by Tamar Myers
“Well, it’s the truth,” I wailed. I practically flung the picture back at him.
He sprang to life. “Abby, please keep the photo. Study it. There might be an important clue in there.”
“Right.” I thrust the photo in my purse. “But if it’s clues you want, then I suggest you interrogate that bunch of so-called guests staying at La Parterre.”
The artists at the wax museum could have applied a new hairline to their Scrubb version in the time it took him to respond. “Would you like to tell me more?”
“I’m sure there is no need to. You probably have bulging files on every one of them.”
“Let’s say I did. What would be in them?”
“Well, the Papadopouluses aren’t who they pretend to be, for one thing. Irena is not a gem buyer—unless it’s baubles for herself—and I doubt if that studmuffin sidekick is her husband. If the Thomases are really travel agents, I’ll eat my—alpaca without complaining. As for the Zimmermans—”
A sharp rap on the window from one of the men in blue made me spill the dregs left in my soda cup. Sergeant Scrubb scowled at the intrusion and tried to wave the young officer away, but the man was insistent.
“What the hell?” Sergeant Scrubb mouthed behind cupped hands. He was obviously unaware of his reflection in the glass.
The young man on the other side also cupped his hands to his mouth. “Phone!” he yelled, his face just inches away from the window.
“You idiot,” Sergeant Scrubb yelled back. He strode outside and carried on a conversation that grew more animated by the second. Finally he turned to the window, his face all smiles.
I waited patiently until he came back inside. “What gives?” I asked.
“Abby, you’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“Officer Ditzski was just on the phone with one of the EMTS—anyway, it seems that Mr. Crawford has a pulse—”
“What?”
“Did you know he was a diabetic?”
“No! And Wynnell has been my best friend for years.” Frankly, I felt betrayed.
“Well, he should have been wearing a medical alert tag. They save lives, you know.”
I was about to open my mouth, to tell him he was preaching to the choir, when a Channel 2 news truck pulled up. Sergeant Scrubb excused himself yet again.
Being four-foot-nine does have its advantages. I slipped out of the Subway unnoticed by anyone. Certainly not by the teenagers, who had progressed from food popping to tongue swapping. I thought I heard someone call my name just as I was closing my car door, but I knew better than to turn around. They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, and while that may hold true for people in the arts, such as film stars, musicians, and even writers, those of us in the retail sector know that even a little bad press can shut your business down overnight. Especially when murder is involved.
Sure, a few ghouls might stop by the Den of Antiquity to get a gander at the woman whom death and disease seem to follow like a pack of snarling hyenas, but discerning folks who have a choice where to shop are more likely to choose a store with a prestigious reputation. Another mug shot of me in the Post and Courier was the last thing I wanted.
I drove quickly, but not recklessly, to the Rob-Bobs’ mansion south of Broad. My wealthy friends do not even pretend not to be pretentious. They purposely picked the house with the grandest columns, the finest ironwork, and the lushest garden they could find for under five million. Then they sprang for a million dollars in “home improvements.” Maison de Robert has been the backdrop for three movies of which I am aware, and has been featured in eight magazines.
What was once the carriage house now serves as a three-car garage, which in this part of town is as rare as hoarfrost. The two stalls on either side were taken, so I parked in the middle. I must confess, it usually gives me a thrill not to have to park on the street, along with the tourists and those of lesser means. Tonight, however, I was numb.
Bob saw me through the kitchen window and rapped on it, motioning for me to take the side entrance. “Hey,” he said, pressing his six o’clock shadow to my cheek. “You’re just in time to help with the salad.”
“Great. Let us begin.” It wasn’t meant to be funny; I needed to keep my hands busy, if not my mind.
“Oh no lettuce, Abby. We start with a layer of baby endive, then a scoop of Albanian albino artichoke aspic, sprinkle a few sun-dried tomatoes over that, and top it off with a drizzle of basil-infused olive oil.”
