Nina hadn't meant the tragedy itself. She'd meant the coffee.

Chapter 13.

Rose Winter's home was by far the most modest of the bunch with its small one-story cottagelike exterior. Unlike Debbie's and Georgina's homes, this one had just two windows facing front and a narrow porch that failed to wrap around the sides. Nonetheless, it exuded an undeniable warmth and charm that made you long to close yourself up inside its walls with a good book or a pair of strong arms.

The walkway, bordered on both sides by freshly planted yellow and white mums, conveyed a welcoming feel almost as if it was pulling you inward, begging you to come and stay for a while. The small front porch boasted a pair of rocking chairs and a small wicker table perfect for a pitcher of lemonade and a couple of glasses.

"See? I told you, Victoria, having just one chair on your front porch doesn't work. You want to fit in-you get another chair. Or two." Margaret Louise huffed her way up the steps behind Tori, stopping long enough to lift the aluminum foil lid that covered the librarian's dish. "Are those miniature Black Forest tortes?"

"They most certainly are." Tori pulled the foil back even further to afford her friend a better look. "My great-grandmother used to make these for special occasions. Like holiday gatherings and birthday parties."

Leona's twin sister leaned even closer, inhaling the dessert's aroma like that of a fine wine. "You didn't use a boxed cake mix."

"Me? A boxed cake mix? You can't be serious." A laugh escaped her mouth as she leaned forward and hugged the woman. "Actually, I may have given in to temptation and taken the easy route if it weren't for the fact I'm trying to make a good impression."

"Store-bought whipped cream?"

"Nope. I made that from scratch, too."

Margaret Louise pursed her lips as she replaced the foil across the plate and straightened up. "Black Forest tortes . . . from scratch? You're in, Victoria."

"If only it was that simple." She folded the edges of the foil around the plate and shifted it to her other hand, the tote bag with her pillow and sewing box dangling from her wrist. "I don't think a homemade dessert is going to make everyone forget there's a murder suspect in their midst."

"It's a start." The woman tucked her arm inside Tori's and pulled her toward the door. "People who make Black Forest tortes for their fellow sewing circle members don't poison coffee."

"What about people who make coffee?" The second the words were out she regretted them. She'd vowed to herself on the way over she wasn't going to talk about Tiffany Ann's murder. If it came up, she'd deal with it then. But if it didn't, she'd count her blessings.

Margaret Louise pulled her hand from Rose's front door. "People who make coffee? What are you talking about, Victoria?"

"Can I tell you later?" Tori waved at Rose as the elderly woman approached the door. "I want to avoid the topic of Tiffany Ann as much as possible."

"As if that'll happen, bless your heart." Margaret Louise yanked the screen door open and stepped inside, Tori blinking in her wake.

She knew the woman was right. The likelihood of making it all the way through sewing circle without the biggest news story to ever hit Sweet Briar being discussed was wishful thinking.

Still, she couldn't help but wish for it anyway as she gazed up at a sky still too light for stars.

"I'm glad to see you listened, Victoria." Rose tugged the edges of her sweater tighter against her body as she backed up to let Tori pass.

"I am, too." She handed the plate to Rose and swept her hand toward the door. "Your front walkway is absolutely beautiful. I love the yellow mums, they're so cheerful."

"Thank you, Victoria." The elderly woman set the plate down on a nearby counter and took Tori by the arm. "I want you to see something."

As she walked with the woman down a small hallway off the kitchen, Tori couldn't help but marvel at the way the ice had begun to melt between them. The woman who'd studied her with such coolness at Debbie's home was emerging as one of her biggest supporters.

"This is my special room." Rose stopped as they reached a doorway halfway down on the left. "It's where I sit and sew."

Tori gasped as she took in the small room with little more than a cushioned wicker chair, a gooseneck lamp, and a large picture window that took up the entire back wall.

"Oh, Rose. This looks just like my great-grandmother's room."

Pleased, Rose rubbed Tori's lower arm with her cold fingers. "I suspected you'd think that after you described it to me the other night."

She nibbled her lower lip inward, resisted the urge to cry as hard as she could. "It's perfect, Rose. Just perfect."

Slowly the woman moved her head as close to Tori's ear as she could. When her mouth was mere inches away, she spoke. "You are welcome to sew here anytime you want. Especially those costumes for the dress-up trunk."

She blinked against the tears that refused to be kept back, her voice shaky. "Thank you, Rose."

And then the woman was gone, her tiny frame moving slowly back down the hallway from which they came, the ever growing number of voices pulling her back to her job as hostess. Tori followed, her thoughts traveling down a hallway she hadn't literally walked in years to a place she visited every single day.

"Victoria, there you are." Debbie appeared beside her right shoulder as she entered the kitchen, a few conversations stopping long enough to acknowledge her presence with a look if not a greeting. "Did you talk to Nina?"

Tori shook her head, dropping her voice to a level she hoped couldn't be heard by anyone else. "Duwayne called in first thing this morning. Nina has laryngitis. She did a little too much screaming at the fair Saturday night."

"Nina? Nina Morgan?" Debbie asked, her mock surprise a near perfect mimic of Tori's earlier that day.

