Gilt by Association (4 page)

“Oh,” she said, and smiled.

“That's funny?” I asked.

“Yeah, it's a hoot. Arnie suffered from claustrophobia. It's kind of—now, what is that word—”

“Ironic?”

“Yeah. Arnie hated tight spaces. It made him crazy just to shower.” She actually chuckled.

I swallowed back several things I could have said. “You don't seem all that broken up,” I said calmly.

“Who me? Look, lady, Arnold Dewayne Ramsey was the meanest son of a bitch to walk this earth. When he was drunk he had a backhand like a tennis player, and he was always drunk.”

I stared at her for a moment, and the large, pale gray eyes stared back. I finally figured it out.

“You mean he hit you?”

“Just about every day until I moved out. Lady, I haven't lived with that scum-sucking S.O.B. for over a year. Anything else you'd like to ask?”

I was taken aback. My script had called for a grieving widow, crying her eyes out at home. I wasn't prepared for a tough-talking young woman with a wad of gum in her mouth as big as an egg.

“What can you tell me about your—well, Arnold Ramsey—besides that he was an abusive husband?”

“He was a lousy lay.” She laughed and had to clamp a hand over her mouth to keep the gum in.

“Where did he work?” I asked with dignity.

This time the gum came out but she caught it and popped it right back in. “You are a comedian! Arnie liked to lie around all day and watch them talk shows. He kept trying to get us on Ricki Lake. Said they hadn't heard nothing yet, till they heard our story. He was right about that.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Hell, don't be sorry. The son of a bitch is dead, isn't he?”

“Very,” I said quietly. “So you supported him?”

“Yeah, well most of the time.” She paused. “But don't you go giving me this bullshit about why didn't I leave him men if it was me who was bringing in the money. I did leave, remember? It just took me longer than it might could have. Anyway, Arnie did work sometimes. It just wasn't steady work.

“I understand. What kind of work was it?”

She shrugged. “Odd jobs. Things he'd read about in the paper.”

I had a brilliant idea. “You wouldn't happen to have a picture of him, would you?”

“Of Arnie? Hell no, I ripped them suckers up a long time ago. But let me tell you, he was mean-looking. Like a big rat that had rabies. I don't know what I ever saw in him.”

As a mother of a nineteen-year-old I could easily answer that. Without a doubt Norma's mother had disapproved of Arnold Ramsey. More often than not, that's all it takes.

She slid out of the booth and stood up. “You married?”

“Divorced.”

She nodded sympathetically. “Here's a tip that won't cost you nothing. Never sign any papers for a man, no matter how much he sweet-talks you.”

“Gotcha.”

“Hey, you gonna order? I can take it back for you.”

I glanced at the menu. The Hunan hush puppies were the most appealing thing I could see.

“I think I'll pass dear. I forgot that this was a religious fast day for me.”

“Yeah?” she said, and walked off without another word.

P
urnell Purvis is a pudgy man, with a paunch, and pink cheeks that suggest a preference for Pernod over Perrier. He's on the shady side of fifty (depending on your point of view), bald as a cue ball, and dresses nattily. By that I mean Purvis is fond of wearing suits and very flashy ties. I have never seen him wear the same tie twice.

I found Purvis in the barn, which was very lucky, come to think of it. Monday is the only day you can count on him being there. The rest of the time Purvis is out roaming around looking for estates to buy, or—and this is strictly rumor, and not to be repeated—passed out in some bar or another.

I'm sure that over the years I've poured thousands of dollars of profit into Purvis's pocket. Normally he greets me—and the other female dealers—with a hug and a kiss. This manner of greeting between acquaintances is customary in the South, but it seems to shock Yankees. At any rate, this particular Tuesday Purvis didn't seem at all glad to see me. The yellow Happy Face on his black tie was in a far better mood.

“I've been in business for thirty years,” he said, without greeting me first, “and this is the first time something like this has happened.”

“Trust me, it's never happened to me before either.”

“It's a goddamn nuisance,” he said. A more sensitive soul than I might have thought, his tone was slightly accusing.

“I'll say. They shut you down, too?”

“Say what?”

“I can't even get into my shop until they complete their investigation.”

“You don't say!” He was softening.

“So you see, I'm really in a jam here. I was hoping that maybe you could help me out.”

Mama always says that it's easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar. If you heard Mama try and talk her way through a difficult situation, you'd think she had a whole jar full of the pesky things.

“What kind of help?”

“Just some information,” I said pleasantly.

“Yeah? Like what?”

Out of the corner of one eye I could see Jimbo and Skeet. They were standing on either side of a Victorian Turkish platform rocker. Presumably they were supposed to be doing something with it, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that their attention was on us.

“Is there somewhere we could go to talk? Somewhere private?”

“Sure thing, little lady.” Purvis is not easily perturbed, but it was obvious something was bothering him. Still, I am a valued customer, and he was doing his best to be gracious.

