“Yes,” I said firmly. “I really want to know.” I really didn’t, since I had already come as close to this story as I cared to get, and I had the scorched eyebrows to prove it. But it might be a good idea to keep tabs on Jessica. I didn’t want her to lose her eyebrows, too—or worse.
“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll phone you. And we’ll have lunch together later in the week. How’s that?”
“Good. Next time, we’ll do it here, on me.” I got out and closed the door. “Sandwiches and soup. Easy on the cilantro.”
She waggled her fingers at me. “Maybe no cilantro at all,” she said, and drove off.
I stood on the sidewalk, watching her turn the corner. Now, after it’s all over, I wonder: if I’d had any idea what was going to happen, would I have let her go? But how could I have stopped her? She knew what she wanted to do; she knew what she was looking for. She wouldn’t have listened.
But I didn’t know what was going to happen, and neither did she. So we each went our ways, blindly, into the future.
Chapter Seven
In contemporary society, mild psychoactive stimulants containing caffeine (tea, coffee, colas, and chocolate) are considered to have a positive value, for they reduce feelings of fatigue and enable people to work harder, longer, and feel more alert. Caffeine is found in varying quantities in the beans, leaves, and fruits produced by some plants. The plants seem to have evolved the chemical as a pesticide, in order to paralyze and kill insects that might destroy them. Caffeine is usually consumed by humans in infusions brewed from the berries of the coffee plant and the leaves of the tea bush, as well as in beverages derived from the kola nut. Global consumption of caffeine has been estimated at 120,000 tons per year, making it the world’s most popular psychoactive substance. Consider this the next time you brew your favorite coffee.
China Bayles
“Mood-Altering Plants”
Pecan Springs Enterprise
Caitlin had spent the day with her friend Alice, who lives across the street from the Pecan Springs Library, where the kids’ summer reading program meets every Monday. At four that afternoon, I drove to Alice’s to pick Caitie up for her violin lesson. She was ready when I got there, cute as a button in her favorite yellow bib overalls and red-and-yellow-striped T-shirt, sitting on the front porch steps with Alice, her violin case and a bag of library books beside her. As we drove to CTSU, she chattered happily about the summer reading program (she had won a candy bar for reading twelve books last week, five more than anybody else), about Alice (her mom was getting a divorce because her dad didn’t love them anymore), and about Alice’s cute kitty (all white, like a baby bunny, with one black spot on his nose).
I listened, making appreciative mom-noises at appropriate points in the narrative and wondering how Howard would feel if a kitten moved in with us. In the past, he has expressed some very definite opinions about cats. I was also thinking that Caitie had changed a great deal in the past few months. She was on her way to being a happy little girl again. If her father could see her at this moment, he would definitely approve.
CTSU is a year-round campus, which means that parking is just as hard to find in June and July and August as it is during the rest of the year. I drove up Anderson and made a right at the top of the hill, stopping at the kiosk where a pleasant-faced uniformed guard used to check your parking sticker to make sure that you weren’t wanted for any major crimes (unpaid library fines or parking tickets) and let you in or kept you out, accordingly. But the campus went high-tech last year, and while the kiosk is still there, the guard has been replaced by an electronic card-reader gizmo. Since McQuaid teaches on the campus, I have a card. I stuck it into the reader, various clickings and cluckings ensued, and the gate went up. I don’t know why, but this always amazes me. I drove through quickly, before the gizmo could change its electronic mind and drop the gate on top of my car.
After some diligent searching, we got lucky and found an empty space behind the Music Education Building, where graduate students—as part of their training as teachers—use the practice rooms to give private lessons. Caitie grabbed her violin case, gave me a quick peck on the cheek, and ran into the building. I staked out a spot on the grass in the shade of a large live oak, overlooking the pretty little river that flows through the middle of campus. I had a book in my bag—Kinsey Millhone’s latest mystery—and the place I’d picked out was close enough to the open window of the practice room so that I could listen as I read. Caitie was playing the Pachelbel Canon with her teacher Brenda on the piano. She had made a few mistakes the day before, but today she nailed it, at least to my untrained ear. I thought it was lovely, although that was probably a mother’s pride.
