Thyme of Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

wondering if Ruby realized that her
remark could go both ways. Jo had the courage and will to commit suicide, if
that’s what she decided.
    I looked at Meredith. “What about
that note?” I asked again.
    Meredith rubbed her eyes with the
backs of her hands. “We had an argument this morning. You know, mother-daughter
stuff. It wasn’t really earth-shaking, but I guess it was bad enough to make
her want to apologize before she—” She shook her head, the tears coming again. “Oh,
God, I couldn’t live with myself if I thought our argument was what pushed her
into this.”
    I looked at Meredith. “You’re sure there weren’t any pills in the house?”
    She shook her head numbly. “Last
night I couldn’t sleep. I’m not into self-hypnosis, and I don’t have Mother’s
thing about chemicals. I asked if she had any. She said she didn’t.” Her face
twisted. “She must have got them this morning. Or she lied.”
    “Listen, you guys,” Ruby said
urgently, “I came over yesterday afternoon and Jo and I did our regular yoga
and meditation together. I’d have known it if she was thinking of something
like ... this. But she was fine.” She closed her eyes. “She was fine,” she
repeated fiercely, as though she herself were responsible for the balance of Jo’s
mind.
    Meredith looked at me, her gray eyes
shadowed. “But there is something odd, China. There was somebody here today.
While Ruby and I were in Austin.”
    I got up and turned on the hanging
light over the table and flicked off the fluorescent. I hate those stupid
things. Even when they’re working right, they make people look like day-old
corpses. They always remind me of the light in Leatha’s kitchen and the
washed-out blue of her face when she’d been drinking. “Who?” I asked. “Who was
here?”
    “I don’t know. I came in the back
way, because I had Mother’s cake and your present and I wanted to surprise her.
Then I went into the living room and found...” She paused and swallowed,
reaching deep inside for control. A moment later, calmer, she went on. “Just as
I came into the room, I got a whiff of perfume. I’m sensitive to smells, but I
couldn’t identify it. Something exotic.”
    “I didn’t smell any perfume,” I
said.
    “Not now, you wouldn’t.” Meredith
rotated her shoulders wearily and Ruby got up and moved behind her, kneading
her shoulder blades with the tips of her fingers, to save her orangy-red nails.
“It was just the barest whiff. It was gone the second I opened the door. And
then I found Mother, and the paramedics came and tried to revive her, and when
they said she was dead they called that awful policeman who smells like damp
cigars.” She made a wry mourn. “Thank God he isn’t smoking the damned thing.”
    I frowned. From the look of it, Jo
had to have taken the pills soon after Meredith and Ruby had left this morning.
But acccording to Meredith, she didn’t have any to take, and no Bloody Mary
mix. Had somebody else brought the pills and the Hot Shot? A speculative
question, no clear-cut answer. I’d been taught in law school to go for the most
obvious, least debatable answer first. And the most obvious answer was that Jo
had put Hot Shot on the grocery list and lied to her daughter about not having
sleeping pills. It wouldn’t be the first time a mother lied to her daughter.
    “I’m not trying to say Mother didn’t
do it,” Meredith said. “She’d been down for the past few weeks. Who wouldn’t
be, with the cancer, and the pain, and the bills. She was pretty depressed.”
    Ruby’s lips tightened. “Will you
knock off the depression shit? Sure, she was frustrated at not feeling better.
But she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d kill herself over a little pain. And not
over a few bills, either.”
    Meredith straightened her shoulders
and fished a tissue out of her pocket. She blew her nose with the grim
determination of someone who’s decided not to cry anymore. “You’re right,