Mourning Gloria (4 page)

This morning, Stu had his eight-year-old twin girls in tow. Margie, he said, was at another booth, buying tomatoes for her secret-recipe pizza sauce, which everybody loves—although it won’t be a secret much longer, since the recipe is included in the book.

“You’re coming to the meeting, I hope,” he added, dropping a casual arm around my shoulders. “Looks like we’re going to have a great turnout. Everybody’s bringing food, as usual.”

“Can we come, too, Daddy?” one of the girls asked, and Stu said, “Yeah, sure, sugar. It’s a family thing. A picnic.” To me, he added, with a squeeze of my shoulder, “We’re bringing pizza.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Love to share some with you, sweetie.”

I ducked out of his embrace. Stu doesn’t mean anything with his flirting, but he can sometimes be a little physical. I’m not comfortable with it and I hate being called “sweetie.” I was glad to see him with the girls, though. I’d heard that he and Margie had been having a few problems and that she had taken the kids and gone to stay with her mother. But it apparently wasn’t very serious—just one of those things that happen in a marriage from time to time. Whatever the difficulty, they had patched things up and Margie and the girls had moved back home.

I promised Stu I’d be at the meeting. I don’t promise, though, to be a committed, uncompromising locavore—that’s the name that’s given to people who eat only locally grown food. I agree that it’s a waste of fossil fuel to tote a tomato fifteen hundred miles from its native field to my eager fork. But I doubt that I’ll ever be willing to give up coffee or tea or smoked salmon. Neither
Coffea arabica
nor
Camellia sinensis
enjoy our Texas climate, and while it’s possible to take a catfish out of the Pecan River and a nice striped bass out of the Highland Lakes, you’ll never find a salmon around here.

Stu had just made off with some fresh basil and thyme for Margie’s pizza sauce when Sheila walked up—Sheila Dawson, Pecan Springs’ chief of police, out of uniform on her day off and looking comfy in jeans and a denim shirt, her ash-blond hair pulled back in a bouncy ponytail. With her, on a leash, was Rambo, a Rottweiler and the K-9 star of the PSPD.

It doesn’t much matter what Chief Dawson wears, actually. Uniformed, sloppy-casual, or dressed for a party, Sheila is unfailingly dropdead gorgeous. Her friends call her Smart Cookie and wish we could all look just like her. We could just as easily call her Tough Cookie, though. She may be a dish, but she’s an experienced officer, savvy, street-smart, and tough as a horseshoe nail. Since she took on the job of chief, she’s been remaking our local police force into something resembling a professionally trained organization. Her methods don’t always please the good ol’ boys, or even those on the city council who have an investment in the way things were. They like to imagine that Pecan Springs is still a cozy, comfortable place where the only criminals are jaywalkers and double-parkers. But those of us who live in the real world are plenty happy about Sheila’s retooling of the police department.

“Hey, China,” Sheila said, with a warm smile. “How are you this morning?”

“Pretty well,” I said, “considering that I was in the garden at dawn.” I came around the table and stroked Rambo’s ears. “Hey, Rambo,” I crooned, putting my face down to his. “Good to see you, old buddy. Caught any crooks lately?”

With well-bred restraint, Rambo licked my cheek. When I first met this dog, he frightened the bejeebers out of me. Big, burly, savagelooking, he’s everybody’s nightmare of the junkyard dog who would dearly love to take a bite out of your right leg, two bites of your left, and work his way up from there. But when his owner (Colin Fowler, Ruby’s Significant Other) was killed and Rambo came to stay at our house, I learned that he had a sweet heart and an amiable disposition. When he also proved to be an expert drug-sniffer and crook-catcher, Sheila asked if she could take him. Howard Cosell voted yes (in fact, he voted yes three times), so Rambo went to live with Sheila.

I kissed Rambo on one ear and straightened. “You doin’ okay, Smart Cookie?”

