Dyeing Season

by Karen MacInerney

  It was coming from a booth swathed in spring-green cotton and filled with chocolate bunnies, chocolate eggs, and a big pot that smelled like what I imagined heaven must be like. The sign on the booth said "Chocolaterie Marta," and beneath it was a small woman with bright eyes and dark hair pulled up in a loose topknot. She wore a crisp blue apron and a bright, cheerful expression.

  "What's in the pot?" I asked.

  "Hot chocolate," she said. "Can I get you a cup?"

  "Oh, yes," I said. It might not be brisk out, but I couldn't resist the scent. As she ladled up a cup for me, I introduced myself. "I'm Lucy Resnick," I told her. "I own a small farm here in town. I hear you're looking to set up shop."

  "I'm Marta Fernandez," she said. "I am looking... if I can find a place to rent," she added as she handed me a cup of silky dark chocolate. I took a sip and groaned; it was thick and velvety and had the most intense chocolate flavor I'd ever tasted.

  "This is amazing," I said. "What's in it?"

  "Chocolate," she replied with an impish grin.

  I laughed. "It sure isn't Hershey's." I took another sip. The stuff was heavenly.

  "No, it's not. I make sure to use only the best chocolate, with around seventy percent cocoa, and I've played with the recipe to make it velvety."

  "Whatever you're doing, it's amazing."

  "I sometimes make it with cinnamon, too, the Mexican hot chocolate way... only thicker and richer."

  "I'll bet that's good," I said, "but I kind of like the pure chocolate. Where did you learn to do all this?"

  "I studied in Switzerland," she said as I took another sip. "I've added a bit of a regional twist; I've got dulce de leche truffles, some chocolate-dipped pralines... all kinds of locally inspired recipes."

  "That sounds amazing."

  "I'm really hoping I can get a shop set up here... and that people will come and buy good chocolate!"

  As she spoke, three more people wandered up to the stall, drawn by the scent of chocolate. As I watched, she sold three more cups of chocolate, four chocolate Easter bunnies, and a bag of chocolate truffle eggs.

  "It looks like you'll do just fine," I said. "Where are you thinking of setting up shop?"

  "I've been trying to lease a space on the Square," she said. "The problem is finding something I can afford. I'm staying in La Grange for now, but I'd rather settle down in Buttercup."

  "Why Buttercup? Why not Houston or Austin?"

  She grinned. "I'm tired of cities. Besides, my sister lives in La Grange, and I'd like to be close to my nieces and nephews."

  "It sounds like you're a tight-knit family."

  "We are," she said. "And the shop won't be my only source of income. I'm hoping I can get a good mail-order business going, and in theory, property here should be less expensive than in a city. Besides," she added, "Buttercup is just so much quainter than La Grange."

  "I can't argue with that."

  "I'm staying at my sister’s place now, but I think we'll both be happier when I have my own digs. I'm looking at other towns nearby, too, but I'd really rather have my business here."

  "I understand," I said. "I chose to live here, too. It's a wonderful community. How long has your sister been in La Grange?"

  "About five years," she said. "She's got a good job, and the kids are happy in school there."

  "What does she do?"

  "She's a nurse. She used to work at Sunset Home, but she just started working at a rehab facility."

  "Small world," I said. "A friend of mine just moved to Sunset Home yesterday."

  Marta grimaced. "I hope she's got someone keeping an eye on her."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's not a good place," Marta said grimly. "You should talk to my sister Linda sometime. Although I'm not sure how much she'll be able to tell you."

  I pulled one of my cards out of my pocket and gave it to her. She handed one of hers to me in return. "I'd love to talk with your sister about Sunset Home."

  "Sure," she said. "She's actually here with the kids. They were giving out free samples a little while ago."

  "Sounds like a family business," I said with a grin. "Are you all free after the Market?" I asked on impulse. "Maybe you and your sister could come over to my farm for a cup of tea."

  "I'd love that!" she said.

  I gave her directions and reached for a bag of chocolate eggs. "How much?" I asked.

