Thyme of Death (20 page)

I raised my hand. “Hang on,
Meredith,” I said. “Do you really think Roz would worry about Jo spilling the
beans? She’d know Jo wouldn’t risk damaging the Anti-Airport Coalition.”

It worked—for a minute. Meredith sat
back, looking remarkably like her mother. Then she straightened up.

“Mother wouldn’t have told the
world,” she said. “But she had something fierce in her, and she’d learned how
to land a punch where it did the most good. If she was angry at Roz, or hurt,
she might have threatened to tell Senator Keenan and back it up with
th
e letters. And
that
would have fixed Roz’s wagon.” She
barked a laugh that was so much like Jo’s that it made me shiver. “Yes, that
would have appealed to Mother’s sense of justice. And if Roz knew anything
about Mother, she must have known that’s precisely what Mother would do. So she
killed Mother to keep her from going to the Senator!”

I shifted uncomfortably. Listening
to my own argument as Meredith worked through it, energized by her passion, I
knew that the case against Roz, circumstantial or not, was very strong. But
this conversation was getting out of hand in a hurry. All Meredith needed was
to fit one more piece to the puzzle and—

She got it. “The letters!” She
jumped out of her chair and paced furiously around the table. “Once Roz shut
Mother up, she still had to get her hands on the letters. That’s why she broke
into the house!”

I sighed. “Oh, come on.” I loaded
the words with sarcasm. “Don’t tell me you
really
believe that the fiancée
of a presidential candidate would risk breaking into—”

“Of
course
she would!”
Meredith punched the air with her fist. “Goddammit, don’t you see? Those
letters must be terribly incriminating. Once she has them, she’ll be home free.”
She stopped pacing and swung around. “I want those letters, and Roz’s will. We
have to lock everything up someplace—Mother’s safe deposit box, maybe. We
can’t
let Roz get her hands on that stuff!”

I couldn’t give her the letters.
Number one, they were the bait to my trap. Number two, there was Jo’s
instruction not to let Meredith read them. I could finesse the first: if I
handled things right tonight, Roz would never know whether the letters were
actually here or not. I couldn’t finesse the second, even though Meredith knew
about the relationship. I had read only three of the letters, but I knew what
private emotions they touched.

Meredith was pacing again. “I
know
Roz killed my mother,” she muttered. “I
know
it, China. But it’s no
good just to know it. I have to
prove
it.”

I rolled my sherry glass between my
hands. With any luck, tonight would get me the proof Meredith was asking for.
But if I told her what I was up to, she’d want in on it. As wired as she was,
she’d blow the whole thing. She’d get herself or Ruby hurt. She’d get me hurt.

I pushed the glass away and folded
my arms on the table, courtroom-style. “Accusing someone of murder is a very
serious business,” I said. “You only
think
Roz is involved with your
mother’s death.” Meredith started to sputter and I held up my hand. “But you
don’t have proof, and there isn’t any easy way to get it, at least, not
tonight. I suggest that you go home and let this thing simmer a day or so. A
friend of mine owns a travel service. On Monday we’ll ask her to check Roz’s
flight schedule.”

“Monday!” Meredith said. “Roz could
be out of here by tonight—by tomorrow!”

“I doubt it. She’s waiting to get
her hands on those letters. Anyway, what if she leaves? That’s what extradition
is all about. If she’s guilty—”

“If
she’s
guilty!” Meredith slammed her fist on the table. “What me hell do you mean, if?
Rosalind Kotner killed my mother—your friend—and you
know
it! How can
you sit there and let her get away with it?”

“Meredith, Meredith,” I said
quietly, shaking my head. “I don’t know anything of the kind, and you don’t
either. Now, I suggest—”

“Yeah, I know,” Meredith said. “Be a
good girl and go home and watch television. Sit on my ass and twiddle my
thumbs.” She could barely contain her disgust. “Some friend you are, China
Bayles. Some
lawyer,
too. So what’s the deal? You’re still on the crook’s
side? You want to see Roz Kotner get away with murder?”

