A Penny Urned

by Tamar Myers

  “You see, Abby? Don’t ever say never. Granny always—” C.J. started to teeter under the weight and then, like Goliath hit between the eyes by David’s stone, fell backward with a resounding crash.

  Actually it was the sounding board that made most of the noise. The entire house shook when it hit the floor, and whatever subflooring lay beneath the pink shag was undoubtedly badly dented. C.J., bless her pecan-crushing neck, managed to land on a hot-pink sofa.

  “Sorry, Abby,” she panted. “I used to carry Granny’s hogs to market, but that thing weighs a sight more than one of those hogs.”

  I should have been at C.J.’s side, a look of intense concern in my eyes. Instead, and it shames me to say this, I was already staring into the belly of the pink baby grand.

  “Don’t be sorry,” I screamed. “I’m rich!”

  We opened the genuine leather portfolios and spread them across the righted dining room table. There were twenty-eight of these books, each holding a dozen coins. All of the books were filled, except for one, which contained eleven coins.

  For the better part of an hour we oohed (something at which C.J. was particularly good) and ahed. We even slobbered a little, although we were careful not to get it on the coins. Finally it was time to take some action.

  “My kingdom for a cell phone,” I moaned.

  C.J. giggled. “How much is one really worth to you?”

  “You have one?” I knew C.J. had phones in both her shop and her house, but you’d never know it by the way the girl acted. She was forever stopping by to use mine.

  “Of course, silly. Granny Ledbetter gave me one when I moved to Charlotte.”

  I held the frown only briefly, since they are known to cause wrinkles. “C.J., dear—”

  “Ah, ah, ah! It’s Crystal now.”

  “Crystal,” I hissed, “I’d be mighty obliged if you’d quit calling me silly.”

  “Sorry, Abby.”

  “So,” I hissed again, “can I borrow your damn phone or not?”

  C.J. fished around in a fringed leather handbag and finally located an instrument smaller than a bread roll. “You may use it, Abby, but you really ought to get one of your own.”

  “They cause cancer,” I snapped and snatched the phone from her hand.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Albert Quarles, a local numismatist.”

  “Don’t, Abby.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Don’t call him. C.J. reached for the phone, which I deftly switched to the other hand. She tried again with no luck. Still, it was like playing keep-away with Wilt Chamberlain.

  “Crystal, dear, a numismatist is—”

  “I know what one is, Abby, but you shouldn’t call this man.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have a bad feeling about this man.”

  “But you’ve never met him, have you? Wait a cotton-picking minute! This isn’t that so-called second sense of yours, is it?”

  She nodded vigorously. “When you said his name, I felt chills run up my spine.”

  “That’s because the heat in here has been turned off for months.”

  “It’s seventy degrees outside, Abby. No, I felt a definite psychic premonition.”

  “Well, I didn’t, and I’m going to call him.”

  Even a bad driver could have parked a stretch limo on C.J.’s lower lip. “Don’t you believe me, Abby?”

  “I believe you believe, dear, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it? I mean, I’m an Episcopalian, and you don’t even go to church. Okay, so maybe that’s not a good analogy. But you get my drift, don’t you?”

  C.J. shrugged. “It still hurts my feelings.”

  “I’m sorry, dear. If that’s the way you feel, I’ll go find a phone. Better yet, I’ll take the collection over to Mr. Quarles’s house. It’s probably much safer there anyway. You never know when whoever did this”—I waved at a kitchen chair that was still overturned—“will decide to come back and resume searching.”

  C.J. glanced at the door and sighed. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “I won’t,” I said, already beginning to dial. “I promise.”

  “And if he tries anything funny, I’ll put a hex—”

  Albert Quarles must have shared the gift of second sight, because he answered on the second ring. “Good afternoon.”

  The unexpected greeting threw me only for a second. “I found the mother lode!”

  “Lula Mae Wiggins’s fabled collection?”

  “It’s a beaut,” I crowed. “Any chance I could persuade you to come over?”

