by Tamar Myers
“Stop it, Abby. Hold it right there. I’m not going to let you assume any guilt. Her murder had nothing to do with you. And just so you know, my contact in the department said that the gorilla skull was not an unimportant discovery.”
“It’s not?”
“These animals, which are among our nearest relatives, have been teetering on the brink of extinction for a long time. Nobody knows how many there are. Maybe less than four hundred, which is barely a sustainable population. In my opinion, anyone who possesses a gorilla skull has some explaining to do.”
“What if they worked for a zoo?”
“Then that would be an explanation. Abby, I’m not trying to argue. I’m just trying to be supportive.”
“Thanks.”
“So you’re coming home now?”
“Well—uh, I thought I might stop at the mall and see if there are some good sales.”
“And I think I’ll paint the house green with purple polka dots.”
“I’d prefer a yellow base color.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”
“Greg, darling, love of my life, you know how I am.”
“Stubborn as a blue-nosed mule?”
“Guilty. I wish I could promise to be right—H-Holy guacamole!”
“What is it, hon?”
“It’s C.J.”
“Our C.J.?”
“Do you know another Calamity Jane?”
“Where is she? Where are you?”
“I’m on River Road. Actually, I’m pulled over to the side. She pulled up right behind me and is getting out of her car. Can I call you later, dear? You know how she is. This may take a while.”
“Take care,” Greg said, and then hung up.
As they say, a word to the wise is sufficient.
19
I can’t think of a single soul who would call me wise. It’s not that I court danger; casual dating is more like it. I lowered my window, willing myself to be patient.
“Hey, C.J. What’s up? Why aren’t you minding the shop?”
“Up is a relative term, Abby. Up here would be down in Bangkok.”
“Yes, but in both places you’d be sidestepping my question.”
“Good one, Abby. I’m here to help you sleuth.”
“Who says I’m sleuthing?”
“Abby, you can’t fool me. You’re like the sister I never had, but would have had if the pet store hadn’t tried to charge Granny Ledbetter so much. I know you’re trying to clear your name of Roberta Stanley’s murder.”
“C.J., I haven’t been charged with anything, and even if I was, I wouldn’t ask you to help me. I need you to run the shop.”
“Don’t be silly, Abby. Mozella said she’d love to look after things at the Den of Antiquity. You’ve got a really great mother, Abby.”
The big galoot means well. If there really is such a thing as a heart of gold, I’m betting it’s hers.
“Thanks. I’d be happy to have your help. And like they say, two heads are better than one.”
“That is so true, Abby. But three heads can be a real headache.”
I groaned. “Good one.”
“I’m not joking, Abby. Cousin Tricia Ledbetter, back in Shelby, had three heads, and it was awful. They never could agree on anything. One time two of the heads decided to go to the mall, but the third one didn’t want to go. Well, the two heads that were in agreement won the argument, of course, but all through the mall the third head kept shouting, ‘Help, I’ve been kidnapped.’”
“C.J., bless your heart, gold or not, you’re never boring.”
“Thank you, Abby.”
“But it’s time to be honest. The last time you talked about your three-headed cousin, you said it was a he, and that his name was Merckle. So what’s the truth, C.J.?”
She fixed her enormous gray peepers on me. “Abby, it really hurts me when you think I’m lying. Cousin Tricia and Cousin Merckle were sister and brother. The times when they got along they sang Gospel hymns in a two-person sextet.”
“Sorry I accused you of lying.”
“That’s okay, Abby.” She hung her own leonine, but very singular, head. “But before you start sleuthing, I have a confession to make.”
I sighed softly. “Shoot.”
“Well, uh—I didn’t come out here to help; I came to talk about my wedding.”
“I thought you had it all under control. And if not you, then Mama did.”
“Ooh, Abby, it’s not really the wedding so much as it’s what comes after.”
“You mean the bills?”
“No, the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
Her large face reddened. “The warblers and wasps. That thing.”
It took me a second. “You mean the birds and the bees?”
