Thyme of Death (26 page)

As I shut the refrigerator door, I
saw a small bottle with a red-and-yellow lid lying on the floor, coated on the
inside with a fine gray dust. I knelt down and sniffed it. I caught a very
slight, lingering scent of garlic—no, not a scent, exactly. It was more like a
bitter aftertaste, at the back of my tongue rather than in my nose. Garlic
powder? This stuff had the same texture, but the odor of garlic powder was
stronger, more pronounced. I stared at the bottle for a minute, while
something tried to nudge its way into my conscious mind. But it didn’t make it,
and I straightened up.

As far as I could tell, there was
nothing out of place, no sign of forcible entry, no indication that a murder
had been committed here. Only in the bathroom—I pressed my lips tight together,
pushing down the sudden nausea. Roz had died a horrible death. Not a death you
would wish on your most bitter enemy.

Unless you thought she had murdered
your mother.
The words came into my mind as if I’d read them off a
teleprompter. Had it been Meredith, after all? Having missed her target last
night, had she tried again this morning? I remembered something else. When I’d
asked Meredith if she had a better idea for dealing with Roz, she’d come back
with one word.

Poison.

A few minutes later, a squad car
braked to a sliding
stop in the alley. Doors slammed, running feet crunched on gravel.
Bubba pushed the front door open and barreled in, followed by Garza and the
mustached patrolman. Bubba’s eyes were narrow slits in a face the color of a piece
of raw sirloin, and he was chewing viciously on his cigar. I thought about
asking him the score, but it didn’t seem like the right time.

“No question she’s dead?” he
muttered at the med techs.

Garza shook her head. “Messy
business. Lot of blood.”

“Great,” Bubba said with enormous
weariness. “Fuckin’
great.”
His eyes flicked to me, registered disgusted
recognition, then back again to Garza. “What was it? Knife? Blunt instrument?”

Petersen glanced at me. “She says it
was poison.”

Bubba turned to Garza. “What do you
say?”

Garza told Bubba what she had told
me about the bleeding ulcer and the asphyxiation. When she finished, Bubba
glanced at me and waited.

“Roz had an ulcer,” I said, “but she
didn’t act as if it were terribly serious. I don’t think the bleeding was
spontaneous. After what happened last night, I believe the enteritis was
induced, and that kicked off the ulcer.”

“Possible?” Bubba asked Garza.

She shrugged. “I don’t know anything
about what happened last night. But yeah, it’s possible. The M.E. will say for
sure.” The pager at her belt made a beeping sound and she looked at Bubba. “If
you’re through with us, we’ve got another run.”

Bubba nodded. Schwamkrug stood up,
tore out the pink copy of the report, and put it on the coffee table. He and
Garza left, carrying their equipment. I wondered what kind of trauma they were
headed to now. An accident on I-35? A heart attack triggered by the excitement
of a fourth-down kick? I was glad I didn’t have their jobs. I’d already seen
enough death to last me.

Bubba jabbed a finger in my
direction. “Stay put,” he growled. “You’re first after the corpse.”

I sat down on the loveseat while he
stepped into the bathroom. He came out a minute or two later, jaw working. I
knew what he was thinking because I’d gone over the same ground. It was
possible that Roz’s death, ugly as it was, had nothing to do with last night’s
shooting. It was also possible that the killer had decided to come back and
finish her off. He was weighing each possibility against the other, and against
the work involved if he treated this as a murder investigation. Finally, with
an irritated jerk of his cigar, he made up his mind.

“Notify the M.E.,” he barked at
Petersen, who had been standing nervously by the door. “Get Masters and his
video gear over here, pronto. Get J. P. and the ID boys for prints. And tell
the dispatcher to keep a tight lid on this thing. Nothin’ to the tee-vee,
newspaper, radio, until I say so. Got that?” Petersen gulped, nodded, and fled.

Bubba folded his arms across his
chest and looked at me. He pulled his forehead down and pushed his cigar up
past his nose in a creditable imitation of Winston Churchill. I fought the
nervous urge to giggle. This was not a laughing matter.

“All right, Miz Bayles,” he said, “I
want the whole thing.”