  “I’ll be right there!” he said, and hung up.

  C.J. actually knew more about old coins than did I. The girl is daft, not dumb. She’s also more honest than a roomful of nuns, so I had no qualms about leaving her, salivating over the collection, while I made a very personal trip to the upstairs bathroom.

  And no, my trip had nothing to do with bodily functions but everything to do with gratitude. Reverently I entered the bathroom where my aunt had breathed her last. The room was even pinker than the rest of the house, if that’s imaginable.

  I sat atop the hot-pink mohair-covered toilet lid and contemplated the scene of my aunt’s demise. Pink bathtub, pink towels, and pink soap. What had my aunt looked like? Was she a smaller version of my father, with pink lipstick and maybe even pink-tinted hair?

  “Auntie Lula Mae, you were really something else, you know that? I wish I could have known you. I think we might have been friends. Even good friends. Lord knows I have friends even crazier than you. Heck, I bet you made Mama seem normal.

  “Anyway, thanks for all this—the house, the coin collection, but most of all just being you. It’s so neat to know that someone in my family stood up for their beliefs to the point of being ostracized. Although frankly, dear, I think you may have carried it too far. I don’t mean about your involvement with a black man—I’m sure my grandparents were none too happy about that—but you could have trusted my daddy more, and you certainly could have trusted me.

  “Still, I hope you had a happy life, and I guess when one has to go, there are worse ways then dying in a bathtub of pink champagne. The champagne was pink, wasn’t it? And did you drink it while you bathed? Of course not, that would be disgusting. But a nice sharp cheese, some Jarlesburg, maybe—”

  The doorbell yanked me from my reverie, and I flew downstairs to answer it before C.J. could put a hex on poor Albert. I got there just in time. C.J. must weigh 50 percent more than I, but I gave her a gentle kick behind the left knee, and she stumbled aside.

  “Come in,” I said to Albert.

  He stepped over the threshold and saw what remained of the piano. “My God! What happened?”

  “Maybe you should tell us,” C.J. quipped.

  I gave my friend a look that would turn even wax grapes into raisins. “C.J., this is Albert Quarles.”

  Albert properly extended his hand.

  “And Albert, this is—”

  “Crystal,” C.J. snapped. Her hand didn’t budge.

  I smiled helplessly. “Crystal’s doctors are still adjusting her medication.”

  “Very funny, Abby.”

  I led Albert into the dining room. C.J. tried clumsily to block us but backed off after I collected a sample of her DNA. Who said long nails were passéon mature women?

  Albert, of course, could not believe his eyes. He had to steady himself with both hands as he leaned across the table. Finally I made him sit, lest he faint and scratch any of the coins with the wire rim of his monocle.

  “Holy cow!” he said more times than I care to remember. Actually, he used a synonym for cow manure, one which no lady would repeat.

  “So, Albert, you’re really impressed, are you? I thought you’d be. This really blows my mind away—although how would I know? I’m not the one who took drugs in the seventies. Still, if I had to guess what a mind-blowing experience would be like, this would be it.” I know, I
was babbling like an idiot, and of course I couldn’t take any credit for assembling such a fabulous collection, but there you have it. Wealth gives me bursts of adrenaline that Gatorade never could.

  Albert placed his monocle carefully on the table beside a portfolio. Without the ridiculous eyepiece he looked mildly attractive. If he shaved the mustache and let his hair grow long enough to hide those ears—what was I thinking? Albert was married, for crying out loud, and besides, I had Greg—That was it! It had been too long since I’d seen Greg. As soon as I got home, my love muffin was in for a big surprise.

  “This collection is,” Albert said, drawing out every word, “the finest I have ever seen. I knew your aunt was keeping something back, but I could never have even dreamed it would be this good.”

  “Would you help me broker it? For a fee, of course.”

  “I would be honored.”

  “Unless, of course, you’d like to purchase it yourself.”

