Chapter Nine

Herbs for Your Birds. Here are three herbs that parrot lovers should know:

“Herbs to Keep Your Bird Healthy”

https://susanalbert.com/herbs-for-your-bird/

The drive back up the mountain was easier than it had been the day before. I knew where I was going and what to expect of the twists and turns, more or less. I could keep my attention focused on the road instead of being distracted by the mountain landscape.

Now that the sheriff had alerted me to Virgil’s coming, I thought it would be good to listen to a weather forecast and see just when the storm was due to arrive. I was still more than a little skeptical, because the sky was a cloudless blue, the spring air was mild, and the understory trees were flaunting their flirty green leaves against the darkness of the hemlocks. If snow was on the horizon, there was no sign of it yet. I punched the car’s radio buttons, looking for a local station with a weather report.

But all I seemed to get was mountain music—“Rambling Boy,” “Handsome Molly,” “Barbara Allen.” And then, dolefully, a traditional ballad by a group of local musicians that called themselves the Mountain Songcatchers. I remembered it from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou. In a minor key and a capella, the song was so eerie it made me shiver.

Death, oh death,
How can it be
That I must come and go with thee
For death, oh death
How can it be
I’m unprepared
For eternity.

Now, I’m not somebody who looks here and there for omens—that’s Ruby’s department. But as I drove through a dark tunnel of hemlocks growing close to the road, the song seemed so ominous that I hurriedly turned the dial. All I could find was the national news out of Washington, though, and it was as dark and unnerving as the song lyrics. I was glad when my cell rang, in a holder on the console, and I turned the radio off.

“Just checking in,” McQuaid said. “I’m headed back to Pecan Springs from San Antonio. Where are you?”

“Driving up a mountain,” I said, negotiating a hairpin curve to the left, with a hundred-foot drop-off on the downhill side. “A steep mountain. On a twisty road. Forest on one side, sheer cliff on the other and ‘Death Oh Death’ on the radio. A thrill a minute. How are you?”

“Fine. ‘Death O Death’ here too, actually. I’m risking life and limb on I-35.” McQuaid likes to say that he had enough excitement with the Houston PD to last for two lifetimes, although I notice that he seems to relish the occasional dangerous investigation that walks into his PI firm. “You? Besides cliffs and trees and twisty roads, I mean.”

“Does a shooting count?” I filled him in on my discovery in the Open Book.

He whistled. “Jeez, China, how do you do it? I let you out of my sight for a few hours and you’re stumbling over dead bodies!” I imagined him rolling his eyes.

“This body wasn’t dead,” I said. “At least, last I heard.” I followed with a quick rundown of my meetings with my two pals, the chief of police and the county sheriff, and Carole, my sister under the skin. “I’m hoping to see Margaret Anderson tomorrow, if we don’t get snowed in. And there are the Hemlock Guild people, too. I have to find out how to connect with them—and who to talk to.” Amelia Scott?

“Snowed in?” McQuaid asked incredulously. “What snow? It’s spring break already! We’re in the eighties.”

“It’s spring break in Texas. Here in North Carolina, we’re expecting Virgil.”

“Who’s Virgil?”

“A blizzard. The sheriff says he’s the storm of the century, reincarnated.”

“Huh,” he grunted. “Sounds like you’re living dangerously. Please tell me that you’re staying out of the line of fire.”

“Doing my level best.” With a shiver, I changed the subject. “You’ve heard from Caitie?”

“Yeah. She and Spock are settled in for a weekend of ranch fun. Caitie says Spock has a crush on your mother’s horse. She’s teaching him to ride. And say “Hi-yo Silver, away!”

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Next thing we know, Spock will be asking for his own horse.”

“Brian is coming for supper tonight,” McQuaid said. Brian is his son by his first wife, bad-penny Sally, who turns up every now and then and turns us all upside down. He’s a student at the University of Texas. “I was thinking that I could stop for a pizza,” McQuaid added. “Or . . .” He left the sentence dangling.

