Oop! Apologies, readers! I scheduled Episodes 17 and 18 out of order. Here’s Episode 17, which I should have sent this morning. But now that you have two episodes, let’s just treat them together. Next week, we’ll move on to Episode 19. (Thanks to Debbie Fraker, for pointing this out so quickly!) I’ll send the Notebook in a moment.
Previously. China has enlisted Ruby in a scheme for an evening stakeout, but she needs to talk to Violett first, to caution her against spreading rumors about Jo and Roz—rumors that could hurt Jo’s daughter and create difficulty for Roz. She goes to the Emporium to look for Violett, but she’s not in her shop and Constance says she’s gone home, ill. Constance spins a story about Violett’s longtime obsession with sex, tracing it to a hinted-at relationship with her father and her domineering mother’s control. China, still mulling over what she’s heard from Constance, now heads for Violett’s house.
Missed something? You can read (or reread) the earlier episodes here.
I knew where Violett lived, but I still had trouble finding the house. It was hidden behind a scrubby oak thicket at the end of a narrow street. Violett’s only neighbors, Ima and Erma Mason—Ima is the once-scarlet woman—live the next street over. Their backyard abuts Violett’s backyard. I’m familiar with this part of the town because the Mason sisters invite the Herb Guild to meet in their yard every year when their roses are in bloom. Two years ago, I was invited to teach the Guild to make rose potpourri. Ever since, when the roses bloom, Irma and Ima invite me to gather all I want for rose crafting.
Violett’s house is a two-story frame structure crouching behind a tangle of agarita, fire thorn, and old rose canes. The white paint had long ago scaled from the weathered gray siding and a shutter hung loose at one corner. A half dozen cats were lounging comfortably on the front porch. They all scattered except for an arrogant-looking Siamese who put a front paw firmly on my foot as I knocked at the door.
“Watch it, cat,” I muttered. I’m not a great cat fancier, and this one seemed altogether too sure of himself. He blinked blue eyes at me and put the other front paw on my foot.
On the third knock, the front door opened a crack and I heard Violett’s voice, thin and reedy. “Thank you, no,” she said. “I don’t need any.”
“It’s China Bayles, Violett. I’ve brought your herbs.”
“Oh,” she said. Then, reluctantly, “Well, come in.”
The door opened and I followed the cat into the darkened parlor, which smelled of furniture polish and cooked cabbage. Violett stood clutching a navy cardigan around her. Constance had been right to send her home. She had the look of someone teetering on the edge. Her hair was in strings, her eyes deeply shadowed, and lines etched her mouth.
I’d never been in Violett’s house, but I could guess that the parlor looked just as it had when her mother was alive. The walls were papered with faded cabbage roses. The windows were draped with mauve brocade and curtained with white sheers. There was no TV, only an overstuffed chair and a purple plush sofa beside an oval table with a Bible open on it. On the wall hung a collection of old-fashioned pressed flowers and several framed photographs: a short, slender man with dark hair parted in the middle, holding himself with rakish and daring bravado; a woman taller and heavier and more powerful, hair drawn severely back, lips pursed, cheerless. One of the photos included a spindly, solemn child with imploring eyes.
With a start of recognition, I glanced from the solemn child on the wall to the faded woman standing nervously beside me. She was grown now but her face was still solemn and her dull eyes implored—what? Affection? Recognition? An opportunity to be herself, to grow away from the obedient daughter her mother had raised and her father had . . . loved? But she’d never had a chance, trapped in this house by her mother and by her own sense of duty.
A movement caught my eye, a cat jumping up on the sofa, and I noticed others drowsing like furry pillows on the sofa and chairs, one of them curled up around the stuffed pink bear that Violett had rescued from the tourist who wanted to buy it. Another cat sat on the small claw-footed maple-veneer coffee table in front of the sofa, giving itself a bath on the People magazine with Roz’s photo on the cover, perched on a pile of pink bears.
“How many cats do you have?” I asked. I could have counted, but I’d probably miss some.
“Eighteen, at the moment. They keep coming, you know, and I hate to turn them away.” She gave me a fragment of smile. “Some people have children. Would you like to see where I make my dolls?”
