Thyme of Death

MORE PRAISE

FOR CHINA
BAYLES AND

THYME OF
DEATH.
. .

“AN
APPEALING CHARACTER ... a good addition to the growing list of female amateur
sleuths.”

—
Booklist

“A NOVEL TO
SAVOR ... I LOVED IT!”

—Susan
Dunlap,

author of
Death
and Taxes

“LIVELY AND
ENGAGING.”

—Fort Worth
Star-Telegram

“A PLEASING
ADDITION TO THE GROWING

SHE-SLEUTH
POPULATION.”

—Rockland
(ME) Courier-Gazette

“FANS   OF  
STRONG   WOMEN   DETECTIVES WILL   BE   DELIGHTED   TO   MEET   CHINA

BAYLES ... I’m
looking forward to hearing more

from Susan
Wittig Albert.”

—Maureen
Reddy, author of
Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel

“COLORFUL
CHARACTERS ... A wreath of (bay) laurel goes to Susan Wittig Albert in this,
her debut into the mystery game.”

—Western Wake
(NC) Herald

China Bayles
Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

thyme of death                                      
MISTLETOE
MAN

                             
witches’ bane                                                 
BLOODROOT

hangman’s root                                               
INDGO DYING

 
rosemary remembered                                 
AN UNTHYMELY
DEATH

        rueful death                                               
A DILLY OF A
DEATH

love lies bleeding                                            
DEAD MAN’S
BONES

  chile death                                                        
BLEEDING
HEARTS

 
lavender lies                                         
SPANISH
DAGGER

CHINA
BAYLES,   BOOK OF DAYS

With her
husband, Bill Albert, writing as Robin Paige

DEATH AT
BISHOP S KEEP                        DEATH AT GALLOWS GREEN

           DEATH AT DAISY’S FOLLY                         DEATH
AT DEVIL’S BRIDGE

           DEATH AT ROTTINGDEAN              DEATH
AT WHITECHAPEL

           DEATH AT EPSOM DOWNS                        DEATH
AT DARTMOOR

           DEATH AT GLAMIS CASTLE                       DEATH
IN HYDE PARK

           DEATH AT BLENHEIM PALACE                  DEATH
ON THE LIZARD

Beatrix
Potter Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

THE TALE OF
HILLTOP FARM

THE TALE OF
HOLLY HOW

THE TALE OF
CUCKOO BROW WOOD

THE TALE OF
HAWTHORN HOUSE

Nonfiction
books by Susan Wittig Albert

WRITING FROM LIFE WORK OF HER OWN

If you
purchased this book without a cover, you should
be
aware that
this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the
publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment
for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

THYME OF
DEATH

A Berkley
Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with Charles Scribner’s Sons, an
imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company

PRINTING
HISTORY

Charles
Scribner’s Sons edition published 1992

Berkley
Prime Crime edition / March 1994

All rights
reserved.

Copyright ©
1992 by Susan Wittig Albert.

This book,
or parts thereof, may not be reproduced

in any form
without permission.

For
information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a divsion of
Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson
Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN:
978-0-425-14098-7

Berkley
Prime Crime Books are published

by The
Berkley Publishing Group,

a division
of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson
Street, New York, New York 10014.

The name
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the

BERKLEY
PRIME CRIME

design are
trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

PRINTED IN
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

30   29   28   27    26    25

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge the
contributions of the following people: Mike Ellison, Texas Poison Control
Center; Mike Cleckler, Cleckler Firearms, Leander, TX; Connie Moore, The Herb
Bar, Austin, TX; Peggy Kelley and William Fly, who furnished legal back-ground;
and John Webber and Patty Craig, who offered valuable editorial comment. I also
wish to thank Anita McClellan, without whose dedicated efforts and patient
encouragement this book might not have been published, and Susanne Kirk,
Executive Editor of Scribners, for her energetic support of this project.

Most of all, I am grateful to my husband and
partner, William Albert, who provided technical underpinning, plot thickening,
and editorial sharpening, and computer consulting, at all hours of the day and
night.

Author’s
Note

This novel is set in the imaginary
Texas town of Pecan Springs, which includes such fictitious elements as the
campus of Central Texas State University and the Pecan River. Readers familiar
with the central Texas hill country should not confuse Pecan Springs with such
real towns and villages as San Marcos, New Braunfels, Wimberley, or
Fredericksburg, or CTSU with local universities. The author has created the
fictional characters and events of this book for the reader’s pleasure, and
intends no connection to real people or happenings.

CHAPTER 1

If I’d known how the week was going
to turn out I would have sent it back first thing Monday and asked for a
refund.

But Monday morning fooled me. It was
the kind of day that thrills members of the Pecan Springs Chamber of Commerce
right down to the pointy toes of their cowboy boots. The blistering Texas
summer was fading fast, the cedar elms were coppery against a crisp blue sky,
and as I came down the flagstone path to the street I was grinning. After
two-plus years in Pecan Springs, I was still grateful for having escaped
Houston with most of my sanity and some of my youth. I’d spent what seemed like
an eternity there, give or take a few centuries, in a law firm that specialized
in protecting the constitutional rights of bad guys - mostly
big
bad
guys who had the wherewithal to pick up the tab for an expensive defense. At
the weathered age of thirty-nine, I’d sold my yuppie condo-with-sauna and moved
to Pecan Springs, Texas, population fifteen thousand, not counting the tourists
and the students at Central Texas State U. I’d put my savings into a
century-old stone building that housed a herb shop with the clever name
of Thyme and
Seasons Herb Company. Everybody in the law firm knew I’d gone nuts. Me, I knew
I’d gone sane. I’m not saying I believed every second that I was doing the
right thing, far from it. But I’d elbowed my way up the ladder and the view
from the top wasn’t pretty. I’d seen enough of the shadow side of justice to
last me for the rest of my life.