He led the way through a maze of antiques, some in crates, others calling seductively to me in all their glory. Our final destination was his office, a mere cubicle next to the men's toilet. A length of dusty green velvet served as the door. An exquisite Wooton desk almost filled the room, leaving just enough room for two chairs. I took the smaller chair. It was contemporary and poorly made.

“Care for a drink, little lady?” He reached inside the
desk and pulled out the bottle of Pernod. There were about two sips left in it.

“No thanks. Purvis”—we all call him by his last name—“I know that the police have already talked to you, and I wouldn't be bothering you, except that this is very important to me. You see—”

He hushed me with an outstretched hand. “Ask away, little darling.”

I took the plunge. “Did you happen to know the deceased, a man named Arnold Ramsey?”

It might have been my imagination, but Purvis's cheeks seemed to grow pinker. “Never heard of him until the cops came this morning. Is that all you wanted?”

“No, I have a few more questions, if that's all right.”

He considered that while he sipped from the bottle. “I don't have all day, little lady. Can you make it quick?”

“Sure thing. Did you see or hear anything unusual yesterday—after the auction?”

He drained the Pernod and put the empty bottle back in the drawer. He did it solemnly, as if it were part of a religious rite, as if he were preparing to say Mass. I tried to imagine Purvis killing a man half his age. It was perhaps possible, but not plausible. His hands were barely bigger than mine, and he was certainly in poorer shape. The only thing Purvis had going for him was his weight, and paunches are more likely to be lethal to their wearers than to others.

“Nope,” Purvis said. “I didn't see anything unusual after the auction.”

“Before?”

“Nope. I don't exactly keep an eye out for murderers.” He opened a different drawer and took out a new bottle of Pernod. “You sure you don't want a little sip? It's almost teatime.”

“How can you drink that stuff?” I asked. “It rots your teeth.”

It wasn't even two o'clock. Purnell Purvis had a problem.

He took a swig. “Picked up a taste for this in France.”

“Army?”

“Nope. I studied in France for a year. The Sorbonne. The scholarship kids drank table wine. This”—he waved the bottle—“was the hip thing for the rich kids.”

I felt my eyebrows rise of their own volition. “You were rich?”

“Nope. Not me, my parents. My granddaddy and his brothers owned one of the biggest department store chains in the Southeast. Biggest in North Carolina, that's for sure.”

I tried to remember a department store chain named Purvis but couldn't. He read my mind.

“The family sold it after World War II. New owners changed the name and it went public. I could tell you which one it was, but you wouldn't believe it.”

“Try me, dear.”

He took another swig, perhaps to fortify himself for my shocked response, but then got distracted. “You ever been to Paris, little lady?”

“Only in my dreams.”

“There's nothing like the Seine on an August morning. The light! Did you know Paris is called the City of Light?”

It was time to steer him back to my original agenda, but I wanted to make a short detour first. “Do you know the Barras family socially?”

He snorted, spraying me with Pernod. “Who the hell would want to? They're all snobs,” he said. “La-dee-das. But you know what? They're all losers. Every last one of them.”

“Is that a no?”

For reasons known only to him, he put that particular
bottle away and brought out a third. What a waste of the magnificent Wooton desk.

“Of course I know them. Lottie Bell Barras Bowman is a rich old bitch who once had my mama blackballed from the Charlotte Women's Club. The stuff you bought belonged to her sister-in-law, Lula Mae. Anyway, Lottie Bell's kids, Bobby and Hattie—twins—were in my class at the academy. Stuck-up little shits, the both of them. Pardon my French.” He laughed.

“Go on.”

“Garland and Toxie are a couple of years younger, but I knew them. Noses always in the air. Squire—well, he's dead now. But he was the only one of the bunch who would give you the time of day. Everyone at school hated them. Do you know what we kids used to call them in school?”

“No, but could we get back to the auction?” I asked quickly.

“
Bare ass
, that's what!”

I smiled to appease him. “Do you mind if I talk to Jimbo and Skeet?” I asked pleasantly.

“Only Lula Mae was different,” he said. He had the tenacity of a teenager trying to borrow the family car. “She was a friend of Mama's. I used to go along with my mama to Lula Mae's sometimes when I was a little kid. Believe it or not that's when I first got interested in the business. Antiques, I mean.

“My mama had expensive furniture, but it was all new. That blond, bland, postwar stuff. Expensive junk, all of it. Thank God most of that stuff just gets thrown out. It's just like the postwar architecture. They're tearing down a lot of those buildings now from the fifties and sixties. They just don't age.”

He had a point. Fortunately the humans from my generation don't have to suffer the same fate. What with mir
acle creams and laser rays, my generation can maintain their facades deep into their dotage.

“So,” I said, “you don't mind if I talk to Jimbo and Skeet?”

“Excuse me, little lady.”

He got up from his chair by the desk and exited the cubicle. He was gone only a minute, but when he returned he seemed considerably more relaxed.

“Too late, little lady. Seems they've already left on their next delivery.” I could feel his eyes give me a quick once-over. “Say, you wouldn't be free for lunch, would you?”

