Ladies Courting Trouble. Dolores Stewart Riccio

and nephew who are living here in Plymouth. There’s another nephew in Marshfield. The niece offered to notify him and various cousins.” He sighed again and flushed slightly. “I believe Lydia’s left the church quite a bit of money. At least that’s what she told me last Christmas when I was seeking contributions towards some renovations. I could hardly believe it, given her usual modest donations, but she said it was a fait accompli, and I would be mighty surprised, but not to call the contractors just yet, as she intended to live a good long while. Well, well…poor Lydia. ‘Tomorrow is promised to no one,’ as they say. Such a cruel end to her expectations.” He was quiet then, looking out the window at the October darkness, lips moving silently. For a moment, he seemed to have forgotten where he was. Then a look of apprehension crossed his face, and he remembered he’d been talking to me. “I trust this bequest won’t cause a problem. With the relatives, that is.”

      “From what I’ve seen of inheritance procedures, I would say, steel yourself, Wyn.” It still hurt me to speak, so I said no more.

      “Patty and I will pray about it. And for you, too, Cass, may the Lord bless and keep you.” He trudged out with steps quite disconsolate for a pastor who’d just got a fortune to spend on his church. Right in the vestibule, exhibited on an easel, I’d seen an architect’s drawing of a grand new entrance and an addition. Wyn called it his “heart’s wish made visible,” and I’d said that’s a magic visualization, same as we do.

      As predicted, the circle descended en masse a few minutes later, bringing a discernible wave of warmth and energy into my room.

      “Don’t touch that slop,” Phillipa commanded immediately, unpacking the small hamper she carried on her arm. “I’ve brought you a thermos of my own double chicken-beef herbed broth, jellied pomegranate juice with a touch of port wine, and some Assam tea.”

      “What, no calf’s-foot jelly?” I whined. The broth smelled heavenly rich.

      “Phil finds it really hard to get decent calves’ feet these days.” Tall, lithe Heather Devlin pushed past Phillipa to give me a hug, her long bronze braid swinging halfway down the back of her khaki jacket, like some modern-day Maid Marian. “Look, I’ve brought you one of my best candles. Light this, my dear, and you’ll breathe in the ocean’s healing power.”

      The candle was greenish and looked like a tide pool, being filled with tiny crustaceans and shells coated with barnacles. If I lit the thing, in a thrice Brenda would be rushing into my room with a fire extinguisher. But it’s the thought that counts. “Thoughts are things,” was my grandma’s favorite saying, and it’s become one of my guiding lights.

      “And I’ve brought you an amulet, a little gargoyle to frighten away the bad vibes.” Deidre Ryan was trying to lean over me and fasten her handiwork to one of my bed’s white enamel posts, but she’s a petite gal and was having to stand on her tiptoes.

      Heather took the ghoulish artifact out of Deidre’s hand and tied it up above the nurse’s buzzer. “Nice eyes,” she commented. “I like that angry red glare.”

      “Now, girls,” Fiona Ritchie took over the room with her new wisewoman glamour. In the slight shift of perception caused by the glamour, her normally plump, rather frumpish self had metamorphosed into a regal, Minerva-like person to whom anyone would want to listen attentively. It was an enviable talent.

      “How does she do that?” Deidre whispered in my ear.

      “I think it’s akin to presence, the kind of aura that some actors are able to project,” I whispered back.

      “If you had dowsed your food, as I taught you to do, you would have detected the poison,” Fiona scolded.

      “Fiona, it was a church social! How would it have looked if I took out a pendulum and let it swing over the cookies?”

      “Exceptional people have to learn to tolerate some puzzlement among the mundanes. Do you know,” Fiona continued, “that there are some religious sects that claim their true believers can handle snakes or drink poison without harm? In ancient times, priestesses of the Great Mother, too, were snake handlers. No, no—don’t look so alarmed. It’s not a test I want us to try. From my studies, I think harmony is the key, and disharmony equals dis-ease. No lectures today, however.” Her deep, warm hug was like medicine itself, and I basked in it. “But on Samhain, we’ll talk of this again. Meanwhile”—out of the pocket of her coat sweater of many colors, Fiona fished a Walkman CD player—“here are some magical tunes to help restore the harmony. Play it later, when you’re alone. I want to see you dancing out of here by tomorrow.”

      Dancing after hemlock poisoning? Sure, why not. Just don’t ask me to make friends with snakes.

      The “magic tunes” turned out to be a tract of medieval music played at my wedding to Joe last Yule. And bringing with it memories of our enchanted honeymoon in New Zealand, it did indeed make me feel like dancing.

      Chapter Two

      “I’m trying to get it out of my head that this calamity was Mrs. Pynchon’s doing, because she herself is such a poisonous individual.” Patty Peacedale confided to me over a cup of my stomach-soothing triple mint-and-chamomile tea. It was several days after the hemlock incident. Thanks to fast action at the hospital, we’d all recovered well enough, except for poor Lydia Craig, of course. Her funeral, just yesterday, had been one of the best attended since the Donahues’ (a double murder two years ago that had packed the church to standing room only). “That miserable woman has been the bane of my existence ever since Wyn took over Gethsemane.”

      “I suspect there’s one like her in every church.” I passed Patty a plate of lemon cookies. Normally, I might have offered cheering chocolate, but I’d lost my taste for that treat, however it might perk up one’s brain chemistry. I suspected that Patty felt the same.

      Lying under the kitchen table, my dog, Scruffy, sighed heavily to remind me that he hadn’t as yet had as much as a crumb of cookie. A bite of sweet stuff hones my superior senses, Toots. Your pal, now, smells lost and sad to my sensitive olfactory system, like she can’t remember where the good bones are buried. Scruffy has his own way of communicating, and somehow I always hear what he’s thinking.

      “This is Wyn’s third church, and believe me, Pynchon’s unique in our experience.” Patty gazed out my kitchen window. “It’s nice here. If I had this view of the ocean to look at every day, I’d never get anything else done. So, what do you think, Cass? I mean, vibe-wise.”

      “Vibe-wise, I don’t believe that the poisoner was motivated by hate, meanness, or church politics. More than that, I can’t say. My first instinct, however, is to rule out the ladies of the League. I’m familiar with Conium maculatum. It’s the black sheep of the parsley, parsnip, and carrot family, and anyone who set out to harvest poison hemlock would have to be as knowledgeable as myself and wear protective clothing as well,” I mused. “I must tell Stone to watch out for someone with a case of dermatitis.”

      “Well, I definitely suspect Mrs. Pynchon myself. I don’t suppose you could…” Patty reached in her knitting bag, took out a blue object, either a sleeve or a wind sock, I couldn’t tell which, and began to complete it. She kept her eyes on the work.

      “No fortune-telling, no hexes, no potions,” I interrupted, not wanting my guest to suggest a Pynchon-remedy she’d regret later. Basically, Patty Peacedale was a good soul. With her heart-shaped face and tiny, pointed chin, she would have been cute, although well past the age for it, if her hazel eyes hadn’t been filled with anxiety and her hair limp from general exhaustion. She dressed as one who wanted above all to avoid notice: a powder blue cardigan, a matching blouse with a silver circle pin at the neck, and a navy skirt of the classic just-below-the-knee length. Her shoes were navy blue comfort moccasins, and the matching handbag was slightly scuffed leather. A single brown curl fell in an oily swirl over her broad, fair forehead.

      When Patty had first begun to confide the problems of being a pastor’s wife to me, she’d said it was because I was unconnected in any way to her husband’s parish. Unlikely to