“Albanian albino artichokes?” I was beginning to feel like Alice in Wonderland.
Rob laughed as he entered the kitchen from the dining room. He bussed my cheek briefly.
“I thought I heard you in here.”
“Just arrived.” I turned back to Bob. “What kind of artichokes did you say?”
“You heard him right,” Rob said. “Guess where he got them?”
I shrugged.
“Go on, guess.”
“You had them shipped in from California?”
“No, I picked them up from a specialty shop in Mount Pleasant, but they were grown in Albania. You see, it’s a very labor intensive process, because although they’re not really albino, they’re shaded from the sun as soon as they start to form flower heads.”
“Sounds delicious,” I said, without the least bit of sarcasm.
The younger partner nodded vigorously. “They’re the perfect accompaniment for alpaca.”
Rob made a face. “I say that we hog-tie Bob, throw this mess into the harbor, and then make a beeline for McCrady’s.”
“Do that,” Bob said, “and after I gnaw myself free, I’ll make a fleet of paper boats from your collection of Broadway Playbills. See which one floats furthest out into the harbor. I bet Cabaret makes it halfway to Fort Sumter.”
Normally I would have joined in the good-natured banter, but I had just witnessed my best friend’s husband slip into a diabetic coma. The jokes, the alpaca sizzling away in the oven—it all seemed so trivial. I gripped the edge of the island table with both hands.
“Guys, I’ve got something to tell you.”
Rob clasped his hands in mock joy. “We’re going to be uncles again!”
Bob pushed a ladder-back chair to my derriere. “Sit,” he ordered. “And here I was about to put the mother of our nephew to work.”
I kicked the chair away. “Stop that! I’ve got something important to tell you.”
Rob winked at Bob. “Ah, it’s a niece, not a nephew. Well, we can handle that, can’t we? At last, a legitimate excuse to shop at Victoria’s Secret.”
“I suppose she’ll start out as a baby,” Bob said. “Maybe we should begin by shopping at baby stores.”
“Right. But I hear they grow up fast. We’ll have to start planning for her coming-out party right away.”
“We don’t know yet if she’s going to be a lesbian,” Bob said. “Or were you referring to a debutante ball?”
I toppled the chair. “Shut up, please!”
That got their attention.
“And keep it shut until I finish—please.”
The two clowns were now the picture of concern. They nodded silently.
I set the chair upright and hoisted myself to the seat. “It’s about Ed Crawford. He almost died this afternoon.”
They stared, open-mouthed, while I related the afternoon’s events. Neither of them had known Ed very well, and neither had they been particularly fond of him, but tragedy seems to have a way of drawing folks together. When I was through with my narration, they made sympathetic sounds, asked a few relevant questions, but then seemed eager to get on with the evening.
“Holy smokes!” Bob said. “The alpaca! I forgot to set the timer.”
Rob nudged me. “Maybe McCrady’s isn’t out of the picture after all. I’ll call and see if they have a cancellation.”
“Over my dead body,” Bob growled. He clapped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, Abby. It’s just that I can’t stand to
see good food go to waste.”
“Neither can I,” Rob said. “That’s why I want to call McCrady’s.”
I found my friends’ preoccupation with themselves strangely comforting. That’s what the living should do—live. How they reacted to an acquaintance’s brush with death had no bearing on my life. Just because I felt unsettled didn’t mean they had to. Besides, if we didn’t consume the camel’s cousin now, it would show up later under another guise. Perhaps as alpaca pâté.
“Guys,” I said, “let’s stick to the original plan. But first I need to show you something.” I fished the Polaroid of the stupid statue from my purse. “Believe it or not, this is what the police think was used to bludgeon Marina Webbfingers.”
Bob tapped the picture with the business end of a wooden spoon. Thank heavens it was a clean utensil.
“Well, I’ll definitely have to remove your name from my list of suspects, Abby. That monstrosity has got to weigh at least twenty pounds.”
