Ladies Courting Trouble

by Dolores Stewart Riccio

  A cloud passed across Heidi’s smile. It would be difficult to tell if that sudden shadow was brought forth by the thought of her aunt’s death or of the disposition of the Craig fortune. I was betting on the latter.

  “An untimely tragedy. She’ll be missed,” Heidi said. “But life must go on.”

  “Still, you must be so distressed,” Deidre said. “At least if the police had made an arrest, you’d feel a sense of closure.”

  Heidi smiled. “Closure,” she echoed, looking directly at Deidre. “Closure is what you get when the culprit pays…and pays big. Otherwise, you just go on waiting for justice to be served. But I don’t have a great deal of faith in law enforcement, I’m afraid. A brutal and primitive effort at best.”

  “How true.” Heather sighed. “It must be very satisfying, though. Winning a civil suit in a worthy cause.”

  “My satisfaction comes from seeing my clients get the justice they deserve and have been denied by callous corporations and careless professionals.” The way Heidi said it was like a prayer.

  “Amen,” Deidre responded.

  “Call me.” Heidi gave just a little squeeze to Deidre’s arm. “There’s no obligation, no charge at all. We’ll see if there’s anything—”

  “Oh, I think your cousin Violet is about to introduce Professor Ishimoto.” I broke into that tender moment, wanting to get to the subject of Heidi’s garden and what might be lurking in it. “Do you have a special interest in seaside gardening, Heidi?”

  “Oh yes. Our property is just across the road from a lovely private stretch of beach. Windemere Road. Perhaps you know the area.”

  Indeed I did. The priciest property in Marshfield. “Yes, some lovely old houses on that road. Herbs are my major interest, of course. Are you fond of herbs yourself?” I asked as we moved to take seats among the rows of folding chairs.

  “I have a number of lavenders,” Heidi whispered. “Sages, rosemary, various thymes. All ornamental. I’m far too busy to harvest and preserve anything, alas.” She sighed as if cherishing a secret longing for domesticity.

  What an actress! I thought. Could the Geoffrey Craigs’ upscale lifestyle also be an act? This dame must rake in the contingency fees, but what if there are extraordinary expenses we know nothing about? Gambling. Blackmail. Addictions.

  I made a note to ask if Stone had checked into everyone’s finances, although who could hide debts better than a CPA?

  By the time we got out of there, I’d about had it with slides of massed blue hydrangeas, Russian olives, and Rosa rugosa. On the way home, we raked over Heidi and her perennial herbs without being able to reach a conclusion on whether she was still a suspect. Heather dropped off Deidre, then me, and came in to pick up her dog. We found Honeycomb drooping over Scruffy’s sheepskin, looking exhausted. Scruffy, who usually greets me as if I’ve been gone for months, was nowhere to be seen. Joe was at the kitchen table, hunched over his drawing of the extended closet.

  “No thanks, no tea,” Heather declined my offer. “This pup looks pooped. I wonder if she’s coming into season?”

  “Ask Dick,” I suggested. “Where will you keep her safe, if that’s the case?”

  “Dick wants to breed her once before she’s spayed, considering her outstanding pedigree, so he’ll probably whisk her away to the kennel he’s selected. When the time comes.”

  After Heather left, I leaned over Joe’s shoulder to admire the sketch. “That looks grand, honey.” He turned for a sweet welcoming kiss, but when I nuzzled his neck, I sensed clearly there was something wrong. So I put on the kettle for a calming cup of kava. “Where’s Scruff?”

  “I had to close the little bugger into the guest room. Is that sassy little gal by any chance already in season?”

  “Uh oh,” I said. “Tell me they didn’t.”

  “Unfortunately, when I let them out for a run around the yard, they took off together into that stand of pines, and I think they may have done the deed. Or partially, before I got to them.”

  “Honeycomb’s about to get shipped off to be put together with a champion golden.”

  “You might want to tell Devlin to save the breeding fee. Or not. Up to you, sweetheart! I’ll go upstairs and let the bugger out of detention, then. Quite the opportunist, isn’t he?”

  “He’s an unneutered male acting the way nature programmed him. But I sure wish he hadn’t.”

