"That’s nice, having something of your own."

  "You'd think," he said. "But she considered my practice community property. What was hers was hers, but evidently what was mine was ours," he said bitterly, then caught himself. "Sorry. We had a bit of a hiccup about that recently... I guess I'm still sore."

  "Community property." I took a sip of my La Croix. "I heard a rumor you and Priscilla might be parting ways."

  He cut his eyes away from me. "We talked about it, but we were patching things up," he said, then looked at me with a faux bright smile. I knew for a fact that they hadn’t been "patching things up"; in fact, unless something had changed drastically, they were divorcing.

  "It must be a lot of work, being the executor of a will with such a big estate."

  "Oh, no," he said. "I'm not the executor. Her attorney's the executor." He sighed. "I can't believe Serafine killed Priscilla. I never would have guessed she was capable of it."

  "You really think she did it?"

  Nigel blinked at me. "It was her tea that was poisoned. And they never got along."

  "I hear Priscilla might have been a little jealous of your relationship with Serafine," I said gingerly, taking another sip of my LaCroix.

  "What?" he asked, as if that were a startling revelation. "Oh, I know what you're talking about. Priscilla got a hold of my phone and completely misinterpreted some of the things she saw, but there was nothing between Serafine and me."

  "Am I wrong that you filed for divorce?"

  A shadow crossed his face, and I could feel his body tense from a yard away. "Who told you that?"

  "Oh, you know how small towns are." I shrugged.

  "It was Aimee, wasn't it?" He sighed. "That woman's had it in for me since the day she met me," he said.

  For someone who wasn't too attached to Serafine, he seemed awfully unhappy with her sister. "I noticed Chloe, Serafine's assistant, seemed rather interested in you at the workshop the other night."

  "Oh, Chloe? Just a schoolgirl crush," he said. "I helped her when she sprained her ankle a few months ago, at the museum, and ever since then she's been a little sweet on me."

  "Did you go to a lot of the workshops at the farm?" I asked.

  "Not all of them," he said. "I was particularly interested in some of the arts and crafts workshops. I often encourage my clients to find traditional activities to bring more flow into their lives and help them curb rumination. When I saw Serafine was creating products with traditional herbs, it seemed like a something I should investigate. At any rate," he said, "you're not here to get my life story, are you? I really do have some things to take care of this afternoon before my next appointment. Thank you so much for stopping by. Can I get you another drink to go? I'm going to get a tea." He headed to the kitchen and retrieved an Arizona Tea bottle from the Sub-Zero.

  I blinked as he popped the top and took a swig. "How is that tea, by the way?" I asked.

  "What, this?" He lifted the bottle. "I love the green tea flavor. I always say I'm going to make my own, but it's so hot in Texas, the ready-made iced tea is just easier. I go through about five bottles a day of this stuff."

  "I'll have to try it sometime," I said.

  "Oh, you should. Would you like one now?"

  "I'd love one," I said. "Can't drink enough in the summer heat."

  He retrieved a second bottle from the fridge and handed it to me. "Thanks again for dropping off the treats... and for the sympathy."

  "Of course. Let me know if you need anything else," I answered, giving him one of my cards.

  As I walked toward the door, his phone rang. He pulled it from his back pocket and silenced the call, but not before I saw a picture of the person calling. He shoved the phone back in his pocket and held the door for me. "Thanks again," he said, closing it behind me as I walked down the porch steps to my truck, the Arizona Tea bottle in one hand and my La Croix in the other.

  When I got to the truck, I set down the can, opened my purse, and retrieved the scrap of tea bottle label I'd pulled from the galvanized tub at the farm. It matched the label on the bottle in my hand. I put the bottle in the cupholder, and tucked the label back into my purse.. As I put the truck in reverse, looking up at the extensive second story of the garage as I backed out, I found myself wondering why, if Nigel's relationship with Chloe was so casual, he had her contact on his phone, and why she was calling him in the middle of the day.

