by Tamar Myers
“Perhaps you were smelling something rotten in Denmark,” I said with just a hint of sarcasm.
“Shame on you, Abby,” Wynnell said. “If my mama was alive, I’d never talk to her like that. Oh Lordy, how I miss that woman.”
“Wynnell, your mama used to whip you with a braid made from rawhide strips just because you left water spots in the sink.”
“Well, I still miss her, Abby—just not in a good way.”
“At least y’all had mamas,” C.J. said. “I was raised by Granny Ledbetter who learned her mothering from her mama who learned hers from a she-wolf.”
“Oy vey,” I said. “I feel a Shelby story coming on.”
“But Abby,” C.J. insisted, “this one is true. You see, there was this band of Gypsies traveling through Shelby—this was back around 1900. Anyways, they accidentally left a little baby behind at their campgrounds and it was adopted by this alpha she-wolf and her pack. A couple of years later this Italian family built a house out in the forest, near the wolf’s den, and discovered Great-granny running wild through the trees. They caught her, raised her up like one of their own, and then took her along with them to Italy on a trip to visit relatives when Great-granny was about nineteen years old.”
“Let me guess how this ends,” Wynnell said. “Your great-granny fell in love with an Italian sculptor who made a statue of her, and another human child, as they were both nursing from a wolf.”
C.J. nearly fainted from surprise. “How did you know? Honest to Pete, Wynnell, I’ve never told anyone that story before. Granny Ledbetter made me promise never to tell it on account of it was just too personal to share—what with the nursing and all.”
“I think your granny was right,” I said. “So don’t tell anyone else.” I put my hands on my hips in the most unladylike of stances and gave them each a frank stare, but not one of them even had the courtesy to blink. “Okay, given that y’all are such good liars, maybe y’all will be of some help—down the line. But I need to collect my thoughts first. In the meantime, you might wish to drive back to I–77 and go north an exit or two. I seem to remember some chain motels up there.”
“That’s all right, dear,” Mama said. “We’re already checked in here. I’m bunking with you, of course—my bags are already in the room—and Wynnell and C.J. will be sharing a room.”
“Of course,” I said. There went any hope of unwinding.
“In case you’re wondering how we’re going to pay for these fancy-schmancy digs,” Wynnell said, without a trace of sarcasm, “I’ve been squirreling away money for a long time in hopes of a ‘girls’ weekend’ getaway. And this, Abby, certainly fits the bill.”
I urged my lips to form a smile, even just a small one. “But who’s minding the shop, Wynnell? Both of my employees are standing right here.”
“Ooh, Abby, guess,” C.J. said, suddenly animated again. “You’ll never guess who.”
“Mayor Riley?”
“Good one, Abby! I did ask him,” she said guilelessly, “but he said his schedule had been filled for some time. Guess again!”
“Oh what the heck, I guess Greg.”
“Abby! How did you do it? Are you psychic like your mama?”
“Wait just one cotton-pickin’ minute! My husband, Greg, is minding my shop, the Den of Antiquity?”
C.J. nodded happily, while Wynnell nodded sheepishly.
“Don’t worry,” Wynnell said. “He’ll be fine. My Ed will be checking in on him from time to time—and Booger is there as well.”
“What’s this world coming to,” I said. “My beloved shop is in the hands of a man who hates antiques. But I shouldn’t worry because his best buddy—who goes by the name of Booger—is there to help him.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Wynnell said.
“If you’ll excuse me, ladies,” I said, “I’m going to the bar.”
“Ooh, goody,” C.J. said.
“Alone,” I said.
The clock was stopped for Mama the day Daddy was killed by a kamikaze gull with a brain tumor the size of a walnut. June Cleaver and Margaret Anderson were Mama’s role models, and to this day my dear little mama, who stands just five feet tall in her nylons, vacuums the house wearing high-heeled pumps and a single strand of pearls. Of course she wears a good deal more than that as well, including a cone-shaped bra built using hurricane-proof construction methods and a full circle skirt shirtdress with a matching belt cinched so tight it appears to bisect her waist. Beneath that skirt (holding it out to at least a forty-five-degree angle) is a crinoline so heavily starched that the carbohydrates in it could feed Paris Hilton for a year.