I followed her into the dining room. The table was littered with cloth scraps, ribbons, laces, and yarn. An old-fashioned treadle sewing machine sat at right angles to the table. Shelves along one wall held bolts of cloth, bags of stuffing, hanks of yarn, and stuffed dolls in various stages of completion. Shelves along the other wall held a dozen or more antique typewriters, all highly polished and carefully dusted.
Violett followed my curious glance. “Those were Daddy’s. He collected and restored them. He let me dust them. Of course, I still do.”
“Did you type his letters, too?” I asked, and then was immediately sorry. It sounded so intrusive.
But Violett didn’t notice. “No,” she replied regretfully. “I wanted to learn to type and get a job, but Mama was dead set against it. Anyway, he didn’t write letters. Mama didn’t either.”
She bent over and picked up the Siamese, who had followed us into the room. It squirmed uncomfortably in her arms, gave a sharply rebuking meow, and Violett put it down. “After I was born, Mama couldn’t have any more,” she added, as if that explained why her parents had no one to write to. “Mama always said it was a shame I wasn’t a boy. But Daddy said girls were better.” She smiled a small, secret smile and touched one of the typewriters. “Sometimes he liked me even more than he liked Mama.”
I shivered, feeling a sudden rush of sympathy mixed with something close to horror. I could imagine Violett as the solemn, spindly-legged young girl, who had by her birth thwarted her stern, joyless mother’s hopes for a son. And who had been liked by her bold, rakish daddy.
I cleared my throat and handed her the sack of herbs I’d brought. “Here’s the valerian you wanted. I hope it’ll help you sleep.”
Violett took the sack. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll get your money.”
“Oh, no.” I waved my hand. “It’s between friends.”
“Thank you.” Then, remembering to be polite, “Maybe you’d like something to drink.”
The kitchen was long and narrow. A pot of cooking cabbage sat on a back burner of the stove. One wall was filled with green-painted cabinets under a white-curtained window. A green painted table sat against the opposite wall, with three green chairs. The Siamese jumped up on a chair. He was a large cat with an air of poise and authority. His sleek body was fawn-colored, but his face, ears, feet and tail looked as if they had been brushed with charcoal. His pale blue eyes were startling in his dark face.
Violett smiled at the cat, her first genuine smile. “Come, Pudding,” she crooned, “does Mama’s little sweetheart want his treat?”
Bored with it all, Pudding yawned. But when Violett poured cream into a bowl, he abandoned his indifference, stalked to the bowl, and began to lap his treat with a pink tongue. Violett took a canned soft drink out of the refrigerator, divided it carefully into two glasses, and we both sat down. I skipped the preamble and jumped right into the reason I had come.
“Constance told me what you said about Roz Kotner and Jo Gilbert.”
Violett pressed her lips together. “She promised not to tell.”
I frowned. “I’m wondering who told you.”
I waited for her to refused to tell me, but she didn’t. “Nobody told me,” she said. Her glass had made a wet ring on the table and she got up and wiped it dry. Then she took two green-and-pink crocheted coasters off a shelf. She gave one to me and put the other under her glass. “I saw them myself.”
I pulled in my breath. “Saw them?”
“In Jo Gilbert’s kitchen. Through the window. They were kissing.” She screwed up her mouth as if the thought tasted bad. But she said it again, mouthing it, not ready to let it go. “Kissing.”
“When?” I asked. “A long time ago? Recently?”
“Ms. Kotner was back on a visit. I was walking home through the alley.”
Walking down alleys, looking through windows, hoping to see—what? I made my voice gentle. “Was that all you saw?”
She threw me a bitterly righteous glance. “Wasn’t that enough? I could tell what was going on. It was what the Bible warns us about in Genesis, chapter thirteen. ‘But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.’ The women, too,” she added. “Just like them.”