“Granny wouldn’t tell me anything, except that I was found under a cabbage. I tried asking your mother, but she said all I needed to know is that a lady is supposed to grin and bear it, and that planning menus was a good way to pass the time.”
How my mother had changed. Just a decade ago, if pressed about her sex life, she would have claimed to be the world’s first serial virgin. But now she was giving wedding night advice to my friend—wait a minute! That could mean just one thing.
“C.J., does that mean you and Toy—well, you know. I mean, did nothing go on between you two at my house last night?”
The massive head recoiled in genuine shock. “Abby, how could you even think such a thing? You don’t think we’d eat supper and say grace later, do you?”
Much to my surprise, I knew what she meant. “No. But didn’t you share a bedroom at my house last night?”
“Ooh, Abby, that would be wrong.”
“But I saw you and Toy come out of the guest room together.”
“Yes, but I didn’t sleep in there. I slept in Mozella’s bed. Really, Abby, you should get her tested for sleep apnea. She snores even louder than Uncle Ernst Ledbetter.”
“So what were you doing in his room, and why were you wearing his T-shirt?”
“We stayed up real late playing Scrabble, and were both kind of sleepy, so your mama asked us to stay over. I tried wearing one of her nightgowns, Abby, but you know how tiny she is.”
“Yes, three inches taller than I am.”
“So Toy loaned me his shirt.” She sniffed under each arm. “Frankly, Abby, your brother doesn’t shower as much as he should. But after we’re married I’ll work on him. Maybe someday he’ll shower once a week, like a man is supposed to.”
“Once a week?”
“I know, that sounds like a lot. But I think men should shower more frequently than women, given the fact that they sweat more.”
That certainly explained some things. Oh, well. While she trained Toy, I’d do my best to train her. That was an older sister’s prerogative, wasn’t it?
I smiled sweetly. “You still haven’t said what you were both doing in the guest room.”
“Ooh, Abby, you’re always so impatient. I was just getting there. You see, I’d gone in there to ask Toy what he wanted for breakfast. He had a hard time making up his mind, on account of I said he could have anything he wanted, except haggis. Then the doorbell rang, and as they say, the rest is hysterics.”
“I believe the proper word is ‘history.’ The rest is history.”
“Not with you, Abby.”
“Touché.” It was time to change the subject. “So, C.J., are you ready to rock?”
“Lead the way,” she said.
Fortunately, it wasn’t far to Miss Sugar Tit’s house.
Claudette Aikenberg was not in a sugary mood. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me. They became absolute slits when C.J. lumbered into view.
“So, it’s you,” she said.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Aikenberg,” I hastened to explain. “I’m not here to give you a hard time.”
“Whatever it is, you’ll have to state your business out here on the porch.”
“Mrs
. Aikenberg—I mean, Miss Sugar Tit, your Royal Highness, do you know a woman by the name of Roberta Stanley?”
“Maybe. Gracious me, it is you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. Last time I checked.”
She wasn’t even looking at me, but at C.J. “Mutton Chops, please tell me I’m not dreaming.”
“Why if that don’t take the rag off the bush,” C.J. said, affecting an accent I’d never before heard. “Tater Tot, is that you?”
“It is!”
Someone pushed me out of the way, and the two women flew at each other like a pair of highly charged magnets. It was the most embarrassing display of emotion I’d ever seen, bar none. It made Jimmy Swaggert seem like a stone carving.
I waited patiently. Eventually I had to put a little foot down.
“Enough. Isn’t someone going to tell me what’s going on?”
My protégé grinned so wide it nearly split her head in two, thereby giving her three-headed cousin’s tale some credence. “Abby, this is my cousin Claudette Ledbetter Aikenberg, only back home everyone called her Tater Tot on account of—oh well, Abby, you really don’t want to know. And Claudette, this is my very best friend in the entire world, Abigail Louise Wiggins Washburn. She was Abigail Timberlake for a spell, but I won’t go into that.”
