An Unthymely Death

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  Ruby looked down at the list, her forehead creased in a frown. “But what does all this mean, China?”

  “I’ve got some ideas,” I said. “But I have a couple of books that might help to confirm my suspicions. Let’s go to my house.” I looked at my watch. “And we’d better hurry. If McQuaid and Brian sit down to eat without us, there won’t be a single tortilla chip left when we get there.”

  But the guys had waited. Along with the guacamole, chips, a green salad, and his enchilada casserole, McQuaid put a dish of frijoles refritos on the table, and the four of us pitched in. When dinner was over, McQuaid and Brian generously volunteered to wash the dishes. Well, McQuaid volunteered—Brian, who will soon turn fourteen, required a little persuading.

  Ruby and I took our coffee and our list of tussie mussie flowers and headed for my studio, where I work on herbal prod- ucts and keep all my reference books. I pulled three books off the shelf and we sat down with them, turning the pages.

  McQuaid Cooks Tex-Mex

  ENCHILADA CASSEROLE

  1 medium onion, chopped

  3 cloves garlic, chopped

  Vegetable oil

  1 pound lean ground sirloin

  2 cups salsa (homemade or purchased)

  ½ cup chopped green chiles, fresh or canned

  2 teaspoons ground cumin

  ½ teaspoon salt (if desired)

  10 corn tortillas, cut in half

  2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

  Sauté the onion and garlic in a small amount of vegetable oil. When they’re limp and translucent, drain off the oil and add the meat. Cook and stir until browned. Drain fat, add salsa, chiles, cumin, and salt, and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Layer half the tortillas in bottom of a greased two-quart casserole dish and cover with half the meat-salsa mixture and a layer of half the shredded Cheddar. Repeat. Cover and bake in a 350° oven for about 30 minutes.

  FRIJOLES REFRITOS (REFRIED BEANS)

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  ½ cup chopped onion

  4 cloves garlic, crushed

  4 cups canned pinto beans

  1 teaspoon cumin

  2 tablespoons lemon juice

  ½ cup grated Cheddar cheese

  Sprigs of cilantro for garnish

  Heat olive oil in a heavy skillet and sauté onion and garlic until translucent. Drain the beans (reserving half the liquid) and add to skillet. Heat, mashing with a potato masher. Cook, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes. Add cumin, lemon juice, and reserved liquid, if necessary, and cook for 10 more minutes. Sprinkle cheese over the top and let it melt slightly. Serve hot, garnished with cilantro.

  SOUTH OF THE BORDER GUACAMOLE

  2 cloves garlic

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 large ripe avocados

  2 to 3 tablespoons grated onion

  1 small ripe Roma tomato, chopped fine

  2 tablespoons lime juice

  Peel and mash the garlic cloves with the salt, making a paste. Mash the avocados and add the garlic, grated onion, tomato, and lime juice. Serve with a basket of warm tortilla chips.

  “Let’s see if I have this straight,” Ruby said. “During Victorian times, people thought it would be cool to send secret messages to one another, and they decided to do it with flowers. Is that it?”

  “Basically,” I said. “It started in the seventeen-hundreds and was popular through the middle of the next century. But flowers and herbs have always had symbolic meaning. Violets, for example, have for centuries conveyed the idea of faithfulness. Napoleon loved them, and always gave a bouquet of violets to Josephine on their wedding anniversary.” I made a face. “Although as I remember, he had a wandering eye. Anyway, his followers wore violets to show that they were eternally faithful to him.”

  Here are the three reference books that China and Ruby consulted, in case you’d like to do some of the detective work yourself:

  Flora’s Dictionary: The Victorian

  Language of Herbs and Flowers,

  by Kathleen Gips

  The Meaning of Flowers, by

  Claire Powell

  Tussie-Mussies: The Language of

  Flowers, by Geraldine Laufer

  Ruby leaned back, sipping her coffee. “So that’s where you got the idea that the violets in Mavina’s tussie mussie came from an admirer?”

  “That’s right. But the other herbs and flowers in the tussie mussie are contradictory.” I ran my finger down the list. “Rue, bay, butterfly weed, garlic chives, cypress, and a white rose.”

  Ruby frowned. “So? I have to admit that it’s a little weird, but—”

  “Weird is right,” I said. I opened one of the books and flipped the pages. “Rue may be very pretty, but it represents repentance—being sorry for something. And a bay leaf stands for treachery.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Ruby objected, leafing through another book. “It says here that it stands for fame and glory.”

  “That’s the interesting thing about the language of flowers,” I said. “There was a lot of disagreement. But you can see how the idea of fame is related to treachery.”

  “Yeah,” Ruby agreed dryly. “Fame is treacherous—and bragging about it can get you into big trouble.” She put down her coffee cup. “What about butterfly weed? What does it stand for?”

  I turned several pages and found it. “Wow,” I said. “According to this author, it means ‘let me go,’ or ‘stop your pestering. ’ ” I turned several more. “There’s no entry for garlic chives, but garlic means ‘hate.’ ”

  “This definitely isn’t a love letter,” Ruby said firmly, “although roses stand for love, don’t they?”