But between listening to Caitie and thinking about my talk with Jessica, I didn’t get much reading done. The longer I thought about what Jessica had told me about losing her family in that house fire, the more it bothered me. The story about the trailer fire was sure to stir up her feelings about the deaths of her sister and parents, and I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to get involved any more deeply than she already was. But she wasn’t going to listen to me, obviously. The only way I could stop her was to call Hark and give him a heads-up. If I did that, though, it would look like I didn’t trust Jessica to handle whatever came up, which might jeopardize her work at the newspaper. It was one of those damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t situations.
I was still thinking about this when Caitie finished her lesson and came out to where I was sitting, Brenda with her. “Alice’s mom gave me some bread for the ducks on the river,” she informed me. “Okay if I go feed them?”
“I’m sure they’d appreciate that,” I said with a grin. “Ducks can never get too much bread.” She put her violin case on the grass beside me, took out a plastic bag, and skipped off.
Brenda plopped down on the grass beside me. She’s a heavyset girl with brownish, disheveled hair and owlish plastic-rimmed glasses, in the last term of her master’s program. The week before, she told me that she has a job lined up in Corsicana, her hometown. Come September, she’ll be teaching music in the high school there.
“Could we have a conversation about Caitlin?” she asked in a serious tone.
“Is she doing okay?” I was trying not to be anxious. “I mean, she sounds fine to me. And she practices a lot. A couple of hours a day during the summer.” I paused. Maybe she was overdoing it. I sometimes have the idea that Caitie is hiding inside the music, using it as a place to go when she doesn’t want to be a part of the family. Using music instead of words, as a way to express her feelings. “Maybe we should encourage her not to—”
“She’s doing very, very well,” Brenda broke in. She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “But I’ve asked Dr. Trevor to take her for lessons for the rest of the summer, instead of me. I told Caitlin about it this afternoon.”
“But why?” I asked, bewildered. “Don’t the two of you get along? She really seems to look forward to coming here every week.” I gave a rueful laugh. “I know the difference, believe me. When I was her age, I hated the violin. Hated my teacher, too. My mother had to drag me to my lessons. But Caitie is always eager to come. I’m sure she loves it.”
Brenda turned to face me. “And I love working with her.” She pushed her hair back, pulled off her glasses, and swiped her forehead with her arm. “She is—well, I’m not sure I’d call her a prodigy. But she is very talented. Very.” She put her glasses back on and looked at me. “In fact, I have never met a child as talented as she is, and I don’t know enough to teach her. I mean, I know enough about the instrument—it’s not that. I don’t quite know how to make the best of her talent. And Dr. Trevor does. She’s spent her whole career working with gifted children.”
Very talented. Gifted. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re telling me that this little girl . . .” I frowned. “That what Caitie is doing with that violin is different from what other kids do?”
Brenda looked at me, frownin
g a little. “Very different. Can’t you tell?”
“Well, no, I can’t,” I said regretfully. “To tell the truth, I have a tin ear. I know when Caitie makes a mistake and plays something over, and I know I love to listen to her. But I don’t know the first thing about music.” I was beginning to feel very foolish. I must have a tin ear when it came to being a mother, too. I didn’t even know enough to catch the signs of talent that Brenda had so easily spotted.
Brenda chuckled. “Well, unless I miss my guess, Caitie is going to show us all a thing or two. I’m looking forward to seeing what she makes of herself over the next few years.” She got to her feet. “Dr. Trevor wants you to call her. She’d like to discuss some options.”
“Options?” I got up, too, still trying to process this entirely unexpected news. “For lessons, you mean?”
“For lessons, and for a recital. And for the youth orchestra program here at CTSU.” Her smile transformed her pudgy face, as she held out her hand. “I think she’s planning to keep your little girl busy this summer.”