  I looked around to see if I could find Arthur, but he was nowhere to be seen. The only sign of his presence was the moist spot on the mulch under the plumbago at the corner of the porch.

  My visit with Nigel had raised all kinds of questions.

  And a lot of them weren't particularly flattering.

  Quinn was elbow-deep in dough when I swung by the Blue Onion on my way back to the farm, her red hair swept up in a green bandanna. The lunch rush had finally dissipated; when I tapped on the glass door to the kitchen, she motioned me inside with a toss of her curly red head.

  "How's it going?" I asked.

  "Busy busy," she told me. "The lunch crowd was huge--everyone wants to catch up on gossip, it seems--and everyone seems to want kolaches today, so I'm making another batch.”

  "I made peach-honey butter last night, by the way; I brought you a jar.”

  "Thanks!" she said as I put the jar of golden puree on the counter. “I was going to make some of Serafine's foot balm, too, just as a trial run; if you've got a few minutes, I wouldn't object to some help. I hate spending money on pedicures."

  "That was on my list of things to try, too," I said. "I'll give it a whirl; do you have everything you need?"

  "In the box at the end of the counter," she said.

  "Got it." I opened the box and pulled out a jar hand-labeled Calendula Oil, a block of shea butter, a bag of beeswax, a bottle of sweet almond oil, and a small, cobalt-blue bottle labeled lemon oil. "Are you going to scent it with this?" I asked, holding up the little blue bottle.

  "I thought we'd try it," she said. "The double-boiler is already on the stove," she told me. She lifted one arm and used her forearm to wipe a bit of flour from her nose. "How are things with you? Any progress on Serafine?"

  "Maybe," I said, and filled her in on everything I'd learned. Including the note left on my back door.

  "That's scary!" she said.

  "Tobias came over and finished canning the peach butter; he's going to stay with me until we get this figured out."

  "Who do you think did it?"

  "Someone who doesn't like me asking questions."

  "So Alicia, maybe. You didn't talk to Nigel until after the note, did you?"

  "No."

  "Who else did you talk to?"

  "I'm not sure it matters. Someone saw me poking around the Warren house," I said. "I saw something moving outside, but I didn't get a glimpse of him or her. It could be anyone."

  "Why is Chloe calling Nigel, anyway?" Quinn asked as she added a little more flour to the dough.

  "That's what I want to know," I said. "And do you think Nigel knew Priscilla changed her will last week?" I asked, thinking of what I'd seen on Opal's desk. "I wonder if the old will had him in it?"

  "I don't know," she said, "but with all those resources going to the museum, that sure gives Alicia a good motive."

  "Particularly with the past-due notice I saw," I said. "Extra funding would go a long way toward taking care of those. Assuming she knew the museum would get anything."

  "Do you think she did know? And that she took Priscilla out to make sure the money came through?"

  "Probate takes a while, from what I hear," I said. "Although it kind of sounded to me like Priscilla might be after her head."

  "You think Alicia killed her to keep her job? That sounds kind of like a flimsy motive."

  "It does," I agreed. "But maybe she was hoping she'd get the money to cover those past-due bills… or avoid an audit. Maybe she wanted to avoid going to jail for embezzling, if there was anything funny going on with the finances. Nigel's on the list of suspects, too, but if he wasn't in the will, there's not a huge motive there."

  "If she was about to hire a nasty attorney, he may have figured he was in better shape killing her than divorcing her. Did she have life insurance?"

  "I don't know," I said, "but I can probably find out." I whipped out my phone and sent a quick text.

  "Who's that?" Quinn asked.

  "An old coworker in Houston," I said. I still had some contacts at the Chronicle from my former life as investigative reporter. "I promised to bring him a pecan pie next time I was in Houston if he could find out for me," I grinned.

  "Good to have friends," Quinn said as I set up the double boiler and put the beeswax and shea butter in to melt, along with the almond oil. I stirred everything together as we talked, bending down to take a whiff of the warm honeyed smell of beeswax.

