Blood Orange: A China Bayles Mystery

by Susan Wittig Albert

  The strains of Telemann began to drift down the stairs. Caitie had finished her book.

  Ramona cocked her head. “What’s that?”

  “My daughter. She’s practicing her violin. I can shut the kitchen door if it bothers you.”

  “No, it’s nice.” Leaning back in her chair, she said, “I’ve been collecting ideas for other beers, too. There are some that I think would go over really well around here.”

  “Oh? Like what?” I was intrigued in spite of myself.

  She began ticking them off on her fingers. “Chipotle, prickly pear, mint chocolate, coconut—really, there are a gazillion possibilities.”

  Chipotle beer I could imagine. Chiles have been used to flavor all kinds of drinks, including hot chocolate. And for centuries, Mexicans have been brewing a sweet, fizzy drink called colonche from the red fruits—the tuna—of the prickly pear, so prickly pear beer was no surprise. As for chocolate beer, an anthropologist at Cornell discovered recently that the people who lived in Central America some three thousand years ago had brewed beer out of the sugary pulp of the cacao pod. But I had never heard of coconut beer.

  “Coconut?” I asked. “Really?”

  She nodded her head firmly. “Really. I don’t have the recipe, but I read that it has cayenne and cinnamon in it.” She began ticking the herbs and spices off on her fingers. “As well as coriander, fenugreek, ginger, and lime. I’m anxious for Rich to try some of this stuff. Doesn’t it sound wild?

  “Wow,” I said softly. Coconut beer with ginger and lime. Now I was really feeling sorry for the unadventurous brewmaster. He might be glad to have Ramona’s money, but it wouldn’t be long before he woke up and discovered that he had a tiger by the tail—if he hadn’t already. When she got an idea, Ramona was ferocious.

  “Anyway,” she said, “those are just some of my ideas. I think it would be totally wonderful if Rich would begin to experiment with herbal beers.” She was talking so fast that her words were flying around the room like sparks. “Of course, I’m not suggesting that he replace Comanche’s usual lineup of beers. All he has to do is expand it. You know, strike out into new and unexplored territory. Be an innovator in the industry.”

  I was going to ask how Rich himself felt about being an innovator and striking out into new and unexplored territory, but she didn’t give me a chance.

  “Tonight, when I was leaving the brewery, I remembered Ruby telling me that you’re going to teach that class on herbal liqueurs. And then it just came to me like a lightning flash that you are the very person we need. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, China. You know a huge amount about herbs. You could sit down with Rich and give him some suggestions for various plants that he could experiment with, in different combinations. You could be our consultant—and of course we’d be glad to pay the going rate, whatever that is.” She put out her hand, beaming. “Doesn’t it sound exciting, China? Doesn’t it sound like fun?”

  Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

  Startled, I turned to look at the old wooden cuckoo clock that hangs on the wall just above the microwave shelf. A family heirloom, it came from McQuaid’s mother, who got it from her mother. It looks like a little brown Swiss chalet with gingerbread trim, red-painted pendulum weights, and a painted cuckoo that’s supposed to pop out through a carved door and sing. McQuaid is fond of it, because it reminds him of family meals at home when he was a little boy, when the cuckoo actually sang his funny song once every hour. But the mainspring broke the year McQuaid started high school, the clock can’t be wound, and for as long as we’ve had it, the cuckoo has never popped out of his door. Until now.

  Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

  I stared at the clock, incredulous. Winchester lifted his head and growled deep in his throat. Ramona frowned down at her watch. “Your clock is slow,” she said. “It’s ten after nine.”

  “Actually, the clock doesn’t work,” I said helplessly. “It’s hung right there ever since we moved into the house. This is the very first time I’ve heard it chime.”

  “Well, it seems to be working now.” Ramona raised an eyebrow. “Except it’s ten minutes slow. You should probably reset it.”

  The door on the clock popped open again and the little wooden bird, painted in bright colors, flew out. He called twice—Cuckoo! Cuckoo!—and flew back in again.

