Never Enough Thyme

by Juliet MacLeod

  Dean tried to pull Barry’s hands away from his neck, but couldn’t. In his agony, the short, chubby lawyer was stronger than the county sheriff who worked out daily. “What happened?” Dean asked. Barry just shook his head and kept clawing at his throat. Dean glanced up at the crowd that had surrounded them. “Does anyone know what happened? Is he allergic to something?”

  I blinked, coming out of the shock of seeing Barry choking to death. I fell to my knees next to Dean and started going through Barry’s pockets, searching for an epinephrine injector or some other sort of medication. I came away with nothing, then I dug in my purse and drew out my pocket knife, a gift from my father when I was sixteen. “Do you know how to do a tracheotomy?” I asked Dean.

  “I’m not a doctor, Bryony!” he snapped. Then he looked up into the faces of those gathered around. “Is Doc Hutchins still here?”

  “It’s too late, Sheriff,” said someone in the crowd. “I think he’s dead.”

  I looked down at Barry again and saw he’d gone limp. Dean pressed his fingers against the side of Barry’s neck, held them there for a moment, then sagged. He nodded and looked at me. “He’s gone.”

  “How can that be?” Viki whispered. She glanced at Gordon with fear in her eyes, then turned and fled the tent.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The tent cleared out quickly after that. Dean got on his radio and asked his deputies to come out and help with crowd control and questioning witnesses, then he sent me to find Doc Hutchins. I found the mortician browsing a table of hand-knit scarves.

  “Good afternoon, Bryony,” Doc said. He smiled, displaying a web of crow’s feet around his sparkling brown eyes. Doc had been one of my dad’s best friends. He had the quiet, comforting, no-nonsense manner of the best funeral home directors, and I always found solace in his presence. I was glad of it now.

  I swallowed and squeezed my eyes shut, damming up the flood of tears that had been threatening since Barry died. “I... We... Dean... I mean, Sheriff—”

  Doc’s hand closed around my arm with gentle strength. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Is it Glynis?”

  “No. No, Mom’s fine. It’s Barry. Shubitz. He’s... He’s dead.”

  Doc stared at me in incomprehension. “What? Barry? Dead?” His head snapped up, and he began looking around the park. I was reminded watching him that he’d served in Vietnam as an Army corpsman. He looked back at me, and the glint in his eyes had been replaced by something hard and flinty. “Heart attack? Where?”

  “In... The tent. Where the food is.”

  Doc nodded and strode off ahead of me. I trotted along behind him. Numbness was beginning to creep in, a welcome change from the constant threat of either tears or screaming I was experiencing. When we arrived at the scene, I saw that the deputies had as well. They’d cordoned off the tent with yellow crime scene tape and had separated the crowd into two groups. I assumed one group was made up of witnesses and the others were lookie-loos. The latter group was nearly double the size of the former. I followed Doc into the tent, where someone had covered the body with a tablecloth.

  “What’s happened?” Doc asked Dean, who was standing next to the shroud-covered form. Dean just shook his head. With a slight frown, the mortician-coroner knelt down and uncovered Barry’s face. “Oh, dear,” he said, sadness in his voice. I was pretty sure Doc and Barry had been friends. “Poor Barry. Poisoned, most like.”

  Dean crouched across from Doc, a frown marring his brow. “How do you know?”

  “He’s not allergic to anything, so this isn’t an anaphylactic reaction. Plus there’s no swelling of the face. And see here?” Doc pulled a pen from his shirt’s breast pocket and used it to point at Barry’s throat. It was awful; the claw marks Barry had left in his own skin had bled freely, and the skin was still ragged and raw. “His airway was restricted. Only thing I know of that could do that is some sort of poison. Ergo, he was poisoned.” He pulled the tablecloth up over the body and stood, knees popping like Rice Krispies. “I’ll have to send him to Denver for an autopsy to know for certain, but my unofficial guess is that he was murdered.”

  Dean stood up, too. “Murdered,” he said and shook his head. “First one in twenty years or more. And it’s on my watch.”

