Hangman's root : a China Bayles mystery Read online

  I took a deep breath. The enemy was advancing on my walls. "Love and living together aren't—"

  "Shut up," he said. "I know the drawbacks—Brian, the dog, the cat, your business, my work. There's two of everything, including egos and refrigerators. But we can handle it. Anyway, if we got a place together, it would solve the space problem you've been bitching about lately."

  I frowned. "How do you figure that?"

  "Simple," he said. "Take down the wall between the shop and your bedroom and living room." He looked at me, challenging. "The shop's twenty by twenty. Open up the wall and you double it. And you could use the kitchen for your classes. That'd work, wouldn't it?"

  "It . . . might," I said. Actually, taking down the wall was a very good idea. I supposed I hadn't thought of it because I'd have to find somewhere else to sleep. And because I'd been fixated on a solution I couldnt accept: evicting Ruby.

  "Admit it," he said. "I'm right about the space. Move in with me and double your space."

  Surrounded, I fell back to my final defensive position. "Even if I grant you that, there's still the dog and the cat. And the careen

  The last I heard, you'd sent your vita to NYU. What'll you do if they come through with an offer?"

  His face became still. "They did. Yesterday."

  "Then what's all this talk about getting a place?"

  "If you'll move in with me, I'll stay here."

  I stared at him. "You'd turn down . . . NYU?" The brass ring, the Big Apple, fame, fortune?

  He grinned crookedly, as if he were acknowledging a major character flaw. "Yeah. Crazy, huh?"

  It was one of those awful fork-in-the-road moments. What I wanted was what I had, what I was used to. My shop, my privacy, my life. What I also wanted was McQuaid, and in some corner of my being, a life together. The road I'd taken up to now included both. But not any longer. A turning point. A critical juncture. Fish or cut bait. It was as simple as that, and I was scared.

  His grin quit. "Well?"

  I looked away, my heart slamming against my ribs. "What if we can't find a place?" Pecan Springs is a small town. Rentals of the kind we'd be looking for aren't that easy to come by.

  He didn't miss a beat. "New Braunfels and San Marcos aren't that far. Anyway, it's getting close to the end of the semester. This is the best time to look."

  "I've got a business to run. I can't just take a month off to look for somewhere to live."

  "I've got spring break," he said. "I can screen places, then we can go see the ones that look like they might work."

  There was a silence. I made one final, last-ditch effort. "The dog," I said. "I could live with you. I might be able to live with Brian. But Howard Cosell—"

  His face was firm. "Me, the kid, the dog—we're all part of the deal. If Brian and I can put up with your disagreeable cat, you can live with Howard Cosell." He put his hands on my shoulders.

  " WhatVe you got to lose, China?" He was making a joke of it, his voice Hght. But his eyes were urgent.

  What have I got to lose? Nothing but my independence, my privacy, my sanity! I opened my mouth to say no. No, finally, and for all.

  "Well," I heard myself say, "if you really think we can find a place big enough to—"

  His mouth silenced me. After a moment he said, tenderly, against my hair, "I'll start with the paper. And I'll give Barry Kibler a call and see what he's got listed."

  We went back to the table and sat down. I got back up and poured the coffee. Then I got up again to get the second jelly doughnut from behind the canned soup.

  This was an emergency.

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  After McQuaid left, I began my attack on the plants, keeping my hands busy and my head disconnected from my heart. Being rational has always been much easier for me than being emotional. Maybe, way back there, it began with keeping my feelings out of the reach of my invasive mother, or with wanting to identify my girl self with the power and potency of my lawyer father, whose remoteness made him even more godlike. Or maybe it was fifteen years of being a lawyer myself. The law has a tendency to reward those who practice with hard-edged, hardheaded logic and penalizes those who let their emotions leak. Whatever it is, I usually deal with emotionally charged issues by locking my feelings into a mental safe and dropping the combination in the John, so to speak. So I concentrated on the hore-hound and costmary and ignored my anxieties.