I leaned forward and took Violett’s hands in mine. Her fingers were cold, stiff, like brittle twigs. “Violett,” I said softly, “what you saw should not go any further. This is a small town. If people start talking, Jo’s daughter could be hurt. Ms. Kotner—”
Violett jerked her hands back. “What do I care?” Her voice cracked and her anger brought color to her ash-gray face. “The daughter’s none of my lookout. But Rosalind Kotner . . . ” Tears spilled onto her dry cheeks. “It’s so unfair! People ought to know what kind of woman she is and what she’s done. What she’s done to me.”
I frowned. What did Rosalind’s affair with Jo have to do with Violett? “To you? What’s she done to you?”
The anger blurred into something else—grief? loss? Her face wrenched with pain and the stiffness drained out of her body, as if she were dissolving. “She broke a promise,” she whispered.
I held her gaze. “What promise, Violett?”
Her eyes slid away from mine. She hunched her shoulders, pulling her sweater together with one hand, mumbling something inaudible. She was suddenly an old woman.
“Tell me, Violett,” I said softly. “You can trust me. I want to help.”
She looked back at me for a brief moment, then away again. “I don’t need your help to get what I’m owed. I don’t need anybody’s help. I know a way.”
“Oh?” I made my voice even, casual. “Tell me about it.”
For a moment, Violett didn’t respond. When she finally spoke, her voice was calmer, more deliberate, but grudging, as if she were measuring the words.
“I know something else.”
“What’s that?” I was pulling answers out of a hostile witness. But this was a witness who wanted to tell what she knew, or what she thought she knew. The room was so quiet that the cat’s purr sounded very loud, louder than the refrigerator and the ticking clock on the table.
Violett looked down at her hands. Her knuckles were white. “She was in town. The day Jo Gilbert died. I saw her.”
My stomach lurched. “Where?”
“On Live Oak, a couple of blocks from the Emporium.”
“When?”
“A little before nine that morning. I was on my way to open the shop.” Her voice was brittle. “She was driving that fancy red rent car.”
I frowned. If this was true, Roz had been lying when she told me she’d come straight to my place from the plane. And while it didn’t put her at the death scene, it confirmed at least some of my suspicions. And raised more.
But was it true? Or was Violett lying now, attempting to get some kind of twisted revenge on a woman who had violated her moral code?
I made my voice casual. “So what if you did see her? There’s no law that says Roz Kotner can’t come back to Pecan Springs when she feels like it. She has friends here, you know. And plenty of fans.”
Violett shook her head stubbornly. “She lied when she told people she didn’t get here until Wednesday. And everybody knows that Jo Gilbert wasn’t the type to kill herself. Roz Kotner had something to do with it. I know she did.” She met my eyes directly, almost challenging. “Are you going to tell her what I said? What I saw?”
It sounded like she was telling the truth. “If you have firsthand knowledge about a crime, Violett, I advise you to go to go to the police. They’ll follow up and—”
Violett was insistent. “I’m not asking for legal advice. I’m asking, are you going to tell her? If you want, you can tell her I’m the one who told you.”
And then I understood what was going on here. Violett was trying to get something out of Roz. She had the idea that if I gave Roz her story—a story that, if it didn’t incriminate Roz, at least put her in the difficult position of explaining why she had lied—Roz might give her what she wanted. Whatever that was.
But while I was already thinking of ways I could use Violette’s story, I wasn’t going to get in the middle between her and Roz. “I won’t run your errands,” I said firmly. “If you want Roz to know what you saw that morning, you have to tell her.”
Violett was silent. “Thanks for the valerian,” she said finally. “It was kind of you to bring it.”
I leaned forward. “I need to warn you, Violett, as a friend. Don’t go spreading gossip about Roz and Jo. It’ll only hurt Meredith. And there’s no telling how Roz will react.”
But I couldn’t get another word out of her, and after a few minutes I said goodbye. The Siamese followed me out to my bike and sat, studying me inscrutably, as I rode away.
Thanks for reading, everyone! Paid subscribers, your Reader’s Notebook, Episode 17, should drop into your inboxes any minute now. I always enjoy our conversations, so please join us in the comment space.
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.
Violett comes across as pathetic, potentially dangerous - her need for revenge a danger to herself as well as others. More layers!