  Doc reached out and gripped Dean’s shoulder. “Not your fault, son. You just catch the sumbitch who did this.”

  Dean nodded and watched as Doc stepped away from the body and phoned his son, Jamie, asking him to come with the hearse and a gurney to transport the body down to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s morgue, where the state police’s medical examiner would uncover the exact cause of Barry’s death. Clear Creek County was too small to need a morgue or a medical examiner, so all suspicious deaths were sent to CBI in Golden. Then Dean looked up and spotted me standing near the entrance to the tent. His eyes narrowed, and he strode across to me.

  “Do you know anything about this?” he asked with a belligerent tone.

  I frowned, thrown off by Dean’s sudden attitude, and took a step away from him. “What? No! Of course not,” I said. “I was with Jennifer and Kim all morning.”

  A look of regret crossed his face briefly. “No, I know you didn’t kill him. What I mean is, do you know anything about poisonous plants?”

  “Of course I do. There’s deadly nightshade, monk’s hood, jimsonweed—”

  “Do you sell any of those?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I’m going to need to see receipts—”

  “I don’t sell them to the general public,” I explained. “I only prescribe them.”

  Dean nodded. “Still, I’ll need to see a list of everyone who’s taking anything poisonous.” He sighed heavily and glanced back toward the tent as he scraped his hand down his face. “I can’t believe this. The first murder in Saxon Lake in twenty years.”

  “What was the name of the last guy? It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

  “Jardins,” Jennifer supplied helpfully from my elbow. “George Jardins.”

  I jumped, startled by Jennifer’s sudden appearance. “Yeah,” I said after giving her a dirty look. “That guy who killed the tourist from California.”

  “Right,” Dean said, the annoyance returning on his face. “I know you ladies like to gossip, so I’m sure as soon as you leave here you’ll be gabbing about it. Just... Don’t say anything about it being a poisoning, okay? We’ve gotta keep some things back from the public to weed out the crazies who call claiming to be the killer.”

  “People honestly do that?” Jennifer asked. “That’s not just something TV writers made up?”

  “They honestly do that,” Dean confirmed then turned back to me. “Promise? Nothing about what Doc said about poison.”

  I nodded, a little stung by Dean’s implication that all Jen and I did was gossip. The fact that he was mostly right didn’t matter. “I won’t tell anyone,” I said, looking sidelong at Jen.

  “I won’t either,” she said, then tipped her head to the side. “Well, maybe Mark.”

  “Oh, and my mom,” I said. “And Bekah—”

  Jennifer, no doubt after seeing the thunderous look on Dean’s face, drew me away from the tent. Once we were a safe distance away from Dean, Barry’s death caught up with me. I gripped Jen’s arm and closed my eyes, squeezing them tight against the threatening tears.

  “What happened?” Jennifer asked, her voice soft with sympathy.

  “Someone poisoned Barry Shubitz. It was so awful, Jen.” I shook my head, cutting off the images of Barry gasping and clawing at his throat in a desperate attempt to breathe.

  Jennifer gave me a tight hug. “Barry?” she asked once she’d released me. “That sweet guy? Why?”

  I shrugged and glanced towards the small group of witnesses being questioned by Dean and his deputies. “Who knows?” I said, distracted by a missing face. I didn’t see Viki. “He was a lawyer, you know. He must have made some enemies at some point.” I glanced at the other crowd of people, still searching for Viki.


  “But he handles contracts and real estate and—”

  “Viki’s not there,” I said, turning around in a slow circle as I scanned the crowd for the young woman.

  “What? Viki? Childress?”

  “Yeah. She and Gordon Oakes were there when Barry died. Like, he died right in front of them. She was a witness. Dean’s deputies should have found her and held her back for questioning.”

  Jennifer, too, turned to look over the crowd. “Maybe they already questioned her?”

  “No, she left before Dean even called the deputies. I’m going to go to the shop. She’s supposed to be working this afternoon.” I turned toward the parking lot where I’d left my car.

