Lye in Wait (36 page)

In bowl large enough to provide plenty of stirring room, combine
Epsom salts and dendretic salt. Stir together with a metal whisk.
Dribble glycerin and essential oil over salts. Stir well with whisk.
Add oatmeal and goat's milk and stir with whisk. This makes
enough for at least three baths.

Dendretic salt helps avoid clumping and distributes the fragrance
more thoroughly in the mix. The liquid glycerin does the same
thing. Colloidal oatmeal suspends in the bathwater, and most pow dered goat's milk is full fat, which makes it very softening. For immediate use you can also make this without the dendretic salt and
glycerin, and substitute nonfat dry milk and baby oatmeal cereal
for the goat's milk and colloidal oatmeal. The result will be a little
different, and you will have to rinse a little oatmeal fiber out of the
bottom of the tub when you're done, but it's a wonderful, soothing
soak!

1 oz. beeswax
1h cup olive oil
1/4 to 1/ teaspoon essential oil-peppermint, spearmint, or
lemon

Melt wax and oil together over very low heat. Stir in essential oil
and pour into small tins, lip balm tubes, or any other suitable, lidded containers. Allow to cool.

This recipe will fill about twenty-five .15 oz. lip balm tubes.

3 oz. beeswax
3 oz. coconut oil
3 oz. cocoa butter

Heat wax, oil and butter together over very low heat. Pour into six
2 oz. molds. Allow to harden and remove from molds. Given the
1:1:1 ratio of ingredients, it's very easy to increase or decrease this
recipe.

Using non-deodorized cocoa butter gives the lotion bars a yummy
chocolate scent, but if you can't find it you can add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of an essential oil or oil blend of your choice.

In addition to soothing "garden hands", try rubbing a lotion bar
on rough feet and putting on cotton socks before going to bed.

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If you enjoyed Lye in Wait, read on for an excerpt from the next
Cricket McRae Mystery

Heaven Preserve Us

"You DON'T HAVE TO fix any of the callers' problems; you just pass
them on to someone else who can."

I nodded. "Got it."

"Okay, babe. I'll leave you to it. I'm going out back to have a
smoke."

Smiling through gritted teeth, I tried to ignore the acrid stench
of cigarettes that permeated his clothes. Philip Heaven could
spend the whole evening toasting his lungs in the alley if it meant
I wouldn't have to listen to him call me "babe" one more time in
that gravelly, know-it-all voice. I'd handle every incoming call to the
Heaven House Helpline if I had to. I mean, how hard could it be?

"Take your time," I said, aligning my list of referral numbers
with the edge of the blotter and lacing my fingers together on top
of the cheap laminate desktop. I glanced hopefully at the multiline phone.

"Thanks, babe." He pointed his finger at me and made a guncocking sound with his tongue.

Yuck. Thank God, the phone rang. I reached to answer it.

After I referred a nice-but-scared-sounding lady to the next AA
meeting in the basement of the Cadyville Catholic Church, the
phone was silent for several minutes. The whooshing of tires across
wet pavement on the street outside filtered into the spacious old
building where I sat, a comfortable, lulling sound. I'd worked my
way to forty-two across on the Seattle Times Tuesday crossword
only to puzzle over a six-letter word for an exclamation of annoyance when the phone rang again. This time I gave a runaway boy an
800 number he could use to find a safe place to stay down in Seattle.
I felt pretty satisfied with the whole volunteer gig after that one and
picked up the next call feeling helpful as all get out.

"I have the knife against my wrist. It shines in the light. And it's
cold. I bet this thing is so sharp I won't even feel it slice through my
skin."

Uh oh.

I struggled to remember what I was supposed to say, but Philip's meager training hadn't prepared me for anything like this.
Where was he? He couldn't still be working on that cigarette, could
he? I mean, I hadn't really meant that about him hanging out in
the alley all night. It was my first night manning the Helpline at
Heaven House, and Philip Heaven was supposed to be mentoring
me. Sheesh.

So I said the only thing I could think of. "Wait!"

"Why should I wait? I've been waiting my whole life to die."

Oh, brother. A philosopher. And a melodramatic one at that.
"So have I," I said.

"What?"

I looked at the caller ID, so I could jot it down on the call sheet.
It read Private Call. Great.

"I've been waiting my whole life to die, too," I said.

"You have?"

Yeah. Right along with all us other mortals.

Hush, Sophie Mae. He may be a moron, but he sounds pretty
serious.

"But I'm not going to die today. And I'm not going to tomorrow, either, at least not if I get a vote in the matter," I said.

Silence.

"And neither should you. What's your name?"

"It's... just call me Allen."

"Okay, Allen, listen, I'm going to-"

"What's yours?"

"What's my what?"

"Your name."

