Gilt by Association (15 page)

“I would?”

“
And
if you weren't so vain,” I said. “Women find vanity a real turnoff.”

“They do?”

We were on a roll. “And cheapness, too. Nothing turns a woman off faster than a date who's cheap. It's in all the surveys. Pick up any women's magazine and read it for yourself.”

He played with a pita piece piteously. “You have a lot of spark, Abigail. I like that. I don't suppose you'd give me another chance, huh?”

“Anything's possible,” I said honestly. “But if you ask me, the real spark is in Nina. I can tell that she likes you.”

She was pouring water for another customer, with her back turned to us, but Arvin sized her up. If she wore flats, and he continued to wear his lifts, they would be approximately the same height.

“You really think so?”

“Definitely. Take it from me, that woman's got the hots for you.”

“Damn! In that case I've really screwed up. What the hell do I do now?”

“You can start by leaving her an enormous tip,” I said, and with my help he did.

 

The phone was ringing when I walked in—alone and in a bit of a daze. I was a little distracted because Nina had been with us. Somehow, between the tabouli and the baklava, Arvin Schlonecker had convinced Nina to feign an upset stomach and spend the rest of the evening touring
the New Heritage Festival of Lights with him. Yes, the tip was large, but not
that
large.

“Hello?” I said into the wrong end of the receiver.

“Abby? Abby, is that you?” From that distance Greg sounded like he was talking through a tin can on a string.

I flipped him right side up. “Yes, it's me. What's up?”

“Where have you been, Abby?”

“Out to eat,” I said casually.

“It's nine twenty-three, Abby. Isn't that a little late to be coming home from your turkey fry?”

“It was a tough bird. It took longer than they thought.”

I could almost feel Greg change his mind. He's too smart to intentionally box me in. “Who were—uh, well, I hope you had a nice time.”

“I had a wonderful time,” I said. “Now, why were you calling?”

“Oh, that. Well, I thought you should know that Lottie Bell Bowman did not die of a heart attack.”

“A stroke then?”

“She was murdered.”

I mashed the receiver tighter against my ear. “You sure? I mean, how?”

“Yes, I'm sure. It was her heart, all right. But it didn't stop on its own. Someone fed her enough tranquilizers to put an elephant to sleep.”

“O
h my God” was all I could think to say, and I must have said it three or four times.

“Hey now, Abby, don't you be getting all upset over this. It's not like you really knew the woman.”

“But I was supposed to have tea with her this morning,” I wailed. “Maybe if I had, I'd be dead as well.”

“Not unless you put Jack Daniels in your tea. The tranquilizer—diazepam—was mixed in with that.”

“Di—what?”

“Diazepam. Valium.”

“Valium? She died of a Valium overdose?”

“Mixed with the Jack Daniels, that's a deadly cocktail.”

I pictured Lottie Bell Bowman happily pouring herself a glass of morning whiskey. I pictured her dead, slumped over in her expensive but appropriately shabby surroundings. I choked back a sob.

“Shit,” Greg said, “you aren't crying, are you?”

“Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. And maybe this has nothing to do with Lottie Bell's death.” One of my sobs escaped.

“There, there, Abby,” he said.

I know he was trying to comfort me, but he sounded lamer than a three-legged horse with stones in its shoes.
I hate sympathetic noises from others, even when they are genuine.

“How do you know it was murder?” I demanded. “Maybe Lottie Bell got tired of being lonely and packed it in.”

“Maybe,” Greg said, “but we checked with her doctor. She didn't have a prescription for Valium. And we checked the bottle for prints. There—”

I swallowed a lump that Arvin would have been proud of. “The prints are mine. She asked me to fetch her the bottle when I was over there. But I didn't put anything in it, Greg. I swear. I'll even bet my shop on it. And I don't have a prescription for Valium, either. You can ask my doctor, too. His number is—”

“Hold on,” Greg said. I thought I heard a chuckle. “If you didn't interrupt so much, you'd learn more. What I started to say was that when we checked the bottle for prints, there weren't any. That's why we're calling it murder at this point. After all, there isn't any reason why any old lady who was trying to kill herself would attempt to cover her own tracks.”

“Not unless she wanted to pin it on someone else,” I said, and then wished I hadn't.

“Maybe,” Greg said. There was a long pause. “Abby, would you mind if I came over?”

“When? Tonight?”

“Right now.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, and hoped I sounded casual.

“I'll be right over,” he said. In the background I heard a large dog barking, which sounded very much like old man Crowley's Great Dane down the street.

“Where
are
you?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.

“In my car. I was just on my way—”

I hung up. I had less than two minutes to wash off Tweetie's creation and change into turkey fry duds.