  Winchester began to whimper. He climbed out of his basket and hurried over to my chair, his brown eyes large and distressed, his ears flopping. He leaned against my leg, and I could feel him trembling. When the bird came out and sang again, he threw back his head and bayed, a deep-throated, melodious aaarrooo! He sounded like the Hound of the Baskervilles, baying at the moon.

  I stared down at him in astonishment. I’ve been told that bassets bay, but in all the years I had lived with Winchester’s predecessor, Howard Cosell had never once bayed. And Winchester—who can be a real baby about thunderstorms and firecrackers and other loud noises—had never bayed until now.

  Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

  Aaarrooo!

  And then, on the shelf beneath the clock, the microwave began to chirp, first slowly, then faster and faster. The kitchen lights flickered, went off, and came back on again. Winchester flung his head back and bayed again, even louder and longer this time.

  I turned to look at Ramona, who had taken out a little notebook and a small gold pencil and was jotting something down, entirely oblivious to the cacophony that filled the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, raising my voice over Winchester’s distress cries.

  “I’m starting a list of spices that might work in beer,” she said. Her face was flushed with excitement. “How about ginger? And cloves? Nutmeg, maybe? Or what would you think of rosehips or juniper or—” She was almost bouncing on her chair. “Gosh, there are so many wonderful flavors to play with!”

  “No, I mean, what are you doing?” I cried, over the microwave’s metallic chirp-chirp-chirp.

  “Why, nothing,” she said, going back to her list. “Just making a few notes, that’s all.”

  Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Chirp-chirp-chirp.

  And then, in the living room, the television set suddenly came on, in mid-sentence, on the Weather Channel, where the last viewer—probably me—had left it. I could hear Jim Cantore warning about the possibility of a tornado outbreak on the following day in north Texas and Arkansas. It was the very last straw.

  “Ramona.” I put up my hand. In a commanding tone, I said, “Ramona, just stop. Stop what you’re doing. Okay?”

  “What?” Ramona put down her pencil and, suddenly, it was quiet. The microwave timer quit chirping, the cuckoo retreated into his clock, and Jim Cantore stopped warning in mid-sentence. Winchester dropped his head and lay across my feet, and the lights stayed on.

  Ramona looked at me, her eyes innocent. Too innocent. When she spoke, her tone was arch. “Stop what, China?”

  Now that it seemed to be over, I didn’t suppose there was any point in confronting her about her childish little poltergeisty demonstration. Ruby maintains that Ramona isn’t always aware of what she is doing. And even if she was, she would likely deny the whole thing. And then start all over again, making clear that she could turn it off and on when she wanted to.

  “Stop . . . stop being so excited,” I said lamely.

  “I don’t see why,” she retorted. “Aren’t you? Excited, I mean. Working as a consultant to an expert brewmaster—why, just imagine the possibilities, China! And it would certainly look good on your resumé.”

  I took a deep breath and held it for a moment. The cuckoo stayed shut away behind his door, Winchester lay very still, and the microwave was silent. The liquid sound of Telemann floated down the stairs.

  I let my breath out again. Actually, working as a consultant to a brewmaster would be a new way to use some of what I already knew, and learn new things on top of that. I always like to take advantage of oppo
rtunities to expand my knowledge base.

  But I could think of several very good reasons not to do it. To start with, I was not thrilled down to my tippy-toes by the prospect of getting involved in a project with Ramona, which strikes me as a little like setting up camp on the rim of a volcano. A good place to be if you’re there to photograph molten lava and flying rocks, but otherwise downright hot and dangerous. And when I added in the possibility that Ramona’s intended’s current wife still hadn’t yielded on the divorce or the property issue, the whole thing got rather complicated.

  I didn’t want to say any of that to Ramona, of course. Instead, I said, “It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t know very much about the possible uses of herbs in beer. I would have to do a lot of research. And I’ve already got more irons in the fire that I can manage.”