Sheila gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Got something to show you.” She held out her left hand, her nails beautifully manicured, a sizable chunk of diamond blazing in the sun.

I blinked. “Wow,” I said feebly, suddenly aware of my grubby hands. I stuck them into my pockets. “Gosh. A ring. That’s beautiful. Blinding, but beautiful. I guess I should say congratulations, huh?”

“Good guess,” said a deeper voice, and Blackie Blackwell snugged an arm around Sheila’s waist. Blackie is the Adams County sheriff and McQuaid’s fishing and poker partner, a friendship that goes back to their student days at Sam Houston State. Blackwells have worn the Adams County sheriff’s badge for decades. Blackie’s grandfather was sheriff back when the biggest criminals were cattle rustlers and bank robbers, and his father kept the peace for another thirty years after that. Blackie, who has been elected to multiple terms as sheriff, is carrying on the family reputation. He looks the part, too: muscular build, square shoulders, square jaw, regulation haircut, regulation posture. He’s a bythe-book man, but he has the intelligence and the wisdom (the two aren’t always the same thing) to know when to put the book aside.

I matched my grin to theirs. “I am so glad, guys. When’s the wedding?”

They exchanged glances. Sheila spoke first. “September, maybe. We haven’t decided.”

“Definitely September,” Blackie said firmly. He scowled down at Sheila. “Got that, woman?”

This requires an explanation. You see, Blackie and Sheila have been engaged before, in an on-again off-again way that drove their friends crazy. Both of them are really great people, and they look like a perfectly matched pair: two experienced, dedicated law enforcement professionals. They have their work in common, and there’s obviously a strong sexual attraction between them, as well as a strong bond of respect and affe+ction.

But while Blackie has never had any doubts, Sheila has had plenty. It wasn’t their relationship that was the problem, she told me the last time she broke the engagement, almost two years ago. It was their careers. “Two cops in one family are one cop too many,” she said firmly. “In fact, even one cop in a marriage can be one cop too many.”

I know where she’s coming from. McQuaid was a Houston homicide detective when I met him, and his career was a big factor in the demise of his first marriage. Whether it’s the long hours or the necessary risks, divorce is an occupational hazard among police officers. Some reports I’ve read put it at sixty or seventy percent above the national average. Does that mean that with two cops in one family, the risk of divorce is a hundred and forty percent higher?

Blackie gave me a crooked grin. “Definitely September,” he repeated. He tightened his arm around her neck in a mock stranglehold. “And this time, she’s not getting away.”

Sheila elbowed him sharply and slipped out of his grip. Rambo stood up, growling deep in his throat. He’s Sheila’s Rotti now, and fiercely protective. But she laughed, and Rambo relaxed.

“Okay if I tell McQuaid?” I asked. “He’ll be so pleased.” Of course he’d be pleased. But like me, he’d also be apprehensive. Neither of us want to go through that on-again, off-again angst again.

“Tell McQuaid, tell the world,” Blackie said grandly. “We’re even going to get Hark to put an announcement in the paper. We’re doing it the old-fashioned way. With a couple photo.”

“We are?” Sheila asked, surprised.

“We are,” Blackie answered, and I wondered if he was insisting on the announcement to make it more difficult for her to break the engagement again. “I’m calling the photographer myself.” He tweaked her nose with his fingers. “If I leave it to you, Chief, it won’t get done.”

“Hark will be devastated,” I said. That’s Hark Hibler, the editor of the
Pecan Springs Enterprise.
He’s had a crush on Sheila for years.

“I thought Hark and Ruby were hanging out together these days,” Blackie said.

“Doesn’t keep him from having a crush on Sheila, too,” I replied. But it’s true that Ruby is seeing Hark on a fairly regular basis, for which I am glad. Hark is solid and substantial, the kind of stability that Ruby needs in her life—in my opinion, anyway.

“Hark can have his crush,” Blackie said generously. “I’ve got the gal. Come on, babe.” And with a wave, the two of them, with Rambo, wandered off.

