Gina came in from the garden with Mrs. Oliver, one of our regular customers, and a tray of dill, basil, and savory transplants, all in four-inch pots.
“Did you find what you wanted?” I asked.
“I did, thank you,” Mrs. Oliver said happily. “Gina knows so much about herbs, China. You should have her here more often!”
“You’re right,” I replied. “She’s a treasure.”
Gina winked at me. “Any time,” she said with a chuckle, and went outside to help someone else.
I was tallying up Mrs. Oliver’s tab when the shop phone rang.
“Thyme and Seasons,” I said, cradling the receiver against my shoulder. “How can I help you?”
It was Sheila. “China, I just got a report from one of the patrol officers. Jessica Nelson’s vehicle has been spotted in a parking lot.”
“Jessica?” I nearly dropped the phone. “Where? When? Any sign of her?”
“Where, in the outside lot at the Hill Country Villa apartment complex. When, about ten minutes ago. No sign of Nelson, at least so far. But that’s a busy area, lots of residential foot traffic. Hark couldn’t provide a photograph of her, so we’re going on a general description.”
“How much is that going to be?” Mrs. Oliver asked, opening her handbag. She is a tiny white-haired woman with vivid blue eyes and a gardener’s hands—that is, you can usually see a little trace of dirt under her nails.
“Eleven dollars and twelve cents,” I said. I was itching to talk to Sheila, but first things first. “Including tax. How about a box?”
“Excuse me?” Sheila asked.
“A box would be wonderful,” Mrs. Oliver replied. “I don’t want to bruise these sweet little babies. Oh, and do you have a brochure for that other thing you do? Party Thyme, I think it’s called. My little grandson is having a birthday and his mother and I would love it if Big Bird could come and bring games and food.” Party Thyme is our catering service and Big Bird is Ruby, who wears her Big Bird suit when we cater a party for kids. She got a Cookie Monster suit for me, but I wear it only under duress.
“Hang on a minute,” I told Sheila. I put the receiver down, made change from twelve dollars, located a cardboard tray for the plants, and found a Party Thyme brochure. “Just call if you’d like to schedule a party,” I said to Mrs. Oliver. “We’re available most weekends, but now that the Farmers’ Market is open, we have to plan ahead.”
“I will,” she replied. “We’ll let you know. And thanks!”
I picked up the phone. “Hill Country Villa?” I repeated breathlessly. “Is that what you said, Sheila?” It was the apartment complex where Gloria Graham had lived.
“That’s right. On Sam Houston Drive. We’ve phoned the Enterprise to let Hark know, but he’s in San Antonio on a story this afternoon. Since you’ve been worried about Nelson, I thought you’d want to know, too. There’s an officer with the car.”
I looked around. It was reasonably quiet, and Gina was still here. “I think I can get away for a while. And I might be able to help at the scene. I know Jessica. I can identify her.” I hesitated. “Have you connected with Blackie on this?”
“Yes. He says that the apartment complex is the address of the woman he’s tentatively identified as the victim in the trailer fire. Gloria Graham. You helped with that ID?”
“I did. Got lucky this morning.”
“Hang on a sec.” She said something to someone else, then came back on the line. “I’m told that Blackie is getting a search warrant for Graham’s apartment. He’ll be there as soon as he has it.”
A search warrant. That meant that the sheriff was able to persuade a magistrate that he had probable cause to believe that some part of the crime—Graham’s abduction, perhaps—might have been committed in her apartment.
“Thanks for calling, Smart Cookie. I’ll try to get over there.” I paused, remembering that there was something I needed to tell her. “Jessica and her roommate Amanda have had trouble with their next-door neighbor. He’s been peeping into their windows. I encountered him this morning, when I checked out Nelson’s house.” I wasn’t going to tell her that I had taken the liberty of going inside. Sheila’s a cop. She would quite naturally object. “He’s the rough, tough type,” I added, “or likes to think he is. It might be worthwhile to have a talk with him. His name is Butch Browning. When I asked Amanda about him, she mentioned lots of after-dark traffic at his place. She and Jessica thought he might be dealing.” Now that I heard myself reporting these details, I thought this sounded like a promising lead. I hoped the PSPD would follow up on it.
