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Ruby Wilcox, my business partner. Ruby’s nose is liberally speckled with sandy freckles, her eyes are sometimes brown, sometimes blue or green (depending on which contacts she’s wearing), and she has Julia Roberts’ mouth. She has two daughters, Shannon Wilcox, who coaches girls’ sports at Bowie High inAustin, and Amy Roth, who lives and works here in Pecan Springs. Amy and her partner, Kate Rodriguez, have a three-year-old girl, Grace, a plump, pretty strawberry blonde who is Ruby’s joy and proud delight.
    Ruby owns Pecan Springs’ only New Age shop, the Crystal Cave, right next door to Thyme and Seasons. The Cave is the place to go if you’re looking for books on astrology, runes or crystals for divination, or a class in how to throw the
I Ching
. And if you can’t read your tarot card layout or your Ouija board won’t answer your questions, Ruby is there to help. Her strong psychic sense—her “gift,” people call it, although Ruby herself sometimes sees it as a curse—manifests itself every now and then, as it did recently, when she helped a friend do a little ghost-busting in a mysterious old house way out in the country. I am by nature a logical, rational, skeptical, cut-to-the-chase kind of person, and it’s hard for me to swallow most claims of the supernatural. But Ruby has been right so often that when she turns psychic on me, all I can do is shake my head and mutter, “You go, girl.” And then stand back and see what happens.
    But Ruby is also a practical businesswoman. Thyme for Tea, the tearoom that’s located behind our shops, was her idea, and she invited her friend Cass Wilde to sign on as chef. After that, she came up with Party Thyme, our catering service. Then she thought it would be a good plan for us to partner with Cass in a personal chef business called the Thymely Gourmet. “Bundled services” is the way Ruby describes it: offering related products and services to customers who already know and trust us. It’s true that I sometimes feel as if I’m one of a trio of maniac clowns who are juggling a half-dozen pins, balls, and rings, trying not very successfully to keep them all in the air at the same time. But Ruby and Cass and I have learned that the more we do, the more we
can
do, and that if we want tostay in business in this challenging economy, we’d better have more up our sleeve than a single trick.
    â€œSam?” Ruby asked with a frown. “What’s going on with him?”
    â€œHeart trouble,” I said, and related as much as I knew. “He’s insisting that we carry on as usual,” I added, “so there’s no change in plans on this end. I’ll be back Sunday night—at least, if everything goes okay with Sam.” I paused, not wanting to think what might happen if things didn’t go okay.
    â€œI’m so sorry, China,” Ruby said. “Sam has been good for your mother.”
    â€œHe’s been a lifesaver,” I said fervently. After a moment, I went on. “I hope you won’t be needing Mama over the weekend. I have a load of plants to take down to Utopia for Jennie Seale’s garden.”
    Big Red Mama is the used panel van we bought several years ago to haul our catering stuff, as well as plants. Mama’s former owner was a hippie artist named Gerald who was arrested for cooking crystal meth. The Hays County sheriff’s office impounded his van, and it ended up in the county’s vehicle auction. Ruby and I were attracted to Mama because she was cheap and because of the wild swirl of colorful Art Deco designs that Gerald (probably under the influence of a certain psychoactive herb) painted on her modest red sides. Ruby says that Mama looks like a cross between a Crayola box on wheels and a Sweet Potato Queen float on the way to a parade.
    â€œNope, Cass and I won’t need Mama,” Ruby said. “You can take her.” She