“I don’t know any more than you do,”
I said. I was lying, because I knew what I’d seen in the kitchen. But Bubba
would find the evidence for himself. Anyway, I didn’t want him to know I’d been
poking around in there. “I heard the siren. I got here when EMS did, and let
them in through the patio door. I didn’t want them breaking down the front door
of my cottage.”

“You see the lady this morning?”

I nodded. “Around seven-thirty, near
the corner of Guadalupe and Crockett. She was out for a walk. I have no idea
when she returned or how long she was gone.” I frowned. The killer must have
come in while she was walking. I would have thought she’d lock up, given last
night’s attack. But maybe she’d locked the front door and forgotten about the
French doors. Or maybe the killer had forced one of the casement windows.

Bubba rubbed his chin. “You got any
idea about that garlic smell in the bathroom?”

I felt a grudging admiration. Bubba
had a sharp nose and a sharper curiosity. “Every morning, she drank tomato
juice mixed with a couple of spoonfuls of garlic extract. She used it as a
health tonic. I assume she drank it this morning, as usual.”

Bubba grunted. “Anything else?”

I shook my head. I could have told
him about my conversation with Roz last night. I could also have told him about
Meredith’s one-word answer to my question about dealing with Roz. But I had
this terrible ambivalence about Meredith. Part of me suspected that she
could
have killed Roz. The other part knew she wouldn’t have. That was the part
that didn’t want to give Bubba any more bright ideas than he could come up with
himself.

Bubba took his cigar out of his
mouth and stuck it into the pocket of his uniform. There was a silence while he
considered his next step. I stared at the stain that this cigar and numerous
others had left on his pocket. Poor Mrs. Bubba, I thought irrelevantly. I’d
hate to wash those shirts. But maybe she sent his uniforms out. I looked at
the creases in the sleeves and the vertical creases down the front and felt
gratified. Good for Mrs. Bubba. At least she hadn’t washed and ironed
that
shirt.

Petersen came back. “Masters is on
his way,” he said, and added, in a lower voice, “He was watchin’ the game too.”

Bubba sighed. “What’s the score?”

‘Twenty-one three, Green Bay,”
Petersen replied unhappily. “Middle of the first quarter.”

Bubba sighed again, the sigh of a
man who has heard this one before and knows the way it turns out. He turned to
me. “What about next of kin?”

‘To my knowledge,” I replied, “Ms.
Kotner didn’t have any immediate family. But to be sure of that, you’d probably
better ask her fiancé. He’d know.”

“Fiancé? She was engaged to
somebody?”

“Yeah. To Howard Keenan.”

Bubba’s jaw went slack.
“Senator
Howard
Keenan?”

I nodded.

“Oh,
crap”
Bubba said, with
great feeling.

In spite of myself, I felt sorry for
him. Not only would he have to deal with the press, he’d have to deal with
Washington, too—the Senator’s aides, maybe even the Senator himself. Chances
were good that Pecan Springs would be overrun by outside law enforcement
agencies, from the Texas Rangers to the FBI. Everybody would be Monday-morning
quarterbacking his investigation. Not to mention the pressure he was going to
get from the county D.A.,
plus
the mayor and the City Council.

I took advantage. “Do you suppose I
could go now?”

Bubba shifted from one foot to the
other. “Yeah, I reckon,” he said reluctantly. “But stay where I can find you if
I want you.” I was out the door when he thought of something else. “And keep
your mouth shut,” he yelled after me. “I don’t want a bunch of reporters rootin’
around like pigs in a sweet potato patch. You hear?” I heard. So also, I
thought, had half the neighborhood.

Outside, I breathed in the clean
air, tasting it, and finding it blessedly free of the smell of garlic and blood
and wet cigar. But when I started up the path to the house, my way was blocked
by Mr. Cowan, from across the alley. He was leaning an arthritic, blue-veined
hand on a carved walking stick, scrawny jowls like wattles, watery blue eyes
avid with curiosity. Something round—a cud of Red Man, most likely— was tucked
in his right cheek and his white-stubbled chin was stained with tobacco. He
wore an old brown sweater with a dribble of what looked like oatmeal down the
front, and a pair of baggy brown pants, the cuffs turned up several times and
pinned with diaper pins. A sour-faced Pekingese glowered at me from behind his
ankle.