As I expected, the bundles of fresh herbs had disappeared by ten o’clock, and the four-inch pots of herbs were pretty well picked over by eleven. I sold (and signed) the last
Book of Days
about that time, too. The other items moved a little more slowly, but when the market closed at one o’clock, Caitie and I didn’t have much to lug back to the shop. We made it in one trip.

After all the unsold stuff had been put back on the shop shelves, I gave Caitlin a hug, thanked her for a good morning’s work, and handed her twenty dollars.

She held the money in her hand and tilted her head to one side, considering. “I’ve been thinking about this,” she said. “My teacher told us that child labor is illegal in Texas. Maybe I should ask for more money, huh?” She gave me a cagey look. “To keep my mouth shut.”

“You could try,” I replied cheerfully. “Except that you wouldn’t get it. Want to know why?”

She nodded doubtfully.

“The Texas Labor Code, Chapter 51, specifically allows the employment of a child in a nonhazardous occupation, under the direct supervision of a person having legal custody of the child, in a business owned by the custodian.” I grinned. “I have legal custody of you, and I own the business. Blackmail will get you nowhere, kid. You’re out of luck.”

Caitlin sighed and pocketed the money. “I think I’ll be a lawyer when I grow up, Aunt China. Like you.”

She might’ve said, “Like my dad,” but she didn’t. She doesn’t talk about her father, or her mother, or her aunt. It’s almost as if they never existed, as if she didn’t have a life before she came to live with us. I don’t think this is altogether healthy, but now wasn’t the time to work on it. I gave her a quick hug.

“Well, let me tell you, child, real-life lawyering is nothing like the TV shows. Long, boring days with the law books, tedious months of pretrial, hours and hours in stuffy courtrooms—and not a minute for yourself.”

I know what I’m talking about. I spent more years than I care to count as a criminal defense lawyer in a large Houston firm that mostly represented big bad guys with bankrolls—until finally, I just couldn’t do it any longer. I had already given up the idea that our legal system actually works to serve justice. I was sick of the company I had to keep, exhausted by the hours I had to put in, and worried that I’d never find the time to have a real life, real friends, a real lover (as opposed to those who drifted casually in and out of my life). I cashed in my retirement fund, left the firm, moved to Pecan Springs, bought Thyme and Seasons, and . . .

Well, here I am, minding my own business, with friends, a husband who loves me, and two great kids, one of whom has just tried to blackmail me.

Caitie hugged me back. “I was just kidding, Aunt China. Okay if I go next door and buy a book with some of my money?”

“Absolutely,” I replied. When I see Brian or Caitlin reading a book, they almost always get an automatic pass on whatever chore I was about to assign. I’ll be delighted if they grow up to be the kind of people who can’t stay out of bookstores and libraries.

Caitie headed for the Hobbit House and I went to work behind the cash register. The tearoom had done well during the lunch hour. There were still quite a few people around, including some who thought that the market was open all day and were disappointed to find that it was already closed and the vendors had packed up and gone home.

But not all the vendors had left. The door opened and Donna Fletcher came in. Brown-haired, slender, but built like an athlete, Donna always wears jeans—today, topped with a green T-shirt that invited everybody to Grow With Us at Mistletoe Creek Farms. She wore leather sandals, and her taffy-colored hair was braided and topped with a yellow baseball cap. She leaned her elbows on the counter, a morose expression on her sun-browned face.

“You’re unhappy?” I asked in surprise. “It looked like you were doing a brisk business this morning.”

“I’m unhappy,” Donna replied. She spread her square hands. Her nails are even grubbier than mine, but then, she’s a farmer, with acres of vegetables and olive trees and Christmas trees to tend and goats and chickens to take care of. Compared to her, my gardening efforts are small-time.

“You’ll understand, when you hear why,” she added glumly. “Terry’s back in town.”

She was right. I understood.