Mourning Gloria

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Thank God it wasn’t worse,” McQuaid said. “Was Caitlin with you?”

  “She’s sleeping over at Amy’s house. She won’t be home until tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s good. The poor kid’s had enough trouble.” He paused. “You can take the day off tomorrow, can’t you? Stay home for a change? Get some rest?”

  I thought of the meeting at Donna’s farm tomorrow night. I didn’t want to miss it—and anyway, I’d promised Ruby I’d pick her up. “I’m sure I’ll feel better.” I paused. “How’s the investigation going?” I asked, adroitly switching the subject.

  “Not bad, actually.” He began a lengthy tale about the day’s activities, none of which sounded very dangerous. I’ve been uneasy ever since McQuaid first hung out his shingle as a private investigator a couple of years ago. He insists that he’s only interested in investigative work—none of the shoot-’em-up, knock-’em-down action you read about in private-eye mysteries. But once a cop, always a cop. If trouble comes his way, he’ll run to meet it. So far, though, his work hasn’t involved anything very dangerous, for which I am grateful. So far. There’s a first time for everything.

  We talked a little more, then said good night. I went upstairs and was filling the bathtub when the phone rang again. I shut off the faucet and went into the bedroom to pick up. It was Sheila. She had talked to Blackie and he had asked her to pass along some news. Not for public consumption, but because I’d been the one who discovered the fire. He thought I’d earned the right to what little information he’d gathered so far.

  I sat on the bed to hear what Sheila had to say. She was succinct, as usual. A search of the burned structure had turned up no bodies other than that of a woman on the sofa—on what had once been a sofa—under the window in the small living room. The foam cushions of the sofa had been highly combustible. The body would be difficult to identify from physical appearance, and no identification had been found. No purse, no wallet, nothing. And aside from some minimal furniture and the usual appliances, the place had been empty. No personal effects.

  “The victim’s hands and feet were tied and she was doused with an accelerant,” Sheila added.

  “Oh, hell,” I said, under my breath. And that’s what it must have been. A vast, unfathomable, fiery hell. I shuddered.

  “One other thing,” Sheila went on. “Blackie says he won’t be sure until he sees Harkins’ autopsy report.” Tom Harkins, an MD at the hospital in Pecan Springs, is the new county coroner—an improvement over the previous situation, where Adams County autopsies were done in Bexar or Travis County. “He says it looks like she was shot. The shooter must’ve figured she was dead and set the fire to obliterate the evidence. The plan might’ve worked, too, if you hadn’t come along.”

  Bully for me, I thought sourly. Sure, I’d come along, but too late to help the victim. “Any idea how the fire was triggered?”

  “At first glance, it looks like a homemade setup at one end of the trailer,” Sheila said. “Nothing fancy, but it would’ve given the arsonist four or five minutes to get outta Dodge. Something else may turn up, though. The investigation isn’t finished.”

  Which reminded me. “Oh, hey, Sheila. Tell Blackie that McQuaid knows the owner of that trailer. His name is Scott Sheridan, at A-Plus Auto Parts. Sheridan bought the place fairly recently, apparently. McQuaid said he evicted the people who were living there. They were into drugs.”

  Drugs. That’s probably what had happened tonight. A drug deal went bad, and a woman ended up dead. That kind of thing doesn’t happen here as often as it does in the cities, and the arson-homicide was an unusual twist. But like everywhere else in the country, we have our share of bad drug deals.

  “Scott Sheridan at A-Plus,” Sheila repeated. “Thanks, China. I’ll pass it on.” She paused, and her voice became warmer, less official. “Sorry you had to be the one to discover this. I know it wasn’t pleasant.”

  Howard appeared in the doorway, assessed his opportunities, and jumped up on the bed beside me. Bassets, even elderly bassets, are more agile than you might think. I didn’t have the heart to make him get down.

  “I just wish I’d happened along sooner,” I said, low. “Maybe I could’ve gotten her out of there. Or caught the killer in the act. Or at least seen him driving off.” How long before I showed up had he left? A minute? Five minutes? Ten? And why did I automatically picture the killer as a man? Women do drugs. Women kill. Women commit arson, too.

