Larceny and Old Lace

by Tamar Myers

  "There you are!" He sounded strangely glad to see me.

  "Well, not for long."

  "Abby, wait. I've got to talk to you."

  "It's hot, Buford, and I've got some place to go. Can you say it in three words or less?"

  "Thank you."

  Damn the heat, and Penny could wait. This was definitely worth pursuing.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said 'thank you.' I'm really grateful for what you did for Susan. She had lunch with me today and told me all about it."

  "You're welcome. I love Susan."

  "I know. You're something else, Abby, you know that? You have a special gift for getting people to see things clearly."

  "And I can see right through you, Buford. What is it you want?"

  "Tweetie is threatening to leave me."

  Two years ago I would have danced with joy. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe I'd changed, but I felt strangely sad. Sad for all of us.

  "Tell me about it."

  "She found out about Betty Jo and Tammy Sue."

  "The two bimbos from Denny's?"

  "Yeah. Talk to her, Abb, will you?"

  "Excuse me? You want me to talk to the bimbo who bounced me out of leaving you? Doesn't that seem the least bit ironic, Buford?"

  "I'll owe you big, Abb."

  "You already do."

  "I'd give you the house, Abb, but you know Tweetie for sure wouldn't stay if I did that."

  "No, she probably wouldn't. Look, I couldn't help you even if I wanted to. I'm headed for the mountains even as we speak. I have a very important appointment up there."

  He began to cry. It was a first.

  "I'll see what I can do," I said. "When I get back. Until then, I suggest you go straight home and stay there. Maybe on your hands and knees."

  "Thanks, Abb. You're one in a million."

  For the first time I was actually glad Buford hadn't realized that before.

  Anita was waiting for me impatiently. The toe on one of her sensible shoes was tapping rhythmically up and down.

  "It's hot, Abigail. We agreed on five-thirty. Why were you talking to Buford?"

  "Tweetie Bird wants to fly the coop. The poor dear needed comforting."

  "You shouldn't waste time feeling sorry for him," she snapped. " 'Both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.' It's from the Book of Leviticus, chapter twenty."

  "I suppose you would be willing to cast the first stone?"

  "Why not? I would be an instrument of God's judgment. That's something to be proud of, if you ask me."

  God's instrument was standing next to the largest suitcase I'd ever seen. "What's with the behemoth bag, dear? We're only going away for one night."

  "It gets cold up in the mountains, Abigail. Even this time of the year. That's why people go up there. I want to be prepared."

  "Good thinking. Maybe we'll meet a party of naked hikers stranded in a blizzard. You can clothe all of them. Maybe feed them, too. Did you bring food?"

  Anita's mouth became a thin gray line and stayed that way until we had cleared Gastonia and the crush of rush hour traffic. Then she actually smiled.

  "Do you know how to get to Mossy Lodge, Abigail?"

  "There's a North Carolina guidebook in the hump. Be a dear and look it up."

  "Oh, there's no need for that. I know a shortcut."

  "You've stayed at Mossy Lodge before?"

  "That's where Brandt and I went on our honeymoon. That's why I decided to go with you. I want to relive a few old memories."

  "Without Brandt?"

  "Abigail, how you talk! That's a sin, too, you know."

  "I didn't mean that, dear. Are things getting a little old in the sack?"

  "Abigail!"

  "It happens to just about everyone, you know. Marital monotony. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

  "Is that why Buford left you for Tweetie?"

  The woman could give better than she could receive.

  "That's a good question, dear," I said generously. "And one I'm still pondering. Although frankly, I'm more interested in finding the answer to what it was I saw in him in the first place."

  "Were you both saved?"

  "Anita!"

  "Well, the Bible states clearly that a Christian should not be yoked together with a non-Christian in the holy union of matrimony. Of course, if both of you were unsaved, then that could be the problem, too. God doesn't recognize the marriages of heathens, you know."

  We were headed almost due west, and the late afternoon sun was hard to avoid. I was beginning to get a headache.