Instead of contributing his own wisecrack, Rob snatched the picture from my hand and held it closer to the overhead hanging light. In the process the spoon was sent flying across the room, where it smacked against a Baccarat crystal vase filled with summer roses. The vase didn’t shatter outright, but from the sound of the collision, I knew it was cracked.
But Rob was oblivious to the damage he’d done. “Somebody get me a magnifying glass,” he shouted.
“Rob,” I said patiently, “I may not have seen as many as you, but trust me, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
“I’m not talking about a plaster putz, Abby. This statue could be worth a fortune.”
21
“Say what?” I snatched back the photo. Nothing had changed.
Rob’s arms are twice as long as mine, and he has the agility of a basketball player. “Look,” he said, holding the photo so that both Bob and I could see.
“We’re looking,” Bob said. “But we don’t see anything—except a middle-class cliché.”
“Look at the scale.”
Wynnell, the horticultural expert, often complained about scale. Spider mites and aphids as well. I had always associated those pests with plants, not with inanimate garden ornaments.
“Maybe we need the magnifying glass after all,” I said. “Still, I don’t see why a little bit of scale should make an otherwise piece of junk worth a fortune.”
Rob’s forehead assumed more folds than a Japanese fan. Then he burst into laughter.
“Not that kind of scale. Scale as in ‘proportions.’”
Bob hates it when Rob’s superior knowledge of the trade shows him up. “So, this statue is a little head-heavy. So what?”
“It is?” I tried in vain to reclaim the snapshot from the hotshot.
Rob was still laughing. “Abby, did you actually see this with your own eyes?”
“I used Bob’s,” I said.
“Good one. And where did you see it?”
“In Marina’s garden, of course.”
“There’s no’ of course’ about this, Abby. Unless I’m mistaken—and I seldom am about this kind of thing—what’s in this picture is not a statue at all, but a maquette.”
“Why didn’t you say so to begin with? Rob—sorry, dear, but I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I do,” Bob said, and his Adam’s apple bobbed twice, like a cork on the line from which the fish got away.
“Then please explain it to me.”
He looked to Rob for approval, and getting it, cleared his throat. “They’re called maquettes. They’re scale models—most often smaller, but made from a variety of materials—of major statues. The purpose is to give the sculptor a chance to see the finished product in miniature, before committing a large, expensive block of marble to the chisel. Sometimes the models survive along with the important pieces, but often they weren’t considered valuable enough to save. Never mind that the practice pieces are the originals.”
I was glad I’d decided to sit. “Are you saying this could be Michelangelo’s original statue of David?”
Rob stroked the photo with a patrician finger. “I’m saying that it could be. Right now it’s just a gut feeling.”
“I still don’t get it. How can you tell by looking at one photo? And no offense to the photographer, but it’s not even a good one. If that was a picture of Mama, I wouldn’t hang it on the refrigerator. It would be a waste of magnet space.”
Bob sighed. “I hate to say this, Abby—because I don’t want Rob’s head to get any bigger than it is—but the man’s got incredibly sharp instincts. When he gets a gut feeling, he’s almost always right.”
“Except about food,” Rob said generously.
“My alpaca!” Bob lunged for the stove.
While our cook fussed and stewed over a leathery roast, Rob located a jeweler’s loupe and we examined the photo more carefully. My silver-haired friend was right about one thing—this was not your run-of-the-mill David knockoff. As Bob had pointed out, the head on this one seemed a little larger than normal.
“Allowed them to fit in more detail,” Rob said. “The student sculptors just had to remember to use two scales when transposing the work to a larger piece. And, of course, in sculpting, one can always take away, but never put back.”
I shook my head. “But what if this one was made in some concrete factory outside Gatlinburg, Tennessee? Maybe the so-called artist just couldn’t get the hang of sculpting. Maybe this David was intended to be bought by a tourist from Ohio, because it would look cute between Snow White and St. Francis of Assisi.”
