Blood Orange: A China Bayles Mystery

by Susan Wittig Albert

  I appreciate the volunteers who help keep the gardens neat, and in thanks for their work, they get to choose a tray of plant seedlings to take home with them, plus cuttings and snippets from the established stock plants. This morning, there were four volunteers, and they were working on the apothecary garden, raking out the winter debris of leaves and twigs and pulling out the weeds that compete with the echinacea, St. John’s wort, plantain, feverfew, sage, comfrey, lavender, garlic, and chickweed. Khat, a large and elegant Siamese, was supervising their efforts from the top rail of a low wooden fence on the other side of the path.

  When Khat came to me from his unfortunately deceased owner, he was called Pudding, which neither he nor I liked. I couldn’t think of anything else, so I fell into the habit of calling him Cat, after Brian’s favorite Kipling story, “The Cat That Walked by Himself.” But Ruby objected that “Cat” wasn’t sufficiently distinctive for an animal with such a sovereign air. She is a great admirer of Koko, Qwilleran’s talented Siamese cat-sleuth in the Cat Who mysteries, and has always wanted a cat who could tell time, read backward, and has fourteen tales. In honor of Koko, Cat became Khat K’o Kung.

  Like many Siamese, Khat is arrogant, conceited, and obnoxiously imperial, easy to admire from a distance but hard to love up close and personal. He lives full-time at Thyme and Seasons and holds the position of shop security guard, as one startled Pecan Springs patrolman discovered when he was looking for a rabid raccoon that had been reported in the neighborhood. He thought he saw the creature climbing the trellis beside the back porch and went to look. Khat launched himself off the porch roof and sank all eighteen of his claws—ten on his front paws and eight on his rear—into the patrolman’s back. Trespassers, beware. Thyme and Seasons is patrolled by an attack cat who takes his work seriously.

  Now Khat jumped down from the fence and came to inspect the garden work. Miriam Johnston, who coordinates the volunteer group, straightened up from her work. Miriam has stunning white hair, glasses, and a wide smile. A breast cancer survivor, she loves gardening and is a natural teacher who worked for years with kids in a pioneer cabin project. These days, she’s passionate about straw-bale gardening. She and her husband Dean, a naturalist by profession, are making it work in their backyard garden. In addition to volunteering to work in the Thyme and Seasons herb garden, Miriam often comes in to help out in the shops, both Ruby’s and mine.

  “Hey, China,” she asked, “is it okay if we take some of this henbit home? There’s a lot of it. And plantain, too.”

  Like many of our native “weeds,” henbit is edible. Raw or cooked, it tastes like a peppery spinach and is packed with vitamins, iron, and antioxidants. At home, I include some of it in our spring salads, and Caitie feeds a lot of it to her chickens, who adore it. (Hence the plant’s common name, “henbit.”)

  “Take all the henbit you can carry away,” I said, bending over to stroke Khat’s charcoal ears. “We need to clean it out as much as we can, or it will take over. Let’s keep three or four of the largest plantains, though—I’m going to make some salve.” Plantain leaves are edible, too, raw (when they’re young), or steamed or boiled. And when the seed heads are young, you can use them in stir-fries and, steamed, in salads, like baby ears of corn. “Leave some space beside the plantain,” I added, “and I’ll make a plant marker for it.”

  “Oh, good,” Miriam said. “Yes, I know about plantain. When I was working on the pioneer cabin project, I used it to make salves and ointments, all by itself and with sage, jewelweed, and calendula flowers. It’s a shame that so many people think of it in the ‘weed’ category.”

  Doris, on her knees with a trowel, looked up. “That’s my husband. If I don’t stop him, he will dig every single plantain out of the lawn. Dandelions, as well.”

  “Mine sprays them with herbicide,” Reba chimed in. “And the peppergrass, too. I tell him that they’re all medicinal, but he does it anyway. He says he doesn’t want our next-door neighbors to be mad at us for spreading weed seeds.”

