Thyme of Death (11 page)

I was writing copy for the first
issue of the newsletter I’m planning when Constance Letterman came in. She was
wearing a pair of wine-red polyester slacks and a matching boat-necked jersey
top with a wide green stripe that went around the neck and down both arms. She
looked like a beet. A round, happily boastful beet.

“Ms. Kotner agreed to let me
interview her for the
Enterprise”
she said, leaning on the counter. “I’m
goin’ to write a feature article on her.” Constance has a sharply nasal East
Texas twang.

“That’s great, Constance,” I
remarked, straightening a stack of herb calendars on the counter. She must have
hit Roz up for an interview during the brief encounter I’d seen at yesterday’s
memorial service.

Constance regarded me hopefully. “I
thought maybe you’d come too.”

“Me?” I asked, surprised. “Why would
you want me to barge in on your interview?”

“Cause you know Ms. Kotner better
than I do. With you there, maybe she’ll feel looser, more like talkin’. We
might get into more ... well, intimate territory.”

I wasn’t quite sure about the intimate
territory, and I certainly didn’t count myself one of Roz’s friends. But after
seeing her virtuoso performances over the past two days, I couldn’t help
wanting to see more. After all, someday soon I might be watching the woman
waltz the first waltz at the Inaugural Ball—on television, of course.

“All right, I’ll go,” I said, and
Constance beamed. I put my head through the door into The Crystal Cave, where
Ruby was waiting on a well-dressed young professional woman who was choosing a
tarot deck. I waggled my “I’m stepping out for a minute” sign and Ruby nodded
that she’d cover for me. Constance and I headed out the door and down the path
to the cottage.

Roz was dressed to meet the press in
a pair of silky cream-colored slacks and a creamy silk blouse topped with an
elegant strand of pearls. She was on the phone with Jane’s office in New York,
but she hung up immediately.

“Jane’s taking a few days off to
drive up to her cottage in Vermont,” she said. She turned to me. “She left a
message for Meredith, China. She thought Jo’s memorial service was quite
impressive—the fact that so many people came, I mean.” Roz supplied us with coffee,
picked up the tomato juice she’d been sipping (heavily laced with garlic
extract, no doubt), and led us out to the tiny patio outside the cottage
bedroom, where we pulled white wicker chairs around the small white table. The
air was heavily scented with thyme. Bees were busy among the violet-colored
blossoms.

Constance took a
professional-looking tape recorder out of her voluminous carryall, checked the
batteries, and set a mike on the table. “Now, Ms. Kotner,” she said, wreathed
in smiles and fluttering like a middle-aged groupie, “tell us
ever’thang!”
East
Texans have a wonderful way with their
ings. Thing
always comes out like
thang.

Roz arched her eyebrows. “Everything?”

“Oh, dear, yes!” Constance gushed
with avid enthusiasm. She took out a steno pad and a pencil. “In Pecan
Springs, we’re proud of your rise to stardom. We like to feel that maybe we’ve
had a teensy part”—she held thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart to
show how much “teensy” was—”in your success story.”

I had no idea that Roz Kotner had
risen to the stature of a Pecan Springs’ folk heroine. As far as I knew, this
wasn’t even Roz’s home town. It was just the last place she’d happened to live
before she became famous. But I could understand why Pecan Springs might take a
proprietary interest in her. After all, how many of its former citizens had
ever made the cover of
People
magazine perched on a pile of pink bears?

Roz gave Constance a kindly smile. “Well,
then,” she said, “perhaps it’s appropriate that the word go out from Pecan
Springs at the same time it goes out from Washington and Los Angeles. But I
will
have to ask you to hold the story until you have clearance from me.

“Sure,” Constance agreed eagerly.
She leaned so far forward that I was afraid she might tip over, even though her
chair was anchored by her ample beet-colored behind. “What story?”

Roz glanced at me approvingly. “I
see you haven’t mentioned it,” she said. I shook my head and she turned back to
Constance.

“I’m leaving the entertainment
field,” she said. “I’ve sold my corporation to Disney.”

