Deadly Thyme

by R. L. Nolen

  “Nothing for me,” Trewe said.

  Ruth started to fix herself a drink then decided against it, opting to eat something first—and changed her mind again in quick succession. She poured herself two fingers whiskey, neat.

  Trewe didn’t sit. “I still have a few questions about the morning Annie disappear—”

  Ruth cut him short. “Maybe you would rather have tea?”

  Trewe hardly paused. “Constable Craig could you make us tea?”

  Ruth set her untouched drink down. “Please sit. I don’t like it when people stand in my house.”

  Constable Craig exited into the kitchen. Trewe sat. “Of all the people you come in contact with on a daily or weekly basis, did it strike you that day or later that someone you know wasn’t around on Sunday? Everyone in the village was out and about looking for Annie at some point. Does anything odd come to mind?”

  Ruth picked up her drink and sat across from him. “Someone I know who wasn’t around?”

  “Yes. Someone you expected would have shown up to help out, or someone you wouldn’t have expected in a million years that showed up and was solicitous?”

  “Sergeant Perstow’s wife. She was being too nice. She’s never been the sort of person to go out of her way to be so nice to me. It did seem odd.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Why these questions? It doesn’t make any difference; she certainly wasn’t the one calling me from Annie’s mobile. That was a man.”

  “Is there anyone in the village you’ve had any disagreements with?”

  Ruth sat back into the cushions. “No one has ever been outright rude. Indifferent, stand-offish maybe, but most have made me feel welcome.”

  Trewe didn’t say anything.

  The silence prompted more words from Ruth. “If ever I need to know local news, I ask the postmistress. She makes it a point to let me know anybody else’s business, so I wouldn’t put it past her to know mine, too. I guess I don’t like her much.”

  “You could form a club, from what I hear. But Sunday morning she was at the church, arranging flowers. Several people saw her. What about someone missing, someone you thought should be there and wasn’t?”

  “Sam Ketterman didn’t come till around two on Sunday.”

  “How long have you been acquainted with Sam Ketterman?” Trewe asked.

  Nothing like being direct, Ruth thought. She stared down at the amber liquid in her glass. It was early for a drink, wasn’t it? “A while.” She took too big a swallow. The whiskey burned its way down her throat. She held her breath, willing herself not to choke.

  “The nature of your relationship?”

  “Does that have anything to do with Annie?”

  Trewe leaned forward. “I like to understand all of the people involved in an investigation, Mrs. Butler. I don’t mean to offend.”

  “The first time I met him was when he asked me if he could get into my garden. He was after thyme. I remember thinking it was a novel pick-up line. I invited him into the garden and we began to talk. That was the beginning. We saw each other—for a short while. I don’t know why he calls himself my solicitor.” She tugged at a loose thread on her sweater. “There’s nothing between us. I broke it off with him. I don’t think he gets it, though. He has been almost what I would call harassing me since Sunday.”

  Trewe stepped to the window, turning his back to her, and said, “I read from another report that you moved here from London. You stopped in London, coming from Texas? Then why here, Mrs. Butler? Doesn’t seem the kind of place to attract a lone woman and her child.” He turned to her.

  Ruth was uncomfortable. On an empty stomach, the alcohol hit hard. His words shot at her much too fast. Probably his intent. She wouldn’t put it past him. She set her glass down too hard on the coffee table. Liquid splashed. Those frightful, white-gray eyes. She hesitated, measured her words. “I followed a friend to London. Found a good job, working for a newspaper … on its redesign. It was a small newspaper, one of the boroughs—Merton. I had a little to live on.” He didn’t need to know that her parents took out a personal loan so she could get away—that her father had to work an extra job to pay the loan back, because any money she sent him could be traced back to her—how her father died before she could even thank him. Her stomach roiled. “Annie and I came to Cornwall for a holiday. Annie loves the beach.”

