Thyme of Death (18 page)

Although I’d never actually been in
Violett’s house, the interior didn’t surprise me. I could guess that the room
we were standing in looked just as it had when her mother was alive. The walls
were papered with large bouquets of mauve cabbage roses, faded to pinky-gray
and green. The windows were draped with a heavy mauve brocade and curtained
with white sheers that filtered the light. A high-backed purple plush sofa,
heavily antimacassared, its seat cushions covered by a dusty rose chenille
throw, stood against the left wall. Over the sofa hung a portrait of a haloed
and bearded Jesus, hands clasped, gazing prayerfully in the direction of God.
On the opposite wall, above an oval table with a large red-letter Bible open on
it, hung several cheaply framed photos: a short, slender man with dark hair
parted in the middle and slicked back on both sides, holding himself with
rakish and daring bravado; the woman taller and heavier and more powerful, hair
drawn severely away from her forehead, lips pursed, chilly, joyless. Several of
the photos included, as a kind of afterthought, a spindly, solemn child with
imploring eyes.

With a start of recognition, I
glanced from the pale, faded child in the photos to the pale, faded woman
standing nervously beside me. Violett’s arms and legs were less spindly, but
her whey-colored face was still solemn and her dull eyes implored—what?
Affection? Recognition? An opportunity to be herself, to grow away from the
meek, obedient daughter her mother had raised? But she’d never had a chance,
trapped in this house by her mother and by her own sense of duty.

A movement caught my eye, a cat
jumping up on the sofa, and I noticed the others drowsing like furry pillows on
the sofa and chairs, one of them curled up around the pink bear that Violett
had rescued from the tourist. Another cat sat on the small claw-footed
maple-veneer coffee table in front of the sofa, giving itself a bath on the
People
magazine that featured Roz. It was an interesting tableau.

Violett tilted her head, listening. “He’s
about to sing.”

I looked around. There was no one
else in the room, no television, not even a radio. But I could hear a musical
twittering and in a corner by a window I saw a covey of cages filled with
birds—parakeets, cockatiels, finches, lovebirds. Every cage was lined with fresh
newspaper, the cups were filled with water and seeds, and little bundles of
lettuce were stuck through the bars. In one cage, a yellow-green canary raised
its head and began to warble a lush, full-throated song, embroidered with
trills and grace notes. The cascade of melody was so surprising that it made me
catch my breath.

“How lovely!” I said.

“Isn’t it?” Violett’s eyes
brightened like a mother whose child has been praised by the school principal. “His
name is Petey.”

“How many birds do you have?” I
asked. I could have counted, but I’d probably miss some.

Petey’s song seemed to have lifted
Violett’s spirits a little. ‘Twenty-two,” she said. “And eighteen cats. At
least at the moment. They keep coming, you know, and I hate to turn them away.”
She gave me what might have been a fragment of smile. “Some people have
children. Would you like to see my dolls?”

I nodded, following her into the
dining room, which was obviously her doll factory. The dining table and floor
were littered with cloth scraps, ribbons, laces, and yarn. An old-fashioned
treadle sewing machine in an oak cabinet, its wheel worn silver, sat at right
angles to the table. Shelves along one wall held bolts of cloth, bags of
stuffing, hanks of yarn, and dolls in various stages of completion. Shelves
along the other wall held a dozen or more antique typewriters, all highly polished
and carefully dusted.

“Those were Daddy’s,” Violett
explained, seeing my curious glance. “He collected and restored them. He let me
dust them. Of course, I still do.”

“Did you type his letters, too?’ I
asked, and then was immediately sorry because it sounded so tacky.

But Violett didn’t notice. “No, I
wanted to learn to type and get a job, but Mama was dead set against it.
Anyway, he didn’t write letters. Mama didn’t either.” She bent over and picked
up the Siamese, who had wandered after us into the room. It squirmed uncomfortably
in her arms, gave a sharply rebuking meow, and Violett put it down. “After I
was born, Mama couldn’t have any more,” she added, as if that explained why
her parents had no one to write to. “Mama always said it was a shame I couldn’t
have been a boy. But Daddy liked me a lot.” She smiled a small, secret smile
and touched one of the typewriters. “Sometimes he liked me even more than he
liked Mama.”

