Lavender Lies

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Will that be enough time?” I asked anxiously. Khat, who can be remarkably empathic when he’s in the right mood, jumped up on the counter, arched his back, and announced that he would allow me to stroke him, if it would make me feel better. I knew that Ruby and Sheila and I could handle the basic stuff—the flowers, the music, the food. After all, Ruby and I have collaborated on enough classes and celebrations to qualify us as certified professional event planners. But Bertha and Betsy have a magic touch with weddings. I was counting on them for the finishing touches that would make everything perfect.

  “Bertha said to tell you not to panic—things will turn out just fine.” Laurel tossed her hair back over her shoulders. “And Betsy said that two days are plenty, since it’s not a huge wedding. And since the Merryweathers are helping with the flowers.”

  “It feels huge to me,” I said. “A whale of a wedding. But they’ve had a lot of experience. They’re probably right.” Khat, having allowed me a full five strokes, decided I’d been sufficiently soothed and dropped to the floor. “Do I want to hear about the other complications?”

  “Probably not.” With a swift gesture, Laurel took a plastic clip out of her pocket, swept her hair into a pony tail, and fastened the clip around it. “Remember that stack of punch bowls we left in the comer of the tearoom? It fell over during the night. We don’t have to worry about returning them. But we do have to figure out how to let people know that their punch bowls got broken. I’m going to call Fannie and see if she can help.”

  “Rats,” I said feelingly.

  Laurel’s dimple flashed. “Mice, actually. That’s the other complication. They got into that big box of cookies Ruby dropped off for the reception and made a mess.” She gave me a regretful look. “I was supposed to put the cookies in the freezer last night, but Ben’s mom called to say that she has to go in for more blood tests tomorrow, and I was so flustered I forgot. I had to throw them out.”

  I scowled at Khat, who was delicately washing one black paw. “What are we keeping you for?” I asked him, irritated. “Why didn’t you eat that mouse?” Khat looked up at me, blinked twice, and gave an incredulous mrrrow—Who, me? Eat a mouse? How plebeian!—and began washing the other paw. He prefers chicken livers cooked with garlic.

  To Laurel, I said, “I’m sorry about your mother-in-law. Do you need to take some time off? If you do, I’m sure I can manage.”

  “I don’t think so. At least, not just now.” Laurel sighed. “There’s a lot to think about, though. I’m having trouble keeping track of it all.”

  “I guess everybody’s in the same boat,” I said. All but Letty. She didn’t have anything to think about or anything to do, ever again. That disquieting thought made a pile of broken punch bowls and a box of mice-munched cookies seem trivial. “Have you seen Ruby?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Laurel made an impatient noise. “What’s happening to my mind? I forgot to tell you that she wants you to come over at the end of her meditation class. She has some news for you—about the case, whatever that means.”

  I glanced at the clock. “Is her class over?”

  “I think it’s just ending.” Laurel began rummaging through the items on the counter. “Also, a woman left a card and a note for you—if I can locate it in this mess.” She sighed hopelessly. “After the wedding, I’ve got to get better organized. All this chaos is driving me crazy.”

  “After the wedding,” I reminded her, “the tearoom will be open, and we will be even more disorganized.”

  “Go talk to Ruby,” Laurel said, with a wave of her hand. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  If you’ve never been inside the Crystal Cave, you’ve missed an intriguing experience. The shop is stocked with crystals and rune stones, tarot cards and dragons, New Age music and goddess greeting cards and fantastic jewelry and magazines and books on spirituality and astrology and the mind-body connection and healing herbs. This morning, the shop’s air was delicately scented with the magical aroma of Ruby’s favorite incense and brightened by the celestial sound of a Celtic harp. A group of women were just leaving, moving quietly, with peaceful smiles and gentle good-byes—Ruby’s meditation students, who meet once a week in the carpeted area at the back of the shop, sitting silently on their zafus and meditation benches, focusing their attention on the breath. No mantras, no humming, just silent focus, allowing the stress to seep away. I join the class every so often, but it’s hard for me to sit still for more than about five minutes and harder yet to concentrate my attention. My mind is always zip-zip-zipping from one thought to another: my monkey mind, Ruby calls it, swinging crazily here and there, chattering away even when I’d prefer it to be quiet. I keep telling myself that when I have more time, I’ll get serious about it and learn how it’s done. God knows, I could do with a little less stress.