“Lord have mercy!” I cried. I needed to sit down, preferably somewhere far away. C.J. was a pistol in her own right. Her cousin, I already knew, also had a mind of her own. Putting the two of them together must be the equivalent of drinking an ephedrine milk shake—not that I’ve ever done that, mind you.
“What’s the matter, Abby? You look faint.”
“Yes, maybe I should sit down. Excuse me, ladies, while I go back to the car for a few minutes.”
“Ooh, Abby, you’re so silly. My cousin and I have a lot of catching up to do, and we don’t want you to miss a single minute of it. Do we, Tater Tot?”
Miss Sugar Tit Tater Tot, or whatever she was now, did not appear to be as taken with the idea. “Mutton Chops, I know this woman is a friend of yours, but she’s more annoying than a jigger bite where the sun don’t shine. You heard her, she’s here to interrogate me about the death of that old battle-ax, Roberta Stanley.”
Any thoughts I had about sitting this one out vanished. “Who told you she was dead?”
The woman didn’t even have the decency to appear cornered. “You’re not the police, Mrs. Washburn. I don’t have to answer anything.”
“I may not be the police, Miss Tater Tits, but my husband is an ex-detective, and he has more connections than a box full of Tinker Toys. You can bet I’m passing this little bit of info on to him.”
Pushing her cousin aside, she waggled her man-made bosoms at me like they were a pair of padded jousting poles. “Oh yeah? Well, my Granny Ledbetter wrote and told me that Mutton Chops has solved oodles of murder mysteries, and is thicker with the police than congealed gravy.”
C.J. flushed. “Actually, Tater Tot, it was Abby who solved those murders. And how come Granny wrote you that stuff, when all this time she’s been telling me that she doesn’t know where you are?”
Miss Sugar Tit blushed, a deep pink that clashed with her red hair, but provided some much needed contrast for her diamond chandelier earrings. “Uh—maybe it wasn’t Granny Ledbetter who wrote. Maybe it was my other granny.”
The big galoot spread her legs and crossed her arms. “No, I don’t think so. Your other granny was killed by a toilet seat when Ida Mae Rupert’s house exploded due to a gas leak.”
That took some of the wind out of her cousin’s sails. “Yeah. Granny often warned Ida Mae not to serve her husband raw peppers. If I knew then what I know now, I would have sued that woman.”
C.J., bless her heart, was not about to be distracted by flying toilet seats and hard to digest produce. “So why didn’t Granny Ledbetter tell me where you were?”
“Because I asked her not to, that’s why.”
“But you’re my favorite cousin.”
“Mutton Chops, let’s face it: you’re a mite hard to take at times.”
I could see the blood drain from my dear friend’s face. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not just you, Mutton Chops; it’s the entire clan. It’s Granny Ledbetter too. Y’all are so weird.”
“Weird? In what way?”
“Don’t you think it’s weird that we have a goat for a cousin?”
“Cousin Zelda may not be much to look at, but she’s as sweet as a piece of brown sugar pie. I’m getting married, you know—of course, Granny probably already told you that. Anyway, Cousin Zelda’s going to be a bridesmaid. Abby, here, is going to help me trim her goatee.”
“I am?”
Miss Sugar Tit snorted derisively. “You just proved my point. Heck, the only reason Granny Ledbetter knows where I am is because my mama tells her.”
C.J. glowered at the woman whose empty beauty had won her trophies. “Come on, Abby, let’s get out of here.”
“No, wait,” I said. “I still want to hear how she heard about Roberta Stanley’s death.”
“Yeah,” C.J. said. “Tell us that.”
20
The former beauty queen responded by backing up through the front door. “Get off my porch! Now! The both of you.”
“You haven’t seen the last of us,” I said.
“I’m calling the cops!” She slammed the door.
By the time we got to the car, tears as big as wading pools rolled down my friend’s cheeks. When a heart the size of C.J.’s breaks, it takes Hoover Dam with it.
“C.J., never mind her trash talk. She’s Miss Sugar Tit, for goodness sake.”
“Abby, you don’t understand. When we were kids, we were closer than cats and dogs.”