I shivered, feeling a sudden rush of
sympathy mixed with horror. I could imagine Violett as the solemn, spindly
legged young girl who had by her birth thwarted her stern, joyless mother’s
hopes for a son. And who had been liked a lot by her bold, rakish daddy.

I cleared my throat and pulled the
sack of herbs out of my purse. “Here’s the valerian you wanted.”

Violett took the sack. “Thank you,”
she said. “I’ll get your money.” And then, remembering to be polite, “Maybe you’d
like something to drink.”

The kitchen was long and narrow, and
had clearly once been a back porch. One wall was filled with green-painted
cabinets under a white-curtained window. A green formica-topped table with
chrome legs stood against the opposite wall, with three chrome-plated chairs.
On the table was a yellow plastic rose in an empty vinegar bottle wound with
red and yellow yarn, a wooden spice caddy with five glass bottles with
red-and-yellow lids, and a wind-up alarm clock with a cracked face. The Good
Shepherd hung on the wall over the table, beside a round wooden plaque painted
with the same grace I remembered Gran saying over meals. “God is great and God
is good. Now we thank Him for our food.” The words brought Gran back sharply,
bright white hair pinned in a loose knot with tortoise-shell combs, softly
slurred New Orleans speech at odds with her sharply cut face and sharper blue
eyes. It’s odd how much clearer my grandmother’s face is in my mind than Leatha’s
face, which always seems gray and blurry and out of focus.

The cat jumped up on one of the
chairs, where he licked a paw and regarded me attentively. He was a large cat,
lean and muscular, with an air of great poise and authority. His sleek body fur
was fawn-colored, but his face, ears, feet, and tail looked as if they had been
brushed with charcoal. His pale blue eyes were startling in his dark face.

Violett smiled at the cat, her first
genuine smile. “Come, Pudding,” she crooned, “does Mama’s little sweetheart
want his treat?”

Bored with it all, Pudding yawned,
displaying two giant fangs.

Violett went to the refrigerator and
took out a carton of cream. As she poured it into a bowl, the cat abandoned
his indifference. With great dignity, he descended from the chair and stalked
over to the bowl, tail twitching. He poised himself in front of it, bunched his
black feet under his tawny belly, and began to lap cream with a pink tongue.

I suppressed a smile. Imperious,
arrogant, in total command, the cat was definitely not Violett’s little
sweetheart. I wondered how he felt about being called Pudding.

I waited while Violett took a canned
soft drink out of the small refrigerator. She divided it carefully into two
glasses and put one down in front of me, without ice. Then she disappeared into
what looked like a pantry. I heard the padded thump of a hamper lid, and she
came out with her purse.

“How much do I owe you for the
herbs?” she asked. When I told her, she counted out the coins and put those on
the table too. Then she sat down across from me and sipped her soft drink.

I skipped the preamble and got right
into it. “Constance told me what you told her about Roz Kotner and Jo Gilbert.”

Violett pressed her lips together. “She
promised not to tell.”

I ignored that. “I’m curious to know
who told you.”

Violett’s glass made a wet ring on
the table. “Nobody.” She got up and wiped the table carefully. Then she took
two green-and-pink crocheted coasters off a shelf. She gave one to me and put
the other under her glass. “I saw them myself.”

I pulled in my breath. “Saw them?”

“In Jo Gilbert’s kitchen. Through
the window. They were kissing.” She screwed up her mouth as if the thought, the
words, were horribly foul. But she said it again, mouthing it, not ready to let
it go.
“Kissing.”

“When?” I asked. “A long time ago?
Recently?”

“After she left. She was back on a
visit. I was walking home through the alley, the way I do when the weather’s
nice.”

“Was that all you saw?”