  "I talked to Serafine about the doll baby," I said. "She told me it wasn't her."

  "Any idea who it might be?"

  "No, but she told me to bring it so she could take a look at it."

  "Hmm," she said, putting plastic wrap over the big bowl of dough to let it rest. "So what do you think about Chloe and Nigel? I heard a rumor the other day at the Blue Onion that there might have been some sparks there."

  "I don't know what to think," I said. "But I found a bit of an Arizona Tea label in the tub at the museum, and found out today that that's Nigel's favorite drink."

  "Interesting," she said, washing her hands, "but I'm not sure how that relates to what happened to Priscilla."

  "What if he poisoned a bottle of Arizona Tea, carried it along with him, then poured some of it into his wife's tea bottle when she wasn't looking?"

  'I don't remember him having a bottle of Arizona tea at the workshop."

  "Of course he wouldn't," I said. "He'd get rid of it; he wouldn't want to carry a poisoned bottle with him."

  "What do you think he did with it?"

  "Put it in the recycling, maybe? It's worth checking out," I said. "Wanna go with me?"

  She glanced at her watch. "Lunch service is over, and everything's pretty clean, so why not? Let's finish that foot balm. I'll put this dough in the fridge and get back to it later tonight."

  "Everything's melting pretty quickly, so it should only be a few minutes," I said; the beeswax and shea butter were liquefying quickly, and they smelled fabulous. I stirred as Quinn finished cleaning up the bowls and the last of the dishes; as she wiped down the cutting board, I stirred the calendula oil, honey, and lemon oil into the mixture, then grabbed the metal funnel off the shelf above the stove and filled several small mason jars with the liquid, scraping the pot to make sure I got all of it.

  "How's it looking?"

  "Liquid," I said. "You're not using preservative?"

  "No," she said. "You might want to if you're going to market it, but this is just a trial run for at-home use."

  Once I put the lids on the jars, I scooped a little residue from the top of the double boiler and sniffed it. "The lemon's lovely," I said, and rubbed it into my elbows, which were always dry and rough.

  She walked up next to me and scooped some up, then rubbed it into her hands and gave them a sniff. "Mmm," she said. "This stuff will be perfect in winter."

  "Especially on your feet before bed, if you wear socks."

  "It's June," she reminded me. "We've got till January before it gets cold, so don't get too excited. Ready to go to the museum?"

  "Sure," I said. "Although I'm not sure how we're going to explain digging through the recycling."

  "You could say you think you lost something?"

  "Like a poisoned tea bottle?"

  "You might want to get more creative than that. When does the recycling come, anyway?"

  "Tomorrow," I said. "We'd better get going."

  "Sifting through garbage at happy hour? You sure know how to have fun."

  "If it means getting Serafine out of jail, I'd sift through worse than that," I said.

  "Word, sister," my friend said with a grim smile on her pretty face.

  Heritage Farms was busier than I'd anticipated when we pulled into the parking lot a little bit later, and I was guessing all the recent news had resulted in more than a few "looky-lous," as my mother used to call them.

  "So what's our plan?" Quinn asked as I parked under the shade of an oak tree a good distance from the entrance.

  "I think we stop by, say hi, tell Alicia we're going to check the gardens, and then stop off and sort through the recycling," I said.

  "Without saying what we're doing?"

  "Better to ask forgiveness than permission," I said.

  "You're doing the talking if someone comes in and finds us knee-deep in trash," she advised me.

  "Got it," I said as we got out of my truck and headed for the entrance.

  Quinn and I waved at the museum director as we walked by the office. Unfortunately, she took that as her cue to hurry out and talk to us.

  "What are you two doing here?" she asked.

  "I wanted to show Quinn the garden," I said. "Also, I, uh, can't find a receipt I need for business expenses; I thought I might check the recycling bin and see if I accidentally tossed it. I cleaned my purse out the other day," I extemporized.