  In the afternoon McQuaid called to say he was taking Brian to San Antonio to spend spring break with his mother. McQuaid and Sally have been divorced for nearly five years. She suffered

  some psychological problems and was hospitalized for a while. She and McQuaid were granted joint custody of Brian, but the boy chooses to be with his father, and she seems content to have it this way.

  On Monday nights Ruby and I usually go across the street to have dinner with Maggie Garrett at her restaurant, the Magnolia Kitchen. But Ruby was visiting her sister Ramona in Dallas and wouldn't be back until the next day, so Maggie and I shared a light meal of cauliflower soup seasoned with mint marigold (a wonderful substitute for the tarragon that doesn't do well in Texas), jicama and garbanzo salad, and Maggie's famous flowerpot herb bread. In a former incarnation, Maggie was Sister Margaret Mary, head cook at the convent about twenty miles west of town. She has the unmistakeable aura of an ex-nun, open face bare of makeup, direct eyes, and a gentle kindness that rises like an artesian spring out of the bottomless well of her spirit. I enjoyed Maggie's dinner and was grateful when she didn't ask any personal questions.

  After I got home, I sat for a long while in the living room, picturing what the place would look like with the wall opened up— although when it actually came to it, I wasn't sure it was a good thing. Tearing down walls always seems so sort of conclusive.

  At last, having managed for fourteen hours to keep my head and my heart from getting together, I went to bed.

  At nine on Tuesday morning, I unlocked Thyme and Seasons and went through my usual opening ritual: retrieving the cash drawer from its hiding place, sweeping, moving the plant racks outdoors, setting out snacks for customers—this morning, sage cheese crisps and iced spiced tea. I usually enjoy the ordinariness of the activity, which is a little like setting the table for friends.

  This morning, though, I kept wondering about that wall. I

  tried not to think of McQuaid, who was probably out looking for a house large enough to shelter us comfortably, something on the order of the Astrodome. I frowned. Was I translating one of life's most significant decisions into square feet simply because I didn't want to think of its other implications? Were the space and that damn wall metaphors for something else? I made myself stop thinking altogether and went out to do the watering.

  At ten I went through the connecting door to open the Crystal Cave for Ruby, who'd be back from Dallas sometime before noon. The prisms hanging in the window splashed showers of rainbows across the wall, and the air, as always, was scented with Ruby's favorite incense. The shelves were loaded with New Age toys designed, as Ruby puts it, "to enhance the subtle energies of your inner journey."

  Not my inner journey, thank you. I am dearly fond of Ruby and I would defend to the death (well, almost) her right to sell what she pleases. But sacred candles, astrology, statues of the goddess, and medicine bundles are not really my thing. Ruby tells me I am too left-brained. I tell her that I am continually amazed that she can actually make a living in Pecan Springs by selling tabletop Zen gardens and subliminal tapes that regress the listener through seventeen past lives without being arrested by Bubba Harris, Pecan Springs's chief of philistines.

  There was a tape in the player under the counter. I turned it on and the silence was broken by the eerie sounds of whales caroling to one another through unfathomable depths. I had just turned to go back to Thyme and Seasons when the front door opened. A young woman stood, diffident and irresolute, in the doorway. Her triangular face was familiar but I couldn't place it.

  "Are you open?" she asked.


  "Just," I said, turning down the volume on the whales. I added, encouragingly, "Make yourself at home. If you have any questions, I'll be next door." In the herb shop, many people are

  browsers, not buyers, at least the first time they come in. Making a sale usually comes second to educating them about herbs. It's the same in Ruby's business, although if this customer wanted to know about pyramid power or the difference between one tarot deck and another, she'd have to wait until Ruby got back.

  But the young woman—early twenties, tall, with freckles and red hair cut short on the sides, with a little tail in back—was neither a browser nor a shopper. She walked hesitantly to the counter and stood there, a wary look in her hazel eyes and a mix of apprehension and determination in her expression, as if she were torn between standing her ground and getting the hell out of there.