  “Bryony, wait.” Jennifer jogged after me, puffing a bit when she caught up. “Tell Dean about it. Let him handle things.” She grabbed my upper arm. “Don’t stick your nose in this. He’s mad enough at you now.”

  “Which is why I have to talk to Viki now.”

  “What? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’m involved.” I gave her a death glare.

  She ignored the death glare. “How? What are you talking about? Does Dean think you did this?”

  “No, he doesn’t. But Barry was poisoned.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “I sell all sorts of poisonous herbs. If someone used my stock to kill Barry, I’m responsible.”

  She sighed—a long-suffering noise. “No, you’re not. You’re very careful with your patients, and you keep all that dangerous stuff under lock in key in the shop’s safe.”

  “You’re right. But still. I feel responsible. I need to know.”

  “Fine. But promise me that you’ll tell Dean immediately after you talk to Viki. She could know something important. You can’t keep information from him.”

  I nodded and hugged her. “I promise. Tell Stephen congratulations for me, and give my love to Kimmy and Mark, too. I’ll call you tonight.”

  “You’d better!”

  I waved and crossed the parking lot to my car. After belting in, I called Taylor & Sons Booksellers. It had been opened in 1946 by my grandfather with money he’d received from the US Army after serving in France during WWII. After he died, the shop went to my father, the oldest of the three Taylor sons, Pierce, Martin, and Elliot. When my dad died, my mother, Glynis, had taken over; my uncles weren’t interested in running the shop, being quite successful in their own careers and living out of state. Uncle Marty was in Fort Worth, and Uncle Elliot was in Seattle. I was an only child, so there were no sons to take over after Mom passed on—nor yet any grandsons, much to Mom’s chagrin—but the shop’s name hadn’t changed. I hoped that if I were forced to sell after my mother passed, the new owner wouldn’t change the name, either.

  “Taylor and Sons,” Viki said, answering the phone. “How can I help you?”

  “Oh, good,” I said as I carefully navigated through the lot to Blue Spruce Street. “You’re still there. Are you closing tonight?”

  “Bryony?”

  “Yes, it’s Bryony. Sorry I should have told you that when you answered.” I passed the Red Dragon, the only Chinese restaurant in a forty-mile area, and despite the cool temperatures, rolled my window down to sniff the air. It smelled delicious and made me yearn for General Tsao’s chicken and egg rolls. I felt a twinge of guilt, remembering how much Barry enjoyed their food. I still couldn’t believe he was gone.

  “Yes, I’m closing tonight,” Viki said. “Your mom’s in the back doing the books. Did you need her?”

  “No, I want to talk to you. I’ll be there in about ten minutes. You can take a break then, right? I’m sure Mom will let you.”

  “You want to talk to me? It’s not about... Barry, is it?”

  “I’ll see you in ten minutes.” I hung up without answering Viki’s question. I didn’t want her to clam up before I could ask her about her weird reaction to seeing Barry die. It was almost as if she was shocked that Barry was dead and not someone else.

  Ten minutes later, I stopped in front of the Jørgensen Building, where the bookshop and my boutique were located side by side on the bottom floor. It was a beautiful old building, three stories tall, and made of red brick. The decorative trim around the doors, windows, and along the flat roofline had been painted white and looked fresh as snow. Oak barrels flanked the huge picture windows and front doors of each shop and had been planted with tiny red rose bushes and drifts of white sweet alyssum.

  There was a display of summer-themed books in the bookstore’s window, and as I passed by it, I peered inside and spotted Viki behind the register. There didn’t appear to be any customers, making my plan to pull Viki aside that much easier. First, though, I had to convince my mother to step out of the office and take over the register.

  “Afternoon, Viki!” I called out as I entered the shop. The interior of the store hadn’t changed since it opened seventy years ago. It always reminded me of an English gentleman’s club, and not the sleazy kind either. Dark, rich mahogany planks covered the floors, shelves, and paneling on the lower half of the walls. There was a scattering of comfortable, dark-green leather chairs and couches, and a few reading tables with green-shaded lamps. I had spent more than a few hours at those tables, doing homework or reading one of the shop’s hundreds of books while my parents worked the register, the sales floor, or were in the office in the back.

