A Collage to Kill For 2: A China Bayles Papercraft Mystery

Oshibana: Pressed Flowers on Paper

Previously: China is saddened to discover her friend, paper artist Mattie Long, tragically dead at the foot of the Craft Emporium stairs. You can read/review the previous episode here.

I’ve owned Thyme and Seasons for quite some time now, and you’d think I’d get tired of the hard work and responsibility. But that hasn’t happened yet, perhaps because I enjoy the shop so much, not to mention the gardens around it. No matter how difficult things may be, I’m always cheered by the sight of chile pepper ristras and garlic braids hanging against the stone walls, shelves of hand-crafted herbal vinegars and soaps and cosmetics and potpourri, and gleaming glass jars filled with dried culinary and medicinal herbs.

Look anywhere in the shop, and you’ll see bouquets of dried tansy and lunaria and goldenrod, and baskets of statice and artemisia and sweet Annie, an all-natural treat for the eyes and nose. On the walls, you’ll see some truly lovely pieces of floral art: pressed herbs and flowers artfully framed or used to create beautiful cards—what the Japanese call oshibana.

Patti Estep’s pressed flower art (oshibana) from Hearth & Vine

Outside, the gardens are built around themes: a fragrance garden, a Shakespeare garden, a butterfly garden, and (Ruby’s favorite) a Zodiac garden. And there are always pots of green plants ready to go into your garden. I come to the shop early and stay late, and love every minute of it, even when I’m weeding.

Photo by Jumpei Mokudai on Unsplash

I was getting ready to close one late afternoon, a few days after Mattie’s funeral. I had just picked up the tray that had held Cass’s ginger-spicy cookies—so good that they were all gone, not a crumb left—when I looked up to see Mattie’s sister Caroline coming up the walk. I called to Ruby, who came through the door that connects our shops just as Caroline opened the front door and came in.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re still open,” she blurted. “I wanted to get here earlier, but Tom needed me, and I couldn’t get away.”

From the look on Caroline’s face, I knew she was worried about something, and I put down the empty tray. At Mattie’s funeral, Ruby and I had offered the usual sympathetic formula: we were there for her if she needed us. We meant it, of course, but I hadn’t actually expected her to take us up on it, and certainly not so soon. I didn’t quite know what to say.

But Ruby is a people-person and never at a loss. Her tone was at once casual and concerned. “How can we help?”

Caroline glanced around the shop, as if she wanted to make sure that we were alone. “If you have a minute . . . ” she said nervously, her voice trailing off.

“Sure,” I said, following Ruby’s lead. “Take all the minutes you want. They’re free.”

 The story came haltingly at first, then in a tumbling rush of words that ended with a burst of tears. Caroline was deeply upset and not entirely coherent, but Ruby and I finally got it all sorted out. Some of it we already knew, and some of it was a surprise. Quite a surprise.

We knew that Caroline’s husband Tom had a serious heart condition that had required frequent hospitalizations over the past two years. We were dismayed (but not surprised) to hear that his preexisting condition had prevented them from getting sufficient health insurance. Caroline had done what she could to pay the bills. But she couldn’t do enough. She and Tom and their kids had been facing bankruptcy when, a year ago, Mattie had handed Caroline ten thousand dollars—in cash. 

“In cash?” Ruby asked, widening her eyes in surprise. She’s six-foot-plus in her sandals, her bright red hair springs out in tight ringlets, and she has the most expressive face and hands I’ve ever seen. When Ruby is surprised, she’s surprised all over.

“In cash,” Caroline said grimly. “I know for a fact that Dr. Weaver—the gynecologist she worked for—paid her peanuts. I kept asking her where it came from, but she would only give me that old chant we used to use when we were kids. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’”

But that was just the beginning. The first ten-thousand-dollar gift, Caroline said, was followed by a three more, and then, just two weeks before Mattie’s death, by a fifth. The grand total: fifty thousand dollars, all in cash. Mattie refused to say where she was getting it. She would only say that somebody owed her the money, and that there was more where that came from.

And now it had occurred to Caroline that Mattie might not have come by this money . . . well, legally. She must have been up to something. What was it? Who else had been involved? And was it somehow connected to her death?

“I hate the thought,” Caroline said thinly. “But I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s driving me crazy.”

“We have to talk to Sheila,” I said, reaching for the phone.

Sheila Dawson—Smart Cookie to her friends—is our chief of police. It isn’t an easy job, for Pecan Springs, by and large, is a conservative town and some of its citizens consider policing (especially chiefing) to be an unsuitable job for a woman. Sheila is always running into trouble with the City Council, which has given her a great deal of grief over a few unsolved crimes, including the murder of an attractive, thirty-something librarian at the Pecan Springs Public Library whom we all knew. And missed.

Caroline put a restraining hand on my arm. “No,” she said. “I can’t talk to the police, China—not right away, anyway. You know Tom. He’ll be terribly upset if he suspects that the money we used to pay his medical bills might be . . . well, dirty money.”  She twisted her fingers. “That sort of stress could be dangerous for him.”

I bit back the temptation to say that it was my experience that most money was dirty money, if you dig deep enough. But that wouldn’t help matters. Instead, I said, “But you’re willing to tell the police about the money if there’s other evidence that Mattie was murdered?”

“I will if I have to,” Caroline said slowly. “If it comes to that. But I was hoping that you could . . . well, look around first. Without involving the police.”

“Investigate, you mean?” That was Ruby. She grew up with Nancy Drew and loves to cast herself in the role of Kinsey Millhone, Private Eye.

“Exactly.” Carolyn brightened. “I know you guys are good at that. I’ll give you the key to Mattie’s condo. You could start there. And her studio, of course. In the Emporium.”  She frowned. “Actually, it looked to me as if someone had searched the studio. My sister was a very neat person, and I noticed quite a few things that seemed out of place.”

“Of course we’ll have a look,” Ruby said in a reassuring voice, patting Caroline’s shoulder. “We’ll get started right away, won’t we, China?”

I sighed. I could tell by the tone of Ruby’s voice that there was no point in arguing with her. When she decides to play Girl Detective, there’s nothing left to do but go along.

And I’ll have to admit that I was curious, too. It was hard to imagine how Mattie could have laid her hands on fifty thousand honest dollars. The money that went to pay Tom’s medical bills must have come out of somebody else’s pocket, and there had to be a reason for it.

Why? What could be the reason?

How did Mattie get that money?

And had her death really been an accident? Or had somebody sent her hurtling headfirst down those stairs?

Subscribers and friends, thank you for reading “A Collage to Kill For.” And please, tie a string around your finger, reminding yourself to ask your librarian to put you on the waiting list for the new China Bayles mystery, Forget Me Never!

Supporting subscribers, the extras for this episode feature the craft of oshibana and include notes on the “reluctant sleuth” and her “sidekick”; the story of the iconic Austin herb shop that inspired Thyme & Seasons; and a note about recipes in mysteries.