Hemlock

by Susan Wittig Albert

  But I hadn’t come to the end of my to-do list. First thing tomorrow I had to confess my sin of omission to Chief Curtis who—I hoped—would see his way clear to pardoning me for my crime. I hoped to see Margaret and drop in on the Hemlocks’ get-together, to meet Amelia Scott. And I should probably have a telephone conversation with the president of the board, Mrs. Cousins, and try to convince her to announce the theft. If she and the board continued to refuse, there wouldn’t be much left for me to do here. I might even see if I could bump my flight from Thursday to Wednesday.

  Rose had cooked a marvelous dinner for us, as I discovered when we sat down at the table. I polished off two bowls of chicken and slicks—a thick, rich, flavorful chicken soup studded with carrots and celery and afloat with flat, slippery, slurpy dumplings. A chicken soup to top all chicken soups, forever. I found it every bit as delicious as Jenna had predicted, as was the cabbage salad and the warm apple pie.

  While we were eating, I asked Jenna if she happened to remember which of Redouté’s lily plates had been taken from the Carswell library.

  She brightened. “Funny you should ask, China. I was working on that list just before supper. I haven’t typed it into the computer yet.” She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a handwritten list. “This is what I’ve got so far. It’s incomplete, of course.”

  I ran a glance down Jenna’s penciled list. My skin prickled. The blackberry lily and the Barbados lily were both on it. I pushed it back toward her. “May I have a copy?”

  “Sure.” She repocketed the list. “Can I ask why?”

  “Just wanting to be on the lookout,” I said. I had more work to do on this. Time enough to loop them in when I found out who owned Socrates.com. “Hey, did either of you hear the weather forecast?”

  They hadn’t, and my news about a possible snowstorm was a surprise. The past winter had been mild, with only a couple of light snows. They had no experience of mountain snowstorms and no idea what to expect.

  “I suppose I should find out if Joe is ready to plow the drive,” Dorothea remarked, when I told her what the sheriff had said about the Carswell barn roof. By that time, we had finished eating and were beginning to clear the dishes. “I’ve often wondered whether the county plows the main road up here,” she added, “since we’re so near the end. The road doesn’t go any further than Claudia Roth’s place. I suppose it’s possible to get snowed in.” She smiled at me. “But I wouldn’t worry, China. It’s spring already. If we get some snow, it’ll probably just melt.”

  Jenna turned from the dishwasher, a bowl in her hand. “I proofread more of my novel this afternoon, China. I took the liberty of emailing the next section to you. But please don’t feel obligated. You don’t have to read it, you know.”

  “Of course I’ll read it!” I said. “I thought of Elizabeth several times today. I wondered what she would make of Jed Conway’s bookstore.”

  “She would be blown away by the electric lights, for one thing,” Jenna said with a laugh. “Can you imagine lighting a bookshop with oil lamps and candles? On a dark day, you wouldn’t be able to see the books on the shelf—and London had plenty of dark days.”

  I planned to spend some time that evening reviewing the notes I had made after today’s interviews. So when the kitchen cleanup was done—quick work, with three of us on the job—I excused myself and went upstairs. I had just propped myself against the generous pile of pillows on the bed and opened my notebook to the Humphreys notes when my cell phone rang.

  It was Margaret Anderson, apologizing nicely for having missed me earlier that day. She had gotten my message, understood that I was a writer doing a piece on the Hemlock House Foundation and the Carswell collection, and would be glad to talk to me at any time. Apparently, she had just gotten back from the hospital, where she had tried to see Jed Conway.

  “But of course I couldn’t,” she said. She sounded younger than I had expected, and I mentally subtracted about ten or twelve pounds, changed the color of her pink twinset to red, and gave her a pair of red Manolos. “What a horrible thing! And so hard to believe.” She took a breath. “I understand that you found him. It must have been a terrible shock.”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering how she had managed to learn that little detail. But she was hurrying on.