  "On the house!" she said with a big smile.

  I got back to the farm with far fewer wares than I'd left with; the Market had been good. So good that I hoped I'd have enough merchandise to get me through the end of the Market, in fact. I needed to make more goat cheese... but I also needed to finish planting transplants and see about fixing up the roof of the little house I was renovating. So much for the slower pace of life in the country, I thought to myself. There were days I wished I could clone myself.

  I'd just finished unpacking the truck when a van came bumping up the driveway. Chuck barked as I shielded my eyes and squinted at it: sure enough, a sign bearing her business name, Chocolaterie Marta, was affixed to the side of the van. A moment later, Marta, a woman around her age I guessed must be her sister, and two girls tumbled out of the van. I stepped outside to greet them.

  "This place is beautiful!" the woman with Marta said, her round face cracking into a sweet smile. "You must be Lucy," she said, extending a hand. "I'm Linda. These are my daughters. Marguerite and Zooey."

  "Nice to meet you," I said to the two girls. The older had solemn eyes and held out her hand. I took it and shook it with a smile as the younger did a little dance, announcing that her name was Zooey.

  "Can I invite you in for a glass of iced tea?"

  "We'd love that," Marta said.

  "Can we go look at the cows?" Zooey asked.

  "Of course," I said. "There are goats, too. And I'll take you to see if there are any eggs in the chickens' nesting boxes in a few minutes."

  "You have chickens?" Marguerite asked, her eyes wide.

  "She has a thing for chickens," Linda told me.

  "They're over there," I said, pointing toward the hen house. As the girls trotted off to the hen house, I invited the two women into my grandmother's yellow farmhouse.

  "This place is amazing!" Marta said, looking around at the wood floors, the pine table, and the pie safe tucked into the corner. Bluebonnet-carpeted hills receded into the distance outside the windows, and two goldfinches were perched on the feeder hanging from a crape myrtle. I saw the house with new eyes, and felt a rush of gratitude that I was able to live in such beautiful surroundings.

  "Thanks," I said, smiling at her.

  "Are you glad you moved to Buttercup?" Marta asked as she and her sister sat down at the table and I poured three glasses of tea.

  "I am," I said. "I've made some wonderful friends here, and as you can see, it's a beautiful place to live."

  "Was that little house here when you got here?" Marta asked, looking out to where the small building perched on a knoll just up from the creek.

  "No," I said. "I got talked into moving it here last year; it needed a home and some renovation or it was going to fall apart. Once I get it fixed up, I'll rent it out on weekends."

  "I'd love to live somewhere like this," Marta said.

  "Maybe you can!" I said.

  "Maybe," she said longingly. Linda peered through the windows to check on the girls, who were tucking grass stems through the wire of the chicken enclosure.

  "Is it okay if they do that?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "This place is lovely," Linda said. "It's not far from La Grange, but it feels like another world."

  "Thanks," I said, taking a sip of tea. "Marta tells me you used to work for Sunset Home."

  "I did, but thank goodness I found another job," she said. "Marta said your neighbor went to live there recently."

  "She did," I confirmed. "Did you know that another one of their former employees died?"

  "What? Who?"r />
  "Eva Clarke," I said.

  "Eva?" Linda blanched. "What happened?"

  "Someone killed her. Down by the creek."

  She raised a hand to her mouth. "No. I can't believe it. She was so nice!"

  "I know," I said. "I've been trying to figure out what happened to her. Did she run into trouble with anyone at the nursing home?"

  "She had a run-in with one of the guardians," she said.

  "Guardians?"

  She nodded. "That was one of the reasons I got out of there. There's a woman named Jerri Roswell who's a court-appointed guardian of a lot of the residents. She never shows up to visit, and I don't think she does a good job taking care of her wards."

  "In what way?"

  "She gets paid for 'handling their estates,' but most of the people I saw there had their houses sold off and weren't seeing much of the money. She just walks in, takes them away from their homes, and deposits them in the nursing home. Eva thought it was wrong, and she spoke up to the administrator."

