Tiles and Tribulations

by Tamar Myers

  “I bet I could find one, if you gave me a minute.”

  “Go for it.”

  He sat back on the upholstered chair. “There are those Portuguese tiles in the kitchen.”

  “So?”

  “So, they’re extremely valuable, aren’t they?”

  “Are they?”

  “Abby, I’m not playing games now. You were drooling over those tiles the night of Golda’s murder.”

  “So?” That little S word was really quite useful. I picked up its finer nuances when my kids were combative teenagers.

  “I’m suggesting that Golda’s murder might have been a decoy.”

  “A decoy?”

  “I know this house doesn’t have any echoes, so you must be hard of hearing. Allow me to repeat myself. You used Golda’s murder as a decoy. You knew the house was being renovated—perhaps even helped with the renovations—learned about the tiles, and then had to figure some way to distract folks while you pondered what to do with them.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Those tiles were worth about three hundred dollars apiece. Maybe four, for the better ones. Let’s say there were a hundred of them—well, you do the math. Do I look like I need three or four thousand dollars enough to murder someone for it?”

  “I just did the math, Abby. It comes to thirty thousand, not three. And that was a long wall. I bet there were at least two hundred tiles on it, which would bring the total to—”

  “I know!” I wailed. “Sixty thousand dollars. I’ve always been dismal at math.”

  “Abby, if that wall was a complete panel—say from some important castle or palace, how much would it be worth? As a whole?”

  My mind flashed to an article I’d read about a retired English couple who bought a modest home in the south of Spain, but alas, too far inland to catch the sea breezes. They removed the worn wall-to-wall carpet only to find the floor consisted of early Spanish tiles worth a tidy half million U.S. dollars. They sold the entire house to a tile collector and bought a villa on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean.

  “Well,” I said, “a whole lot more than three thousand, that’s for sure.”

  He laughed politely. “Yes, but how much?”

  “This is just a wild guess, mind you—but perhaps in the neighborhood of a quarter million.”

  “And what if there’s something more than tiles hidden in those walls?”

  My mouth fell open wide enough, I’m sure, to swallow a Spanish villa. “Who told you about the body in the wall?”

  It was his turn to experience a sprained jaw. “Body? Did you say there was a body in the wall?”

  I can’t tell if a man means it when he says I’m not fat, or that the roast wasn’t tough, but it didn’t take a relationship maven to see that Chisholm Banncock IX was genuinely surprised by the revelation. Now that the cat—make that body—was out of the bag, I didn’t see that I had anything to lose by filling him in on the details. And since he’d been the real estate agent, he might even be able to shed some light on the grisly matter.

  Chiz listened as raptly as if he’d bought a dozen lottery tickets and the winning number was being read. His eyes were closed, and periodically a dimple would twitch. When I was through he opened his eyes halfway and regarded me under lashes so long they looked artificial.

  “Jane Cox isn’t planning to sue, is she?” he asked.

  I must say, I hadn’t thought of that. If a woman can sue a fast food restaurant just because she found a chicken beak in with her nuggets, then surely a homeowner can sue a real estate agent for selling her a house with a skeleton in the wall.

  “I don’t know what C.J. plans,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

  “But I didn’t know the body was there. I swear.”

  “Maybe. But you knew the house was haunted, didn’t you?”

  I could see him relax. “That one I’m guilty of. I hadn’t ever seen the ghost, or heard it, but everyone in Charleston—well, we natives at any rate—know about the ghost of Sarah MacGregor.”

  “So that really was her name?”

  He nodded. “According to the story, she had a—uh—let’s call it a romantic involvement with the house slave, a light-skinned mulatto named Henry. Her father found them together and killed the slave. Sarah was packed off to a boarding school up North. From there the story gets a little fuzzy. One version has her running away from boarding school with a professional gambler; another has her hitching a ride on a wagon train out West somewhere where she became a prostitute. At any rate, she was never seen again, never returned to Charleston—that is, until she died. One night her ghost showed up and started haunting the house, presumably looking for Henry.”