“Or there’s a quart container of beef stew in the freezer,” I offered. “And a loaf of sourdough bread. I think there’s a tub of garlic butter in the fridge. Is he bringing Casey?” Casey is Brian’s live-in girlfriend.

“Casey’s moved out,” McQuaid said quietly. “Lotta angst, I’m afraid. Which is probably why he’s coming. Man-to-man about women. That, and his laundry. The washer at his place appears to be inop. I need to get up there and see if I can fix it.”

“Oh, dear,” I said, but not about the washing machine. Brian and Casey have been together for quite a few months now and I genuinely like her. She is smart, athletic, and beautiful. But she is also pre-med and competition tennis, and there isn’t a lot of room in her life for a boyfriend. Still . . .

“Tell him not to give up just yet,” I said. “She may reconsider.”

“Love is hard on the young.” McQuaid sighed. “I wouldn’t be that age again for a million dollars.” There was a moment’s silence. “You’ll be at the Hemlock House tonight?”

“That’s the plan. I’m told we’re having chicken and slicks for supper.”

“Chicken and . . . sticks?”

“Slicks. Chicken stew with flat dumplings. Traditional Appalachian dish.”

“Doesn’t sound like it would go good with beer,” McQuaid said. “Here’s my off-ramp. Looks like I survived another drive through the death trap. Talk to you tonight.” His voice became stern. “No more dead bodies. Hear?”

“Love you too,” I said, and clicked off, glancing at the clock on my cell. Not quite four, and supper was a couple of hours away.

Plenty of time for parrots.

• • •

A hundred yards beyond the Carswell mansion, the road narrowed, made a hairpin left, and rose at an even steeper angle. I had to navigate several more switchbacks in the next mile or so before I saw the wooden sign: Hemlock Forest Parrot Sanctuary. Appointment only.

The sanctuary was located on the side of the mountain, well above the road and surrounded by forest. It took me a moment or two to figure out what I was looking at, for all I could see when I got out of the car (bags of banana chips in hand) was a screened enclosure that turned out to be an outdoor aviary. It was built on three sides of an open grassy square in front of a large A-frame house with a steep green metal roof. A mini-jungle of bushes and small trees grew inside the enclosures, and I could hear the musical splashing of a waterfall. Next to the A-frame was a large storage shed with a snowmobile parked off to one side.

Sometimes when you set things in motion, you don’t know where they’re going to end up or what’s going to happen along the way. Ruby, with her intuitive gifts, could probably have guessed that this was one of those times. But I’m usually so focused on what’s directly in front of me that I don’t give much thought to what’s around the corner.

The same thing was true today. I wasn’t expecting much from this visit except for a few interesting parrot closeups. I got that—and more. Much more.

I found my way to the front door and rang the bell. From the slightly open window beside the door came a strident voice: “Don’t want any.”

“I’m China Bayles,” I said. “Jenna Peterson called about my visit. I’d love to see the parrots.”

“Don’t need no more parrots,” the voice said. “Got enough parrots.”

“I’m not bringing a parrot,” I replied, beginning to agree with the people who thought that the woman who lived here was a little nuts. “I’m China Bayles. I’m staying down the mountain at Hemlock House and I’d like to meet—”

The door opened about three inches. The woman peering out was in her sixties, short and wiry, with a lined, leathery face and snappy blue eyes behind oversized red plastic cat-eye glasses. She wore a beaded Indian headband and a pair of long steel-gray braids tied off with red yarn, an ankle-length blue caftan heavily embroidered with bright colored feathers, and scuffed brown loggers’ boots. Perched on her shoulder was an African grey parrot with a black beak and a fan of bright red tail feathers.

“Hello, cutie,” the parrot said, and made kissing noises. “Don’t need no more parrots.”

I felt foolish for mistaking the parrot for Claudia Roth. “Hello,” I said to the bird. “What’s your name?”

“Pipsqueak,” the parrot replied, holding out one light-gray foot. “Got something for me?”

“Don’t be pushy, Pippy,” the woman said. She squinted up at me. “China Bayles? You’re the one with the parrot?”

