Queen Anne's Lace

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Annie sucked in her breath. She had always tried to return Delia’s habitually disparaging remarks with something polite and neutral. But it didn’t matter what she said. Delia was a silly chatterbox, impervious to even the most barbed rebuke. She was either completely unaware that her remarks might be hurtful or she didn’t care. Annie had always suspected that it was the latter.

  And this afternoon, the secret resentment she often felt toward Adam’s wife suddenly bloomed into a hot red coal burning deep inside her. In Delia’s pretty, perfumed shadow, Annie could no longer pretend to be anything other than she was: a poor-as-a-church-mouse widow whose chief source of income had just vanished. A woman who needed a husband.

  Annie was too angry to risk an answer. Without a word, she rose and walked away. And when the train arrived, she chose a seat next to a portly gentleman who smelled of garlic and cigars, so Delia could not sit beside her.

  Chapter Five

  The ancient Chinese sailors who used ginger to prevent seasickness were right. Ginger’s antinausea action relieves motion sickness and dizziness (vertigo) better than the standard drug treatment, Dramamine, according to one study published in the British medical journal Lancet . . . In addition to motion sickness, the researchers recommended ginger capsules, ginger tea, or ginger ale for the morning sickness of pregnancy. Some doctors now recommend it for nausea associated with chemotherapy.

  The Healing Herbs,

  Michael Castleman

  I didn’t sleep very well that night. In my dreams, I was back in that dark storeroom, the scent of lavender heavy around me. I was searching for something—what it was, I had no idea—pawing futilely through mountains of boxes and bins and piles of newspaper. I tossed and turned until Winchester abandoned the foot of the bed and McQuaid shook me awake to tell me that I was having a bad dream. When I finally woke a little after six, a haunting fragment of the Scottish melody I’d heard in the storeroom was running through my head. And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I’d lay me down and die. As I dressed (my usual shop outfit: jeans, sneakers, and a green Thyme and Seasons T-shirt), I found myself humming it.

  Downstairs, I fixed a quick breakfast for McQuaid, Caitie, and the animals. I was on my way out the door, heading for the shop, when I got an anxious telephone call from Connie Page, Sheila’s longtime assistant at the Pecan Springs Police Department.

  “China, I just got off the phone with Sheila. She planned to come in early today, but she called to say she’ll be late. She’s been throwing up all night, and she didn’t sound good at all. I’m worried about her. Blackie’s out of town on a case, and I can’t leave the office—we’ve had a couple of crises already, and there’s another one brewing. We can certainly use her here, but if she’s sick, I hope she won’t push herself. Can you stop at her house and see what the situation is?”

  Of course I could. And if Sheila had been throwing up, I knew what she needed. I went back in the house and took the last two bottles of my homebrewed ginger ale out of the fridge. Ginger is the best thing for nausea, but the ginger ale you find in grocery stores is either artificially flavored or doesn’t contain enough ginger to get the job done. On the other hand, pregnant women need to be careful when they use ginger, since researchers say that in high doses (2000 or more milligrams a day), it can cause uterine cramping and even miscarriage. I also filled a baggie with dried peppermint from the canister I keep in the kitchen for making tea. There’s more than one way to treat a case of nausea.

  Twenty minutes later, I was parking behind Sheila’s black-and-white cop car in the drive at her house on Hickory Street. I went around the back, opened the gate, and saw Rambo, Sheila’s fearsome-looking Rottweiler, sitting on the porch step. Rambo works the day shift in the PSPD’s K-9 Unit (nights, too, when there’s an emergency), so Sheila’s being late to work meant that the Rottie wouldn’t be punching in on time, either.

  Rambo scrambled to his feet as I came up the steps, gave an eager welcoming woof, and escorted me to the kitchen door, even pushing a little. Rambo looks like a vicious junkyard dog, and when the occasion demands, he can act like one, too. With bad guys, he is all teeth and threatening snarls, but with friends, he’s a sweetie with exquisite manners. And like all Rotties, he has a very strong sense of responsibility, especially for Sheila’s welfare. Now, he stood beside me, pressing against my knee and whining, his stub of a tail wagging so hard that it wagged his whole rear end. Rambo has been clocked at twenty-five miles an hour and he can clamber up and over a six-foot-high chain-link fence. But while he has many talents, he can’t open a latched door. Obviously, he was asking me to do that for him. I felt a prickle of apprehension.

