Southern Sewing Circle 2 - Death Threads by Elizabeth Lynn Casey

Author:Elizabeth Lynn Casey [Casey, Elizabeth Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2011-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

One by one, each member of the Sweet Briar Ladies Society Sewing Circle descended on Tori’s cottage, armed and ready to stitch away the hours on a project that would benefit the town’s nursing home residents.

Rose Winters was the first to arrive in her drab colored housecoat and trademark cotton button-down sweater. Gone was the tension and hostility the retired schoolteacher had worn like a badge of honor just four nights earlier, in its place a weariness that sagged her frail and bony shoulders with an invisible weight.

Next, was Georgina Hayes, the tall and lanky mayor who looked as if she’d aged ten years over and above the ten she’d added when her husband was tried and convicted of the town’s first murder just six months earlier. Slowly but surely her perfectly honed handshake had grown less enthusiastic, her loosened grip symbolic of her hold on life.

British nanny Beatrice Tharrington, the youngest of the group, was quieter than usual, her gaze skirting direct eye contact with everyone and anyone in favor of a spool of thread and a needle.

Dixie Dunn, the retired former town librarian, claimed one of the two chairs Tori had dragged inside for the evening, the woman’s infamous sharp-tongued motormouth all but silent as she nodded a greeting at Leona, who held court in the plaid armchair that was everyone’s favorite.

For a group of women who normally spoke from arrival to departure, the swollen silence that blanketed Tori’s living room was nothing short of suffocating, the initial greetings between members fading away as the crickets beyond the open windows took center stage.

“Beautiful weather we’re having,” Tori said as she shifted from foot to foot. “The breeze we’ve been getting lately has been so nice, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Rose muttered under her breath as Beatrice shrugged in agreement.

“Miss Anna at the market said a breeze at this time of year is almost unheard of.” She knew she sounded like an idiot, chattering away like some bimbo, but she didn’t care. Mindless chatter was preferable to the kind of morbid silence that hung around them like a black storm cloud. “She said these kinds of breezes usually happen in—” Tori looked over her shoulder in relief as the screen door smacked against its wooden frame, bringing an end to any additional—and relatively ignored—babbling on her part.

“We’re here . . . we’re here.” Margaret Louise, in a charcoal gray polyester warm-up suit, strode into the cottage with a covered plate in her hand and her daughter-in-law at her heels. “We waited until the last possible moment just in case Debbie changed her mind and Jake needed to come along and supervise the brood . . . but no such luck.”

“I know. I’d been hoping just as hard on this end, too.” Tori spun around, covering the distance between them in two long strides. “Mmmm. Is there chocolate in there?” she asked Margaret Louise.

The woman’s eyes sparkled as she headed toward the treat-laden kitchen table in favor of answering.

“Well . .

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