Wicked Weaves (35 page)

Read Wicked Weaves Online

Authors: Joyce Lavene,Jim

BOOK: Wicked Weaves
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2 oz. butter, melted
4 oz. raisins
4 oz. currants
2 oz. mixed peel
4 oz. coarsely ground brown sugar
1 level teaspoon mixed spices
1 lb. puff pastry
Egg white
Caster sugar (powdered sugar)
 
Preheat oven to 425° F.
Mix the melted butter, raisins, currants, peel, sugar, and spices together in a bowl, combining well.
Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and, using a saucer, cut into about 16 circles. Divide the fruit mixture evenly between them, then dampen the edges of the pastry circles and draw up into the center, sealing well. Turn over and, with the hands, gently form the cakes into ovals, then press down very gently with a rolling pin.
Make 3 diagonal cuts across the top of each cake, then brush with egg white and sprinkle with caster sugar. Place on lightly greased baking trays and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden. Serve slightly warm.
 
MAKES ABOUT 16.
Turn the page for a preview of the next book
in the Peggy Lee Garden Mysteries
by Joyce and Jim Lavene . . . 
A Corpse for Yew
Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!
Muscadine
Botanical:
Vitis rotundifolia
These grapes are native to the southern United States. They were discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh who wrote home of their abundance. The Algonquins called muscadine Ascopa meaning sweet berry tree. The Mother Vine is the oldest living vine known, from the time of Sir Raleigh, and still grows on the coast of North Carolina. Some vines are male and some are female. Male vines provide pollen but do not produce grapes. Female vines produce flowers that catch the wind driven pollen from the male vines and produce fruit.
 
 
 
 
 