  The orange ears turned red. “I would love to. The truth is, I couldn’t raise this kind of money.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I know, on the surface it may appear that I have money, but most of what you saw at the house was inherited. Which is not to say I don’t make a respectable living investing in coins—just not enough to purchase a collection like this.”

  I realized then that he had removed his monocle so that no man-made object would be between him and the object of his lust. Call me crazy if you will, but I think that at least once in every individual’s lifetime he or she should be rewarded with the object of his or her heart’s desire. I am not so crazy, however, as to give two million dollars away.

  “Albert, it would be my pleasure to offer you the opportunity to buy that portion of the collection you feel you can afford.”

  “You mean break up the collection?”

  I nodded. Generosity is almost as much of an adrenaline rush as money.

  C.J. gasped and then gasped again as I took a second DNA sample. Albert seemed too stunned to speak.

  Albert’s vocal chords sputtered to life, like an old car engine that hadn’t been started in a long time. Like that car engine, he misfired a few times.

  “I am overwhelmed,” he finally said.

  “Abby, you can’t do this—ouch!”

  “I can do whatever I please with what is mine. Take your time, Albert, you don’t need to decide right now. Give it an hour or two to sink in—heck give it all night. I would give you more time, but I’m anxious to get back to Charlotte.”

  Albert cleared his throat and popped the monocle back into place. He was suddenly all business.

  “I would like this,” he said pointing to a coin in the portfolio directly in front of him. “And these three,” he said, picking up another leather-bound book. “Oh, and this.”

  “Of course you would,” C.J. snapped. “Abby, he’s up to something!”

  Albert bared his teeth at C.J. Against his sallow skin they were startlingly white.

  “I am quite prepared to pay Miss Timberlake a fair price for these coins.”

  “Why those coins?” C.J. demanded. “Why not these?” She pointed to another portfolio, one Albert had glanced at only briefly.

  I’d had quite enough. “C.J., shut up!”

  “Ladies, please! I do not wish to come between two friends. I picked these coins because they fill gaps in my own private collection. I didn’t pick these”—he gestured to the folder C.J. was indicating—“because I already have a complete collection of Capped Bust dimes. You see, collecting coins and investing in them are quite unrelated things.”

  I gently took the portfolios from Albert. Their leather covers felt like kidskin. The front of each was embossed with gold initials. L.M.W. Lula Mae Wiggins must have been a fascinating mixture of tackiness and class.

  “And the fair market value of the coins you just selected?”

  Albert squinted through the monocle. “I’d have to do some checking, you understand. Prices are constantly fluctuating. But off the top of my head I’d say close to a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Well, what if I give you these coins in exchange for your brokerage services? After I’ve had the chance to draw up an agreement, of course.”

  It was Albert’s turn to gasp and C.J.’s turn to shriek. I smiled at one and glared at the other.

  “But Abby, you can’t do that! Something awful is going to happen because of this man. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Get your bones out of my house!” I barked. “I will not have you speaking like that to my guest.”

  C.J. slunk off like a hyena chased from a lion’s kill. Like the hyena, she didn’t slink very far. I could hear her banging about in the living room but decided to let her be. Perhaps she’d come to her senses and return to apologize. If I was very lucky, she’d put the piano back together and straighten up the place.

  “Albert, I don’t know what to say—”

  He held up a yellow, well-manicured hand. “Please, there is no need to say anything. I admire loyalty among friends.”

  “Just the same, I feel bad about the way you’ve been treated.” I smiled warmly. “So, will you consider my offer?”

  He held the yellow hand out to me. “Abby, I would be very grateful.”

  We shook on the deal. It was the first time I’d touched his skin, and I was surprised by how cool and clammy it felt, like a child’s forehead when a fever has broken. Or like a snake?

  I hate to admit it, but just for a second I too had a premonition. The feeling had nothing to do with Albert cheating me; it was more of an overall sense of dread.

  “Is something wrong?” Albert asked quietly.

