Spanish Dagger Read online

  And she’s been right, by golly. Thanks to her firm and capable management, Thyme for Tea and Party Thyme are turning a healthy profit. Ruby may look like and act like a card-carrying member of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, but there’s an admirable brain beneath those bouncy red curls and an iron fist in that yellow velvet glove.

  Cassandra Wilde—in the kitchen, stashing Carole’s breakfast goodies in the refrigerator—turned our duo into a trio when she joined our enterprise this spring. Cass is blonde and bountiful and proud of it. “Sassy, brassy, and size twenty-two,” she coos seductively. “Wanna see my love handles, sweetie?” Her sense of style and color is as outrageous as Ruby’s, and since there’s some eighty pounds more of her than there is of Ruby, the effect can be…well, a little overwhelming. If you prefer shrinking violets, Cass’ in-your-face attitude will not win you over. On the other hand, her cooking will. Guaranteed.

  Ruby and I met Cass six or seven months ago on the set for A Man for All Reasons, a local amateur theater production. After opening night, she came to us with a bright idea: a personal chef service called the Thymely Gourmet that would be an extension of Ruby’s other two bright ideas. That is, people who enjoyed the food at Thyme for Tea and subsequently engaged Party Thyme to cater their garden party would be happy to hire the Thymely Gourmet (that’s Cass) to put a dozen splendid dinners in the freezer. After giving the proposal some thought—and giving Cass a trial run in the kitchen—we said yes, and we two became we three.

  Although I was initially skeptical about the Thymely Gourmet, I have to admit that the concept is a winner. Cass herself—a gifted cook who was recently certified as a personal chef by the American Culinary Foundation—is definitely adynamo. Shehas no Off button, her cheerfulness rarely wanes, and if you watch her too closely, you’ll get dizzy. Cass’ Thymely Gourmet has become, as Ruby puts it, “the third ring of our circus.” And even I have to admit that having Cass as one of the ringleaders makes the circus a lot more lively.

  Which leaves me. I’m China Bayles. I’m five-four in my Birkenstocks, a bit on the hefty side (although I’m on a campaign to lose some weight). My hair is brown with a streak of gray, my nails usually have garden dirt under them, and I don’t have an ounce of interest in fashionable clothes: jeans, tees, and tennies, that’s me. I was a criminal attorney in Houston before I moved to Pecan Springs, single, on the scary cliff of forty, and desperately soulweary. I was sick of playing games—the sort of dirty pool everybody has to play to make the justice system work—tired of fighting and clawing my way up the ladder, and ready, oh, more than ready, to lead a kinder, gentler, less combative life.

  So I opened an herb shop, planted a garden around it, and began collecting girlfriends. A few years into my new incarnation, I took a deep breath and said yes to a former Houston homicide detective named Mike McQuaid, whose marriage portion included his gun collection; his melancholy basset hound; his son, Brian (now fifteen); and Brian’s spiders, snakes, and lizards, who have staked out free-range privileges throughout our house. These collaborations have been challenging, since privacy, autonomy, and personal independence are high on my list of personal priorities. But I’ve managed, in spite of the difficulty in adjusting to Brian’s geckos and McQuaid’s guns—McQuaid is the name I used when we met on opposite sides of a legal issue, and it’s stuck. It’s been a good marriage, too, if a little scary sometimes, such as the day McQuaid announced that he was quitting his second career (as a professor in the Criminal Justice program at Central Texas State University) in order to hang out his shingle as a private investigator.

  Gulp. Ruby tells me I think too much and too logically about the possibilities, such as not being able to make the mortgage payments. She says I need to let go and listen to my Inner Teacher. But my Inner Teacher is also worried about the mortgage payments, especially because McQuaid’s last case was the rare book theft he investigated for Jeremy Paxton in March. We have now arrived at late April without a client, which is why I take heart when Ruby shows me our healthy bottom line. Two risky business ventures in one family is two too many. But by this time, Cass has finished in the kitchen, Carole and Ruby have caught up, and I am glancing at my watch. It is nearly five, time to help Laurel close up both shops.