  "And?"

  "It didn't go well," Linda said with a grimace. "Apparently that's a big part of the home's business. From what I could see, they weren't going to go after Jerri... I did the math once, and I think she was responsible for thirty to forty percent of their business."

  "How does she end up being guardian? Does she know the people who are her wards? Do they choose her?"

  She shook her head. "Jerri started a business a few years back. Since then, from what I could see, she preyed on people who had assets, not much in the way of family, and enough dementia that she could get them declared incompetent. Then the court appointed her as guardian and she took over everything."

  "How is that possible?"

  "It's possible," she said. "One of my patients, Rose, woke up one day to Jerri at the door. By the end of the day, she was in the nursing home, with no say over anything. Her house was sold within the month, and all of her personal effects sold in an estate sale."

  "That's horrible!"

  "It is," she said. "Eva thought so, too. I think that's why she was fired."

  "Eva was going to file a lawsuit or something, right?" Marta asked her sister.

  "She talked about it," Linda said, "but I don't know if she ever did it."

  "That kind of sounds like what happened to my next-door neighbor," I said. "Her son just came in and bundled her off to the home. Within twenty-four hours, there was a 'For Sale' sign on the property."

  "The one next door?" Marta asked.

  I nodded.

  "It's under contract," Marta said.

  My stomach dropped. "What?"

  "Some lady in high heels was pinning the sign on it when we drove by," she said.

  12

  "They got a buyer fast, it looks like," Marta said.

  "I can't believe it," I said. "I have got to get in touch with Dottie's daughter." I grabbed my phone and dialed Jennifer's number, then left an urgent message. "Call me anytime," I said before hanging up and turning to Marta and Linda.

  "Jerri's not her guardian, is she?" Linda asked.

  "No," I said. "I think her son has taken control of her finances. I talked with Dottie today; she didn't know the house was even on the market. And now it's sold."

  To whom? I wondered. And what would happen to that little patch of restored prairie?

  "I hope you can find a way to stop it," Linda said.

  "I just want to make sure Dottie's wishes are being honored," I said. "I don't think she wanted to move. If Eva hadn't been murdered..."

  "Do you think maybe her son did in the home health aide so that he could have an excuse to take over and move her out?" Marta asked, voicing the same thing I'd thought of on multiple occasions. "I don't know him, but it sounds like he stands to gain if he's in control of her finances."

  I thought about Dottie's reaction when we brought up her son the day Eva died. Was he in town? Had he called Eva to meet? I wished we'd been able to find her phone. Was there any way to track down phone records? I wondered. I'd have to ask Deputy Shames.

  "I've thought about that, too" I mused. "Why do you think she was fired?" I asked Linda.

  "I think she was causing trouble by advocating for the patients."

  "I'd heard that, too. That just seems wrong."

  "It is," Linda concurred. "I feel so bad for those poor people, but with Jerri in charge of everything legally, there isn't much anyone else at the home could do. Once a resident is made a ward, they and their family pretty much lose all their rights."

  "I wonder how that works?" I mused. I'd have to find out more about this guardianship. Was Eva killed for being a troublemaker? I wondered. Or was Dottie's theory about boyfriends the right one?

  "What's that little house down there?" Linda asked, pointing out the window and recalling me from my thoughts.

  "Oh, it's a little house I'm trying to get in shape to rent out."

  "Like, permanently?" Marta asked.

  "I was thinking of doing weekend rentals."

  "I might be interested in taking it long-term if you'd consider it."

  "If it were done, we could talk, but I still have a ways to go."

  "Maybe in a few months, once I find a place to open my shop?"

  "Maybe," I said. I hadn't thought about having someone on the farm permanently, but it was worth thinking about.

  "I'll give you my cell number," she said. "If you decide to rent it full-time, I can write you a deposit check whenever you want."

  "Let's get it habitable first before we talk about that," I suggested. "And get your business set up, okay?" I suggested.

  She laughed. "You're probably right. I got carried away."