Sheila seemed to agree. “How can I get in touch with the roommate?”
I fished up Amanda’s boyfriend’s number and gave it to her, then put down the phone and hurried into Ruby’s shop. She was just finishing up with a customer who was buying some essential oil and a book on aromatherapy. The oil was the same one that Ruby was using in a fragrance diffuser on her counter. She used to burn incense, but the smoke (she says) can transmit harsh, even carcinogenic chemicals into the air, and it bothered some of her customers who suffered from asthma. So she turned to a diffuser instead, and creates and sells her own unique mood-altering blends. I asked her once if she could come up with a fragrance that would encourage people to pull out their checkbooks and credit cards, but she said she didn’t think that was funny.
“Listen, Ruby,” I said urgently. “I just found out that Jessica’s car has been located. It’s parked in the apartment complex where Gloria Graham lived. Hill Country Villa, on Sam Houston.”
“That’s good news,” Ruby said. She closed the cash drawer as the customer left the shop. “I think. Is it good news?” She frowned. “Who’s Gloria Graham?”
Things had been so hectic that there hadn’t been time to fill Ruby in on everything that had happened that morning. “She’s the girl who burned to death in the trailer,” I said hurriedly. “At least, that’s the tentative identification. Jessica may have gone to her place because she thought she had a line on Graham’s killer.” I was leaping to all sorts of conclusions here, but at the moment, at least, they seemed warranted. “I need to drive over there and check things out. Is that okay with you? Gina can take over for me, and now that the lunch rush is over, the afternoon will probably be pretty quiet. I hate to leave you in the lurch, but I feel that I ought to . . .”
I stopped. Ruby was looking at me with an odd little smile. “What?” I demanded impatiently. “What’s that smile supposed to mean?”
“If I told you no,” she said quietly, “you would either sulk or throw a temper tantrum. Wouldn’t you?”
“I would not,” I said hotly. “I would just deal with it, the way I always do. I would just . . . just . . .” My voice trailed off.
“Just what?”
I sighed. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’d more likely sulk than throw a tantrum, though. I only pitch a fit when there’s nobody around.” I paused, remembering that Ruby had been in the room the last time I had blown up. “Mostly, anyway. With a few exceptions. I let my closest friends see who I really am.”
With another smile, Ruby put out her hand and gently turned my face in the direction of the diffuser. “Breathe,” she commanded.
“Why?”
“Never mind. Just breathe.”
I breathed. I breathed again. Whatever she was diffusing in that diffuser, it smelled very good.
“There,” she said. Her voice was soothing. “Don’t you feel calmer?”
Actually, I did. I felt less jittery and jumpy, less frantic. I took another breath and began to relax. “What is it?”
“Sandalwood, with clary sage, cloves, and a few other essential oils. My customers say that they begin to feel calm the minute they walk in the door. When they feel calmer, they slow down. They’re not in such a rush.”
“Mmm,” I said, wondering if calm customers might take more time to shop. “I guess I won’t throw a tantrum this afternoon. Even for my closest friend.”
<
br /> “I thought so.” She grinned. “So go already, China. We’ll keep an eye on Caitlin.”
“It’s okay?” I took one last breath and straightened up. “Really? You won’t be mad if I take off for an hour or so?”
“I will be seriously mad if you don’t go find out what has happened to Jessica Nelson.” Ruby reached behind her, pulled out a tissue and a small bottle, and dropped a bit of oil on the tissue. She handed it to me. “Put this on the dashboard of your car, in the sun. Now go solve a crime or two.”
“What’s this?” I asked, looking down at the tissue.
“Rosemary oil. It energizes the mind and stimulates the adrenal glands. Calm is wonderful, but you have a job to do this afternoon. You need to be on your game.”
What did I do to deserve such a friend?