  “The red rose means love,” I said. “But the white rose symbolizes silence. Listen to this, Ruby. ‘The white rose used to be sculptured over the door of banqueting rooms to remind guests that they should never repeat outside the things they had heard.’ ”

  “Amazing,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “And I suppose that cypress represents—”

  “It represents mourning,” I said, turning a page. “And death.”

  There was a long silence as we thought about this.

  “So if we put it all together,” Ruby said at last, “this tussie mussie says that somebody hates somebody else, and that there’s treachery involved. And that somebody needs to stop pestering—”

  “And keep quiet,” I said. “Or die.”

  Ruby shuddered. “I suppose,” she said, “since Mavina is the one who wound up dead, she was the one who was being warned to stop pestering and keep her mouth shut. It sounds as if she was blackmailing someone.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “And if we can find her victim, we may have found her killer.” I stood up. “Let’s go.”

  Ruby jumped to her feet. “Go where?”

  “I want to talk to Mavina’s niece, Esther, again. She told Sheila and me that her aunt was always meddling in people’s private affairs. Maybe she knows more than she was willing to let on—at least to Sheila.” It’s sad but true that even people who have nothing to hide don’t want to share what they know with the police.

  Esther lived in a small house on a dead-end street. As we came up the walk, I smelled the crisp, clean, citrusy scent of southernwood, and against the house, I could see the pale yellow blooms of St. John’s wort. Through a window, we could see the television screen flickering in the darkened living room.

  When Ruby knocked, the porch light came on. “Who is it?” Esther asked apprehensively, opening the door only a crack. But when we announced ourselves, she opened it wide and stepped back.

  “You can’t be too careful,” she said, as if in explanation. She glanced at me. “Is this about Aunt Mavina?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was hoping that you’d given a little more thought to the situation.”

  She laughed shortly. “Are you kidding? I’m about to inherit property that’s worth in the neighborhood of a million dollars. It gives you a lot to think about.” She paused. “I’ve got
some iced tea in the fridge. Sit down. I’ll be right back.”

  When she returned, she was carrying a tray with filled glasses garnished with mint and lemon slices and a plate of curry and cardamom cookies, deliciously fragrant, with an unusual taste. There was a brief silence while we all helped ourselves, and then she said, “I guess you want to know whether I’ve thought of anybody who might have wanted to kill her.”

  “Good guess,” I said. “Have you?”

  She put down her glass. “No. But I did find something that puzzled me. Maybe you can tell me what it means.”

  Ruby leaned forward. “What have you come up with?”

  “My aunt had a talent for finding things out,” Esther said. “I don’t think she worked at it, but information just seemed to come her way.” She laughed a little. “I used to think that, as a librarian, she was in exactly the right job. What are librarians called these days? Information specialists? That was Aunt Mavina, for sure. An information specialist.”

  “That’s not necessarily bad,” Ruby said tentatively.

  “Of course not,” Esther replied. “But Aunt Mavina was also a very self-righteous kind of person. She liked to see the guilty punished, and she always wanted the punishment to fit the crime.” She smiled a little. “Once when I was a kid, I stole some candy. She doctored that candy with powdered chile pepper and made me eat it. I’ve never forgotten.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said with a shiver.

  “So who was she punishing lately?” Ruby asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Esther replied. “But as I said, I’ve found something curious. I went to her house this afternoon to take care of her canary, and while I was there I went through the desk where she keeps her checkbook and business papers. I wasn’t just snooping,” she said defensively. “I needed to get her lawyer’s name.”

  CURRY AND CARDAMOM COOKIES

  1 cup butter or margarine

  2 cups brown sugar

  2 eggs, lightly beaten

  2 teaspoons vanilla

  3 cups flour

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons curry powder (sweet, rather than hot)

  ½ teaspoon cardamom

  1½ cups chopped walnuts or pecans

  Cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Sift dry ingredients together. Add to creamed mixture, a third at a time. Stir in nuts. Divide dough into four rolls and wrap each in waxed paper. Refrigerate at least 4 hours (may also be frozen). Slice into quarter-inch slices and place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake in preheated 350°F oven until golden (12 to 14 minutes). Let cookies cool 2 minutes on baking sheet, then remove to racks and cool. Yields six dozen.

  I took another cookie. “What did you find?”

  “A check for a thousand dollars made out to an organization called Friends of the Faithful. It was in an unsealed envelope that Aunt Mavina had already addressed and stamped. I looked up the organization on the Internet. It’s a nonprofit group that provides support and counseling for victims of marital infidelity.” She paused. “I don’t suppose it’s important, but it did seem kind of curious to me.”

  “Who wrote the check?” I asked. “Your aunt?”

  “No,” Esther said. “I remember the name, but I didn’t recognize it.” When she told us who it was, I knew that we had discovered the identity of Mavina’s victim—and her killer, as well.

  When Sheila came into Thyme and Seasons a day or so later, she was shaking her head with amazement. “You two are incredible. I still can’t believe that you unraveled the whole mystery from a little bunch of flowers.”