  We were shaking our heads about that when my cell phone rang. Everybody looked up, startled, and I fished it out of my jeans pocket as quickly as I could. When Brian was home the previous weekend, he downloaded a police siren ringtone onto my phone for a joke. He forgot to take it off before he went back to school, and I can’t seem to delete it. I’ve turned the darn thing down as far as I can, but it’s still way too loud. So I’m stuck with a police siren—a highly realistic, totally convincing, ear-splitting siren—on my phone until next weekend, when Brian will be home again.

  The caller was Charlie Lipman. “Hey, Charlie,” I said. “What’s up?”

  For most of the years I’ve known Charlie, he has been Pecan Springs’ best and most popular attorney. He is also a longtime family friend who throws a lot of work in McQuaid’s direction, especially divorce work, which is Charlie’s stock-in-trade. McQuaid would almost always rather be doing something else (there’s nothing particularly uplifting about tailing an adulterous spouse to a lovers’ hideaway), but since Charlie is a friend, he takes the cases when he can.

  “Got a little problem,” Charlie said. “I’m hoping you can help me.”

  “I’ll try,” I said warily. “What’s up?” For too long, Charlie has been drinking too much, especially on weekends. This might not be so awkward, professionally speaking, since judges like to take the weekend off, too. But Charlie’s weekends are a little longer than normal, usually beginning on Thursday night and ending around Tuesday afternoon or so. And this was only Monday, which accounts for my guardedness.

  But Charlie sounded entirely sober when he said, “I understand that Kelly Kaufman is stayin’ in that cottage behind your shop. She had a nine o’clock appointment with me this mornin’, and she didn’t show up. I’ve tried her cell phone but I’m not getting any answer. I figure she forgot to set her clock and maybe let her cell run out of juice. Reckon you could bang on the door a couple times and roust that gal outta bed for me?”

  Charlie Lipman grew up in the upscale Highland Park area of Dallas, took an undergraduate degree from Princeton, and spent a year at Oxford before entering University of Texas Law and passing the Texas bar exam with a stratospheric score. But in Pecan Springs, it pays to talk like your average local cedar chopper, and Charlie (who occasionally imagines that he might make a run for a seat in the state legislature) is conveniently bidialectal. He writes like a law professor and talks down-home Texan. It’s part of his charm.

  “Sure thing,” I said. “I’m in the shop garden right now. I’ll go back there and knock on the door.” I was curious about why Kelly had an appointment with Charlie. But he does a lot of divorce work, and she had mentioned a divorce.

  “She probably overslept,” I added. “Do you still bill people by the minute when they’re late?”

  It was an old joke between us. Charlie chuckled. “By the quarter hour. Encourages discipline, y’know.”

  “Encourages people to look for another lawyer,” I said. “Will you bill Kelly for being late?”

  “Ain’t decided,” he said cheerfully. Lawyers never answer questions about fees—they just send the invoice. “Talk to you later, China.”

  Thyme Cottage was built in the days when every respectable property owner had a horse and buggy. Originally a large stone stable, it had been erected at the back of the garden, parallel to the alley. Sometime before World War II, somebody turned the stable into a garage for his new 1937 Buick, with wooden doors and a parking area at one end. How do I know about the Buick? Because the proud owner of his new car took a snapshot of it in front of his new garage and framed the photo for posterity. Ruby discovered it when we were renovating the second floor of the shop building and it is hanging in the cottage hallway right now.

  But it was the next transformation that really counted. The previous owner, an architect, reincarnated the stable-cum-garage as a lovely one-bedroom guesthouse with a fireplace
, a built-in kitchen, and a hot tub in its own private deck. Until early this year, Ruby and Cass and I scheduled workshops there, since the main room—we call it the Gathering Room—was large enough to accommodate a modest crowd and the open-plan kitchen was ideal for cooking and crafting demonstrations.

  I had been in the habit of renting the cottage as a guesthouse when it wasn’t in use for our events. But when we remodeled the second floor of the main building this winter and moved our classes there, the cottage became available full-time. I advertise on the Internet and in the Pecan Springs Bed-and-Breakfast Guide and take bookings in advance. The rental comes with linens, towels, and a breakfast that Cass makes up the afternoon before and stashes in the cottage’s refrigerator, so the lucky resident can heat it up in the microwave while she’s waiting for the coffeemaker to brew that first morning cup. There’s also a television, a radio, and (of course) Wi-Fi. The cottage is proving to be a reliable source of extra income and only a little extra work.

