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I
was working on my customer’s dress alterations when Connie came into the front room.
“Hello!” she called.
“Back here.”
She walked over to the sewing machine. “What are you working on?”
“A customer bought this dress earlier today, and she asked to have it tailored for her.”
“Oh...that’s great...isn’t it?”
“It is,” I replied. “If she’s happy with my work, it’s likely she’ll be back.”
“I don’t see how anyone could not be happy with your work. Your designs are beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Connie rolled a chair over so she could sit near me. “I saw Janice leave with Guy.”
I nodded. “I saw him come in with flowers...red roses, as a matter of fact. He looked like he meant business.”
“Yeah. I hope things work out for them, don’t you?”
I simply shrugged.
“What?” she asked. “You don’t think they make a nice couple?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even met him, and I’m barely acquainted with Janice,” I said. “But it seems to me that she doesn’t care about Guy if she was involved with Mark until...well, you know.”
“True, but I don’t believe Janice was ever all that serious about Mark.”
“Maybe not, but it must’ve been serious to Mark. I mean, he talked with his mother about her.”
Max appeared at my right shoulder. “Except he didn’t tell Mommy dearest that his beloved was closer to the nursing home than she was!”
I lowered my head until I could hide my smile. I really did wish Max would stop popping up unexpectedly to provide commentary, no matter how amusing it was.
Connie sighed. “I can’t help it. I want everyone to be happy.”
“That’s a noble goal,” I told her.
Max snorted. “And about as likely as a pig growing wings and taking flight. Or me taking up knitting.” She paused. “Do you think I could take up knitting?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured.
“About what?” Connie asked.
“About...about anything.”
Connie patted my shoulder. “Poor dear. You’ve had a roller-coaster of an opening, haven’t you?”
Ford opened the door leading to the workshop. “Hey, sorry for interrupting.”
“No problem,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I’m going out for food and wondered if you guys would like anything.”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Connie said. “I brought lunch from home.”
“So did I.”
Ford grinned at me. “Thanks for bringing my customers upstairs earlier, but I’m sure they could’ve found me on their own.”
I looked down at my hands. “I was worried they were up to something. They didn’t strike me as particularly scholarly types.”
He laughed out loud at my comment. Then he said, “Hon, I’m sorry Mark’s death got you off to such a rocky start at Shops on Main.”
“I was just this minute telling her the same thing,” Connie said.
“Well, I hope your fears won’t cause you to leave. You’ve brought a breath of fresh air to the place.”
“Thanks, Ford. I don’t have any plans to go anywhere, but I do feel that we need to look out for each other.”
“Excellent point.” Connie put her hands on her elbows and hugged her arms to her chest. “We should do that no matter what. By the way, Ford, did the men Amanda brought upstairs buy anything?”
“One did—a 1960s collector’s edition of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.”
“Ernie was a handsome bird, but I always preferred Fitzgerald’s writing,” Max said.
I WAS SAYING GOODBYE to Martha Brighton, the woman who’d bought the dress and had it altered, when Olga, Taylor, and a diminutive young woman Taylor introduced as Hannah came into Designs on You.
“I really want that green dress to wear to prom in the spring,” Taylor said. “Only I want it in a bright pink. Can you do that?”
“Of course,” I said.
Taylor shot Hannah a look of triumph. “Told ya. She can do anything.”
“Well, I don’t know about anything—”
“If I can find a dress I want, you can make it for me?” Hannah interrupted me.
“Most likely.” I turned to Taylor. “Did you bring a fabric swatch with the color pink you have in mind?”
“No...but I’ll know it when I see it. What have you got?”
I opened my laptop and logged onto a favorite fabric wholesaler’s website. Taylor, Olga, and I looked through fabrics until we found Taylor’s desired shade of pink in a bolt of chiffon. Hannah was too busy scrolling through her phone to pay much attention to us, but she gave Taylor an obligatory thumbs up.
I took Taylor and Olga back to the atelier where I took Taylor’s measurements for the dress.
Hannah burst into workshop as I was measuring Taylor from the base of her neck to the center of her waistline. “I found it! I found my dress!”
I wrote down the measurement before looking at Hannah’s phone. The dress she’d found was a white strapless gown accented with black embroidery. I immediately recognized it as the dress Hubert de Givenchy designed for Audrey Hepburn to wear in the movie Sabrina.
“Well?” Hannah stared at my face, her blue eyes sparkling. “Can you do it? Can you make this dress for me?”
“I can.”
With a squeal, Hannah threw her arms around my neck and nearly knocked me down hugging me. I started to remind her that the dress wouldn’t be cheap, but, of course, Taylor’s dress wouldn’t be either. If the girls didn’t want one-of-a-kind dresses, they wouldn’t be here.