“Abby,” Rob said quietly, “you saw the statue close up. What was it made of?”
“Well, it wasn’t concrete. I would have noticed that.”
“Plaster? Some of them can look pretty good when finished properly.”
“I remember thinking that it was compressed marble—at best. More likely resin.”
“Could it have been solid marble?”
“I never considered the possibility. Good golly, Miss Molly, what if it was?”
“Then I’d say the chances of it being something really special are pretty good.” He tapped his head with a corner of the photo. “Incredibly sharp instincts, remember?”
“If your head gets any bigger, you’ll have to ride with your sun roof open. Think how your hair will look then.”
“As long as it’s all there, who cares? Abby, you have got to let me see this statue.”
“It’s being held as evidence, Rob. It’s the alleged murder weapon.”
“Okay, so maybe I won’t be allowed to see it, but you can. Take copious notes. Write down anything and everything you observe. Are there any marks on it that could possibly be a signature? Are the edges polished or crude? What the heck is it made of—and oh, try to guess its weight.”
“Rob, why do you think I’d be allowed to see it?”
He appeared to be baffled by my question. “Because you’re a woman, Abby.”
I slid off my chair. Unfortunately that didn’t make me any taller.
“Are you suggesting that I sleep my way into seeing it again?”
“Sergeant Scrubb is awfully sexy,” Bob said, pausing briefly in his efforts to scrape excess carbon from the roast.
I gave him the evil eye. “You guys better be kidding about this, or I’m out of here.”
They exchanged glances. “Yeah, we’re only kidding,” Rob said. “But you still have an advantage.”
“What exactly would that be?”
“You’re petite, pert, and pretty. That’s a winning combo.”
“Ha, that’s what you think. Studies have proven that taller people are treated better.”
Bob went back to his roast while Rob did his best to rescue me from a slow burn. “There are always exceptions to the rule, Abby, and you’re one of them. People like you. They connect with you.”
“Go on.”
“You’re a quick thinker, too. You have the ability to
talk yourself into, or out of, just about any situation.”
“It didn’t work with the alpaca,” I whispered.
“Touché.”
“Hey, I heard that!” Bob waved a meat fork in our direction.
I sighed. “I’ll see what I can do, but I don’t want you to get all bent out of shape if my report isn’t exactly what you wanted. I obviously don’t have your eye for beauty.”
“I heard that, too,” Bob said, but he was smiling.
It startled me to see the table set for five. I knew we weren’t going to eat in the kitchen, because the Rob-Bobs make an occasion out of every meal, but they generally restrict entertaining to the weekends. Tonight’s table sagged under the weight of their best Limoges porcelain (reputedly made for the Queen of England), heavy ornate St. Christopher’s pattern silverware, a bewildering assortment of glasses and goblets, and a floral arrangement that looked like it had been swiped from a funeral home. Perhaps it had, because both men know better than to create a centerpiece that interfered with one’s line of vision. Unless they planned for me to peek under it, while they peered over.
“Is that a pyre for the entrée?” I wasn’t being mean, because Bob couldn’t hear me. He was still in the kitchen fretting over the albino artichoke aspic, which seemed to have a mind of its own.
Rob chuckled. “Well, actually, they are from a funeral home.”
“You’re kidding!”
“It was Bob’s idea. We have a friend who does makeup there, and she’s always bringing discarded arrangements home. Anyway, Bob thought it would be a clever way to divide the table, in case you and one of our other guests didn’t get along. I can remove them if you like.”
I racked my brain, which took all of three seconds. There are few people I truly don’t get along with, and none at all that I know of on the Rob-Bobs’ roster of friends. Okay—so I don’t particularly care for Randy Dewlap. But for the record, it has nothing to do with his split tongue, and everything to do with his split personality, both halves of which are acerbic to the point of being abusive.