by Tamar Myers
“Not all men. Not all women, either.” I gave her my hand signal for “hurry up,” which is a little bit like Queen Elizabeth waving in fast motion.
“So anyway, I make Charlie tell me everything. He says his wife is this rich Russian woman—her first husband was some kind of communist big shot—and that she offered him a whole lot of money to marry her, so that she could get a green card. That’s how Charlie got his money for the restaurant, see. Only now she won’t divorce him. She says that if Charlie sues for divorce, then she’ll expose his scam, even though that would mean she’d be in big trouble, too.”
“He could call her bluff.”
“He has. Last time he sent an actor pretending to be a lawyer. She just laughed. So this time he sent Vladimir.”
“Do you know why this woman won’t give Mr. Dupree a divorce?”
“Sex.”
“You’re joking!”
“Mrs. Washburn, Charlie is—well, let’s just say I couldn’t be happier in that department. But you see, all the other old bags he’s brought over were just as happy not to be bothered with that. Then along comes Tatiana, who falls head over heels in love with Charlie. Who would have thought? I mean, how could she think that a good-looking guy like him would really fall in love with her? Like, who is she kidding? Besides, he told her from the get-go that it was strictly business.”
Simone looked to be about my daughter Susan’s age. I found myself wanting to mother her, to dispense advice on men. Instead I had to grill her like a weenie on the Fourth of July before the Rob-Bobs showed up.
“What exactly does Blackmond—I mean, Charlie Dupree—want Vladimir to do to his wife?”
“Kill her orchids.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, threaten to kill them. If that doesn’t work, he really might kill them.”
“You’re talking about flowers, right?”
“Yeah. You see, Tatiana—when she’s not drunk, which is most of the time—is really into orchids. Did you know there are clubs for that kind of thing?”
“There’s a club for everything. So you’re saying that Vladimir is not planning to kill Charlie’s wife, but is planning to kill her flowers?”
“Yeah. Sounds pretty silly when you put it like that, doesn’t it?”
“I take it that they’ve been married long enough to get divorced and not cause suspicion?”
Her entire body went on red alert. Her eyes darted about like those of an impala that has caught the scent of a lion hiding in the tall grass.
“Uh—yeah. I’m sure of that. Mrs. Washburn, I can’t get into any trouble, can I? I’m only sleeping with Charlie; it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong.”
It is neither my inclination nor my right to tell others how to live their lives. But like I said, I have a daughter Simone’s age.
“Here’s some unsolicited advice, darling. If he’ll cheat with you, he’ll cheat on you. Yes, I know, this is a sham marriage, and he wasn’t emotionally committed to Tatiana and all that, but just think about this: the guy tells lies for a living. You’re too intelligent and too beautiful to waste your life on someone like that.”
“He’s the only man I’ll ever love, Mrs. Washburn.”
My daughter Susan says the same thing—over and over again. The only man she’ll ever love is invariably replaced by the new only man she’ll ever love. Susan never listens, and if I lecture her too much, I run the risk of straining our relationship. But I had nothing to lose by preaching to Simone.
“How old are you, Simone?”
“Twenty-three.”
“How old is Charlie—a.k.a. Blackmond—Dupree?”
“I don’t know. Forty-six, I think. Something like that. We don’t talk about age.”
“Do you think he’s cute?”
“Yeah.”
“Just think, when you’re his age, he’ll be pushing seventy. All his muscles will have turned to flab. And he probably won’t have any hair—not that there’s anything wrong with that. But will you still find him cute?”
“Ew!” She remembered we were on opposing sides. “So what? I like bald men. And anyway, if he works out in a gym, he won’t be flabby.”
I hopped off the daybed. Perhaps the seed had been planted. If it had fallen on stony ground—well, I wasn’t going to be around come harvest time. Besides, I’d gotten all the information I needed.
“Toodle-ooh,” I said.