  Ruby saw the last of the students out the door and turned to me, smiling slightly. She was wearing loose white cotton pants, a white cotton loose-sleeved jacket, white sandals, white hoop earrings. Her hair was a frizzy red halo. She wore a look of ethereal purity.

  “Have a good session?” I asked.

  “Mmm, wonderful,” Ruby said serenely. She focused her eyes and seemed to come back from somewhere far away. “Oh, hey, I like your hair!” she exclaimed. “It makes you look five years younger—no, ten, don’t you think? Has McQuaid seen it? What did he say?”

  “Let’s not go overboard,” I said cautiously. “Five, maybe, but not ten. McQuaid saw it but he didn’t say anything. He was paying more attention to Letty than to me.”

  Ruby looked amused. “To Letty? You mean, you have competition?”

  “Letty’s dead,” I said.

  Ruby stared at me. Her lower jaw dropped.

  “I found her at the bottom of a twenty-foot stone staircase at the rear of her house. Her neck was broken.”

  Ruby gulped, started to say something, swallowed, and tried again. “Murder?” she squeaked.

  I leaned against the counter. “McQuaid is trying to figure it out. A neighbor suggested suicide, but it could’ve been accidental. Those steps are treacherous.” I thought of Letty on her back, blind eyes staring at the sky, and I shivered. She had endured what must have been bitter years of marriage to a man who exploited her cruelly. And now, on the threshhold of freedom and a new life, she was dead.

  Ruby shook her head. “Uh-uh. An accident is just too convenient.”

  “Convenient for whom?” I said. “Not for Letty. It was pretty inconvenient for her.”

  “You know what I mean,” Ruby said. She went to her CD player and turned it off, silencing the harp.

  “I suppose I do,” I said, and told Ruby about my conversation with Rena Burnett, including the information about Jean, Suspected Lover Number Three, and the blue car that had turned around in her drive while she was rinsing the breakfast dishes. “Of course,” I added, “the car isn’t necessarily related.”

  “Three!” Ruby exclaimed hotly. She folded her arms across her chest. “What a louse! If he’d been my husband, I’d have kicked the jerk out on his philandering butt.” Ruby’s been there, done that. When she caught Wade Wilcox, her ex, taking out-of-town weekends with his secretary, she called a lawyer, filed for divorce, and never looked back.

  “It doesn’t say much for the institution of marriage,” I agreed quietly, thinking of Letty and Edgar and Pauline and Darryl and Ruby and Wade and wondering how many other families have been fractured beyond repair by sexual avarice. Fidelity may be an old-fashioned virtue, but it speaks to something deep and true in the heart. I sighed. “I wish I’d been a little more willing to listen to Letty yesterday. She was ready to tell me the woman’s name, and I told her to keep it to herself.”

  “We have one Jean on our suspect list already,” Ruby said. “Billie Jean Jones. You talked to her this morning. Were she and Edgar getting it on?”

  Billie Jean! Why hadn’t I thought of her? “I was with her from eight-thirty until ten,” I said slowly. “When I left, she wa
s still sweeping my hair off the floor. So unless she pushed Letty down the stairs before she came to work—”

  I stopped. Bobby Rae had said that Billie Jean came in late this morning. Billie Jean herself had seemed unusually preoccupied while she was doing my hair, and it had been hard to get her to talk. I had accepted her story at face value because I know her, and because I hadn’t had any reason to question it. But maybe she hadn’t told me the whole truth about her relationship to Edgar Coleman or the deal he’d offered her. Her alibi certainly wasn’t as airtight as she made it sound. She could easily have put her granddaughter in her car and driven back to Pecan Springs from San Antonio. Was Billie Jean Jones the “Jean” Letty had mentioned to Rena Burnett? Had it been her gun that killed Edgar? Had she gone to see Letty before she came to work and pushed her down the stairs?

  Ruby was watching me narrowly. “What are you thinking, China?”

  “I’m wondering what time Letty died,” I said. But we wouldn’t know that until after the autopsy, and maybe not even then. She had been lying in the sun on the warm ground—the medical examiner probably wouldn’t be able to come any closer than a three-hour range. “I guess we can’t rule out Billie Jean,” I added. I summarized for Ruby what she had told me about Coleman’s offer of six rent-free months.