  “I hate to be a spoilsport,” I said, “but I’ve got company coming for dinner tonight.” I was not looking forward to the occasion, but it could no longer be put off. There were questions that had to be answered. Old questions, maybe some new questions, none of which had any answers, at least as far as I was concerned.

  “I guess that means you can’t join Ruby and Cass and me for an early supper,” Carole said regretfully.

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  “I’ll have to take a rain check, too,” Cass said. “The Thymely Gourmet is serving an out-of-this-world dinner to a pair of prospective clients. Well-heeled clients, I am happy to say.”

  Ruby made a face. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do supper, either, Carole. I’ve got a personal problem. Two personal problems, actually.”

  “Only two?” I teased. I already knew about one. Ruby’s boyfriend had stood her up the night before, and she was fretting about it.

  Actually, it is no longer accurate to say that Colin is Ruby’s boyfriend. She was madly in love with him for months—and when Ruby is in love, it’s a passionate, wholehearted, hang-on-to-your-hat, over-the-top affair. She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and steps into the void, plunging into total free fall without so much as a bungee cord while her friends look on, wringing their hands in helpless dismay.

  But in early April, after months of feeding the eternal fire of hope with scraps of poor excuses, Ruby decided that Colin would never be able to give her what she wants: love, commitment, and a future together. So she told him she was turning down the flame, for which I have to give her a great deal of credit. Who among us is capable of actually ending a love affair, even when it falls pitifully short of our great expectations? I know what it cost Ruby to put some distance between herself and Colin and to assert her independence. I deeply admire her for stepping back from the brink of what was beginning to look like a toxic situation. And to give Colin credit, he agreed that breaking up was the right thing to do—with just enough regret to allow Ruby to feel he really did care, after all, but not enough to make her think she might have been just a tad too quick to push the eject button.

  But “distance” does not necessarily mean closure, and while Ruby is no longer extending those hopeful invitations to dinner-plus-sleepover at her house, she is still accepting Colin’s occasional evening-out invitations, on a just-friends basis. Not a good idea, if you ask me. Having been there and done that, it is my personal opinion that when a love affair dies, it ought to stay dead. Definitely, decidedly dead. If it threatens to rise again, it ought to be treated the way you’d handle a vampire—by plunging a dagger into its heart. Trying to resurrect it as a friendship can only extend the pain.

  But as usual, Ruby is doing things her way. Or not, as the case may be. Colin had planned to drop in about ten last night to pick up a box he had left in her keeping, then stay for soup and sandwiches. He didn’t show up, and she’s been fretting all day. I feel for her, of course. It’s no fun to be stood up, even if you’ve made up your mind that your heart is no longer in love. But failure to show up for a date was one of Colin’s less agreeable habits, and Ruby ought to be used to it by now. His unreliability is one of the reasons—but only one—that I am not his biggest fan.

  “What’s the other problem?” I asked.

  Ruby’s shoulders slumped. “My mother.”

  “You can’t solve your mother in one evening,” Cass said sympathetically. “What’s she done now?”

  Ruby’s mother lives at Cedar Summit, a retirement village in Fredericksburg, about an hour’s drive from Pecan Springs. Under the best of circumstances, Doris is not the kind of person you want to spend time with. She always wears a sour expression, as if life has not gone according to her expe
ctations and plans; understandable, given the fact that no matter how much willpower and muscle you exert over events and people, you can’t dictate how everything turns out. Doris has definitely given it her best shot, though. Ruby was nineteen when she found out she was pregnant—the same week the baby’s father was killed in Viet Nam. When Ruby started to show, Doris packed her off to a home for unwed mothers in Dallas and insisted that the baby be given up for adoption, even though Ruby desperately wanted to keep her. It was years before Amy came back into her mother’s life, and Ruby still mourns all those lost decades.