Chapter Nineteen
Margaritas are traditionally made with silver tequila, which is produced from the blue agave (Agave tequilana Weber), a stately plant with long, stiff leaves, each defended by a row of sinister teeth and a needle-like tip. This well-armed member of the lily family thrives in an arid climate in volcanic soil. In the Tequila region of the state of Jalisco, Mexico, where much of the blue agave is commercially grown, the fields cover the slopes of two extinct volcanoes. ¡Salud!
China Bayles
“Mood-Altering Plants”
Pecan Springs Enterprise
The Hill Country Villa rambles over a wide expanse of carefully landscaped hillsides on the east side of campus. As you drive into the complex, the first thing you see is a cluster of beautiful blue agaves—a relative of the plant that’s used to make tequila—carefully mulched with white gravel. Ahead, you can see three architecturally pleasing units arranged around a swimming pool large enough to launch a Nautilus sub and a couple of tugboats. The buildings are surrounded by tennis, basketball, and volleyball courts and a soccer field—all of it designed for students who have plenty of time to play and the money to finance their leisure pursuits. There is also plenty of parking, in a residents’ parking garage adjacent to the central unit and in an open visitors’ lot a little distance away.
I located Jessica’s green Ford easily, not only because it was the oldest car in the lot (the others were late-model sports cars, Jeeps, a Hummer, and an SUV with a rack of water skis on top and a muscle boat hitched to the rear) but because there was a Pecan Springs police car parked beside it, and a uniformed officer, making notes on a clipboard. Some Texas police departments have squad cars with onboard computers, but Sheila says it’ll be a while before that happens in Pecan Springs. We’re still a small town, with a small town’s public safety budget. She’d rather put the money into patrol officers than computers.
The rosemary that scented my car really did smell delicious, and I took one last deep breath before I opened the door, got out, and called to the officer. “Hey, Jerry!”
Jerry is short for Jeraldine, but if you call her that, you’d better be ready to duck. She and I met on what you might call official business, when a man with a gun broke into my shop a week or so before Christmas. Jerry was one of the officers who answered my 9-1-1 call and helped to subdue the intruder. She may be only an inch above the regulation height minimum, but she grew up on a ranch where her favorite sport was calf-wrestling, and I think she likes it when somebody is foolish enough to resist arrest. She had also liked what she’d seen of the shop that morning and had dropped in several times since.
“Hey, China,” she drawled, in her flat East Texas twang. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Chief Dawson phoned me. She said Jessica Nelson’s car had been spotted here. I’m a friend of Jessica’s.”
“She’s a student?” Jerry cast a raised-eyebrow look at the car, then around at the Villa’s obvious amenities. “Great little place she’s got here. Must be nice.”
“She doesn’t live here. She and her roommate have a place north of the campus.” I walked around the car. “No sign of a disturbance or a struggle?”
“Not that I can see,” Jerry said, “but somebody from the investigations unit will be along in a few minutes. They’ll give it a good going-over.”
I understood. Jerry’s job was to hang out until the investigators arrived. “Who reported it?”
“The manager noticed that the car’s been sitting here for a while—at least since Tuesday morning, she said, maybe Monday night. She checked, and it wasn’t registered as belonging to a tenant, so she gave it another twenty-four, then phoned for a tow truck. The towing service picked up the APB on the vehicle and called it in.”
“A piece of luck,” I said. That’s how it’s supposed to happen, but it doesn’t always work that way. The car could have sat in an impound lot for weeks before it was noticed again.
A brown Adams County sheriff’s car pulled up beside us, and Jerry turned. “My, my,” she said in an ironic tone. “We’re attracting a crowd.”
“Hello, Blackie,” I said, as the sheriff—wearing his brown uniform and his usual utility belt—got out of his car. He was alone.
“Why am I not surprised to see you here, China?” He turned to Jerry. “Any sign of the car’s owner, Officer?”
“No, sir,” Jerry said. She aimed an inquisitive glance at the county vehicle.
“Related business,” Blackie said, reading her look. “Your team is on its way.”
“Sheila told me you were coming to check out Gloria Graham’s apartment,” I said.
“Right. Unit One, second floor.” He added dryly, “I suppose you think that bringing in Fisher means that you’ve earned the right to tag along.”