  “Well, do come over tomorrow and let’s talk. I was a great admirer of Miss Carswell and I know a little about her collection. And of course I’m always glad to talk books.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “What time tomorrow would be convenient for you? And where?”

  “Oh, let’s do it here.” She rattled off the address—the one I already had. “It’ll have to be first thing, though,” she added. “Is nine-thirty too early?”

  “Sounds right.” I paused. I didn’t want to put her on her guard, but there was one more thing. “I had hoped to interview Jed Conway, but . . .” I hesitated. “When you went to the hospital this evening, did you hear anything about his condition?”

  “They’re saying it’s touch and go. He’s still critical. If he makes it through the night . . .” She hesitated, took a breath, and said, “I wonder—when you found him, was he able to talk?”

  “He was barely conscious,” I said, evading. I owed my mea culpa and a report of what I had heard to Chief Curtis. I wasn’t going to share it with anybody else. And why was she asking? Was she worried that I might have heard something from him? The name of his assailant, maybe? Her name?

  She tried again, more insistently this time. “But did he say anything? Was he able to identify—”

  At that moment, my phone beeped and I looked down to see that McQuaid was calling. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, Margaret,” I said quickly. “My husband is on call-waiting. We’ve been playing phone tag all day and I really have to talk to him. I’ll see you at nine-thirty in the morning.”

  I clicked off. Every lawyer learns how to duck questions she doesn’t want to answer. And it wouldn’t hurt Margaret Anderson to twirl her pearls and stew about what Jed Conway might have said to me before the medics showed up.

  McQuaid had just sent Brian back to Austin with a load of clean laundry. They had opted for takeout pizza from Gino’s instead of my beef stew (pizza goes better with beer) and spent the evening commiserating about how hard it was to keep a relationship going when two people are so busy that they barely see one another except in bed. And when seeing one another mostly in bed just isn’t enough.

  “Real-world stuff like that,” McQuaid said. “Hard lessons in love.” He paused. “So how about you, Sherlock? Stumble over any more dead bodies?”

  “Not funny,” I said darkly. “Not to joke about.”

  “Sorry. Starting over.” In a faux sprightly tone, he said, “So how did the rest of your day go, dear?”

  “I met a flock of parrots,” I said. “And I have an idea for an aviary for Spock, out by Caitie’s coop. He can keep an eye on the chickens and report any troublemakers.”

  “Refer it to the buildings and grounds committee.” McQuaid chuckled. “Maybe Spock would be willing to settle for an aviary instead of a horse. Caitie says Spock thought it was great fun and wants to go riding again tomorrow.”

  “I hope she remembers to put his harness on him.” When he goes outdoors, Spock wears his parrot harness and a leash, which is attached to Caitie’s wrist. “He’d probably come back if he got loose—if he could find his way. But he might get lost, especially on the ranch. It’s a wilderness.” I paused. “Listen, I wonder if there’s something you might do for me.”

  “Within reason,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I need to find out who owns a website called Socrates.com. I’ll take a quick look at WhoIs, but I’m sure I won’t find it there.” WhoIs enables you to look up the owners of domain names and IP addresses on the internet. “I’ll bet you have ways up digging up the ownership information even if it’s privat
ely registered, which this one probably is.”

  “Sure thing,” McQuaid said easily. “I’ll check it out tomorrow and get back to you. Oh, almost forgot. I ran into Ruby when we stopped to get the pizza. She wanted me to tell you something. She said it was urgent.”

  Uh-oh. I was instantly worried. Something must be wrong at Thyme and Seasons or the Crystal Cave. We’ve had our share of calamities over the years and any one of them could happen again—or two or even three of them could happen at the same time. A water pipe could break and flood the kitchen. Somebody could trip on the tea room doorsill, break a leg, and sue us. Big Red Mama, our shop van, could have blown a valve. A catering client’s check for a very large party could bounce. The old pecan tree out front could—

  “China?” McQuaid said. “You still there?”

