by Tamar Myers
“Like Mrs. Sparrow.”
“You seem to be fixated on that woman.” I stood and fished a pair of twenties out of my pocketbook. “Hey, you don’t mind paying, do you?”
“Are you leaving?”
“Yes. Duty awaits me at home.” Not to mention three disgruntled loved ones, if you include my cat Dmitri. Fortunately, I’d left Greg with enough goodwill to see him through a couple more hours—even if he discovered I’d ditched the bodyguard he’d hired.
“But how will I get home?” Ingebord whined. “How will I get back to Mrs. Rodriguez’s apartment?”
I fumbled for another five. “You can either call a cab or I’ll take you there now.”
Ingebord had only to glance back at the menu to reach a decision. She grabbed the five. “This will pay for one dessert, yah? But what about the cab?”
I threw her a ten.
Mama threw herself at me the second I walked in my front door. “Oh, Abby, you’re alive!”
“Of course I am, Mama. Why would you—” I gasped. “What happened here?”
Mama stepped back so I could view the scene of destruction. My parlor now looked like a teenager’s room—one in which an atomic bomb had just been detonated.
“We’ve been burgled, Abby, that’s what.”
“Where are Greg and C.J.?”
“We’re here, Abby.” Greg strode quickly across the room from the hallway and threw his arms around me. C.J., who was trailing him, threw her gangly arms around the both of us. Not to be outdone, Mama wormed her way into the center of this human tripod. Thank heavens Dmitri was a cat and stayed appropriately aloof.
“I can’t breathe!” I cried.
The group hug broke up. “Abby,” Greg said, concern written all over his handsome face, “we didn’t know what to think. You were supposed to be, uh—”
“Protected by the bodyguard you hired?”
“Damn it, Abby, you shouldn’t have ditched him. He was only doing his job.”
“And so was I. Only I can’t do it with a shadow scaring off the folks I want to interview.”
“Your job, Abby, is to sell antiques.”
“And to be a good wife,” Mama said, and then patted her pearls. June Cleaver’s clone realized she’d gone too far.
I glared at her for good measure. “Well, y’all, here I am, and very much alive. Your worries were unfounded. Now this”—I waved at the devastation—“is another matter. Did anyone call the police?”
Greg appeared mildly miffed that I would even ask such a question. “Scrubb and Bright are on their way.”
“But Abby,” Mama said, her fingers still resting on her beads, “it’s not as bad as you might be thinking. It’s only this room that’s been burgled.”
“Mozella,” my hubby said, “I don’t think there’s been a burglary. Nothing seems to be missing.”
Mama’s single strand of ancient pearls began a slow rotation around her neck. “Don’t be silly, Greg. What do you call this?”
“Vandalism. That’s what it looks like to me.”
“But why would anyone want to vandalize our house?” Mama dropped the necklace as both hands cupped her cheeks. “It’s because of something Abby did, isn’t it?”
“Me? All I’ve done is to ask a couple of people a few questions.”
If I hadn’t seen C.J. put her fingers in her mouth, the ear-splitting whistle that followed would have propelled me right out of my sandals. Mama, who didn’t see it coming, jumped so high that as she descended, her crinolines and full circle skirt filled with air and she floated gracefully back to the floor.
“Please people,” C.J. begged, “I hate to see my family argue like this.”
We stared at her.
“We weren’t arguing,” Mama said. “We were discussing.”
“Nobody’s in the least bent out of shape,” Greg agreed.
C.J. could read my mind, as small as the print was. “Still, y’all are like family to me. You,” she said to Mama, “are the mother I never had. And you, Greg, are the brother I never had. And you, Abby, are the daughter I’ll probably never have.”
“Daughter? I’m old enough to be your mother!”
The big gal shrugged. “Well, that’s how I feel. So, are you three going to apologize to each other and promise to get along?”
Our stares turned to glares.
“Or not,” C.J. said, with another shrug of her shoulders. “But can we all agree to count our blessings?”