Thyme and Seasons fronts on Crockett
Street, a couple of blocks from the town square and a dozen blocks from the
CTSU campus. Pecan Springs is a picturesque town, halfway between Austin to the
north and San Antonio to the south. People who think that Texas is nothing but
sagebrush and prickly pear flats are always surprised to see the
cedar-blanketed Edwards Plateau that rises west into the hill country, and the
flat fertile farmland that spreads east to the Gulf Coast. West, too, lies the
chain of highland lakes, strung like silver charms on the silver bracelet of
the Colorado River, where Dallas and Houston money comes to play. Ten miles
from town there’s Canyon Lake on the Guada
-
lupe River,
the site of several luxurious vacation communities, and the lovely San Marcos
River rises from Spring Lake and winds crystal clear beneath massive cypresses
and sycamores. While Pecan Springs may not be endowed with big-city cultural
riches like opera and ballet, I personally prefer to live in a green and
beautiful place, with blue lakes and limestone hills within biking distance.
And
after fifteen years of risking life and limb on the 1-10 into Houston,
simply not having to drive to work every morning is something to feel cheerful
about over breakfast.

Today was my day off. The shop was
closed, and I was headed next door to the Craft Emporium, a rambling Victorian
mansion that houses a jumbled warren of tiny craft shops, antique booths, and
boutiques. As I opened the stained-glass front door, Gretel Schumaker

was hanging a fresh batch of
hand-dipped candles in the front window of what was once the parlor. She was
surrounded by her craft - a forest of scented candles in dozens of shapes and
hundreds of shades.

“Hi, China,” Gretel called. She is
blond and sturdily buxom, like her mother and German grandmother, who also make
candles. It’s a family enterprise. “Hey, you got lavender oil? Mom wants to dip
a batch tomorrow.”

“Sure,” I said. “Stop by and knock
at the kitchen door in an hour or so, and I’ll get it for you.” I live behind
the shop. As far as the neighbors are concerned, that means I’m never closed.
Sometimes that’s a nuisance. Mostly, though, it’s okay.

Because I was on an errand, I only
nodded at Peter Dudley, who was fussily dusting Depression glassware in what
used to be the mansion’s dining room and is now his upscale antique shop. If
you do more than nod, you’re lost. Peter’s fund of gossip is only rivaled by
that of Constance Letterman, who owns the Emporium. Peter wears a dark toupee
that covers his bald spot, open-necked white shirts with the sleeves rolled up,
and pastel slacks. He’s a rare treat in Pecan Springs, where everybody’s into
jeans, tee shirts, and cowboy boots, which is exactly what I was wearing today.
My tee shirt announced that behind every successful woman was herself.

‘If you’re here to see dear
Constance,” Peter said solicitously, putting down a Fiesta Ware pitcher as if
it were the Hope diamond, “you’ve just missed her. She’s gone to the newspaper.”

“Thanks,” I said, and kept going, up
the grand stair-case that climbs to the second floor. I was on my way to
Violett’s Doll House, a tiny shop, squeezed, appropriately, into the mansion’s
old nursery and crammed floor to ceiling with dolls, each one uniquely and
individually

handcrafted by Violett Hall.

Violett herself is shy and
sweet-faced, with a cupid’s-bow smile and brown hair fringed in Mamie
Eisenhower bangs and curled over her ears in tight, tidy rolls that Peter
affectionately calls “cootie garages.” She’s lived all of her fifty-something
years in Pecan Springs, keeping house and caring for an invalid mother who died
several years ago. When Violett wasn’t nursing Mrs. Hall or mothering the
multitude of cats and birds she dotes on, she was sewing stuffed cows and plaid
pigs and checkered chickens for the First Baptist Church Holiday Bazaar and the
Public Library Baked Goods and Craft Sale. After Mrs. Hall died, Constance
talked Violett into renting the mansion’s nursery and making a business out of
her hobby. It seems to have worked out, for her soft, pudgy dolls and stuffed
animals have been featured in several newspaper and magazine articles, and her
customers come from as far away as Little Rock. She can’t be turning a huge
profit (nothing in the Emporium does
that),
but Constance says that Violett’s
Doll House always pays its rent on time and Violett probably clears enough to
feed her pets and keep a roof over their heads. She’s fanatical about her
animals. One purpose of my visit was to bring her the herbs she’d ordered,
tincture of echinacea and goldenseal to treat a cat’s ear mites, and the
tincture of marigold and myrrh that she uses to fight her foot fungus. It must
have been bothering her. I noticed that she’d switched to sandals, a departure
from the usual sensible loafers that went with her neat A-line skirt and the
tidy white round-collared blouse she wore buttoned up to the throat. Violett’s
outfits always reminded me of schoolgirls’ uniforms.