When I returned to the room I found five of these crinolines lined up, standing upright on my bed. Mama, on the other hand, was curled up under a blanket on the sofa in the sitting room of my suite. Believe me, her sweet dreams soured rather quickly upon my arrival.
“Mama!” I had to shake her as hard as a paint mixer just to get her to open her eyes. “You didn’t take a pill, did you?”
She sat up groggily, pulling the blanket over her bust. The modesty move was so unnecessary given the fact that she wears the twin cones to bed under her nightgown. After all, Deborah Kerr wouldn’t be caught braless. What if her lover—Deborah’s, not Mama’s—were to come pounding on the hotel door, demanding to take her into his strong, business suit–clad arms . . .
“Mama, I’m talking to you. Did you take a sleeping pill?”
“No, dear. It’s just that I didn’t get much sleep last night, what with all the worrying I had to do about you.”
“Had to do? No one’s forcing you to worry, Mama!”
“It’s a mother’s job, dear; it comes with the territory. Don’t you worry about Charlie and Susan?”
“Well, of course I do, but that’s different; they’re only in their twenties.”
“It never ends, Abby. The problem is that there isn’t anything you can say to anybody before they—well, you know, do it—that will truly make them understand this. That parenthood is forever.”
“I thought that only applied to Jewish mothers.”
“Who knows? Maybe so—but remind me to discuss that further with you tomorrow.”
“What?”
“Abby, I’m really awfully tired. Can’t we just go to sleep?”
“Where, Mama? The bed has been taken over by a company of crinolines. I know that if I were to set them on the floor there would be all heck to pay.”
“Well, dear,” said Mama becoming suddenly, and suspiciously, wide-awake, “this couch opens into a full-queen size bed. We could stand the crinolines on this and I could sleep with you on the king.”
I sighed. “Okay, Mama. But no spooning. Last time those cones dug a hole in my back that took two weeks to plump out again.”
“Deal,” Mama said happily.
When I’m with her, Mama makes me drive. C.J. and Wynnell drove separately. That said, we had breakfast at the Flying Biscuit in the Stonecrest Shopping Center. The biscuits there are the size of small pillows, and I’d forgotten just how much food my compatriots could put away in a single meal. Even more surprised at their combined intake was the somewhat distraught manager of that fine establishment. Understandably, she was trying to urge us along.
I shared her frame of mind. “So,” I said, “we best be getting this show on the road. We have a lot of sleuthing ahead of us.”
“More biscuits, please,” Mama said nonchalantly. Given that my minimadre has a waist that would make Scarlett O’Hara look positively chubby, it is a wonderment where she stores all this.
Wynnell fixed her unibrow on the manager, which sent the poor gal scurrying back to the kitchen. “The problem is,” she said, when the coast was clear, “that we’re here as Abby’s backup team. But according to that fellow who grilled me like a well-seasoned tenderloin this morning, my petite friend here, my best buddy, my galloping gal pal—”
“Okay, we get it,” Mama said. “Could you just get to the point, dear?�
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“Well, the point is that your daughter is the number one suspect.”
“What?” I cried. In my distress I stood so abruptly that I tipped our table, causing empty, but nonetheless sticky and gooey plates to slide into C.J.’s and Wynnell’s laps.
Wynnell ignored the egg yolk on her white cotton blouse and the syrup on the lap of her blue bias-cut skirt. “He knocked on the door at six-thirty, Abby, and made it sound like I had to speak to him. You know, down at the station. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What did he ask, and what did you tell him?”
“He asked mostly stupid stuff, like how long had I known you, did I ever hear you talk about the victim, did I think you were capable of killing anyone—that kind of thing.”
“And what did you say? About me killing someone?”