Mama’s pearls began another rotation. Fortunately for her, she has very small wattles, and the orbits are smooth and apparently painless.
“Which blessings would those be?” she asked.
“That nothing was stolen. Once back home in Shelby we were vandalized—”
“But something was stolen!” My shriek had Mama airborne again.
“What, hon?” Greg’s sapphire eyes swept the room.
“That beautiful camellia carving I brought home yesterday. It was right here on the coffee table when I went out this morning.”
Greg scooped up a couple of Architectural Digests, a wooden Balinese carving of a man sitting cross-legged, his arms folded, and a Rookwood Pottery vase. The items had been artfully arranged on the heavy marble table along with Percival Franklin’s exquisite sculpture. The table had been overturned, and all my decorative items dumped on the floor, except for the wooden camellia blossom.
“Are you sure it was on the table, hon? I remember you showed it to me, but I don’t remember you putting it on the table.”
Of course I was sure. And even though he was a retired detective, it didn’t surprise me that my helpful hubby hadn’t noticed the rearranged objet d’art. After all, the day I came home from the beauty shop with an eighteen-inch weave attached to my short dark hair, it had taken Greg a full three hours to process the change. It was only when I dangled my new locks inches above his precious chili that they registered with him. I had the weave removed the next day.
“I’m sure, Greg,” I said, drawing on my reserve pool of patience. “Mama—C.J.—y’all remember it being there, don’t you?”
Mama nodded. “I thought it looked a little tacky there, next to those fancy magazines, but I wasn’t going to say anything, dear.”
“You just did, Mama.”
C.J. must have thought another tiny tiff was in the offing. She jockeyed into position between me and my mini-madre.
“Ooh, Abby, I’ve been thinking. Maybe that camellia carving is still here in the house. Maybe it’s just been hidden.”
“And who would do that, dear? C.J., you didn’t!”
The poor girl looked mortified. “Not me, Abby! I meant, hidden by the ghost.”
“Ghost?”
“The one I’ve been telling you about. The one who jangles his keys in the hallway outside your guest room.”
If exasperation was a virtue, I stood a good chance of being canonized after my death. “First of all, C.J., they don’t like to be called ghosts anymore. The correct term is Apparition American. And in the second place, what would an Apparition American want with a carving of a flower?”
“Maybe the ghost—I mean, Apparition American—didn’t have flowers at his funeral. And I know it’s a male, Abby, I can just feel it. Anyway, maybe he was just trying to make things right.”
Mama gasped, her pearls frozen in mid-stream. “Your daddy,” she said to me. “I knew it!”
“What?”
“How can you forget, dear? There weren’t any flowers at your daddy’s funeral!”
I moved considerably closer to sainthood. “There weren’t any flowers at Daddy’s funeral, Mama, because it was his wish that the money be donated to York Place, the home for boys.”
“Well, he could have changed his mind the day he died, and not gotten around to telling me. Besides, Sudie Mae up in Rock Hill had an Apparition American living in her house, and she—this one was a female—hid things all the time.”
C.J.’s enormous head was bobbing u
p and down with all the vigor of the paint mixer at Home Depot. I knew from experience that the only way to get her to stop was to let her share the experience she wanted so desperately to relate.
“Spit it out, dear,” I said.
“Well, Granny Ledbetter’s house was haunted, you see. Things were disappearing all the time. Then they would reappear—just like that.”
“How did you know it was an Apparition American who was responsible for this phenomenon?” Greg asked. My husband, bless his heart, tries to keep an open mind.
C.J. rolled her eyes at the question. “Because Granny’s sister, Miss Mulva Jenkins, contacted the ghost—or whatever—during a séance. She—the ghost, not Granny or her sister—admitted she borrowed certain things. It was her house, after all. And she always put them back.”
“Well—”
“Ooh, except for one thing, and that was Granny’s teeth. They disappeared one night and we didn’t find them for months. Then on National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day, I found them in the very back of the freezing compartment. You won’t believe this, you guys, but Granny’s teeth were embedded in a frozen Snickers bar. Who knew Apparition Americans liked sweets?”