And then, before Constance had time
to recover, Roz dropped bombshell number two.

Constance’s eyes grew round in her
round, flushed face, and her chair teetered dangerously.
“Senator Keenan”
she
exclaimed. “Lord sakes!” Then, remembering herself, she burbled through
profuse congratulations, tripping over every other word, with anxious glances
at her tape recorder to make sure it was still running. This was clearly the
biggest scoop of Constance Letterman’s journalistic career.

Ten minutes later, when Constance
had asked all the
questions she could think of, she stammered grateful thanks,
turned off her recorder, and dashed off— straight to the
Enterprise,
I’d
bet, to write her story.

I said my good-bye and was following
Constance out the door, when Roz stopped me. “China,” she said, putting a
beautifully manicured hand lightly on my arm, “what do you think I can do to
persuade Meredith that there’s no harm in letting me look for my letters? With
all the details of the memorial service and settling her mother’s estate, I’m
sure that a few old scraps of paper aren’t a high priority for her. It might be
months before they’re found, and I’d really like to take them back with me. God
knows when I’ll get to Pecan Springs again.”

I hesitated, thinking of the boxes
in the back of my car, which was parked in a CTSU faculty lot. For a moment, I
considered telling Roz that if anybody had the letters, I was the one. But I
decided against it. Time enough to tell her when I knew for sure what was in
the boxes.

“I’m afraid Meredith is like Jo when
it comes to making up her mind,” I said apologetically. “She can be pretty
stubborn.”

“I see,” Roz said. Then she dismissed
the matter with another wave. “Oh, well, they’re just old letters. Not at all
important. I suppose I’m being too sentimental.”

I glanced at my watch. “I’m sorry to
have to run,” I said, not sorry at all, “but I’m scheduled to give a lecture to
the Friends of the Library this afternoon, and I have to get my act together.”

I went back to the shop to tend
customers and sort out my notes and locate the slides I’d taken of the summer’s
herb garden. It was twelve-thirty when I finished. I’d planned on asking Ruby
to keep an eye on things, but she was late getting back from lunch so I called
Laurel Wiley, who is usually available to take charge of both shops. Laurel is
a regular student in my herb classes and a friend of Ruby’s, too. She’s good
backup for times when Ruby and I both are gone. I changed into a green corduroy
skirt and green print blouse, and then Mrs. Culpepper, the president of the
Friends of the Library, came to pick me up.

The lecture, which was held in the
small library auditorium, went well. I enjoy talking about herbs, and the
Friends of the Library are a receptive audience. But I had the sense of
something wrong, something out of kilter. It didn’t take long to figure out
what it was. I Missed Jo. When I first opened Thyme and Seasons, she was the
one who had encouraged me to get out and talk to community groups.

Jo wasn’t there. But Lila
Seidensticker was, her thin neck and arms glittering with Seidensticker
jewelry. I hoped fervently that Ruby’s sleuthing was running into a dead end. I
wasn’t sure what would happen if she actually turned something up—not that she
would.

The lecture over, I went back to the
shop. Business had been slow, according to Laurel, maybe because the weather
was so beautiful. The afternoon sun spilled a rich, burnished gold over the
autumn trees, and the temperature was in the low seventies. Ruby hadn’t gotten
back yet. Lured by the fragrance of the roses in the herb garden, I left Laurel
behind the counter, took my shears and went out to the bed along the alley,
behind the cottage. Sweet Annie—
artethisia annua,
called Qing hao by
Chinese herbalists—grows hip high there, golden brown and fluffy, with its own
unique spicy-sweet fragrance. Right now, it was at a perfect stage for
wreath-making. Wreaths are big holiday sellers in the shop. I buy dozens on
consignment from various local craftswomen, each of whom has her own unique way
of combining materials. But I manage to devote a few October and November
evenings to weaving dried flowers and seedpods and grasses into bases made of
sweet Annie or artethisia. I’m always surprised when I see how beautiful my
wreaths are. I spent so many years lavishing all my creative energy on legal
briefs and courtroom arguments that this kind of creating is sheer joy.