  “No, I just—”

  My words were drowned by a deafening crash. The house shook so violently that I ducked under the sturdy kitchen table. I am ashamed to say this, but I left both Albert and the portfolios behind.

  18

  “C.J.!”

  She moaned. The poor girl was sprawled over Aunt Lula Mae’s pink marble coffee table. The impossibly heavy sounding board was on the piano. Not in it, but on it. It was immediately obvious that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men were not going to be able to put that baby grand back together again.

  “C.J, are you all right?”

  The big gal hauled her lanky limbs back to a central location and slowly stood. “Yeah, I’m all right. Just had the breath knocked out of me, that’s all. Abby, who moved that coffee table?”

  “Nobody moved it, dear. Besides, this is your first time in this house. How would you know it was moved?”

  “I know the name of a good chiropractor,” Albert said helpfully.

  “I bet you do.” C.J. growled like a rabid dog. “I bet you know the names of all the vermin in Savannah.”

  “C.J!” I said sharply. “You apologize to Mr. Quarles.”

  Albert twiddled one end of his mustache. “That’s not necessary. I was just leaving.”

  “But Abby—” I reached up and clamped a hand over her mouth. I couldn’t quite cover it, but she got my point and hushed.

  “For shame,” I said, after I’d seen Albert to the door. “Didn’t your Granny Ledbetter teach you any manners?”

  “I’m just trying to protect you, Abby.”

  I pointed to the smashed piano. “I think maybe someone needs to protect me from you.”

  C.J. hung her massive head. “Sorry, Abby. I know you told me to get out, but I was trying to do you a favor and straighten up a little first. Go ahead and yell at me. I deserve it.”

  “You certainly do. However, I have a better idea. Instead of yelling at you, why don’t we go find ourselves some dinner?”

  “What?” My young friend looked like a sheep who had been asked an algebra question.

  “Well, I’m starving, and I prefer not to eat alone. How about it?”

  I know, I should have given C.J. the boot and sent her a bill for the piano. Call me sentimental, but I found her loyalty endearing. Besides,
maybe I really was in danger—only not from Albert, of course—and could use a five-foot-ten-inch giant with dishwater blond hair.

  My young friend might call herself Crystal, but she has a heart of gold. “You buying?”

  “I’ll buy, but the choice of restaurant is mine.”

  That was fine with C.J. She really is an easy woman to please, which is one of the reasons I like her so much. She is also exceptionally generous, and she volunteered to hide the coin collection before we left. When I accepted her offer and suggested the chimney, she turned the color of Mama’s Easter lilies.

  “But Abby, what if that brown recluse spider gets me?”

  “Nonsense. I didn’t get bit, did I? At least you won’t have a mousetrap snapping at your fingertips.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “We’re going to the Pirate’s House.”

  “Ooh, goodie!” C.J. squealed. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

  “And now you shall. Just put these portfolios up in the chimney and off we go. And mind you, handle them gently.”

  She did as she was told, but not without a good deal of lamenting. The way C.J. carried on, a passerby might well have thought the girl was being tortured. My children seldom made that much fuss when I made them help with housework.

  I know, I should have hustled my bustle over to the bank, but it was only ten minutes until closing time. Rather than break my neck trying to get there, only to have the door slammed on me, I did what I honestly considered to be the second-best thing.

  The Pirate’s House is a favorite of locals and tourists alike. It was first opened as an inn for seafarers in 1753 and fast become a rendezvous for bloodthirsty pirates and sailors from the seven seas. Here seamen drank their heady grog and discoursed, sailor fashion, on their exotic high-seas adventures from Kingston to Bombay, Lisbon to Manila.

  The sense of maritime history is almost palpable in this old inn. It is said that in the Captain’s Room, with its hand-hewn ceiling beams joined with wooden pegs, shorthanded ships’ masters negotiated the abduction of unwary seamen to complete their crews. Many a sailor was supposedly drugged and carried unconscious through a hidden tunnel from the Old Rum Cellar beneath this infamous room.