  She rubbed her face. “I’d read Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes and had notions of becoming a writer living the romance. I read everything by Rosamunde Pilcher and Dauphne du Maurier and decided that the West Country was my stopping place. I’m a horrible writer. I do artwork for hire. I felt some sort of homing pull when I came to Cornwall, though. Sometimes sitting at the top of the cliff watching the way the sun set beyond the sea—the cottages planted against the valley slopes, the wildness of the sea during a storm—I think it’s like something made up, and … such a contrast from the forest of buildings and the diesel fumes of London. But that isn’t what you want to know is it?”

  “I think you answered the question.” He sat again. “So you do artwork for a living?”

  “Technical stuff and advertising art, the occasional illustration job.” She pointed at the mock-ups for the illustrated dictionary of herbs she had been working on that were pinned across one wall. “I have a crafting website that pulls in money from advertisements.”

  Trewe watched her for a moment before saying, “I apologize for asking, but tell me more about your ex-husband.”

  “I lied about his death to my daughter so she would never go looking for him. The hiding, the lies, the cross-world move—it was a justified deception. Stealing Annie was a necessary evil.”

  “I do understand, Mrs. Butler. I have family.”

  Ruth wondered if Trewe could picture her in a previous world—an existence more foreign than miles made. “Everything was so different.”

  Constable Craig entered with tea and biscuits on a tray. “You sounded very Texan just then, Mrs. Butler.”

  “Call me Ruth. That part is my real name. I’ve been hiding so long, it’s hard to remember what normal could look like.” Ruth didn’t take the offered cup of tea or cookies, but took a slice of dry toast. “The police might still be looking for us. I’m sure we’ve been on milk cartons and the post office walls in my home state.”

  “You are a ‘wanted’ woman, but not in a serious way. I wondered if that response was how things were done in Texas. It called for more questions. That’s really why we’re here.”

  “I would describe the police in Texas as being a lot more aggressive.” She remembered how they had handcuffed her arms behind her, cuffed her feet, and tossed her in the police car like a sack of rice. It happened after she had run away from Bubba. But those had been officers who were Bubba’s friends. “They would still be the same cold arm of the law, unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless Bubba called off the search.” A cold chill crept up from her feet.

  WPC Allison Craig put her cup down with a clatter. “And the only reason he would do that?”

  “Because he had found us and wanted to exact his own revenge.”

  Trewe sat forward in the seat. “We are trying, Mrs. Butler. But you understand that even if it isn’t Mr. Brock who has done this, Mr. Brock is now aware you are in England, as his picture has been put in the paper. I tried to keep it somewhat quiet, but when it concerns a child, these things take on a life of their own.”

  Oh, if only you knew! Perhaps it was the unexpected compassion in his tone of voice and the fact that after so many years, someone else knew. Ruth found she couldn’t put a stopper in the flood of tears. “It’s just … the feeling of losing … she seemed here a moment ago. I can’t believe she’s not … coming home. I keep thinking she’s visiting a friend.”

  “Mrs. Butler, they say bad things come in threes. I’d say you’ve had all your bad things.” Trewe’s eyes were not so terrible after all—piercing, direct—but not terribl
e. She pulled an afghan from the back of the couch tight around her shoulders.

  Trewe finished his tea. “You’re young.”

  Ruth shook her head. “Please don’t say that. It’s not good enough.”

  “No, I expect not. Do you have any relatives here?”

  “No.”

  “Without family,” Trewe said quietly, “this must be especially hard.”

  “My mother is terrified of flying. Always has been, but not because of what happened in New York. ‘There’s terrorists everywhere’ is what she says to me.” She rubbed her wet cheeks. “This is when I think most about moving back. But I can’t leave now … not without my daughter.”

  “And I’m sure you’d be missed here.”

  It touched Ruth that he would offer that thought.

  “Would you like me to stay?” Allison Craig asked. Allison’s wild hair floated out from her face despite several clasps. “I could help out with the phone, the email.”

  Ruth shook her head. “Really, today I got by alone. It’s at night I’m afraid of my own shadow, but Sally stays with me.”

