Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 Read online

  Mistletoe Man

  Susan Wittig Albert

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK

  Praise for Mistletoe Man ..

  "Ms. Albert artfully uses Texas language patterns to bring the down-home town of Pecan Springs alive with eccentrics in abundance in this colorful Christmas story."

  —The Dallas Morning News

  "China proves herself intelligent, independent, persistent and compassionate... This is a funny, human story that will give Albert's admirers a ringing jingle bell romp."

  —Publishers Weekly

  Raves for

  SUSAN WITTIG ALBERT'S previous China Bayles mysteries...

  LAVENDER LIES ... "Realistic, likable characters."

  —Chicago Tribune

  CHILE DEATH ... "Satisfying ... Not too spicy, just right."

  —Publishers Weekly

  LOVE LIES BLEEDING... "The best yet in an appealing

  series." —Booklist

  RUEFUL DEATH ... "A page-turner." —Publishers Weekly

  ROSEMARY REMEMBERED ... "Memorable, indeed."

  —Publishers Weekly

  HANGMAN'S ROOT... "Fine observations and sly humor."

  —Wilson Library Journal

  WITCHES' BANE... "A delightful cast of unusual characters."

  —Booklist

  THYME OF DEATH ... "Lively and engaging."

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  Mistletoe Man

  Susan Wittig Albert

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK

  Dedicated to the memory of Marge Bell Clark

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP Published by tile Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  MISTLETOE MAN

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author Copyright © 2000 by Susan Wittig Albert.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 1-4406-6586-9

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Pamela and Frank Arnosky, of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers, in Blanco, Texas, for their fascinating and informative articles in Lynn Byczynski's newsletter, Growing for Market. The Arnoskys' articles have given me useful information about the challenges and rewards of growing flowers for market in Central Texas.

  Thanks to Bill, who makes it all possible, day after day. And to expert herbalists Theresa Lowe, Carolee Synder, Pat Reppert, Sybil Kunkle, Betsy Williams, and Deborah Cravens: E-mail friends who are generous with their advice and support and who surprise me, over and over, with their adventures and insights into the magical, mysterious world of herbs.

  And speaking of herbs, I must add this caution to all readers:

  Please don't use this novel as your herbal guide to good health. While both China Bayles and I have a great deal of confidence in medicinal plants and frequently use them ourselves, neither of us would presume to prescribe them as a treatment for your ailments.

  The Druids hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe... and when it is discovered, it is gathered with great ceremony, on the sixth day of the moon, which for these Gallic tribes constitutes the beginning of the months and the years.... Hailing the moon in a native word that means "healing all things," they prepare a ritual sacrifice and banquet beneath a tree and bring up two white bulls.. .. A priest wearing white vestments climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts down the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloak. Then finally they kill the victims, praying to their god to render his gift propitious to those on whom he has bestowed it.

  Pliny the Elder (C.E. 23-79)

  Chapter One

  There are three species of mistletoe, one European, the other two American. All three are parasites that invade a host tree and feed off its nutrients. European mistletoe (Viscum album) the legendary "Golden Bough," was believed to cure epilepsy and ulcers, encourage fertility, banish evil spirits, promote peace, and serve as an antidote to poisons. American mistletoes (Phoradendron sp.), which are widely collected as Christmas decorations, have been used to treat cholera, hysteria, heart problems, and nervous conditions. Western dwarf mistletoes (Arceuthobium sp.) are deadly tree pests whose infestations threaten whole forests. Their leaves have no decorative or medicinal value.

  China Bayles "Mistletoe Magic" Home and Garden page, Pecan Springs Enterprise

  I said goodbye to Rowena Riddle and put the phone down with a bang.

  "Uh-oh," Laurel Wiley said. "Doesn't sound good." "It isn't," I said grimly. "The Christmas Tour of Homes is only a week from tomorrow, and I haven't even started to clean house, much less decorate. Now Rowena wants to know what sort of herbal goodies I'll be serving to the guests, so she can put it into the program." I made a face. "She wants to know what my theme is, too."

  It was still a few minutes before nine, and the pale winter sun was just beginning to slant through the window. But Saturday's a big day at Thyme and Seasons, especially during the holiday season. Laurel turned the closed sign to open and straightened the Christmas wreath on the front door. She has been my full-time shop assistant since last spring, when I had to take time off to deal with a major crisis in my personal life. Part Cherokee, Laurel has a wide streak of earthy common sense.

  "Seems like a reasonable request to me," she said. "What are you serving?"

  I retrieved the cash drawer from under the dust rags. "Hey, give me a break! The Thanksgiving turkey is hardly cold on the platter. We're still eating leftover s
tuffing." I shook my head disgustedly. "Whatever made me agree to have the house included in that stupid tour, anyway? Everybody else has a theme, or a color scheme, or they're decorating ten dozen angel cookies. I haven't done the laundry since Halloween, much less decked the halls. It'll be a disaster!"

