A Sprig of Blossomed Thorn (2 page)

“Thank you,” I told her. “You don't have to do that if you're busy.”

Rosa shook her head, smiling. “Dee's got the party in Hyacinth, and that's it until four.”

I nodded, picked up the tiered tea tray, and followed her back to the butler's pantry. I watched her long, black braid swaying as I tried to think of a way to ask what she'd been doing in Rose and Lily without coming across as a snoop.

I didn't know her well, yet. She'd only hired on two weeks ago, as a replacement for Vi, who had landed a summer job as an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera.

Come to think of it, Vi had a flower name, too: Violetta. Her mother was opera-mad and had named her for the title character in
La Traviata
.

Vi was thrilled to death about being an apprentice, once I convinced her that I wasn't angry and she'd get her job at the tearoom back when the season was over. That had been a bit of a rash promise—my budget was tight as a drum--but I had hopes that business would increase enough by September to enable me to keep it.

We piled the dishes by the washing station, where Dee's brother Mick was gallantly working his way through the huge stack that had accumulated since the morning, bopping to the music in his earbuds. Everything about him was long—limbs, hair, fingers—but he was dextrous and always handled the fragile china with competent care. I gave him a smile and he nodded.

Rosa went into the butler's pantry and started to tidy. I strolled up front to the gift shop and looked at the reservation list. As she had said, there was one party coming in at four. They were assigned to sit in Jonquil, not Rose or Lily. Why the back-and-forth with the place setting, then?

A puzzlement.

Dee, one of those lovely young blondes who always look so fresh and pretty, stepped in from Hyacinth, a teapot in her hands. “Kris is looking for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, glancing at my watch, a gold pendant that had been my grandmother's and been left to me by my own mother.

I'd promised to meet with my office manager after my tea with Willow. Giving up on the puzzle for the moment, I hurried upstairs to Kris's office, which shared a doorway with mine.

The slanting roof made the upstairs rooms seem smaller than they actually were. Kris's desk was near the window, which was open to the gentle breeze. The floor creaked beneath my feet—a loose floorboard I'd been meaning to have fixed—but Kris didn't look up from her computer monitor. Unusual; she normally greeted me when I came in. I sat in one of her guest chairs.

She wore a baby-doll dress with a sweetheart neckline and little puffed sleeves, except it was black. It also had lacings all up the front. Her black hair brushed her jaw, the trimmed edge so perfect it looked knife-sharp. Her nails were polished in frosted white.

Kris's Goth styles actually suited the tearoom much better than I had expected at first, and she always dressed with care. Having seen what she wore when she was going out with her friends, I was grateful for the restraint she exercised in choosing her work attire.

I watched her, and she continued to avoid my gaze. I wondered if something was amiss or if she was just feeling especially Goth that day. I was tempted to ask, but didn't want to offend her. Though we worked well together, I was always conscious of the authority my being her employer gave me. We were close enough in age to make that feel a bit awkward, and I tried to be careful not to patronize her.

“Would you like some tea?” I offered.

“No, thanks,” she said. “You must be floating by now. How was your tea with Willow?”

“Fine. She's got some interesting ideas that might bring us more business.”

“Good.” Kris glanced at me as she handed me a printed page. “Here's the adjusted budget for June.”

I looked at the page. Business was up, but so were expenses.

The tearoom was picking up steam as the summer tourist season in Santa Fe came into full swing. The murder that had occurred there in April was almost forgotten, except by a few people who thought it fascinating and came to visit the tearoom regularly on account of it, about which I could hardly complain.

We were busy every day and I would soon need to hire more staff, which was a mixed blessing. The budget was tight—scary tight—and most days I spent as much time in the office with Kris as I did downstairs in the tearoom with my customers.

“Is there any way we can hire another dishwasher?” I asked. “By the time Mick gets here things are stacked to the roof.”

Kris shook her head and reached for her mouse, twitching it across the desktop as she gazed at her monitor. “Another part-timer is too much. Mick's not working forty hours, though. You could see if he's willing to come in an hour earlier. Would that help?”

“Anything would help! What about two hours earlier?”

“That would kick him to full-time. Do you want to give him full benefits?”

I bit my lip. One thing I'd insisted on was that my full-time employees—Julio, Kris, and now Rosa—have decent health care benefits. I subscribed to a plan through the chamber of commerce. It was expensive, but I felt strongly that offering good benefits would increase the loyalty of my staff. I only wished I could offer health care to the part-timers as well—all of my servers were part-time except for Rosa—but at this stage it just wasn't feasible.

“Let me talk to him,” I said. “Maybe we'll try an hour earlier for now.”

“OK.”

We moved on to review my chef's orders for next week. Expensive as well, but good food required good ingredients and I wasn't about to scrimp. The Wisteria Tearoom was already enjoying a reputation for high quality and I had no intention of cutting corners. I approved Julio's list.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“That's it for now.”

I paused, hoping Kris would say something about whatever was making her frown, but she kept her attention on her monitor. “All right, thank you, Kris. I'll be downstairs if you need me.”

She nodded absently, pale fingernails gleaming in a ray of sunlight as she danced her mouse again. I left her to her numbers.