I finished Taylor’s measurements, and Olga wrote me a check for the retainer. Hannah promised that she and her mom would be back on Saturday.
“Jolly good,” Max said when we were alone in the shop. “You should be proud of yourself.”
“I am.” I sat on one of the wing chairs by the window.
Max appeared to sit on the other chair. “Then why don’t you sound happier?”
“No reason. I suppose I’m just a little tired.”
“Spill it. You know I’ll find out eventually.”
“Jason told me this morning that he’d be down to talk with me later today. I thought we were going to make plans to go out again.”
Jazzy came over and hopped onto my lap. I stroked her short gray fur and was soothed by the sound of her purring.
“He’s been fairly busy today,” Max said. “Cut the poor man a little slack.”
“I know he has work to do. I’ve had a lot to do myself.” I blew out a breath. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up where he’s involved, you know?”
“Applesauce! The man likes you, or else he wouldn’t have taken you to dinner last night.”
“I know.” I let my thoughts wander.
“You promised to help me find out more about what happened to Hazel,” Max said.
“All right.” I placed Jazzy onto the floor and went over to the desk where my laptop sat. I opened a new tab. “You said the only thing you two had in common was the liquor she brought from her cousin’s house in Knoxville?”
“That’s right.”
I typed 1930 booze into the search bar and found articles by Time and Slate that suggested the alcohol was to blame for what had happened to both women. I was skimming one article, and then I turned to Max. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah...please...I want to know.”
The Time article pointed out that thousands of deaths per year could be traced to alcohol poisoning, but the really toxic substance that can end up in moonshine is methanol. I opened yet another tab and searched for methanol.
“Methanol, or wood alcohol, can lead to blindness, paralysis or death. Methanol metabolizes into formaldehyde in the body...” I stopped and scanned. “Max, it says here that the effects of methanol include fatigue, headache, nausea, vertigo, dizziness... That’s what caused you to fall down the stairs.”
“And what caused poor Hazel to go blind.”
With a little more digging, Max and I discovered that the government added toxic ingredients to denatured industrial alcohols during Prohibition to make their consumption deadly.
We were still reading about “the chemists’ war” in the 2010 Slate article when an older man ambled into Designs on You and sat on one of the navy wingback chairs.
The man turned his rheumy eyes toward me and smiled. “Hello.”
“Good afternoon,” I said. “Welcome to Designs on You.”
He nodded toward the mannequin wearing the royal blue ready-to-wear dress. “My mother had a dress kinda like that one...quite a high-end garment, I imagine. Paid upwards of twenty dollars for it, if memory serves.”
“I’m sure she looked beautiful in it.”
“She did. I was awfully proud of her. She wore that dress when we went on the train. It was after Papa died during the war...in France.” He looked off into the distance as if he were watching the events unfold on a movie screen. “We rode the Birmingham Special from Pennsylvania to Bristol...Mother, Roscoe, and I.”
“I remember the Birmingham Special,” Max said. “It was a passenger train that stopped at the Bristol Train Station. Mother, Dorothy, and I took that train to New York City once.”
“Roscoe was four years old.” The man continued his narrative. “I was six and thought I was the man of the house now.” He chuckled. “A man at six. The things we get in our heads.”
“It sounds as if your mother was a brave woman,” I told him.
“She was. She truly was.” He shook his head. “She once took Roscoe and me on a train and brought us all the way here from Pennsylvania to live with her family. We rode the Birmingham Special. It was after Papa died in the war.”
I glanced at Max, who was looking a little sad at the man’s retelling of his journey from Pennsylvania to Bristol. I felt sorry for him too.
Jazzy came over and rubbed around our visitor’s ankles.
“What a pretty little thing you are!” he exclaimed. He patted his knees, and Jazzy obliged by hopping onto his lap. He stroked the cat’s back for a moment before glancing at me. He did a double-take, as if he hadn’t realized I’d been sitting there. “Oh...hello.”
“Hello.”
“I’m George.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, George. I’m Amanda.”
“Is this your kitty?”
“Yes. Her name is Jasmine.”
“She’s very nice.”
I smiled. “Thank you. She likes you.”
“I like her too.” He sniffed the air. “It’s funny, but I don’t smell the tobacco.”
“Tobacco?”
“Yes. I thought this was a tobacco shop now.”
“No,” I said. “Fortunately for me, Mrs. Meacham leased the shop to me instead. I design and make women’s clothing.”
The door eased open, and a younger man stepped into the room. “There you are,” he said to George.