The sweet Annie patch borders the
cottage. The afternoon was warm, so the windows were open. When the telephone
rang inside, I knew I’d be able to hear every word of Roz’s conversation. The
honorable thing, I suppose, would have been to pick up my basket and leave. But
I didn’t do the honorable thing. I kept on cutting sweet Annie right where I was.
After all, it
was
my garden, and if I let this batch of ripe stuff
stand, it could get rained on.

The truth was, Roz’s opening line,
after her breathy hello, had caught my attention. “I’m sorry, but as I told
you, it’s all over. It’s out of my control now. I can’t give you anything more.”

I froze, bent over the sweet Annie.
Who was Roz paying?

There was a silence while the person
on the other end of the line responded. Then Roz laughed, a light, careless
laugh, but nervous, pitched just a little too high. “Yes, but who’s going to
believe you? There’s no proof. And even if there was, it doesn’t matter. It was
my talent that brought it off, and I’m getting out.”

Another silence, as Roz listened to
the caller. Then: “If that’s what you think, you’re mistaken. I gave you money
only because I felt sorry for you—not because I owed you anything. But things
have changed. If you push this, the only thing you’ll get out of it is a lot of
trouble. Do you understand?’ She slammed down the receiver.

I finished cutting and went back to
the shop, where I paid Laurel and sent her home. Then I bunched my cuttings,
climbed up on the stool, and hung the bunches from the rafters. As I worked, I
kept thinking about the phone call. Could someone be blackmailing Roz? I
thought back to her bitter comment the night before about directors and
producers and agents and coaches, all wanting to get something from her. No
wonder she wanted to bail out of the business. Washington politics probably
looked like patty-cake compared to the games she’d been playing.

I was hanging the last bunch when
Ruby came in. She was wearing a 250-watt grin and her frizzy red hair stood up
all over her head, practically snapping with electricity.

“I know you said you didn’t want to
help,” she said. “But will you at least
listen?”

I climbed down from my perch and
carried the stool behind the counter. “Don’t tell me you’ve been playing
detective.”

Ruby’s face darkened and she turned
away. “Okay, don’t listen. When the whole thing is over, you can read it in the
newspapers.”

I closed my eyes briefly. I knew
this was something I didn’t want to know. But I had the feeling that if I didn’t
know it, I’d probably be sorry. “Ruby,” I said to her back, “give me a dollar.”

Ruby fished in her shoulder bag for
her billfold. “What do you want it for?” she asked suspiciously. She found one
and handed it to me.

I put the dollar into my skirt
pocket. “You’ve just hired me,” I said with a sigh. “As your lawyer.”

Ruby’s grin came back. “You mean,
you’re going to help?”

I sat down on the stool. “Help,
bullshit. I said I’d listen, and anything you say is privileged communication.
But that doesn’t mean I’d aid and abet you in anything stupid. It also doesn’t
mean I’d go to court for you if Arnold Seidensticker slaps you with a libel
suit. You’ll have to find another lawyer for that.”

“It’s no libel, it’s the truth,”
Ruby said earnestly. She leaned both elbows on the counter and lowered her
voice. “Lila Seidensticker takes sleeping pills.”

“Big deal,” I said, folding my arms.
“Ninety percent of the adult population of Pecan Springs has probably popped
pills at one time or another.”

Ruby looked over her shoulder to
make sure that nobody was listening. She did it strictly for effect, because
there was nobody else in the shop.

“She takes the
same
sleeping
pills that killed Jo.”

I raised my eyebrows. “So? Divide
the ninety percent of the population who’ve taken sleeping pills by the number
of nonprescription brands on the market, and you’ll find out how many other
people take the same sleeping pills that killed Jo.” I put on my stern look. “But
I’m curious. Just how did you manage to find out what brand of pills Lila uses?
And please don’t tell me you bribed her maid.”

Ruby shook her head. “No, nothing
like that. I just followed her.”