Larceny and Old Lace (7 page)

I politely covered the phone while I guffawed. Aunt Marilyn wouldn't recognize her real face if it jumped out of an old photo album and bit her. If all the stitches that have gone into her face were lined up, they would reach from Charlotte to China and back. The silicone and plastic in those jowls were enough to catapult China into the computer age.

“Well, of course it wouldn't be any bother at all.” What else could I say? It was her house. “I'd be delighted to have company.”

“That's wonderful, dahling. I'm on my way. See you—”

“But there is something you should know first.”

“Yes, dahling?”

“Uh, remember those scraggly junipers you had planted out front?”

There was a pregnant pause. This one was easily long enough to get pregnant during. Especially if Buford was involved.

“What junipers, dahling?”

“The ones on either side of the front door. Well, since they were doing so poorly, I had them removed and—”

“There were no junipers by the front door. Dahling, those were plaster poodles.”

“You sure?” Hopefully her memory had started to slip. After all, mine already had, and she was a lot older. I know, it was shameful of me, but I was desperate.

“Positive, dahling. One black, the other white, exactly forty-two inches tall. Eighteen inches at the base. Fifi and
Mimi. I had to special order them from a place called Garden Treasures of the South. They arrived on November seventeen, nineteen forty-eight, the day after you cut your first tooth.”

“Well, in that case, Fifi and Mimi are just fine,” I said. “Do you mind if I speak to Mama for a moment.”

I begged Mama to stall her. Mama refused to sneak out the side door and stab Aunt Marilyn's tires with a butcher knife, but other than that, she pledged her full cooperation.

While Mama danced jigs to entertain her older sister, or whatever else was necessary, I worked like a damless beaver who has just been handed a forecast calling for drought. Panic can do amazing things to one's adrenaline. Somehow I managed to dig up both camellias, stuff them in leaf bags, and put them in the trunk of the car. How I managed to lug Fifi and Mimi up the basement stairs is beyond my comprehension. The one thing I could not do, however, was replace the two pink plastic flamingos from the backyard. The Charlotte Department of Sanitation had long since laid claim to them. Of course that is only an assumption, but they had yet to show up in Mrs. Ferguson's yard.

Seconds before Aunt Marilyn's car turned left onto Ridgewood, I turned right, going the opposite way. I arrived at my shop only an hour late, sweaty, with dirty fingernails and two camellias suffocating in the trunk.

It was the start of an auspicious day.

O
n any other day it would have knocked my socks off to see a crowd of customers waiting to be let in, but not that day. Given the weather, I had decided to flaunt convention and stay in the white dress I'd put on for Greg. After putting one toe out the door, I had shed my pantyhose faster than a hyperactive snake sheds its skin. In my excitement I had forgotten it was after Labor Day.

“It's not even winter white,” I heard a woman mumble. “I mean, there is a correct way, no matter how hot it is.”

She had a right to talk. She was wearing a wool skirt, a wool turtleneck sweater, and knee-length leather boots. They were all in shades of brown. Either she had a portable air conditioner hidden in that getup, or she was one of the living dead. Clearly she was not menopausal.

While the crowd surged into my shop—hopefully to make me a rich woman—I struggled with the two camellias. Another five minutes and they would have been compost.

“Can I give you a hand?”

I recognized the voice of Rob Goldburg.

“Sure.”

He reached past me and easily lifted one of the plants out of my trunk. “What's this? You offering your customers premiums now?”

“Aunt Marilyn's in town. I escaped by the skin of my teeth.”

“Ah yes, the Marilyn Monroe of Hilton Head. How is the old darling?”

“She looked just fine in my rearview mirror. I suppose I will have to find out tonight.”

He took the second camellia out. “Say, you got a minute?”

I gestured at the camellias and my shop. A woman was standing on the steps with a silver candelabra in her hand.

“Is this part of a pair?” she called.

I shook my head.

“I know you're busy,” Rob said, “but I
have
to talk to you. Maybe between customers?”

He carried the camellias into the relative coolness of my shop. What could I do?

“Shoot,” I said. I had just sold the candelabra at 20 percent off the asking price. It was a steal, both for me and the customer. The damned thing had been a wedding present from Buford's mother. Buford, with his eyes full of Tweetie's silicon curves, had never missed it.

“I think I may be in trouble,” Rob said, his voice barely above a whisper. “A hell of a lot of trouble.”

“Don't tell me you sold yet another original Mona Lisa?”

“This is serious, Timberlake. You know that bell pull everyone's been saying did the old lady in?”

“What about it?”

“I think it belongs to me.”

“What?” I tried to sound surprised. It was obvious Greg Washburn was sitting on his information.

I had to interrupt our tête-à-tête to part with a Shaker ladderback chair. I barely broke even on that but consoled myself by remembering the candelabra.