  An odd one, I thought. She held one hand awkwardly behind her, and alarm bells jangled in my head. Ruby's shop was broken into once, but neither she nor I have ever been held up. There's a first time for everything, though. Then I saw the PETA button on the young woman's striped blouse, and I remembered.

  "Weren't you handing out leaflets at the rattlesnake sacking championship this weekend.^" My question held relief, mixed with guilt for being unreasonably suspicious of her. Somebody who stuck up for rattlesnakes seemed unlikely to stick up the Crystal Cave.

  She bit her lip. "Yes," she said. Her freckles were like flecks of copper paint against her pale cheeks, and there was a faint tic at the comer of her eye. Whatever her errand, it was definitely making her edgy. Her glance slid off to one side, then down. Then, as if the act took all her courage, she looked straight at me, meeting my questioning glance.

  "My name is Amy . . . Roth," she said, concentrating on my face. The corners of her mouth quivered. "And you are ..." She swallowed hard, twice.

  She was wanting me to introduce myself, I thought. She was probably proselytizing for PETA, and nervous about making

  cold calls. Well, it wouldn't hurt me to make a donation. After what rd seen on Sunday, I could certainly find a few bucks to save the snakes. I extended my hand to put her at her ease. 1 m—

  She ignored my hand. "I know who you are." Her voice was thick and she swallowed again. Suddenly, surprisingly, her eyes filled with tears. "YouVe my mother"

  i

  I stared at the girl. Her mother} The notion was so absurd that I had to suppress the urge to giggle. But that would have been unforgivable. Amy Roth was dead serious.

  "I'm sorry," I said. I dropped my hand. "There's been a mistake."

  "Yes." She blinked the tears away fast, pretending they weren't there. Her voice held a childhood's worth of bitterness. ''Your mistake. Twenty-five years ago last month."

  I shook my head. "People get confused about paternity all the time. Amy, but maternity is a different matter If I had been your mother, I couldn't forget that I—"

  "Please," she said wearily. "I didn't come to listen to your excuses. I have a perfectly decent adoptive mother and father who worked hard to give me a good start in life, after you walked out on me. All I want from you is a simple acknowledgment that I exist and—"

  The back door banged opened. The woman who sailed in was remarkable in ankle-length black skirt, loose green tee that said "My Other Body's in the Shop," and black flats that kept her height to six feet. Her orange hair was frizzed around a green felt beret that sported a cockade of peacock feathers and her peacock feather earrings could have doubled as feather dusters. Ruby

  Wilcox, my best friend and tenant, in her working clothes. I looked at Ruby and back at Amy, and suddenly I knew why Amy had seemed familiar the first time I saw hen

  I straightened up. "Amy, my name is China Bayles. And this is Ruby Wilcox." I turned to Ruby. Over the past three years of being friends, we had often shared our life histories. Obviously, one of us had left something out. "Ruby, this is Amy Roth."

  Amy's glance teetered from one of us to the other, finally landing on Ruby. "Uh, hi," she said.

  "Hello." Ruby stepped briskly around the counter, her flats making little tap-taps on the floor. "Were you looking for something special?"

  "In a manner of speaking," I said.

  Amy looked back at me, coloring. "Fm sorry."

  "That's quite all right." I smiled. "But you did startle me. I was beginning to wonder whether I'd misplaced nine months of my life."

  Ruby frowned. "Excuse me?"

  "I think," I remarked diplomatically, "that the two of you have something to discuss. Alone."

  It was a good thing business was slow that morning. About an hour after Amy's dramatic appearance. Ruby came through the connecting door. Her face was red and splotchy and the mascara had run in sooty rivulets down her cheeks. Without a word, I handed her a glass of spiced tea and a plate of sage cheese crisps and made her sit down on the stool behind the counter.

  "Bad, huh?" I asked.

  "Awful." She blew her nose into her paper napkin. "It took her two years and every cent she could scrape together to get the court records unsealed and find out who I was. Honestly, China, I never thought the birth could be traced." She thought for a

  Hangman '^ Root ^/

  minute, then shook her head. "But I didn't have any other choice. I just did what I had to do and put it out of my mind. If I'd thought about it—if I'd thought about her, I'd have gone crazy."