  “Yeah, well, maybe you could’ve gotten yourself dead, too,” Sheila said. “You did what you could, China. Don’t beat yourself up. Forget about it—as much as you can.”

  “Thanks,” I said wearily. “I’ll try.”

  I said good night and clicked off. I guess I wasn’t surprised to hear that the victim had been shot. Tied up and shot, which accounted for the fact that she couldn’t get out of the trailer. I had read recently that arson-homicides were on the increase, and that in a growing number of cases, the victims were killed or left for dead before the fire was ignited. In fact, there had been a similar case in Florida not very long ago. A prostitute had shot the victim—another prostitute, a former friend—and set the fire in an attempt to conceal the dead woman’s identity. The motive: jealousy, pure and simple. The victim had replaced the killer in their pimp’s affections. Of course, the jealousy might have been compounded with an economic motive. The pimp was sending more traffic in the victim’s direction.

  I shivered, suddenly grateful for the safety and comfort of our house, the love of a good man and fine children, wholesome work, the kindness of friends, the safety—the relative safety—of a small town. What had happened tonight in that trailer was incomprehensibly vicious and ugly beyond words. But I didn’t have to comprehend it or explain it or even describe it. Sheila was right. As far as I was concerned, the whole thing was over. Blackie and his deputies would do their usual competent work, and I’d hear all about the investigation when it was finished.

  Howard pushed his cold nose against my arm, telling me he had forgiven me for not being home when it was time for his dinner. He added a raspy lick, expressing the wish that I’d allow him to sleep with me tonight, since McQuaid wasn’t there to take up half the bed.

  I bent down and kissed one soft brown ear. There’s something about a basset that makes me want to smile. And it didn’t matter whether I “allowed” him or not, Howard would be sleeping with me. He considers it his right and his obligation to occupy the empty half of the bed.

  But despite a luxurious hot bath (scented with the lavender salts Ruby gave me for Christmas) and a generous smear of aloe salve on my burned hand, I didn’t sleep well. I dreamed that I was scrabbling up the hill toward the burning trailer, the shrieks of the dying woman echoing through the fire-torn night. It was one of those awful dreams where the faster you run, the slower you go. The harder I tried to scramble upward, the farther back I slipped, until at last a huge, volcano-like explosion ripped the sky, and the trailer vanished in a great gush of fire, showering me with searing flame.

  I woke, crying. Howard was licking the tears from my cheeks.

  Chapter Five

  Coffee (Coffea spp.) is probably the most popular mood-altering plant in human experience. In the West, we’ve enjoyed a beverage brewed from this plant for only about three hundred years, but people in the Middle East began drinking it centuries before that. Legend has it that a Yemeni shepherd watched his goats nibble reddish-brown berries from a bush and then leap and dance, having a high old time—a caffeine rush, no doubt. The shepherd told his story to a monk, who (having fought off drowsiness during many all-night prayer sessions) knew a good thing when he heard it. He boiled the berries in water, and before you could say Starbucks, he was pouring cups of dark, rich mocha for himself and his fellow monks, who were also aware of the virtue of staying awake.

  Whatever the truth of the legend, this herbal beverage spread quickly from Africa through Arabia and Egypt, gathering converts wherever it was brewed. It
was considered medicinal and used as a stimulant, diuretic, and a treatment for headaches, muscle aches, asthma, fever, colds, flu, constipation, menstrual cramps, congestive heart failure, and general what-have-you. Too much coffee can lead to nervousness, irritability, and the jitters. But most Americans couldn’t get through the day without it.

  China Bayles

  “Mood-Altering Plants”

  Pecan Springs Enterprise

  The promised drizzle turned into a steady rain after breakfast the next morning, one of those sweet, gentle rains that do so much to refresh early summer gardens and restore the fields and pastures. At midmorning, Amy and Kate dropped Caitlin off and stayed for a cup of coffee and my report (brief, objective, and lacking in detail because I didn’t want to alarm Caitie) of what had happened the night before. They had seen the burned trailer as they drove past and noticed several county vehicles parked along the road. Obviously, the investigation was still going on.