  I knocked several times but didn’t get any answer, and the prickle became an urgent concern. Sheila’s squad car was in the drive, so she was still here. Rambo was outside, so she had gotten up to let him out. She had talked to Connie, as well. So where was she?

  I knocked again and gave a loud yoo-hoo, then turned the knob and pushed at the door. It wasn’t locked. “Let’s go in, Big Guy,” I said.

  But Rambo didn’t need my permission. He had already shoved past me through the open door, dashed across the kitchen, and was pounding up the stairs.

  I found Sheila on the bathroom floor, Rambo frantically licking her face. Half-dressed and barefoot, she was just beginning to come around, and was dazed and only semi-coherent. Normally, she is downright beautiful, tall and willowy, with blond hair that she wears twisted up in a bun, blue eyes, a fetching nose, and full lips. This morning, her hair was down and disheveled, her face was ashen, her eyes barely focusing, her pulse fast and slight. There was a deep cut over her ear and she was bleeding badly. From what I could manage to get out of her, I guessed that she hadn’t been able to keep any meals down the day before and hadn’t kept herself hydrated. She had fainted, fallen, and whacked her head on the edge of the bathtub.

  “I have to get dressed . . . go to work,” she said in a blurry voice, as Rambo whined worriedly. She struggled to push herself up but fell back dizzily. “Help me up, China,” she whispered. “Please . . .”

  I didn’t try. We were way past the point where ginger ale or peppermint tea would get Smart Cookie on her feet and into her uniform.

  “Lie still, sweetie,” I commanded, reaching into my jeans pocket for my phone. I knew that Sheila wouldn’t want to alert the dispatcher, who would spread the news all over the department quicker than you can say 911. So I called Connie.

  “Oh, dear God,” Connie said breathlessly, when she heard my report. “I’m so glad you’re there, China! Is she all right? Sounds like a concussion. Is the baby—”

  “No idea,” I said, breaking in. “We need to get her to the hospital. Can you handle the dispatch yourself? She’ll want us to keep this under wraps until we know something definite.”

  “Will do.” Connie stopped babbling and became all business. “Somebody will be there in less than five minutes, China. Hang tight.”

  I ran into the bedroom, pulled a blanket off the bed, and covered Sheila, who was shivering. I encouraged Rambo to curl up as close as he could get, to keep her warm. Then I made a compress out of a damp washcloth and pressed it against the gash in her scalp. All the time, I kept telling her that she was going to be just fine once EMS got an IV into her and pumped her full of fluids.

  I hoped to God it was true.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN Sheila was in the ambulance and on her way to the hospital, I put Rambo in my Toyota and dropped him off at the K-9 facility, telling the supervisor that the chief wanted to board him overnight for a day or two. Back in the car, I took a few moments to phone McQuaid. I told him about Sheila’s accident and asked him to get in touch with Blackie, who was working that new case up in Lubbock. Then I phoned Ruby to ask her to open the shop for me, and explained why.

  When I got to the hospital, Helen Berger, a friend and fellow herb guild me
mber, was on duty in the ER. She told me that they had already taken Sheila upstairs for a CT scan. I hung around for a while, pacing the floor and biting my nails, before deciding that since I wasn’t helping matters, I might as well go to the shop. I gave Helen my number and Connie Page’s and asked her to get in touch with both of us when there was news.

  “I hope we can keep this quiet for now,” I said in a lower voice. “Jessica Nelson from the Enterprise monitors the EMS runs in town. I wouldn’t be surprised if she popped in to see what’s going on.”

  “I understand,” Helen said gravely. “Patient privacy is a watchword around here.”

  It’s good to have friends in the right places.