“That’s me,” I said cheerfully. “His name is Mister Spock. He’s an Eclectus, and boss of the house. Keeps us on our toes.” I held out the bags of banana chips I’d bought at Sam’s. “This is for your parrots.”

She snatched the bags from my hand before Pipsqueak could get them and opened the door just wide enough for me to squeeze through. “Be quick. I just got my guys rounded up. I don’t want them making a break.”

As I squeezed through the door, I heard a raucous squawk and a bright blue and green parrot swooped over my head, wings flapping noisily. I ducked and looked up as the parrot landed next to a large blue macaw perched in the A-frame’s rafters. With a shriek, Pipsqueak lifted off Claudia’s shoulder and flew to join them. One of them dropped a fat wad of poop onto the floor below, where a pile suggested that the rafter was a favorite perch.

“I thought they lived in the aviary,” I said. “It’s gorgeous, by the way. I wish we had something like that for Spock.” I was thinking that maybe I could talk McQuaid into building one. After all, he’d built Caitie’s chicken coop. Spock could spend the day out there when we were at work and Caitie was in school.

“Most do live in the aviary, when its warm,” she said. “They’re indoors now because of Virgil. They’ll go back out when the nighttime temp stays above forty.” She peered at me. “You look agile enough. How handy are you when it comes to catching birds?”

“I’ve had a fair amount of practice,” I allowed. Spock likes to play hide-and-seek-the-parrot. “You need some help?”

She nodded. “I got most of them. But there are still three stubborn birds out there, and it’s easier with two. You’re just in time.” She turned and began clumping across the room. “This way.”

Maybe it was the tricks I’d learned catching Spock, or just a round of good luck. But when I tossed a towel over the last bird, a bright orange conure, Claudia nodded shortly.

“You’re a pro. Let’s put these boys up and have a cup of coffee.”

The birds I’d caught were returned to their own large, bright bird rooms, three separate indoor aviaries built against one side of the A-frame. The size of small bedrooms, they were equipped with cages against one wall; perches, swings, ropes, and toys hanging from the ceiling; feeding stands on tables and shelves. The floors were covered with newspaper. Large birds, such as the macaws, lived in one room, cockatoos in another, and Amazons and African greys in the third. There was another smaller room lined with cages for birds that, for a variety of reasons, couldn’t go cage-free.

Altogether, Claudia said, she was taking care of twenty-five birds at the moment. “I’m down a few,” she added, pouring coffee. A bright blue parrot—Tick-Tock—flew down from the rafter and landed, teetering, on the back of a chair, where he began to preen, cooing. “Fostered some out last month,” she added. “Due to get another two or three this week. One of them has a broken wing. I also do rehab.”

I thought of multiplying Spock’s mischievous energy by twenty-five or thirty and decided that “a little bit loony” wasn’t quite the right word. Certifiable might be more like it, or unhinged or even stark staring nuts.

Claudia put the cups on the table and we took chairs on opposite sides, as Pipsqueak returned to her shoulder with a loud squawk and a flurry of wings. She opened a bag of banana chips and began sharing them with him and Tick-Tock. In a moment, the other two parrots, an Eclectus (like Spock) and a large red macaw with gorgeous blue and yellow wings, flew down from the rafters to join the party. When the four of them had finished the banana chips, Claudia shook the bag to show them that it was empty. Tick-Tock gave a frustrated screech and Pipsqueak wailed “All gone!” so despairingly that I had to laugh.

I gave her my cover story, but Claudia didn’t seem very interested in my magazine article about Sunny Carswell. While the parrot quartet chattered and clucked and cooed and recited scraps of parrot ditties, the two of us swapped parrot tales, sipping our coffee and enjoying the bond that forms between people—even between strangers—who share a common passion.