  After trotting into the kitchen at Joe’s heels, Scruffy raced around the downstairs searching for Honeycomb. Having satisfied himself that she was indeed gone from the premises, he sank onto his sheepskin sniffing her scent with a gloomy expression.

  “So…what do you have to say for yourself, fella?” I asked.

  Hey, I had everything going just great with that sweet little blonde until your furry-faced pain-in-the-butt pulled me away.

  “Uh oh. I think you may have got us all into trouble, you mutt.”

  What do you want from me, Toots? I’m in love.

  “I may have got them in time,” Joe said. “We could just forget about this incident. Let Devlin proceed with his plans, and nature will take its course.”

  That’s exactly what I wanted to do, but lies of omission are still lies. I drank two cups of kava and gave Heather a call.

  “Didn’t I tell you to have that scamp neutered for his own good?” she screamed, “But would you listen? No way.” Then, surprisingly, Heather began to giggle. I could hear the reassuring sound of ice clinking and a drink being poured. “Well, so much for Dick’s plans to produce a superior therapy breed.”

  “I’m really so sorry. And we don’t even know if Scruffy caught her or not. Will Dick be very cross?”

  “Never. He’s a real teddy bear, you know that. The nicest guy I ever married. We’ll quarantine the little hussy, and Dick will give her a pregnancy test as soon as he can. Meanwhile, I think we’d better call off Honeycomb’s other rendezvous. Maybe next year, as the Red Sox used to say. But if Honeycomb is preggers, what will I do with a litter of mixed-breeds? I suppose I could ask Dick to—”

  “No, don’t do that!” The words I heard myself saying seemed to be bypassing my brain. “They’ll be champs in their own special way. And I promise to take one myself and help you to find homes for the rest.”

  “You bet you will. I’ll drink to that,” Heather said.

  “I can’t believe what I just heard,” Joe muttered after I’d hung up. “Another Scruffy! The patter of little paws. Do you suppose this one will converse with you, too?”

  I was rubbing my forehead as if to get my thinking processes back into gear. “It may not even happen. You probably separated them in time. You do think you did, don’t you?”

  Joe just smiled and raised one eyebrow. “Que sera, sera.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was soon determined, alas, that Honeycomb was in a family way, but Heather nobly forgave this canine indiscretion. She admitted to having been partly responsible, arranging a “play date” for the two dogs when there was even a suspicion Honeycomb might be coming into season sometime that month. There should have been warning signs, of course, but there were always a few females who kept everyone guessing.

  In a spirit of clemency, Heather even insisted on hosting an anniversary party for Joe and me. After all, it has been in her Victorian red living room just one year ago in December that we’d been married by the Reverend Peacedale and handfasted by Fiona.

  Heather’s hospitality tended to be on a grand scale. She planned to hire the same troop of medieval players, The Greensleeves Strollers, to provide music. A decorator was being brought in to garland the rooms in holly, mistletoe, pine, and fir, but Heather herself was designing the tree—seashells and real candles. (A slight worry, but I knew Dick would insist on keeping a fire extinguisher nearby.) Captain Jack would lay out one of his spectacular fish feasts, with its lavish centerpiece of bright red lobsters on a bed of green seaweed. And, naturally, there would be a case of Veuve Clicquot.

  Who could resi
st such a lavish festival so lovingly planned? Joe and I agreed to it gratefully and began to rough out a guest list.

  It would be Yule, the Winter Solstice, the Wiccan season of the sun’s rebirth as the Child of Promise—the promise of life’s renewal. We would burn the Yule log using a bit of the old year’s log and dry sprigs of holly to ignite it. There would be peace and hope for earth’s return to spring in our hearts.

  But as Yule approached and the sun reached its weakest days, there was at least one heart in which not peace but murder reigned. The scene I had envisioned last fall came to pass, a stealthy intruder into the Peacedale kitchen, the addition of lacy greens to a plastic bag of prepared salad.

  That Monday evening, pastor’s day off, Patty had set up two tray tables in front of the TV and popped into the VCR a favorite Christmas movie, The Bishop’s Wife. She’d carved up a barbecued chicken from Angelo’s, nuked two baking potatoes, and doused two bowls of salad with garlicky blue-cheese dressing, strong enough to kill the mousy flavor of hemlock snipped into the baby greens. (Actually, Patty thought her taste buds were encountering a particularly pungent arugula.) But before the angel, Cary Grant, could skate away with the neglected wife, Loretta Young, Patty had doubled up in pain and nausea, while Wyn Peacedale was seeing heavenly visions and gasping for breath.