  * * *

  • • •

  AT the shop that morning, it was business as usual, except that the Library Reading Circle was meeting for lunch in the tearoom. It’s a largish group, so Cass and Jenna, her helper, were already setting up for it. On the menu: an easy chicken and pesto wrap, tomato basil soup, and fruit. Several of Lori’s students came in and went upstairs to the loft to work on their weaving projects, and Ruby was teaching her Tuesday morning meditation class in the Crystal Cave’s back room. Khat, as usual, was stretched out on the windowsill beside a pot of bright green parsley, napping in the sunshine. It would have been a lovely morning, if I hadn’t been so uneasy about Sheila.

  And then something happened to ratchet up my uneasiness a few dozen points. Merilee Kaufman, one of my frequent customers, dropped in on her way to work at the antique shop on the square. While I was ringing up her purchases—a box of mini lavender soap bars and a bottle of eucalyptus oil—she asked me about our fall classes. “I heard that Kelly Sutherland is teaching wreath-making,” she said. “Do you know when?”

  “First and third Saturdays in October,” I said. “The classes are all listed there.” I pointed to the magnetic bulletin board that hangs on the wall at the end of the counter, where customers can easily see it. I had posted the list the day before and made a colorful caption for it—FALL CLASSES—using some handy magnetic alphabet letters I bought at the five-and-dime.

  But what I saw jerked me back for a second look. Between the class list and this week’s tearoom menus (fastened to the board with cute yellow smiley-face magnets) somebody had posted a photograph. I recognized it right away: the sepia-toned photograph I had seen in the box in the storeroom, the picture of the smiling couple with the baby and the little girl, sitting in the porch swing on the veranda—on my veranda. The photo was stuck on with a heart-shaped magnet, and behind it was a single sprig of lavender. Fresh-picked lavender, just out of the garden. And as I turned back to Merilee, the bell over my front door rang twice, emphatically, as if it were making a point. I looked to see who had come in, but the door stayed shut.

  “Your bell is ringing but nobody’s there,” Merilee said unnecessarily.

  “I know.” I sighed. “I have no clue.”

  I had no clue to the photo, either. I had put the Corticelli carton of photographs back on the shelf in the storeroom, intending to take it home and go through it some Sunday afternoon. I remembered doing that, quite clearly. So how had that photograph gotten to the bulletin board? The simplest explanation was the likeliest one, I told myself, exchanging Merilee’s purchases for her credit card. It had fallen out of the carton and Ruby or Lori had picked it up and stuck it on my board.

  So a little later, when Ruby came into the shop to remind me that the Library Reading Circle was coming to lunch and we needed to take turns hosting the tearoom, I asked her about the photo.

  “Wasn’t me,” she said. “And I don’t know when Lori could have done it. It was on your bulletin board when I opened up this morning. I noticed it because of the lavender. It smelled very fresh, like it had just been picked.”

  Before I could answer, the bell over my front door gave a silvery, half-amused tinkle. Khat, who had been sound asleep on the windowsill, suddenly woke, gave a gruff mrrrow! and jumped to the floor. In an instant, he had darted out of the room.

  Ruby looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

  I shrugged helplessly. “I’ll ask McQuaid to take a look at the bell. Maybe it’s loose, and a vibration . . .” I let my voice trail off. She wasn’t believing me anyway.

  Ruby cast a pointed look at the bulletin board. “There’s another explanation. But you’re not going to like it.”

  That’s when she told me about a few “little things” she had been noticing in the past couple weeks. A book left open, found closed. A chair moved, an arrangement of crystals scrambled, incense set burning on a high shelf. A shimmer, like the skirt of a long white dress, barely glimpsed. Little things, but inexplicable.

  “You’re saying we have a ghost?” I asked. I tried to make my question neutral, but I must not have succeeded.

  Ruby pulled down the corners of her mouth. “Please don’t make fun, China. The spirits don’t like it when we laugh at them.”

  I wasn’t laughing. I was thinking of the woman I’d heard humming in the darkness of the empty storeroom. “Why don’t you consult your Ouija board?” I asked crossly. “And you didn’t mention any of this to me.”

  “I haven’t asked Ouija because we’re not living in a Ghostbusters movie,” Ruby said patiently. “In my experience, it’s not a good idea to pry, or ask a lot of questions. Be patient, and if a spirit wants to get in touch, he—or she—will find a way to do it. And I didn’t mention it to you because . . . well, you know. You’re skeptical. I thought I’d keep it to myself until something happened—to you. And now it has. That photograph. And the bell.”