“I said that it was theoretically possible, but extremely doubtful. I told him about the time we found a mouse in the storeroom and you insisted that we catch the little fellow in one of those humane traps and release it in the black neighborhood.”
“What?”
“Well, you did; that’s where the vacant lot was.”
“Wynnell, dearest, I merely directed you to release the critter in the nearest vacant lot. Now the detective is going to think that I’m a racist. C.J., were you grilled as well before breakfast?”
The galoot had crammed half a biscuit into her mouth and was having trouble swallowing it. I waited patiently while she chased the pastry down with half a tumbler of milk and a glass of ice water.
“I have my own room now, Abby, on account of Wynnell snores like an asthmatic orangutan. Anyway, he knocked on my door at six thirty-five, only he was a she in my case. I know because I was on the phone with my ex—your brother—and I had my eye on the clock. It isn’t cheap calling the Congo.”
“Toy is in the Congo?”
“My only son is in the Congo?” Mama wailed.
“The Democratic Republic of the Congo—which is anything but. There are two countries that call themselves Congo, Abby. This is the by far the bigger one; this is the one most people think of when they hear that name.”
“Fascinating geography lesson, C.J., but what’s my brother—your ex—and mama’s son—doing there?”
“He’s delivering mosquito nets to remote villages. Malaria kills thousands of people over there every year.”
“My son the saint,” Mama said.
“How did he get to the Congo?” I asked. “Did he walk across the Atlantic?”
“Good one,” C.J. said. “I’m sure he took a plane, Abby. But my cousin Malcolm Ledbetter up in Shelby can walk on water.”
“That’s very interesting,” I said. “What questions did the detective ask you?”
“You don’t believe me, do you, Abby?”
“Well—”
“You’ve never believed any of my Shelby stories, have you?”
“Never say never, right? Right, Mama? Right, Wynnell?”
“If y’all will excuse me, I need to use the little girls’ room,” Mama said.
“I’m coming with you,” Wynnell said. “Somewhere it’s written that we ladies of a certain generation must always do this in pairs.”
“You’re not that old, dear,” Mama said, “but come along. And do hurry. This is one conversation that I’d prefer to miss out on.”
Apparently C.J. was not in a waiting mood. “Well what?” she said before Mama was even safely to her feet.
“Well,” I said, “some of your stories are a little far-fetched.”
“Just name me one!”
“For instance, you don’t have goat DNA, C.J. That’s physically impossible—not to mention that’s a lot of initials.”
“I have horns and a tail, Abby. What further proof do you want?”
I glanced around the room. I saw normal people eating pillow-size biscuits having normal conversations. It was probably a safe bet that none of them was claiming to have barnyard kin.
“C.J., I’ve said this before—and you know that I say this out of love, as your friend, and not as your ex- sister-in-law—that I know someone in Charleston who is excellent. I can recommend her personally, because I am one of her patients. It’s strictly talk therapy, mind you, nothing—”
That’s when she lunged. She threw herself across the table and grabbed my right hand, which she then forcibly placed on her head.
“Feel that,” she bellowed.
“Ouch!” I tried in vain to yank my hand away. “What is it?”
“Get a good feel,” she ordered.
“Okay, okay. You can let up.”
“No, you have to feel the other side. And push the hair away too, and tell me what you see.”
“Gross! C.J., they make special shampoos for this condition—oh my fathers, what the hell? C.J., is this really a horn? No, that’s ridiculous! You’ve obviously glued something to your head.”
“Uh-uh, Abby. Here, I have a tail too. You gotta feel that.”
“Get out of town and back! A tail?”
“That’s not so uncommon, Abby. Like one in a hundred thousand people is born with a little extra something that needs to be removed, but this—Abby, you really need to feel it.”
This was getting surreal. The only pills I’d taken that morning were a multivitamin and extra vitamin C, but they were Mama’s pills, ones that she’d brought with her and foisted on me. Left to my own devices, I picked up my nutrients via a glass of orange juice and healthy eating choices (which did not include pillow-size biscuits, no matter how tasty). My point is that I had not, to my knowledge, ingested a hallucinogen, nor was I still asleep and having a nightmare. I knew the latter because I could smell bacon, and I don’t smell anything when I dream.