“Roscoe! Come in and meet Amanda. She’s turned the tobacco shop into a...” He struggled to find the right words. “A sewing room.” He punctuated the end of his sentence with a triumphant nod.
I stood and extended my hand. “Hi, Roscoe. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Hey, Amanda.” He shook my hand and lowered his voice. “It’s Brett, actually. Brett Meacham. George is my grandpa.”
George got up and tottered toward the atelier. “I want to find that tobacco...see if there’s any cherry tobacco like we used to sneak from Granddad. Remember, Roscoe?”
“There’s not any tobacco here, George.” Brett quickly caught up to his grandfather and took him gently by the arm.
“Yes, there is. That good-for-nothing bum Mark has to go, and we’re putting in a tobacco shop.”
“But it’s not a tobacco shop.” Brett got in front of George, bent slightly to look the stooped man in the eyes, and spoke in a calm but firm tone. “This is a dress store.”
George blinked a time or two. “Brett...what are we doing?”
“I brought you to see Grandma.”
“Well, go up and get her, would you? I don’t feel like climbing those stairs.”
“All right.” Brett helped George back to the navy chairs and helped him sit. He turned to me. “I’ll be back in just a second.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s fine.” I sat beside him. “I’m sorry we don’t have any tobacco, George.”
“I am too,” he said. “But that Mark has to go. We’re giving him the bum’s rush because he won’t pay his rent. We don’t know what he’s doing with his money...gambling or drugs is our best bet.” He shrugged his bony shoulders. “You’re a pleasant young lady.”
“Why, thank you.”
“You’re very welcome. You remind me of my mother. She brought my little brother Roscoe and me here on the train way back in...” He screwed up his face. “I reckon it must’ve been ’44 or ’45.”
“George!” Mrs. Meacham hurried into the room and took George by the hands. “Brett shouldn’t have brought you out today. I think he got you over-excited.”
“Nonsense, love.” He smiled. “I was simply talking with this dear girl. She came here on the train...just like Roscoe and me.”
“That’s wonderful, sweetheart. Let’s you and I go home. You can tell me all about it on the way.”
“All right.” George stood, told me goodbye, and said he hoped to see me again sometime. “Brett, I’ll see you later.”
“Okay, Grandpa. Have fun.”
When Mrs. Meacham and her husband had left, Brett turned to me with a sheepish grin. “Sorry about that. Grandma thinks Grandpa should stay home and—how does she put it? —not get his feathers ruffled. But what a drag to be sitting around your house all day. Am I right?”
“I can see both sides,” I said. “I understand that your grandmother wants to protect George, but I also feel that it’s sweet of you to want him to keep enjoying life.”
Brett sank onto the chair George had vacated and crossed his long legs at the ankles. “You’re pretty patient. How many times did you have to hear that train story?”
“Oh, a time or two.”
He chuckled. “Grandpa has his good days and his not-so-good days. This is one of the not-so-good. It was really hard to keep him out of the past today.”
“I don’t think the clothes helped much. I design clothing using retro patterns, so they have a vintage look.”
“They’re pretty.” Brett’s hazel eyes lingered on my face, and I could feel the color rising in my cheeks.
“What do you do, Brett? When you’re not getting your Grandpa in trouble, I mean?”
“I’m a physical therapist.”
I supposed that explained his physique. The man obviously kept himself in shape. I ignored Max giving him the once-over while I thought back to what George had said.
“I’m sorry your grandpa was so upset about the tobacco shop. Did he have his heart set on the shop going in here?”
“Who’s to say?” He spread his hands. “It’s like once something gets in Grandpa’s head, it’s hard to get it out. He must’ve heard Grandma say someone was thinking of putting a tobacco shop in the building, and now he thinks there’s a tobacco shop here.”
“What happened to the tobacco shop?” I asked. “I mean, I’m guessing I got this spot because I leased it first, but I thought the tobacco shop would go in where Mark’s office was.”
“Nope. The guy backed out entirely. I believe our resident bookseller might’ve had a hand in his decision.”
“Ford? What do you mean?”
Brett shrugged. “You’d have to ask him about that.”
“Your grandpa seemed fairly agitated about Mark Tinsley.” I grinned. “’Give him the bum’s rush’.”
Brett got to his feet. “Yep, the old bum’s rush. Don’t pay your rent, you’re out.” He strode to the door. “It was nice meeting you, Amanda. I hope to see you again soon.”
“You too.”
“He seemed to be enjoying his visit until you brought up Mark,” Max said.
“He did, didn’t he? Do you think it’s such a touchy subject because Mark was killed here?”
“Could be. Or it could be a touchy subject for an entirely different reason.”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe he knows more about Mark—and his death—than he wants anyone to know.”
{ }