She laughed. "I know. Can you believe it? But she must be good at it, because her booth apparently earned over five hundred dollars for their church."

Debbie stepped back a few feet and motioned Tori to follow her to the room where the circle would meet. "Okay, but you still need to talk to her."

"I will. As soon as she's back. If she can't talk a whole lot, I'll give her some paper and a pen."

"Good idea." Debbie glanced over her shoulder as they neared the noisiest part of Rose's home. "By the way, I saw what you brought tonight. I want the recipe."

"I think Margaret Louise has dibs."

"Dibs?"

"Dibs . . . first crack at . . ."

Debbie's eyebrows raised.

"She wants the recipe as well." Tori bit back a laugh as Debbie finally nodded in understanding.

It never ceased to amaze her how different Sweet Briar was from anywhere she'd ever lived, especially Chicago. She hadn't moved more than fifteen hundred miles yet it felt, sometimes, as if she'd crossed oceans and continents to get from one to the other.

It also made her miss Leona all over again. The woman's desire to school Tori in southern ways the first few weeks was sorely needed. And truly missed.

At least by Tori anyway. Whether Leona had even bat-ted an eye over the situation was anyone's guess.

Still, she was unprepared for the stiffened shoulders and tightened mouths that greeted her arrival in Rose's sunroom. Somehow, amid the unexpected show of support from Rose and Debbie, she'd let her guard down, assumed the rest of the circle knew she wasn't capable of murder as well. But she'd been wrong. One only had to see the looks that passed between Georgina, Leona, and Dixie to face that fact. Beatrice simply looked downward at the vest taking shape as the machine's needle sped along, her discomfort at the situation virtually impossible to miss.

"Victoria, I'm surprised to see you here." Georgina pulled her straw hat from her head and placed it on the floor beside her feet.

Rose pushed her way into the room, her hand grazing Tori's arm as she passed. "I told her to come."

A hint of betrayal shot across Dixie's face as she worked her lips into a tightly closed circle.

"Come, Victoria, sit here . . . by me." Rose slowly lowered herself onto a sofa covered in a bold floral pattern. "The light over here is quite good for detail work."

"Shouldn't you be at your home, where you can be watched?" Dixie finally asked.

"Where I can be watched? By whom?" Tori froze in her spot, her mind and body suddenly plagued by an overwhelming desire to bypass Rose's invitation in favor of a tear-drenched sprint back to her own house.

"The police."

"Daniel is on top of everything in this investigation," Leona piped up, her perfectly manicured hand draped across the base of her neck, a magazine poised on her lap in lieu of the more popular sewing basket or latest project. "You should see him work, he's so thorough."

"Thorough?" Tori spat. "You think Investigator McGuire is thorough?"

Leona's hand dropped to her lap as her voice grew indignant. "I most certainly do. He's working on this investigation around the clock."

"Is that why he's had time to stroll around in front of the library every day this week? Or why I've seen him at the hardware store and the market simply hanging out, chatting up the staff and various customers about the weather and politics?" Tori tugged her tote bag up her arm, gripping it against her shoulder. "I think maybe he should spend less time wandering and more time actually investigating. Maybe then he'd actually have half a chance of solving Tiffany's murder."

By the time she was done with her rant there wasn't a closed mouth in the room. Including her own. Only hers was draped open out of shock-at herself.

Georgina shifted in her seat, her hands clenching and unclenching the pair of slacks she'd pulled from her bag. Dixie's mouth, while open, still managed to be twisted. And Leona- "Daniel is not wandering aimlessly. There's been a reason you've seen him in every place you have." Leona yanked open the cover of her magazine then stopped to smooth the page with a gentle hand. "That man doesn't have an aimless bone in his body."

"That little tidbit might well qualify for what the kids refer to as"-Margaret Louise shot the index and middle fingers on both hands into the air and wiggled them up and down to indicate quotation marks-"too much information."

Mouths gaped open once again.

"I mean, really, Twin, do we need to hear about the aim of this man's various body parts?" A mischievous grin lit Margaret Louise's face as she dug her elbow into Debbie's side. "Get it? His aim?"

"I get it, Margaret Louise." Debbie ducked her beet red face into her oversized canvas bag and pulled out the sign she'd been working on at each of the past two circles. "How about we focus on sewing for a little while, ladies? Leave the whodunit solving to the authorities?"

"And to a pair of Nancy Drew types like Victoria and myself."

All eyes moved from Tori to Margaret Louise and back again.

"Nancy Drew types?" Georgina asked.

"That's right." Margaret Louise unrolled a piece of brown thread from a spool, the length extending farther and farther with each turn of her hand. "Since Investigator McGuire has failed to look for the truth, Victoria and I will. And we'll find it."

"That's why we have police: it's their job to solve the case," Georgina said as she held a steadying hand against Leona's magazine-holding hand. "Civilians getting involved will only slow the process."

"Investigator McGuire getting in his own way only slows the process," Tori corrected.

"I find that offensive," Leona said, her cultured voice causing everyone to sit a little taller. "Daniel is working night and day to solve this crime."