  Somehow Patty managed to call 911. The rescue wagon arrived in a matter of minutes to whisk the couple to Jordan Hospital, where the ER nurses and doctors were becoming all too familiar with the symptoms of hemlock poisoning. Treatment was swift and sure.

  Loki of Valhalla, a.k.a Buster, yowled plaintively from the third-floor bedroom, where an insensitive animal-control officer had incarcerated him with dry food, water, and his litter box. Loki’s feline brain had been fixed upon the remnants of that barbecued bird now being swept into plastic bags, along with the rest of the Peacedales’ last supper. Well, not really their last supper, since both of them managed to survive the ordeal, although it was touch-and-go with Wyn.

  Deidre alerted us to this new crisis. She and Will had been in the emergency waiting room with Willie, who’d crashed his sled—and head—into a tree and needed to be checked for concussion, when two ambulances screeched up to the entrance. The scanner on Will’s belt told the rest. Deidre rushed into the ER in time to see the Peacedales, pale as beeswax and barely breathing, being given oxygen as they were rushed away to be detoxed. By the time everyone had been called, Phillipa had the news, too, from Stone.

  Heather made it her mission to rescue Loki from the parsonage. After a fearful tussle getting the obstinate cat into a carrier, she tucked him up at the Animal Lovers cat wing for safekeeping until the Peacedales recovered and were released.

  So that Deidre could keep watch over Willie while we discussed this latest attack, we met in Deidre’s living room for a council of war. We gathered around the truncated oak dining table that served as her coffee table, surrounded by Deidre’s prolific handiwork, from gleaming refinished pine pieces to needlework samplers and her family of poppets. Heather had brought what she called “a divining candle,” a thick purplish stub with orange streaks. Imbedded in the wax were runic symbols: the messenger, Ansuz, and the breakthrough, Dagaz. When Deidre lit the wick, familiar odors wafted around us. “Mugwort and peppermint for prophecy,” Heather said.

  “Goddess help us,” Fiona said. “We have to stop this woman.”

  “I’ve become so fond of the Peacedales,” I said. “And I’m upset with myself for not having divined the murderer’s identity before this latest attack.”

  “Maybe you’re trying too hard,” Fiona suggested. “Psychic knowledge comes in its own good time. Sometimes you just have to ‘let go and let Goddess.’”

  “One thing we do know for sure—it’s the Peacedales who are being targeted,” Heather said. “No matter who else got poisoned along the way.”

  “Okay, say that one of the Craig heirs wants to eliminate Peacedale before the year is up and the pastor’s permitted to will away the fortune elsewhere,” Phillipa said. “Why bother to poison the breads on my cooking show?”

  “Have you forgotten that Patty was there, chaperoning the Sizzling Seniors, who were part of your audience that day? Maybe the poisoner thought Wyn—” I paused, letting impressions of the audience form in my mind’s eye. There was some elusive knowledge hovering on the edge of my consciousness, but what? “You usually do pass around samples of whatever you’ve been cooking as soon as the taping is finished.”

  “I thought we’d tagged Jean Craig as the likeliest suspect,” Heather said. As usual, Salty and Peppy had established themselves in her lap, and she continued to scratch them in the sensitive chest area as she developed her theory. “Cass and I had a look at Bruce and Sherry Craig, and, really, they simply don’t fit one’s psychic profile for poisoners. Isn’t that true, Cass?”

  My attention was caught up in the light of the candle. I felt too tired and heavy to reply.

  “Dee, you were with us at the G.M.S. meeting. Did you think Geoffrey Craig’s wife, Heidi, was a possible? I mean, in your bones?” Heather asked.

  “My bones are dumb as posts.” Deidre refilled our teacups and passed a plate of arrowroot cookies, her nursery staple. “But my common sense suggests that a personal injury lawyer as sharp and hungry as Heidi wouldn’t be fussing about in the kitchen whipping up poison brownies when she could probably hire some lowlife of her acquaintance to plant a bomb in the Peacedales’ Buick.”

