Thyme of Death (15 page)

The second consultation in two
days—Thyme and Seasons was beginning to feel like a legal-aid clinic. “Former
lawyer,” I reminded her. “I’m still in good standing with the bar, but I don’t
do law anymore, Constance. It’s hazardous to my health.”

This was true. In the last year I
practiced law, my blood pressure was creeping toward redline and I was living
on stress pills. When I realized I was fast becoming a bonafide Type A
personality, I knew it was time to run from the law. That, and knowing I was
alive only because somebody else wasn’t—a psycho client whose case I’d lost
early in my career and who came after me when he got out of prison.

“But I need your advice,” Constance
said.

“You want a legal opinion, go see
Charlie Lipton. He’ll take good care of you.” Charlie Lipton’s law office was
down the block, in a gentrified frame cottage painted a modest gray and green.
Charlie’s a competent lawyer, according to Ruby. He’d represented her in her
divorce action.

“I can’t talk to Charlie. I need to
talk to a woman. It’s—” Constance stopped with a hissing sound. “It’d be too
embarrassin’ to talk to a man about this ... this
thang.”

“Why?’

“Because it has to do with, well,
sex.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You want to
talk to a lawyer about sex? Isn’t that what psychiatrists are for?”

Constance’s nostrils flared. “Not
that
kind of sex. This sex is ... well, different.”

I was hooked. I like gossip as much
as the next person. And you have to admit—different sex is more interesting
than ordinary sex. “Okay, so tell me,” I said.

Constance balanced on her toes and
bounced nervously a time or two. “I’ve just heard, from somebody who knows,
that Ms. Kotner and Jo Gilbert were ...” Her voice squeaked, like a balloon
when you pinch the neck and let the air out. Her cheeks puffed. “Were, well,
lovers.”

Lovers? Jo and Roz?
Lovers?

Constance nodded several times,
eyeing me to see my reaction.

Lovers. At first glance, improbable.
It wasn’t a question of heterosexual morality. Jo would have brushed that
question aside as irrelevant: what she wanted to do, she simply did, regardless
of what people thought. And as far as I was concerned, Jo had the right to

determine her own sexual preference,
just as I did.

No, it was a question of
personality. Jo had been stern and often unyielding, a woman of strong convictions
and a stronger will that she wielded with dignity and fairness. I had respected
her for her strength of character, her intelligence, her independence. The idea
of her with Roz—whom I felt to be shallow and egocentric, a childish
airhead—was almost offensive to me. Surely there was nothing about Roz that
would have attracted Jo. Or was there?

Roz was physically attractive,
certainly. Sexy, even. Maybe Roz’s physical attractions—the porcelain skin, the
full breasts, the sexy legs, combined with her delicate fragility and her youth—had
appealed to Jo. Maybe it was a simple matter of sexual attraction, easily
acceptable between a woman and a man; less conventional but certainly no less
strong between two women.

And while I found Roz silly and
superficial, I’d only been acquainted with her recently. Fame and fortune,
particularly fortune, changed people. Maybe it had changed Roz. Or maybe—and
this was even harder to contemplate—maybe it was her very playfulness, her
childishness that appealed to Jo. Maybe lively, vivacious Roz gave Jo a
sparkle that Jo’s disciplined self-control wouldn’t allow her to experience for
herself. Perhaps Roz touched a vulnerable spot, opening Jo to feelings that she
otherwise denied.

And what about Roz? What was there
in Jo that would have attracted her? One thing came to mind immediately—Jo’s
unfailing strength and stability. To Roz, perhaps Jo’s very maturity and
settledness were appealing. Perhaps Jo cared for her, took care of her. Perhaps
Jo was mother and father to her, as well as lover.

The possible relationship was
beginning to seem less improbable. It was also beginning to seem a little
scary. For love can turn to hate, and hate can turn to murder. I might have
found the motive I’d been looking for.

“Who told you this?” I asked.

Constance’s flush grew darker. “I
can’t say,” she muttered. “A journalist doesn’t reveal her sources.”

