Deadly Notions - By Elizabeth Lynn Casey Page 0,21

anywhere near him during the party.”

Debbie’s face turned crimson. “Can you imagine anyone saying that about my precious Jackson? That woman was out of her mind.”

“I seem to remember you were, too, after you heard what she had to say about him.” Dixie scooted to the edge of the rattan chair and struggled to her feet. “And your cake.”

Margaret Louise turned and looked at Debbie. “She said something about the cake? I didn’t hear that.”

“Neither did I,” Tori said.

Gritting her teeth, Debbie flashed a look of annoyance in Dixie’s direction. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Oh no?” Dixie’s stout frame moved across the sun porch. “Then why did you point to the rope the kids were swinging from and speculate how much it would take to wrap around that woman’s neck?”

Margaret Louise clapped her hands sharply. “Dixie, that’s enough.”

“Seems to me you’d like me pointing that out on account of the fact it deflects attention from the things you said.”

“It’s already been established I wanted to strangle her,” Margaret Louse reminded Dixie in a voice that was uncharacteristically sharp for a woman who seemed to smile twenty-four/seven.

“But has it been established that you talked about the best way to untie the kind of knot Milo used to secure the rope to the tree in the first place?”

More gasps erupted around the room.

“Dixie, why are you doing this?” Tori pleaded, her heart sinking at the fear in her friends’ eyes. “You made a comment or two yourself that night.”

The elderly woman stopped just short of the hallway that led to the bathroom. “You’re right, I did. And I suspect those words will come back to bite me just as all of yours will do for you. But knowledge is power, Victoria. And knowing what can be used against us will help us to prepare.”

Leona tossed her magazine onto the coffee table and swiveled to face Dixie. “Prepare?”

Dixie nodded then offered an explanation that made perfect sense. “To prepare a defense.”

“A defense against what?”

“The kind of scrutiny that comes with a murder investigation. The kind of scrutiny each one of us is going to be under until Ashley Lawson’s killer is finally caught.”

Chapter 8

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting there in the dark. Maybe a half hour, maybe more. It was hard to know exactly without getting up off the couch to check her cell phone—an effort that seemed too great.

In fact, if Tori was honest with herself, she knew the effort to do much of anything at that moment seemed too great. Especially when the events of the past twelve hours were weighing on her shoulders like a pile of bricks.

The moment she’d heard of Ashley Lawson’s death, she’d known the offhand comments made during Sally Davis’s birthday party would come back to bite them. But it wasn’t until that evening’s circle meeting that she’d truly begun to realize just how ferocious that bite might be.

There was no doubt about it, Dixie had gotten the circle riled up, her stick poking offending more than a few members. But when Tori had allowed herself to step back and be objective, she knew Dixie was right. People tended to look out for themselves. Self-preservation, after all, was part of human nature.

Knowing that, though, didn’t make the fallout from Dixie’s comments any easier to take. Never in the past year had Tori ever seen Debbie get as defensive about anything as she did regarding her feelings for Ashley Lawson. And never, in that same amount of time, had she ever known Margaret Louise to be anything but happy and fun-loving—a far cry from the demeanor the woman had exhibited on the heels of Dixie’s cross-examination.

Even the normally shy Beatrice had shown something resembling a spine when Dixie had mimicked the victim’s opinion on what constituted correct party attire, the nanny’s flaming red cheeks and trembling hands merely a hint to the animosity she still harbored.

Pulling her knees to her chest, Tori wrapped her arms around them and stared at the swath of light streaming in through the blinds from the street lamp two doors down. She knew she should probably consider getting ready for bed, or, at the very least, laying out her clothes for the next day, but she couldn’t. Her mind was simply too keyed up—and her heart too heavy—to move.

A soft knock at the door made her look up, her eyes squinting toward the transom window that framed the right side of the door. Suddenly, a hand rose up against