  “On the other hand, I went with Cass to have a look at Jean Craig,” Phillipa said. “And I agree with the Hazel sorting spell that Jean might be the genuine article. There’s something desperately determined about that woman, in spite of the outward pleasantness she projects to customers. Also, she impressed me as the type that would go a long way to help her son achieve his dreams. The boy has his heart set on being in the theater, and Assumption doesn’t give him much scope in its drama department.”

  “That description fits most parents,” Deidre said.

  “True,” Phillipa agreed, “But now we have the evidence of the lab report. Stone says the brownies Jean brought to Fiona’s tested the same—minus the hemlock, thank Goddess—as the ones that polished off Lydia Craig. Baker Boy, with a jolt of extra artificial vanilla and chocolate liqueur. Must have been sickening. However, that’s beside the point. Cass, you share the view that it’s got to be Jean, don’t you? But where do you suppose she got her hands on fresh killer greens at this time of year? Cass? Cass!”

  At that point, as I was told later, it appeared that I had fallen into a trance. But to myself, I had left Deidre’s living room and was standing outside a small, decrepit greenhouse, trying to peer in the small-paned windows. It was difficult to see through the filth of years and the steam of some interior heater. But I could detect someone moving within. I rubbed one pane and pressed closer. A small person, spraying and watering the plants. Too slender to be Heidi, too short to be Sherry. And the plants…There were several varieties. I recognized some of the leaf shapes.

  “Leave her alone,” Fiona was saying when I came back. “Let her follow the sighting as far as she can.”

  Nausea and weakness overcame me, but after a while I said, “Hemlock growing in pots. And some other plants. I think I recognized tobacco leaves—nicotine can be deadly. In an abandoned greenhouse. And you’re right, from the general outline of the figure tending them, it must be Jean. But I didn’t see her closely enough to make a positive identification.”

  Fiona patted my hand, the silver bangles on her arm tinkling their soft music. “You’ve brought us even closer to our good goal, dear. We know who we’re going after. All we need to do is to find that greenhouse. That might be a job for me and my pendulum.”

  By the time we’d finished our conference, it was too late to visit the Peacedales. All we could do was hold hands, summon energy in our usual way, and send our best healing vibrations to the recovering couple. Before we parted, Fiona promised to use her particular tal
ents to find the greenhouse where deadly plants were growing in December.

  When I got home, Joe had the kettle on and was spooning chamomile mint tea into the pot. As his muscular arms held me closely, the doom and gloom of my visions melted away. “The Peacedales will be okay, sweetheart,” he murmured into my hair. “While you were out, I called the hospital again. They’re both out of intensive care, although Wyn is still a pretty sick puppy.”

  “Good news so far. Thanks.” I sighed, enjoying the reassurance I always found in his embrace.

  “And speaking of sick pups, this dog of yours has been moping around all evening. I think he misses his lady love.”

  He’s got that right. After the most perfunctory of greetings, Scruffy had slumped down on his faux sheepskin again. Now he gave me a baleful glance.

  “I suppose, since the damage is done, I may as well take him over to Heather’s for a visit. If he’s not canine non grata.”

  “Otherwise, who knows what he might get into his head to do,” Joe said. “Some spin-off from The Incredible Journey, perhaps?”

  Don’t knock it, dude. We superior tracking canines can follow a scent trail to the far places. Scruffy perked up suddenly and began to pace around the kitchen. Love and danger bring out our amazing skills and perseverance.

  “For the time being, I think all walks had better be on L-E-A-S-H,” I spelled.

  “Right,” Joe agreed, letting me go so that he could pour the tea. “And I managed to connect with Stone, too—he was in Patty’s room to ask her about that infamous salad. Patty said she’s been so busy with parish work, she’s had the groceries delivered from Angelo’s. Also, she explained to Stone that as an affirmation of Christian principles, they never lock the parsonage. Also, she says it drives Mrs. Pynchon crazy.”

  “Laudable goals, but a risky policy. Gosh, I’m bushed.”

  “Take your tea and go straight to bed, sweetheart. I’ll take Scruff out for his last walkabout. And, yes, on L-E-A-S-H.”