  I realized I was holding my breath. “What did Ruby want to tell me?”

  “She said, ‘The Universe says boots.’”

  “Boots? What’s that supposed to mean?

  “I have no clue,” he said. “I’ve done my job. I’ve told you. Boots. Cowboy boots, maybe? Riding boots? Hiking boots? Chukka boots? Combat—”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He changed the subject. “Any word on the condition of that guy who got shot today?”

  I told him what Margaret had told me. He reminded me to stay out of the line of fire, blew me a telephone kiss, and went off to watch his favorite political talk show on TV. I opened my notebook and began going over the notes I had taken during my conversations that day, summing up what I had learned about the mysteries—two of them, now, instead of just one. Who stole the Herbal? Who shot Jed Conway? And there was a corollary: Are the two events related, and if so, how?

  I hadn’t gotten much from Rose, except for some background information about the people who came and went at Hemlock House and her reluctant confirmation that there was a secret room. Not that it had anything to do with the theft of the Herbal. It was just an interesting side note about this place.

  From Jed Conway, I’d heard a whispered word suggesting that he might have some connection to the Blackwell Herbal, or that his assailant might have been Kevin Maxwell, or something else entirely—how was I to know? As for Socrates.com: I went online and did a quick search of WhoIs. But I had been right. The site’s ownership was privately registered. I’d have to wait and hope that PI McQuaid could dig up the registration.

  And when I went to the website and looked at the images of the sale items, I realized that I would need Jenna’s list of the prints and pages that were missing from the Carswell collection. Even then, without some distinctive physical characteristic that tied each item to a particular book, it might be next to impossible to match them so that they could be used as evidence of theft. As a for-instance: one of the detectives in The Map Thief had related how hard it had been to prove that the maps in the thief’s possession were the same maps that had been stolen. Maps aren’t like cars, he’d said. They don’t come with VIN numbers. (He had traced one of the stolen maps by matching wormholes—bookworm holes!—in the pages.) This was a research project that would take some time and would require inspection of the physical evidence. Which meant that the chief or the DA would have to subpoena the inventory of Socrates.com.

  From Carole, I had learned that Margaret Anderson’s departure from Hemlock House had not been entirely amicable and that she—Margaret, aka Ms. Twinset—might have grudges against the board and especially against Dorothea. She’d had plenty of opportunity to identify the most valuable books and steal prints from them. Had she also made off with the Herbal? Were all these things being fenced through Socrates.com, which might or might not be owned by Jed Conway?

  If so, that could link Twinset to Jed and make her a serious candidate as the shooter. To my image of the frosted hair, red twinset, and Manolos I considered adding a concealed-carry Smith and Wesson 9mm handgun.

  From the talkative Sheriff Rogers, I’d gotten the lowdown on his investigation of the theft, including his frustrations and his evident suspicion of Dorothea. Oh, and a warning against Virgil, for whatever that was worth. And from the bulletin board outside the sheriff’s office, the information about the Hemlock Guild meeting, with Amelia Scott’s name and phone number.

  But it had been Claudia the Unfiltered who had given me the most to think about, starting with her claim to a wrong-side-of-the-blanket family-tree connection to the Carswells, her sisterly friendship with Sunny, and her information about Jed Conway’s precarious financial situation and the pump-and-dump scheme that he used to inflate his commissions. Plus the fact that the phrase “those Hemlock folks” had likely referred to the local right-to-die group, rather than the current occupants of Hemlock House—and Claudia’s revelation that Jed had been threatened by Kevin Maxwell, angry about Conway’s alleged role in his sister’s suicide. I had to add Maxwell to my suspect list.

  Which led me to confront the awkward fact that the whisper I had withheld from Chief Curtis might be the name of Jed’s assailant. Damn. In legal terms, I was guilty of obstruction, which is a very bad thing. First thing tomorrow morning, I would have to visit the chief, eat a big helping of crow, and hope that he would find it in his heart to overlook my sin of omission.