“C.J., I’m not going to go feeling around in your pants—not here, at any rate.”
Chapter 5
The pseudo-giantess from Shelby pivoted around the table and would have forced my hand down the back of her Gloria Vanderbilt denim jeans had not Mama and Wynnell returned from the ladies’ room. As it was, we presented quite a spectacle and had the attention of everyone in the restaurant.
“What’s going on?” Mama said in a tone that only a mama can muster.
“Nothing, ma’am,” I said.
“Then why is your face the color of a raw pork chop, and why is everyone staring at you?”
“C.J. and I were arm wrestling,” I said. “I lost badly—of course.”
“Why Abigail Wiggins Timberlake and Oughta-Be-Washburn, you’re lying to me, as sure as Sherman razed Atlanta. C.J., you wouldn’t lie to an old woman, now would you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I would.”
Mama turned and faced the other customers. “Y’all see what I have to put up with? Have y’all ever seen such an incorrigible pair of twins? Oh yes, they are twins—normally they’re as close as Frick and Frack. I guess they’re just overly excited about this being their thirtieth birthday; I know, it doesn’t seem possible—but Abby here played in the sun a lot as a baby. Plus she used to smoke. There’s a lesson there, folks.”
“I am not C.J.’s twin!” I cried. “I’m practically old enough to be her mother!”
“You said it, dear, I didn’t.”
At that Mama gathered her crinolines in both hands and glided from the room like a swan on ice skates. Wynnell hurried after Mama, and C.J., bleating a pathetic apology, trotted three steps behind.
I was stuck with the check.
Toy and I never got along—except late on Christmas Eve day, when we could be found canoodling over a puzzle, or playing Go Fish (a tradition we kept up all the way through high school). The rest of the year we were sworn enemies, if not out for blood, then at least out for revenge.
It was during my so-called Toy years that I learned how to be sneaky and tap into all my baser instincts. I had to, because it was a matter of survival. Essentially then, this darker side of me is all his fault. At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
After I paid the bill, rather than exit through the front door where I knew the rest of my group were waiting, I fabricated a story about a competition and a race, and was ushered through to a back door, which also happened to be a shortcut to where I’d parked the car. By the time the others came back in to inquire about me, I was long gone in Mama’s car. As a matter of fact, I was probably halfway to the shabby-chic home of Chanteuse Ovumkoph Goldburg.
Rob’s mom lives in a 1940s traditional two-story brick that is now sandwiched between a pair of McMansions. The effect is immediately unsettling, as the brain has trouble sorting out which of the residences is out of place. As I understand it, Chanti has been offered a substantial amount of money for her house by someone who wishes to bulldoze it and erect a third McMansion in its place. So far memories have triumphed over money.
A boxwood hedge flanked Chanti’s restrained brick path, in contrast to the imported river-stone walks and dwarf gardenia borders of both overstated productions on either side. Yet I would rather be walking up to the door of either stucco palace, with the intent of selling skin products, than facing the woman who produced my best friend. To put it succinctly, Chanti had never liked me.
Actually, I can’t recall anyone she’s liked other than her Robbie. If the word possessive had a picture next to it in Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, it would be Chanti’s stern visage. I realize this description makes their relationship sound like it leaps off the pages of some 1950s psychological review of homosexuality, but I’m just calling a queen a queen.
But I wanted to know where Rob was, and since he hadn’t answered either his room phone or his cell phone, I was willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the good ol’ boy was at his mama’s. And while I was betting greenbacks against my favorite fat-laden sugary treats, I’d go so far as to say that he’d already confronted his mama about the food-poisoning charge and was now curled up on his bed, in a fetal position under the covers, reading ancient copies of Mad magazine by flashlight. It is self-medicating habits like this that keep the man trim and fit-looking, while the rest of the walking wounded sport spare tires and double chins.