Read Online Thyme of Death by Susan Wittig Albert - Free Book Online

ready
to close. When are you knocking off?”
    “Right about now” I said firmly,
pushing Haumea into the corner and closing the door. I penciled a note that
said “Closed for Jo Gilbert’s memorial service. Open tomorrow at nine,” and
taped it to the door.
    I turned to Ruby. “There’s some
spinach-cheese lasagna left from last night,” I said. “Want some? We could eat
out on the back patio.”
    “Super,” Ruby said enthusiastically.
Ruby is always enthusiastic where eating is concerned. But anybody who’s almost
six feet and only one-thirty-five can afford to be enthusiastic about food.
    I locked up and we went through the
connecting door into my place. I stuck the lasagna in the microwave and found
several deviled eggs in the fridge, along with some celery and carrot sticks.
We carried our lunch trays out to the sunny flagstone patio under my kitchen
window, where the late-blooming butterfly weed was attracting the last of the
hummingbirds, tanking up for the long haul to Mexico, where they spend the
winter. If you sit out there for lunch in the summer, you’ll be barbecued in
nothing flat, but on an autumn day like today it was perfect, just the right
mix of sun, cloud, and breeze, seasoned with the sweetly pungent odor of the
sun-warmed creeping thyme that grows among the paving stones. It was going to
be a fine afternoon for a memorial service. Just the kind of day Jo loved.
    Ruby and I were unusually silent.
When we were finished eating, she leaned back in her chair. “I still don’t
believe Jo did it,” she said testily, as if she were contradicting something I’d
just finished saying.
    “You’ve said that before. Several
times.”
    “I’ll keep on saying it.”
    “Well, fine,” I replied reasonably. “But
I don’t know what you think it proves. Bubba says - ”
    “Piss on Bubba!” Ruby ran her
fingers through her frizzy orange hair, making it even frizzier. “Bubba Harris
is a grade-A turkey. He doesn’t know the least thing about the way people feel.”
    I sighed. “I won’t dispute you
there. But feeling doesn’t have a lot to do with the facts in this case. And
Bubba knows plenty about police procedure. All the evidence points to—”
    “The evidence could have been
planted.”
    I stared at her. “Planted? By whom?”
    “By the person who killed her, of
course. Who else would plant evidence?”
    I narrowed my eyes. “Let me get this
straight. You mean, you think Jo was murdered?”
    “She didn’t kill herself, and she
didn’t take an accidental overdose,” Ruby replied firmly. “That leaves only
one alternative, doesn’t it?” She shot me a challenging look. “Well, doesn’t
it? You must have seen plenty of murders dressed up like suicides, back when
you were defending crooks.”
    “Clients,” I corrected her. “They
might have been crooks before or after I defended them. But while I was
defending them, they were clients.”
    Ruby waved a dismissive hand. “Crooks,
clients, whatever. Weren’t there cases that looked like suicide and turned out
to be homicide?”
    “Her prints were all over the
bottle. And the glass.”
    “Somebody else could have put them
there after she was dead, or unconscious. I’ve read about it in murder
mysteries. In fact, it was in one of the Kinsey Millhone books. The murderer
pressed the victim’s hand around the poison bottle, and viola! Prints.”
    “Oh, yeah?” I said acidly. “Then why
don’t you tell me who you think did all this surreptitious fingerprinting? And
while you’re at it, P. I. Wilcox, you can also expound your theory of how the
pills got into her in the first place. Did somebody pry her mouth open and pour
them down her throat? And what about the note? And the motive? Just why would
anybody want to kill Jo?”
    Ruby gave me an injured look. “You
don’t need to be so sarcastic, China. I was just telling you what I think.”
    I modified my tone. “Well, who,
then?”
    “Arnold Seidensticker, for