  It is a sad irony that, in the last few months, Doris the super-controller has been losing her grip. She gets lost, she misplaces her door key and her checkbook, she forgets appointments, and she has morphed into a kleptomaniac with a passion for scarves—and not your ordinary, dinky dime-store scarves, either. A couple of weeks ago, the security guard at Dillard’s stopped Doris from waltzing out the door with a pricy alligator bag stuffed full of hand-painted silk scarves. Doris claimed that she’d merely forgotten to stop at the cash register to pay for the bag and its contents, but the security tapes told a different story. And when Ruby started snooping around her mother’s apartment, she found silk scarves hidden in the closet, in drawers, in the refrigerator, in the oven. The conclusion is clear: Doris is losing her marbles. Or, as the colorful Texas expression has it, she’s a few peaches short of a pie.

  “What’s happened now?” Ruby repeated in a depressed tone. “It’s not pretty. I got a call from Melanie, the administrator at Cedar Summit. Maybe you remember that Mom can’t drive her car any longer—she lost her license after she ran into that school bus last spring. But her car is still in the parking lot until we decide what to do with it. This afternoon, she took the keys from the board in the office, and when the guard wouldn’t let her drive out of the compound, she locked herself in the car.”

  “Oh, dear!” Carole exclaimed. “Is she all right?”

  “Right as rain,” Ruby said ironically. “Melanie called a locksmith and they got her out within the hour. But she was…well, her language was even worse than it was after the car wreck.” She shook her head. “The school bus, the shoplifting, and now this—it’s clear that Mom has some serious problems. Melanie is insisting that we move her into a supervised unit. She wants to schedule a psychiatric evaluation, as well. I talked to Ramona—my sister, who lives in Dallas—and both of us agree. I’m driving to Fredericksburg tonight to tell Mom what has to be done.”

  Poor Ruby. Doris was not going to leave her apartment willingly. She wouldn’t take kindly to “evaluation,” either. “If you have to stay overnight,” I said, “don’t worry about the shop or the tearoom. We can cover for you here.”

  “I can stop by and feed your cats in the morning,” Cass volunteered. “Call if there’s anything we can do.”

  “Thanks,” Ruby said. “I’ll phone if I can’t make it back.” She gave us each a hug, trying to smile, but her worried look didn’t disappear. If I knew Ruby, it wasn’t the shop or Doris that was bothering her. It was Colin Fowler, and for a fierce instant I hated him for causing her pain, for treating her as if she didn’t matter.

  I straightened my shoulders. Where Colin is concerned, there is nothing I can do for Ruby except hope that she will stop seeing him altogether. And I certainly couldn’t help her cope with Doris. Anyway, I had my own relatives to deal with tonight, and I sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Chapter Two

  LEMON-MINT TEA CONCENTRATE

  Lemon balm gladdens the heart, warms the stomach, and cheers the sad and melancholy.

  —Polish proverb

  Fresh herbs: mint, lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon verbena, 2 quarts water

  Gather and rinse about four cups of fresh herbs. Chop mint, lemon balm, and lemongrass. Strip the leaves from the lemon verbena and discard the stems. Bring water to a boil in a nonreactive pan. Add herbs, cover, and remove from heat. Steep for 10 minutes. Strain and refrigerate. Dilute two to four times, depending on the strength you prefer. Serve over ice, garnished with slices of lemon and sprigs of fresh mint.

  “Brian is having dinner at Jake’s house,” McQuaid said, peering into one of the grocery bags. “They’re working on their science project.”

  “That’s good,” I said decidedly. Jake is Brian’s girlfriend of some months’ standing. The kids have had more than their share of trouble in the past few months, after the high school football coach, a man whom their friends idolized, was shot. They had nothing at all to do with the shooting, but they were both on the scene and both were in a highly compromised situation. It was a tragedy for the whole town, and some of the kids at the high school—some Pecan Springs football fans, too—still blamed them. I was glad that Brian was gainfully occupied for the evening. He didn’t need to be faced with any more uncomfortable situations, especially in the family.

  McQuaid frowned. “I hope you remembered the salmon.” He was in charge of the grill tonight, and salmon is one of his favorite things to cook.