  "Not everyone believes the way you do, dear. Anyway, doesn't the Bible say something about not judging, lest we be judged?"

  "Oh that! The Bible is always being quoted out of context, you know."

  "Really?"

  We drove along in relative peace until we got to Shelby.

  "Turn right there, Abigail. You want to take two twenty-six north."

  I turned right.

  The peace prevailed until we were about five miles past Polkville.

  "Turn right at the next crossroads," Anita directed.

  It didn't seem right to me, but Anita was the navigator, so I made a right turn. I also turned my tape deck on. Mozart is every bit as effective as aspirin for headaches and has the added advantage of being the perfect accompaniment for mountains. Had I not been trying to shake the headache, as well as stay on the road, I might have noticed that the thin gray line had reappeared. At any rate, Mozart worked his magic and the pain started to go.

  "They play Mozart in heaven," I said to myself. It wasn't meant for Anita's ears, honest.

  "They do not!"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I wasn't going to say anything, Abigail, but that so-called classical music is really the work of the devil."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's just as evil as rock 'n' roll."

  "That's evil?"

  "Of course you Episcopalians wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

  "I dislike heavy metal and I positively hate rap," I said cooperatively.

  "That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the role the devil has in all this, making you think that classical music is beautiful. It's a deception on his part, Abigail. Did you know you were deceived?"

  "Yes." And I did. But by Buford, not Mozart. "Well?"

  "Turn it off then. We can sing some nice hymns instead."

  "Please, dear," I said softly, "there's a jackhammer going on inside my head."

  "It's the devil! I can pray him out."

  "Thanks, but no thanks. There are enough homeless in this world."

  "All I need to do is to lay my hands on you. It will only take a minute."

  Her hands descended on my unwilling forehead like the talons of a giant bird of prey. Her nails were every bit as sharp as a bird's spurs. I ever so gently pushed them away.

  "It's the devil that's making you resist, you know. Fight him, Abigail. Fight!"

  The talons came stinging back and fight I did. I didn't mean to slap her hands quite so hard, but a blue pickup was passing me and my attention was diverted. I didn't expect Anita to scream, so when she did, I screamed back. It was a case of being startled pure and simple. Her second scream was pure theatrics, I'm convinced. My second scream was because I had almost sideswiped the truck and had overcorrected. As a result I was ploughing through some tall grass alongside a cow pasture.

  I stopped shaking about the time Anita quit praying. That was when the driver of the pickup—a very handsome fellow in his thirties—rapped on my window.

  "Hey, y'all all right in there?"

  I opened the window. "We're just fine, sir. Sorry about that back there. I didn't mean to get so close."

  "You two ladies having a fight in there?" He ran his fingers through a head of thick, bushy hair that I would have loved to have gotten my fingers into. Of course, at another time—in another life.

  "Absolutely not."

&nbs
p; "Yeah? Well, y'all was waving your arms like a pair of referees at a bad hockey game."

  "Everything's cool, honest."

  "No it isn't," Anita said, leaning way over me. "She's possessed by the devil."

  "I am not!"

  The pickup driver grinned. "That's fine by me. I like women with a little devil in them. You sure you ladies are okay?"

  "Fine as frog hair split three ways," I said.

  He politely extended his hand. "My name's Roy, ma'am."

  "Good to meet you, Roy. I'm Abigail. This is—"

  "Eve," Anita said coolly. Either that woman had multiple personalities, or she was used to giving out phony names. A televangelist couldn't have been any slicker.

  "Pleased to meet you ladies. Say, there's a diner up the road just a short piece-called The Sitting Duck. Y'all want to have supper with me? My treat?"

  Anita recoiled. "We do not!"

  "We'd love to," I said.

  It sounded like my voice, and I swear my lips moved, but that wasn't me talking. Not the real me. Maybe Anita was right after all, and there was a devil in me.

  "Half a mile up on your right. You can almost see it from here." He was off.

  "Well!"

  "It is suppertime," I said.

