Susan Albert: Rueful Death

The fifth book in the China Bayles series, 1996

I am grateful to the community of Lebh Shomea for the quiet refuge its members have offered me from time to time. Sister Maria, Sister Marie, and Father Kelly: my thanks. Your commitment and joyful sacrifice allow me a glimpse into the soul of the spiritual life and show me that God is larger than I thought. To Jean Springer, my deepest gratitude. Your gentle guidance and your insights into contemplative life have taken me further along my own path. Thanks, too, for your generous and helpful reading of this book. To Bob Goodfellow, thanks for the comments that helped fill out the basic plot idea, and thanks to Natalee Rosenstein, Berkley Prime Crime editor, for your thoughtful suggestions. And to my husband and fellow author, Bill, thanks and hugs for all you do, always.

The fictional landscape of Rueful Death closely resembles that of the Texas Hill Country, and some of its characters eat, drink, and carry on like me people who live there. However, the town and county of Carr are wholly imaginary, St. Theresa's is a monastery of the mind, and the Sisters of me Holy Heart are a fictional creation. Don't let the bits of real life mat the author slips in from time to time fool you into thinking that the characters, settings, and events of this book are anything but figments of an insubordinate imagination.

Afterward, when I thought about what happened at St. Theresa's, I felt embarrassed and a bit rueful. If I'd been a police officer and drawn those wrong conclusions, my sergeant would have bawled me out for my errors in judgment. If I'd been a private investigator, I might have been fired. But I'm neither, thank God. I'm just an ordinary person who was asked to do something a little unusual, and I made a mistake here and there.

But everybody makes mistakes. And every so often, our mistakes are criminal. If we get caught, we have to pay the prescribed penalty-when the system works right, which it doesn't, most of the time. But even when justice fails, there's the universe to be reckoned with, or God, or whatever you call it. One way or another, you pay for what you do. And sometimes, what you think was a mistake, or even a crime, turns out to be something else altogether.

It's all very mysterious.

But I wasn't thinking about any of that when I was getting ready to leave that first Saturday in January. I was listening to McQuaid, who didn't want me to go away. Or, more precisely, he didn't want me to go away without him.

"If what you want is a vacation," he said, "how about Cozumel? We can rent a condo and a dune buggy, go fishing, scuba diving, dancing. We can take the ferry across to the Yucatan and see the ruins at Tulum." He spoke alluringly, his slate blue eyes warm. "Let's do it, China. It'll be a belated Christmas present for both of us. We don't get to spend enough time together anymore."

My name is China Bayles, and Mike McQuaid is the guy I live with. This discussion was occurring in our bedroom. I was packing for my trip and McQuaid was still trying to talk me out of it.

I stuck a second pair of jeans into my suitcase and counted my rolled-up socks. Seven pairs, all I could find. I would be gone fourteen days, which meant that I'd have to wear dirty socks or do some laundry. I dropped to my knees and fished a pair of sneakers out from under the bed. The toes were scuffed and the laces frayed, but where I was headed, poverty was a virtue. I stuck the shoes in the suitcase, moved Khat (my seventeen-pound Siamese) to the pillow, and sat down on the bed next to McQuaid.

"Look," I said wearily. "I don't want to go fishing or diving or bounce around in a dune buggy. I want to rest." I didn't want to tell him the whole reason I was going away without him. I settled for half. "Christmas was a killer."

"You mean you've finally OD'd on Christmas?" McQuaid was gently teasing. ' 'I thought you loved the holidays-all those herbal wreaths and candles and staff. You certainly looked like you loved it, and you had lots of business. Thyme and Seasons is a great success."

"I'm supposed to look like I love it," I said, scratching Khat's back. "If I looked like Scrooge, my customers would go someplace else." Thyme and Seasons is my herb shop. Lately, I've been spending most of my waking hours there. Maybe that's the trouble. I sighed. "To be honest, a person can only stand to make so many bushels of potpourri in one lifetime. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm cut out to be a successful herb shop owner."

McQuaid was startled. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

He narrowed his eyes. "How seriously?"

' Enough to think twice about Wanda Rathbottom's offer to buy me out."

"I thought you didn't like Wanda."

' I don't. But I might be persuaded to like her money-if there's enough of it." Wanda owns the nursery outside of town. She's coveted Thyme and Seasons from the day I opened.Tired as I was right now, I'd almost have given it to her.

Six years ago, I left my busy Houston criminal-law practice and moved to Pecan Springs, Texas. I wanted to have more time for myself, for friends, for doing things I enjoyed. Until the past six months, I'd been pretty successful in balancing my work and my life. But lately, I'd been at the shop from eight in the morning to six or seven in the evening. After business hours and on weekends, there was the newsletter and the bookkeeping and the ordering and the tax forms, not to mention the time I'd spent developing a plan to open a tea shop at the back of the store. I hadn't been in the garden for weeks, and I certainly wasn't doing what I started out to do. Enjoy myself. Have a life.

"It's probably just burnout," McQuaid said sympathetically. "You need to get away."

Just burnout? "Isn't that what I've been telling you?" I asked.

"Look, China," McQuaid said patiently, "nobody made you work fourteen hours a day for the entire Christmas season. You could have taken off whenever you felt like it." McQuaid teaches in the criminal justice department of the local university. On a long day, he's in the classroom for maybe three hours. He's on sabbatical leave this semester, which means he'll put in mornings on his research project and call it a day. From where I sit, calling it a day at eleven sounds pretty darn good.

"When you're in business for yourself," I said tackily, "you don't get a sabbatical."

He shrugged. "You could have given Laurel more hours.

Or made a deal with Ruby." Laurel Wiley helps out in the shop. Ruby Wilcox runs the Crystal Cave, next door. We take turns minding each other's shops. "And what's going to happen when you open the tearoom? You'll be even busier than you are now."

" Laurel was away for the holidays," I said defensively, "and Ruby had her hands full at the Cave. Anyway, it wasn't just the shop, it was the season. I had the house to decorate and the presents to wrap and the cooking. I don't think our Christmas guests would have appreciated it if we'd sent out for tacos."

"Nobody made you cook all that stuff, either," McQuaid went on, in the even, logical tone that he uses when he's lecturing his classes. ' 'Mom and Dad would have been perfectly content with sage stuffing-we didn't need oyster and corn bread stuffing, too. We've got enough fruitcake to last until next Christmas. And how many hours did you spend on the gingerbread house? And the tree decorations? You must have put in two days on those angels."