  “Oh, it was just some herbal sleuthing,” Ruby said with a modest smile. “Easy when you know how.”

  “Actually,” I said, “the answer to the mystery jumped out at us when Esther told us the story of the chile pepper powder her aunt used as a punishment—and mentioned the check that Alice Olsen wrote to Friends of the Faithful.”

  “But it might not have jumped out at us if we hadn’t understood what was behind it,” Ruby reminded me. “That’s what we figured out from the tussie mussie.”

  “Let me see if I’ve got the story straight,” Sheila said. “Mavina somehow discovered that Alice Olsen was having an affair with her boss. She threatened to tell Alice’s husband unless Alice paid up, handsomely.” She made a wry face. “So far, it sounds like a fairly ordinary blackmail. But the blackmailer didn’t want the money for herself. She wanted her victim to make regular contributions to an organization that supports victims of marital infidelity.”

  “A fiendishly clever punishment,” Ruby said. “It fitted Alice’s crime to a T.”

  I thought back to Alice’s all-white apartment and her brand-new furniture. “It turns out that Alice had recently separated from her husband and filed for divorce,” I said. “There was quite a bit of money at stake in the settlement, and Alice quite naturally didn’t want her husband to find out that she’d been having an affair while the two of them were still married. Rather than risk exposure, she was willing to pay up.”

  “But she must have been afraid that Mavina wouldn’t keep her mouth shut,” Sheila said.

  I nodded. “The clue to that is in the tussie mussie. Alice designed it to lure Mavina to an out-of-the-way place in the park, including violets to make it appear that it was a token of love from a secret admirer. But when you look at the flowers and herbs, the message is altogether different.”

  “Right,” Ruby chimed in. “The flowers say, ‘I hate you. Stop pestering me and keep your mouth shut, or you’re dead.’ Short and simple and straight to the point.”

  “But Mavina didn’t get it, of course,” I said, “and Alice didn’t intend her to. She was exercising her ingenuity, I suppose. And venting her feelings of anger and frustration.”

  “The tussie mussie might have been a clue to you,” Sheila said, “but it was the check that broke this case. It gave us probable cause to get a warrant to search Alice’s apartment. That’s where we found the murder weapon—and those violets, of course. The magic number, in fact.”

  “The magic number?” Ruby asked.

  “Remember?” I asked. “Sandra, at Blooms and Blossoms, originally had two dozen violets. According to Sandra, Alice bought most of them, and Joe bought the rest. He told us that he got a half dozen to give to Charlene, which means that Alice must have bought a dozen and a half. Right?”

  “Makes sense,” Ruby said.

  “But there were only a dozen violets in the crystal bowl in Alice’s apartment,” Sheila put in. “The missing six—”

  “—were in the tussie mussie in the dead woman’s hand,” I said. “Elementary, my dear Ruby.”

  “Wouldn’t you think that grown people could find another way to sort out their differences?” Ruby asked, shaking her head. She started toward the door to her shop. “Well, guess it’s time to get back to work.”

  “Hang on there,” Sheila said. “Whose red Honda is parked out front?”

  “Mine,” Ruby said. “Why?”

  “Because the meter’s expired,” Sheila replied, “and I just saw MaeBelle Battersby coming down the street. She’s got her ticket book in her hand and a mean look in her eye. If the owner doesn’t get out there and put some money in the meter—”

  “Yikes!” Ruby cried, and scrambled for the door.

  “I didn’t expect to get that kind of reaction,” Sheila said mildly.

  “That’s because you don’t know about MaeBelle and Ruby and the parking tickets,” I said. “You see—”

  “Whoa.” Sheila held up her hand. “Some stories are better off not told.”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking about Alice Olsen and her boss. “I guess you’re right.”

  A DEADLY CHOCOLATE VALENTINE

  “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

  —Forrest Gump

  VALENTINE
’S Day has always been my favorite holiday, but I’ve loved it even more since I met Mike McQuaid. Early in our relationship, we started a tradition of exchanging chocolate hearts and recycling the same valentine, not because we’re too cheap to buy new ones, but because this was our first one. Each year, we write a love letter to en- close with the valentine, which is beginning to show the wear. Not that I’m sentimental or anything, but I’ve kept the letters, and after McQuaid and I got married, I put them into our wedding scrapbook, along with the herbs from my wedding bouquet and a few other special mementos.

  Yes, chocolate is an herb, and a New World herb, at that. It is a product of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao), a native of Central and South America. The Mesoamericans ground up the cacao beans, which they considered sacred, and mixed them with water or wine, vanilla, pimento, and chile peppers. This bitter-tasting brew, called xocoatl, was used to treat diarrhea and dysentery, as an aphrodisiac, and as a source of quick energy. The Spaniards imported the cacao beans into Europe, and by the seventeenth century, the hot peppers had been replaced with sugar and the new drink was a sweet success.

  “Inside some of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but she can usually be sedated by a piece of chocolate cake.”

  —Anonymous