  "That man doesn't want to eat, Abigail. He's trying to pick us up."

  "He's buying us supper, Anita, not a bed. Besides, look at it as an opportunity to witness. His heart is probably a lot less hard than mine. After all, he had a tattoo on his arm that said MOM."

  She thought it over for a minute. "It is often easier to reach an outright heathen than it is a backslid Christian. Especially an Episcopalian."

  "Amen!"

  As soon as we found a booth I excused myself and called Mama. Much to my relief she answered the phone at her place.

  "Abby! Where are you? I've been trying to reach you for an hour."

  "I told you I was going to the mountains, Mama."

  "Abby, you turn around and come home right now."

  Mama hadn't spoken to me like that since the first time I went out with Buford—after she had a chance to meet him. If I had listened to Mama then I would have spared myself a whole lot of pain, but a lot of happiness, too. Like Susan and Charlie.

  "Mama, I'll be all right. Anita's with me."

  I could hear the pearls clicking against the receiver. "What is she going to do, pray you out of trouble?"

  "Prayer can be a powerful weapon, Mama."

  "The Lord helps those who help themselves, dear. Listen, I've been trying to reach you because I got a call from that detective boyfriend of yours."

  "He's not my boyfriend, Mama. Yet."

  "Hush, dear, and listen. He said that he stopped by the lab on his way home and the report showed that the sweat on the bellpull belonged to a female. Probably a postmenopausal female. Is that supposed to mean something, Abigail?"

  It is hard to dissemble to Mama. 99 percent of the times I thought I was fooling her in high school, I wasn't. Not that I was a major discipline problem, mind you, but just active enough of a teenager to keep Mama too exhausted to follow up on all her hunches. But the hunches were there, and Mama always had enough energy to peer through the wool I kept pulled over her eyes.

  "Mama, it means that Aunt Euey's killer wasn't a man, that's all. It's proof that Rob Goldburg is innocent. Will you call Rob and tell him?"

  Mama promised to call Rob, and she promised not to worry. I knew she would do the former and excel at ignoring the latter. As for me, I promised to not worry that she might be worrying. We understood each other perfectly.

  Anita was livid when I got back. She held the plastic-coated menu up as a sound barrier and whispered behind it to me.

  "How could you leave me alone with this man?"

  I smiled pleasantly at Roy and ducked behind the menu. "Because this establishment doesn't have phones that plug in under the tables, that's why."

  "Who did you need to call anyway? Your detective boyfriend?"

  "He's not my boyfriend."

  "Peggy says he is."

  "Not yet."

  "Well, did you call him?"

  "My phone calls are personal, Anita."

  "Well, I think it was rude of you to accept this invitation with a strange man and go off and leave me alone."

  "I'm sorry, dear."

  "He's undoubtedly a fornicator."

  Fortunately the waitress, a buxom thing in a too-tight dress, appeared to take our orders. Anita's wrath was temporarily distracted, and by the time the food came she was almost civil.

  Of course the credit goes to Roy. He was almost as delightful as the chicken-fried steak and black-eyed peas. He wasn't quite as delightful as the peach cobbler, but close.

  "Believe it or not, I ain't never been to Rock Hill. I been to Charlotte, though."

  "You ain't missed much," Anita said sourly.

  It was obvious she was having a bad time. Roy had not only resisted her attempts at conversion but was addressing almost all his comments to me. I shuddered to think how Anita would act if she knew Roy had tried to play footsy with me under the table.

  "Where are you from, Roy?"

  "Right around here, ma'am. Born and raised."

  "You ever drive down I-seventy-seven to Columbia and then over to Myrtle Beach?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Then you've been to Rock Hill, dear. By it, at any rate. We're right off seventy-seven."

  "Told you it wasn't much," Anita said.

  She had a piece of collards hanging from her chin, and I kindly pointed it out.

  "If we don't hurry Abigail, it's going to be too dark for me to find the right turnoff. Mossy Lodge isn't that easy to find."

  "Y'all headed to Mossy Lodge?"