  "While you're at it, see if you can find the Jordan brooch," she said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Remember how I said some things have gone missing? Well, Priscilla's grandmother's prize sapphire brooch—came from Paris—has also disappeared," she said. "I've been turning absolutely everything over looking for it; it must have been worth tens of thousands of dollars." She sighed. "It's almost a good thing Priscilla is gone; she'd be furious at me."

  "I wonder who it would belong to now?" I asked.

  "Why, the museum, of course," she said. "Priscilla donated it."

  "I guess I was thinking about the estate," I said, wondering what she knew about Priscilla's will.

  "Oh, didn't you hear?" she said, smiling brightly. "The executor just called today. The museum is getting a huge chunk of the Jordan fortune, along with more land. It looks like we're going to be the best-funded living history museum in all of Central Texas!"

  "Wow," I said, as if I hadn't seen the will on Opal's desk. "Congratulations!"

  "I just wish it didn't come under such horrible circumstances," she said, her attempt at a solemn face not looking particularly convincing.

  "Me too," I said. "And I'm still hoping we can get Serafine off the hook. You don't think she did it, do you?"

  "I just don't know," the director said, shrugging.

  15

  Fortunately, the phone rang inside the office, drawing Alicia away. I looked at Quinn, and together we walked on.

  “Ready?”

  “I even brought latex gloves,” she said, pulling them out of her back pocket as we headed toward the fenced-off enclosure where trash and recycling were kept.

  “Let’s hope whoever it was recycled the bottle and didn’t throw it in the dumpster.” We both looked at the massive black cube with apprehension. It smelled a little ripe, like sour milk and onions, and something else… something deeply unpleasant. Both of us hoped what we were looking for would be in the two smaller yellow and green bins beside it.

  “What did they do with their trash back in the day?” Quinn asked as she opened the lid of one recycling bin and peered in.

  “Burned or buried it, I guess. Not a lot of dumpsters back in the 1800s, I suppose.”

  “This one’s half-full.”

  “So’s this one,” I said, opening the second bin. “How are we going to do this?”

  “I guess we just dump it all out on the ground and put it back in piece by piece,” she suggested.

  “Glad you brought gloves.”

  We gloved up and each tipped over our bins, distributing papers, bottles (a few of which were broken), and cans all over the stained pavement.

  “What are we looking for again?” Quinn asked.

  “Well, an Arizona Tea bottle, for starters. Or any tea bottle. Who knows?”

  “But wasn’t she found with the tea bottle in question?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes,” I answered, “but my theory is that the poison may have been poured from another bottle into hers.”

  “Based on what?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at the pile of recycling.

  “Wild goose chase? Desperation? I don’t know, but I don’t know where else to go from here.”

  She sighed. “All right, then. Let’s get started.” We started sorting. As she threw the third half-crunched Coke can into the bin, she asked, “How do we know it’s a bottle? And what does the poison look like?”

  “I looked it up,” I said. “It’s supposed to leave a white, powdery residue.”

  “Okay,” she said, and continued sorting. I dug through crumpled museum maps, several juice boxes that had been evidently been thrown in the wrong bin—these I moved to the dumpster. I found three tea bottles, but none of them had Arizona Tea on them, and none of them had any residue that looked like strychnine inside— at least not what Google told me strychnine was supposed to look like. I set them aside anyway.

  “This is fairly disgusting,” Quinn said, lifting a moldy piece of pizza and a paper towel. “Can’t these people read? Recycling, not trash?”

  “I just hope whoever tossed it threw the poison in the recycling bin, not the trash,” I said, repeating the fear both of us had.

  As she spoke, there was a thunk on the other side of the enclosure. Quinn and I looked at each other; a moment later, a sour-looking figure came around the corner.

  “Oh, hi,” I said.

  “What are you two up to?” Arthur asked, raising a bushy eyebrow. Although there wasn’t much resemblance to Priscilla in terms of deportment, they had shared the same arched eyebrows, and they both had wide-set eyes.

  “I think I accidentally recycled a few receipts,” I said.

 

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