by Tamar Myers
I approached the young woman. Her eyes were closed and her bowed head was resting on balled fists.
“Miss Franklin?” I asked.
“Shhh,” Mama whispered loud enough to wake the dead downstairs in the morgue, “I think she’s praying.”
I touched Percival’s sister lightly on the shoulder. “Miss Franklin, I brought you some coffee.”
“And two kinds of Danish,” Mama said. Her glance flitted around the room. I could tell she was afraid that at any second germs would leap at her from the chairs and magazine tables.
The girl looked up. “Sorry. Did you say something?”
“I brought you some coffee, dear,” I said.
She looked confused. “I don’t think I ordered any—never mind, how much do I owe you?”
“Not a thing. I’m a friend of your brother.”
The large dark eyes focused on me for the first time. “Percy’s? You’re a friend of Percy’s?”
Lying is, of course, wrong, but it’s especially bad to lie in a surgical waiting room. Think of the karma. Next time that could be me—or Mama—behind those swinging doors.
“Well, he wasn’t so much a friend as a business associate.”
She took the coffee, black, but passed on the Danish. “The Market?”
Even fudging is pushing fate in a hospital. “Actually, I met him investigating the death of Mrs. Amelia Shadbark. Apparently he was her part-time gardener.”
She tried to hand the coffee back, but I refused to take it. “You a cop?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then who the hell are you?”
“She’s a busybody, that’s who she is.” Mama fluffed out her crinolines and patted her pearls. “I’m afraid my daughter just doesn’t know when to mind her own business. Why, once—”
It undoubtedly generates bad karma to step on your mother’s toes, but that’s precisely what I did. It was the only way I could think of to shut her up.
“Why, Abby, I declare!”
“Sorry, Mama.” I turned my attention back to the young lady. “I was one of the last people to see Mrs. Shadbark alive. I have a special interest in finding her killer in order to—well, prove that I had nothing to do with it.”
“And you think Percy did?” Despite her hostile tone, she took a sip of the coffee I’d brought.
“No, ma’am. I got to know your brother a little bit—he gave me a beautiful carved camellia. He’s extremely talented.”
“You bet he is.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now I know who you are. You’re that lady who owns the antique business. The one who accused him of being a thief.”
“I did no such thing! I was merely puzzled by seeing his name engraved on the back of a piece of Lalique. But then, as a friend pointed out to me, his name wasn’t engraved after all, but part of the piece. I have to confess, that still throws me.”
Her expression reminded me of the stray cat that showed up in my backyard one evening. It was obvious that the undernourished animal was nursing and had kittens stashed somewhere. I put out a bowl of Dmitri’s food, and some water, but the poor thing—which bolted every time I opened the door—was too terrified to eat, even after I moved the food to the security of some bushes. You could see the cat’s internal battle reflected in her eyes. Eventually hunger won out, and the stray cat ate from the bowl, but she had been right not to trust me. For her own good, and that of her kittens, I had to call animal control. Fortunately, they were able to track her to the crawlspace of an empty building two blocks away.
Percival Franklin’s sister didn’t have offspring stashed under a vacant house, but she did have a brother under the knife. I could feel her eyes appraise me.
“What is it you really want, Miss—”
“Mrs. Washburn,” I said decisively. It was time for me to drop Timberlake and take up my new married name. Either that or revert back to Wiggins, my maiden name. Juggling two last names was getting confusing, even for me.
She set the coffee cup on a year-old copy of Sports Illustrated. “Mrs. Washburn, then. So, what is it you want?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know exactly. I just have this gut feeling that—”
“I smell trouble,” Mama said.
I dismissed her with a wave of my hand. “My gut feeling is that what happened to your brother—the hit-and-run—was no accident.”
The girl’s eyes widened, but she didn’t seem shocked by my statement. “What makes you say that?”
“Like I said, it’s just a feeling. I feel that what happened to him was somehow connected with what happened to Mrs. Shadbark, and her neighbor, Miss LaPointe.”
“What happened to her—this Miss LaPointe?”
Her reaction was encouraging. Evangeline LaPointe’s death had not been listed in the paper.
“She was murdered as well,” I said.
She retrieved the coffee and sipped in silence for several minutes. When she spoke again, she looked at the cup, not at me.
“Just so you know, Mrs. Washburn, my brother was not into drugs. But ever—”
“I never said he was.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the conclusion some folks would jump to just because of the color of his skin. Anyway, what I was about to say is that ever since my brother quit his job at the glassworks, he’s been looking over his shoulder.”
The hair on the nape of my neck stood straight up. From the back I must have looked like a porcupine.
“Glassworks? Which glassworks is that?”
26
“Arcadian Designs,” she said. “It’s located on Savannah Highway down near Ravenel. Just across the road from Caw Caw County Park.”
“Your brother made glass there?”
“He made lots of stuff there, but glass too. From what I understand, the company makes art reproductions. Percy didn’t like to talk about his job there.”
Now we were finally cooking with gas. “Do you know if that’s where he made that fake Lalique?”
