An Unthymely Death

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  Mrs. Thomas lived in a comfortable frame house in an older section of town. As I walked up the porch steps, I noticed that several rosebushes had been newly planted beside the porch. They’d all been pruned back and were just beginning to put out some sturdy new growth. Behind them, leaning against the house, was a spade.

  The woman who answered the bell was in her fifties, tanned and athletic-looking with short-cropped gray hair. I introduced myself, and she gave me a welcoming smile.

  “Please come in,” she said, opening the door. “I was so excited when you called, Ms. Bayles. It’s nice to know that the Enterprise would like to do an article about my family.”

  I felt guilty for making up a story, but I couldn’t have told Mrs. Thomas about my real reason for coming to see her. So I followed her into the living room and took the chair she indicated. A teapot waited on a small table, together with two slices of pie.

  Mrs. Thomas handed me a plate, and when I had taken a bite and exclaimed at the unusual taste, she said proudly, “It’s vinegar pie—an old family recipe.”

  “Vinegar pie?” I asked, surprised. The pie was almost like custard, with a delicate rose flavor.

  Mrs. Thomas nodded. “During the Depression, lemons were expensive and hard to get. So instead of lemon pie, people made vinegar pie. My mother made lots of herbal vinegars, and she often used them in her vinegar pie. I made this one with rose vinegar, just the way she used to do.”

  “It’s delicious,” I said. I listened for the next half hour or so, pretending to take notes, while she told me about her family’s early days in Pecan Springs. She was obviously proud of being a descendent of one of the founding families and anxious to talk about this important connection. I was more interested, however, in the photograph album she brought out to show me. One of the pictures showed the stone angel standing guard over the Hausner plot. At its feet was a large shrub rose, smothered with yellow blossoms.

  THE HAUSNER FAMILY RECIPE FOR ROSE-FLAVORED VINEGAR PIE

  ½ cup softened butter

  1¼ cups sugar

  3 tablespoons rose petal vinegar*

  4 eggs

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  1 unbaked 8“ pie shell

  Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vinegar, eggs, and vanilla; beat well. Pour into pie shell. Bake in 350°F oven 45 minutes or until knife blade inserted between center and edge of pie comes out clean. Makes eight servings.

  *To make rose petal vinegar: Steep 1 cup red rose petals (clean, freshly picked, unsprayed) in 2 cups champagne vinegar for one week. Check the flavor and steep for a longer period, if desired. Strain and rebottle. Store in a dark place, tightly capped. Use for fruit salad dressing, in a sorbet, as a facial splash—or to flavor vinegar pie!

  After a time, I put away my notebook and thanked Mrs. Thomas for her hospitality. Then, as she was showing me out, I said casually, “I see that you’ve just planted a rosebush beside the porch. I love roses. What kind is it?”

  An uneasy look crossed her face. “It came from the cemetery,” she said. She bit her lip and dropped her eyes. “I brought it home because the poor thing never bloomed.”

  And that was that. But after Mrs. Thomas had gone inside and closed the door, I stepped quickly off the porch and peered at the spade that was leaning against the house. What I saw sent me to my car in a hurry, where I picked up my cell phone and called Sheila Dawson.

  “You want me to question a Hausner descendant about Mrs. Barton’s death?” Sheila asked, surprised. “Why? Have you turned up some evidence to suggest that this woman had something to do with it?”

  “I’m afraid I have,” I said sadly. It was a shame. I liked Mrs. Thomas.

  “Oh, yeah?” She was skeptical. “Like what?”

  “A rosebush,” I said. “And a spade.”

  There was a long silence. “Is that all?” Sheila asked finally.

  “When you see the blood on the spade,” I said, “you’ll think it’s enough.”

  It took Sheila a little while to round up a judge and obtain a search warrant. When the squad car pulled up in front of Mrs. Thomas’s house, I left. I wasn’t exactly anxious to hang around while the chief questioned this particular murder suspect. Anyway, I knew I’d hear all about it before long.

  I was right. The next morning, as Ruby and I were opening our shops, Sheila stopped in.