When I met Spock and was offered the chance to adopt him, I knew I couldn’t bear to see him go to yet another unhappy or sterile home, where he would be locked up in a cage in the corner and neglected. Claudia understood that impulse, and I understood why she couldn’t turn down a bird with a broken wing or one that just needed security, structure, and somebody to pay attention. She might be unfiltered and a little loose with the truth, but she knew her parrots—what to feed them, what toys keep them occupied, how to deal with parasites, what books are helpful. She told me about The Parrot Who Owns Me by Joanna Berger, and I told her about a list of parrot-friendly herbs and spices I’d written for my newspaper column. Put a pair of parrot people across a table from one another and they will talk parrots for hours on end.

Parrots weren’t the only thing on my mind, though, and after ten minutes or so, I shifted the subject.

“You must know Jed Conway,” I said. When she frowned and nodded, I told her what had happened in Bethany. I didn’t, of course, tell her about Jed’s whispered word. “He could be dead by now, I suppose,” I said regretfully.

Her lips tightened and she turned her head away—but not before I saw that the news of his shooting didn’t seem to surprise her. It certainly didn’t distress her, either, which was interesting.

“The police don’t have a suspect yet, as far as I know,” I added. “I talked to Carole Humphreys afterward, and—”

“Got what he deserved, after the way he treated Sunny,” Claudia broke in abruptly. I saw what he was doing and I know why he did it. If he’s dead, that gets three cheers from me.” She clapped her hands in slow-motion applause. Joining in, the red macaw gave a loud police-siren whistle. Tick-Tock flapped his wings and cried “First down! Goal to go!” Pipsqueak bobbed his head and clicked his beak.

Well. Now we were getting somewhere. Jenna had told me that Claudia was an oversharer who lacked a filter. She said whatever she thought without considering who she was saying it to. What else might she say?

“How did Jed Conway treat Miss Carswell?” I asked.

An ordinary person would surely have thought twice about answering this blunt question, especially when it was asked by a stranger who claimed to be writing a magazine article about a dead neighbor. Someone else might even have said something like, “And just why are you asking?” or “What the hell business is it of yours, anyway?”

But Claudia didn’t ask. The answer to my question was at the top of her mind so she let me have it. She didn’t pull any punches, either.

“Jed Conway is responsible for the way Sunny died,” she said flatly. “He introduced Sunny to that pal of his, Amelia, and after that, all Sunny could talk about was that Hemlock Guild stuff about death with dignity. Oh, I could understand her suicide—after all, she was going to die of cancer. What I couldn’t understand was the gun. She had plenty of pills she could have used if she’d wanted to. I just can’t believe that she would have used that gun. The same gun that killed her father and grandfather.” Her face grew dark. “Our father and grandfather. Has anybody told you that Sunny was my sister?” If she was lying about the relationship, it sounded as if she had managed to convince herself.

“I’ve heard it mentioned,” I said.

In fact, as I sat here and listened, I could easily imagine it to be true. Jenna had said that Claudia’s mother had been a housemaid, and it wasn’t unheard of for a man to impose droit du seigneur on the women who worked for him. Sunny and Claudia might have a passel of siblings scattered across the mountain. And Jenna had mentioned an annuity. Had Carswell money paid for Claudia’s aviaries?

But Claudia wasn’t finished. “Guns reminded Sunny of all the bad things our family has done over the decades, selling arms and munitions, making money off of wars. She stayed as far away from the business as she could. She hated guns.”

I frowned. This was news. I had thought that the gun—the same gun that killed her father and grandfather—might have been her first choice. A kind of ritual hara-kiri.

“Are you saying she didn’t kill herself?”

Claudia shifted uncomfortably. “Sunny believed that everybody has the right to die when and how they choose. But when I heard she’d used a gun—and that gun, to boot—you could have knocked me over with a feather.” She put up her hand and stroked Pipsqueak, on her shoulder. “Somebody must have talked her into doing it that way. I’ve even wondered if maybe somebody picked up that gun and shot her. Not sayin’ who,” she added hastily, “and not sayin’ for sure. Just sayin’.”

The death had been ruled a suicide. But according to the sheriff, the coroner had had questions. “Who might have suggested it?” I asked.