I’d gotten only halfway to the front door when I heard the Rob-Bobs coming through the back. I raced back to find Simone, dug a couple of twenties out of my purse, and practically threw them at her.
“Let’s keep this conversation between you and me,” I said.
She looked astonished, as well she should. “The IGS pays to do interviews?”
“Only for the best.” I plastered a smile on my face as the Rob-Bobs came through the back door of the display area. Simone, by the way, faded into the background like a receding shadow. “Hey, I just dropped by to see if you were here. My breakfast meeting is over.”
“Guess what we had for breakfast.” Rob said, rolling his eyes. “No, don’t waste your time guessing. It was yesterday’s pigeon soufflé.”
“How was it?”
He rolled his eyes again.
“No fair,” Bob said. “A soufflé is meant to be served the minute it emerges from the oven, not as leftovers. But you have to admit, the scallion sauce I whipped up just on that account was pretty darn tasty.”
“I’m sure it had a lot of taste, darling,” I said.
“Moving right along,” Rob said, “Abby, I forgot, Bob and I need to do a little paperwork this morning. Would you mind terribly if we—”
“Go right ahead. I really don’t need a baby-sitter.”
“Tough,” Rob said. “You’ve got one anyway—at least until Greg gets home. We expect you to meet us here at twelve sharp, and we’ll take you to lunch. This time it’s our treat.”
Bob squirmed like a six-year-old who’d been told to be quiet in church.
“Or we could eat lunch at your house,” I said generously.
“No, we can’t,” Rob said.
That settled, I bid my friends adieu and stepped out into the full blast of a Charleston summer. Even the palmettos along the street appeared to be wilting, like broccoli tops that had lost their turgidity. It was, of course, only an optical illusion. But what I saw transpire beneath the shimmering palms was very real.
18
Stretch limos are not an uncommon sight in Charleston. Movie stars can be tourists as well. And lots of movies are filmed in the Holy City. But this was the first time I saw someone I actually knew emerge from one of these ostentatiously elongated automobiles. The woman who disembarked glanced up and down the street, and presumably not seeing me, leaned back into the rear of the car and gave someone a sloppy kiss. The smooch I couldn’t see, but I’m no stranger to the sound. At any rate, after laying lips on the limo passenger, the woman in question straightened her skirt and started walking away from me at a brisk trot.
No one in Charleston (except for tourists and firemen) walks that fast between Memorial Day and Labor Day. To do so is to risk death by drowning—in one’s own sweat. Nosiree bob! When we must be out and about in the summer sun, we locals do the “Charleston walk.” That is to say, we stroll languidly down the street, keeping to the shade as much as possible. When we must negotiate a sunny patch, we walk even slower. As every native Charlestonian knows, perhaps instinctually, to hurry creates even more heat.
“Well, as I live and breathe,” I said, barely able to breathe in the saturated air, “but if that isn’t Catherine Deephouse.” To be truthful, I was more than a mite hurt that she hadn’t noticed me upon disembarking. Oh well, I am used to being overlooked, and I mean that literally.
Catherine continued to walk away from me at this breakneck speed, deftly dodging pedestrians. I had to run if I was going to catch up with her. I was steeling myself to do just that when a door two
shops down the street opened and out squeezed a herd of tourists. Once outside, they blew up to twice their size, like giant yeast rolls, forming an impenetrable wall of dough from storefront to curb. A cursory glance across the street informed me that foot traffic was no better there.
I briefly contemplated risking my life by stepping out into the automobile traffic—some of the tourists were larger than cars—but fortunately, a better thought popped into my heat-addled brain. Ducking from doorway to doorway, like a GI in a war movie, I worked my down to Queen Street, turned left on it, and then finally right on Meeting. By now I was out of the shopping district, and my chances of being trampled were considerably less.