“No,” I said to the buyer, a tall gangly woman of indeterminate age, “I don't have any more in stock.”

“Well, can you order seven more and have them here by Friday? I'm giving a little informal dinner party for my husband's birthday. Don't you think those would look just darling with bows tied to the top rungs?”

“Just darling,” Rob said.

I had to explain to the woman that Shakers were a celibate sect who have virtually died off. Last I heard there were three members left, all of them women, and all around ninety. I doubted very much if they would be able to whip up seven
chairs for her dinner party. The woman left with her chair and a promise from me that I would try my level best to convince those lazy Shakers to speed up their production.

“I'm almost positive that bell pull is mine,” Rob said, when she was gone.

“What makes you think so? There are oodles of bell pulls in this world.”

“With roosters on them? Anita saw
the
bell pull. It had a rooster on it. One I had just like that is missing.”

I should have advised him to clean out his cash drawer and hop the first flight to Guadalajara, but I didn't. Rob Goldburg, despite his temper, was an honest man who played by the rules. Besides, he had done nothing wrong. If I believed for one second that it was he who strangled my aunt, I would turn Ron Goldburg into a candidate for the Vienna Boy's Choir. There are certain advantages to being short.

“When did you notice the pull missing?” I shook my head at a customer who was trying to investigate the bagged camellias. They were not for sale.

“I don't know. I'd like to say Monday, after that disastrous breakfast, when I shot off at the mouth. But it may even have been earlier. I've been kind of distracted, you see.”

I assumed the distraction was his new partner, whom I had yet to meet. I had seen the guy a couple of times through the window of his shop, and had even waved, but that's as far as I'd taken my southern hospitality. If the Kovels themselves had moved next door, I still would not have found the time and energy to run over with a homemade peach pie.

“Maybe you should take the initiative,” I said quickly. The woman dressed like a fall mummy was bearing down on us with a cut glass punch bowl in her woolly arms. “If you contacted the right people with this information, before they contact you, it might go better.”

Rob stared under long dark lashes. He has a remarkably handsome face, just shy of being pretty, and it's only because I know he is not interested in women that I resist my temptation to leap on him and declare my eternal love. Let's face it, I am a wanton woman. You would be too if you were in
the prime of your life and had not had sex in almost three years.

“What do you mean ‘the right people'? Who have you been talking to, Abigail? What's up?”

Mercifully, the blessed woman in the thermal garb came between us with the punch bowl. “How much is this bowl?” she demanded.

She was playing games with me; the price was clearly visible on a card inside it the size of a dinner napkin. I vaguely remembered seeing the woman's face on the society page, something about donating a new wing to some hospital. Even if she were stark naked with a hood over her head I could tell that she had more money than she knew what to do with. Besides the six-carat carbon monstrosity on her wedding finger, she wore an even larger diamond on the middle finger of her right hand. It surprised me that she didn't require a set of luggage wheels just to help tote that thing around.

I would have told her to take her woolly butt to a soup kitchen and serve the homeless, except that I needed extra sales to make up for when I would close the shop for Aunt Eulonia's funeral.

“It's not punch season, dear,” I said gently. “One should only drink punch between Memorial Day and Labor Day.”

She didn't bat an eye. “I'll give two hundred dollars for this,” she had the gall to say.

The bowl was marked at $350. It was deep cut glass, probably with a high lead content. The lead made it sparkle; hopefully it made it toxic as well.

“I can only come down to three and a quarter,” I said kindly.

She sniffed. “It isn't worth that. I saw another one at a shop in Pineville that was much more intricate in design. They only wanted three hundred for it. And it had the cups.”

I shrugged. “Three and a quarter is the best I can do. Take it or leave it.”

She glared at me. “All right, but it's highway robbery. What else do you have that's interesting?”

It was clear this woman was used to shopping in Paris, so I saw it as my duty to my profession to accommodate her.
Rudeness doesn't come easy to me, mind you, but I did my level best. Five thousand dollars later I helped her carry things out to the car. I would have licked those knee-high boots if she'd asked me.

Rob was still waiting for me by the register, sitting on a Victorian side chair that had a
SOLD
sign on it. Tension showed in his gray eyes. “Well?”

“Sorry,” I said, “but a buck is a buck. This is a business. You know how it is. Hey, you ever see that Money Mummy before? She looks awfully familiar.”

He shrugged. “Who have you been talking to, Abigail? Not the police?”

“Not exactly. Investigator Greg Washburn, homicide division. He was over at my place this morning. Showed me the pull. I thought I recognized it, and so I told him.”

He stood up. Like most everyone else he towered over me. “Told him what?”

“I told him that I recognized the pull as coming from your shop. I also told him that I knew you didn't do it. That you couldn't.”

“Damn!” Rob pounded a fist on my glass register counter. Fortunately he hit a wood panel.