  After they left, Caitie went upstairs to her tower room to practice her violin, carefully running a scale, slowly at first, then more rapidly, moving back and forth and up and down the strings in melodic repetition. When she made a mistake (there weren’t many), she went back and corrected it. I could imagine her frowning, concentrating on her finger position and her bowing technique. It seemed to me that there was something intensely personal—sometimes reflective, sometimes playful—in the way she played the simple scale, searching for color and tone, making musical what might be purely mechanical. After a while, she stopped playing scales and began to practice the piece Brenda, her teacher, had given her—Pachelbel’s Canon, much simplified, but beautiful.

  I puttered in the kitchen, listening to Caitlin while I made several kinds of cosmetic vinegars—a big seller in the shop and something I could take to the market, as well. I was making lavender, floral, and mint vinegars in gallon jugs, which I would strain and rebottle into pretty glass containers when the herbs had steeped for a month or so. After I finished that project, I made a batch of carrot cupcakes to take to the Local Food Society meeting that evening. I had bought the carrots at the Farmers’ Market and we had gathered the pecans under the tree by the creek and cracked them ourselves, so that much was local. The other ingredients, though—flour, sugar, cream cheese, vanilla, and so on—came from heaven-knows-where. The work reminded me that eating entirely locally would be a very difficult thing to do. However, I could add some of my own locally grown edible flowers, so I went out into the garden and collected enough blooms to decorate each cupcake.

  Cooking doesn’t require a lot of attention, giving me time to listen, think, and appreciate the space around me. Our house is one of those sprawling Victorians that you occasionally see around here, more often in town, though, than in the country. The former owners planned to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast and called it Meadow Brook, which—considering that the five-acre property includes both a pretty meadow and a spring-fed brook—is descriptively appropriate. It’s close enough to the Hill Country tourist hot spots that a B and B might make good sense. The house is certainly large enough for that: two stories, five bedrooms, a turret at one corner, a wraparound porch with roses and honeysuckle climbing the arbor. Every time the checkbook looks a little thin, I bring up the idea. But so far, we haven’t tried to implement it, partly because we’re all selfish about our personal space and partly because I’m not sure I want strangers in the house as long as the kids are with us.

  There’s plenty of personal space. McQuaid has a shop where he works on his gun collection and other projects, and he’s converted what used to be the downstairs bedroom into his private investigator’s office. (He points out that it could be awkward to mix clients and customers—another reason why a B and B might not be right for us.)

  Brian, who plans to major in biology when he goes to college, has staked out the creek at the back of the property, where he collects frogs, lizards, and other amphibious creatures. They occasionally go AWOL from his bedroom and exercise free-range privileges around the house, showing up in unexpected places—behind the toilet, for instance, or in Howard Cosell’s water dish.

  I have a large garden area for plants I don’t want to grow at the shop, and the screened-in back porch for crafts. Until Caitlin became a part of our family, I also claimed the turret as my getaway place. Then, knowing that every little girl needs a magical place to call her own, I turned it over to her. She sleeps and reads and plays her violin there, and writes in her diary and does the other things that young girls do.

  The rest of the day passed so pleasantly that I almost forgot what had happened the night before—or rather, relegated it to the status of a bad dream, like the nightmare that had awakened me. That is, I forgot until I was getting ready to go to Donna’s farm for the meeting and looked in the mirror and saw that my eyebrows were gone and my face was reddened and splotchy. I repaired the damage with an eyebrow pencil and some cover-up, and asked Caitlin what she thought.

  She put her head to one side and replied in her forthright way. “It’s better than it was before, but you still look like you leaned too close to the barbeque grill.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, and put away the eyebrow pencil. “It could’ve been worse. You sure you’re okay about staying by yourself for a couple of hours this evening? Wouldn’t you rather go to the meeting with me? It’s at Mistletoe Farm.” When Brian’s home, I don’t think twice about going out, because he can handle most crises. But Caitie is just eleven.