“Journalist? Constance, you’re not—”

“That’s why I need legal advice,”
Constance broke in. “The story about Ms. Kotner’s leavin’ show business is a
big scoop, but it’s goin’ to break in Washington and L.A. too.” She cleared
her throat. “If
this
story broke here—the one about Ms. Kotner’s relationship
with Jo, I mean—I’d have an exclusive.” Her voice dropped on the last word, as
if it were sacred.

“If the
Enterprise
breaks a
story about Rosalind Kotner’s lesbian relationship with her former landlady,”
I said firmly, “Arnold Seidensticker will be hauled into court so fast he’d pee
his pants. You too,” I added. “And wait until you get a load of the battery of
barracudas Senator Howard Keenan will turn loose on you.”

Constance’s round eyes got rounder. “Senator
Keenan? Why for the Lord’s sake would

he…
?”

“Why, for the Lord’s sake, of
course,” I said. “Isn’t he the champion of the Moral Majority?” I leaned forward,
emphasizing my words. “Visualize this scene, Constance. It’s Monday morning.
Senator Keenan— deacon in the church, experienced politician with aspirations
for the White House—has just announced his engagement to Rosalind Kotner,
famous television personality. Suddenly one of his aides runs into the room
and hands him your front-page story. His fiancée is a lesbian. An hour later,
the
Washington Post
and
The New York Times
pick the story off the
AP wire. What do you think he’s going to do? Come on, Constance, get
real!”

Constance stepped back. She was
silent for a moment, rerunning the scenario in her mind. Her face was pale,
but she wasn’t ready to give up yet. “But what if it’s true? How can I be sued
if I write the
truth?”

I sighed. “Would you like a taste of
the pretrial depositions?”

“Pretrial what?”

I folded my arms across my chest,
pulled my eyebrows together, narrowed my eyes, thrust my chin forward, and
spoke in my most aggressive cross-examination tone. “Ms. Letterman, this
allegation of yours—it’s quite fantastic, incredible, really. How do you know
it to be true? On what occasions did you personally see the two women in
question having sexual intercourse?”

“It wasn’t me,” Constance admitted
nervously. “But my source is sure—”

“Ah,
hearsay.”
I made it a
dirty word. ‘Tell me— on what occasions does your
source”
—the word
dripped irony—”claim to have seen the two women having intercourse?”

Constance bit her lip. “Actually, I
don’t reckon...”

“Hearsay,” I said savagely. “Gossip.
Innuendo. Slander. Libel.” Dirty word after dirty word. I leaned forward,
threatening. “Just who is your source, Ms. Letterman?”

Constance hunched her shoulders and
buried her hands in the pockets of her denim smock. “A... a journalist can’t
reveal—”

I leaned back and relaxed, assuming
my own voice again. “It’ll be settled out of court by the
Enterprise’s
insurance
company for—oh, say, ten, twelve million. Maybe more, Including, of course,
your public apology,
And
your resignation. And what do you suppose
Cousin Arnold will do to you after that?”

Constance’s cheeks looked shriveled
and her shoulders were pulled in. She was deflating rapidly. “It’s a sorry day
for America when—”

I stopped her. “You asked for my
advice, Constance? You got it. If I were you, I’d back off this story so far I
couldn’t even
smell
it.”

“But I still think—” Constance
began. Her voice was a whimper.

“What you think and what you can
print without asking for a libel suit are two entirely different things,” I
said emphatically. “Stay away from it.”

“But do
you
believe it?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”
I frowned. I’d just had a thought that made me uneasy. “Who have you told about
this?”

“Nobody but you. I wouldn’t want to
jeopardize my scoop, would I?”

“Well, don’t tell anybody,” I said.
Constance Letterman probably had the brains to see that she couldn’t print an
unfounded allegation, especially a sizzler like this one. If she didn’t, Arnold
Seidensticker would certainly be smart enough to quash it before it got into
print. But if the person who told Constance had also told somebody else, the
rumor was probably flying around Pecan Springs at the speed of light. The
person who was peddling this story—whether it was factual or not was
irrelevant—
had
to be stopped.

I made my voice gentle. “You know,
Constance, Roz isn’t the only one who could be hurt by this. Who told you?”