"Allen, I need you to write down a number. This is someone
who knows how to help you."
"

I don't want another number. I want to talk to you. Tell me
your name.

"Sorry, it's against-"

"I told you mine."

No, you didn't, I thought, but stopped myself before I said it
out loud. Just call me Allen? That's not how you tell someone your
name, for Pete's sake.

"Call me Jane."

"No! I want your real name. Tell me."

An icky feeling crawled up my spine. I put some steel in my voice.
"Allen, take down this number: 555-2962. There's someone there
who's trained in how to help you deal with your suicidal thoughts."

"What the hell? You're trying to foist me off on someone else?
All I want to know is who I'm dealing with."

My resolve wavered. It was against the rules of Heaven House to
give out our names to the people who called the Helpline. For that
matter, I shouldn't still be talking to this guy. Volunteers were armed
with a long list of experts who dealt with all sorts of different problems, from teenaged runaways to unplanned pregnancy, depression
to spousal abuse, alcoholism to... suicide. If Philip had been honest
enough to list Heaven House as a Help Referral Line in the phone
book, maybe this guy wouldn't be so angry about having to call
someone else.

Still. There was something about him that gave me the creeps.

"No, Allen. I'm not going to tell you my real name. That's
against the rules here. I'm here to help you find someone to talk
to. Are you going to let me do that?"

"You stupid bitch! All I want to know is who-"

A finger came down on the disconnect button. I went from
staring stupidly at the phone to staring stupidly up at Philip. His
cousin, Jude Carmichael, stood slightly behind him. I hadn't heard
either of them come in.

"Should you have done that?" I finally managed.

"I could hear him yelling. He's a crank," Philip said.

I licked my lips, ambivalent about the intense relief I felt at the
timely rescue. "But what if he really needed help?"

Jude, his coat collar still turned up around his ears, shuffled his
feet and looked at the floor. In the brief time I'd known him, I'd
noticed that he did that a lot. When he spoke, I leaned closer so I
could hear his soft voice.

"Then he should have taken it. You don't have to put up with
abuse, Sophie Mae. Philip should have told you. Sometimes people
call in just to call in. They're lonely." He shuffled his feet again. I
had the feeling he knew about lonely. "Or they're weirdos. Like this
guy. His next call will probably be heavy breathing and obscene language. He's just bored"

"Well, he better not call back here, then."

Philip bent toward me. "Tell you what, babe. It's your first
night. Your shift's almost over. Go ahead home."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. It's fine. My boy here can start his overnight shift early."

"That okay with you?" I asked Jude, since Philip hadn't bothered.

Jude shrugged and tried a smile. "Sure. I forward the calls to my
cell and keep it on my nightstand. It hardly ever rings." He pulled a
phone out of his pocket and started pushing buttons.

"I hope that guy didn't scare you off," Philip said.

"No, I'll be back," I said. "Friday, right?"

"That'll be great. We'll need your help. Friday night'll be hoppin'!" He made it sound like great fun, taking all those desperate
phone calls from people in horrible situations.

Woo hoo!

Just after nine I pulled to the curb in front of the house I shared
with Meghan Bly and her eleven-year-old daughter, Erin. I jumped out of my little Toyota pickup and ran up the sidewalk. Rain spattered down for the twentieth day in a row, and the temperature
hovered around forty-two degrees-typical weather in the Pacific
Northwest in February. The damp air smelled of rotting leaves and
wood smoke.

In the foyer I shook like a dog, scattering the stray drops I
hadn't managed to avoid in my mad dash from the street. I waved
at Meghan as I passed the doorway to the kitchen on my way to
the stairs, breathing in the scent of freshly baked bread.

"Back in a sec," I called over my shoulder and climbed to the
second floor.

I poked my head into Erin's room. "How's it going?"

Meghan's daughter sat in bed, wedged in on one side by a
stuffed platypus and on the other by a big purple hippo. Brodie,
Erin's aging Pembroke Welsh corgi lay on his back, legs splayed
open as he slept by her feet. His right eye cracked open so he could
peer at me upside down, then squeezed shut again. A textbook lay
open on Erin's lap, and she looked up from scribbling on looseleaf notepaper when I spoke. Her elfin features held pure disgust.

"I hate math. I hate algebra, I hate geometry, and I plan on
hating trigonometry and calculus as well." She squinted blue-gray
eyes at me and shook her head of dark curls for emphasis.

"Trig? When do you start that?" Could be next week for all I
knew. She was in an advanced class and last year had blown by
everything I'd retained from my English major's admittedly pitiful
math education. But trig? In the fifth grade?

"And proofs. I hate proofs, too"

I had no idea what proofs were. I went in and looked at what
she was working on. Drawn on the wide-ruled paper was a y-axis. And an x-axis. Lines connected some of the points in the grid. I
still had no idea what proofs were.