Your little girl. The words echoed after Brenda had gone, and I heard them again as I picked up Caitlin’s violin case and went down the slope to the river, where she was feeding the ducks, carefully tearing the last piece of bread into tiny pieces.
“I wish I’d brought more,” she said. “I don’t have enough for him.” She pointed to a black duck swimming all by itself. “The others get all the bread before he does.”
“You can bring more next time,” I said, and hesitated. “Brenda told you that you’ll be having lessons with Dr. Trevor from now on?”
“Mmm,” Caitlin said, nodding. She threw her last crust of bread as hard as she could. It landed in front of the black duck. He gobbled it instantly.
“Is that okay with you? Changing teachers?”
“Did you see that, Aunt China?” Caitlin demanded excitedly. “He got it before they did! Finally!” She turned back to me. “Sure, it’s okay. I’ll miss Brenda, but she says I’ll move along faster if I change to Dr. Trevor.”
I regarded her. “Is that what you want to do? Move along faster?”
“Uh-huh.” She took her violin case from me. “Brenda says I might even get to have a recital this summer. If I do, she’ll come to hear me play.” She took my hand. “You and Uncle Mike will come, too, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I replied, as we started up the hill toward the car. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
As I said, life is full of surprises. I had barely gotten used to being a mother to a teenaged boy when Caitie joined the family and I had to get used to being a mom to a little girl.
And now I had to get used to being a mom to a little girl who was also a talented violinist. I wasn’t sure I was ready.
But Caitlin apparently was, and that was all that mattered.
JESSICA was very much on my mind for the next twenty-four hours, although I heard nothing from her. I thought of calling Hark to ask how the story was coming along, but postponed it. And anyway, there wasn’t time. On Tuesday, I was busy nonstop at the shop, and a dozen members of the library’s Senior Book Club came in for their monthly lunch in the tearoom, which meant a hectic couple of hours at midday. I also had to finish my article for the Enterprise, which I somehow managed to do, between customers.
It was nearly four when I glanced at the clock and realized I hadn’t heard from Donna Fletcher, either, not since the morning of the day before. I phoned and caught her just coming in from the gardens.
She sounded dispirited as she answered my questions. No, Terry hadn’t come home. And no, the police hadn’t turned up any sign of her. “She’s probably hanging out somewhere in Mexico,” she added bleakly. “With my truck.” The fact of the trailer fire ballooned between us, but she didn’t mention it, and I didn’t, either. There was nothing we could say that would change what had happened. Either Terry had been in that trailer or she hadn’t.
“About the truck,” I said, finally. “We’re not using McQuaid’s pickup right now. Would you like to borrow it until you get yours back?” I was sure that McQuaid would make the same offer, if he were here right now. “It’s older than anything else on the road, but it runs.”
Her breath whooshed out. “Oh, thank you!” she said, sounding overjoyed at the prospect of having wheels again. “Margie Laughton is here right now. Maybe she could drive me to your place to pick up the truck. What time will you be home?”
I looked at the clock again, thinking that I probably owed it to Hark to talk to him about Jessica. “I have to stop at the Enterprise for a few minutes, then pick up Caitlin at Amy’s house.” That morning, Caitie had come in with me and helped out in the shop. She was spending the afternoon playing with Baby Grace. “Maybe six? Is that too late for you?”
Donna consulted with Margie and came back to the phone. “Margie says six will work.” She took a breath and managed a small laugh. “Thanks, China. I don’t know which is worse—worrying about my sister or worrying about my truck.”
I knew she didn’t mean that. But it felt good to help her solve at least one of her problems.
