Susan Wittig Albert

Afterward, when I thought about what happened at St. Theresa's, I felt embarrassed and a bit rueful. If I'd been a police officer and drawn those wrong conclusions, my sergeant would have bawled me out for my errors in judgment. If I'd been a private investigator, I might have been fired. But I'm neither, thank God. I'm just an ordinary person who was asked to do something a little unusual, and I made a mistake here and there.

"What would happen if I slipped it into the departmental coffee pot? Mass poisoning?" I shook my head. "Not exactly. According to folklore, you'd get people royally pissed. The root was said to turn even the mildest person into a mad dog." Dottie made a sound deep in her throat. "The guys in my department don't need hangman's root. They're mad dogs without it." I didn't think she was joking.

Everybody laughed, me included. But you can't blame the garden club. They are used to seeing red, white, and blue petunias planted in the shape of the American flag, not a collection of plants with enough poison to dispatch half the population of Pecan Springs.

"Speaking of witches," Mary said, "I'm having a women's Halloween party at my place out in Deadwood on Saturday night. Some of my Wiccan friends from Austin are coming. You're all invited. "

“If I'd known how the week was going to turn out I would have sent it back first thing Monday and asked for a refund.”