  “No rent?” Ruby asked wryly. “That’s a better deal than the one he offered Darla.” She paused, her brow furrowing. “Do you remember the plaque on Darla’s desk?”

  “Yeah. I wondered what she was president of.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Her middle initial was J. Do you suppose it’s Darla Jean?”

  “Good grief,” I said. “Not another one. Don’t people have any imagination when it comes to naming their kids?” I regarded her. “Hey, your middle initial is J, isn’t it?”

  “J for Janine,” Ruby said. “And if you’re thinking that I might have been Edgar Coleman’s sweetie, you can stuff it.” She unbuttoned her white jacket, shrugged out of it, and hung it up. Beneath it, she was wearing a tight-fitting sleeveless silk tank top, the same fiery red as her hair. She slipped out of her sandals, reached under the counter, and pulled out a pair of bright red wedge heels. “I think it’s worth a trip to Bluebonnet Books to find out what the J stands for,” she added, stepping into the wedgies, which added another three inches to her six-feet-plus. Instant character change, from guru to foxy lady. Ruby is astoundingly versatile.

  “I’d go with you,” I said, “but I need to go over to the courthouse and see if I can get the marriage license and take it to McQuaid. That might be the only way I’m going to get him to sign it.” I sighed. “I also have to see Wanda Rathbottom sometime today. And Sheila and I are supposed to have a talk with Iris Powell this afternoon.”

  “Iris Powell?” Ruby looked bemused. “How’d you manage that?”

  “Sheila suggested it.” This involved another explanation, at the end of which I remembered that Ruby was supposed to have done some investigating of her own that morning. “Did you get a chance to talk to Ken Bowman?”

  “Oops, I forgot,” Ruby said, snapping her fingers. “When you told me about Letty, it flew right out of my mind. Yeah, Ken came over to help me light the pilot light on my hot water heater.”

  “I thought he was going to jump-start your car.”

  Ruby took a red felt hat off a peg and put it on her head, tilting it rakishly over one ear. “The pilot light went out by itself, so I didn’t have to monkey with the car. I couldn’t get past first base, though. Ken admitted that Edgar bought a new Lincoln from him, and that’s all he would say.”

  I remembered the classy silver Lincoln Letty had been driving. “I wonder if the new car was Edgar’s end of a trade for Bowman’s vote.”

  “My thought exactly,” Ruby said. “But when I probed, Ken got all huffy and said that the sale had nothing to do with anything.”

  “At least his name isn’t Jean,” I said dryly. “I’m not in the least surprised that you didn’t learn anything. Nothing is going right. Did Laurel tell you that the punch bowls fell over and broke, and the mice got into your cookies before the cookies could get into the freezer—and that Bertha and Betsy won’t be here until tomorrow?”

  Ruby looked dismayed. “You know, I didn’t check the stars when you set your wedding date. I’d better do that right away. Just to make sure what’s going on. I suspect that Mercury’s gone retrograde, at the least. Or maybe Pluto is acting up.”

  “I’m glad there’s a logical explanation,” I replied.

  “Don’t be tacky,” Ruby said, going to the front door to lock it and put up the Out to Lunch sign. “Some things are going reasonably well. All the work in the tearoom is done, and I went through the herb garden today—it looks very nice. Even if we don’t do any extra decorating, it will still be lovely. Unless it rains, of course.”

  I shuddered. “God forbid.” Pecan Springs is normally dry—we get less than thirty inches of rainfall a year—and I’m always hoping for a nice all-day rain. Not this weekend, though. This weekend, I was praying for sunshine and decently cool temperatures.

  “Amen,” Ruby said vehemently. “But I’m afraid we’ve got a major problem with the wedding cake. It turns out that Annie wasn’t the only one who took the bus to Tucson. She and Maureen have been having an affair and Maureen went with her. Which leaves Adele all alone to cater the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast on Friday and bake four wedding cakes for the weekend. To top it all off, somebody crunched her delivery van in the First Baptist parking lot. She says this just wasn’t her week. She’s doing the prayer breakfast, but canceling the cakes.”