I gave him Greg Washburn's phone number. “He's a decent guy. Call him, Rob. It's the wisest thing to do.”

“Oh shit!” Rob said, and left my shop.

 

For some strange reason business was so good that day that my fingers suffered register burn. Who would have guessed that half of Charlotte, and their Yankee cousins, would be out shopping for antiques on the hottest September day in decades? I stayed so busy that I didn't remember, much less worry about, Aunt Marilyn's presence in town. Not until she showed up at my register, a brass towel rack in hand.

“What is this?”

I looked up from stuffing money in the drawer. “Uh, looks like a towel rack—Aunt Marilyn! How good to see you!”

There she stood atop her six-inch heels, as big as life and twice as awesome. In the summertime Aunt Marilyn dons puffy little sundresses and combs the sidewalks, looking for
cold air registers to inflate her skirts. Mama and I have repeatedly tried to convince her that upper arms are usually best kept covered by the time one cashes their first Social Security check. But summer was officially over and Aunt Marilyn, who is more correct than I, was wearing a crimson taffeta cocktail dress. The mini feather boa around her neck was her one concession to the daylight hours. As usual the platinum hair was sprayed into hard perfection. I have long ago concluded that my aunt need never fear meteors or other heavenly debris.

I ran around the counter and embraced her tightly, her arms pinned to her sides. “What a wonderful surprise,” I said, spitting out the boa between words.

She gave me two little air pecks and pushed me to arm's length—heaven forbid I should bend her hair or dislocate the mole on her left cheek. She held up the towel rack again.

“What is this, dahling, and what is it doing in my house?”

“It's a towel rack, of course.”

“I know what it is, dahling. I want to know what it was doing in my bathroom.”

I willed myself to be calm. It was a doable thing. Aunt Marilyn was merely a pain in the side compared to Buford. But enough was enough. The platinum terror had to be stopped before either I or my camellias died.

“I slipped while reaching for a bath towel,” I said. “Unfortunately I grabbed the cheap, plastic rack you have in there, and it broke. I fell, bumping my head, spraining my wrist, and bruising two knees. I had to close down my shop for a day just to find something that looked vaguely like the piece of junk that was in there before.

“Since there were no bones broken, and I didn't require stitches, I didn't have a doctor bill to send you. However, I was sore for weeks and undoubtedly lost customers because I wasn't able to get around very well. But of course I would never sue a flesh-and-blood relative, now would I?”

Aunt Marilyn lit a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring through bright red lips. “Dahling, you simply must take better care of yourself. Why, I tell you what. This evening when you get off work I'll have a nice little supper waiting for you.
Things I brought up fresh from the coast. How does she-crab soup and shrimp gumbo sound?”

It sounded superb. I had been so busy I hadn't had a bite to eat since the futile cinnamon rolls that morning. I had never seen Aunt Marilyn so docile. I should have thought of threatening her with a lawsuit two years ago. After all, I had been married to the king of ambulance chasers. Foolishly I decided to push the envelope.

“Supper sounds great, Aunt Marilyn. Then after supper, if it's still light, you can help me plant my camellia bushes.”

She teetered on the six-inch heels. “I beg your pardon?”

I pointed to the bagged plants. “I thought they would look great where Mimi and Fifi are now. We could move those plaster mutts over a couple of feet—”

Aunt Marilyn gasped, sucking in a generous chunk of boa. I hastened to extract it before she choked. Two aunts dead in one week by strangulation would be hard to explain to Greg Washburn. Especially if one of them asphyxiated in my shop.

I patted her back to get her breathing again. “There, there, dear. If you insist, I can plant my camellias somewhere else. Maybe up by the front of the driveway.”

I wouldn't be a southern lady if I repeated what Aunt Marilyn said next—when she could get her voice back. I bet the real Marilyn Monroe didn't talk like that. Hilton Head is just too close to Parris Island, I suppose. My guess, based on the words I heard, is that Aunt Marilyn regularly entertains marines. She sure didn't hear language like that growing up in Rock Hill.

“But the neighbors all love my camellias,” I said calmly. “Even Mrs. Ferguson loves them. When she saw mine she went out and bought four just like them for herself. She said they're the prettiest camellias she's ever seen.”

The boa bobbed dangerously close to my aunt's open mouth. Even I would never gasp like that in public.

“Then again, what does Mrs. Ferguson know?” I said helpfully.

“Out!”

“Why, that's exactly what I said to those pink flamingos,
dear. Haven't you had a chance to glance at the backyard yet?”

“Out!”

It was the only word she could say for the next few minutes. When she could finally manage a multiple word vocabulary she made it crystal clear that I, my cat Dmitri, and what few belongings I had in her house, were never welcome there again. Not unless I got down on my hands and knees and begged her forgiveness. This dictum inspired a few choice words of my own, which I will spare you.