“Sounds more like your granny liked sweets,” I growled. “Look, y’all, this conversation about Apparition Americans has been absolutely fascinating, but I can assure you that none of them were responsible for the missing sculpture.”
“But how do you know, Abby?” C.J.’s chin jutted out so far, I could have balanced a broom on it, bristle end down.
“Because Apparition Americans aren’t capable of killing anyone, are they?”
“Of course not, Abby. Don’t be silly.”
“There you have it, dear. Whoever took that flower is the same person who killed Mrs. Amelia Shadbark. And I just happen to know who it is.”
24
“Who?” My loved ones sounded like a Greek chorus. Even Dmitri got into the act by yowling.
I suspected Mindy Sparrow. The woman had demanded I give the flower to her. She couldn’t wait to get her well-bred hands on the entire estate. But I needed to talk to Percival again. Maybe he knew something about this Linen Lady that I didn’t.
“Well, I can’t prove it just yet, so I’m not sure I should tell—”
The doorbell rang and I skipped to get it.
“Deus ex machina,” the Greek chorus cried. Dmitri, who doesn’t speak Latin, merely meowed.
I ushered the sergeants in. They surveyed the mess, took notes, and asked a few questions. For a moment it looked like I was going to be able to hustle their bustles out of there before one of the gang told on me. I might as well have hoped that the Hope Diamond flew out of its display at the Smithsonian and landed in a locket around my neck.
“There’s really no need to waste time asking any more questions,” Mama said, patting her pearls. “Our Abby knows exactly who did it.”
“I do not!”
“Ooh, Abby, but you do,” C.J. said, nodding her huge head like a somnolent draft horse.
“They’re making this up,” I cried.
“Abby,” Greg said, an uncharacteristic sharpness to his tone, “it’s better if you come clean with the sergeants now.”
Just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more betrayed, Dmitri nipped my ankle and scampered from the room, his tail erect and bushy.
“Et tu, Brutus?” I wailed.
Detective Bright looked puzzled, but the Affleck look-alike treated me to a boyish grin. Since I no longer believed he was in the least bit attracted to me, I found it more annoying than charming.
“Well, Abby, it would appear that you’re outnumbered.”
“Maybe so, but might does not make right. I have a theory about who did this—I certainly don’t have any proof. It would be wrong of me to point the finger now.”
“But that finger,” Mama said, “would be pointing at both the thief who stole the sculpture and Mrs. Amelia Shadbark’s killer.”
“Mama!”
Scrubb scribbled with his stub. “Is this true, Abby?”
“I plead the Fifth.”
Sergeant Scrubb sighed heavily. Sergeant Bright was bright enough to feign interest in a post-Impressionist watercolor hanging askew on the wall.
“Abby,” the unhappy detective said, “holding back information could be dangerous.”
“True,” I said, “but giving you the wrong information could be damning.”
Sergeant Scrubb turned to Greg. “Can’t you talk sense into her?”
The Greek chorus gasped.
“He’s my husband, not my father,” I said, drawing myself up to my full four feet nine.
“Her daddy couldn’t talk sense into her, either,” Mama said, and then, realizing the error of her ways, clapped a hand over her mouth. Had she been wearing gloves, I had no doubt she would have popped one in first for good measure.
Sergeant Scrubb spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “In that case, it appears we’ve done all we can do here.” He scribbled again on the miniature pad. “This is my personal cell phone number. Don’t hesitate to use it.”
The Greek chorus was relentless in their persecution of me. They claimed, repeatedly, that their blathering stemmed from their concern, but I didn’t care. To put it bluntly, I was pissed off.
I went to bed right after supper—which I cooked, by the way—and I went to bed alone. I tried to get Dmitri to join me, but he was pissed at me, and all because at supper I’d made the mistake of mentioning my plan to take him to the vet the next day for his rabies shot. No doubt there are those who will scoff at the idea of a cat understanding English, but those folks have never met Dmitri. A house guest once referred to my ten-pound bundle of joy as “that four-footed fleabag.” She made the mistake of saying this in Dmitri’s presence, and that very same afternoon the “fleabag” in question made his daily deposit in one of her shoes.