  I leaned against the counter, imagining Ruby as she must have been back then, a scared kid—younger even than Amy— with no choices. "Do you want to tell me?"

  Ruby nibbled on a crisp. "I had her before I married Wade," she said. Ruby would have been in college by that time. She and Wade had a daughter. Shannon, now a junior at the University of Texas, in Austin. They've been divorced for four years.

  "Why did you give her up?"

  "What else could I do?" Ruby's head was bowed, her voice heavily scored with twenty-five-year-old guilt. "All I had was a part-time job with the phone company, and Roe v. Wade hadn't happened yet. Her father was killed in Vietnam the same week I found out I was pregnant. Mom took over after that."

  "Oh," I said. I could imagine that. Ruby's mom still took over, every chance she got.

  "Yeah. She sent me to a home for unwed mothers up in Dallas. I never even saw the baby. A couple of years later, Wade came along. The next thing I knew, we were engaged." She laughed sardonically. "Mom and Dad thought he hung the moon. He sang in the choir."

  I took her hand. "I'm sorry," I said. "God, what a shock it must have been."

  "It was so long ago," Ruby said despairingly. "I never thought Fd have to face it. I thought it was over."

  "It is over. You gave her birth. Somebody else mothered her."

  She lifted anguished eyes. "Over!" she exclaimed. "Now that I see her, I know it will never be over. If only I hadn't let Mom tell me what to do! If only I'd kept her! If only—"

  I held up my hand, stemming the tide. "Ruby," I said quietly, "then is then. Now is now. What does Amy want from you?"

  Ruby hesitated, not quite ready to relinquish her "if onlys."

  "Now? Well, she's a graduate student in journalism at CTSU and she works in the pet store at the Pecan Springs Mall. She was very definite about not wanting money. She wants recognition. She wants to be part of the family."

  I hesitated. "Are you sure about the family bit? I got the idea that she only wants to be acknowledged." Only? Isn't having our existence acknowledged the most important thing there is? Isn't that what we all want, deep down?

  "That's what she said, " Ruby replied. "But she didn't come just to hear me say 'Hi, kid, sure, I'm your mom. Now beat it.' You don't spend two years digging up your mother—"

  I smothered a laugh. Ruby's metaphors sometimes get away from her.

  Ruby frowned. "I mean it, China. She said she dreamed about finding me for years and years. It was all she thought about. It's not fair to just sort of leave her hanging. Well, is it?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I'm no
expert on mothers and daughters." In my oldest memories of Leatha, my mother, she's getting blitzed while she waits for my father to come home from the office. After a while she stops waiting and just gets blitzed. Dad died ten years ago, she joined AA and got therapy, and now she's marrying again. But while I'm glad that Leatha is pulling herself together, her recovery doesn't mean much to me. I still feel a deep-down vacant place where the mother part ought to be. I hoped that Amy's adoptive mother had filled that vacancy for her.

  Ruby closed her eyes, sighing heavily. "I'll have to tell Shannon."

  "Why are you making such a big deal about it?" I asked. "It's none of Shannon's business. It's not like the three of you are going to be living together." When I said that, I remembered I had something important of my own to tell Ruby. Amy's birth announcement had driven it out of my head.

  Ruby's eyes popped open. "But Shannon's got a sister! She has to know,''

  "A half-sister," I said. "Really, Ruby, I think it would be a mistake to make a big deal out of this. Let Amy take the lead in this family thing. Wait and see what she's comfortable with."

  But Ruby wasn't listening. Where matters of the heart are concerned, her only gait is a flat-out gallop. "I'll have to tell Mother, too," she said. "I wonder how she'll take the news."

  "Speaking of news," I said, and told her.

  "You're moving in with McQuaid!" She pummeled my arm, shrieking. "China! That's great! That's terrific! I'm so thrilled! We'll have to get everybody together and have a big housewarm-ing party!"

  "Not so fast." I pulled my arm back, "I said, maybe. Anyway, first we've got to find a house."