Thyme of Death (27 page)

One evening the summer before last,
I’d been invited to dinner in Jo’s backyard. Jo was there, of course, and Roz,
visiting from New York with her agent, and a half dozen of Jo’s friends and co-conspirators
on the Pecan Springs Park project. Roz had discovered a large ant mound at the
base of Jo’s favorite rosebush and insisted that something be done about it, on
the spot. They could be fire ants, the bane of local backyards. Jo didn’t think
they were fire ants and neither did I, when I was called in to consult. But to
appease Roz, Jo sent us into the garage for ant poison. We found it on a shelf
beside the door, in a rusty can with the label half torn off. Something
sulfate, it was—thallium sulfate, I seemed to remember. When Roz brought it
out, Jo kiddingly told her to be careful of it around the food because it was
toxic—so toxic that an eighth of a teaspoon would put you away forever. It was
on the EPA’s no-no list and wasn’t available any longer. What I remembered
about the episode, and about the ant poison, was that when you sniffed the
stuff, you got a bitter, garlicky aftertaste.

I emptied the last of the tea in one
gulp and reached for my denim jacket. The last time I’d seen that can of
thallium sulfate was on the shelf in Jo’s garage.

On my bike, it took all of four
minutes to get to Jo’s. Meredith’s Mazda was gone, and I didn’t hesitate. I
leaned my bike against the house and went around the back, to the garage. The side
door was unlocked, just as Jo had always left it. I flicked on the light and
surveyed the shelf where Roz and I had found the ant poison. The can wasn’t there.

In fact, as I saw when I looked
around, the garage had been neatened. The bundled newspapers, piles of old
magazines, cans of paint—the clutter that I remembered was gone and the
remaining tools and gardening supplies were tidily arranged on pegs or shelves
or on the floor. Either Jo had had an attack of housecleaning frenzy in the
weeks before she died, or Meredith had gone through in the last couple of days
and cleaned everything out. I paused as something clicked. No, it wasn’t Jo who’d
taken care of that chore, it was Meredith. Yesterday morning she’d mentioned that
the garage needed cleaning, and she intended to do it that day.

I went out, closing the door behind
me. Had Meredith found the thallium sulfate when she was cleaning and
recognized it as a deadly poison?

When the shooting was unsuccessful,
had she turned to poison—
ant
poison?

Or had the ant poison been thrown
out weeks or months ago? If so, what had killed Roz Kotner?

No answers. My right brain still dug
in its heels when it came to believing that Meredith was a killer. My left
brain still insisted I was losing the objectivity I’d always been so proud of,
especially in the light of the mounting evidence of Meredith’s guilt. I biked
home more slowly than I had come.

“You’re kidding,” Ruby breathed,
straightening up from the bookrack she was dusting in the Cave. It was already
one-thirty, and I hadn’t opened up yet.

“I wish I were,” I said.

She shuddered.
“Poison
—”

“That’s just my guess,” I said. “Nobody
will know for sure until the medical examiner is finished.”

“Yes, but it stands to reason.” Ruby
was frowning. “Have you come up with any suspects?”

“I’m not the one who’s doing the
investigation, Ruby. The question is, who will Bubba come up with, especially
given the fact that he’ll be under pressure to do it quick?”

She chewed her lower lip. “Meredith?”

“She’s already on his list.” I
reported Bubba’s two visits that morning, the first to me, the second to Meredith.
I repeated Mr. Cowan’s scornful remark about the Sunday-morning jogger in the
pretty blue suit. And I told her about the can of ant poison that no longer sat
on the shelf in Jo’s garage.

“Gosh,” Ruby said, awestruck at the
bleak litany, “things really look
bad
for Meredith.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Looks like she’s
guilty as hell.”

“To somebody who doesn’t know her,”
Ruby added.

“Even to somebody who does,” I said
ominously.

Ruby thought of something else. “China,
what are we going to do about Jo’s murder now that Roz is out of the picture?
Can we still prove that Roz did it?”