I politely reminded him that since, by his own reckoning, it was already teatime, lunch had to be a thing of the past. He took my refusal graciously and gave me the customary hug and a peck. No doubt as soon as I left Purvis promptly pursued the Pernod.

 

Think me crazy, but the next person on my list to see was eighty-seven-year-old Lottie Bell Barras Bowman. No, I didn't for a minute think she was physically capable of killing a young man in his twenties and stuffing him into an armoire. But she
did
have three names that began with the letter “B” and, according to Purvis, plenty of doh-re-mi. She could have hired a killer—assuming such things are done in Charlotte, of course. It was beyond me just why an elderly woman would want to have someone killed, but it seemed a worthwhile thing to check out. If the world is indeed going to hell in a handbasket, as Mama claims, there is no reason Charlotte should be exempt.

They say that old money can afford to present a shabby side to the world. It has nothing to prove. By this measuring stick the Barras family made its fortune when God was still a child. The magnificent Greek Revival mansion of Lottie Bell Barras Bowman is all but hidden behind a
tangle of overgrown camellias, azaleas, and aucuba. From above, the house is screened by a canopy of immense laurel oaks. Monkeys and parrots would not have seemed out of place in this setting.

Perhaps the jungle was meant to discourage casual visitors. As it was, I tripped twice on vinca major that was crowding the cracked, tilted squares of the front walk. I snagged my pantyhose on a dead branch poking out of a monstrous aucuba. I was swatted in the face by a branch hanging from one of the tree-sized camellias. Had I been there to push a religion, I'm quite sure I would have turned around and set my sights on some tropical jungle where the natives are more forthright in their persecution. A large pot over a cannibal cookfire gets right to the point.

I should have done the polite thing and called first, but Lottie Bell Barras Bowman does not list her number in the book. Fortunately among us dealers it was common knowledge where the old money lives. You never know what you might find in the curbside trash outside some of those homes.

Much to my surprise, Mrs. Bowman herself answered the door. I don't mean this unkindly, but she appeared older than her garden. Perhaps she did know God when he was a boy.

“Mrs. Bowman?”

She stared at me with eyes that had once been blue, but which time had faded to a pale, watery gray. I had no doubt she was Lottie Bell Barras Bowman because I had seen her picture on numerous occasions in the society write-ups. And since she was wearing a cashmere sweater, an English wool tweed skirt, and a triple strand of eight-millimeter cultured pearls, there was no mistaking her for an elderly housekeeper. Old money, as you know, insists on uniforms.

I extended my hand. “I'm Abigail Timberlake, Miss Bowman.”

Her hand was like ice, but her smile was as warm as a June day. “Come on in, dear. You'll catch your death of cold standing out there.”

I accepted her invitation gratefully, although it was a typical Charlotte December day, sunny and sixty degrees. It was fierce wild beasts that might be lurking in the underbrush that worried me.

Perhaps I should be ashamed to admit this, but the contents of Mrs. Bowman's house made my mouth water. I pointed to the carpet in the foyer.

“Ooh, I love this carpet,” I gushed. “Hadji Jallili Tabriz?”

“I beg your pardon?”

I repeated my question.

She gave me an odd look. “The rug belonged to Granny Barras. It's old, so don't mind the worn spots.”

She led down a long, portrait-hung hallway. Her ancestors smiled at us from elaborate gilt frames. Eventually we turned left into a magnificently appointed parlor. The drapes covering the windows were almost thick enough to supply extra support for the ceiling. It would have been dark as a tomb in there, had it not been for the chandelier. When I saw it, I gasped.

“And that chandelier! Irish Waterford, right? Circa 1800?”

“Would you mind speaking a little louder, dear?”

I repeated my question, while she stared at my lips.

“Granny Neely, Mama's mama, brought that over from England. I had to have it wired myself. Even Mama was afraid of electricity. Whenever there was a storm she couldn't wait for the power to fail so she could light the hurricane lamps. Your ever lived through a hurricane?”

“Hugo,” I said, careful to look at her.

“Lordy, that
was
a storm.”

There were tea things laid out on a low mahogany table with claw feet. English, I thought. The tea set was Tiffany
silver in the Japanesque style, circa 1870. The teapot was silver, with copper, gold, and ivory accents.

“You really didn't have to go to all this trouble,” I protested. “After all, I invited myself.”

“Nonsense, dear. Do you prefer lemon or cream?”

“Cream, please,” I said, and I knew it would be the real stuff.

As she was pouring I noticed for the first time a huge blue stone on the ring finger of her right hand. The stone—rock, really—was a true cornflower-blue, and as clear as the Caribbean on a windless day.

“That's a lovely ring,” I couldn't help but say, when I had her attention again. “A sapphire?”

She glanced down at her hand. “I suppose it is. Daddy picked it up on one of his travels. India, I think. No, Kashmir.”

I gulped. Kashmir sapphires were discovered only in 1888. By 1925 the mines had been all but exhausted. In the last twenty years, no major stone claiming this provenance has appeared on the market.