  Laurel Hipped her long brown braid back over her shoulder and began to straighten a rack of herbal recipe books. "If it wasn't the tour, it'd be something else," she said pragmatically. "A crisis in the tearoom, maybe, or a case of the flu. Nobody ever gets through the holidays without at least a couple of disasters." She grinned. "Especially not you, China."

  Khat, the elegant Siamese who lives in the shop, sauntered in and leaped up on the counter for his morning stroking. I shoved the cash drawer into the register and checked to see that the tape was working. The register is a genuine antique—I bought it when Drews Dry Goods went out of business after seventy years at the same location on the square—and it loves to eat the paper tape. But it functions when the electricity goes out (which is more than you can say for computerized registers), and the old bell's satisfied jingle makes customers smile.

  "Let's not talk about a crisis in the tearoom," I told Laurel firmly. "Let's not even think about it."

  Thyme for Tea, which Ruby Wilcox and I opened in late September, has outstripped even Ruby's wildly optimistic financial projections. In late October, the annual Pecan Pageant attracted flocks of tourists to Pecan Springs, and we were far busier than we'd expected. The weekend after that, the Herb Fair brought in customers from as far away as Dallas and El Paso, all of them wanting to sample our menu. And then, to make a good situation even better, Mrs. Kendall appeared out of nowhere and offered her services as a part-time chef—a superb chef, as we learned to our great delight—which has given us a little breathing room. But Thyme for Tea is not even three months old, and it's too soon to congratulate ourselves. I didn't want to think about a crisis there, or anywhere else, for that matter. I was ready to settle in for a happy and restful Christmas season, the first that McQuaid and I would spend together as a married couple.

  If you're new to Pecan Springs and are feeling a little lost, let me help you get your bearings. My name is China Bayles, and I own Thyme and Seasons, which is located in a century-old stone building at 304 Crockett Street, just east of Guadalupe and a couple of blocks from the courthouse square. In the same building, adjoining Thyme and Seasons, is the Crystal Cave, a New Age shop owned by Ruby Wilcox, my tenant and best friend, where you can buy crystals, weird music, tarot cards, and books about Wicca or astrology or healthful living. In the space behind both shops, where I used to live, we've located our new joint venture, Thyme for Tea. At the back of the large lot is a remodeled stone stable where Ruby and I hold classes (I teach herb cookery and crafts, Ruby teaches meditation and astrology and other mystical stuff)- Both buildings are surrounded by a maze of small gardens, which you really must visit the next time you're here. I'm especially proud of my apothecary and culinary gardens, as well as the butterfly garden, the moon garden, and the Shakespeare garden, green and pretty even in winter. People can buy herbs and potpourri and New Age music at Wal-Mart or the Big Thrif-T on Nueces Street, but they come here because of the gardens and the herb classes and workshops, and because Ruby and Laurel and I are passionate about what we do. And also because Wal-Mart does not have a Khat.

  Like most small business owners, I spend enough hours in the shop and the gardens to qualify as a full-time resident, but I no longer live on the premises. About eighteen months ago, I moved in with Mike McQuaid and his thirteen-year-old son, Brian, and at the end of September, a couple of weeks before Ruby and I opened Thyme for Tea, McQuaid and I were married. We live a couple of miles west of town in the big white Victorian house on Lime Kiln Road—the one with the Christmas Tour of Homes sign out in front and the elderly bassett hound sleeping under the front step. (The bassett, who is a grumpy old dog, is the reason my Siamese, Khat, elected to live at the shop.) Around the first of January, if all the paperwork goes as it's supposed to, McQuaid and I will no longer be renting this marvelous house—it will be ours, a thought that both comforts and unnerves me at the same time.

  If you think that all these changes have come easily, think again. Independence, autonomy, and privacy have always been at the very top of my list of personal issues (right up there with being my own boss and loving what I do for a living), so it was pretty tough to give up my nifty one-person apartment and become McQuaid's roommate and Brian's surrogate mom—even though I loved both of them enough to give it my best shot. It wasn't a whole lot easier to agree to Ruby's proposition that she should invest the income from her big lottery win in the tearoom. We've been friends for a long time and I knew I could trust her. I was grateful for her generosity, too—without it, the tearoom wouldn't have been possible. But I didn't want to be financially dependent on Ruby or responsible for her financial investment, and I couldn't help feeling that taking a partner would compromise my autonomy, not to mention my privacy. You don't keep secrets from your business partner—not if you want the business to survive. It was a while before I could bring myself to agree, and I'm still second-guessing my decision.

