“But I’ve been taking a cake course,” Leatha said eagerly, “and it just so happens—a marvelous coincidence, really, just as if it were predestined!—that our class project was a wedding cake. A lovely three-layer cake, decorated with frosting flowers and with the groom’s cake on top. So I know just how to do it.” She pushed up the sleeves of her chic green floral-print dress. “I’ll call my instructor and get the recipe. It doesn’t have any herbs in it, but we can make a rosemary-and-lavender wreath for the plate—which is what we did for our class project. Rosemary and lavender are wedding herbs.”
“I know,” I said, wondering if the people who thought up these things also knew that snakes were supposed to hide in both plants.
“The cake will be my contribution to your wedding day, China. Heaven knows, you haven’t let me do anything else.”
“You’re getting Brian’s clothes.”
“Oh, that.” She waved her hand dismissively. “To tell the truth, I’ve felt positively helpless. But now I’ve got something worthwhile and fun to do.”
Now, I grant you that Leatha has accomplished a great many admirable changes in the past few years, metamorphosing from a wealthy River Oaks matron to the practical wife of a Kerrville rancher, from daily drunk to recovering alcoholic. She’s let her hair go from bleached blond to natural silver, and she grandmothered Brian at the ranch this summer while I was trussed up in traction. But from kitchen klutz to wedding-cake baker? The mind boggled.
“I really think it’s too big a job—” I began, but Leatha cut me off.
“Of course you do,” she said matter of factly. “You’re just like your father. He always thought I couldn’t do the least little thing. But he was wrong then and you are wrong now, and I’ll show you. I’ll bake you a three-layer wedding cake you’ll never forget.”
That was exactly what I was afraid of. But if I didn’t let Leatha bake the wedding cake, her feelings would be hurt and I would feel guilty, which was the very last thing I needed. Laurel opened the door at that moment, and Leatha announced that she had just been appointed official wedding cake baker.
“Can she really handle a wedding cake?” Laurel asked, after Leatha had left, her signature scent of White Shoulders lingering after her. My mother may have moved to a ranch, but I’ll bet she wears White Shoulders while she’s out branding dogies, or whatever.
“If she can’t, we can always fall back on peanut butter and jelly.”
Laurel’s eyebrows edged upward.
“Well, then,” I said, “how about Sara Lee? I’ll go to the supermarket and get a dozen or so frozen cakes. We can stack them up like a row of bricks and pour a bucket of frosting over them. It won’t be round, but we can tell everybody that rectangular cakes are in fashion.”
Laurel shook her head. “I don’t understand you, China. If this were my wedding, I’d be going absolutely bananas. The groom is too busy to show up for the license, your mother has volunteered to bake your cake, there’s rain in the forecast—”
“Rain?”
“You haven’t been watching the Weather Channel?” Laurel’s tone softened. “Gosh, China, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s a storm brewing out in the Gulf. Her name is Josephine. She’s still a tropical storm, but they’re saying she may intensify to hurricane strength today. The best guess for landfall is somewhere along the Texas Gulf coast late Saturday or early Sunday. Of course, she could shift to the northeast and head toward Louisiana, in which case we’d be out of the woods. But still—” She shrugged. “Who knows?”
“That’s all we need,” I groaned. “A hurricane!” Pecan Springs is far enough inland that we don’t usually get hurricane winds, but a big tropical storm can dump eight or ten inches of rain on us in just a few hours. What a mess! Then I thought of Letty, whose blank, staring eyes would never see another sky, another sun, another storm. What was a little rain, compared to a long death?
I straightened my shoulders. “Time to come up with Plan B,” I said. “If Josephine shows up, we move the ceremony into the tearoom. It’ll be a bit crowded, but we’re all friends.”
“A bit crowded?” Laurel asked doubtfully. “How about a lot crowded?”
“We’ll open the shops,” I said with determination. “We’ll all stand close together. We’ll make it work.”
