A Bitter Taste of Garlic, Episode 16: Constance's Story

Previously. China left Laurel to mind the shop and sat down with the letters, reading enough of them to realize that—yes, it is true. Jo and Roz had been lovers. But there was more: Roz was demanding the return of her letters to Jo, and Jo was resisting. Roz’s last few letters were not just demanding, but threatening. Determined now to see what she can learn from Roz, China drops in on her at the cottage, letting Roz know that she has the letters but, as Jo’s executor, has already agreed to donate all of Jo’s papers to the Notable Women of Texas collection at the CTSU library. Roz’s desperation is so real that China might have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t burgled Meredith’s house. And if it weren’t for her growing suspicion that Roz might have had something to do with Jo’s death. She tells Roz that she will be out for the evening, baiting Roz with the information that the letters are in her apartment at the rear of the shop.

Missed something? You can read (or reread) the earlier episodes here.

After I left Roz at the cottage, I went back to the shop. Laurel was signing the UPS ticket for the herb order that had just come in. I checked the register to see what the sales had been like while I’d been gone.

“It looks like we didn’t have a thundering herd of customers,” I said.

Laurel ticked off the sales on her fingers. “Two books and some rose-scented soap. Oh, and Susan Albert bought the last of that basil vinegar, over there on the corner shelf.” She pointed. “She said she was also looking for rosemary vinegar, too. I told her I thought we had some in the back but I couldn’t find it. You might give her a call if we have it.”

“I will,” I said. “Meanwhile, could you call Sheryl Tomas and see when she’s going to deliver those vinegars we ordered?” Working out of her “cottage kitchen” down in New Braunfels, Sheryl produces an attractive line of herb, fruit, and cosmetic vinegars.

I left Laurel reaching for the phone and went next door to Ruby’s shop, where she was dusting her crystal display.

“Listen, Ruby, about the art show tonight—”

Ruby frowned. “You’re not folding on me, are you?”

“We can do the art show another time. Something has come up—something urgent. And I need your help.”

“Help with what?”

“We’re doing a stakeout.”

“A stakeout?” Ruby has always wanted to be Nancy Drew when she grows up. She was immediately intrigued. “Who are we staking out?”

“You’ll see,” I said. “Come at seven. Wear your black jeans. And a dark shirt.”

If I’d had my druthers, I might have wished for McQuaid as a stake-out partner. He’s had a lot of experience with stakeouts and he’s got about sixty pounds more brawn than Ruby. But McQuaid wasn’t available. Ruby and I would have to handle this together.

Ruby had more questions. “But what are we going to do?”

“I’ve baited a little trap,” I said cheerfully. “We’re going to wait for a rat to break and enter.”

*****

But tonight’s stakeout was still hours away, and while Laurel was here to mind the shop there was something else I had to do. I reached for the valerian jar that Laurel had just refilled.

Valerian smells like a locker room. You want to store it in a tightly lidded container, away from anything that absorbs odor. Away from cats, too. Most cats think it’s even sexier than catnip and go moderately bananas over it. But valerian is a strong natural sedative, loaded with plant chemicals that relax muscles, calm nervous energy, and release tension. If insomnia was Violett’s problem, a strong valerian tea could be part of the answer. I sacked a couple of ounces and stuck the sack in my purse.

Then I left Laurel to mind the shop and headed up the street to the Craft Emporium. When I got there, I found a closed sign hung on the door of Violett’s Doll House. So I went back downstairs to look for Constance, who turned up in her broom-closet office under the staircase. There are brooms still in it, hanging on the back wall, and there’s a mop bucket under the plywood shelf that serves as her desk. The desk is always littered with curls of adding machine tape and mounds of bills that seem to grow higher every day.

Constance was never cut out to be a businesswoman, and her relationship to the Craft Emporium is one of harried struggle. When I think of her and the Emporium, I imagine a frazzled chipmunk trying to push a large, balky white elephant. Constance has spunk, but she’s met her match in the Emporium’s leaky roof, sagging floors, and unreliable plumbing.

As Constance moved her pudgy elbows a drift of papers and pink phone slips fluttered to the floor. The broom closet isn’t air-conditioned, and it was hot and stuffy. Her perm had frizzed out all over her head, and she’d taken her shoes off and propped her feet on the mop bucket.

“I’m looking for Violett,” I said. “I brought some herbs she wanted.” But the herbs were just an excuse. I had to persuade her not to talk to anyone else about Roz and Jo and their relationship. “Have you seen her?”

“I sent her home. Poor thing looked like death warmed over.” Constance made a note on a piece of adding machine tape. “You know she had a nervous breakdown once?”

“Violett?” I was surprised. “No, I didn’t. When?”

“Just after her mother died. Violett took care of that old woman for, oh, nine-ten years maybe, not gettin’ out of the house except to go to church and the grocery store. The only other thing in the world she did was make dolls. When her mother died, she went all to pieces. Real basket case.”

I made a sympathetic noise. It sounded as if Violett had been thoroughly victimized by life’s circumstances.

Constance picked up a piece of adding machine tape that had just snaked from the pile and glared at it accusingly. Then she wrenched her attention back to the conversation. “She was totally out of it for a few days, pitching one hissy after another—about sex, mostly.”