I was able to exchange the black velvet cocktail dress
for a pair of gray slacks and a gray and cream wool sweater, but that's as far as I got when the doorbell rang. From the neck up I still bore the stamp of Tweetie. In my desperation I decided that confidence was my best defense and flung open the door.

Greg stared at me.

“Come in,” I said. “It's getting colder by the minute.”

He came in, but wouldn't take his eyes off my face.

“Coffee? Tea? Hot chocolate?” I wasn't going to offer him me until I was sure where our relationship was headed.

“Coffee,” he said absently.

“Cream? Sugar?” I knew the answers—black and one sugar—but I was trying to divert his attention. It didn't work.

“Damn, but if you don't look good tonight, Abigail.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, you look good all the time, but you look especially fine, tonight. New hairdo?”

I casually patted an hour of Tweetie's time. “Same old, same old. You want some of those soft chocolate chip cookies with your coffee?”

“Your face, too, you know? I guess that's what they mean by radiant.”

“I hardly think so,” I said. “This is exactly how I look every day. You just never notice.”

“Then I'm a fool,” he said.

Mercifully the doorbell rang.

“Not as big a fool as I,” I mumbled as I went to answer it. Thanks to my ex-husband's wife I was going to have to add an hour and a half to my routine every day.

“There you are!” Calamity Jane practically shouted.

“Yes, dear, here I am.” I made no move to invite her in.

“I've been trying to call you for an hour, but it's been the strangest thing. First the phone is busy, and then it
just rings and rings.” She peeked past me and saw Greg. “And now I know why.”

I invited her in. To my knowledge, C. J. and Greg had never been formally introduced. Foolishly I wanted to impress her.

“Oh, so you're the blind date Bob Steuben arranged for Abigail. I hope you don't mind if I say so, but she got lucky.

“This girl I knew back home went on a blind date arranged by her pastor. Her
pastor
! Anyway, the guy turned out to be a serial killer. He dated college girls and then strangled them with their own pantyhose. He locked the corpses up in one of those rental storage sheds. They caught him after only five girls, because the smell got so bad. They say that if it had been the winter—”

“I am not her blind date,” Greg said. He was staring at me. The once Wedgwood-blue eyes were now a piercing, icy blue.

“Like she said, it was Bob's idea,” I said quickly. “His and Rob's. They wanted to cheer me up. I couldn't just say no.”

“I said no to Deena for this evening,” he said coldly.

I glared at C. J. and then smiled brightly at Greg. “Well, I wouldn't even call it a date. The guy is a narcissistic foot doctor who tried to play footsies with me in a public restaurant. And for your information, he ended up going home with a waitress.”

Greg was unmoved. “You should have been honest with me from the beginning, Abby. If we're going to see each other, we have to be absolutely up front. Some turkey fry!”

“I would have told you,” I wailed. “I wasn't trying to hide anything.”

“Oh Abby, isn't that a new hairdo?” C. J. asked. I'm sure she meant to divert the conversation, but then again,
we all know what the road to hell is paved with, don't we?

“Aha!” said Greg. “And you did something different to your face, too.”

“Tweetie and I were just fooling around this afternoon. It was just girl stuff. It had nothing to do with Arvin.”

“Arvin? Do you mean Dr. Arvin Schlonecker? That foot doctor with all those big muscles?” C. J. had clearly forgotten her job was to divert.

I glared at her again. “Yes, and he's not my type at all, is he, Jane?”

She shrugged. “I've never met the man, but my cousin Lou Anne went to see him about an ingrown toenail. She said he looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger—only shorter.

“Anyway, the next thing you know Dr. Schlonecker had removed the nail. Well, it got infected something awful, and Lou Anne had to have the entire toe removed. Of course she had that done at a hospital. But then they released her too soon, and when she was back at home she got gangrene. So it was back to the hospital for poor Lou Anne to have her leg removed, below the knee, of course. But wouldn't you know the hospital screwed up and they removed the wrong leg? Only once you get gangrene there's no stopping it, you see, so they
had
to remove the original leg as well, and now my cousin has no legs.” She said it all in one breath, two at the most.

It was a horrible story, but for some perverse reason—maybe the way she told it—Greg and I burst out laughing.

She stared at us. “I don't think it's a bit funny.”

We howled. We couldn't help it.”

“Y'all are sick,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” I sputtered.

“Here!” She thrust a folded piece of paper at me. “From now on, kindly remember that I am not your gal
Friday. You are going to have to start taking your own messages, Abigail.”

I apologized again for my insensitivity, and thanked her several times for the message. C. J. stomped off into the cold night still mad at us, I'm sure.

I turned to Greg. “Feel free to follow suit. I'm too tired to fight any more tonight.”

