Sew Deadly Read online

 
  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Sewing Tips

  Sewing Pattern

  /body>

  Needled

  Feeling the room begin to spin, Tori closed her eyes tightly.

  “Why would the investigator be asking questions about me?”

  “You’re new in town.”

  “So?”

  “This is the first murder Sweet Briar’s ever had.”

  Tori swallowed back the bile that threatened to gag her where she sat.

  “And therefore I must be a murderer? Is that what he thinks?” She knew her voice sounded shrill, near hysterical even, but she couldn’t stop. This had to be some sort of joke, didn’t it?

  “That’s what a lot of people are going to think, Victoria.”

  Swiveling back toward the window, Tori stared out at the pockets of people standing around—virtually everyone either pointing or staring at her. They weren’t curious about the new librarian. They didn’t care about the changes she would bring to the library. And they couldn’t care less whether she was from Chicago or Beijing. They were there for one reason and one reason only. To catch a glimpse of Tiffany Ann’s murderer.

  “But you don’t think that . . . right, Leona?”

  An awkward silence filled her ear as she waited, desperately, for the answer she needed to hear.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  SEW DEADLY

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / August 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-10885-7

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

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  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  For my daughters,

  who light my world each and every day.

  I love you.

  Acknowledgments

  In many ways, writing is a one-person show. You sit in front of a computer screen day in and day out, crafting a world and its people entirely from your imagination. And while I love every moment of the process, I’m keenly aware of the people in my real world—the ones who love and support me long after the last word has been typed.

  A huge thank-you goes out to my best friend and writing buddy, Heather Webber. Your constant support through all aspects of my life means more than you can ever know.

  A teary-eyed thank-you to my agent, Jacky Sach, for handing me the ball and telling me to run. And to my editor, Emily Rapoport, for making one of my fondest childhood dreams a reality.

  A huge thank-you goes to my assistant (and friend), Beth Thaemert. You took a load off my shoulders that allowed me to focus on the best part—the storytelling.

  A special thank-you to the group of online sewing enthusiasts who took the time to answer some of my zany questions. Your sewing tips and funny stories helped the Sweet Briar Sewing Circle come to life!

  And last but certainly not least . . . my heartfelt thanks and love to Jim. For walking beside me on some of my darkest days and loving me through to the other side.

  Chapter 1

  She wasn’t entirely sure whether it was the pull of the mahogany sewing box in the window or a much-needed respite from the endless barrage of curious glances, but either way, Elkin Antiques and Collectibles seemed as good a place as any for a momentary escape.

  Switching the paper sack of lightbulbs to her left hand, Tori Sinclair pushed the glass door open, her presence greeted by a wall-mounted bell and a cocked eyebrow from the sixty-something woman behind the counter.

  “Yessss?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry are-are you not open?” Tori glanced back at the door, the inward facing Closed sign in direct conflict with the irritation hovering above the clerk’s shoulders like vapors off scorching hot pavement.

  “Of course, I’m open.” The woman stood statue-still as her gaze played across Tori’s pale yellow sundress and white strappy sandals, lingered on her light brown shoulder-length hair and heart-shaped face. “Can I help you with something?”

  “I—uh, wanted to take a closer look at the sewing box in your window.” She pointed at the simple rectangular container that had piqued her curiosity from the sidewalk. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s from the late 1800s, isn’t it?”

  The woman’s mouth gaped open a hairbreadth. “Why yes, it is.”

  Tori closed the distance between the entryway and the display in a few small strides, looking over her shoulder as she stopped beside the box. “It was built by a company in Kansas that specialized in furniture but occasionally dabbled in keepsake pieces, yes?”

  The woman nodded, the gap between her lips ever widening.

  “I thought so.” Tori ran a gentle finger across the backside of the box before coming to rest on the carved scene that
adorned its lid. “My great-grandmother had one just like this. It used to sit on a hope chest in her bedroom, and it was where she kept her favorite needles and buttons and ribbons. She’d gotten it as a gift from her parents.”

  Slowly, gently, she traced the outline of the horse and buggy. “Only her box had a snowflake carved onto the lid.” She closed her eyes, focused on the feel of the design. “It’s funny, but I can still remember how her box felt under my fingertips.”