  Rising, Trewe nodded in Allison’s direction. “If there’s nothing else, Mrs. Butler.”

  “Before you go there’s something I should show you.” She went to a bookshelf near the door. She pulled a book forward, flipped it open and extracted an envelope. “I found this taped to my door yesterday.”

  She handed it to Trewe.

  Trewe’s face closed up as he studied the picture. “This is your daughter.”

  “It was taken on Sunday morning, when she was on the beach. Those are the clothes she was wearing.”

  Allison crowded over Trewe’s shoulder to view the picture. “Good detail. Perhaps an IP camera.”

  “Who was on the beach, this near the girl, except …” he didn’t finish the sentence. He glanced into Ruth’s eyes.

  She knew he hadn’t wanted to say, “except the one who took her.”

  “May I keep this?” he asked.

  “I’ve already made a copy.”

  “Mrs. Butler, we’ve taken enough of your time. Thank you.” He nodded and stepped aside as Allison passed him. He followed on her heels to his car as the rain began again in earnest.

  Ruth pushed the door shut behind the two police officers. She was emotionally drained, but she sat down to check her email, just in case someone was trying to get in touch. She had a new email.

  RAB@Westco.uk.co

  Subject: For you

  Lazy Annie has grown so fine

  She can’t get up to feed the swine,

  But lies in bed till eight or nine.

  Lazy Annie Butler.

  She pivoted. It would be best for Constable Craig to stay; the police needed to have this email. She stood. She should, at least, call them back inside. She hesitated. Should she call Sally? Before she could decide, the doorbell rang. Detective Chief Inspector Trewe must have forgotten something. She would show him this email.

  She opened the door.

  It wasn’t the chief inspector.

  12

  When the figure on the porch came forward from the gloom of the wet day, Ruth drew in a gasp. The short, square woman with a round, flushed face peered at her over her rain-speckled glasses. The woman’s hair had definitely gone much grayer and thinner than the last time Ruth had seen her.

  “Momma?”

  “Well! I don’t know what ‘a penny for a pound’ means in this gosh-darn, cold, wet place! And what in God’s name is a ‘Euro-dollar?’ I can’t even get what a ‘pence’ means.” She shook a rolled-up newspaper in Ruth’s face. “This is a great picture of Bubba—a detestable ugly mug if ever I saw one.”

  The harsh, bravado voice resounded against the porch’s slate walls. Ruth certainly never imagined her mother would brave the seas and air to come to England, but she had never been so relieved. “Is it really you?”

  Mrs. Thompson stood on the step in her red coat, the same coat she had worn when Ruth was a girl. It stretched threadbare thin in places. One of the buttons dangled loose, hanging on by a thread.

  Ruth pulled her mother into the house, putting her arms around her. “Momma? I—how did you get here?”

  Her mom returned the hug, squeezing tight. “Amazing what a little Valium can do. They should pass them out with the peanuts on planes. Thankfully, they were generous with the wine, too.”

  “What?”

  “Had to have something. Supposed to be eleven hours!” Her voice was overloud.

  Ruth smiled to hear her mother, see her mother, for the first time in so many years and especially now. “Wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t remember. Good medicine. Your Aunt Maybe’s suggestion. Blame her! Can a body get something decent to drink around here besides tea, Ruth-Ann?” Her voice rose to loud, as if she were talking through a wall. “I’ve got enough caffeine in this body, I could have carried that taxi. And there aren’t enough bathrooms to accommodate, I can tell you right now!” Her voice was gravelly. She must have been yelling a lot.

  Mrs. Thompson glanced around. “My land and stars! That taxi driver is still sitting there! He doesn’t want my credit card and I don’t have the right kind of money. If that don’t beat all, I don’t know what does.”

  Ruth glanced out. A rumbling taxi exhausted black fumes into the tiny street. And worse, it was a black taxi. No telling how much this was going to be because he would have kept his meter running all this time. “I’ll take care of it,” she said, and prepared herself to haggle.

