Lavender Lies

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Thanks,” I said wryly, pasting the damp, cool poultice to my face. “You sure know how to make a person feel better.”

  “I’d make you lie down with it,” Winnie replied, “but you need to eat some of that jam cake. More good medicine. It’ll make you feel even better.”

  It did, too. The poultice was awkward but cooling and the rosehip tea was iced and tasty, with the zing of ginger and a hint of anise. The jam cakes were light and luscious, and Winnie’s rose jam, hidden inside, was the color of rubies. We said little as we ate. The taste was too good to spoil with the rattle of words.

  After a few moments, Winnie refilled all three glasses from the frosty pitcher, sat back in her chair and said casually, “When I came in with the tray, you were talking about Edgar Coleman.” She looked at me. “Has Mike got a line on the killer yet?”

  With a start, I realized that Winnie, by virtue of her seat on the Council, was also one of McQuaid’s bosses. “Not yet,” I replied. “It looks like the investigation might drag on for a while.”

  “Which is why we’re here, Winnie.” Ruby said, getting to the point. “The wedding is Sunday, you know.”

  Winnie looked at me. “Well, sure. But what’s that got to do with—” Then she snapped her fingers. “Oh, I get it. If Mike doesn’t wrap up his investigation by Sunday, you’re afraid he’ll stand you up.”

  I winced. I turned the compress over to the cool side and held it over my nose, which was beginning to feel better. “I’m sure he won’t miss the wedding,” I said in a muffled voice, “but it might not have his full attention.” I didn’t want to think of McQuaid standing beside me, wearing his cop face and mentally sifting murder clues while Maude Porterfield joined us in holy matrimony. He might just mutter, “I don’t know,” instead of “I do.”

  “Their honeymoon might have to be postponed, too,” Ruby said, looking mournful. “You can see why we’re anxious to find out what happened. And we’re not sure that everybody will come clean to the police.” She paused. “Everybody on the Council, that is,” she added, in a silky tone.

  Winnie sat still for a moment, turning the matter over in her mind. “Well, you’re right on that score,” she said finally. “Most of the Council members wouldn’t tell you the time of day unless it was in their best interest.” She frowned. “But how come you’re asking about the Council? Coleman had enemies all over town—across the state, for that matter. He was not what you would call a popular person.”

  Instead of answering, Ruby said, “You voted against the annexation proposal, I understand.”

  “You bet I did.” Winnie thumped her glass on the table, and one of the white roses, jarred, dropped its petals in a soft heap. “What Coleman did out there at Blessing Ranch is just plain criminal. If I weren’t a lady, I might’ve killed him myself.” She paused and added, cautiously, “You didn’t hear me say that. I was here by myself Sunday night, so I don’t have a very good watchamacallit—alibi. But people in this town have been listening to my anti-gun speeches for years, so I doubt that anybody would seriously believe that I’d use one. Even on a rattlesnake like Coleman.”

  I sat forward. “We think Coleman tried to influence the vote on the annexation proposal, Winnie. One of the other Council members has shown us evidence that he was trying to blackmail her and her husband.”

  If Winnie was surprised by that information, or curious about who it was, she didn’t let on. Absently, she pulled the fallen white petals toward her, pushing them into a circle on the table with her finger. “Blackmail, huh?” she said at last, not looking up. “So you think somebody decided to kill him rather than pay to shut him up?”

  “Coleman dead is a lot more likely to keep his mouth closed than Coleman alive,” Ruby said reasonably. “The trouble is that a blackmail victim isn’t going to volunteer anything that might make them look like a murder suspect. We thought maybe you’d have some information that might move the investigation along. Can you help us?”

  Winnie studied the rose petals as if they were tea leaves and she was looking for an answer to Ruby’s question. After a moment, she said, slowly, “I was going to keep this to myself because I couldn’t see that it mattered to anybody but me. But I guess maybe it’s time to speak up.” She glanced at me. “Are you going to tell Mike what you find out?” She rubbed her hand across her face. “Scratch that. Of course you will.”