  Yes, of course I’m skeptical. I’m suspicious by nature, and as a lawyer, I have been trained to examine every statement, question every claim, find a rational explanation, construct a logical theory, and stick to it.

  But there was that bell chiming. And Khat, normally the most self-possessed of creatures, suddenly spitting and darting out of the room. The ghostly humming I had heard yesterday, and the sudden drop in temperature in the storeroom. And now the photograph, and the fresh sprig of lavender.

  In the cold light of day, of course, the idea of a ghost defied logic. And even granting that implausible possibility, there was the timing. Ruby and I had occupied this building for years with no evidence of anything out of the ordinary. Why this, why now?

  I was about to ask Ruby that question, but at that moment the bell rang again, authoritatively. This time it announced an actual customer—Geraldine Castleman. She’s a chatty lady who loves to discuss the properties of relatively unknown herbs, and our conversations can easily stretch to a half hour or more. This visit wasn’t quite that long, but by the time Geraldine finished her shopping and left, Ruby had gone back to her shop to wait on someone. And when she popped her head in a half hour later, she had something else on her mind.

  “Have you had any news about Sheila?” she asked.

  I had, via a flurry of phone calls. Blackie had phoned to get my firsthand report of what had happened and tell me that he was on his way back from Lubbock and would get to Pecan Springs early in the evening. McQuaid called to let me know that Blackie’s insurance scam investigation was something they couldn’t put on hold, so he was driving up to Lubbock to pick up where Blackie had left off. He likely wouldn’t be back until early the next week.

  “Caitie will be disappointed,” I said. “You’ll miss the poultry show.”

  “I’ve already told her I’m sorry.” McQuaid paused. “Listen, I’ve just dropped her off for orchestra rehearsal. Afterward, she’s going to Karen’s house. She wanted to stay all night, and after I talked to Karen’s mom, I said okay. That way, you won’t have to pick her up tonight and take her to rehearsal again in the morning. But I’m afraid you’ll have to handle the chicken check-in at the fairground on Thursday morning. Sorry.”

  He didn’t sound terribly sorry about the chickens, but it was no big de
al. “We do what have to do,” I said. “Drive carefully, sweetie. And call me when you get to Lubbock.”

  I had just hung up when Helen Berger called to say that Sheila didn’t have a skull fracture—which was a huge relief—and her baby seemed okay. But her concussion had been diagnosed as moderate to severe and she had to stay quiet for a few days. She added that Jessica Nelson had showed up at the hospital to find out what was going on. Helen had sent her away empty-handed, but she didn’t think that was the end of it.

  “Ms. Nelson is a persistent young woman, isn’t she?” she remarked dryly.

  “Persistence is her middle name.” I paused. “How’s Kevin, Helen? Is he feeling better?”

  Kevin is Helen’s grandson. Just as importantly, he is Caitie’s first boyfriend. Caitie and Kevin, who are both exceptional young violinists, compete for the position of concertmaster in the local kids’ orchestra. The concertmaster is the player who occupies the first chair in the violin section, helps everybody tune up, and plays the solo parts. Caitie had that place until Kevin moved to Pecan Springs a few months earlier. He had held the position until he got sick—headaches, blurred vision—and had to sit out several of the summer performances. Caitie was back in first chair again, but I was concerned about Kevin.

  There was a silence. When Helen spoke, her voice was unsteady and I could hear the pain in it. “China, please don’t tell Caitie about this yet. We’re not ready to make a general announcement, but I think you’d better be prepared, since Kevin and Caitie are close. She’ll have to know.” She cleared her throat. “Kevin has a brain tumor. We’re taking him to MD Anderson next week for surgery.”

  I gasped, struggling for words, although there’s nothing you can say in a situation like this. I managed, “Oh, Helen, that’s . . . that’s terrible! I am so very sorry!”

  MD Anderson is the University of Texas’ cancer center in Houston, and one of the very best in the country. But a brain tumor! Kevin is a bright and talented kid, not just in music but in math, and a wicked sense of humor lurks behind that nerdish look of his. If I had invented a first boyfriend for Caitie, he would be a lot like Kevin.