Thyme of Death Read Online Free PDF

rule on all suspicious deaths, although most aren’t trained for
the task.
    He jerked his head toward the
kitchen. “The daughter’s back there. Whyn’t y’all see if she needs anythin’. I’ll
call Watson’s Funeral Home to come and take care of bidness.” That’s the way
all good old boys pronounce “business” in Texas, even the ones who’ve promoted
themselves into gov’ment bidness and gone to Washington. I used to wonder
whether they’d admit me to the club if I took to saying it. When I realized I
was tempted to test out the theory, I knew it was time for a career change.
    Bubba turned to the telephone. Ruby
and I had been dismissed. I gave her a little shove and we went down the dark
hallway toward the back of the house.
    Meredith was sitting at the
oilcloth-covered table in Jo’s pleasantly old-fashioned kitchen, her head on
her folded arms. The room was dusky and a red enameled teakettle chirruped
merrily on the gas stove. A white cake carton sat on the yellow formica
counter, beside a box of birthday candles and the calico goose. I turned off
the teakettle and turned on the light over the sink. One end of the fluorescent
tube glowed, the other flickered fitfully. Jo had been meaning to replace the
ballast.
    Ruby bent over Meredith. “Meredith,”
she said in a whisper, “I’m so sorry.”
    “Yes,” I said, low. But sorry didn’t
cut it. Sorry didn’t begin to describe the sadness and loss I felt, standing in
Jo’s familiar yellow-painted kitchen, her birthday cake and Fuck-the-Airport!
goose on the counter, while the funeral home was coming to handle the “bidness”
of taking her body to the Adams County Hospital, where some doctor would cut
her up and tell us what killed her. But what else was there to say?
    Meredith raised her head, stricken. “I
didn’t even know she had any sleeping pills.”
    “And I never saw her take more than
one drink,” Ruby said.
    Meredith leaned against Ruby. “She
had a bout with hepatitis once. She always went easy on booze. The last time I
saw that Smirnoff bottle, it was better than half full.” She paused. “I didn’t
know she had any of that Hot Shot stuff, either. She liked to drink it for
breakfast. She said it woke her up. But we ran out, and the liquor store was
out of it.” Her pale face looked pinched and blue under the flickering
fluorescent light and her cheeks were furrowed with tears. “But it’s the pills
that bother me. She must have bought them just for... this.”
    Ruby looked shocked. “Jo? Buy pills?”
She shook her head firmly. “She was into self-hypnosis. She refused to take
anything chemical to knock her out or cut the pain. She wouldn’t use pills.”
    I opened the cupboard where Jo kept
the cups, neatly hung from hooks. I couldn’t see where all this denial was
getting us. Jo’s dying left a cold, empty place where something alive and vital
had lived. But evading it wouldn’t bring her back. “So what about the note?” It
certainly looked to me like a suicide note.
    Ruby shook her head stubbornly. “I
don’t know. But Jo wouldn’t take the easy way out. For her, cancer was the
lesson she had to learn in this life. She wanted to confront it, learn
from it, not escape from it. That’s part of healing.”
    I took three cups from the cupboard
and set them on the counter. When Ruby talks like this, I always feel
uncomfortable, like an atheist at a prayer meeting. Maybe it’s because I haven’t
started down the Healing Path. To do that, Ruby says, I’d have to give up my
anger at Leatha, my mother. I’ve mellowed some since I left the law, but I’m
not ready to give up my anger. It’s been part of me for so long, I’m not sure
who I’d be without it Ruby reached for Meredith’s hand. “Your mom had the
courage to choose her own way,” she whispered, “and a marvelous strength of
will. Her next life will be something special.”
    I measured peppermint tea into the
teapot and poured boiling water into it,