  “If it’s relevant,” I said. “If it isn’t ...” I shrugged. I didn’t want to get into the question of who was going to decide what was relevant and what wasn’t. Strictly speaking, that was the investigating officer’s job. Strictly speaking, Ruby and I should butt out, right now, before we got ourselves in trouble with the law. But there was Wallace, damn it, acting like he was the only one with enough brains to find a killer. And something about the way Winnie was responding made me want to hear what she had to say. Her next words decided me.

  “To be honest, I’d rather tell you,” Winnie said. “Telling Mike, I’m on the record, and he’s got to act on what I say. Talking to you, I’m just having a conversation with a couple of friends. What you do with the information is up to you.”

  Ruby nodded, and I made a noise intended to sound encouraging. So she did know something.

  Winnie picked up her glass, drained it, and said, “The first vote came up a couple of weeks ago. Coleman was there, of course, taking names. The next morning, I was out watering when he came by.” She wrinkled her nose distastefully. “Edgar was about as subtle as a horny longhorn. He said he had some privileged information that might change my mind about the ranch project.” She snorted. “ ‘Privileged information.’ That man always talked big, trying to make folks think he knew more than he did. So I asked him what in the world he thought was privileged enough to change my mind, and he said he knew something about Johnnie that might be kind of hard for him to explain to his boss.”

  “Who’s Johnnie?” Ruby asked.

  “My younger brother,” Winnie replied, in a matter-of-fact tone. An orange cat sprang onto the table and she took it into her lap. “He’s an undertaker at Pauley’s Funeral Home.”

  “And what did you say to Coleman?” I asked.

  She laughed sharply. “I said that Johnnie wasn’t my favorite brother and if he’d done something he shouldn’t have, by golly, old Mr. Pauley ought to hear about it. And if Coleman thought he could make me change my vote on that ranch development by threatening to get Johnnie in trouble, he had another think coming.” She stroked the cat, her eyes on my face. “I know I should have told Pauline, because it was an out and out bribery attempt, and that’s illegal. But then I’d have to involve Johnnie, and I didn’t exactly want to do that, for obvious reasons. So I just let it rest.” The cat jumped off her lap, landing with a soft thud in a puddle of sunshine on the rug. “When I read in the paper that Coleman was dead, I was sorry I hadn’t spoken up.”

  “Do you know whether Coleman approached any of the other Council members?” Ruby asked.

  Winnie frowned. “Do I know? Well, not exactly. But I happened to be driving past Ken Bowman’s Lincoln-Mercury dealership the day before the vote and I saw Edgar and Ken standing outside in the lot, having a talk. That afternoon, Ken called and said he was voting for the annexation proposal, and I should too.” She paused. “Now, maybe Coleman was putting pressure on Ken, or maybe Ken was giving him a good deal on a new car. But Ken’s phone call bothered me. If the vote had gone Coleman’s way, I would’ve blown the whistle. I sure as the dickens wouldn’t have let that sonofagun get away with rigging the vote.” She gave us a calculating glance. “You know, you two might be on the right track. If I’d wanted to cover up for Johnnie, I wouldn’t have trusted Coleman to keep his mouth shut. Even if you gave him what he asked for, there’s no guarantee that he wouldn’t have wanted more. He was dangerous.” She spoke without inflection, but there was something in her eyes that made me think she felt more passion than she showed.

  “Ken Bowman is the only one Coleman might
have tried to buy?” Ruby asked.

  Winnie frowned. “Well,” she said, “I got the idea from Darla McDaniels that she and Edgar might’ve had a private conversation recently, but I have no idea what they talked about.” She picked up the pitcher. “She leased her bookstore space from him, you know. He was her landlord. Do you want some more tea?”

  We lingered for another few minutes, sipping tea and admiring the garden. My nose was feeling better, and I thanked Winnie for the poultice. Ruby told her we’d give her a call and arrange a convenient time to collect the flowers, and we said good-bye. On the way out, I collected a couple more sprigs of lavender.

  Ruby managed to contain her excitement until we got to the car, but just barely. “We’re on to something big, China!” she exulted. “Pauline, Phyllis, Winnie, Ken Bowman—Coleman tried to blackmail all four of them—and maybe Darla and Wanda and Billie Jean, as well! Now all we have to do is find out which one of them had a secret they couldn’t trust him not to tell, and we’ve found our murderer.”