“Right,” Laurel said. “We’ll make it work.” She didn’t sound convinced, but she didn’t argue. Anyway, what choice did we have? I checked in with Ruby to tell her—without going into the details—that she could take the wedding cake off her list of things to do. I didn’t mention Josephine.
There might be a tropical storm out in the Gulf but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky over the Hill Country and the temperature was in the nineties. I got in the car and turned on the air conditioning, letting it wheeze for a few minutes before I drove off.
Wanda’s Wonderful Acres is located on Redbud Road, on the east side of I-35 and the Balcones Fault. The fault divides the the Edwards Plateau to the west from the Black-land prairie to the east, a rolling, grassy plain that was easily transformed by the plow into Texas’s principal cotton-producing region. But then the pink boll worm chewed the heart out of the Cotton Kingdom and the droughts of the fifties finished it off. Now, the land produces animal feed. The fields are kept green by mobile irrigation systems that pump millions of gallons of water up from the aquifer and sprinkle it on the hay and sorghum that fatten the beef cattle that provide the cholesterol that clogs American arteries. I’ve heard that it takes twenty-five hundred gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, and when I drive past a huge field when the sprinklers are spouting like a hundred Old Faithfuls, I believe it. I resent it, too, especially at the height of a summer’s drought, when the aquifer levels have dropped like a rock, the springs have dried up, and we’ve gone to a flush-only-when-necessary status. Today, though, I wasn’t thinking about irrigation systems or clogged arteries or even the dwindling aquifer. I was thinking ahead—not very happily—to my conversation with Wanda Rathbottom.
Mostly through the efforts of Quentin Craven, the longtime manager, Wanda’s Wonderful Acres has become Pecan Springs’ premier nursery. Sales have no doubt been hurt by the big home-and-garden warehouse that opened on the Interstate last year, but the competition has been good for the nursery at least in one sense, forcing it to expand into new markets. Until last year, Wonderful Acres stocked only easy-dollar sure sellers—summer and fall annuals, predictable perennials, basic shrubs. Now Wanda has branched out, so to speak, into Texas natives and drought-resistant plants, which the home and garden store doesn’t carry. She also brings in potted herbs every spring and fall, and in that sense we’re rivals. Our competition doesn’t bother me particularly. Even rivals can enjoy amicable relations. But Wanda has always been a sharply competitive and very prickly person.
Quent was nowhere in sight when I drove up and parked in the lot out front. There were only one or two other cars, suggesting that Wanda—if she was there—would not be occupied with customers. The heat had been bad all summer, which is not good for nursery traffic. Browsers won’t hang around hot, humid plant tables when they might be lounging in the air conditioning with a cold lemonade, and experienced gardeners don’t like to see their new plants keel over with heat stroke. In our part of the country, fall is the big perennial season. If you plant in early or mid-October, you can count on a couple of good rains to settle the plants in before the first hard freeze halts new growth.
It was definitely too hot for browsing in a nursery. After a search, I found Wanda, red-faced and irritated, in the cactus house. She was giving orders to a couple of youngsters—horticulture interns from CTSU, I guessed—who were handling the watering. Apparently they had not been doing the job to her liking, and she was reading them the riot act in no uncertain terms. Wanda is a large, strong woman with spiky brown hair, narrow eyes, and almost no eyebrows, and when she gets emotional about something, which she does quite often, her nose twitches. She wore a red
denim apron over green twill pants and an extra-size T-shirt that hung to her knees. Her nose was definitely twitching.
“Hi, Wanda,” I said with robust cheer. “Got a minute?”
Wanda glanced at the large man’s watch she always wears. “Only just,” she said pointedly. “I’ve got to make some phone calls.” She motioned with her head. “We’ll go into the office. It’s hot out here.”