When I hit Broad Street, I had only to turn left and walk a few yards before arriving at Catherine’s shop, Deephouse Designs. Always painfully aware of how dowdy little me stacks up to the stacked designer, I paused in the shade of an awning and surveyed myself in the window of an attorney’s office. I smacked my lips a couple of times to even my thinning war paint, and ran my fingers through my short dark hair. Could be worse, I thought. I gave my reflected image the thumbs-up, only to see it give me two thumbs in return. What the heck?
“Oh shoot,” I said aloud, when I realized that the second thumb belonged to a receptionist behind the glass. What must she think about my lip smack? I didn’t hang around to find out. Abandoning the Charleston walk, I practically leaped the remaining distance to Deephouse Designs.
Catherine’s assistant met me at the door as I expected. What I didn’t expect was to see the grande dame herself, sitting behind her Brazilian hickory desk. Except for some beads of perspiration above her Botoxed brow, she appeared as if she might have been sitting there all morning. Ah, the glory of Charleston women: they never sweat—they merely dew.
The dew-dotted Deephouse acknowledged my arrival with a smile that was all business. “Abby, what can I do for you this morning?”
“Hi, Catherine. I was hoping you’d have time for a cup of coffee.”
She looked past her bosom, which was spilling out from a tight purple blouse, and pretended to scan some papers on her desk. “Sorry, no can do. I have a fabric shipment coming in at any moment that’s going to take the two of us the rest of the morning to check, and this afternoon I’ve got to start work on the Blazer House over in Ansonborough. Have you ever been in the Blazer House, Abby?”
“No.”
“Even back in the not-too-distant past, when Ansonborough was more shabby than chic, the Blazer House was to die for. It’s one of the oldest mansions in Charleston, you know. Anyway, all the best parties were held there. Anyone who was anyone was on Howard and Blanche Blazer’s guest list. Then they retired to Florida—they didn’t have any children, you know—and the St. Ophelia Society bought the place.” She sighed deeply, causing the tops of her bosoms to rise and fall like the swells caused by a boat wake. “Well, you should have seen the house once those fossils were through with it. Everything was off-white, and anything the least bit architectural had been stripped from the place. All the friezes, all the crown molding, even a Tiffany stained-glass window.”
“Excuse me. Did you say the St. Ophelia Society?”
“I did. Thank heavens the new owners—”
“The same organization that holds its annual ball in the basement of the Daughters of Fine Lineage building?”
“The same. Abby, do you want to hear about the Blazer House or not?”
“Not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean I do want to hear about it—just not right now. You’ve got me really interested in the St. Ophelia Society. Are you a member of that illustrious group?”
Of course I knew she wasn’t. No member would speak disparagingly of it. At least not to an outsider. But the best way to get Catherine to tell me everything she knew about the geriatric gentry was to provoke her on the subject.
“Illustrious my ass. Do you know how many pints of blood it takes to give one of those old fogies a complete transfusion?”
“No.”
“Guess.”
“Five?”
“None! They run on antifreeze. Or embalming fluid. Take your pick. My family’s been in Charleston as long as any of theirs, but just because mine got off on the other side of the ship, I’m not good enough to join.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. If your ancestors got off on the other side of the ship, wouldn’t that put them in the water? Ah, I get it now! They were stowaways.”
Stay away from botulinum injections if you intend to scowl. Catherine’s attempt was downright pitiful.
“Stowaways? I should say not! My people were honest-to-goodness indentured servants. The salt of the earth.”
I nodded vigorously to show my support of the working classes. “I take it then that you’re not a member of the St. Necrophilia Society.”
“Ha! Good one, Abby. Even if I could, I wouldn’t join that bunch—not if you paid me a million dollars. And you know what, they’re going to have to start paying folks to join, the way they’re going. From what I hear, young people these days are far more egalitarian than their parents. Sure, you’ve got the straight arrow, Junior League types, but they’re not into classism, either. Mark my words, those stuffy old society dames are teetering on their last legs.”
“That’s not what I heard. They apparently have a waiting list a mile long. It’s basically a case of waiting for someone to die. That’s why the membership is so old, you see. By the time a vacancy opens, the folks on the waiting list have gotten up in years. In that regards, it’s somewhat like the English royal family. Prince Charles will probably be long in tooth by the time he gets his turn to reign.”