  I got into the car and shut the door. “Ruby,” I said quietly, “I want you to think about what you just said.”

  She stared at me. “Think about it? Why? What’s wrong with it? Don’t you agree?”

  “Those people you just named—some of them are our friends, all of them are our acquaintances. They’re people with children, people with families, people who have done a lot for Pecan Springs over a lot of years. There’s a very good chance that Edgar Coleman was murdered by somebody we know and like.” I paused. “Winnie, for instance.”

  “Winnie?” Ruby was horrified. “How can you think such a thing, China? Why, she—”

  “She fed us jam cake and tea and said that she told Coleman to go fly a kite. Then she incriminated Ken Bowman and implicated Darla McDaniels.”

  “Incriminated? Implicated?” Ruby stared at me. “But she was only giving us the information we asked for. Don’t you believe her?”

  “It’s not a matter of belief, Ruby. This killer isn’t going to hold up a hand and say, ‘Hey, it’s me. I did it.’ He, or she, is going to lie. Are you sure you can tell the difference between a lie and the truth—when the liar is somebody you know and like?”

  Ruby frowned. “Maybe you’re right. But I still don’t believe that Winnie—”

  “Maybe not. But we can’t be taken in by her hospitality and her willingness to tell us what we want to hear. This is an ugly business. Now that we’ve started digging, we may unearth something that should have stayed buried.” Having delivered this ominous remark, I slumped down into the seat. “Damn it. This is my wedding. Why can’t the week be normal?”

  Ruby turned the key. “Whoever heard of anybody having a normal week just before her wedding? Why, things haven’t even started to get difficult. We haven’t heard Sunday’s weather forecast yet.”

  More headaches. I held the lavender to my nose and sniffed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lavender in full bloom is a beautiful plant, and the Tuscan fields where it grows are famous for their beauty. But the workers who harvest the crop arm themselves with stout sticks because they know that poisonous snakes hide in the lavender’s dry, fragrant shade. Perhaps for that reason lavender became a symbol of dishonesty, deception, and secret malice. In the Victorian language of flowers, a sprig of lovely lavender tucked into a bouquet might convey the warning “Beware of deceit.”

  “The Meaning of Lavender,” by China Bayles

  The Pecan Springs Enterprise

  Home and Garden Section

  The asp that bit Cleopatra is said to have been found lurking beneath a lavender bush.

  Folk saying

  The afternoon was almost over, and I had more to do than play Watson to Ruby’s Holmes. Ruby took me back to the shop, where I checked on the afternoon’s traffic (encouragingly brisk), counted the newly arrived punch bowls (six more), and unpacked the shipment of the herb books that Bertha and Betsy had agreed to autograph. By that time, it was nearly five, so I helped Laurel close, cleared the register, and headed home. McQuaid had a case to solve. I might be a successful small-business owner with an important event scheduled for the weekend, but I still had groceries to buy and dinner to make.

  Howard Cosell was sitting, like a grumpier old man, in front of the kitchen door. I said hello to him, got a grunt in reply, then unloaded the groceries and poured myself a glass of sherry. Then I went out on the back porch, cut a leaf from an aloe vera plant, slit it, and rubbed the cool gel on my nose and under my eyes, not looking in the mirror. Sherry first, reality later.

  But some realities have to be dealt with immediately. The answering machine was blinking furiously, and I pushed the button. The first message was from Brian, announcing that Melissa was coming to supper and hoping this was okay, because like he’d already told her it was, if I knew what he meant. Since a foot-long homemade submarine sandwich—my ingenious plan for tonight’s supper—can be stretched almost to infinity, I wasn’t worried about not having enough to go around, especially when the second message turned out to be from McQuaid, who said he’d be home late and not to wait supper, and hoped my nose was better.

  “Hey,” he added sternly, “I love you, remember? Whatever shape your nose is in.”