  “That’s it!” I cried. And believe me, that weird house does have echoes.

  “What’s it?”

  “The body in the wall—that was Sarah MacGregor. She never went up North. Her father killed her!”

  I could see the light bulb go on in his head as well. It shone right through his dimples.

  19

  “You may be right,” he said. “Assuming one believes in ghosts, of course.”

  “They prefer the term Apparition Americans. But there’s one thing wrong with this theory—wait, did you tell Golda Feinstein about Sarah MacGregor?”

  “Guilty again.”

  “As I was about to say, Madame Woo-Woo—I mean Golda—had Sarah MacGregor claim to be the mistress of the house. The Sarah in your story wasn’t; she was the daughter.”

  “Ah. I guess I forgot to mention that the real Sarah MacGregor’s mother died during childbirth. Apparently the baby was turned around—what do you call that?”

  “Breech,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s it.

  “Too bad we don’t have fingerprints or DNA samples to compare the corpse with.”

  He grinned. “The doctor made a mess of things and little Sarah was born with a finger missing.”

  “And that’s somehow funny?”

  He looked surprised. “No, but there’s your physical evidence. If the skeleton you found in the wall is missing a finger, it’s her.”

  “You may have something there.” I gasped as I noticed the time on a grandfather clock that, somehow, didn’t look out of place against a shiny silver wall. If there were no accidents on Highway 17, and if I took Mathis Ferry Road when I got to it, I just might beat Greg home.

  “Is something wrong, Abby?”

  “Time seems to have gotten away from me again, that’s all.” I hopped to my feet. “Mind if I ask you one last question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “If I came into your downtown office tomorrow morning and asked to see a house, would you show it to me?”

  “But Abby, Jane Cox is your friend. You’ll have to work that out with her.”

  “No, I mean some other house. As a customer.”

  A true Southern gentleman, he’d stood when I did, and now he towered over me. “You want an honest answer?”

  “I always want honest answers—unless they have to do with the way I look.”

  “Then the answer is no.”

  “Because I’m from off? Because I’m not a blue blood?”

  “In a word, yes.”

  “But that’s illegal! That’s discrimination!”

  “Of course it is. But as with everything, there are ways to get around the law.”

  “How would you do it?”

  He glanced around, as if he was nervous. Perhaps the metal sphere had ears.

  “I’d stonewall you. For starters, I wouldn’t return your calls—most folks from off can’t stand that. If you showed up at the office, my secretary would tell you I wasn’t in.”

  “What if I caught you in the office?”

  “Well, then I’d have to help, legally, but I’d be late for showing appointments, or conveniently forget them altogether. If you persisted—demanded my cooperation—I’d show you a few houses, but you wouldn’t like them. Not when I got done with my spiel.”<
br />
  “But why? Isn’t ‘off’ money as good as ‘on’ money?”

  He smiled. “Of course it is. And there are plenty of other real estate agents who would be happy to take it. It’s just that I, for one, prefer to work with the older, more established clientele.”

  “Then you’re a hypocrite, because that dirt road out there is clogged with the Sopranos.”

  “Come again?”

  “Okay, so maybe they’re not all from New Jersey, but they are from so far off, they’re practically on again.”

  Chisholm Banncock IX groaned. For a split second I thought maybe he had appendicitis. It can come on real fast, you know. It happened to Buford, who had to be rushed to the hospital within an hour of the first pain. The doctors said his appendix was as hot as a Tijuana tamale, and could burst at any moment. Within minutes he was on the operating table. Unfortunately, he recovered.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Yeah, if you can call it that. You see, that property isn’t mine—not anymore. I sold it to a cousin, who promised to keep it in the family. But the pull of Yankee dollars was just too strong. All I own is the little patch of ground around this house.”

  “You don’t even own the main house? Or the slave cabins?”