“I’m just trying to keep you out of
trouble.” I picked up the sherry bottle and gestured toward her empty glass. “I
advise you to calm down, have another sherry and—”

“You can take your goddamned advice
and stuff it. I’m Jo’s daughter.
I’ll
take care of my mother’s business.”
She stalked out the door and slammed it so hard that the dishes rattled in the
cupboard.

I put down the bottle and sat
morosely. Boy, had I screwed
this
one up. I’d wanted to calm Meredith
down and keep her from doing something she might regret—something I might
regret. Instead, I’d gotten her angry, charged up. What would she do with that
anger? Would she go to Roz? And what would
Roz
do? Maybe I’d better add
Meredith to my list of people to worry about.

But I also had to worry about what I
was going to do. I sat there for a moment, thinking. Then I reached for the
phone. I needed somebody to listen critically to my version of what had
happened, somebody who could help me ask the right questions, head toward the
right answers. I needed McQuaid. It was only last night that we’d made love,
but it seemed like weeks. Maybe he could come over tonight and have chili and
cornbread with Ruby and me. Maybe he could join our stakeout team. Maybe—

With a muttered curse, I dropped the
phone. McQuaid had gone camping with Brian, probably deliberately, to put some
space between us. I was on my own.

CHAPTER 12

I did what I often do when I’ve got
something to think about, I cooked. When Ruby arrived a half hour later, I was
putting the cornbread into the oven. It’s a terrific recipe, made with cheese
and corn and home-grown jalapeno peppers. I bake it in my cast-iron skillet and
cut it into wedge-shaped pieces that are brown and crispy on the bottom, steamy
and corn-sweet inside, with flecks of red and green pepper. I always enjoy
making it, but tonight I have to admit that my attention wandered. I forgot the
peppers.

Ruby had followed my instructions.
She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater with the sleeves pushed up, skinny
black denim jeans and black suede boots, matching my own black sweater and dark
jeans and sneakers. She was carrying a heavy pot filled with venison chili.
She thumped the pot onto the back burner of the stove and turned on the flame.
Then she straightened up, hands on hips.

“I’ve figured it out!” she
announced, triumphant. “China, I have
solved
the mystery. And the answer
is so incredible that you will never guess it—not in a million years. Not in a
trillion
years.”

I reached automatically for the
sherry. Then I pulled my hand back. I’d already had several sherries and I
needed to be able to think tonight, not just slosh around. So I went to the
refrigerator and got out a couple of bottles of sparkling water. “Does this
have to do with Arnold Seidensticker?”

Ruby took her glass and sat down at
the kitchen table, looking uncomfortable. “Only indirectly. I mean, it started
out about Arnold Seidensticker. But it ended up about—” She ran her fingers
through her red-orange hair, fuzzing it wildly. “What I found out changes
everything, China. I mean,
everything.
It’s totally incredible. You won’t
believe it.”

I know Ruby. When she gets into this
state, there’s no reasoning with her. “Okay, P. I. Wilcox.” I sighed, resigned.
‘Tell me what I won’t believe. Only make it fast, huh? We’ve got to talk about
what we’re going to do tonight.”

Ruby jumped up to pace around the
table, hands stuffed into the pockets of her jeans. “First, I have to confess
that I really
did
think Arnold Seidensticker killed Jo. Or maybe Lila. I
was trying to think how to pin it on them and I got to thinking about that
Bloody Mary mix—Hot Shot. Meredith said they didn’t have any, so I figured I’d
find out where Arnold or Lila bought it.”

“Needle in a haystack,” I said, “unless
the bottle had a store price label.” I’d wasted time on scavenger hunts like
that myself, beating the bushes for evidence that never turned up. You could
search until you dropped, and still come up empty-handed.

“I thought about the price label,”
Ruby said, “but Bubba took the bottle, so I didn’t have that to go on. But it
turns out that Hot Shot is what you might call a gourmet brand of Bloody Mary
mix. The chains don’t carry it, which is lucky.”

“Yeah,” I said, wishing she’d speed
it up.

