A Sprig of Blossomed Thorn (15 page)

“May I help? I'm done with the bush Joan assigned me.”

“Of course! The more the merrier.”

I followed her to a bed of mixed tea roses, and began pruning a Gemini while she worked on a Sundance that was covered with mostly-faded blooms. The summer was getting hot, and many of the roses would soon go dormant for a while until the monsoon rains came.

“Have you lived in Santa Fe long, Ms. Kingston?” I asked.

“Oh, call me Lucy. We're not formal in the Guild. Yes, I've lived here forever. We moved here just after getting married. My husband worked for the State, rest his sweet soul.”

“Do you have children?”

“Two. They've both flown the coop. One's in Oregon and the other's in Florida, so I have to do things like this to stay busy, ha ha. Cora keeps trying to get me to volunteer with her at the free health clinic, but I don't have any medical background, so I'd get stuck typing or filing.”

She seemed so cheery and pleasant it was hard to remember her show of animosity in the tearoom. Being curious, I decided to poke the wasp's nest and see if anything flew out.

“How well did you know Maria Garcia?” I asked.

Her smile immediately closed down, and her lips became set in a grim line. She didn't answer for a moment, being occupied in choosing where to prune a stem. She chopped it with a vicious snap, and threw the spent bloom at her feet.

“Too well,” she said in a clipped voice. “I'd rather not have known her at all.”

“She couldn't have been that bad,” I said.

Lucy turned sharp eyes on me. “Did you know her?”

“Only very slightly.”

A wry, mirthless smile turned her lips. “She could appear pleasant. She had lovely manners. Cora says that's how she could work her way into groups like ours.”

“What can she have done to upset you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “She had encroaching ways. I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but she could be very forward, if you know what I mean.”

I wasn't sure I did, but I decided not to press the issue. Group dynamics were a reality, unpleasant when they took a sour turn, but inevitable.

I had finished trimming the Gemini, and stooped to pick up my clippings. “Shall I take yours, too?” I offered.

Lucy's smile returned. “Thank you, dear.”

I collected the trimmings and carried them to the crate, which was now full to overflowing. Stuffing my contribution on top, I decided to make myself useful by emptying the crate.

Looking around, I saw a dumpster over toward one end of the park, near a small shed whose doors stood open. I carried the milk crate over there and emptied it into the dumpster. Joan came up and joined me, smiling.

“Finished? Shall I give you another assignment?”

“Sure.” I saw a familiar face nearby, and waved. “Hello, Ms. Young. Ellen Rosings, from the tearoom,” I added as she gave me a startled look.

“Oh, hello!” She smiled, blinking against the bright sunlight from beneath her floppy cloth hat. “How nice of you to join us.”

“Beautiful day for gardening.”

She nodded and laughed. “Any day's beautiful for gardening, unless it's snowing.”

“Or windy,” I said, thinking of New Mexico's notorious spring winds.

“Come have a look at these miniatures, Ellen,” said Joan.

She led me away toward a raised bed of tiny plants covered with a profusion of equally tiny flowers, little bright balls of red, yellow, pink and white. I reached down to touch a bloom.

“Wow, they look really happy!”

“Have you ever grown them?”

“Not successfully,” I admitted. “I've received them as presents a couple of times. I never planted them.”

“They do much better in a bed than in a container.”

“So I see.” I looked up at Joan. “They don't look like they need pruning.”

“Oh, no. I just wanted to show them to you. There's a Stainless Steel over here you can help with.”

“How do you decide which roses to plant?” I asked as we strolled between beds of riotous rosebushes. I kept sniffing the air, catching tantalizing whiffs of scent.

“Well, it doesn't come up that often. We only have so much room here in the public garden. Unless a plant dies, or the City approves a new bed, we don't usually plant new roses here.”

“I see. And you probably don't lose a plant very often. These all look wonderfully healthy.”

“Thank you! We do our best, though we do lose one every now and then. It can get a little contentious, deciding how to replace it. The members nominate varieties they're interested in, then the Board votes on which one to plant. We always consider the variety that was lost, of course. But there are also always wonderful new roses coming out.”

“What's the newest rose in the garden?”

“An Our Lady of Guadalupe rose. That was a fight! I almost wanted to resign, it got so bitter!”

“Really? Why?”

“We'd lost a Judy Garland, and Lucy wanted to replace it with another, but Maria nominated the Our Lady of Guadalupe. That's a fairly new variety, named in honor of the Pope recognizing the Virgin of Guadalupe as the patron of the Americas a few years back, you remember?”

I nodded. The Virgin of Guadalupe is a powerful symbol in New Mexico, one I've always been fond of though I'm not a Catholic.

“I didn't know there was a rose named for her.”

“Appropriate, don't you think? With the legend and all.”

“Yes, indeed.” La Guadalupana was famous for a miracle involving roses, and she was often depicted surrounded by them.

“Well, Cora sided with Lucy, and they argued and argued. The other board members were mostly just terrified to even say a thing! The vote came in tied, and I had the tie-breaker. I chose the Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“Why?”

Joan stopped walking and glanced around. A troubled frown had creased her brow.

“Maria had been such a good member for so long,” she said quietly. “She was our Vice President, and she made large donations to the Guild every year, over and above her membership. And I felt sorry for her.”