She frowned. “I don’t know anything about Lalique, Mrs. Washburn. I don’t know if the ones my brother made were fake or not. He made a lot of different glass pieces. He liked to show me his latest designs.”
“René Lalique is a designer who’s been dead a long time,” I explained, trying not to sound superior. I mean, just because I was gaga over the man’s creations, didn’t mean the rest of the world necessarily knew about him. Lord knows, I know zilch about NASCAR racing.
Percy’s sister was far more loyal than Toy would have been. Her eyes flashed with indignation.
“My brother had nothing to do with that woman’s death, either!”
“I believe you. Miss Franklin,” I said, guessing at her name. “Do you happen to know how many artists Arcadian Designs employs?”
“Ha! None now, that I know of. It was just Percy and the owner. Percy did all the creative work; the owner made all the money. That’s why Percy quit.”
“And when was that exactly.”
“Last week.”
“Who is the owner? Do you know his name?”
“Jackson, that’s his last name. I don’t remember his first. I only met him once. He came by my brother’s apartment once when I was over there for dinner. I don’t like to make snap judgments, Mrs. Washburn, but I didn’t like this guy from the second I laid eyes on him.”
“Would you describe him please.”
“He was white.” She blinked and looked away. “Bald and kind of heavy. And he had square glasses.”
“That sounds like Homer Johnson!” Mama cried.
“Don’t be silly, Mama. Homer is a retiree from Tennessee.”
The young woman, whose name I still did not know, glanced at Mama. “I think this guy’s name is Hubert, not Homer. Anyway, he came across to me as a con artist. Percy said ladies found him real attractive, but I didn’t see it. He was always bragging to my brother about all the women he’d slept with, particularly coeds from the College of Charleston.”
“Then it’s
definitely not Homer,” I harrumphed. “They are not the same person. Homer Johnson is a happily married man. In fact, he has a daughter who’s a professor at the C of C!”
Mama patted her pearls. “No, he doesn’t.”
“Yes, he does, Mama. He told me himself. Her name is Winter.”
The pearls began a slow rotation. “There isn’t anybody by that name on staff at the college.”
“Mama, how on earth would you know that?”
The pearls picked up speed, but Mama’s lips were as tightly sealed as an oyster at low tide.
“Mama, you didn’t!”
The pearls became a blur.
“Mama, you checked on him, didn’t you? You had the hots for a married man, so you checked him out!”
The pearls fell into resting mode with a faint clink. “He isn’t married either. If he is—well, he wasn’t married in Knoxville, Tennessee.”
I staggered to a seat next to Percival Franklin’s sister. I had yet to sort out the implications of this information deluge. But at best it meant I had hired a con man and a sleazebag to run my shop. At worst it meant—
“Oh my God,” I moaned.
“Abby!” Mama cried, her voice shrill with alarm. “What happened? Did you just get sick? I knew it! I told you hospitals were unsafe, didn’t I?”
“I’m fine,” I wailed. “I can’t believe I hired a murderer, that’s all.”
The Franklin girl rested a hand lightly on my shoulder. “You think this guy that my brother Percy worked for—making the glass and such—is the one who killed that rich old lady south of Broad?”
I nodded miserably. “Mrs. Shadbark.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because his scam was about to be exposed. Mrs. Shadbark had decided to sell her estate and move into the Bishop Gadsden Episcopal Retirement Community. She’d asked me to appraise her glass collection.”
Mama has to find a “but” in everything. “But Abby,” she said, “that doesn’t make a lick of sense. Mrs. Shadbark was poisoned. How could Homer—or whatever his name is—find a way to do that?”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Maybe he bribed Ingebord, the housekeeper.”
“Well, whatever happened, I’m coming with you.”
“With me where?”
Mama addressed her answer to the young woman seated next to me. “My daughter thinks she’s some kind of James Bond. You wouldn’t believe the tight spots she’s gotten herself into. If she were a cat, she’d have used up all her lives by now. Well, this time she’s not going to get in trouble all by herself. I’ll be right there with her—wherever she goes.”
Percival Franklin’s sister smiled for the first time. “You remind me of my own mother, ma’am. She was real feisty, just like you.”
Mama beamed. “You hear that, Abby?”
I hauled myself to my feet. “I’m not going to be getting into any trouble, Mama. I’m just going for a little ride.”
Mama grabbed my right hand. “Like I said, dear, I’m coming with you.”
I didn’t have enough evidence to take to the police. It was that simple. But if I could find Arcadian Designs and take a picture of some counterfeit Lalique, well, that should give the Charleston police something to go on. Of course they’d have to involve the sheriff, since the area around Caw Caw was outside city limits, but at least there would be proof that my so-called meddling had actually done some good.
Rather than waste precious time by returning to the house for a camera, not to mention the time wasted should we run into C.J., we swung up to the Citadel Mall. There I bought one of those cheap, disposable cameras, one with a flash, and Mama bought herself a pretzel. Perhaps she did it out of sympathy for Percival Franklin. I didn’t bother to ask.
While Mama used the ladies’ room, I called my shop on a pay phone.
“Den of Antiquity,” Homer said with his usual good cheer.
“This is Abby. How are things going?”