At any rate, as I lay in bed waiting for Greg to join me, I heard the three humans talking, laughing, and generally carrying on, as if there was a party in progress. I’m sure Dmitri, who has a silent laugh, was out there yukking it up as well. In a futile effort to block out the sounds of revelry, I put my pillow over my head. It was still there the next morning when I awoke. Greg, however, had come to bed and gone.
I was surprised to see that it was already nine o’clock. Thank heavens I’d hired Homer. Having an assistant was like owning a debit card. I couldn’t imagine how I’d gotten along without one for so long.
C.J. was still asleep; I could tell that without even checking the guest room, thanks to her snores. And since the big galoot hadn’t sought asylum in my room from the resident Apparition American, I assumed that Mama had taken mercy on the girl and spent the night in there as well. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the two of them had stayed up until the wee hours bonding. If that was the case—well, bully for them. C.J., who had been abandoned as a baby on Granny Ledbetter’s porch, could benefit from a little extra mothering, and Mama could always use another daughter. One who wasn’t so pigheaded.
I showered and dressed, grabbed an untoasted Pop Tart, and headed straight for the Den of Antiquity. I couldn’t wait to learn what treasures Homer had purchased for me from the Delrumple estate. Of course he wouldn’t have had time to transport, much less display them—
“Homer!” I cried, startling a flock of Linen Ladies who were gathered around him, as if he were their guru.
Seeing me, Homer sauntered—if the word may be applied to a man of his girth—my way, sporting a grin as wide as the Cooper River. “She’s a beaut, isn’t she?”
At first I thought he was referring to one of the Linen Ladies. Perhaps one of them was his wife—although I hadn’t pegged Mrs. Homer Johnson as one of the wrinkled set. Then I saw the eighteenth-century breakfront bookcase, the true object of the bevy’s admiration.
“Oh, Homer! It’s just gorgeous. Did you get a good deal?”
He nodded, his trademark jowls obscuring his collar with
each downward movement. “You bet I did. I spread me a little rumor.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Homer’s pate turned petunia pink. “I told a couple of the dealers that I thought this breakfront was a fake. This is a Massachusetts piece, you see, and the drawer bottoms are hand-hewn pine. So I told folks that pine wasn’t used for drawer bottoms up there—and guess what? They believed me. They’re nice folks, most of these dealers, but they’re no Antique Road Show experts. No sir, not by a long shot. They can’t afford to take big risks. All you got to do is plant a little seed of doubt in their brains and they’re more than happy to set their sights on something else. Anyway, they all spent their budgets on other lots earlier in the auction, and when this came up—it was the second-to-last piece—they were plumb out of money. We—I mean you, Mrs. Timberlake—picked this baby up for a song.”
“Well, I love that tune!” I cried. Then my conscience took over. “Was what you did legal?”
He shrugged and the jowls quivered. “Why not? I wasn’t selling anything, just buying. And I was only making an observation that I may—or may not—have believed.”
It certainly sounded like something one could get away with. Still, if I ran this scenario by the rector at Mama’s church—well, I could imagine what he would say. There is legality, and then there is ethics. The two are not necessarily synonymous.
“Homer, I’d really rather you didn’t pull this stunt again.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His color deepened. “You wouldn’t be wanting me to try and take it back, now would you? Because you can’t do that with things you buy at an auction—not when they let folks preview the stuff first.”
“A card laid is a card played,” I cried, eager to sweep the ethics issue under a rug, preferably a nice wool Heriz from Persia. After all, Homer was right. There was nothing to be done about the eighteenth-century breakfront now, except to sell it. I could always donate a portion of the profit to charity.
Hormer’s grin exceeded the span of the Silas N. Pearlman Memorial Bridge. “Do I take it then you feel the same way about the Philadelphia highboy I bought last night, and sold not more than five minutes ago?”