Thyme of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

meaty face.
Unfortunately, I can’t look at Bubba without thinking of Jackie Gleason in Smoky
and the Bandit. But underneath Bubba’s overstuffed, rednecked exterior,
there’s a steely hardness that comes from a longtime, sure-fisted control of
his town. In Texas, only one serious crime in every five is cleared by arrest.
But the police in Pecan Springs clear something like four out of five,
according to my friend McQuaid, a former Houston homicide detective who now
teaches in the criminal justice department at Central Texas State University.
Bubba’s in charge and he knows it. So does almost everybody else.
    Bubba glanced up. It took him a
minute to place me, but when he did, his cigar twitched and he pulled his dark brows
together in a heavy frown. When I opened the shop, we’d had a discussion about
whether selling medicinal herbs amounted to practicing medicine without a
license. I pointed out my sign, which read, “I am not qualified nor does the
law permit me to diagnose or treat your medical problem.” This is an issue
these days, and I aim to be clear on it. I’m glad to sell people what they ask
for or refer them to reliable texts. But that’s where I have to draw the line,
and that’s what I told Bubba. It probably isn’t too often that he comes up
against a five-foot-six, hundred-and-forty-pound female who knows the law and
talks back. He remembered me. And he knew that I was a friend of Jo’s, too.
    Ruby also talks back. “It wasn’t
suicide,” she said emphatically. Her voice was pitched too high and she
swallowed, making an effort to bring it down a notch. “Jo wouldn’t kill
herself.”
    Bubba rolled his cigar from one side
of his face to the other and regarded Ruby. “Accident, you figure? Could be she
didn’t know what would happen if she mixed pills and booze. But what about the
note?”
    “What does it say?” I asked.
    Bubba bent over and looked, not
touching it. “I’m sorry about what I said. It wasn’t what I intended. Please
forgive me.’“
    Ruby bent over and looked too. “It’s
not signed. And it doesn’t say who it’s to.”
    “Her handwriting?”
    Ruby straightened up. “I don’t know,”
she said doubtfully. “Maybe.”
    “We’ll check it out,” Bubba said. He
switched his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Looks like suicide to me.”
    “No,” Ruby said. “I mean...” She
waved her arms, an agitated butterfly. “I mean, Jo Gilbert was working to heal herself. She didn’t like medicine. She especially didn’t like sleeping
pills. She wouldn’t have taken any, much less enough to kill herself.”
    Bubba’s brows came together. “The
lady was terminal, wasn’t she? Seems like what I heard around town.”
    “She had cancer,” Ruby admitted. “But
she’d never give up. Never.” She gulped and turned helplessly away from the
loose bundle of cooling flesh. “Never.”
    I looked down at the empty pill
bottle on the table. Like Ruby, I didn’t want to believe that Jo could have
killed herself. But there was a part of me that was trained to assess evidence
and draw valid, verifiable conclusions. Like it or not, that part had to admit that
the worsening pain of cancer or the fear of being a helpless burden on her
daughter and her friends might have pushed Jo into doing something otherwise
unthinkable. A handful of sleeping pills, a couple of strong Bloody Marys to
wash them down, might have seemed the most reasonable way out of an altogether
unreasonable illness. She’d been depressed lately, and today was her birthday.
Perhaps it had seemed a symbolic day on which to bring her life to a close.
    “Well, then, mebbe an accident,”
Bubba said. “Say she took a few pills, had a drink, got dopey, took a few more.
It’s happened before.”
    “But she wouldn’t take the pills in
the first place,” Ruby insisted.
    Bubba shrugged. “We’ll see what the
J.P. has to say.” I made a face. In Texas, a justice of the peace is required
to attend and