PECAN Springs was established in the late 1840s by German immigrants who settled on the Fisher-Miller Land Grant, under the auspices of a German emigration company called the Adelsverein. The company hoped to establish a German colony in the Republic of Texas, which had won its independence from Mexico in 1836 but had not yet been annexed by the United States. For safety, the colonists were dispatched in groups, a smart strategy, considering that the local Indians were not absolutely thrilled at the thought of new people moving into the neighborhood. They arrived by ship on the Gulf Coast and trekked overland by horse and wagon to the gently rolling hills of the Edwards Plateau, where they settled the towns of Pecan Springs, New Braunfels, and Fredericksburg.
The Indians were definitely a problem for a year or two, but they were soon outnumbered and persuaded to retire from the field. The Germans proved to be an extraordinarily industrious lot and all three settlements prospered. Before long, Pecan Springs was the trading center of the local agricultural commerce, with grist mills, sawmills, and manufacturing shops that supplied pioneer families with farm implements, leather goods, furniture, clothing, and wagons. Settlers built their first houses out of cypress logs, but as time went on, the German stonemasons began building more permanently, with stone. A great many of the buildings in town date from that period, and they all share a distinctive look.
The Enterprise building, for instance. It’s two stories high, three times longer than it is wide, and constructed of square-cut blocks of light-colored native limestone. Last year, Hark moved the newspaper’s production plant to a more modern facility on the outskirts of town, brought the archives downstairs, and leased the remodeled second floor to an architect. But the editorial offices remain on the first floor, and— for better or worse—Ethel Fritz is still the first person you see when you open the front door.
Ethel is the office manager. A largish, busty, fiftysomething woman, she loomed even larger today in a purple-striped dress, her bleached hair newly done up in a towering bouffant that made her look as if she were balancing a golden beehive on her head. Ethel has never won prizes for her people skills, and she greeted me with her usual frown.
“It’s late,” she said, glancing pointedly at the clock on the wall opposite her desk. I knew that “it” was my “Home and Garden” page, which had been due today at three o’clock. It was now five fifteen. Ethel doesn’t go home until five thirty.
“Actually, it isn’t late,” I returned, with a barely hidden note of triumph in my voice. “I emailed it to Hark’s computer at two forty-five.”
“Huh.” Ethel’s frown deepened. She resists learning to use the computer. She says that people are losing their memories because they trust everything to the computer and then can’t remember a “durn thang,” as she puts it. (I have the sneaking feeling that she might be right.) Hark inherited Ethel—as well as a reporter named Gene,
of the same vintage—when he bought the paper from the previous owners. He has threatened several times to replace both of them, but Gene is earnest and dogged and knows Pecan Springs inside and out, and Ethel is similarly valuable. She has worked for the Enterprise since she graduated high school and is acquainted with all the native Springers. She knows their family trees and all their in-laws and outlaws. She knows their sins, too, ancient and modern. She jots them all down in her mental black book.
“Actually,” I added, “I’m here to see the boss. Is he in the office?”
“Can’t say he’s in the best o’ moods.” She pushed her long yellow Number 2 pencil into the back of her beehive, where it stuck out like a chopstick. Ethel has a habit of sticking pencils into her hair and forgetting about them. I counted a half-dozen once. “You know what’s good for you,” she added darkly, “you better tippy-toe.”
“Tippy-toe? Why? What’s wrong?”
She gave me a stern look. “Might wanta ask your friend Ruby’bout that.” Ethel has the idea that Ruby has been toying with Hark’s affections, which puts Ruby in Ethel’s black book. In fact, Ruby probably has a page all to herself. Maybe two pages.
“You know she was seein’ Mr. Hibler when that Colin fella came along,” she added, with barely concealed bitterness. “Threw him for a loop. Looks to be happenin’ all over again, I’m sorry to say.” She picked up another pencil and stuck it in her hair. “Some cowboy this time, is what I heard.”
“That Colin fella” was Colin Fowler. And yes, it is true that Ruby lost her heart to Colin, and that Hark took it hard when it happened. But Colin is dead now, and I was hoping that this episode had been forgotten. It had not, obviously, by Ethel. And if she had already heard about “some cowboy,” she had probably been listening in on a phone conversation between Hark and Ruby.
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