  Ah, the drama of small-town life. “Maybe we could get the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast to pray for Annie and Maureen to come back and bake cakes,” I said, “and ask the Baptists to take up a collection to fix the van.” I grinned. “Although the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast might be busy praying for Pauline’s forgiveness. After all, she is now a fallen woman. She needs all the prayers she can get.” Ruby scowled. “Be serious, China. This is your wedding we’re talking about, for pity’s sake.”

  “Right. It’s only a wedding, not the event of the century.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Ruby laughed cheerily. “Think again, sister. It’s the event of your century. After Sunday, you’ll be a married woman. You’re beginning a whole new phase of your life. Take it from me. Things will never be the same.”

  I shuddered. I like myself as I am, plus or minus a few minor personality flaws. I like McQuaid, too, and the way we are together, friendly, comfortable, argumentative. If I thought marriage would change me, or change him, or change us, I’d cancel, even at this late date. Instead of a wedding, we’d have a party, and our honeymoon would simply be a great vacation. Which would be a whole lot easier, come to think of it. I could stop worrying about wedding cakes and marriage licenses and flowers and enjoy the party.

  But I was gambling that McQuaid and I, married, could remain our independent, autonomous selves. I wasn’t entering a marriage like Letty’s, where one partner dominates the relationship so completely that the other is forced to give up what she wants in order to keep the thing going. I sighed. In the beginning, at least, Letty must have had great hopes for her marriage. When had she realized that it closed down her options, rather than enlarging them? At what point—if ever—did she understand that she had yielded up her will to his?

  Thinking of Letty made me sad, but it also put this latest wedding-day glitch into perspective. “Relax, Ruby,” I said. “Let’s not sweat the small stuff. If we can’t find anybody to bake a cake, we’ll put out peanut butter and jelly.”

  It’s a good thing the Mayor’s Breakfast bunch couldn’t hear Ruby’s response. They would have added her to their prayer list.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lila Jennings’ Greater Garlic Mashed Potatoes

  16 cups peeled white potatoes, quartered

  4 cups peeled garlic cloves (Lila says this is right,

  even if you don’t think so.)<
br />
  2 cups milk

  ½ pound butter

  Chopped fresh parsley

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Simmer the potatoes in salted water until tender. Drain and mash with the butter. While the potatoes are cooking, simmer the garlic and milk in a saucepan until soft, or about 30 minutes. Puree in a blender. Beat the puree into the mashed potato, and season with salt and pepper. Garnish with chopped fresh parsley. [Lila says this recipe makes enough for 16 people, and she usually makes it twice, to handle her lunch crowd. To serve your family of four, divide by four.]

  It was just noon, so Laurel and I closed up for lunch too. She went off to eat and I headed for the Adams County Courthouse, which sits in the middle of the town square, surrounded by statues dedicated to the memory of dead soldiers, and benches where the survivors can sit and remind one another of past glories. The building itself is constructed of slabs of pink granite hauled to the site from Marble Falls, seventy miles to the west and north. It’s a fine example of turn-of-the-century Texas political architecture, looking as if it will endure for centuries to come. The granite, which was quarried out of Granite Mountain, is likely to be around somewhat longer. It was born of Precambrian fury more than a billion years ago and buried beneath a half-mile thick layer of limestone rock that was deposited in the warm and shallow Mesozoic seas that extended west to New Mexico and north to Oklahoma. The granite was exposed after the land began to rise, the seas were drained, and Cenozoic erosion stripped off the overlying sediments. In various shades of gray-pink, it is found now in weathered heaps on the surface and in domes of unimaginable size beneath. By such picturesque names as Texas Sunset, Prairie Rose, Texas Star, and Texas Red, it has made rather a reputation for itself in the world. You can see polished slabs of it on buildings in such faraway places as Osaka, Singapore, and Atlantic City, as well as the Texas State Capital building in Austin. If you’re looking for Texas Red in the raw, you can find a 500-foot-high, 640-square-acre hunk of it a few miles north of Fredericksburg, on Farm to Market Road 965. It’s called Enchanted Rock. When you climb it, you’ll see how layers of the stone have peeled off like layers of an onion in a process called exfoliation, which is caused by the heating and cooling of the rock’s surface.