Wanting to spend some time outdoors, I paused to fetched my shears and a broad-brimmed straw hat from a closet above the stairwell. The closet and the tiny bathroom beside it were on my list for a remodel; both were old and in need of updating, but they'd have to wait until the tearoom's cash flow improved.

Downstairs, I stopped in the pantry to grab a vase and fill it with water, then stepped into the kitchen to talk to Mick. He was open to coming in an hour earlier, nodding enthusiastically at the suggestion. Maybe he would use the extra income to actually paint his '77 Mustang a single color. Not that I minded it; he parked it in back of the kitchen, so no guests could see it even from the dining parlor.

I went out into the garden and sighed with pleasure at the scent of the roses in the afternoon sun. They were mostly hybrid tea roses, with a few floribundas and one wickedly-expensive David Austin, a Wildeve, that I'd placed at the southeast corner of the front
portal
. Planning and planting the rose garden had been therapeutic for me as I grieved for my father, and now that they were in their first full bloom, I was glad that I'd invested the time and money.

Setting the vase at my feet, I began clipping blooms, inhaling each one's perfume before slipping it into the water. Some were spicy, some lightly sweet, some as rich as chocolate.

Their colors were delicious, too, ranging from palest pink to the flamingo-hued Tropicana to deep velvety red, and beyond. Peace roses in multicolored pastels. A Sterling Silver, almost the same hue as the wisterias. I smiled, gazing over my garden as I clipped one of the lavender blossoms, pleased that my vision had become reality.

I paid for my inattention. Drawing my hand away from the bush, I caught the back of it against a thorn and yelped.

I switched the rose to my other hand and sucked at the puncture. Stupid; should have worn my gardening gloves. They were for grubbing in the dirt, though, and I hadn't wanted to wear them with my nice tearoom dress.

I had too many faces, perhaps. Gardener, manager, hostess—not to mention the times when we were so busy I had to step in and help the servers. There had been a week, right after Vi was accepted at the opera, when I'd spent a lot of my time in the butler's pantry.

Ah, well. I loved it all. The tearoom was worth all the effort I'd put into it so far, and I knew it would only get better.

I clipped another half inch off the stem of the Sterling bud I had cut before adding it to the vase, then went inside to wash my little wound and comfort myself by arranging my cut roses.

 

 

2

T
he next morning I was at my desk when Kris came in to work. She headed straight into her office without pausing to say hello.

I was sure there was something bothering her. I stood, went to my credenza and picked up a tall Russian tea glass containing a mixed half-dozen of the roses I'd cut the day before, then went to the open archway between our offices and knocked on the sill.

“Good morning. I cut some roses for your desk.”

“Thanks,” she said without looking up as I set the flowers in front of her. Her outfit today was a black lace dress with tight-fitting long sleeves and a spray of velvet violets at the point of a rather plunging neckline.

“Want some tea?” I said.

“No thanks.”

“Sympathy?”

That got her to look up, at least. “For what?”

I shrugged. “Anything. I'm a good listener, you know.”

Her skeptical look softened and she glanced down. “I know.”

I kept silent, waiting. She blinked a couple of times, then reached for her mouse. “I have to get these bills entered.”

I suppressed a sigh. “OK. If I can help with anything, let me know.”

“I will.”

I went out to the hallway, rubbing the back of my hand, still sore from the rose scratch. Warm light glowed through the window at the west end of the hall. Soon it would start getting hot upstairs in the afternoons; I needed to think about some thermal drapes, but they'd have to wait.

I went downstairs to the butler's pantry, where Dee and Rosa were preparing tea trays for our first guests. Dee had her blonde hair up in a knot on top of her head, a style she'd adopted as the weather got warmer. It made her look sweetly innocent, though in fact she was the most intellectual employee I had, next to Kris. We traded “good mornings” as I passed through on my way to the kitchen.

Julio was dancing to salsa music and working at the long prep table in the center of the kitchen. He wore his usual plain t-shirt over loud, baggy pants—tropical fish, today—and a matching baker's cap that didn't quite restrain his wild black curls. He had cucumber sandwiches laid out on the table in long rows, and was garnishing each with a dab of herbed butter and a sprig of fresh dill.

“You could have the girls do that, Julio,” I said, stepping to the window and lowering the volume on the boombox.

“Girls are too busy,” Julio said, his face set in artistic concentration. “Rosa keeps running back and forth to Lily.”

I turned to look at him. “Why?”

Julio grimaced. “Abuela's coming.”

“Your grandmother?”

He nodded. “The matriarch.”

That might explain Rosa's odd behavior the day before. I glanced toward the pantry but didn't see her.

“Shall I help?” I asked Julio.

“Not now. Maybe in a bit.”

I resisted the urge to pick up one of the sandwiches and instead snagged a bit of trimmed crust from a plate Julio had set aside. The orange I'd had for breakfast wasn't holding me.

I popped the crust in my mouth and left him to his work, going into the butler's pantry to scare up some tea. The girls, bless them, had a pot of Assam under a cozy in the far corner of the pantry. I poured myself a cup and added a splash of milk.

Dee glanced up at me and smiled. I smiled back, then stepped down the hall toward the front parlor to look for Rosa.