  "To meet our husbands," I said. There was no point in pushing it.

  Roy shook his handsome head. "Then y'all need to go back to two twenty-six and head north. Mossy Lodge is up there by Marion."

  "I thought it was near Grandfather Mountain."

  "Neither of you know what you're talking about," Anita said. "Abigail, I told you that I know the way. Don't you trust me?"

  "Of course I do, dear. It's just that Roy is from these parts, that's all."

  "On the other hand, I ain't never been to Mossy Lodge," Roy said, sucking on a neck bone. "I just heard about it. Your friend might be right."

  "I am right."

  It was a risk worth taking rather than offend the woman further. Despite Roy's charm, it had been a touch-and-go meal. For starters, neither Roy nor I had bowed our heads in prayer, and when chided I had the temerity to cross myself, Anglican style. To hear Anita, the Pope and devil were sharing the booth with her.

  "Y'all be careful now," Roy said cheerfully. I hoped the eleven dollars our meals cost him hadn't set him back too far.

  Anita fished in her purse and pulled out a gospel tract. "Here. Read this."

  Not to be outdone I pulled out one of my business cards. "A twenty percent discount anytime you stop by. And I usually take an extra five off at Christmas."

  "Yes, ma'am, I'll be there."

  "And here," I pulled a comb out of my purse that had my shop's logo on it and handed it to him. With a full, thick head of hair like that, he probably went through a comb a week.

  He gave me a friendly good-bye peck on the cheek but wisely refrained from getting within an arm's length of Anita.

  "Why, I've never been so insulted in my life," she said as I pulled back onto the highway.

  "Anita, dear, I think a little perspective is in order. You would probably have hauled off and plugged him. At the very least you would have called him a rapist."

  I got the thin gray line treatment again for the next fifteen or twenty miles. It was just getting dark when Anita ordered me to make a sudden left turn.

  I slammed on the brakes. "Where?"

  "There, just past that stump."

  "But that's nothing but a logging road."

  "Turn."

  There w
as a forcefulness to her voice that was strange, even for Anita. I glanced at her and back at the logging road.

  "I said to turn, and I mean it."

  She did, too. She was holding a gun.

  "Holy shit!"

  Anita wagged the gun at me like a fat gray finger. "Don't swear."

  "Excuse me? What the hell is that doing in your hand?"

  She cocked the pistol. "I said, don't swear. I mean it, Abigail. You swear again and I'll shoot."

  "Jeepers! And that isn't swearing," I added quickly. "What on earth has gotten into you, dear?"

  Anita extended the gun another couple of inches closer to my head. "I said turn left just past that stump, and I mean it.

  I turned left on the logging road and came to an abrupt stop. We both lurched forward in our seats, and I tapped my chest against the steering wheel. My purse went flying off the rear seat, nearly hitting me in the back of the head. Somehow Anita managed to hold on to her gun. In retrospect, I should have hit that damp stump and deployed the air bags. If I'm ever on a country road with a gun-toting looney again, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

  "That's wasn't nice," Anita said. With her free hand she patted her Holy-Roller do back into place.

  I turned the engine off. "Excuse me! You pull a gun on me, and you say I'm not nice? What on earth is going on?"

  "If you give me a chance, I'll explain."

  "Well, have at it, girl. Because this doesn't make a lick of sense to me."

  Anita actually smiled. "I want you to drive on this road, that's all."

  "Well, in that case, just put the gun down, and off we go."

  "Oh no, you don't, Abigail. You're not leading me into temptation. That gun stays right here in my hand, trained on your neck. Now turn off your headlights and start the car."

  I tried to start the car, I really did, but the engine just sputtered and died. It's my opinion that something happened in the quick stop to flood the thing.

  "I said start it!"

  I prayed first and spoke later. "It won't start, dear. It must be flooded."

  She was a hard woman to convince. After several more futile attempts I found the barrel of the pistol nuzzled against my neck. It felt pleasantly cool now that the air-conditioning was off.