  “Dang! I’ve got to find a bathroom.”

  “Through there, Momma.” Ruth pointed. She grabbed some money out of her purse and ran out in the rain to the taxi.

  Her mother came back into the sitting room at the same moment Ruth finished instructing the taxi driver where to deposit the rest of the luggage. She shook off most of the rain inside the door. An exhilarating wave of emotion swept over her—her teeth chattered, her knees jellied—but all she could do was stand mute and stare at this pleasant-faced, frumpy woman in her late fifties. Ann Thompson wore her mousy, blond hair curly on top to hide the thin, gray roots. Her mother was here.

  “All the way from London in a taxi? It must have taken forever.”

  Her mother laughed, “Forever. But daughter, I am glad to see you. I’m so sorry about Annie.”

  Ruth’s voice choked with emotion. “You’re here. Oh Momma, you came! Are you sure no one would trace you? Though it doesn’t matter much now, with his face all over the place, he’ll soon follow unless he’s been here all along.”

  “No, he couldn’t be.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t get that email.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We only found out about this a week or so ago. We sent you an email immediately. Now we realize you never got it.”

  “Got it?”

  “You’re just not going to believe it!” The plump woman hugged Ruth, speaking into her hair. She choked back a loud sob. “I couldn’t stay home, my sweet girl. The minute I heard, I started my plan—plane or no plane, ocean or no ocean—and despite Bubba’s awful family, and the extra cost of baggage, and full-body scans, blast it, I’d get to you.”

  Growing up, Ruth had always been a little afraid of her mother—her strength, her commanding voice, her constant movement—the unflappable, Blitzkrieg of mothers. That remembered image could not describe this lady. Standing before her now was a short, untidy woman with tears streaming down her care-worn face.

  Shaken, Ruth said, “Momma, what’s going on?”

  They clung to each other. Her mom cried out. “Oh, how I’ve missed you and baby Annie!” After a few minutes, her mom kissed Ruth lightly, let her go and headed for the brandy decanter. “I was plannin’ to come see you before this happened, I have to tell you. The shock of this … Have they any idea where she is, honey?”

  Ruth collapsed on the couch. “He’s gone and done it. He’s t
aken her.”

  “Maybe emailed you.”

  “What do you mean? Which email? You’ve been speaking in code or something. I’m not getting it.”

  “Your ex is dead, honey. Has been. For two weeks.”

  Climbing the windswept hills, Ruth watched white foam slash against the rocks in the surf below. She’d just come from speaking to DCI Trewe for the third time that day to tell him that her ex-husband was dead, so it couldn’t be him that took Annie. It couldn’t be him, so it had to be someone else. Her heart shuddered deep inside. What kind of life had she brought her daughter to? Who had her? What was going on?

  While walking the night before, she had thought someone was following her. It was an odd sensation. But it would explain the emails, the phone calls, and the shadowy figure watching her house from across the street. She had heard the footfall barely in step with her own. She’d called out and no one had responded. It wasn’t right. Why were they after her? Why would anyone wish her harm here? Who had a vendetta against her? Who had picked up the slack from her dead ex-husband?

  She went home. Her mother was in the kitchen, scraping the stone floor with a knife on her hands and knees.

  “Mom, you don’t have to do that.”

  “It’s dingy.”

  “You’re disturbing hundreds of years of dirt.”

  “I couldn’t sit.”

  “I get it, but cleaning the floor doesn’t change anything.”

  “Daughter of mine, don’t reckon you can act as if you know everything. I know a few things, too.”

  “I made the decision to live here. It was better than staying near Wallis. We were safe from him here.”

  “You were safe from him after he got sick. I told you that.”

  “You never could accept that he would find a way to hurt me no matter how sick he was. He’s got family that’s as bad as he was. He’d use them from beyond the grave if he could. That’s how determined he was to hurt me and, more importantly, to hurt Annie.”

  Her mother pointed to one of Ruth’s paintings of Annie. “She took after you in looks.”