  I enumerated the items as I set them on the kitchen counter. “Salmon for the grill, and some fresh ginger for the marinade. Yellow squash, zucchini, plum tomatoes, onions, mushrooms—also for the grill. Potatoes. Salad fixings. Strawberries and whipping cream.” A container of soup and a loaf of herb bread were thawing on the counter, and I had made some concentrate for Leatha’s favorite lemon-mint iced tea before I left for the shop this morning. All I had to do was marinate the salmon and veggies for the grill, make a salad, and mix and bake the shortcakes. Everything easy. Everything under control.

  Everything except me. McQuaid caught the expression on my face, put down the package of salmon fillets, and pulled me to him. Ruggedly good-looking, my husband has dark hair, steely blue eyes, and a twice-broken nose. But best of all, he’s six-feet-something, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and comfortable in his body. Nothing rocks him, nothing knocks him off-balance. When he holds me, he is steady and strong and solid as an oak, the kind of man you can rely on when the world turns upside down.

  “Hey, babe,” he said softly, kissing my ear. “Don’t sweat it. They’ll get along—at least, they’ll be civil. Leatha is your mother. And Miles is your brother, for Pete’s sake. They’re civilized. There won’t be any violence.”

  I pulled away. “Half brother,” I corrected him testily.

  Robert Bayles, my father, had begun his long-term liaison with Laura Danforth before he married my mother, and Miles was the result. The affair had been going on for three decades when my father drove his blue Cadillac through a bridge rail and down a steep embankment, where it burst into flames, some sixteen years ago. An accident, my mother and I had been told. Something much more sinister, my half brother believed, after reading some letters his mother had saved. Miles was a lawyer, and lawyers love answers much more than questions. He wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery—if it had a bottom.

  After reading the letters for myself, I had to agree that the idea seemed plausible. But sixteen years is an eternity in law enforcement. As far as Houston Homicide was concerned, this wasn’t even a cold case. It was an automobile accident. Period. Paragraph. End of story. It would be impossible to get the matter reopened. If Miles wanted to dig around in the ugly past, that was his business. But I had told him to deal me out. I have a husband, a son, and a business to tend to. I am busy getting a life. I would be just as glad if Miles Danforth went away. Far away.

  He didn’t, of course, and now he was about to get what he asked for: an evening with Leatha, McQuaid, and me—the whole fam-damn-ily, as McQuaid’s easygoing father puts it with a chuckle. But Miles wanted more than a good meal and pleasant conversation. He intended to talk about the way Dad died. If there was a better recipe for an uncomfortable dinner party, I didn’t know what it was.

  I learned who Miles Danforth was just two months ago, around Valentine’s Day. It was a shock, for I had lived my entire life believing that I was an only child—and
all of a sudden, I wasn’t. I had a brother. As teenagers we hung around Stone, Bayles, Peck, and Dixon, my father’s law firm. Then, he was just Buddy, a slim-hipped, dark-haired kid with sexy eyes and a lazy, heart-thudding smile, whose mother was my father’s secretary. I already half-suspected that there was something going on between Dad and Buddy’s mother, but it wasn’t any of my business. I respected Laura Danforth’s ability and admired her directness, and to be brutally honest, I looked up to her more than I did my alcoholic mother. Maybe that was one reason for the major crush I had on Buddy the summer I was fourteen. I had no idea he was my father’s son.

  Neither did he. Miles—the nickname was abandoned when he got his law degree—had learned the truth only a short time before I did, from the love letters and photos he found after his mother died. If the discovery was a shock for me, it must have been a massive earthquake for him, a volcanic eruption, a cataclysmic rearrangement of his entire universe. Although his father—our father—paid his college and law school tuition and even gave him his first job, Dad had never acknowledged that Miles was his son. It must hurt like hell.

  I could sympathize, because Dad never really acknowledged me, at least not in any way that mattered. In all the years of my life with Robert Bayles, we shared only one close father-daughter moment: he took me to a shooting range, taught me to load and fire a gun, and gave me a 9mm Beretta. I still have the gun, and the memory. But now that I think about it, it wasn’t exactly a father-daughter moment, was it? It was the sort of thing a father might do with his son. Had he taken Buddy to the same range? Had he given him a Beretta, too?