  “What happened to it?”

  Tori turned to face the woman who’d left her countertop fortress in favor of blatant curiosity. “It was lost in a fire shortly after she passed away.”

  A soft clucking sound broke through the white noise of memories in Tori’s mind, forcing her back to the here and now—and the unmistakable compassion that had chased aloofness from the shopkeeper’s eyes.

  “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry.”

  Tori shrugged softly. “It’s okay. Seeing this one is kind of nice, even a little comforting.”

  “I’m glad.” The woman reached out, tentatively squeezed Tori’s forearm with a finely wrinkled hand. “Memories are a wonderful way to link us with the past.”

  “I agree.” Pulling her hand from the top of the wooden box, she extended it toward the woman. “I’m Tori Sinclair and I—”

  “Tor—you mean, Victoria Sinclair? The new librarian?”

  Startled, Tori nodded.

  “Hmmmm. You’ve certainly been the talk of Sweet Briar these past few days.” The woman stepped backward as her words slipped away in favor of a second, and more thorough, inspection of her lone customer.

  Tori shifted from foot to foot in response, the fingers of her left hand inching the top of the paper sack more tightly into her grasp. “Then I guess that would explain the looks I’ve been getting all afternoon.”

  “People around here aren’t used to seeing new faces, Victoria.”

  That made sense in a small town like Sweet Briar, yet some of the looks she’d been getting were—

  “It’s been good talk, right?”

  “Mostly. But that’s neither here nor there, my dear.” The woman waved her hand in the air then brought it daintily to her chest. “I’m Leona. Leona Elkin.”

  “Mostly? Is there a problem, Ms. Elkin?” she asked quickly.

  “Leona, please.” The woman brushed her hands down the side of her long, flowered skirt, stopping every few inches to swipe at a nonexistent speck. “A problem with what?”

  “Me.”

  Leona’s hand moved from her skirt to her hair, smoothing back a few errant strands of salon-softened gray as she trained her eyes on Tori’s. “You?”

  “You said, just now, that talk regarding my arrival has been good—mostly.”

  Leona tipped her glasses downward and gazed at Tori over the upper rim, her brown eyes warm. “Don’t you worry about a thing. Sour grapes are sour grapes; they’re not worth fretting over.”

  “Sour grapes? I don’t understand.”

  After several long moments, Leona turned on her sensible off-white pumps and gestured for Tori to follow. “Your position at the library . . . it wasn’t vacant, my dear.”

  “I-I don’t understand.” She knew she sounded like a broken record but she couldn’t help herself. If she’d done something wrong, she needed to know.

  Reclaiming her spot behind the counter, Leona offered a soft shrug. “You’re replacing Dixie Dunn, a woman who’s been Sweet Briar’s one and only librarian for more years than you’ve been alive. Retirement wasn’t her idea.”

  Uh-oh.

  Tori gulped. “You mean this woman . . . this Dixie Dunn . . . was fired because of me?”

  “Yes—I mean, no.” Leona pulled two oak chairs from behind the counter and slowly lowered herself onto one, her head bobbing at Tori to take the other. “To listen to Dixie tell it, she was fired because of you. But in reality it was time for her to go. She did things the way she’d been doing them for years. She balked at new programming, pooh-poohed any fresh ideas. The board wanted to bring in new blood. It just so happened to be yours.”

  “I didn’t realize.” Tori gave in to the lure of the chair, setting the bag of lightbulbs at her feet as her left temple began to throb. “I certainly wouldn’t want someone to lose their job for me.”

  “She was granted—or, maybe I should say—given retirement. If it wasn’t you, Victoria, they would have replaced her with someone. Unfortunately, they chose someone who isn’t”—Leona bent her knees to the side and clasped her hands in her lap, reminding Tori of an elegant tea party minus the cups, saucers, and table—“southern.”

  “I was born in the south,” Tori offered. “Tampa, to be exact.”

  Leona peered at her over the top of her glasses. “Florida is not considered part of the south, dear.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Florida is a melting pot. The south is not. You’re either a southern belle or you’re not.”

  “And my not being a true southern belle is a problem?”

  Leona pursed her lips together in contemplation before answering. “It can be. But let’s get back to that later. Right now I want to know more about you. Other than the part about being born in Tampa, bless your heart.”