She threw me a bitterly righteous
glance. “Wasn’t that enough? I could tell what was going on. Anybody could,
anybody who had eyes. It was what the Bible warns us about in Genesis, chapter
thirteen. ‘But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord
exceedingly.’ The women, too,” she added. “Just like
them”

I leaned forward and took Violett’s
hands in mine. Her fingers were cold, stiff, like brittle twigs. “Violett,” I
said softly, “what you saw should be forgotten. You know how gossip is in this
town—if people start talking, Jo’s daughter could be hurt.”

Violett jerked her hands back. “What
do I care?” she asked angrily. Her voice coarsened and cracked and her anger
brought color to her ash-gray face, firmness to her shoulders. “The daughter’s
none of my lookout. But Rosalind Kotner...” Tears appeared in her eyes, spilled
onto her dry cheeks. “People ought to know what she’s done. What she’s done to
me.”

I frowned. What did Rosalind’s
affair with Jo have to do with Violett? “To you? What’s she done to you?”

The anger blurred into something
else—grief? loss? Her face wrenched with pain. “She made me a promise,” she
whispered. Her voice died and she began to tremble. The stiffness drained out
of her body, as if she were dissolving. “But she broke it”

I leaned forward, trying to hold her
gaze.
“What
promise, Violett?”

Violett’s eyes slid away from mine.
She hunched her shoulders, pulling her sweater together with one hand, mumbling
something inaudible. She was suddenly an old woman, lost and alone in an
unfriendly world.

‘Tell me, Violett,” I said softly. “You
can trust me. I want to help.”

Violett looked at me for a moment.
Then she shook her head, thin-lipped, her face immobile. “I don’t need your
help to get what I’m owed,” she said jerkily. “I don’t need anybody’s help. I
know a way.”

“Oh?” I made my voice even, casual. “Tell
me about it.”

Violett didn’t respond. The cat
finished his cream, walked to the vacant chair, and jumped up lightly. He
tucked his front paws under his brisket and began to purr with a deep, throaty
rumble. Violett watched him, her hands clasped in her lap, fingers knit
tightly. After a moment she spoke. Her voice was calmer, more deliberate, but
grudging, as if she were measuring the words. “I know something nobody else
knows.” She shot a glance at me. “Besides the kissing, I mean.”

“What’s that?” I was pulling answers
out of a hostile witness. But this was a witness who wanted to tell what she
knew, or what she thought she knew.

There was a long pause, and the room
was so quiet that the cat’s purr sounded very loud, louder than the
refrigerator and the ticking clock on the table. Violett looked up at the Good
Shepherd, back down at her hands. Her knuckles were white. “She was in town,”
she said, “the day Jo Gilbert died.”

My stomach lurched. “How do you
know?”

“I saw her.”

“Where?”

“On Live Oak, a couple of blocks
from the Emporium.”

“When?”

“A little before nine. I know
because I was on my way to open the shop, and I always get there at five to.”
Her voice was brittle. “She was driving that fancy red rent car.”

I thought for a moment. If Violett’s
claim were true, it put Roz in town on Monday. And while it didn’t put her at
the death scene, it blew Roz’s credibility and confirmed at least some of my
suspicions. But
was
it true? Or was Violett lying in order to implicate
Roz in Jo’s death, to get some kind of twisted revenge on the woman who had
violated her moral and ethical codes?

I took a different tack. “So what if
you did see her?” I asked, making my voice tougher. “There’s no law that says
Roz Kotner can’t come back to Pecan Springs when she feels like it. She could
have been here to visit old friends.”

Violett shook her head stubbornly,
still not looking at me. “She told people she didn’t get here until Wednesday.
She lied. And Jo Gilbert wasn’t the type to kill herself. That woman had
something to do with it.”

“With Jo’s death?” Yes.” She met my
eyes directly, almost challenging. “Are you going to tell her what I said?”

I frowned. “If you have firsthand
knowledge about a crime, Violett, it’s my responsibility to advise you to go
straight to—”

Violett cut me off. “I’m not asking
for legal advice. I’m asking, are you going to tell her?”

And then I understood. Violett was
trying to get something out of Roz. She had the idea that if I gave Roz her
story—a story that, if it didn’t incriminate Roz, at least put her in the
embarrassing position of explaining why she had lied—Roz might give her what
she wanted.