Constance pulled herself up,
clutching the last shred of her professional identity like a drowning person
clinging to a chunk of floating Styrofoam. “A journalist can’t—”

“Bullshit,” I said firmly. “Even if
it doesn’t get into print, a rumor like this one could cut Meredith up pretty
badly. Her mother’s reputation is as much at stake as Roz’s, even if Jo is
dead.” I paused, thinking. “In fact, maybe that’s the purpose behind this
little rumor. Maybe it’s designed to disgrace Jo and discredit the Anti-Airport
Coalition.”

“Oh,” Constance said, fluttering, “I
don’t think Violett would—”

“Violett?
Violett Hall
told
you this?” I never would have guessed that shy, shrinking Violett could define
the word “lesbian,” let alone bring herself to use it in a sentence.

Constance’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t
mean to ... she told me not to... I wish I hadn’t...”

“How does Violett know?”

“I asked, but she wouldn’t say. I
don’t think it’s the kind of thang somebody would
tell
her, though. I
mean, I don’t think it’s—what did you call it? Hearsay?”

I agreed. It was hard to imagine
anybody bringing up the word “sex” with Violett, much less “lesbian sex.” “Maybe
Violett lied,” I said.

“The way it came up, I don’t think
so,” Constance replied. “I was in my office in the Emporium this mornin’, and
she came in to pay the rent She didn’t look too good, like she hadn’t slept. So
to cheer her up, I told her about Ms. Kotner sellin’ her company to Disney and
marryin’ Senator Keenan.” She flushed guiltily. “I know I wasn’t supposed to
mention it ‘til Ms. Kotner said so, but I didn’t think tellin’ Violett would
... Anyway, when she heard, she got all funny-lookin’ round the eyes. ‘Rosalind
Kotner is a wicked, wicked woman,’ she said. She sort of burst out with it,
like it was dammed up inside her. That’s when she told me about the... the
thang
between Ms. Kotner and Jo.” She shook her head. “The way she said it, it
was like she didn’t really want to, but it just had to come out, if you know
what I mean. It was too quick to be a lie. And anyway, I don’t think Violett
has it in her to lie about... sex.” She made a prim mouth. “She’s got this
thang about sex. She’s a very religious person. She goes to church twice every
Sunday and to Wednesday prayer meetin’.”

“Going to church doesn’t keep people
from lying,” I replied. “It doesn’t keep them from having sex, either, thank
God.” I looked up as a woman came into the shop, carrying several pots of lemon
thyme, southernwood, and lamb’s ears that she had picked up outside. “I’d like
to pay for these, please,” she said, in the kind of voice that’s aimed to
summon the hired help from their slothful ways.

I counted the plants and multiplied
times a dollar twenty-nine. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” the woman said. I recognized
her as one of Ruby’s regular customers. She was a tall, striking woman with dramatic
sloe eyes framed by unruly dark hair. She wore a long red cape over a black
turtleneck sweater and black slacks. “I called a couple of days ago about
Aconitum
vulparia -
wolfsbane. I’m looking for seeds. Do you have any?”

“No,” I said, “all the aconitums are
highly toxic, and I don’t get much call for either the plants or the seeds. I
can give you a source, though.” I began to search under the counter for a
catalog. Several mail-order companies specialize in odd herbs and plants like
the aconitums.

“I have to go, China,” Constance
said. She was completely shriveled up now, totally deflated. Her eagerness
about her potential story had evaporated. “Thanks for the advice.”

Just to be sure, I gave her one last
warning. ‘Take it from an expert,” I said, straightening up with the catalog in
my hand. “Lawsuits are no fun.” She nodded and left.

The woman leafed through the catalog,
took down the address and ordering information, and paid for her plants.

“What’s your interest in
Aconitum
vulparia?”
I asked. “It’s so toxic that most people are afraid of it.” The
most notorious of the aconitums, monkshood, is poisonous from the root to the
pollen. Native Americans used it to poison arrow tips for wolf hunts, and to
treat rheumatism and the early phases of pneumonia. As a sedative and for the
treatment of pain and fever, it’s still one of the principal pharmaceuticals in
Chinese medicine.