  “Well?” I asked somberly. “Did Charlotte Thomas tell you how she came to kill Mrs. Barton?”

  “Yes,” Sheila said. “When she was confronted with the victim’s blood on the spade, she made a full confession. By the time she’s arraigned, we’ll have the DNA evidence.”

  “How did it happen?” Ruby asked, coming in with a plate of cookies and a pitcher of iced tea. She set them on the shelf where we put treats for our customers. There was a little sign on the plate that read CAUTION: HOT LIPS COOKIE CRISPS. “Did she really kill Mrs. Barton over a yellow rose?”

  “Well, yes and no,” Sheila said. “The way Mrs. Thomas tells it, she went to visit her mother’s grave and surprised Rose Barton, who was digging up the rosebush. She told Mrs. Barton to stop, but the woman paid no attention. She took the bush out of the ground and put it into a tub she had brought. Then Mrs. Thomas lost her head—or at least that’s what she says. She grabbed the spade and hit her.”

  “So she didn’t intend to kill her,” Ruby said quietly.

  Sheila nodded. “She dragged the body behind the monument, put the tub and the spade in her car, and drove away.” She sighed. “I think she was actually glad to get it off her chest.”

  “I hope she’s got a good defense attorney,” I said. “Sounds like manslaughter to me.” And in Texas, where people take their family burial sites seriously, a jury might find it difficult to send her to prison for very long.

  “Are you going to tell me what led you to Charlotte Thomas?” Sheila reached for a cookie. “Was it the Hausner connection?”

  “Be careful of those cookies,” Ruby warned. “They’re a little spicy.”

  “Yes, it was the Hausner connection.” I picked up the pitcher and poured a plastic cup of iced tea. “That, and the fact that the cemetery caretaker had mentioned that the rosebush that had been removed from the Hausner plot was a yellow rose.”

  “And Mary Lewis told us,” Ruby chimed in, “that Rose Barton had been looking for a yellow rose. She intended to collect some cuttings.”

  RUBY’S HOT LIPS COOKIE CRISPS

  1 cup soft shortening

  2 cups brown sugar

  2 eggs

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  1½ cups finely chopped cashews

  1½ cups whole-wheat flour

  1½ cups unbleached flour

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  ½ teaspoon habanero powder*

  Preheat oven to 325°F. Cream butter and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. Mix the dry ingredients together with the nuts, and stir into the creamed mixture. Form into a log about two inches in diameter and chill. Slice and bake until golden, 12 to 14 minutes. (Watch carefully—these cookies burn easily!) Yields four dozen.

  *The habanero pepper is an incendiary chile with a fruity flavor. Look for the powder in a specialty shop that sells spicy foods.

  “She was taking more than a few cuttings,” Sheila said, and popped the cookie into her mouth. “She was digging up the entire—” Her eyes opened wide and filled with sudden tears. She grabbed the cup out of my hand and gulped it down. I poured another and handed it to her.

  “You should have been careful,” Ruby said, in an I-told-you-so tone.

  “I was just caught off guard,” Sheila replied. After a minute, she wiped her eyes and reached for another cookie. “What in the world did you put in them, Ruby? They’re wonderful!”

  If you’d like to read more about old roses, here are three helpful books:

  Old Garden Roses, by Edward A.

  Bunard (New York: Earl M.
>
  Coleman Publishing, 1978)

  In Search of Lost Roses, by Thomas

  Christopher (New York:

  Summit Books, 1989)

  Antique Roses for the South, by

  William C. Welch (Dallas,

  TX: Taylor Publishing, 1990)

  For a wealth of pictures and information on-line, go to www.antiqueroseemporium.com and click on “A Guide to Old Roses.”

  “Thank you,” Ruby said modestly. “They’re made with habanero powder. I’m glad you like them. And I’m glad the case is solved.”

  “Yes,” I said. “There’s only one more thing to be decided.”

  “What’s that?” Sheila asked.

  “Who gets custody of that yellow rose?”

  MUSTARD MADNESS

  “I ain’t too old to cut the mustard, but I’m too tired to spread it around.”