  “Meetings are boring,” she said, and ran her fingers through her short dark hair. “I like staying by myself, and I have a book to read. Can I make a sandwich?”

  “Sandwich, milk, whatever,” I said. “I’ve left a couple of carrot cupcakes. You can use the microwave if you want, but don’t turn on the stove, please. The Banners are at home, if you need them, and their number is on the wall beside the phone.” Tom and Maxine Banner live up the road from us and are on call if one of the kids has a problem. “Oh, and you’ve got your cell?” For a long time, McQuaid and I resisted getting Brian a cell phone, until we discovered how easy it is to keep track of a kid when he’s got a phone in his pocket. Now, we view the phones as another of the costs of having children. The kids have to live without texting, though, and neither of them have Internet access. We’re on a budget here.

  She patted the pocket of her jeans, her delicate face sweetly serious. “I’ll call you if I need to.”

  “And I’ll call you every hour, so keep the phone handy.” Maybe moms who have more practice than I do can go away and leave their daughters for an evening without worrying. I’m not quite there yet.

  “Have a good time,” she said, and hugged me. “You haven’t forgotten about tomorrow, have you?”

  I frowned. “Let’s see—tomorrow, tomorrow. We have a dentist appointment?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Must be a haircut, then.” I smoothed her dark pixie cut. “Nope, that was last week.”

  “I’ll give you a hint,” she said, and mimed bowing a violin.

  “Oh, that!” I exclaimed. “Well, sure. Of course I haven’t forgotten. Your lesson. Four thirty. “

  She gave an exaggerated sigh of relief and giggled. “I knew you’d remember. With a little help.”

  “I’ll tie a string around my finger,” I said.

  “Cool,” she said. “Make it a violin string.” One of her rare, brilliant smiles flashed across her face.

  THE rain had stopped by midafternoon and the sun had come out, turning the wet grass and trees to glitter and raising the temperature by about fifteen sultry degrees. As I drove into town to pick Ruby up, I had to pass the burned trailer. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help myself, and the sight brought the whole scene back, hot and fierce. The trailer was a ruin, a twisted hulk of scorched, scarcely recognizable metal, and despite the rain, the fire had extended in a smudge of blackened trees and underbrush halfway to the top of the ridge. The area was marked with yellow crime-scene t
ape and the fire marshal’s car was parked out front.

  Resolutely, I turned my attention away from the trailer, toward the evening. Our Local Food Society meetings are pretty informal—I was wearing plain khaki walking shorts, a dark brown tee, and sandals. Ruby, when she finally appeared, was distinctly colorful. She came running out of her house breathlessly, dressed in red pedal pushers and a red-and-yellow draped top, carrying a tote bag.

  I love Ruby. What’s more, I admire her courage. To look at her, you’d never know that she belongs (as she puts it) to the tribe of one-breasted women. She had breast cancer surgery a few years ago, and refuses to get an implant. “No foreign bodies inside my body,” she insists, and chooses her clothes with care. She says she’d rather have people looking at her face than her boobs, anyway, and she makes up accordingly. She’s fond of colored contact lenses, well-defined eyes, glittery eye shadow, and bright red lipstick—not to mention that carroty hair, which she likes to wear frizzed. Today, it was held back from her face with red and yellow plastic barrettes.

  “Vivid,” I said appreciatively, as she got into the Toyota and put the tote bag on the floor.

  “Thank you,” she replied, settling in and fastening her seat belt. “Sorry if I’m late. It was Doris, of course. She had another . . .” She turned to me and her eyes widened. “Omigawd, China! What happened to you? It looks like you were torched!”

  “An explosion.” I shivered. “A trailer fire. Out on Limekiln Road. I was on my way home last night when I saw it.” The rest of the story came tumbling out, uncensored and replete with the gory details, since I didn’t have to worry about Caitlin listening in.