  Forcing her thoughts from a wounded Dixie Dunn and her own southern inadequacies, Tori smoothed her dress and relaxed her shoulders. “We lived all over when I was growing up—mostly the Midwest. I went to college in Chicago, falling in love with both the city and a particular someone during my years there.”

  The woman clapped her hands gently. “Oooohhh. A romance in the big city. How enchanting.”

  “It was . . . for a few years.” Tori looked around the walls of the shop, desperate for anything that could change the course of the conversation. While she considered herself a fairly open book most of the time, her disastrous relationship with Jeff was still too raw, too painful. “That mirror right there”—she pointed to an oval piece of glass encased in elegant silver latticework—“is beautiful. How much is it?”

  The shopkeeper’s gaze traveled from Tori’s face to the wall beside the counter. “I love that piece, too. But if I kept everything I love, I’d have no store and no home in which to put it.”

  Mission accompl—

  Leona trained her focus back on Tori, her smile disarming. “But I’d rather hear about the romance that soured.”

  Or maybe not.

  Defeated, Tori considered simply sharing the whole story. Right down to the humiliation she’d endured when Jeff had been caught with his pants down—quite literally—in the coat closet of the hall where their engagement party was being held. But she opted to keep that information to herself. Realizing the love of one’s life was a philanderer was hard enough; admitting it to others was something entirely different. Instead, she gave an abbreviated version that she hoped would satisfy without seeming too evasive.

  “I was engaged to a man whom I loved very much.” Tori glanced down at her entwined hands then back up at Leona Elkin. “Only I found out he wasn’t who I thought he was.”

  “Tomcatting was he?”

  That’s one word for it.

  She simply nodded, pulling her hands from the safety of one another to push a strand of hair from her face. “I couldn’t stay in Chicago anymore. I’d spent years picturing my life there in a certain way. And after he”—her voice dipped momentarily as she struggled to cap her words in a suitable way—“showed his true colors, I knew reality was never going to match the fantasy I’d envisioned.”

  They sat in silence for a few long moments, each woman deep in thoughts the other could imagine but never know. Finally, Leona reached out and patted Tori’s knee. “You made a good decision. Change is not nearly as bad as lingering in water that’s become stagnant and cloudy.”

  She liked that description, hoped the older woman was right. But either way, remaining in Chicago was simply not an option. Not if she wanted to reclaim her life.

  “I never married,”
Leona said as her eyes traveled to a distant place Tori suspected reached far beyond the walls of Elkin Antiques and Collectibles. The kind of place she, herself, had traveled to many times over the past few months.

  “My twin sister, Margaret Louise, was always trying to get me to settle down. To stop traveling the world and have a family like she did,” continued Leona in a quiet voice. “But what she never understood—until recently—is that I didn’t share that same dream. I liked being on my own . . . learning . . . exploring . . . growing. I liked knowing that if I was going to be let down in some way, it would be by my own doing and no one else’s.”

  It was Leona’s last sentence that made Tori sit up taller. The woman was right—absolutely right. If Tori’s dreams were going to come to an end, she’d rather it be of her own doing.

  “I think that’s why I jumped at this job. Sure, I wanted to put as much distance between myself and Jeff as possible . . . but, just as much, I want to reclaim the path I’ve always envisioned for my life.” Tori stood and walked around the counter, her words growing in strength and animation. “Running my own library—it’s been a dream since I was a little girl. I have so many ideas, so many plans.”

  “Be careful, dear, you’re in a small town now. A small southern town, to be exact.”

  Leona’s caution halted Tori’s starry-eyed woolgather ing in its tracks. Tori retraced her steps, stopping short of the chair she’d occupied just seconds earlier. “I don’t understand.”

  The woman gestured toward the front windows of her shop. “Sweet Briar is a small town, Victoria. Virtually everyone in this town has lived here their whole life. And it’s those kinds of people—as wonderful as they are—who find comfort in stagnant waters. They like their food a certain way. They raise their children the way they were raised. They go by their given name, not a cutesy shortened version. They”—she coughed quickly, then let her eyes dip to the camisole-like top of Tori’s sundress—“dress a certain way.”