It was almost too hot for comfort, in spite of the large exhaust fan at the far end of the greenhouse, which kept the air moving. But I trailed behind as Wanda bustled down the rows of plant tables. I don’t much like cacti because they have so many defense mechanisms, but their forms intrigue me. I lingered, bending over a tray of something that looked like a bunch of green mushrooms covered with dense white prickles.
“What’s this, Wanda?”
Wanda paused in her hurrying exit. “Escobaria leei. Dwarf Snowball. It has salmon pink flowers in the spring.” She took a couple of backward steps and pointed to another cactus, which was covered with a symmetrical net of stout white spines, like touching stars. “This is Coryphantha echinus. West Texas Spiny Star. I collected the seed myself in Howard County, which is about as far north as it grows.” She touched the cactus affectionately. “In the spring, it has the most incredible yellow and orange flowers. Isn’t it gorgeous? And look at this one.” Her voice was slowing down and getting softer. “Echinocereus dasycanthus. He’s a real sweetie.”
A sweetie? This was Wanda Rathbottom talking? I looked at her sideways. “He’s cute,” I agreed. “What do his friends call him?”
She actually giggled. “Rainbow Hedgehog. When he gets older, his stem will be banded with different pastel colors. His big yellow flowers display red stripes when they close up, like peppermint candy. Soooo spiffy,” she added, verbally chucking the cactus under the chin.
This was a side of Wanda I’d never seen before, and it intrigued me more than the cacti. I turned, catching sight of a long row of large pots filled with the very same ribbed green cactus I’d seen in the Colemans’ walled garden. “Now, that’s a handsome plant. What is it?”
“Cereus hildmannianus,” Wanda said. “Hildmann’s Cereus. It’s native to Brazil.” She looked ruefully at the row of pots, about twenty of them. “I have quite a lot of it, as you can see. If you know of anybody who wants some ...” Her voice died away. The pleasure was gone. Her nose was twitching sadly.
I waxed enthusiastic. “Isn’t this the same cactus you used in the Colemans’ garden? I love the strong vertical element it provides there. So architectural. And the skin—wonderfully leathery and interesting. Really, Wanda, you outdid yourself with that garden. The design, the plants—the whole effect is nothing short of stunning.”
If Wanda was surprised by my hyperbole, she didn’t let on. “Thank you, China. Yes, that little garden came off quite beautifully, if I do say so myself. Cereus is an absolutely fabulous plant.” She stroked the cactus as if she were fondling a familiar friend. “She’s a night-blooming plant, you know. Huge white flowers as big as a saucer and so delicate, like porcelain. Letty Coleman hated her, though,” she added, with a small, sour smile. “She said she didn’t like the smell, and she doesn’t like cactus. She didn’t tell Edgar that, of course. The garden was his idea, and he always got his way. He said he wanted to see how it looked before he finalized the contract for—” She stopped. A shadow crossed her face.
Contract? I waited, but nothing else was immediately forthcoming. “What happened was so terrible,” I said after a moment. “Just tragic. And so unexpected, too.”
Wanda’s smile faded as if it had been turned off by a dimmer switch. Her eyes became watchful. Her nose grew still. “Yes,” she said, very quietly. “It’s hard to believe he’s actually dead.”
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of Edgar. I was thinking of Letty.”
She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing dirt across the place where her left eyebrow would have been, if she’d had one. “Letty?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?” she asked irritably. “Don’t talk in riddles, China. You’ve got something to say, say it.”
“Letty Coleman is dead,” I said.
The effect of this information was really quite interesting. Wanda’s lower jaw dropped, her eyes widened, and she made an audible gulping sound, like a fish out of water.
“Would you like to sit down?” I asked solicitously, taking her elbow.
Her jaw snapped shut, her eyes narrowed, and she yanked her arm out of my grasp. “Of course not. How did it happen?”
“Broken neck,” I said. “The back stairs.”
“Oh, those stairs. Very dangerous. I nearly fell on them myself once.” Her nose twitched. “When did it happen?”