  "Nothing wrong with enthusiasm," I said with a grin. I didn't know how I felt about having someone rent the house long-term, but if I did decide to do it, Marta would be a lovely neighbor to have.

  Once Marta and Linda and her daughters left, I spent a few minutes online finding out about guardianship. It turned out Linda wasn't too far off about how it worked. Once someone was declared incompetent and made a "ward," their "guardian" had full legal rights to everything... including whether or not family—if there was any—can come to visit. Although most wards no longer had close family, I found several instances where a family discovered one of their members had been made the ward of a professional "guardian" only after it was too late to do anything about it.

  There wasn't much to becoming one in Texas. You had to pass a criminal background check, apply for certification, take an exam, and you were in. If you could find well-to-do, lonely older adults without family to protect them, I could see it becoming a lucrative business opportunity.

  Was that what Jerri was doing?

  I was starting to worry more and more about Sunset Home. I was going to have to visit Dottie soon, and check the place out.

  I would have done more, but farm chores awaited me. I closed up the laptop and headed out to put on my work boots; I was hoping to get most of the day's work done before Quinn showed up.

  As I headed out to the field with a tray of vegetable starts, Chuck dawdling at my heels, I passed the clothesline and stopped short. There were gaps along the line; the clothespins were still clipped to the narrow rope, but the clothing was gone.

  As Chuck sniffed the ground under the flapping laundry, I did a quick inventory and identified a pair of missing jeans and two button-down shirts, one of which was my favorite, a white cotton blouse sprinkled with cherry blossoms. I scanned the ground, wondering if they’d somehow blown away, but there was no sign of them. I put down the starts and gathered up the dry clothes, folding them and replacing them in the basket I’d left at the end of the line, then heading back to put the basket in the kitchen, just in case there was a laundry thief prowling around Buttercup.

  The incident niggled at me as I finished feeding and milking the goats and cows. Unless two shirts and a pair of jeans had miraculously blown away, leaving everything else untouched and vanishing into thin air, someon
e had stolen some of my clothes. Why?

  I was still stewing on my missing blouse and mulching the vegetable starts with compost when Quinn's truck bumped up the driveway. I wiped my hands on my jeans and waved, then used a pitchfork to toss on a few last bits of compost before heading back to the farmhouse.

  "I hope you don't mind that I brought Pip," Quinn said as the black dog bounded out of the truck. He'd been small when we rescued him, but he was now leggy and coming up on seventy pounds. Chuck barked in greeting from behind the fence, and Pip ran to the gate to greet him.

  "I’m glad you did," I said.

  "How is everything looking?" Quinn asked as I opened the gate to let Pip in, then watched the two dogs greet each other joyfully.

  "It's coming together," I said as she retrieved a cardboard box from the passenger seat of the truck. "But I think someone stole some of my clothes off the line."

  "What?"

  "I know," I said.

  "Creepy," Quinn breathed, tucking a red curl behind her ear. "Would you mind grabbing the bag from the floor of the truck? I brought dinner."

  "Of course… thanks so much for bringing food!" I said, holding open the gate for Quinn as she carried the box through, then grabbing the big bag from the floorboard of the truck. "What are we having?"

  "Baked potato soup, salad, and fresh bread," she informed me, depositing the box on the table on the front porch.

  "And you brought your magic box," I said.

  "I did. I hope it stays where I put it this time, though."

  "Me, too," I said as we walked into the house together.

  I showed Quinn the damage to the coop—she was as mystified as I was—and we spent the next half hour trying to figure out what was going on in Buttercup as we enjoyed Quinn's fabulous soup. She'd brought a few cookies, too, making dinner a decadent and entirely nonlow-carb dining experience, but I wasn't complaining.

  We gave the dogs, who had worn themselves out in the yard playing, the dregs of the soup, then cleaned up the kitchen and headed into the living room with cups of tea and Quinn's box.

  "I’m worried about you, Lucy," she said. "I know you’re against guns, but being out here all alone…"