“Violett?” I was surprised. Meek, mild Violett was one of the least violent people I’d ever met. It was hard to imagine her getting up the energy to sneeze, much less pitch a hissy. And sex?

Constance cluck-clucked pityingly. “Really, you wouldn’t have known the poor thing. But she got better after I told her she ought to open herself a shop upstairs here and sell those stuffed dolls of hers.” She shook her head sadly. “Those dolls—they’re her life. She hates to sell any one of them, which is why she has such a hard time paying her rent.” With one last exasperated glance at the offending adding machine tape, Constance impaled it on a spindle.

I nodded, remembering the doll she’d refused to sell. I leaned closer, now feeling urgent. “What’s this about sex?”

“Obsession.” There’s nothing that Constance likes better than gossip. Her eyes glittered. “She’s got this obsession with sex.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, back when she was havin’ her nervous breakdown, I was the who offered to sit with her.” She gave a short, scornful laugh. “And me a Presbyterian. Wouldn’t you think those Methodist ladies would’ve given an afternoon to the poor soul? But no, it was me, so I got treated to her goin’s-on for a couple of weeks, until she got better. Mostly what she carried on about was sex. Growing up, you know, she was her father’s little girl, and they was . . . real close, if you know what I mean.” She gave me a significant look.

I felt chilly. “Poor Violett,” I said, low.

She nodded. “Well, after her father died, she was stuck at home with her mother, with nothing but the Bible and her dolls for company. Mrs. Hall wouldn’t let her look sidewise at a man. Wouldn’t even let her have a tee-vee.” I could have said that not having a TV might be a healthy thing, but I didn’t. “She was mostly goin’ on about Miss Ima’s lover,” she added with relish.

I raised both eyebrows. This was getting juicier by the minute. “Miss Ima had a lover?”

Ima and Erma Mason, twin sisters, both in their eighties, are Violett’s closest neighbors. Miss Ima is vivacious and still sprightly, but I’d never heard anything about a lover.

Constance moved her elbows and a few more pieces of paper drifted onto the floor. “‘Course, it was only old Sam Peavy. He comes over every couple of weeks to mow the grass and help Miss Ima and Miss Erma keep up their roses. But Violett took it into her head that Ima and old Sam were committing sins of the flesh. I doubt Miss Ima gave a hoot ’bout what Violett said. She’s had quite a checkered past, you know.”

She glanced at me, and I nodded. I knew both Ima and Erma Mason from the Herb Guild and Sam Peavy, the neighborhood handyman. And I’d heard that Miss Ima had been a scarlet woman in her youth, a half-century or more before.

“But it was very embarrassing for Ima’s poor sister,” Constance went on, “because it was spring and the windows were open and she could hear every last word of Violett’s carryings-on. You know Erma, so proper and genteel. It worried her no end that the neighbors might think there actually was something illicit between Ima and dear old Sam. Especially her neighbor on the west, who’s a Jehovah’s Witness.”

I reflected. If it weren’t for the letters, Violett’s story about Roz and Jo could be a figment of a delusional imagination, like this silly story about Ima and her lover. However, there were the letters.

Constance combed through the papers on her lap and found another adding machine tape. She glared at it balefully. “What I’m sayin’ is that Violett looked every bit as bad today as when she was havin’ her nervous breakdown. So I sent her home. If you’ve got something for her, that’s where you’ll find her.”

“I guess I’d better stop by and see her,” I said. “I’ve got some valerian for her. It might help.”

But now I was really feeling urgent. I had to convince Violett not to talk to anyone else about Roz and Jo—which was exactly what she might do, if she was as unstable as Constance thought. Meredith had enough to handle without having to deal with gossip about her mother’s love life.

But more importantly, there was Roz.

If she was capable of slipping Jo a deadly combination of sleeping pills and booze to keep her quiet, what might she do if she found out that Violett was wholesaling her sex life to the public?

Constance hoisted herself out of her chair and the papers drifted from her lap to the floor. “If you’re going over to Violett’s, will you tell her something for me?”

“Sure. What is it?”

She pointed at a calendar on the wall. The first of the month was circled in red. “Would you remind her about the rent? She brought it in early this morning, but when she heard the news about Roz and the senator, she forgot to give it to me. I never like to let my tenants get behind on their rent.”

I was tempted to tell her I didn’t collect rents, but I wasn’t sure she’d know I was joking.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Your Reader’s Notebook, Episode 16, should drop into your inboxes any minute now. Now that the holidays are over, we’re back to our usual format, with some answers to your questions from Susanna Brill, owner of The Rosemary House, and a few craft and cookery ideas.

A quick update: When we’ve finished A Bitter Taste of Garlic, we’ll move into a different format, with a slow read (a chapter or two a week) and a book from another of my mystery series. The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree, the first book in a series set in a small Southern town in the early 1930s. The book is widely available in print, ebook, and audio. You might also be able to find it at your local library or via Interlibrary Loan.

I’m also planning to add several books to our Guerrilla Readers read-along. Three titles I’m considering for later in the year:

• American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodard;

• Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, by Beth Macy; and

• Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster, by Jacob Soboroff.

If you have other suggestions, please drop them into the comments.