Thyme of Death (19 page)

“No,” I said firmly. “I won’t run
your errands. If you want Roz to know what you saw that morning, or anytime,
you
tell her.”

Violett’s eyes dropped. She was
silent for a moment. Then she picked up the sack of valerian. “How am I
supposed to use this?”

“Steep it for five minutes in water
that’s just off the boil,” I said. I leaned forward and put my hand on her arm.
“Violett, please promise me you won’t go spreading gossip about Roz and Jo. It’ll
only hurt Meredith, and there’s no telling how Roz will react.”

But I couldn’t get another word out
of her, and after a few minutes I said good-bye and left. The Siamese followed
me out to my bike and sat, studying me inscrutably, as I rode away.

CHAPTER 11

It was nearly five by the time I got
back to the shop. Ruby wasn’t back yet, so I sent Laurel next door to close the
Cave, while I locked up and checked out my register. When I finished, I made a
quick survey next door, paid Laurel for three hours of store-sitting, and went
home through the connecting door. I poured myself a sherry and sat down at the
kitchen table to think things through, beginning with Violett’s claim that Roz
had been in Pecan Springs on Monday.

Violett’s statement wouldn’t be
difficult to verify. The airlines usually refused to give out passenger information,
so there wasn’t much point in pursuing that tack. But I could call Helen
Jenson, a good customer and friend who owned Jenson’s Travel, and ask her to
check the flights into both Austin and San Antonio and tell me when Roz had
arrived. I glanced at the antique schoolhouse clock that hung over the
refrigerator, its pendulum swinging gently. The clock said five-twenty, but it
was always ten minutes slow—not bad for a hundred-year-old clock. I should do
so well at a hundred. But the agency would be closed already. Anyway, it was
Saturday. On Saturday, Helen leaves the agency to Linda Bowles, her
second-in-command, and drives ninety miles to Waco to spend the weekend with
her elderly mother. I frowned. I wouldn’t be able to get any information from
the agency until Monday morning.

If practicing law for fifteen-plus
years taught me anything, it was that there was more than one way to skin a
cat. Roz had rented a car, mostly likely at the airport, and the car was parked
behind the cottage. If it wasn’t locked, I might be able to find the car rental
agreement, which would document the day and time she’d rented it.

Not wanting Roz to see me, I took
the long way— a right at the comer by the Craft Emporium, a half block, then
another right down the alley. The red Buick Century was parked behind the
cottage, against its windowless rear wall. I tried the doors. Locked. It looked
like I wasn’t going to get my hands on that rental agreement. But there was
something else I could get. I copied the name of the car rental company—Ace Car
Rental, in San Antonio—from the decal in the rear window. I also copied the
license plate number. Then I went back to the house—the long way again—dialed information
in San Antonio, and got the number for Ace. So far, so good. But then I struck
out.

“I can’t give you that information,”
a curt male clerk told me. “Our computer has been down all afternoon. Try again
tomorrow morning.” The clerk sighed the resigned sigh of someone used to
dealing with recalcitrant computers. “Or tomorrow afternoon. Sometimes it
takes a while to get it up again.”

“How about checking your paper
files?” I asked.

The voice laughed nastily. “No
offense, lady, but I’ve got people lined up from here to the Alamo waiting for
cars, and no computer. And you want me to check
a file?”
Try tomorrow.”
The line went dead.

I put down the phone and poured
myself another sherry. Short of breaking into Roz’s car, I couldn’t at the
moment verify Violett’s statement. But I could hypothesize. Roz had a motive—a
strong motive—to silence Jo. If the Mickey Finn theory had any merit, she also
had the means: a hefty dose of barbiturates and vodka added to Jo’s Hot Stuff.
And if Violett was telling the truth, Roz had the opportunity. My structure of
guesses and hunches was pretty flimsy, shored up by purely circumstantial
evidence and built on too many ifs. But it was beginning to look like a case a
D.A. might be able to live with.

Somebody banged on my kitchen door.
It was Meredith, dressed in her new blue jogging suit and running shoes. She
had one hand on my doorjamb and was bent forward from the waist, gulping for
air, her face blotchy, her eyes red and tearing.

