Chapter One
“Oh, Kendrick Lowry,” Mama gasped, clutching her pearl-studded handkerchief as if the world were about to end. She waved it in the air like she was fanning away a fainting spell. “I just can’t. I simply cannot.”
Her voice broke with so much dramatic flair, you’d think the Lord Himself had descended in the living room and declared me unfit to walk down the aisle.
But I knew better. Mama could whip up a pity performance better than a preacher on Sunday morning.
And sure enough, the tears that had threatened to fall vanished quicker than a pat of butter on a hot biscuit.
“But I can!” She popped right back up, hands on her hips, a victorious grin plastered across her face.
Behind me, Georgia, a seamstress so ancient she probably hemmed the first Confederate uniform, adjusted her lopsided cat-eye glasses and let out a loud humph. She didn’t have to say a word for me to know she didn’t agree with Mama, but no one in Cottonwood dared disagree with Mama.
“I reckon we can do a little tucking around the waist,” Georgia finally said, squinting at me through the glasses perched precariously on her nose. “And a lot of nipping around the breast.”
I stared at her in horror as she made a slicing motion with her hand right across my chest. “Kenni certainly didn’t get the Sims side of the family genes, did she?”
“Mama!” I shrieked, my arms flailing in the shapeless mound of fabric masquerading as a wedding dress. “Do I really have to stand here and entertain this any longer? I cannot wear this…this Halloween costume to my wedding!”
Georgia’s eyes went so wide I thought she might faint, but Mama waved me off with a cluck of her tongue.
“Oh, hush now, Kenni. Georgia can work miracles, can’t you, sugar?” she asked but really didn’t mean it in a question form, rather more it was like she expected Georgia to do what she’d asked.
Georgia gulped so hard I could hear her throat creak.
“Well, I’ll do what I can, but…” Georgia started to say but that didn’t matter to Mama. She was already poking and prodding the dress like she was auditioning for a spot on Project Runway.
I stood there letting mama do whatever it was she was trying to make the dress even look presentable in the shape it was in, and glanced around Georgia’s house which hadn’t changed a bit since I was a kid.
The heavy scent of mothballs and lavender sachets clung to the air, mixing with the faint whiff of fabric glue and thread. Georgia’s ancient sewing machine sat in the corner on a crooked card table, surrounded by a fortress of fabric bolts. The walls were lined with faded photos of Georgia’s ancestors, all staring disapprovingly at me like they could sense my complete lack of enthusiasm for this “family heirloom” of a dress.
As a kid, I’d spent many afternoons in this very room getting my Sunday school dresses “taken in,” as Mama called it. Really, it was just Georgia adding unnecessary frills and lace that made me look like a bedspread from the Sears catalog. I could still remember the scratch of crinoline and the unbearable itch of hand-sewn pearls on my neck as mama tried to make me into some sort of southern belle. I won’t go into any detail on how she’d thrown this biggest hissy fit this side of the Mississippi when I told her I was going to law enforcement school.
She took to the bed for nearly a month over that one.
Now here I was, years later, standing in the same spot, drowning in a yellowed wedding dress that smelled faintly of cedar and disappointment.
“Calling all units, calling all units,” a crackly voice blasted through the old walkie-talkie clipped to the shoulder of my sheriff’s uniform that was lying in a pile on the floor. The familiar screech of static was followed by the unmistakable rasp of Betty Murphy, Cottonwood’s one-woman dispatch team.
Mama froze, her hands gripping the hem of the dress as if she’d been personally insulted by the interruption. “Now what in heaven’s name—”
I stepped away, mama still clinging on to the hem, crawling on her knees to walk with me.
Reaching down I grabbed the shirt and hit the button on the side of the walkie talkie.
It beeped.
“Go ahead, Betty,” I sighed, already bracing for whatever drama had unfolded in town.
“Calling all units,” Betty repeated, dragging out the words like molasses on a cold day. “This is an urgent matter down at the courthouse. Judge Blackwell’s…” She paused, the sound of her shuffling papers crackling over the line. “Judge Blackwell’s been found—oh, heavens, Kenni—deader than a possum on I-75. Over.”
Mama gasped and clutched her chest like she’d been shot. “The judge? Well, I never!”
But Betty wasn’t over.
“I mean murdered dead, Kenni. Um, sheriff,” she clicked off again. Not even a second later she chirped back, “Murdered!”
“On my way,” I said after I hit the button to talk back. “Call down to Cottonwood Elementary and tell Vesta Lynn that she needs to get Finn out of the library where he’s down there for Read with a Sheriff Day and have him call me.”
“10-4,” Betty chirped.
There was no time to wrestle out of the dress. I grabbed my uniform from off the floor, balled it up in my hands, and bolted for the door, my boots thudding against the floorboards.
“Kenni, what do you think you’re doing?” Mama hollered, chasing after me.
“I’ll change in the Jeep!” I shouted back, slamming the screen door behind me.
Duke, my ever-loyal hound who was waiting on Georgia’s front porch, bounded down the porch steps after me, barking as if he knew the urgency of the situation.
I threw open the Jeep’s door and climbed in, wedding dress and all.
The hoop skirt puffed up around me like I was sitting inside a cotton candy machine. Duke looked at me like even he knew this was a new low.
The wedding dress puffed out so much I could barely reach the gearshift. Forget solving a murder, I’d be lucky if I didn’t crash into a mailbox on the way there.
“Lord help me,” I muttered, jamming the keys into the ignition. “I can’t even solve a murder without looking like Scarlett O’Hara on laundry day.”
Mama stood on the porch, hands on her hips, shaking her head.
“Don’t you ruin that dress, Kendrick Lowry! Five generations of Sims women wore that dress, and not a single one of them got divorced!” she hollered.
As I sped down Lone Oak Drive I glanced at Duke in the passenger seat. His floppy ears bounced with every bump in the road. He let out a long, soulful howl as we hit a pothole. Whether it was the urgency of the case or the ridiculous state of my wardrobe, I couldn’t say.
“Duke, if anyone sees me like this, I’m going to have to move to another county.” I gripped the wheel as I headed us straight for the courthouse.
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