Although perhaps a bit faint, the twinkle was back in his eye. “So am I. Truce?”

“Truce! And for the record, I have absolutely no intention of seeing Arvin again. I value my legs.”

He winked. “So do I. You going to open that note?”

I opened the note. It was from Amy Barras, asking me to call her as soon as possible. The word “urgent” had been underlined at the bottom. I resolved to call her first thing in the morning.

 

Amy didn't pick up at her home, and since I owed Mama a call I decided to kill two birds with one stone and drive down to Rock Hill. Mama often made—from scratch—biscuits for breakfast. A couple of those and some homemade peach preserves would be the perfect way to start my day. And anyway, like I said, I'd been meaning to stop in Amy's home design center for years, but had just never taken the time.

It was not my lucky day. Mama was backing out just as I was pulling in. I parked my car on the street and trotted up to her open window. She hadn't even bothered to get out.

“Mama, where are you off to so early?”

“For heaven's sake, Abigail. It's quarter after nine. It's only early yet in Alaska.”

“You haven't answered my question, Mama. Where are you off to?”

Mama sighed. “If you must know, I'm going up to Charlotte, to do a little shopping.”

“Shopping?” Mama never leaves Rock Hill, except to go to Pawley's Island one week a year with three of her closest friends.

She fingered her pearls nervously. “It's about time I changed my look, don't you think so, Abby?”

“It's that Apathia Club, isn't it?”

Mama nodded. “They're a very smartly dressed bunch, Abby. They don't buy their clothes at the Galleria Mall.”

Mama doesn't buy her clothes at the Galleria Mall, either. She makes them. No stores I know of stock crinolines anymore.

“Mama, don't you think it's important to just be yourself? Isn't that what you always told me?”

“But I want to
belong
,” she wailed.

“You do belong, Mama. You belong to me, and the kids. To church, and your friends. Even—”

“I want to belong to the Apathia Club. I want to belong so bad I can taste it.”

“Mama, remember what you said to me when Marilyn McElveen wouldn't invite me to her birthday sleepover?”

“That was then, this is now,” Mama said and resumed backing out, practically taking my head off.

 

Inside and Out—“your complete home design center”—was much more welcoming. A well-dressed woman, possibly an Apathia member, swooped down on me like a hawk on a sleeping chicken.

“What can I do for you today, honey?”

“Well, I'm here—”

“Because until December twenty-fourth we're running our ‘Mrs. Santa Claus likes to decorate' special.”

“You don't say. That's very nice but—”

“One of our professionally trained staff will come out to your house and assess all your decorating needs, and it's absolutely free.”

“I live in Charlotte, ma'am.”

“No problem.”

“But ma'am—”

She trotted off, and before I could hide behind a forest of window treatments, she was back and flipping through a black vinyl notebook.

“Let's see, the nineteenth at eight
A.M
., or the twenty-first at six-thirty
P.M
. No, better make that seven.”

“The twenty-first would be more convenient,” I said.

I don't know why I said it. The woman undoubtedly had the power to possess souls.

“I'm afraid I have to warn you that everything I own is beige,” I said.

She nodded and made a notation in the black book. “Beige is good, honey. It's much easier to start with a neutral palette and build on that.”

“I want red,” I said. I know the words came out of my mouth, but I had no intention of saying them.

She smiled and made another notation. “Maybe a nice subdued
deep
red?”

My lips moved of their own volition. “No, a Chinese red, with maybe just a slight touch of brown. Like Amy Barras's walls.”

She shuddered. “Yes, I see. I'll put together a collection of possible accessories.”

“Oh, and speaking of Amy, that's who I'm here to see. Is she in?”

Amy was indeed in. I was escorted to her office, where I had to wait for at least five minutes before Her Highness got off the phone. She did not look happy to see me.

“I didn't get your message until late last night,” I said. “I tried calling you at home this morning, but there was no answer.”

“Please sit,” she said frostily. Despite all her plastic surgery, it was obvious her frown muscles were hard at work.

I sat in the single chair—a Biedermeier armchair—
across from her desk. She looked out at me between two mountains of paper. Either business was good or Amy liked to procrastinate. I recalled her saying she didn't need to go into the office every day, so perhaps it was the latter.

“Well, here I am,” I said pleasantly.

Despite her reception, I was feeling rather good. It was the room that did that. The walls were a deep forest-green with white trim. All the furniture, including the Biedermeier, was in compatible shades of green. Perhaps I would do well to consider green instead of red.

“Yes, finally. I told Miss Cox to put ‘urgent' on the note.”

“She did. She even hand-delivered it. But I didn't think you wanted me calling you in the middle of the night.”