“Are you okay, Meredith?” I asked,
startled. “What’s the matter? Charley horse?”

“No, I’m not okay,” she gasped. “And
no, it’s not a charley horse. I’ve been running hard.” Her shoulders heaved as
she sucked in air. “We got’ta talk, China.”

I pulled her into the kitchen. “Don’t
tell me you’ve been burgled again,” I asked, alarmed. Another break-in at Jo’s
would shoot holes in my theory. Roz knew the letters were
here.

Meredith shook her head and
collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table. She stretched out her legs, her arms
limp at her sides, chest heaving. “No,” she said. She closed her eyes. “I still
can’t believe this, China. It’s just too incredible. This mousy little woman
came over to see me a few minutes ago. She claimed that Mother and Roz—”

Mousy little woman? “Violett Hall?”
I asked.

Meredith opened her eyes and pulled
herself up in the chair. “Yes, that’s her. Violett Hall. China, this woman says
that Mother—”

I held up a hand, silencing her. I
got the sherry and another glass, poured her one, and topped off my own. I put
her glass in front of her and sat down on the other side of the table.

“Okay,” I said, putting my elbows on
the table. “Now, what did Violett tell you?” Meredith chuga-lugged the sherry
and put the glass down. “She said that Mother and Rosalind Kotner had a... a
lesbian affair. For years and years.” She looked straight at me. “Is it true,
China?”

“What makes you think I know?”

“You were her friend. You must have
known.” She tightened her mouth, but her chin trembled. “Is it
true?”

I had to play it straight. Whatever
Jo’s reservations about telling her daughter about Roz, Meredith needed to know
the truth. Anyway, there was no point in lying. “I don’t have any direct
knowledge of their relationship, Meredith. I moved here after Roz left, and I
only saw them together a few times. But there were letters in the boxes your
mother left for me to dispose of. Those letters—the few I read, anyway—were
pretty explicit about the relationship. There was also a copy of Roz’s will,
under the terms of which she left everything to your mother. Judging from that
evidence, I’d say that Violett’s telling the truth.”

Meredith sat silent, struggling with
the idea. “I suppose that explains why Mother cut me out of her life. She didn’t
want me to know.” She gave a sharp, embittered laugh. “It’s crazy, China.”

“What’s crazy?”

“My mother loved controversy. Show
her a boogeyman—somebody like Arnold Seidensticker with his airport—and she’d
go after him, damn the torpedoes. She wasn’t afraid of a fucking thing. She was
a feminist from the word NOW.” The laugh again, even more bitter. “And all the
time she was afraid to come out of the goddamn closet. The biggest feminist
issue in her life, and she
ducked
it.”

“Well, maybe,” I said. “But this
town doesn’t award a medal to somebody who leads an alternative lifestyle. She
had to live with these people, work with them. She needed their cooperation.”

“We’re not talking about this town,”
Meredith said. Her voice was brittle as thin glass. “We’re talking about her
daughter.
I can forgive her for not wanting to come out to the people around here. I
just can’t forgive her for not coming out to
me.”

“Maybe she thought you wouldn’t
approve,” I said gently. “Maybe she wanted to protect you. Maybe she wanted you
to keep loving her.” I stopped, struck by a disconcerting thought. Until I was
fifteen or sixteen, Leatha tried to cover up her drinking, keep it a secret
from me. I’d thought she hid it because she was ashamed of seeming weak beside
my father’s towering strength. But maybe my mother, like Jo, had wanted to
protect her daughter, wanted her to keep loving her. I slid uneasily away from
the thought. I’d built up a reserve of energizing, sustaining anger against
Leatha. It was useful. I wanted to hold on to it.

Meredith put her hands between her
knees and hunched her shoulders like a hurt child. “I’m surprised that it mattered
to Mother whether I approved or not,” she muttered, tight-lipped. There was a
long silence. Then she sighed. “Well, she would have been right, damn it.”

“You’d have disapproved?” I asked,
surprised.

“Not the lesbian part. If Mother
wanted to take a woman lover, that was her business, not mine. I only wanted
her to be happy.” She shook her head angrily.