  —Shel Silverstein

  “Not only can’t you cut the mustard, honey, you’re too old to open the jar.”

  —LaWanda Page to George Burns

  IN Pecan Springs, the big event of the summer is the annual Adams County Fair, which is held in late July and early August at the fairgrounds a couple of miles outside of town. The weather during fair week is al- ways hotter than a string of firecrackers, but folks don’t seem to mind. They look forward all year long to the Cowboy Breakfast, the carnival, the calf-roping, and the big country music concert in the Pavilion, not to mention Barnyard Babies for the kids, performances by the Cowgirl Cloggers, and the best old-time fiddlin’ contests in the whole state of Texas. Now, those of you who live in the city and are used to sophisticated entertainment—off-Broadway shows, foreign film festivals, opera and ballet—may find these down-home doings just a little too simple and folksy for your taste. But for people who live in Pecan Springs, this kind of entertainment seems exactly right. It hits the spot.

  Mustard: The Herb

  Mustard is an annual herb that belongs to the genus Brassica (the same family that includes cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts). It is usually described in terms of the color of its seeds: black mustard (Brassica nigra); brown mustard (Brassica juncea); and pale yellow mustard (Sinapis alba). The black mustard plant can grow to nearly twelve feet high, but the more restrained brown and yellow mustards top out at three feet. Black mustard seeds are the smallest, brown are middle-sized, and yellow are the largest. In terms of intensity, however, the smallest (black) seeds are the hottest and the largest (yellow) the mildest. Black mustard seeds are very difficult to find, since they must be harvested by hand and are less viable commercially than brown and yellow mustard seeds.

  And what especially hits the spot for most Pecan Springers is the Mad for Mustard competition, which takes place at the fair on the first Saturday in August—which just happens, of course, to be National Mustard Day. Bet you didn’t know that, did you? National Mustard Day has been on the calendar since 1991, when it was first officially sponsored by the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum, in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, the World’s Mustard Mecca.

  Here’s how the Mustard Museum describes itself: “The Mount Horeb Mustard Museum began when its founder, Barry Levenson, started collecting mustards on October 27, 1986. His beloved Red Sox had lost the World Series to the New York Mets that night and Barry was very depressed. He went to an all-night supermarket to wander the aisles. He turned down the condiment aisle and heard a deep resonant voice as he passed the mustards: ‘If you collect us, they will come.’ Barry bought about a dozen jars of mustard that evening and resolved to amass the world’s largest collection of prepared mustards.” From this inauspicious beginning, the collection has grown to more than 3,700 mustards. You can see them all at the Mustard Museum, 100 West Main Street, Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, or enjoy a virtual visit at www.mustardweb.com.

  What makes this particular contest so interesting is the fact that many of the people who settled this part of Texas originally came from Germany, and Germans are notoriously fond of their mustard. A great many families have closely guarded heirloom mustard recipes. What’s more, they don’t just make homemade mustard—they cook with it, too. Which is why the Mad for Mustard competition is divided into two sections. In Division One, Gourmet Mustards, you can enter your home-cooked mustard in five different categories: classic mustards, sweet-hot mustards, herb mustards, spirit mustards (made with beer, wine, and hard liquor), and fruit mustards. In Division Two, Mustard Cookery, you can enter your favorite mustard-flavored dish in six different categories: appetizers, soups, main dishes, vegetables, salads, and desserts.

  Now, the prizes in Division Two are always fiercely contested by quite a few very good cooks, and you can find several entries, each one unique and different, in any one category. (I can tell you this with confidence because Hark Hibler always asks me to write a Mad for Mustard story for my regular Thursday Home and Garden page in the Enterprise—which means that I get to sample all the entries.) But Division One is different. While the competition is every bit as fierce, it is concentrated between two people, Homer Mayo and Pete Hitchens, a pair of cantankerous senior citizens with temperaments as tart and tangy as their mustards.