  The pleasant feeling generated by McQuaid’s remark was abruptly extinguished by the third caller, the absent Harold Tucker, who owns our house. “We wanted to let you know that we’re in the States,” he said, in his clipped, dry, English professor’s voice. He gave a mailing address in Indiana and added, “We came back a few months early to take care of some urgent business. We’ve had an unexpected and rather surprising change in plans. We’ll be in touch with you to see what we can work out.”

  I hit the erase button with a vengeance. It sounded as if the Tuckers were hoping to move back home early. Well, if that was their idea, they could jolly well think again. The lease stated clearly and unequivocably that McQuaid and I were entitled to live in their house through the first of January. A change in plans, phooey! I knew a first-rate lawyer—me—who would tell them exactly what they could do with ...

  These litigious thoughts were interrupted by a rap at the door. When I snatched it open, I saw Fannie Couch standing on the front porch. Fannie has always dressed like a sweet little lady in lace-trimmed grandmotherly dresses and flowered hats the size of Edwardian parasols. But a few months ago she celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday and announced that now that she was an old woman, she intended to wear purple, shock the Ladies League, and scare the horses. This evening, she was decked out in what looked like race-walking gear: brash purple shorts with a slick finish, a baggy yellow T-shirt, purple-and-white striped knee socks, and running shoes with treads that would have looked right at home on an eighteen-wheeler. But she hadn’t jogged all the way out here. A car—not Fannie’s old red Ford but a classy silver Lincoln—was parked in the drive. Somebody was sitting in the driver’s seat, waiting for her.

  Fannie frowned. “What in tarnation did you do to your nose?”

  I explained about the door.

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, I sure hope that purple under your eyes fades away before Sunday. If you’ve got an aloe vera plant, you might try cutting a leaf and—” She stopped. “Hell, you’re the expert. Why am I giving you advice?” She pursed her mouth. “I’m not interrupting your supper, am I?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Listen, Fannie, I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but would you please tell your fans to turn off the punch bowls? We’ve got enough to serve punch at the next Texas-OU game.”

  “That’s gratitude for you,” Fannie said. She gestured toward the Lincoln. “Letty Coleman’s out there. She wants to talk to you.”

  “Letty Coleman?” I was taken aback. “Why?”

  Fannie fixed me with her bright blue eyes. “Letty’s friend Charlotte is on the nursing home board of directors. Charlotte told her how you straightened out that bad business with Opal Hogge a few months ago, and Letty was hoping that maybe y
ou could help straighten out some of her bad business.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, Fannie. Letty’s husband is dead and she’s a suspect, last I heard. She needs to talk to the police.”

  “Now, China.” Fannie was patient. “You surely don’t believe that Letty Coleman has enough gumption to shoot somebody. Anyway, she was with her sister on Sunday night. And she’s already given a statement to the police. She’s not a suspect anymore.”

  That was nonsense, and Fannie ought to have known better. Alibi or no alibi, the wife is always a suspect when the husband is blown away by an unknown assailant. A great many timid little women have been known to hire big bad trigger men to put an end to their husbands’ philandering. But if Letty had already talked to McQuaid, there couldn’t be any harm in—

  “Straighten out what bad business?” I asked.

  “I’ll let her tell you,” Fannie said, and skipped down the steps and out to the Lincoln. A moment later, Letty Coleman was sitting next to Fannie on my living room sofa. She had thanked me for my condolences and both had accepted my offer of a glass of sherry, which I brought in a decanter and set on the old pine carpenter’s chest that serves as our coffee table. I like primitives because there’s nothing you can do to them that hasn’t already been done and left the scars to prove it. There’s nothing fancy about them, either—and I’m not a very fancy person.

  Letty was in her mid-fifties. She had been pretty once, and there was still something striking about her almond-shaped dark eyes and high cheekbones. Her coarse, graying hair was pulled tightly back and fastened in a low bun at the nape of her neck. She was predictably dressed in a black dress, black stockings, and black low-heeled shoes, and she wasn’t wearing any jewelry. She looked even thinner than she did the last time she had come into the shop. Her hands twisted nervously, and there was a little tic at the comer of her right eye. She spoke with difficulty, in a tense, weary voice.