“I do.” I grinned. “You got what you needed from Fisher?”
He nodded. “An interesting story. Several angles, a couple of leads.” He looked at me. “I doubt if our investigation would have turned her up, China. I owe you.”
He was right. There are things that cops can do and things they can’t. “I need to give you a couple of other items,” I said. Guiltily, I added, “I meant to call and fill you in on a phone conversation that took place after I left your office this morning, but things got hectic at the shop. If you let me tag along, I can do that now.”
“Come on, then.” To Jerry, he said, “Which way is the manager’s office?”
The officer pointed toward the central building, which sported a fancy white-columned portico. “Inside. Hang a right. First door on the left.” Her radio chirped. “Manager’s name is Linda Sternfeld,” she added, as she reached for it.
On the way to the office, I briefly sketched out for Blackie what Amanda had told me about Jessica’s relationship with Stuart Laughton. I concluded with, “So it seems that Laughton had been seeing both Gloria Graham and Jessica Nelson. Romance, sex, or both. And maybe more,” I added.
“Busy fellow,” Blackie remarked. “Guy with a big heart. Highpowered sex drive, too.”
“I hate this,” I said bleakly. “I’m acquainted with Stuart and I like him, although I’ve been a little uncomfortable around him sometimes. I’m sorry to hear that he’s been cheating on his wife. She’s a nice gal.” I didn’t blame Jessica, though. According to Amanda, Stuart had misrepresented his situation and Jessica had broken off their relationship when she learned the truth. I could chalk that up to a mistake. I’ve made a few like that in my time, and managed to extricate myself without too much damage. I could only hope that Jessica would, too.
“Uncomfortable?” Blackie asked.
“Yes. He’s a little too flirtatious for my taste. He’s a hands-on guy, if you know what I mean. But more to the point, he seems to be at the center of this situation. He’s a faculty member, and I like to think they’re above this sort of thing. But he’s made frequent trips to Mexico for his research. It’s possible that he’s somehow gotten involved with one of the cartels. Unlikely, but possible.”
Unlikely, yes. But this kind of thing happens. Justine Wyzinski, aka the Whiz, a law school buddy of mine who practices in San Antonio and South Texas, was recently asked to take the
case of a young doctor who had financed his way through medical school with a cartel affiliation. He was a paragon of respectability, according to his friends and colleagues, and couldn’t possibly have done what the Feds said he was doing. But Justine took a look at the case and declined to represent him. I didn’t blame her. Once you climb into bed with the drug lords, they may be reluctant to let you climb back out—especially if they like your work. If she had pled him out or gotten him off, there could have been another, and another.
“Maybe Gloria Graham wanted to make some extra money,” I added, “and Laughton recruited her. It’s possible that he tried to do the same thing with Jessica, too. Maybe she refused and he—”
Blackie raised a hand. “Whoa,” he cautioned. “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Given what Shannon Fisher reported and what I’ve just heard from you, I’ll be talking to Laughton as soon as I’m finished here. But we don’t have a positive on the trailer fire victim yet. And we don’t know what’s happened to Nelson. In fact, we don’t know that anything has happened to her.”
“Oh, right,” I said, with some sarcasm. “Like maybe she parked her Ford here, then hopped a bus to Austin and forgot to let anybody know where she was going.”
“Or she ran into a friend of the opposite sex, and they went off together for some fun,” Blackie said. The radio on his belt chirped, and he stopped to speak into it.
Blackie was right about the identification. And as far as Jessica’s disappearance was concerned, there were suspects other than Stuart Laughton. There was the jerk—the next-door neighbor, for instance. And there was Larry Wolff, whom I had not yet tried to track down. And how about—
“Hey, Matt,” somebody called. “Yo! Simmons!”
Matt Simmons? The name rang a bell, and I turned. A tall, strongly built guy in his early twenties—brown hair, rugged good looks—was striding along the walk in front of the central building. He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt that shouted OAXACA! in multicolored letters dancing around a big sombrero, and leather sandals.
Mourning Gloria Page 24