“No, it’s
Roz.
That’s what I
can’t stomach. She’s power hungry. She’s got an ego that won’t quit. New York,
kids’ TV, a toy empire—that’s not big enough. What she wants is the Keenan
money, the Keenan name, the White House.” She shook her head again, misery
drawn on her face. “My mother was tough. She was smart. I just can’t understand
why a woman like that would choose
Roz
for a lover.”

I was silent for a moment. “Sometimes
we don’t choose,” I said. “Sometimes we’re chosen.” My words surprised me. They
sounded like Ruby’s. But I had the feeling they were close to the truth.
Whatever Jo’s reasons for loving Roz, they must have been utterly compelling.
They must have risen like an artesian well out of a source that she couldn’t
control as she controlled the ordinary events of her life.

Meredith gnawed her lower lip. I
waited, but she didn’t say anything. After a minute I asked, “Did Violett tell
you anything else?”

“She said that Constance Letterman
knows, and that pretty soon the whole town will know.” Meredith’s voice was
flat and dull. “I tried to tell her that this would sabotage the things Mother
was fighting for. But Mother isn’t important to her. It’s Roz. That’s the one
she’s out to get, any way she can.”

I pushed. “Anything else?” Had
Violett told Meredith about seeing Roz in Pecan Springs on the day Jo died?

“Well, yes,” Meredith replied
slowly, “but I was so... so churned up by the other that I didn’t think about
it. She said she saw Roz here on Monday.”

I could understand Violett’s logic,
although her purpose—or what I thought was her purpose—was a little obscure. I
wouldn’t take her story to Roz, so she’d gone to Meredith, telling her about
her mother’s lesbian relationship and planting the idea that Roz had been with
her mother when she died. Enraged and hurt, Meredith would carry the story to
Roz, and Roz would see that Violett was the person who held the key to her future.
It wasn’t blackmail, exactly, and I had no idea what Violett hoped to get out
of it, other than the satisfaction of seeing Roz pay for her moral transgressions.
But Violett was on dangerous territory. If Roz could kill her former lover,
what qualms would she have when it came to Violett?

Meredith frowned, and I could see
that she was making the connections, beginning to build her own case. She was
quiet for a moment, then: “That perfume I smelled just before I found Mother—do
you suppose it was Roz’s? Was she in the house that morning?”

I winced. I’d just as soon Meredith
didn’t pursue this line of questioning. “I don’t know,” I said.

Meredith sat forward on her chair,
elbows on her knees, arms clasped. “I didn’t notice her perfume at the memorial
service,” she said in a low voice, more to herself than to me. “But that was
outdoors. And when we went to dinner that night, she wasn’t wearing her own
perfume. I remember you saying she’d showered with lavender soap.”

I didn’t reply.

“But if Roz was here on Monday, why
didn’t she say so? Why did she lie?” She raised her head and looked at me,
working it out. “And if it was Roz’s perfume I smelled on Monday, was it the
same perfume I smelled after the burglary?” Her voice was harsh. “Was it
Roz
who broke into the house? But why? What was she after?”

There wasn’t any point in trying to
stop her. She was thinking too fast, clicking away question after question,
gathering momentum.

“And if Roz was here on Monday, was
she with Mother before she died? Or
when
she died?” She half rose out of
her chair, her eyes wide, her face putty-colored in an intensity of anguish and
despair. “Jesus, China, did Rosalind Kotner
kill my mother?”

I put out my hand and gently pushed
her down again. Meredith’s questions had pulled her into the heart of it. I
wasn’t prepared for that. I was afraid she’d want to take some kind of action—what,
I wasn’t sure. I had to slam on the brakes, keep her from going further.

“Listen, Meredith,” I said
carefully, “everything you say could be true. But we don’t
know that
it
is. We don’t have enough facts to go on. We’d be jumping to conclusions if—”

Meredith wasn’t listening. “I think
she did!” she cried. She strained forward, every muscle tight, her eyes bright
with a feverish clarity. “I think she came over to the house, mixed pills and
vodka for a great double whammy, and poured in enough spicy tomato stuff to
cover up the taste. She did it to keep Mother from telling people that they’d
been lovers.
That
would queer her chance at the White House!” She
laughed bitterly at her own tasteless joke, her voice rising. “Queer her
chance—get it?”