Claudia laughed harshly. “Well, it wasn’t the Hemlock ghost, that’s for damned sure. Amelia told Sunny it was the quickest way. Told her it would make a statement. A statement! I ask you!” She shook her head disgustedly. “But that wasn’t all. There’s what Jed did about the books, too—especially after he found out that Sunny had cancer.”

I wanted to ask Claudia how she knew all this. And about Amelia—Amelia Scott, I assumed—and the gun, too. But Claudia was pushing the conversation forward, too fast for me to keep up. I tried to slow her.

“Wait,” I said. “The books? You mean, Sunny’s books? What did he do about—”

“Hell, yes. Sunny’s books. Who else did Jed know who owned thousands of pricy books and never read any of them? He kept telling her that she should sell the whole lot before she died. He said he just wanted the books to be safe and cared for after she was gone and the idea of the foundation wasn’t going to work.” She narrowed her eyes. “But what he really wanted was to get the commission on the sales, especially the best ones. And maybe more. Maybe a lot more.”

“A lot more?” I was fishing. “A lot more . . . what?”

She didn’t answer directly. “The thing is, Sunny wasn’t worldly, not in the least bit. She had a lot of money and she didn’t bother to keep track of it. What’s more, she liked Jed so much that she couldn’t see what he was doing.”

The words were coming fast and the bitter jealousy in them was unmistakable.

“Jed’s bookstore was about to go under, and Sunny was keeping it afloat. He got her to buy good stuff she didn’t want and bad stuff that nobody wanted and took every penny of commissions he could. Then he’d get her to sell and take a commission on that end, too—pumping up the value as high as he could. Bless her heart, Sunny never asked a single question. She just told her accountant to pay whatever he asked. She was a cash cow. He just kept milking her.”

Ah. This was beginning to make sense—a different kind of sense. “So you think Conway might have—” I didn’t get to finish.

“When I tried to tell her that Jed was pulling the wool over her eyes, he turned her against me.” Claudia’s voice broke. “That hurt, believe you me. She didn’t want to see me—her own sister. Told me I wasn’t welcome, when I was the only one who had her interests at heart.”

He turned her against me. So Claudia had a personal reason—and a strong one, a realistic one—for disliking Jed. I was hearing some potentially useful information that nobody else had given me, from somebody who seemed close enough to the situation to know what she was talking about.

I leaned forward on my elbows. “How long had this been going on? Conway pumping up items from Miss Carswell’s collection so he could dump them.”

Pumping and dumping is the term that’s used in securities fraud cases. It describes what happens when a fraudster buys a cheap stock, mounts a big PR campaign to inflate the value, then sells it at a higher price. Something like that also goes on in the art market. I had read recently about a well-known European art dealer who was charged with arranging for fraudulently high evaluations from a prominent auction house on several collectible paintings so he could charge a higher commission. I could see how this strategy might work for a collection of rare books—with or without the collusion of the books’ owner. And primarily for the benefit of the dealer, who might also be the owner of Socrates.com.

“How long did it go on? Years and years.” Pipsqueak was nibbling at Claudia’s braids and she flipped them both over her shoulder. “But the worst of it was the way he badgered her about the Herbal.”

My pulse quickened. We were getting at what I most wanted to know. “Badgered? Badgered her how? Why?”

Claudia’s expression was fierce. “He just kept after her about selling it. He’d say he had a buyer, or that there was a really great auction coming up, and now was the time. He kept telling her how much it was worth—six or seven times what she’d paid for it—and that it would be a shame to leave it at Hemlock House with nobody but Margaret Anderson to take care of it after she was dead.” Her laugh was gritty. “Sunny liked Margaret because Margaret likes books. But Margaret only likes to write about books. She doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of them. Cataloging and conserving and stuff like that.” Claudia snorted. “She’s like Jed that way. Both of them care more about how much they’re worth than anything else.”

How much they’re worth. Dorothea had estimated that the plates in the Herbal could be worth two hundred thousand—and there were plates missing from other valuable books as well. Margaret Anderson had worked at Hemlock House for several months after Sunny died. She obviously had ample opportunity to take whatever she wanted, whole books as well as individual prints. And if she had joined forces with book dealer Jed Conway, deciding what was worth stealing and how to dispose of it could be a piece of cake.