  A few minutes later, I was ringing the bell at the front door. Once, twice, three times—and getting no answer. Which was odd, I thought. The doorbell rings in the main hallway, loud enough to wake even the soundest sleeper.

  I stood for a moment with my hands in my pockets, debating whether to go back to the shop and get the key from the hook on the wall beside the kitchen door. Or go around to the deck on the right and try the French doors that open onto the bedroom. The French doors first, I decided, although the gate to the deck was probably latched from the inside, in which case I’d have to get the key after all.

  I walked around the side of the cottage to the deck, which is surrounded on three sides by a five-foot privacy fence draped in cross vine, blooming now in a gorgeous orange and yellow profusion. The hummingbirds arrive around the middle of March and head straight for that cross vine, which providentially begins to bloom just about the time they show up. There are two gates in that fence, one to the garden, the other to the alley, where the garbage cans are kept for the early morning pickup. I gave the garden gate a tentative pull and, to my surprise, found it unlatched. I stepped up on the deck and saw that one of the French doors was slightly ajar.

  Oh, good, I thought. Kelly had probably gotten up late, eaten her breakfast on the deck, and was getting ready for her meeting with Charlie. I opened the door a little wider, stuck my head through into the bedroom, and called out expectantly, “Kelly. Hey, Kelly. Your lawyer called to tell you he’s waiting—and his billing clock is running!”

  Nothing. Nada, zilch, nein. No answer.

  I stood there for a moment, frowning, then called again—louder this time. But the place had an empty, unoccupied feeling, and I was suddenly, skin-prickly sure that Kelly wasn’t here.

  I pulled the door open and stepped into the bedroom. The bed hadn’t been made. There was a filmy blue nightie on the pillow, a pair of orange scrub bottoms draped over a chair, and a pair of white Reeboks on the floor. The closet door was open, revealing several outfits hanging on hangers. So was her suitcase, on the luggage rack, its contents still neatly arranged. A black leather shoulder bag, on the dresser, was open, too.

  In a half dozen strides, I was in the bathroom. A damp towel lay in a heap on the floor. The showerhead was dripping warm water, the shower curtain was wet, and a wet washcloth was wadded up on the rim of the tub. The makeup light was on, and the makeup mirror was swung out over an open makeup case. A hair dryer lay beside the case, its cord dangling.

  I left everything as it was and ran down the hall toward the galley kitchen. The overhead light was on, and the breakfast tray Cass had put in the fridge the night before—a pint jar of her “overnight oatmeal,” an egg-and-cheese breakfast burrito, a cranberry mini-muffin, and a glass of orange juice—was sitting on the counter, still completely covered with plastic wrap. Beside it there were two red ceramic mugs of coffee, black. Two cups.

  I stood there for a moment, frowning down at the cups. Behind me, the coffeemaker was burping, and I reached to turn it off, then half-consciously thought better of what I was doing. Without pausing to think about it, I picked up a table knife and used the rounded tip to flick the switch off.

  Then I realized what I had done, and why, and stood very still.

  I had used the knife to turn off the coffeemaker because some old criminal-lawyer part of my brain had blinked on for an instant to remind me that there might be some useful fingerprints on the switch. Because Kelly was gone. Because she might have gone away with somebody, either willingly or otherwise.

  Otherwise? I shivered, not liking the idea that was gathering at the back of my mind. But why else would she leave the French doors open, the lights on, her breakfast and coffee on the counter, and—most important—her shoes on the floor and her shoulder bag on the dresser?

  Oh, come on, now, China, I chided myself. Get real. There were no signs of a struggle, no upset furniture, no traces of blood. She had probably glanced at her watch, realized how late she was, and dashed out without eating her breakfast, turning out the lights, or closing and locking the French doors. She was likely wearing flats or heels, not Reeboks, to her appointment with Charlie, and she probably picked up another purse. It was a good bet that she was already seated in Charlie’s client chair or on her way to his office.