  “I’ll bet you already know absolutely everything you need to know.” Ramona leaned forward eagerly. “And if you don’t, just imagine all you’ll learn. It’s right up your alley, don’t you think?” She paused. “And if it works out, I’m sure you could set yourself up as a consultant to—”

  “Hang on a sec. There’s something I need to do.”

  I got up from the table and went to the counter, where the saucepan of coffee syrup had been cooling. It had a lovely coffee fragrance and was the right temperature now to add to the liquor-extract mixture. And it gave me an opportunity to slow down the onrush of Ramona’s ideas.

  “Have you talked to your brewmaster about this experimentation thing?” I asked over my shoulder. “If he’s not sold on the idea, there isn’t much point in discussing it.”

  Ramona drained her coffee cup. “As I said, I just thought of this tonight and wanted to talk to you first. I’ll discuss it with him tomorrow.” With a sigh, she put her cup down. “But just between you and me, China, Rich has a lot on his mind right now. A whole lot.”

  Upstairs, Caitie hit a sour note, stopped, started again, and then again. For a child, she is dedicated to her art, to making it perfect. I poured the syrup into the jar that held the mixture of vodka and brandy, watching the coffee-colored syrup swirl into the alcohol. This was going to be yummy.

  “Oh, really?” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” Ramona’s sigh was heavy and dramatic, like a repertory actress doing regret. “Sorry and frustrated. I wasn’t going to tell you, but—” She took a breath. “The thing is that he’s still married. He says that he and his wife were never suited in the first place and the marriage has been over for months. She promised to sell her share—that’s why I got involved in the first place. But that was a few months ago. Now, she’s being stubborn about it. Apparently she invested her own money in it before they were married, money she inherited from her parents, Rich says.” Ramona pulled down her mouth. “Strictly speaking, she owns more of it than he does. And now she seems to want to hang on to it.” Under her breath, she added, “The bitch.”

  Ah. Now I understood. Yes, strictly speaking, this was a very messy situation. If his wife had bought the business with her own money before they were married and wasn’t willing to sell some or all of her shares, Ramona might not be able to buy into that brewery. No wonder she was upset. She likes being fully in control, and when she isn’t, she gets crabby. And when she gets crabby—

  “Sounds kind of tricky,” I said sympathetically. “Are Rich and his wife the only two partners in the business?”

  Ramona winced at the word wife. “Yes, the only two,” she said, sounding resigned. “And yes, you’re right, it’s tricky.” She was obviously glad that I was getting the full picture. “Of course, Rich is upset about the whole thing. She’s conservative about what the brewery does, she doesn’t agree with his decisions, and lately, he says, all they do is fight about the business. She doesn’t want to let go of it and he can’t figure out how to make her do it.”

  I screwed the lid on tight and put the liqueur into the cupboard over the counter, where it could age. It sounded to me like the wife was holding the best hand in this little game, but I wasn’t going to point that out.

  “And on top of all that,” Ramona went on, “Rich says she’s been having lots of trouble at work and he doesn’t want to make things harder for her. So he’s leaving it up to her to file for divorce, rather than making the first move himself. He says we have to be patient. It may take a while, unless she has a sudden change of heart.” She gave an ironic little laugh. “And as you know, patience is not my middle name. When I want something, I want it now.”

  I certainly wasn’t going to argue with that. I hated to say it, but if I listened between the lines, what I was hearing was an old, old story. Married guy gets into a hot-and-heavy out-of-bounds relationship with an attractive woman. She falls for him, and he keeps her on the string by telling her that his marriage is all washed up and a divorce is in the offing. But somehow it never materializes. It sounded to me like this guy was giving Ramona the big runaround.

  And in this case, it might not be sex he was after, although that could be a bonus. Ramona had money, which made her the perfect target for this kind of scheme. Entice her to invest a big chunk of money in the business, then marry her and get control of the rest of it—and after that, who knew what might be next? Wife Number One might be in on the scam, or she might be perfectly innocent and not know a thing about her husband’s affair with the other woman. In this case the older other woman. Hadn’t I heard that Rich was five or six years younger than Ramona?