Joan started walking again, so briskly I had to hurry to catch up. I wanted to ask why she felt sorry for Maria Garcia, though I had my suspicions. Maria had been wealthy and powerful and certainly a strong-minded woman, good qualities that might also get one in political trouble.

“May I see the Our Lady of Guadalupe rose?” I asked instead.

“Of course. It's over this way.”

She turned down a different path, toward the far corner of the park. I followed her to one of the outer beds, where we found Cora vigorously spraying water onto a large floribunda covered with pink blossoms.

“Easy, Cora!” said Joan. “You're going to blast the petals right off it!”

Cora tuned the hose away and twisted the nozzle to lower the water pressure. “Sorry,” she said in a slightly grumpy tone. “It's got aphids.”

“Well, it needs feeding anyway. Get some of the systemic. It's in the shed.”

Cora nodded and shut off the hose, but stood frowning at the pink rosebush for a moment before dropping the hose on the sidewalk a few feet away. She glanced at me, then shuffled off down another path toward the shed.

“This is it,” Joan said, indicating the bush Cora had been hosing down. “Not looking its best at the moment, I'm afraid. I don't know what Cora was thinking.”

A number of petals were scattered on the ground beneath the rosebush, and water dripped off of the drooping pink blooms. I didn't bother trying to smell one, as the scent wouldn't be very strong after the hosing.

This was the bush Maria had fought for. Our Lady of Guadalupe. A simple pink rose, nothing extraordinary, but I knew that because of its name it would mean a lot to Maria Garcia.

“Thank you,” I said. “I'll come visit it again when it hasn't just had a shower.”

Joan smiled. “Come on. I'll help you with the Stainless Steel.”

I spent another hour or so pruning roses and chatting with Joan. She introduced me to several of the other ladies, very kindly mentioning my tearoom as she did so, and the ladies made polite interested noises. Very promising.

At mid-afternoon the Rose Guild began winding down its session for the week, for which I was secretly grateful as it was getting rather warm. I helped Joan gather equipment and supplies into a wheelbarrow, which she then rolled to the shed to put away.

“Thanks for visiting us, Ellen.”

“Thank you for letting me tag along. I'm very interested in joining the Guild. Do you have a brochure?”

“Oh, I should, shouldn't I? There might be one buried in my the car somewhere—or you can just visit the website.”

“That's fine,” I said.

“It's santaferoseguild.org,” Joan said. “It's on the card I gave you, if you have trouble remembering.”

“Great. Thanks again!”

We removed our gardening gloves and shook hands. I rather liked Joan, and I thought my Aunt Nat might like her too. I looked forward to continuing the acquaintance.

“I'll be calling you about the reception,” Joan said. “I'm going to want that sample menu, and a quote to put before the board. We meet Thursday.”

“All right. We're closed tomorrow, but if you call on Tuesday I should be able to get you a quote by—say, Wednesday morning?”

“Perfect.”

Joan pushed the wheelbarrow into the shed, then bid me a cheerful farewell. I strolled off to my car, pleasantly tired and ready for a glass of something cold.

Driving home, I thought about Maria Garcia and her Our Lady of Guadalupe rosebush, and wondered if she had planted one in her own garden. If she even had a garden.

I remembered Tony mentioning she had lived in Casa de Sónset, an upscale assisted living place, a retirement community for people with money. She wouldn't have a garden to play in there. The Rose Guild was probably her only outlet for gardening, then. No wonder she had been willing to fight for the Our Lady of Guadalupe rose.

I parked and went in the tearoom's back door, leaving my gloves and shears on the bench out back with the intention of putting them away later. I wanted a cold drink and a shower before I put things away and figured out what to fix for dinner. Before I even reached the stairs, though, the front doorbell rang.

I considered ignoring it, but couldn't. It might just be someone looking for tea, but it could also be a friend or a neighbor—Katie Hutchins, who ran the B&B across the street, often dropped by to say hello. I left my hat hanging from the bannister post and went to the door, but stopped short as I reached it.

Standing to one side, looking at me through the lights, was Tony Aragón.

 

 

15

A
n echo of the previous night's anger arose, and I almost turned my back, but Tony had seen me and I couldn't be that rude. Instead I opened the door, not caring, for once, how disheveled I might look.

“Hi,” he said, holding out a plastic bag containing several pieces of china. “I brought back your things from the lab. The food all tested negative, of course.”

I accepted the bag, looking down at the china that had served Maria Garcia's last meal. “Thank you.”

“Still mad?”

I glanced up at him. An apprehensive smile hovered on his lips. I took a deep breath.

“Less so.”

The smile broadened. “Good.”

“I gather she talked back to the officers. She should have known better.”

“Yeah.”

We stood staring at each other for a long, silent moment. He had on a black t-shirt and jeans, his normal attire. He looked good, and a little anxious as well, which was endearing, much to my annoyance. I didn't want to be attracted to him. I wanted to stay mad, but I just didn't have the energy at the moment.

“Would you like a glass of lemonade?” I said finally.

“That sounds ... safe. Good, I mean,” he said, laughing at my frown. “It sounds good. Yes, I'd love a glass of lemonade.”