“This morning.” I paused. “I’m sure the police will be checking with you.”
Wanda was startled. “With me?”
“Well,” I said judiciously, “they haven’t wrapped up the investigation into Edgar’s murder, you know. And now that Letty’s dead—” I gave her a sympathetic look and, on a hunch, added, “People who had contractual dealings with Edgar will be on their suspect list. The police always go for the business associates. And since you’re also on the Council—”
My remark about the police was an unfounded and unconvincing assertion, and under other circumstances, Wanda would have given me a smart, sarcastic “Says who?” But her emotions had taken over for her brain. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes began, unexpectedly, to fill with tears. “Oh, God, what a mess! And just when I thought it was all over and done with.”
“A landscaping contract?” I asked, still guessing.
“The most important one of my life,” Wanda said bleakly. “It would have saved the nursery. But as things stand ...” Her nose twitched faster.
I could finish the sentence in my head. As things stood, she was going to lose Wonderful Acres. “Why don’t we sit down?” I said. There was a wooden bench in front of the cereus.
Wanda sank down on the bench with a weary sigh. I upended a five-gallon bucket and sat down on it where I could see her face. Our long silence was broken only by the metallic whir of the big exhaust fan and the manic chirping of a bird that had managed to find its way into the greenhouse and couldn’t get out. The twenty cereus were a line of silent witnesses.
“About the contract,” I prompted, and waited for her to tell me to shut up and get the hell out of there—as she would have, under other circumstances. But she didn’t. This had been tormenting her and she was ready to get it off her chest.
“A friend of Edgar’s,” she said, “a man named Shepherd, manages a five-acre office complex in San Antonio. He planned to remove the shrubs and install a xeriscaped landscape. What he wanted was low-maintenance, drought-tolerant native plants he wouldn’t have to hire a landscape service to water and weed, along with some large succulents—prickly pear and agave and some showy cacti. He wanted a desert look.” She glanced sadly at the waiting cereus, obviously destined for the project. “Edgar set it up so I was low bidder on the project.”
“So you got the job?”
“That’s what he said,” she replied dully. She wiped her twitching nose with the back of her hand. “In fact, he showed me the contract. It was all filled out—all it lacked was Shepherd’s signature.”
“And you purchased the plants for the project on the basis of that unsigned contract.”
She looked at me as though I were a mind reader. “How did you know?”
“It’s an old scam,” I said. I paused. I already knew the answer to the next question, but I had to ask it anyway. “What did Coleman want from you to persuade Shepherd to execute the contract?”
Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t seem to say anything. She put her hand to her nose as if to hold it still.
“He wanted you to change your vote on the annexation project?”
She closed her mouth, dropped her hand, and thought about it. “Y
es,” she said finally.
“What did you tell him?”
“What could I tell him?” she wailed. Her eyes were screwed almost shut. “To get the best price, I bought the plants on a nonreturnable basis. I’ve got a lot of money tied up in them, and no way to get it out. The contract would have kept the nursery alive for another six months, maybe more.”
“So you agreed to vote his way?”
She pulled at her already spiky hair with both hands. “What other choice did I have?” she asked shrilly. “Don’t go taking the moral high road with me, China Bayles. If some sleazy snake cornered you and ordered you to do something for him if he’d save your business, you’d do it.”
“I’d do almost anything,” I said, reserving some wiggle room.
“Bullshit. I’d do anything I had to do to hold it together. So would you. What does a stupid vote matter, one way or the other? What does the Council matter? It’s all a political game.”
I’d do anything I had to do. Her words sliced the still air. What had she done? To pry the truth out of her, I needed some leverage.
“I might be able to help you, Wanda,” I said slowly. “One of my friends practices law in San Antonio. She specializes in fraud. A letter from her would probably convince Mr. Shepherd that it’s in his best interest to sign that contract. If a letter doesn’t work, a phone call will. She can be very persuasive.”
Lavender Lies Page 18