“You stomped on that skull, Margaret. Mind your feet!” Peggy Lee pulled her booted foot back out of the knee-deep mud and debris. She still couldn’t believe she’d agreed to accompany her mother on her outing with the Shamrock Historical Society. One of the first things her mother had done after moving to Charlotte last month was to entrench herself with the local history museum. Somehow, she’d managed to drag Peggy into the group as well.
It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy and appreciate history, but plants were more her thing and she wished she was home in her garden. She looked at some nice, fat cattails as they swayed gently in the afternoon breeze.
“We need you over here.” Lilla Cranshaw Hughes beckoned her daughter then lowered her voice. “Please stop daydreaming. You’re making me look bad in front of Mrs. Waynewright. You know I can’t tolerate that.”
Peggy slogged away from her mother, her redheaded temper bubbling beneath her calm exterior. Just because her hair was mostly white now didn’t mean she didn’t get just as angry.
Especially
with her mother. Why she couldn’t be more like her pleasant, even-tempered father, she’d never understand. And why her mother always brought out the worst in her was a lifelong mystery.
One thing was for sure; she had to find a polite, well-mannered way to get herself out of her mother’s historical group with its petty little jealousies and problems. She had more important things to do. She had a life her mother’s intrusion had disrupted. She was probably needed at the Potting Shed, her garden shop in Center City. But her cell phone, miserable, traitorous wretch that it was, hadn’t rung in over an hour. Next time, she’d tell her assistant, Selena, to call her.
Peggy rehearsed over and over what she was going to say to get herself away from her mother for at least an hour. She decided she’d lie, if needed, and tell her that Selena had called and she had to leave right away. She’d have to call someone to come and get her since she’d made the mistake of coming out with the group in the museum van. But she wasn’t above that, or lying, to get out of this mess, although a fifty-plus daughter shouldn’t have to lie to her mother anymore.
“Grab this bucket, Margaret.” Lilla shoved a yellow plastic container toward her daughter. “You can at least do that. Jonathon will take care of handling the bones and such that we find. You probably aren’t trained for that, are you?”
Peggy snatched the yellow container. She wouldn’t have said if she’d trained twenty years for the job. “No, Mom. I’m a forensic botanist. We only look at living matter on bones if we have to. And I hate to tell you this, but Selena just called from the Potting Shed. I have to go back. Something’s wrong with a shipment and she needs me.”
It wasn’t
too
big a lie, really, Peggy soothed her conscience. Selena
was
having problems with her boyfriend. She pushed aside a low-hanging muscadine vine as she inched through the heavy mud. A trickle of the spring-fed creek still ran under the mud, keeping it moist, making walking through the stuff even more difficult.
“They’ll get along without you,” her mother said. “We need you here. Have you ever seen such a mess?”
Peggy looked around herself. The worst drought North Carolina had ever seen had brought lake levels down so low that piers stood five feet above dirt where water had once been. Boats were dry docked. People who lived in expensive lake houses tried to decide if they should get out before it got worse.
Already many cities in the Piedmont, including Charlotte, were down to less than three months of water. The governor and city officials had declared several state of emergencies, restricting people to lower water consumption and raising the price of the water they used. The governor had challenged the populace to emulate his twenty-six-second showers in the face of the calamity.
Brown grass and dirty cars had become badges of heroism in the area as people did without to try and wait out the drought. Those with green lawns, who secretly watered at night, paid the price with stiff penalties such as having their water service interrupted. Stores were emptied of their low-flow shower-heads and residents put bricks in their toilet tanks to use less water per flush.
The local wildlife and fish were suffering as well, as the lakes and other water resources dried up in the baking hot fall sun. Sweltering temperatures added to the problem as they caused evaporation and massive fish kills. Deer migrated into the city to find shelter when the leaves fell from the dry trees, while frogs and other amphibians retreated into an early hibernation away from the parched topsoil.
But Peggy thought the strangest thing she’d seen from the drought was Lake Whitley. The one hundred-acre lake, created by damming Little Whitley Creek, had completely dried up. Besides the expected pieces of old boats and lost fishing poles at the bottom of where the lake had been, there were almost one hundred graves.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Jonathon Underwood was standing beside Peggy as the ladies of the group, all ladies except for Jonathon, argued over who was going to take photos of the find. “Who would’ve thought we’d ever see this village again?”
“Or these graves.” Peggy looked up at him. Jonathon was well over six-feet. She moved her foot away from a chest cavity separated from the head and arms. “Why didn’t they move the graves before they dammed the creek?”
“They did move some of them, actually,” he told her. “These were the ones left behind. The state charged the relatives of the dead with collecting them and making sure they were moved to higher ground. These people didn’t have any family left behind to take care of them. Most of the graves are from the early 1800s. As you can imagine, many of their relatives had moved away from the village or died by the early 1900s when this happened.”
Peggy had only met Jonathon that morning when they all set out together for the dry lake. He was a sober, serious man with gentle brown eyes and a boyish mop of brown hair. He was the director of the Mecklenburg County History Museum and was far more patient with her mother and the other ladies than she’d ever be. “Did you know this was under the lake all these years?”
“Oh yes. There are maps of the village. You can see over there where the old town hall stood.” He pointed to what was left of the structure, little more than four partial stone walls. “And over there is where the school was. Whitley Village was one of the first towns in this area to have their own academy. Teachers came here from across the state to train in their profession then they went on to other schools.”
There was even less of the impressive academy left. The gray stones were nearly buried in the mud and debris from the lake that had covered them for more than a century. “If this place was so important, why did they cover it up? Why not move it?”
“People were eager for the new found wealth electricity would bring to the area.” He shrugged his shoulders beneath a green T-shirt. “In comparison, history and schooling didn’t mean very much.”
“So now you reap what you can find out here.” Peggy looked at the scattered bones and upended wooden coffins that filled the mud around them. “What will happen to the bones?”
“Your mother and the other ladies will make sure they get a proper burial. Mrs. Waynewright is cataloging the bones as we take them out.” He waved to the elderly lady who was wearing a cheerful pink bonnet. She was seated on the heavy moss that covered the sides of the lake with a large ledger in her lap. “Most of the graves that were moved originally are located in a cemetery over there in the woods. These new remains will be added to that cemetery.” Jonathon looked at her across the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. “Did I hear you say you’re trained as a forensic botanist?”
“Yes, she is.” Lilla stepped into the conversation. “She taught botany at Queens University for many years. Her specialty is botanical poisons. Now she helps the police and the sheriff’s office investigate crimes. Except when she’s running that little garden shop of hers.”
“You’re very accomplished.” Jonathon grinned. “I took the six-week course in Raleigh and work with the police sometimes as a forensic historian.”
“Really?” Peggy’s mother slipped her hand through his arm. “You’re very accomplished as well, Jonathon. Just what does a forensic historian do?”
“Well, it’s similar to being a forensic botanist,” he explained. “I help discover and sort historical evidence the police can use from a crime scene. I imagine I get a lot fewer calls than Dr. Lee. There aren’t many crimes that involve historical artifacts.”
“Please, call her Peggy.” Lilla smiled and patted his arm. “She’s a very good cook, too. And she lives in an estate on Queens Road. It’s not actually hers. It belongs to her late husband’s family but she can live there as long as she likes. Where do you live, Jonathon?”
Peggy felt the slight bubbling of her temper turn into a full boil.
What was she doing?
It was obvious. Only her mother would think of setting her up with a man she’d barely met!
Her phone actually started ringing in the pocket of her jeans.
Finally!
Grateful for the reprieve, Peggy passed the yellow bucket to her mother and pushed through the bone-littered mud to a rock where she sat down. “Please tell me something horrible has happened and I have to come home.”
“Sounds like you’re having a good time with your mother.” Steve’s voice was edged with humor that Peggy didn’t share.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she told her lover (She refused to think of him as her boyfriend. It was undignified.). “I’m standing knee-deep in mud full of human bones while the Shamrock Historical Society tries to sort skulls from femurs. How’s your day going?”
“As well as can be expected with a malignant mole on a Yorkie and bad canines on a Collie. It’d be going a lot better if we’d slept in the same bed last night. My house is empty without you.”
Her heart softened toward his bad attempt at humor. “I’m sorry. I wish I could just come out and tell them. But I can’t.”
“But you’re working up to it.”
She acknowledged his hopeful tone, imagining his face as he spoke, thinking how much she loved looking into his eyes. Peggy pulled herself back before she began acting even more like a love-struck teenager and reminded herself that her hyperjudgmental mother was standing less than ten feet away.
“I am,” she promised. It was a lie, but she didn’t think he could tell the difference.
“Because this can only go on so long,” he continued.
“Are you threatening to break up with me because I can’t tell my parents we’re sleeping together?” She laughed, the humor of the situation hitting her funny bone. “If so, maybe we could sneak out tonight. You could pick me up at the end of the block and we could go to Lover’s Lane.”
“I’m glad this is making you laugh. I hope you’re laughing when I announce our engagement to your family next Tuesday night at dinner.”
She sobered at once. “You wouldn’t! Steve! You know how my family feels about proper mourning. They’d be very upset.” She was putting it mildly. As her mother had just reminded her that morning, no Cranshaw woman had ever mourned her husband for less than five years. It just wasn’t done.
“Give me an option or I pop the question.”
“Give me a little more time.”
“Peggy, it’s been a month already. I’m too old to sneak around somebody’s parents. Let’s think of some way to take care of the problem.”

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