  These two fiery old geezers, now in their seventies, have come out on top since the contest began, although if you count up the ribbons, you’ll see that Homer has won about twice as many as Pete. In fact, the two of them have won so many times that nobody else ever bothers to enter the Gourmet Mustard Division, leaving these two to divvy up the prizes between them. You’d think that this would be discouraging, and that maybe there’d be a move to get these winners to step aside and let other people have a shot. But while this has been hinted at a time or two, nobody seems to want to spoil the fun.

  A Mini History of Mustard

  For centuries, mustard has been one of the most widely grown and used spices in the world. It was cultivated in China some seven thousand years ago. In ancient cookery, the seeds and oil masked the off-taste of spoiled meat and added zest to an otherwise bland cuisine. The Romans were the first to make prepared mustards by grinding the seeds and mixing them with honey, vinegar, oil, and an unfermented grape juice called must—hence the Latin name mustum ardens, “burning wine,” which eventually became the word mustard. In addition to flavoring food with mustard, the Romans used it as an all-purpose cure for everything from hysteria to the bite of mad dogs and the plague. Roman soldiers, who were especially fond of the condiment, took it with them to France, and Dijon, the ancient capital of Burgundy, became the center of the mustard world. In Tewkesbury, England, during Shakespeare’s day, ground mustard seed was mixed with honey, vinegar, and horseradish. The thick paste was formed into balls, which were sold in London markets. (In Henry IV, Falstaff snorts, “His wit is as thick as Tewkesbury mustard.”) To serve, the dried balls were broken apart and mixed with more liquid—vinegar, beer, wine, cider—along with sugar, cinnamon, or honey. This method of managing mustard seems to have fallen into disfavor around 1800, when a Mrs. Clements, of Durham, began grinding and sifting mustard seeds to produce a fine flour. She was followed by Jeremiah Colman, who marketed his ground mustard in the still-familiar yellow tin.

  And fun it is, because Homer and Pete put on quite a show—the Grumpy Old Guys, people call them. They’ve been feuding for years, although I suspect that, down deep, they really like one another. All through the competition, they trade exaggerated glowers, glares, and insulting stares, like a pair of aging wrestlers showing off for the TV cameras. All this goes on behind the judges’ backs, of course—they’re all smiles and sweet as stolen apples when the judges turn around. Last year, Homer’s cheering section (the regulars at Baker’s Barber Shop) showed up with mustard-yellow T-shirts emblazoned with HOMER’S MUSTARD MAVERICKS in fiery red letters. Pete’s backers, most of them members of the Pecan Springs Horseshoe Team, wore yellow

  MUSTARD HAPPENS caps and carried big yellow signs that proclaimed MUSTARD SI, MAYO NO.

  A Little Mustard Lore

  Mustard, which is tradition
ally thought to be ruled by the planet Mars, has long been considered an aphrodisiac and a symbol of fertility. In northern Europe, mothers sewed mustard seeds into the hems of their daughters’ wedding dresses in order to ensure the groom’s desire and enhance the bride’s ability to bear children. The Chinese, too, thought that mustard (like other spicy herbs) was an aphrodisiac. In India, mustard seeds were spread on door- and windowsills to repel evil spirits, and in Denmark mustard was grown around barns to protect the animals. In biblical times, mustard seeds symbolized faith and endurance, an idea that perhaps arose from the fact that mustard seeds, which have a hard outer shell, may lie dormant for decades, even as long as a century, before conditions are right for sprouting.

  But all their energies were to no avail. For the third year in a row, Pete took first prize in only one category, while Homer took first prize in four, bringing his fans to their feet in frenzied celebration and causing Pete’s fans to swear that next year, their Mustard Mogul would sweep the field. Pete showed his displeasure by shoving his one blue ribbon and four red ones into his back pocket and stomping out of the judging tent in disgust, while Homer and his friends danced off to celebrate at Bean’s Bar and Grill. This entertaining rivalry has turned an ordinary, ho-hum mustard contest into oneof the big events of the year, and people line up early to get good seats.

  That’s why Ruby Wilcox was so pleased when she was asked to be one of the judges in the Gourmet Mustard Division, the very first woman judge, in fact. “At last,” she said, “I’ll have a chance to see what all the shouting is about.”