What the hell?
Lips tight, Baba put the truck back into gear and pulled onto the highway, headed in the direction of the next address Bob had given her. There was something decidedly odd going on here, and she was going to find the explanation if it killed her. Or better yet, whoever was behind what was clearly a plot to discredit her. Somehow, she had a feeling Maya had her dainty hands in there somewhere. If that bitch was ruining Baba’s good name, there was going to be hell to pay.
*
BY THE TIME she got back home, Baba was so angry, she was shaking like an aspen in a hurricane. It was all she could do to roll the BMW down off the ramp she kept in the back of the truck and park it to the side of the trailer until she could find the time to fix the paint job. Right now, she had more important things to do. Like track down whoever was making her clients sick and beat the living crap out of them.
“Feeling better now that you have the bike back?” Chudo-Yudo asked when she came in the door. He was sprawled across the entire length of the couch, one large white paw holding his place in one of Baba’s historical romances. He liked to read as much as Baba did, although he preferred fantasy—especially those with dragons in them.
He ducked as one of her boots went flying across the Airstream and bashed into a cupboard on the far end. It was quickly followed by its mate, which hit the exact same spot with a hollow thud. A stream of cursing colored the air inside a light robin’s egg blue.
“I take it that’s a no, then,” Chudo-Yudo said, closing the book with a broad canine sigh. “Didn’t the mechanic do a good job?”
Baba stomped over to sit next to him, flexing her toes in the soft fibers of the rug with relief. She hated wearing shoes. And never wore socks.
“Bah,” she said. “The bike is fine. At least as fine as it can be, until I can do something about the way it looks. But I ran into a problem.”
Chudo-Yudo cocked his head to one side. “How unusual for you,” he said in a sarcastic tone.
“This is serious,” Baba said, scrubbing her face with both hands, as if she could wash away the last couple of hours. After visiting three more people, and being variously yelled at, cried on, and threatened with a lawsuit, she felt like she was covered with some kind of viscous, malignant sludge. “Someone’s been tampering with my herbal remedies,” she told the dog.
That got his attention, and he sat up straight, the book sliding unnoticed to the floor, where tiny silk flowers helped to break its fall.
“The hell you say!” His brown eyes went wide. “All of them? How? Why?”
Baba shook her head. “All the ones I could track down anyway. Bob told me that people had been complaining, and his father—” she took a deep breath at the memory of the old man’s nasty accusations—“let’s just say that ‘witch’ is the nicest word being used to describe me. I had one woman whose arm swelled up when she used my cream on it, another who sneezed so hard she fell off a stool and broke her ankle, and a guy who came to me for a hair growth shampoo that made his hair fall out instead.” And hadn’t that been fun to try and fix subtly. Great goddess.
“Holy Mother Russia,” Chudo-Yudo said. “That’s awful.”
“Those aren’t the worst, though,” she said, heart heavy as she remembered the hysterical mother who swore Baba’s cough syrup had made her baby so sick, she’d had to take him to the emergency room.
The woman had been distraught, and wouldn’t let Baba into the house, slamming the door in her face when Baba asked to come in. She’d had to do what she could to help the infant from outside, standing in the insubstantial shadows by the bedroom window and praying that no one would drive by and ask what the hell she was up to.
“As to how, I have no earthly idea,” she added. Her head felt like it was reverberating with the accusing voices of all those she’d let down; she couldn’t think a clear thought past the murk and the misery of it all.
“All the medicines I’ve been able to get back look like my mixtures in my bottles, but every single one of them has been adulterated with something horribly wrong.”
She pulled the vials and jars out of her pockets, which as usual held as much as she wanted them to hold. Chudo-Yudo put his massive head down next to them and sniffed. Then he let out a huge snort, eyes watering and black nose twitching.
“Ugh. That’s nasty,” he said, rubbing a paw across his muzzle. “Feh.”