  The shop sold more than just books, too, which was a contributing factor to its longevity. There were also magazines, newspapers, stationery, greeting cards, postcards, blank books, maps, and fancy fountain pens and an entire display case filled with colorful bottles of ink. But the biggest innovation was located directly in front of the doors: a display of independently-published books, written by local authors.

  “Bryony,” Viki said when she spotted me browsing the local author table. Viki’s expression and body language were wary, and there were signs she’d been crying recently. Her brown eyes were bloodshot and her pug nose reddened. “Glynis is still in the back.”

  “Okay, good. Thanks!” I breezed through the rest of the shop, headed towards the offices and private areas in the rear of the store. One of the doors was marked “Staff Only.” I knocked on it, waited three seconds, then pushed inside.

  In direct contrast to the rest of the shop, Glynis Taylor’s private domain was airy, light, and cheery. The walls had been painted white, the hardwood floor was a glowing honey oak, and the furniture was upholstered in pink and cream gingham. Mom sat behind a dainty pine desk, dressed in a dusty rose short-sleeved twin set, heather gray slacks, and minimal gold jewelry. Her white hair had been pulled back into a neat chignon, and a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of her upturned nose. At sixty-eight years of age, she was still a beautiful woman.

  She glanced over the rim of her glasses and smiled when she saw me. “Bryony!” she exclaimed and stood up, rounding the desk to enfold me in an L’Heure Bleue-scented embrace. “So lovely to see you. I didn’t expect to see you until our dinner Thursday night.”

  I kissed her cheek before leaning against the wall across from the desk. Mom settled down on one of the desk’s corners and pushed her glasses to the top of her head. “I’ve actually come by to chat with Viki for a moment,” I said. “Could I borrow her?”

  “Oh, sure.” Mom stood, and I followed her out onto the sales floor. “Is everything okay?”

  “Well, I’m not sure if I can talk about it yet.”

  Mom stopped and spun around, a look of alarm on her face. “What? What’s happened? Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. There was just an... an incident at SummerFest this morning. Viki was there, saw everything—”

  “And you want to make sure she’s okay.” Mom nodded knowingly. “I should have guessed. Do you want to use my office?”

  “Sure, if that’s okay?”

  “Absolutely fine.” We reached the front, where Viki had just finished ringing up a custome
r’s purchase. “Viki? Bryony would like to talk with you. Go on back to the office with her, would you?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Taylor.” Viki smiled at Mom, but the expression turned ugly when she glanced at me.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, ignoring the daggers coming from Viki’s gaze. “I promise I won’t keep her long.”

  Mom nodded and turned to help another customer who had just walked in. Viki and I went back to Mom’s office, where I sat in Mom’s seat behind the desk and Viki settled on the edge of a chair across from me.

  “So,” Viki said, her expression alternating between boredom and worry. “What do you want?”

  “Has Sheriff Jensen called you?”

  “No. Why would he?”

  “You were there when Barry died. You might have seen something important.”

  Viki shrugged and looked away. She crossed her arms over her scant chest, and I would have sworn if she’d been chewing gum, she would have smacked it or blown a nonchalant bubble. “I wasn’t watching him. I was paying attention to my boyfriend.”

  “What about this morning? At the fishing derby judging? You and Barry seemed to be having an argument.”

  Viki frowned in confusion, but there had been a spark of worry in her eyes that flashed by so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I saw you this morning, arguing with Barry after he won the $500 prize. Does... did he owe you money?”

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I have to get back. Your mom’s nice and all, but she’ll be mad if I’m away too long.”

  “Okay, just one more question then. When Barry died, you said ‘How can that be?’ Like, you were surprised that it was Barry and not someone else who’d just died.”

  “What? That’s... Of course, I was in shock!”