“Somethin’ goin’ on,” he remarked in
a shrill, knowing voice. The Peke growled.

“Yes,” I said, edging backward, out
of reach of the dog. I don’t mind big dogs so much, it’s the little yappy ones
that make me nervous. I have the theory— untested, at least so far—that they
bite harder and hold on longer. “Ms. Kotner, who was staying here, has died.”
Bubba probably wouldn’t approve of my telling the old man, but I didn’t think
he would run back home and phone the newspaper. Besides, he might have seen
something.

“Same one as was shot at last night?”
Mr. Cowan asked loudly. The Peke growled again, and he frowned. “Now, hush,
Lady Lula. There ain’t no call to take on so. This here person ain’t gonna
bite. Not while I’m here, anyhoo.” Lady Lula hushed, apparently comforted by
the old man’s assurance of my good will.

I nodded. “Yes, the same one.”

“Got her this time, eh?” Mr. Cowan
asked with satisfaction.

“It’s not exactly clear how she died,”
I said evasively. “But she wasn’t shot.”

“Neighborhood’s goin’ to hell,” Mr.
Cowan declared with a snort. He spit tobacco juice into the lavender and
scrubbed the back of one hand across his stubbly chin. “Police in the alley all
hours of the night, people hangin’ round, people gettin’ shot at. Not a safe
place for a law-abidin’ body.” He glanced down at Lady Lula. “Not safe for
critters, neither. Next thing you know, it’ll be dogs they’re after, eh, Miss
Lula?”

Miss Lula barked in a frenzy of
apprehension.

I frowned. “People hanging around?”
I asked. “You mean, around the cottage?”

Mr. Cowan considered my question as
if he were not used to being listened to. He nodded. “Seen ‘em m’self.” He
switched his cane from one hand to the other.

“Saw them when?” I asked urgently. “Who
did you see?”

“Runnin’ down the alley in them
purty blue suits,” he replied with consummate scorn. “Don’t work hard enough
during the week, I reckon. Got to run on Sunday mornin’ to make theirselfs
tired.”

I frowned. Meredith had a blue
jogging suit. Had Mr. Cowan seen her running down the alley this morning?

Lady Lula launched a swift sortie
with the clear intention of nipping all potential dognappers, beginning with
me. I stepped back again. “Did you see anybody besides the jogger?” I asked.

“People
allez
walkin’ up this
alley, pokin’ around,” Mr. Cowan muttered, emphasizing his words with another
spurt of tobacco juice. “People lookin’ in the garbage. People lookin’ in
windows. Damn peepin’ Toms.”

“Did you see anybody peeping this
morning?”

Mr. Cowan frowned. “This mornin’?”
he repeated vaguely. “This mornin?” He scratched his chin, reflected a moment,
spit into the lavender again. “Mebbe I did. Or mebbe ‘twas t’other mornin’.” He
grinned, showing toothless gums. “Happens all time. All time.”

And that was the best I could get
out of him, no matter how hard I pressed. I finally ushered him to the cottage
door, told Petersen when he answered my knock that the old man claimed to have
seen people “hanging around” the cottage, and left Mr. Cowan and Lady Lula to
Bubba’s tender mercies.

I went home to think.

Back in my kitchen, I put on the
copper teakettle and brewed a cup of ruby-red rose-hip tea from a batch of
special rose hips I’d gathered at an old farmstead a couple of miles out of
town. Rose hips—good to clear the mind, good to think with. Whatever was buried
in my unconscious needed some encouragement to get through. What I wanted to
connect with had something to do with the scent of garlic. I cupped the steaming
mug in both hands, savoring the citrusy tang and the remembered fragrance of
roses, almost like an aftertaste.

My right brain nudged me. It wasn’t
the scent of garlic I needed to connect with, it was the
taste.

I put down the cup. No, that wasn’t
it. It wasn’t the taste of garlic, it was the
aftertaste.

And then I had it.