  “I’m afraid not. But I guess things could be worse. A group of musicians from Newark bought the house. They plan to renovate it themselves and turn it into a retirement home for oboe and clarinet players. Gone With the Winds they’re going to call it.”

  I thanked Chiz for his time and took the elevator back down to reality. The Rob-Bobs were back at the car, looking much happier.

  We crept across the Grace Memorial Bridge in record time. That is to say, it took longer than I can ever remember it taking, thanks to a car that ran out of gas midway and had to be pushed because there was no room to get a tow truck near it. Perhaps it is age, perhaps just maturity, but at times like these I find that the Zen approach is the only way to go. While Rob pounded the steering wheel and Bob invented naughty limericks about other antique dealers we all knew and loathed, I enjoyed the scenery. Charleston harbor is one of the prettiest sights in the world, and I had a bird’s-eye view.

  Unfortunately, my petite progenitress has never experienced a Zen moment in her life, and might never do so, even after she’s dead. When the Rob-Bobs dropped me off, with admonitions to be good and stay out of trouble, Mama met me at the door with her hands on her hips. She looked like a mother hen whose only chick had decided to go for a swim in the farm pond.

  “Abby, where have you been?”

  “Hanging out with my friends, Mama.”

  “Abby, there were reporters here. I had to deal with them all by myself.”

  “Reporters? From what? The Post & Courier?”

  “That, and the local network stations. They wanted details about you finding a body in C.J.’s house. Abby, is that really true? Did you find a body?”

  “Oh, Mama, it was awful!”

  She did the motherly thing and clasped me briefly to her bosom, taking care all the while not to crush her crinolines. Sometimes I forget she was my very first friend.

  “Did it smell?” she asked, fluffing up her skirt.

  “What?”

  “The body. You know I have an incredible nose, dear.” She couldn’t help but smile proudly.

  “Yes, Mama, you claim to have the best sniffer in the entire South. You claim you can actually smell trouble coming. Well, you didn’t this time, did you?”

  The worried hen look returned. “Abby, do you think I should see a doctor? I mean, there I was, not a foot away from the wall the night of the séance, and I didn’t smell a thing.”

  I wandered into the living room and hoisted myself into a chair. It had been an incredibly long day and my dogs were barking. Mama, as I knew she would, followed and took a chair of her own. And speaking of smells, the aroma of her post roast drifted pleasantly into the room from the kitchen.

  “Mama, you couldn’t smell anything, until you actually broke through the wallboard. Then it was awful. But please, I’d rather talk about something else.”

  “Afraid it will spoil your dinner, dear?”

  “No. What I want to talk about is the work you and the Heavenly Hustlers were doing for C.J.—without her knowledge!”

  Mama didn’t smell that one coming, although she did recoil like she’d just gotten a whiff of bad fish. She popped to her feet.

  “No time to talk now, Abby. Your hubby will be home any minute, and I haven’t even started on the potatoes.”

  “Make noodles, Mama. They take less time. We need to talk—and before Greg gets home.”

  “Abby, you’re not going to yell at me, are you?”

  Now, how do you suppose that makes a good daughter feel? I wouldn’t dream of yelling at the woman who’d endured thirty-six hours of excruciating pain on my behalf. Not when sarcasm is a much more effective tool.

  “Why should I yell, Mama? I’m not in the least bit vexed.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Not in the least. It wasn’t me who thought she had a remodeling ghost on her hands. It will be interesting, however, to see how C.J. reacts when she gets here. She’s still staying with us, right?”

  Mama nodded. The hen had no idea what her chick would do next. Maybe it would even walk on water.

  “Do we have to tell C.J., dear? It was meant to be a surprise—a good surprise.”

  “Yes, we have to tell her. The police are going to tell her anyway. In fact, they probably already have.”

  Mama squirmed. “C.J.’s a sweetheart, Abby. You know she is. She’s not likely to do anything—uh, dangerous, is she?”