She snorted, a response that doesn’t require any facial muscles. “We obviously have different sources. But you should trust me, Abby. Like I said, my family’s been here for generations. I know how things work in this city.”
I swallowed back my irritation. It was a lot tastier than Bob’s soufflé.
“Catherine, how do you think the membership would respond if someone tried to crash one of their functions—incognito, of course?”
“Why I suppose they would be furious. Inbreeding produces short tempers.”
“Would they physically harm the intruder?”
“Hmm—I don’t think so. For starters, they wouldn’t be capable of such a thing. Besides, that’s not their style anyway. Their style would be to socially blackball the offender.”
“But what if the offender was ‘from off’?”
“Like you?” I swear she said that just to be mean.
“Everyone who is anyone goes to church or synagogue, Abby. Not to mention charity events, concerts, and the like. There are plenty of opportunities to snub someone who has broken the rules.”
Despite her dearth of working muscles, it was clear to me that Catherine Deephouse had not been shaken by my line of questioning. But I hadn’t come to Deephouse Designs to talk about genealogy, or historical houses—although her comments about the St. Ophelia Society were certainly interesting.
“Catherine, darling,” I said, “did you know there is another woman in Charleston who looks just like you?”
I was both pleased and surprised that she was able to blink. “I beg your pardon?”
“Just minutes ago I saw her running down King Street. Of course she had to be a tourist, so she won’t be here long. But how cool is that? Can you imagine if the two of you were to meet? I mean, you look exactly like each other. In fact, I thought it was you at first.”
“Why, that’s just silly,” she said, glancing down at the canyon between her bosoms. “I doubt if there’s anyone else who looks just like me.”
“Maybe you’re right. The woman I saw was built like a brick outhouse.”
“Abby,” she gasped, “there is no need to be rude. I have a mighty fine figure, if I do say so myself.”
“Oh you do! But this woman was sensational. Very classy as well.”
Catherine le
aped to her feet. “I’ll have you know, Abby, that this classy woman you claim to have seen is me.”
“No way!”
She glanced at her assistant, who was in the far corner sorting carpet samples. “I had some business on King Street, but I didn’t want anyone there to think I had to rely on an antiques dealer for help, so when I was through, I made a dash for it. That’s why you thought I was a tourist.”
That didn’t explain the limo. Or the kiss.
“What sort of help did you need from an antiques dealer, Catherine?”
“That was business—my business. Not yours.”
“Yes, but I would have been glad to help. Besides, you do business with our shops on King Street all the time.”
The best defense is a good offense, and Catherine Deephouse had no qualms about being offensive. “You seem to be gone from your shop a good deal, Abby. If you were more attractive, one might think you were having an affair.”
“What I do with my time is my business.”
“Touché.”
“And at least one man finds me very attractive.”
“Yes, you are married.”
“Only to the most handsome man in all of Charleston County.” I gave her an “I gotcha” face. “Well then, I better be going. Nice visiting, Catherine. Oh, and about the birdcage—is your client still interested?”
You could have knocked Catherine over with one of Monet’s feathers. “You’ve changed your mind?”
“Possibly. I mean, I’m giving it some thought.”
“You’re still asking fifteen, right?”
“I wasn’t asking anything; it was you offering. And I believe the sum was sixteen five.”
“Abby, you know that’s a small fortune.”
“Yes, but the Taj Mahal is undoubtedly the most exquisite birdcage in the entire world. It’s a real collector’s item.”
“Hmm. You’ll let me know when you decide for sure, right?”
I promised that I would. Then, just to be polite, I nodded at her assistant before leaving. But I hadn’t taken three steps outside before someone grabbed my elbow. Thinking it might be a purse snatcher, I whirled around defiantly. It really wasn’t my fault that my head met with Catherine’s sternum.