  And then I thought of the car. When she checked in on the previous Friday, Kelly had been driving a blue Kia two-door, several years old, and I’d shown her where to park it. I hurried to the narrow window next to the living room fireplace and peered out through the wooden shutter.

  Kelly’s car was still parked on the gravel apron just off the alley outside the window.

  Chapter Three

  Writer Amy Stewart got the idea for her book The Drunken Botanist in a conversation with a fellow garden writer who confessed that he didn’t care for gin.

  “How can anyone with even a passing interest in botany not be fascinated by this stuff?” [Stewart] said. “Look at the ingredients. Juniper! That’s a conifer. Coriander, which is, of course, the fruit of a cilantro plant. All gins have citrus peel in them. This one has lavender buds, too. Gin is nothing but an alcohol extraction of all these crazy plants from around the world—tree bark and leaves and seeds and flowers and fruit.”

  Stewart and her friend visited a liquor store and realized that they could assign a genus and species to almost every bottle on the shelves. She reports:

  “Bourbon? Zea mays, an overgrown grass. Absinthe? Artemisia absinthium, a much-misunderstood Mediterranean herb. Polish vodka? Solanum tuberosum—a nightshade . . . Beer? Humulus lupulus, a sticky climbing vine that happens to be a close cousin to cannabis.”

  In every culture around the world, herbs, flowers, shrubs, and trees have been used to brew flavorful and intoxicating drinks.

  China Bayles

  “Botanical Drinkables”

  Pecan Springs Enterprise

  It probably says something about me that I didn’t yank out my cell and call 911. One way or another, I’ve had quite a few experiences with the cops, and I know that, when they’re called to take a look, they like to see a real evidence of a crime—a dead body, signs of a struggle, a spent cartridge or two, a smear of blood. Anything that says, “Hey, something happened here.” A call on a suspected disappearance, when the disappearee has been gone for only an hour or two—is not likely to be met with enormous enthusiasm.

  Instead, I called Charlie Lipman. He might or might not be Kelly Kaufman’s lawyer (an appointment with an attorney doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll hire her or that she’ll agree to represent you). But despite his human frailties, Charlie is a trustworthy man who carries the confidences of a great many local folk, past and present. He knows where the bodies are buried, what the dirty linen looked like before it was washed, and whose closets are full of skeletons. Anyway, he was planning to meet with Kelly, so I needed to let him know that she was a no-show. Moreover, he might have a goo
d guess where she had gone, and with whom.

  So Charlie got my first call. And then I began to pace.

  * * *

  LIKE all the other small towns up and down the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio, Pecan Springs is growing fast, with urban development strung north and south along the freeway and residential development east and west along and between the feeder roads. The city council thinks all this growth is just dandy, of course, since an expanding tax base is pure gold in the city coffers. But a lot of locals don’t agree. If it’s five fifteen and you’re trying to get from the courthouse square to the freeway on-ramp, you can bet on sitting in traffic for twenty minutes, even though that stretch of Sam Houston Drive is only ten blocks long.

  But this was Monday morning, Charlie’s office is no more than six blocks away, and he was here in under five minutes in his truck. When he goes to Dallas or Houston, he drives a silver Lexus. Around town, a man of the people, he drives a burnt-orange ten-year-old Dodge pickup with dinged fenders. (He’s a loyal University of Texas alum and bleeds orange blood.) I heard his tires crunching on the gravel parking area and opened the front door before he could knock.

  He didn’t say How the heck are you? or even Hello, just “She turn up yet?” But I understood from the way he asked the question that he already knew the answer.

  Stepping back, I shook my head. “Come in. Everything’s the way I found it—haven’t touched a thing.” I glanced down. “Except for this doorknob. Haven’t called the cops yet, either. I thought we might like to do that after you have a look around. A quick look,” I added. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that calling the police was a smart idea. Kelly Kaufman wasn’t just a friend, she was a paying guest. And as an innkeeper, I could have some liability. The idea made me nervous.