  And for tonight, one more thing. Ms. Twinset’s upscale, golf-club-neighborhood residence had already told me something about her. Now I needed to look for her website and her Facebook and Twitter and Instagram accounts. I wanted to see what kind of online persona—professional and personal—she had created for herself.

  But when I tried to get onto the internet, there was no signal. I went back to the sign-on popup and tried again. Nothing.

  I cocked my head, listening for the first time to what was happening outdoors. It was raining buckets—a gully-washer, we call it in Texas. As I looked up, a blue-white flash of lightning lit the hemlocks outside the windows and I saw that a wild wind was lashing the trees.

  My first thought, regretful: Rain, and lots of it, messing with the satellite signal. My online research would have to wait until the storm passed.

  My second, snarkier thought: Rain? What happened to big, bad Virgil and the blizzard he was supposed to bring us?

  My third thought, more like a silent prayer: Please don’t let the power go off. I had already downloaded the chapter Jenna had emailed me and my tablet’s battery was charged, so I could read, electricity or not. But I’d hate to have to grope for the bathroom in the dark. Why hadn’t I brought a flashlight?

  Oh, wait. There was a flashlight on my cell phone, wasn’t there? I took a moment to find it and make sure I knew how to use it, just in case.

  Then I looked back down at the scribbles in my notebook, feeling frustrated. I’d made a lot of notes but I wasn’t any closer to identifying the thief who had stolen the Herbal than when I began. The theft had been the main target of investigation, but it was now overwritten by the attempted murder of Jed Conway. All things considered, the question of who had tried to kill him and why was now more important—and more urgent—than the question of who had stolen the Herbal.

  Unless, of course, the two questions were opposite sides of the same coin, and the answer to one turned out to be the answer to the other. In which case, both were equally urgent.

  If Conway lived, he might solve this duplex riddle for us. If he died . . . I shook my head. If he died, we might never know either answer.

  Wearily, I rubbed my eyes. Enough. Maybe this muddle would look clearer after a good night’s sleep. Meanwhile, Jenna said she had sent me the next section of her novel—and there it was, in my phone. Hadn’t she also said that she had made some rosemary bath oil and left it for me on the shelf in the bathroom? It would be lovely to take my book and climb into a hot, rosemary-scented bath.

  That’s what I did. The water was hot, the bath delightfully fragrant, the oil soothing to my dry skin. I opened Jenna’s chapter on my
phone and began to read.

  Within minutes, I was so deep in the eighteenth century that it would have taken a very determined ghost to pry me out. But the ghost let me read, and if anything unusual went on at Hemlock House that night, I didn’t know a thing about it.

  The Curious Tale of Elizabeth Blackwell

  Part Four

  February 7, 1735

  Number 3, Great Russell Street

  Bloomsbury Square, London

  Apothecary. The earlier name for one who prepared and sold drugs for medicinal purposes—the business now (since about 1800) conducted by a druggist or pharmaceutical chemist. From about 1700, apothecaries gradually took a place as general medical practitioners.

  The Oxford English Dictionary

  In addition to dispensing herbs and medicine, the apothecary offered general medical advice and a range of services that are now performed by other specialist practitioners, such as surgeons and obstetricians. Apothecary shops sold ingredients and the medicines they prepared wholesale to other medical practitioners, as well as dispensing them to patients.

  “Apothecary”

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apothecary

  What Sir Hans Sloane wanted, it turned out, was an entire book of carefully detailed botanical drawings, and quite a substantial book, at that—the most substantial of its kind ever imagined.

  The three of them—Sir Hans, Dr. Stuart, and Elizabeth—were seated in front of a pleasant fire in Sir Hans’ great library-cum-museum.

  “To explain why this book is needed,” Sir Hans said, “I must tell you about the Society of Apothecaries and the garden of medicinal herbs that the society maintains at Chelsea. I studied botany there when I first came to London some fifty years ago.”