"It's not working. The more time he wastes focusing on Victoria, the more time he gives the real killer to get away." Margaret Louise raised the dark brown spool to her mouth and bit the foot-long piece of thread loose.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Rose offered from across the room, her hand still patting the empty spot on the sofa beside her own. "Do I need to open my mouth to remind you of what will happen if you keep that up?"

Tori looked a question at her newfound friend, torn between the desire to cut short the conversation at hand and the urge to plead her case.

Opening her mouth wide, Rose pointed at the missing corner of her top left tooth. "You need to use scissors to cut your thread, not your teeth."

"Biting off thread did that?" Tori ventured across the room and boldly claimed her spot beside Rose.

Take that, nonbelievers. . . .

"It most certainly did. Happened at a sewing circle about six months ago." Rose scooted over a few extra inches on the couch to give Tori ample room to work on her pillow.

"My great-grandmother used to bite her thread all the time." Tori pulled the pillow from her bag, aware of the envied glances it drew. "She never broke any of her teeth."

"That's because most threads now are polyester and they weren't back when your great-grandmother was sewing," Georgina said. She rolled a leg of the slacks inside out and held a miniature tape measure to the hem, shaking her right arm from time to time. "The polyester thread will wear a groove in your tooth over time. And eventually-snap."

Rose nodded, her finger tapping her tooth. "I considered getting it fixed but I just don't have the money. Besides, it's not like there are any men my age left to impress."

"I thought that same thing less than a year ago and look at me now," Georgina said as she gave her arm a quick shake before rolling up her tape measure and tossing it into her sewing box. "Thomas and I couldn't be happier. Unless maybe he didn't travel for work quite so much. But you can't question success, now can you?"

Tori didn't know quite how it had happened, but somehow Rose's tooth had managed to turn an evening of sewing into exactly what it was supposed to be-time to get caught up on sewing projects while engaging in a little good-natured conversation. And she was glad.

As hurtful as it was to see Leona support the same man who seemed hell-bent on destroying her reputation, Tori was grateful for the reprieve. It gave her a chance to cool down and provided yet another opportunity to show who she was to the group's members. To prove to them, somehow, that she was as far from a murderer as anyone they could ever find.

"What does Thomas do?" Tori asked in an attempt to set aside the swords for at least one evening.

Georgina beamed as she looked up from her hemming and shook her arm once again. "He's a salesman. He sells products designed to make senior citizens' lives easier. Walkers, wheelchairs, special beds, and those kinds of things. He has a very large territory that requires a good deal of traveling to places like Pine Grove and Washington Falls, though lately he's found plenty of untapped business in Ridge Cove."

"What on earth is wrong with your arm, Georgina?" Margaret Louise bellowed. "You look like you're shaking out a rectal thermometer."

"Margaret Louise!" Leona stated between closed lips. "Must you really be so-so crude?"

"Lighten up, Twin." Margaret Louise winked at her sister before looking back at Georgina.

"I've been signing a lot of paperwork for Thomas the last week or so. He's compiling a few petitions to lobby for the rights of seniors on the state level and he thinks it would help their fight if they had some mayoral signatures. He's hoping my name will carry clout." The woman shook her arm once again before retrieving a needle from the tiny box in her lap. "But I have to say, I'm beginning to wonder how your Colby, bless his heart, can sign hundreds of books on any given day. Thirty papers nearly did me in. Thank heavens I didn't have to read them."

Debbie shrugged over her project, her eyebrows knitted together in concentration as she worked her turquoise thread in and out through her canvas-backed sign. "I think he's so glad to be out from behind a keyboard for months on end that signing his name on a book is no big deal. But even that gets tiring after a while, too."

"How many books has your husband written?" Tori asked as she bent over the tassel she was trying to attach at the bottom of the pillow's triangular flap.

"Four. The first two were about getting his feet wet. The next two propelled him further up the ladder. The newest one he's working on-when he can find some quiet time between the kids' hectic schedules and my crazy hours at the bakery-might be the one. You know, the big one. At least that's what his agent is saying. She thinks this could be the one that gets him known nationally." Debbie looked up from her sign long enough to exhale a piece of hair away from her eyes. "That is, if he finishes it."

"He will. Colby is bound and determined to write, you know that. It's in his blood. Like baking is for you and me." Margaret Louise fussed with the lampshade beside her chair in an attempt to get as much light as possible before tackling the hole in Jake Junior's brown church slacks. "As for feeling guilty about your schedule at the bakery . . . don't. You're allowed to pursue dreams, too."

Tori peeked at Margaret Louise across the room, a smile tugging at her lips at the sight of the more-than-a-little plump woman. She'd liked Margaret Louise the very first night they met-once she'd come to realize the woman's outspoken nature meant no malice. But her fondness for the woman had increased tenfold in the two weeks since, a fact that was as much about who she was as a grandmother and a person as it was her steadfast belief in Tori's innocence and her desire to help prove it to everyone else.

She only wished the woman's twin sister had been as steadfast. Sneaking a look at Leona, Tori felt her smile disappearing. They'd gotten along so well. And then-boom-she'd been cast aside for a man who looked good in a uniform.