“The evidence is circumstantial and
presumptive.”

“English, please.”

“If I were the D.A., I’d want a
witness. I’d want fingerprints. I’d want something to tie Roz to the crime.” I
paused. “Anyway, now that Roz is dead, I’m not so sure we want to prove that
she killed Jo.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’d have to give that information
to Bubba.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Ruby
demanded indignantly, narrowing her green eyes. “Roz may be dead, but so is
Jo. And we
have
to tell people that she didn’t commit suicide. We have
to clear her name.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. To
prove that Roz killed Jo, we have to establish her motive, which means
revealing Jo’s relationship with Roz. Do you want people like Arnold
Seidensticker knowing the details of Jo’s personal life?”

Ruby chewed on that for a minute.

“Furthermore,” I went on, “the way
things stand now, Bubba probably hasn’t come up with a plausible motive for
Meredith. But if he knew that Roz killed Meredith’s mother, that would clinch
it. And then, of course, there’s Roz’s will.”

“But I thought you said that
Meredith can’t inherit Roz’s money through her mother. Wouldn’t Bubba know
that?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But Meredith
probably doesn’t. Money—even if it’s merely the expectation of money— is a
classic motive for murder. Add money to revenge and you’ve got an unbeatable
combination, at least as far as the D.A. is concerned.”

Ruby shook her head stubbornly. “I
still don’t—”

I sighed. “Put yourself in Bubba’s
boots, Ruby. What would
you
do if the City Council and the county D.A.
and a U.S. Senator were coming on hot and heavy for an arrest and you had
Meredith up your sleeve?”

“Well, then,” Ruby said with the air
of someone who has come to a logical conclusion, “why don’t you find out who
really
killed Roz? Then Bubba wouldn’t arrest Meredith.”

“Sure,” I said. “But Violett is the
only other person I can think of who might have done it and—” Violett. I’d
forgotten about Violett. “I’m supposed to see her this afternoon.”

“Well, go over there now,” Ruby
said. ‘Tell her about Roz’s death and get her reaction. If she didn’t do it, we’ll
have to get busy and figure out who did.”

I stared at her. Out of the mouths
of babes. “Will you open the shop for me?”

“Sure. I have a big job to do
anyway. I need to build a new display before the media show up.”

“The media?’

“Roz Kotner isn’t your everyday,
run-of-the-mill murder victim,” Ruby said patiently. “When the newspapers and
the TV reporters and the tourists find out that StrawBerry Bear is dead, they’ll
be flocking around. I don’t mean to be crass about it, but
some
of that
traffic will be hoofing past my window. I need a display that will catch their
attention.”

“On Roz? I didn’t know you carried
kids’ stuff.”

“I don’t,” Ruby replied absently,
going to a shelf and pulling out a few books.

When I left, she was building a
display on reincarnation.

CHAPTER 16

There were two problems, of course.
It took a substantial stretch of the imagination to see Violett sneaking into
the cottage a few minutes before or after our encounter this morning to dump
ant poison into Roz’s tomato juice. It took an even more substantial stretch to
come up with a
why.
Violett thought that she and Roz had some kind of
agreement that she needed to collect on. But with Roz dead, Violett was, as we
say in Texas, up shit creek without a paddle.

There was no answer to my knock on
Violett’s door. The Siamese jumped lightly off the porch swing where he was
napping and arched his back in an indolent stretch. There were half a dozen
cats lying under the porch swing, but he was the only one
on
it.
Obviously, he was in charge and the other cats knew their place— beneath him.
He gave my jeans an arrogant sniff and arranged his two front paws on my right
foot as I knocked for the second and third times. “Not home, huh?” I asked him.
I’d told Violett I’d be there after five. Maybe she hadn’t believed young Mr.
Cavette when he assured her that the good Lord wouldn’t strike her dead for missing
one service. Maybe she’d gone to the church this afternoon.