I cleared my throat. “A minute ago, you mentioned the ghost. There really is one, then?”

“You bet your sweet boobs there’s a ghost,” she snapped. “More than one.”

“You’ve seen it?”

She nodded. “Could be our dad, our grandfather, maybe both.” Pipsqueak was after her braid again and she pulled it away from him. “Dorothea doesn’t believe, but Jenna does.” She gave me a knowing look. “Just you wait, you’ll see it too. Sunny always said it appeared on stormy nights. Said that anybody could hear it but you had to be a believer to see it.”

“I suppose that’s why Jenna sees it,” I ventured. “She believes.”

“Sunny, too.” Claudia grinned and her eyes glinted behind her red-rimmed glasses. “The difference is that Jenna is scared of it. Sunny actually liked it, because it seemed like a member of the family. If people came around bothering her, she made sure they knew all about it. Told them to be on the lookout for it. Made it sound really scary. She said it was a sure-fire way to keep them from coming back.”

I had more questions, but Claudia was dealing with the parrot. Denied access to her braids, Pipsqueak jumped off her shoulder to the table and strutted toward me, clicking his beak and goose-stepping with the comic precision of a Prussian soldier. When he reached me, he stopped, put his head on one side, and studied me curiously, as if he were deciding whether I was worth knowing. Then he fluttered up onto my left shoulder and nibbled my ear.

“Nice,” he said softly, and cooed.

“Pipsqueak is usually standoffish with strangers,” Claudia said. “He must like you.”

I held out my finger and after a moment Pipsqueak jumped off my shoulder and onto my hand. Murmuring that he was a lovely boy, I scratched his neck. He ducked under my fingers, letting me scratch his head, too. After a few moments he gave another soft coo, turned and sidled up my arm to sit on my right shoulder and nibble that ear. I turned to face him, making kissing noises. A little parrot lovefest.

After a moment, I turned back to Claudia and asked, “Do you think Jed Conway might have stolen the Herbal?” I wanted to surprise her with the question, with no lead-in. “If he did, could his shooting have been somehow involved with the theft?”

On the back of his chair, Tick-Tock clicked his beak, squawked, and then lifted one foot and began nibbling his toes. From one of the rooms came the tinny clang-clang of a bell being rung by a parrot. Pushing her lips in and out, Claudia eyed me. Perhaps she was actually filtering her answer, I thought. Perhaps she was better at that than she was given credit for.

“Well, maybe,” she said warily, after a moment. “Maybe somebody helped him steal it. Margaret, maybe. And then the two of them got into a disagreement about something.” She sounded tentative, as if she was trying out possibilities. “Or maybe somebody thought Jed must have the Herbal and they wanted it. But he couldn’t give it to them so they shot him.”

I was startled by her mention of Margaret. It was as if she had plugged into my thinking. “What makes you say that Margaret might have helped him?” I asked. But she disregarded my question.

“Or maybe it was Kevin Maxwell who shot him,” Claudia said. “In fact, that seems a lot more likely to me.”

“Kevin Maxwell?” Who was this? Somebody new? Oh, wait. I had heard the name before. He was the guy Carole Humphreys mentioned in the context of “those Hemlock people,” which—at the time—I had found puzzling.

“Kevin Maxwell is Wanda Sanger’s older brother,” Claudia said. “Wanda had ALS for years. She was toughing it out—until the Hemlocks told her it was okay to decide that she’d had enough. Nobody’s going to say this out loud, but she was encouraged. It was Jed who coached her, same way Amelia coached Sunny.”

Of course nobody would name a suicide coach out loud. Assisting suicide is a crime—manslaughter, at least—in all but seven states. You can’t provide the drugs or tools, or advise or persuade somebody to commit suicide. And even where assistance is legal, it’s restricted to physicians.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“Oh, maybe three, four weeks ago.” Claudia pushed her red cat-eye glasses up on her nose. “Kevin says Jed should be in jail and has been making a lot of noise about it, but Jeremy Curtis—he’s the police chief in Bethany—says there’s not enough evidence. What’s more, Wanda left a tidy pot of money to those Hemlock people, which rubs Kevin the wrong way.” She shook her head. “Can’t say I blame him, either.”

