The Rosemary Caper 1

China Bayles Gets an Assignment

This story features China Bayles, a former lawyer who owns an herb shop in the small Texas town of Pecan Springs, and her friend Ruby Wilcox, owner of the neighboring Crystal Cave. China and Ruby are given an uncomfortable and thankless task: finding which of their longtime friends is a thief. Reading time: about 9 minutes.

Compared to my former life as a Houston criminal defense attorney, where every day was a battleground and every encounter a hand-to-hand combat, my life in Pecan Springs flows as smoothly as that sweet molasses that’s made from sorghum  grown over in East Texas. But every now and then there’s a hitch in our git-along, as we say around here, and something happens to remind me that ugliness happens in even the coziest—and friendliest—of places.

Take what happened one Tuesday morning last month, for instance. I am contentedly dusting the bookshelves in my shop when Vickie Bridges comes in, clearly upset. Vickie is the president of our local herb club, the Myra Merryweather Herb Guild. The Guild is named for the energetic, public-spirited woman who organized it back in the 1930s and is remembered to this day with an awe that borders on reverence. Vickie is a short, bouncy, cheerful woman with short gray curls. She isn’t bouncy this morning, though.

 I stow my duster under the counter. “What’s up, Vic? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“I can’t believe what’s just happened, China.” She bites her lip. “I know how busy you are, but I’m hoping you can help.”

 I go to the hospitality shelf and pour a cup of lavender-mint tea. “Sit down for a minute and tell me what’s going on,” I say, handing it to Vickie, along with a cookie from the platter of rosemary shortbread cookies Cass Wilde, our tearoom manager, baked this morning.

Vickie is so upset that getting a coherent story isn’t easy. But when I’m finally able to pry the details out of her, I have to agree. Indisputably, something odd and troubling has happened.

This morning, she went over to the Merryweather Guild House to catch up on some club paperwork. She didn’t notice anything unusual until she went up to the second-floor library, where we keep a couple of hundred books for our members to borrow. Most aren’t in the least remarkable—donated cookbooks, herbals, and gardening how-to. But the Guild owns one crown jewel: Myra Merryweather’s Cookery Book, published in 1920. A book dealer in Houston appraised it for three thousand dollars, because the author herself, a celebrated Southern herbalist, had written notes in the margins. But it’s worth a lot more than that to the Guild because . . . well, because Mrs. Merryweather holds a special place in our hearts.

“And that’s the book that’s missing!” Vickie wails. “Myra’s Cookery Book is . . . gone! Somebody took it!” 

I frown. “I thought we were keeping that book in a safety deposit box at the bank.”

“We were, until just a few days ago,” Vickie says. “We took it out to put into the library. Greta Jacobs is scheduled to give a talk about Mrs. Merryweather’s life in a couple of weeks and she wanted people to be able to see it.”

 “Well, then, maybe somebody borrowed it. Greta herself, maybe.”

“I’m afraid not,” Vickie replies miserably. “We put it in that locked glass display case beside the window in the library. The case was broken into. There’s glass all over the floor.”

That was a surprise. Member of our herb guild have been known to get into a fuss now and then. Pecan Springs is a small town. People know too much about each other. Little disagreements and petty jealousies pop up like unwelcome weeds in an otherwise tranquil garden, and there are often undercurrents of tension in the membership. But it’s hard to imagine anyone I know smashing a display case to get at a cookbook.

 “This is a job for the cops,” I tell Vickie firmly. A theft of this significance is a felony. Convicted, you can get a hefty fine and a couple of years in jail.

Vickie shakes her head. “We can’t call the police, China. Mrs. Kytle has just offered us a pair of valuable floral paintings—but only if we have adequate security. If she finds out that somebody’s stolen that cookbook, we can kiss those paintings goodbye. And anyway, we don’t want the police to arrest one of our members. That’s why I’ve come to you. I want you to get that cookbook back—with as little fuss as possible.”

“I still think it would be good to talk to Sheila,” I say stubbornly. That would be Sheila Dawson, the Pecan Springs chief of police. She’s a friend, and we could count on her to keep a secret. But then I remember. “Nope. That won’t work. Sheila’s in Dallas this week, attending a Texas Women of Law Enforcement Conference.”

Vickie gave me hopeful look. “Well, maybe Ruby could give us a suggestion or two.” Vickie was with us the night Ruby Wilcox’s Ouija board tipped us off to the whereabouts of a valuable stolen quilt. She understands that Ruby (who is deeply intuitive) often has access to information that isn’t available to us ordinary mortals. And Ruby is also a Merryweather, so she has a vested interest in finding that book.

I leave my helper Laurel behind the counter and take Vickie next door to the Crystal Cave, Ruby’s New Age shop—the only one of its kind in Pecan Springs. In her vivid imagination, my best friend is Nancy Drew and Kinsey Millhone mixed together, with a dash of Stephanie Plum tossed in to spice things up. If I went looking for that cookbook without her, she’d never forgive me.

Six feet tall, with red hair and gingery freckles, Ruby is utterly unforgettable. Today, she was wearing a slim, ankle-length dress, slit to the knee and tie-dyed in various shades of indigo blue, with a tie-dyed scarf wound around her hennaed curls. She looked like a carrot in blue shrink-wrap.

“Omigosh!” she gasps and her eyes go big when Vickie tells her that Mrs. Merryweather’s famous Cookery Book has been stolen. “Who would do a thing like that?”

“That’s what we’d like to know.”  Vickie leans forward eagerly, as if she’s hoping that Ruby will produce a hat and a rabbit. “Any ideas?”

Ruby hesitates and I wonder if she’s about to come up with something for us—one of her intuitive guesses that are often right on the money. But she shakes her head. “Nothing comes to mind immediately,” she says regretfully.

Vickie is obviously disappointed. After a brief silence, I speak up. “Well, then, how about if you and I go over to the Guild House after we close this afternoon?” I turn back to Vickie. “In the meantime, don’t clean up. Just leave things as they are.”

And that was it. We had a plateful of questions and precious few answers. Maybe a visit to the scene of the crime would yield some clues.

Episode Two: “Cora Suggests a Suspect.” If you haven’t read my brief (two-minute) history of serial fiction, you’ll find it here.

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