“Fine as frog’s hair, Mrs. Timberlake. I sold that chest of drawers you have in the back room. You know, the one with the veneer starting to peel off the front.”
“Get out of town! To whom?”
“Aw, some woman wandered in who was just looking for a place to store her husbands’ socks and underwear. She was right happy to take it off our hands.”
“You go, boy! That piece of junk came with an estate. I was fixing to put it out on the street next garbage day.”
I know, it was a lame conversation, but all I really needed to know was whether he was at work. It would be foolish for Mama and me to attempt our reconnaissance mission with our prime suspect tailing us. I was beginning to feel foolish anyway. Homer Johnson did not sound like a maniacal killer to me, an overachiever was more like it.
“Mrs. Timberlake?”
“Yes, Homer?”
“That friend of yours was just in here, wanting to know where you were.”
“Which friend?”
“Big sort of gawky girl—a bit on the strange side.”
Now that was rude! True, but rude. Homer had no business talking about my friends that way.
“Her name is Miss Cox. If she comes in again, or calls, tell her I took my mother shopping at the mall.”
“Which mall would that be?” He was clever enough to make it sound like an innocent question. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he had experience acting in community theater.
“We’re at the Northwoods Mall,” I said, to throw him off track, just in case he heard mall sounds in the background. If we can’t find what we want here, then we’ll probably head over to the Towne Center in Mount Pleasant.” This was, for your information, the opposite trajectory of our true destination. “If Miss Cox comes in again, Homer, you tell her we’ll be home in plenty of time for supper.”
“Will do. You have yourself a good day now, Mrs. Timberlake.” Then he hung up. He hung up on me!
“Why, I never in all my born days!”
“Never what, dear?” Mama was back from the restroom, although she was still plumping up her crinolines.
“Seen a man as arrogant as Homer Johnson.”
Mama sighed. “Or as cute. Too bad he’s not who he said he was.”
“He said he was married, for crying out loud.”
“Married men can get divorced, dear.”
I dragged Mama out of the mall. It behooved us to shake a leg while Homer was still in the shop. There would be plenty of time on the way to Arcadian Designs to chide Mama for her wanton ways.
Willis Carrier, a Yankee, occupies the pinnacle of my personal pantheon of saints. Thanks to this native of Buffalo, New York, Mama and I were able to drive out toward Ravenel in search of Arcadian Designs in air-conditioned comfort. But just as Mama and I were crossing Tea Farm Creek Bridge, a car came barreling around us so fast that, at first, we didn’t even know it was a vehicle. Mama, who claims to have met Judy Garland when they were both girls, was convinced we’d been passed by a tornado.
When I finally figured out what had happened, I shook so hard I was afraid my eyeballs would come loose, an event that might make further driving difficult. Fortunately, Greg and I had been out to Caw Caw County Park several times to hike, and that stretch of the road was familiar.
More folks should visit Caw Caw. The park is composed of what was once a rice and tea plantation, and is a walker’s dream. The trails meander through woods and along the tops of old dikes that contained the rice fields. It’s a great place to view migratory waterfowl, and from March through October alligators are visible and abundant.
The rice fields are set back from the highway, and the land along the highway is heavily wooded. I was vaguely aware that there were several small businesses tucked willy-nilly among the trees, but I had never paid close attention to them. Still, finding Arcadian Designs was surprisingly easy, thanks to Miss Franklin’s excellent directions. It was located directly across from the park entrance.
Gaining access to the property was an
other matter. The whole shebang was surrounded by an eight-foot wire mesh fence, with a triple strand of barbed wire on top. It looked more like Stalag 13 than a glass factory.
We tramped along the perimeter in waist-high grass (knee-high to most other folks) looking for a breach in the fence. If anyone spotted us and challenged our right to be there, Mama would do the talking. She’d already concocted a story about a broken engagement and a ring tossed, foolishly, in the heat of the moment, into the tule weeds. We couldn’t be stealthy about what we were doing, because we had to stamp our feet to scare away snakes and the odd rogue alligator.
Perhaps we should have split up—tramping in opposite directions—because it wasn’t until we’d gotten three quarters of the way around that we found a spot where a fox, or some other animal, had dug a hole under the fence. We had nothing with which to dig to improve upon the hole, except for small pine branches, which are extremely soft. After the third branch broke in my hands, I sacrificed one of my sandals to use as a scoop. In no time at all, I’d managed to wiggle through the expanded hole.
Mama, however, got stuck. She was able to back out all right, but every time she tried going forward, she couldn’t get her hips through the hole. True, her hips are slightly wider than mine, but the real problem was her voluminous underpinnings.
“Abby, I’ll never make it through. Just go on without me.”
“Nonsense, Mama. Lose the crinolines.”
“I can’t, Abby.”
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be decent. I always wear my slips.”
“You don’t wear them to bed.”
“But this is different, Abby. We’re out in public. What if we get caught?”
“Mama, we’re on a reconnaissance mission, not a fashion show.” There was no point to hurting her feelings by clueing her in to the fact that full circle skirts and crinolines went out of style in the sixties.