“So I started making the rounds of
the liquor stores. But I didn’t have to go far. I found it at the second place
I went to. Bart’s Liquors.” Ruby stopped pacing. “And get this, China. The
clerk—a kid, actually, just graduated from high school last June, still living
at home with Mom and little sis—remembers selling a quart of the stuff on
Monday morning. It was his first sale of the day, about two minutes after nine.
And
he remembers who he sold it to!”

“I sincerely hope it wasn’t Arnold
Seidensticker,” I muttered. We didn’t need a complication like that.

Ruby threw up her hands. “I keep
telling you, China.
Forget
Arnold. I admit I was barking up the wrong
tree. No more Arnold Seidensticker. Now we’re onto the
real
killer.”

“Ruby,” I said, “will you get to the
point? We’ve got a lot to do tonight and—”

Ruby put her hands on the table,
palms down, and leaned on them. “The reason this kid remembers the sale is that
he recognized the person he made it to. You see, his little sister watches
something called the StrawBerry Bear Kids’ Klub every Saturday morning.” She
straightened up with a look of mixed jubilation and incredulity, like an amateur
magician who’s just pulled a live rabbit out of her hat and can’t quite figure
out where it came from. “The person who bought the quart of Hot Shot was our
very own—Rosalind Kotner!”

I closed my eyes briefly. I’d gone
the long way around to verify Violett’s claim, while Ruby had taken the
shortcut. Not only that, but she’d just put the means to murder right into Roz’s
well-manicured hands. Well, almost.

I opened my eyes. “I hate to rain on
your parade, Ruby, but buying a bottle of Hot Shot doesn’t prove shit. A good
defense lawyer could probably convince a jury that Roz was buying it to spice
up her garlic-tomato juice cocktail.”

Ruby shook her head, and I
remembered I hadn’t told her about Roz’s garlic habit. “I don’t know about
that,” she said, “but the clerk said she bought something else.” She leaned
forward again and pulled out another rabbit, a big one. “She bought a bottle of
Everclear.”

I stared at her. Everclear is a
hundred and eighty proof. It packs more whammy than anything else you can
drink, unless you make it yourself. What’s more, the stuff is absolutely
odorless and colorless. If Roz had mixed it into the Hot Shot, Jo would’ve been
drunk out of her mind before she figured out what she was drinking. And if it
were combined with sleeping pills—

I whistled.

“I knew you’d be surprised,” Ruby
said excitedly. “The last person you’d think of, right? I mean, as far as the
rest of us know, Roz didn’t get into town until Wednesday night.” She narrowed
her eyes and pushed out her lips. “Now, all we have to do is figure out Roz’s
motive for killing Jo and—”

“I know the motive,” I said quietly.
I told Ruby the entire story, from last night’s break-in to my clumsy attempt
to cool Meredith off a few minutes before. I told her about Violett’s report of
the relationship between Roz and Jo, about the confirming letters, about Roz’s
will leaving everything to Jo.

“Oh, wow,” Ruby said, when I
finished. Her eyes were as big as sand dollars. “Oh,
wow!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Means, motive,
opportunity—it’s all here. Roz must have doctored the Hot Shot with a handful
of pulverized sleeping pills. Then she surprised Jo—”

“Sure,” Ruby said, sitting down on
the edge of her chair. “She probably pretended that she wanted to talk things
over, maybe get back together. When she got the chance, she went into the
kitchen, poured Jo half a glass of doctored Hot Shot and topped it off with
Everclear. Maybe she even managed to get Jo to drink a
couple
of glasses
of the stuff.”

I nodded. “With Jo safely knocked
out, she found the vodka bottle, dumped out the contents, and printed it with
Jo’s fingerprints. She left it and the empty bottle of pills on the table, with
what remained of the Hot Shot, also printed. And she left the note, too, that
Jo had started to write to Meredith. It made a perfect suicide note.”

“And when that was taken care of,
she started looking for the letters—”

“But got scared off when she heard
RuthAnn knocking at the door.” I shook my head. “Except for that, she didn’t miss
a trick. Every prop was in place. It was a first-class job of staging a
suicide.”