  “Mama, she’s one of your best friends. How can you even suggest that? Just because her cousin, Orville Ledbettter, attacked six people with a Ping-Pong paddle on a cruise ship, because one of them stepped on his ball, doesn’t mean our C.J. will react violently. And that story about her Aunt Lavinia believing she was a condor and jumping off Half Dome in Yosemite National Park simply isn’t true. She did not, as C.J. claims, fly a hundred feet before falling, and as a result break every bone in her body except her nose. Lavinia jumped off a much lower cliff, and she landed in a pine tree. A broken wrist was the extent of her injuries.”

  Mama sighed with relief. “I didn’t think she’d go bonkers, Abby. But with those folks from Shelby, you can never be sure.”

  “Yeah, well, one thing for sure is that it was a member of your Heavenly Hustlers club who killed Madame Woo-Woo, AKA Golda Feinstein.”

  Mama blanched. “Oh, Abby, that’s just so hard to believe. They’re all such nice, normal people.”

  For some reason the intergalactic bar scene in the first Star Wars movie popped into mind. If those creatures could be considered normal, then maybe the Hustlers stood a chance.

  “Mama, no matter how nice they seem to you, one of them is a killer. You have to stop associating with all of them.”

  Except for the day of Daddy’s death, and the funeral, I have never known Mama to cry. She seemed on the verge of tears now.

  “If you think it’s best, dear. But I’m going to be very lonely.”

  “But you needn’t be, Mama. There are oodles of opportunities for you to volunteer at church.”

  “I know that, dear, but I want to kick up my heels—have a little fun.”

  “Well, volunteer in the church office during the week, but on Saturdays go skydiving.”

  Mama’s shimmering tears dried as fast as dew in a Carolina August, and her trembling lips transformed into a smile. “That’s a wonderful idea, dear. I’ll look up skydiving companies in the Yellow Pages right after supper.”

  If I’d been wearing pointy pumps, instead of summer sandals, I would have gladly kicked myself. Mama wasn’t bluffing. At least if neither the main nor the spare chute opened, her voluminous skirt and its requisite petticoats might slow her descent a little. Still, I had to try and stop her.

  “You might not be as luc
ky as C.J.’s Aunt Lavinia. Things could go terribly wrong and you might live to tell the story—only your mouth could be on the back of your head. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight.”

  “Charleston has plenty of good plastic surgeons,” she said, not in the least bit discouraged.

  “You’ll probably have to wear some sort of unfashionable jumpsuit. Otherwise folks in both London and France might see your underpants.”

  Mama flung her skirt over her head, but mercifully, after a few seconds, yanked it down. “Abby, at my age, modesty means nothing.”

  I suppose that’s why she survived a week in a nudist camp three years ago. Granted, it was a ladies only nudist camp, and then, only for ladies of “a certain age.” The brochure described it as “a retreat for ladies of breeding who want to experience the world as God had originally intended them to.” I was never quite sure if it was a religious cult, but when Mama returned she was still an Episcopalian, and wasn’t into hugging trees or kissing toads. She’d had a lovely time—except for when she’d inadvertently sat on a hot metal stair. She claimed that since she’d been allowed to keep her pearls on, she hadn’t even felt naked. Her pearls! They were the solution.

  “Suppose,” I said wickedly, “the string in your pearls breaks. I know, they’re knotted individually, but the entire necklace could come off. You would almost certainly never see it again.”

  My progenitress’s petite paws flew to her throat. “Perish the thought, Abby! You don’t think that could really happen, do you?”

  “Most certainly. You and your pearls are bound to fall at separate rates. Why, they could land a mile away—maybe in a pond or something. Say sayonara to your Mikimotos.”

  “Then skydiving is definitely out. I guess I’m just destined to be a lonely old widow.” The tears threatened to spill again.

  “I saw the strangest house today,” I said to divert her attention. “It looked like a flying saucer.”

  “Chiz Banncock’s house,” Mama sniffed.

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “Of course, dear. Remember that cocktail party I attended last month?”

  “That was in the space ship?”