  Toughest of all was the decision to marry McQuaid. I agonized over it, afraid that marriage would erode a relationship I had come to value. Worse, I feared that the daily, inevitable compromises of married life would gnaw away at my last shreds of autonomy and send me hurtling down a slippery slope to total personal and financial subjugation. (This may sound a bit over the top, but that's how I was feeling about it.) However, events—not the least of which was McQuaid's getting shot last February, when he was working undercover for the Texas Rangers—persuaded me that marriage was the right thing and now was the right time. The shooting left McQuaid with a lingering paralysis and, for longer than I like to remember, a fierce and anguished despair. His recovery has been a painful struggle to regain his physical strength and mobility as well as his old optimism. Right now, he's on sabbatical leave from Central Texas State University, where he teaches in the Criminal Justice Department, and the time off has helped him cope with the lingering effects of the shooting. Our marriage has helped too. Now that we've made the commitment, we're both beginning to heal, he from the physical disabilities that nearly crippled him, me from my crippling fears of intimacy. He'll probably get well before I do. I might get the hang of it after a couple more centuries of practice.

  Laurel broke into my thoughts. "Why not ask Mrs. K?" she said. She poured lemon oil on a dust cloth and began to polish the wooden counter. Khat purred and arched against her arm, asking her to rub his ears.

  I'd lost track of the conversation. "Ask Mrs. K what?"

  "To make goodies for your Christmas tour guests. She could bake those terrific fruit cake cookies she just added to the menu, or the lemon thyme bars that everybody likes. She could use the kitchen here, and leave you free to concentrate on the laundry and the Christmas decorations." Laurel grinned. "And whatever other disasters crop up."

  "Great idea," I said. "If she'll do it." Mrs. Kendall was a law unto herself. She might not be willing to accept an extra job. But it certainly wouldn't hurt to ask.

  Not getting the attention he wanted from Laurel, Khat turned to me. I picked him up, scratched his ears, and began to survey the shop, which (unlike my house) was beautifully decorated for Christmas, with wooden bowls of clove-studded pomanders and potpourri, a tiny Christmas tree decorated with gingerbread cookies and popcorn-and-cranberry chains, and fresh green branches of rosemary everywhere.

  But I wasn't admiring the Christmassy effect, I was checking to see what required special attention. Thyme and Seasons is small, which makes it easy to see at a glance what items we need to restock or reorder. Wooden shelves hold books, essential oils, and jars of bulk herbs, as well as the herb products I buy from local crafters: jellies, vinegars, seasoning blends, potpourris, soaps, and cosmetics. Baskets of dried strawflowers, poppy pods, statice, arte-misia, and baby's
breath fill the corners, along with pots and buckets of Christmas herbs: rosemary, ivy, holly, lavender, thyme, mistletoe. The stone walls and cypress-beamed ceiling are hung with garlic braids, red-pepper ris-tras, wreaths, and—

  I frowned as a large bare space caught my eye. One entire wall—and the ceiling as well—should have been hung with holiday wreaths, our best-selling Christmas item.

  "Hey, Laurel, we're sold out of wreaths again," I said. Just a day or so ago, when I'd checked, there'd been plenty. We buy from several local crafters, but the most popular holiday wreaths, garlands, and swags come from two sisters, Donna and Terry Fletcher, who use herbs and flowers gathered from the fields of their flower farm and dried in their barn.

  Laurel nodded. "The Fletchers were supposed to bring in two dozen twenty-four-inch grapevine wreaths and a dozen swags yesterday, but Donna called to say they'd be late with the order." Laurel tied on her Thyme and Seasons apron and reached for the broom. "Things have been pretty hectic at the farm, apparently. Something's wrong with their van, and their dog got his leg caught in a trap."

  "Oh no, not Max!" I exclaimed. Max is classic Border collie, intelligent, confident, and totally in charge of everything. "He's not—"

  Laurel shook her head. "He'll be okay. The leg was pretty badly mangled, but Donna said the vet managed to save it. Apparently Aunt Velda is taking it worse than Max." She chuckled. "She's convinced that the Little Green Men set the trap in order to capture him. She thinks they want her back, too."

  This is one of those things that shouldn't be funny, but it is. Aunt Velda was abducted by aliens two years ago, and she hasn't been the same since they sent her home on furlough. I don't know how Donna and Terry find the patience to deal with her various weirdnesses, but their aunt is their only living relative and they refuse to pack her off to a nursing home until it is absolutely necessary. It may be a while before that happens. Aunt Velda is pushing seventy-five, but she's as strong as she was at sixty and twice as stubborn. In spite of having been abducted by aliens and given the grand tour of the galaxy, there isn't much wrong with her.