Cat—I couldn’t force myself to call
him Pudding— pricked dark ears forward and gave me a penetrating blue-eyed
stare, assessing my intelligence. Then, with a gruff, throaty
meow,
he
stepped off my foot, strode purposefully down the steps, and crossed in front
of the garage. He paused at the corner of the house, looked back over his
shoulder, and spoke again, peremptorily.

I, too, knew my place. I followed
Cat around the garage to the open back door. I knocked and called Violett’s
name several times, but there was no answer.

“Should I go in?” I addressed the
question to the Siamese, feeling like Alice speaking to the Cheshire Cat.

By way of answer, Cat shouldered the
door open and stepped into the kitchen.

Again, I followed. The house was
quiet except for Petey pouring liquid cadenzas into the musty air. Cat leaped
to the linoleum-covered counter and from there stepped to the window ledge over
the kitchen sink, where he sat watching me, flicking the tip of his charcoal
tail. I glanced in the sink and saw several unwashed dishes—an omelet skillet
crusted with egg, a single plate, two glasses that had held tomato juice.
Beside the sink was a wooden cutting board, a knife, the shells of two eggs,
half an onion, several cloves of fresh garlic, and a cello-wrapped tray of
mushrooms three-quarters full.

I turned around. On the table was
one of Violett’s father’s antique typewriters. Beside the typewriter was the
wooden caddy of spice bottles with red-and-yellow lids. One bottle was missing.
Beside the caddy was a rusty, dented can with the label half torn off. It was
the ant poison from Jo’s garage.

With a velvety thud, Cat leaped from
the counter to the floor, walked to a closed door in the kitchen wall, and
waited for me to open it. When I did, I saw a steep, narrow flight of worn
wooden stairs. Cat took the stairs swiftly and turned at the top with
restrained impatience, summoning me.

I hesitated. I was trespassing. I’d
be in an awkward fix if Violett came in and caught me. But there was the can of
ant poison on the table and Cat at the top of the stairs, muttering an imperial
command. I climbed the stairs and followed him down a short, dark hallway to a
closed door. With a guttural meow, he sat. This was the place. I pushed the door
open and went in.

Violett lay on her stomach,
diagonally across the white chenille spread, her head and one arm hanging
limply off the side of the bed nearest me, over a white enameled bedpan.
Blood-stained vomit overflowed the pan and puddled on the wood floor. The room
was acrid with the smell of vomit and garlic.

I stepped to the bed, bent over the
silent figure, and put a finger to her throat. She was breathing irregularly
and shallowly and there was a faint pulse. I rolled her over on her back and pulled
her head back over the edge of the bed to make it easier for her to breathe.
She moaned and stirred, then was still.

The phone sat on the bedside table
beside a framed
picture of a blue-robed Jesus holding a sheep, a woolly flock
arranged picturesquely at his feet. I dialed 911, giving Violett’s address to the
dispatcher and telling her that I suspected poison. “Better get the police here
too,” I said. As I put the phone down, I saw a long-barreled revolver on the
table, lying on a typewritten note. Some of the characters were dirty and badly
out of line, but the note had been typed with a sure, firm touch. I read it
without picking it up.

To Whom It
May Concern:

Last night,
I tried to shoot Rosalind Kotner. But I missed, so I put ant poison in her tomato
juice. The Lord told me to do this because she is a wicked woman who doesn’t
deserve to live. She thought she was outside the reach of man’s law, but
Vengeance Is Mine Saith The Lord.

Now His work
is done. I go to be with Him forever more. His name is praised.

Violett Hall

I stared at the note. It looked like
Bubba had lucked out. All the loose ends were right here. Violett had neatly
and conveniently tied them all together.

But there was something about the
note that troubled me. I tried to focus on what it was, but I couldn’t. The
whole thing was too much, emotionally, and my mind didn’t want to function. I
was having a hard enough time dealing with the larger picture, never mind the
details. Jo and Roz both dead, Violett near death—too many, too much, too
awful. What had been gained by all this dying?