  Upstairs, Caitie came to the end of a long musical phrase, made a mistake, stopped, and went back to the beginning.

  Ramona gave another sigh. “It’s so complicated, China. I mean, I’ve met his wife. I like her and I certainly respect her. Everybody says she’s a very kind and good person, and I think it’s wonderful that Rich is trying to be respectful of her feelings. But it’s a terribly uncomfortable situation for both of us.” She slid me a look. “I hope you won’t share any of this with Ruby. She’s a very sweet sister, but she worries about me too much. And she’s always giving me advice.”

  I nodded. I understood her discomfort, and I could sympathize. But it seemed to me that she had helped to create the situation in the first place. If you get involved with a married man, you’re asking for trouble. Complaining that he had a wife didn’t make a lot of sense.

  She made a petulant face. “I love Rich, China. I really do, but I wish he would be a little more respectful of my feelings. I hate it that everything’s up in the air like this. So I told him that he needed to do something to get it settled. Tell her the truth about us, or move out of the house—there’s plenty of room at my place—or file for divorce himself. But do something to get rid of her.” She gave what sounded like a little laugh. “And finally, last week, he did. They had a terrible fight, just awful, Rich said. I’m sure it was very painful for him, but it had to be done. Kelly moved out.”

  I turned, leaning against the counter, staring at her. Ruby once explained the theory of “six degrees of separation” to me—the notion that everybody on the planet is separated from everybody else by only six relationships. According to Ruby, there have even been a couple of intriguing experiments that seem to confirm the theory. But I can tell you from my own personal experience that everybody in a town the size of Pecan Springs is separated from everybody else by only one—or at the most two—degrees of separation. And that sometimes, this is a problem. A big problem.

  “Ramona,” I said, “this guy you’re engaged to. Rich. Does he have a last name?”

  “Of course he has a last name, silly.” Ramona gave a light, mocking laugh. “It’s Kaufman. Richard Kaufman. Why?” She slanted a curious look. “Do you know him?”

  No, I didn’t know him. But I certainly knew his wife, and I was suddenly swept by a very understandable panic. Kelly Kaufman—Mrs. Richard Kaufman—was due to knock on my door at any moment now. I looked up at the clock and saw that it was alread
y nine twenty, so she was actually overdue. And here was her husband’s current girlfriend, the other woman in her marriage, sitting in a chair at my kitchen table, drinking coffee out of the mug I had intended for Kelly. How in the world do I get myself into jams like this?

  I took a deep breath. “Nope, hadn’t even heard his name until now.” Which was true, since I knew only Kelly, not her husband. I pushed myself away from the counter and made a show of glancing at the clock, then doing a double take.

  “Gosh, just look at the time. It’s getting late.”

  I scurried to the table, picked up Ramona’s coffee mug and mine—which wasn’t quite empty—and carried both of them to the sink. “I’m willing to consider the idea of being a consultant,” I said, rinsing out the cups, “but we don’t have time to get into it tonight. As I said, I’m expecting a visitor. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Well, that was certainly abrupt.” Ramona gave me a suspicious look. “Are you sure you don’t know Rich?”

  “Absolutely sure,” I said truthfully. I turned to face her, hands out. “Why would I lie?”

  She didn’t have an answer for that. She pushed back her chair, frowning distrustfully at me. “Well, okay, then. We’ll do it tomorrow. What time?”

  “Oh, wait,” I said. “I’ve got to be at the shop all day, so it can’t be tomorrow. Why don’t I give you a call in the next day or two and we can check our schedules?”

  “Well, I suppose,” she said reluctantly. She reached into her shoulder bag, pulled out a business card, and put it on the table. “I hope you will call me, China, and the sooner the better. I’d love to get started on this new line of beers, and you’re exactly the right person to help us out.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, hustling her to the door. I was so anxious to get her out that I would have promised her the sun, the moon, anything. “Talk to you tomorrow,” I warbled. “Good night, now.”