“Well there you go. I bet you hardly knew each other.”
When she shook her head, I was drenched in a shower of salt spray. “Abby, honestly, sometimes I think you must be a little slow. Cats and dogs get along wonderfully when raised from little on. Trust me, because we had plenty of those. And that’s practically how we were raised. On account of I had no parents, Granny Ledbetter always invited Tater Tot over to spend the summers. Sometimes even over the winter break. It was Tater Tot who taught me right from wrong. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have grown up to be a hooligan.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Abby, it’s true. I was tearing tags off mattresses when I was only six. Once when I was twelve I lathered and rinsed, but I didn’t repeat. Tater Tot made me do it over again.”
“And it shows. I’ve always admired your hair. But C.J., I’m afraid it’s possible your cousin, as much as you love her, might be a murderess.”
“Ooh, Abby, don’t be so silly. Tater Tot wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
“I think that’s supposed to be ‘fly.’”
“We had lots of cats and dogs, remember?”
“There are some who think she murdered her husband and dumped his body into the Wadmalaw River.”
C.J. wiped her cheeks while she giggled. “You always were good at cheering me up.”
“How does me suggesting that your cousin is a killer cheer you up?”
Giggles turned into snorting guffaws. With my pal momentarily distracted I backed out of Miss Sugar Tit’s driveway and drove up Major Moolah Road a piece. But not as far as Mac Murray’s tree house. If the ex-beauty really did call the police, at least I couldn’t be written up for trespassing on anyone’s property.
After a while C.J.’s snorts ebbed, as did her spirits. “Abby, you weren’t joking, were you?”
“I’m afraid not. I have a witness who claims to have seen her dumping—”
“Abby, I mean you weren’t joking about her being married.”
“Of that I’m almost certain. She told me herself he was a big-shot lawyer. That’s why she can afford such an expensive house.”
“But we made a pact!”
“You what?”
“We were thirteen. In Gra
nny Ledbetter’s barn. We made a pinkie swear that we would be at each other’s wedding. We even did a double Dutch toss.”
“What’s a double Dutch toss?”
“There were these two neighbor kids who were originally from Amsterdam. We threw them off the hayloft. Abby, that kind of promise has to be kept.”
“But wait a minute. Until now you had no idea your cousin was living in the Charleston area. That means you were going to break your oath as well.”
When C.J. extends her lower lip she is the envy of four-year-olds and teenagers around the globe. “Okay, so maybe I wasn’t going to invite her. You know something, Abby?”
“I know a lot. But apparently not as much as you.”
“I think Granny Ledbetter was lying to protect me when she said that she didn’t know where Tater Tot was. Just like when she told me Cousin Ordelphia died of pancakitis, instead of coming right out and saying that she got stepped on by a circus elephant. Because to tell you the truth, Abby, I haven’t really liked Tater Tot since the day she was crowned Miss Sugar Tit.”
“Do tell.”
“The second the judge set that crown on her head, Tater Tot proceeded to put on airs. She didn’t even want to associate with her kinfolk anymore. Especially the Shelby side of the family. Granny said that if Saint Peter gave Tater Tot a tour of Heaven, she’d ask to see the upstairs.”
“I can believe it.”
“And do you really believe she might have killed this Roberta Stanley? And this man they found in the Wadmalaw River?”
“Actually, the police never found a man in the river. Not this time, at least. They were called out to investigate, but decided they didn’t have enough evidence upon which to base a search.”
“Ooh, Abby, but they do have Roberta Stanley’s body, and Tater Tot knew she was dead.”
“I know. And that got me going for a minute, too. But the longer I think about it, the less important I think it is. A wealthy woman like your cousin has got to be plugged into a zillion gossip connections. And let’s face it, you two have a lot in common.”
C.J. gasped. “How did you know she has six toes on each foot? She wasn’t wearing sandals.”
“You have six toes?” Come to think of it, I’d never seen her in sandals, and I for sure hadn’t seen her barefoot. Even this morning, dressed in my brother’s T-shirt, she was wearing shoes.