Those Hemlock people. When I first heard the phrase, I had thought Carole Humphreys was referring to Dorothea and Jenna at Hemlock House, and I dismissed what sounded like an unfounded accusation. But Carole hadn’t meant the Hemlock House. She’d meant the Hemlock Guild. I had been mistaken.

Now I wondered about Jed’s whisper. Had I been mistaken there, too? I’d thought he had said Blackwell. But what if he had said Maxwell instead? Was he accusing Kevin Maxwell, whose sister he might have helped to kill herself? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t rule it out.

And now that I knew about this possibility, I also knew I had to tell Chief Curtis what I’d heard. Which would not be a pleasant task. I had withheld potentially important crime-scene evidence. The chief would be justifiably angry. He might even decide to charge me. I couldn’t blame him. And I had no defense.

But at the moment, I needed to figure out just where Claudia was coming from. How much of her evident animosity toward Jed Conway and Amelia Scott was based in fact and how much was conjured up out of a grudge against the Hemlock Guild—or even more personally, out of jealousy toward Conway for getting between her and Sunny? Was she just guessing? How much did she actually know? How much was true?

There were several ways to go about this, but I elected a straightforward question. “A minute ago, you said something about the gun that Sunny used. You seemed to suggest that Amelia prodded Sunny into using that gun to kill herself. Did I hear that right? Is that what you meant to say?”

“Well . . .” She hesitated, frowning. “Jed had a hand in it, too. After all, he wanted that Herbal. His store was in trouble, you know, and he had to have money.”

“His store was in trouble? The place looked pretty well stocked to me.” But appearances can be deceiving. Things can look totally shipshape, and suddenly the ship starts to sink. “How do you know?”

“His sister Kaye fosters parrots for me. She told me about it. That place bleeds money and Jed’s in hock up to his ears. If he took the Herbal, he did it for the money. And because Sunny wouldn’t let him sell it.” She wore a cagey look. “But Amelia’s a totally different story. For her, Sunny was a trophy.”

“Trophy?” I frowned. “Is that why you said the gun was a ‘statement’?”

“Yeah. You know, here was somebody who actually did it. That bunch down in Bethany talks a good game. But Sunny was the first—and she was somebody important. There was that damned gun.” Her grin was mirthless. “Of course, now the Hemlocks can claim Wanda as well, which is why Kevin Maxwell is out for blood.” Her eyes glinted behind her red cat-eye glasses. “Sounds like he might’ve got it, too. I—”

But I didn’t get to hear the rest of it. Tick-Tock chose that inconvenient moment to lift off his chair-back perch and fly to the kitchen counter. He landed next to an unstable stack of bowls, knocking three or four to the floor with a loud crash. He peered over the edge of the counter.

“Offsides!” he squawked cheerfully. “Penalty!”

“Damn it, Tick-Tock! Just look at that mess.” Claudia went to get the broom.

Clearly, we had arrived at the end of the conversation. I lifted Pipsqueak onto the back of my chair, told him he was a good boy, thanked Claudia for sharing her parrots with me, and promised to keep in touch. On the way out, I remembered about the ginseng and asked, off-handedly, where I should look for it.

“Wild ginseng?” She snorted. “Come back in about six weeks. Maybe it’ll be putting up leaves by then—berries in July and August.” Another snort. “But don’t bother to bring a shovel, unless you want to get arrested. Not legal to dig it until September.”

“Oh,” I said. Embarrassed, I thanked her again and headed for my car. Claudia Roth was definitely unfiltered. She hadn’t given the answers I’d expected and surely some of what she said was not factual—or at least unsupported. But she had given me a different, and very interesting, view of Sunny Carswell and her relationships with Jed and the Hemlock people.

And now I knew a little more about ginseng.