her former assistant’s name echoed in my head. My stomach clenched and alarm bells went off. I followed behind Ms. Robin in a bit of a daze, listening to her ramble on about her work that she loved.

  She pulled out a key and unlocked the door to a private room. She stood in front of a custom table made to fit around an antique cabinet with an old but beloved sewing machine on it. The woman ran a hand over its black surface with gold filigree embellishments and hand painted floral decorations.

  “She’s another example of a quick decision that turned out to be one of the best. I found her at the Grand Bazaar flea market in Manhattan and paid extra to have them take her back to my tiny apartment I was working out of at the time.” Her passion for the piece poured out of her, and I did my best to admire it.

  “I said this before, but you can always take her with you,” I suggested, reaching out to trace a swirl of gold paint. The second my fingertips touched the machine, a zing of energy bolted up my arm and the hair on my arm stood on end.

  Ms. Robin missed my reaction and sat down at the table. “It’s time for her to grace someone else with her magic. All I need is to finish sewing up this hem, and I’ll be done with her.”

  With the machine in use, I couldn’t examine it as close I needed to, now that everything had changed. She was right about one thing, even though she didn’t know the full meaning of her words. The sewing machine definitely possessed magic. I searched for Dad and Uncle Jo to get their second opinions but couldn’t see them.

  I paced behind Ms. Robin while she tucked a white strip of something at the bottom of her last dress and folded the navy-blue fabric over it, finishing the hem with slow stitches. Leaning over her shoulder, I tried for a better look. “What’s that you’re sewing in?”

  She dismissed me with a chuckle. “Oh, it’s a silly tradition. I like to write personal messages of good luck and well wishes and place them where they won’t be noticed by the person wearing it. It’s like giving them a piece of me that will make the time that they wear my creation a little more special.”

  “You do this with every dress?” I clarified, testing out a theory forming in my head.

  Ms. Robin nodded and kept working. The table vibrated under the needle flying over the fabric. “Mm-hmm. Pretty much. Even sewed one into yours,” she winked at me. “I just wished for you to live boldly and claim what was yours.”

  I recalled the feeling that washed over me when I put on the dress before going to the wedding. I’d never felt so confident or so beautiful, especially when Luke appreciated how I looked. Maybe a part of my emotions had been affected by Ms. Robin’s hidden message she’d sewn in using a machine that hummed with power.

  “There. Finished.” She trimmed the thread and stoo
d, holding up the final product. “I’ll hold onto this for the client. But I guess this is it.”

  My father poked his head in and admired the dress. “That’s real pretty. Whoever it’s for will look beautiful in it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Jewell,” she beamed. “I’ll put this in a garment bag and then take it up front to wait for pick up.”

  I grabbed Dad’s hand and dragged him outside to another worktable with a bolt of fabric spread out on its surface. “We’ve got to get that sewing machine out of here right now,” I whispered through clenched teeth.

  “Why?” he asked. “It’s going to take a while to negotiate what she wants to do with the items we think we can sell. What’s the rush?”

  Ms. Robin excused herself to go up to the storefront, and I escorted my father over to the sewing machine. “Here’s why.” I grasped his hand and held it right over the decorated surface.

  He flinched away. “Whoa. That thing has some kick to it.”

  “She just used it.” I tapped his arm multiple times with my finger. “And, I think she’s unintentionally been enchanting her pieces. I just watched her sew what she calls good wishes into the hem of that dress.”

  My father listened while he bent down to examine the machine. “But she’s not a witch, is she?”

  “No, but this thing might have taken her good intentions and turned them into magic.” I paced around to the other side of the table and leaned on it. “Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve figured it out.”

  Uncle Jo joined us. “Figured what out? I can hear you guys all the way on the other side of the room even though you think you’re whispering.

  “Look at this, Jo,” Dad insisted. “We’re going to need an exit strategy to get out of here quicker than you and I planned.”

  I slapped my hands on top of the work surface to get their attention. “You’re not listening to me. Based on the sewing machine, the notes in the dresses, and Ms. Robin’s reasons for closing, I think I’ve figured out who’s at the center of everything.”