Monet Talks (20 page)

The runner on the broad staircase that led to the second floor was silk needlepoint and featured green acanthus leaves on a beige background. It was the only ornamentation I saw that wasn't bird related. I followed the pleasant anomaly up the stairs with a mounting sense of excitement and danger. Experience has taught
me that escaping from upstairs windows can be a mite challenging.

If, after all, Bubba Johnson was in the house, he surely could not have heard me. I work hard to keep my weight down, so as a consequence, I am light enough to walk on figments of my imagination. And anyway, the racket produced by the feathered crowd was loud enough to drown out a gathering of Hell's Angels.

There were just as many birds upstairs as there were downstairs, perhaps even more, given that there wasn't space set aside for a cage museum—which is not to say the upstairs lacked a museum. The first room I came to was filled with birds; not in cages, but sitting on perches, pecking at walls, even flying through the air. It took a few seconds for it to register with my bird brain that not one of the creatures was moving, even the soaring swallows over my head. These were real birds, all right, but stuffed. The ones that appeared to be airborne were suspended by fine wires. They represented many sizes and species, but the one thing they all had in common were beady black eyes.

“Holy guacamole,” I said, and backed from the room.

 

Why is it that every time I search for something, I find it in the last place I look? Alas, I didn't find Mama. What I found in the last bed
room I searched was, of course, more birds, but there was also a cot and a small desk piled with papers. Parked neatly in front of the modest bed was a pair of Tweety Bird slippers.

While one might say that I rifled through the papers, I much prefer the word “sorted.” I also sorted through the contents of the desk. What I found was the normal stuff of everyday living: bills, insurance papers, medical files—nothing related to his dry cleaning stores that I could see. No doubt Bubba Johnson had an office outside the home.

It is darn hard to find something when you don't know what you're looking for. If you keep at it too long, you're bound to find trouble. When I was done with Bubba's desk, I did only a cursory search of the two massive armoires that served as his closet. Neither held anything out of the ordinary for a middle-aged businessman—if you discount a red feather boa, which I did. In the absence of a pair of matching heels, size twelve, it was reasonable to assume that the boa was part of his avian collection.

Now it was time to skedaddle. The way I saw it, I had just as much chance of being caught sneaking out the rear as I did making a grand exit out the front door. Probably even more. So holding my head as high as it could go, I tugged the towering bronze door shut behind me and sashayed down the walk, from the
steps to the street, like I was Mrs. Bubba Johnson, mistress of the manor.

“She doesn't look rich to me,” I heard a New York woman say, in that pleasantly nasal tone that is that city's trademark.

“Maybe she's the maid,” her male companion said.

I turned right on East Bay and picked up speed.

“Don't waste film on her,” the woman said.

“It's the digital camera,” the man said. “There's unlimited room.”

“Then hurry.”

And that's exactly what
I
did. I broke into a trot and didn't stop until I reached one of my favorite places in all of Charleston.

 

Waterfront Park is arguably the loveliest urban park in the nation, situated as it is along the harbor, and just yards from the spot where the Atlantic Ocean is born. The most famous landmark within the park is Pineapple Fountain (the very same fountain to which I'd been instructed to bring a mythical Monet). Oddly enough, the fountain is shaped like a prickly Hawaiian fruit. Another fine example of garden architecture is the gravel walk, which was the brainchild of our mayor, who collected gravel samples from around the country to find just the right grade.

A massive container ship was inching its way
out of the harbor, and I sat on a bench to watch it pass. Big ships stir my blood, causing me to think of travel to exotic ports of call. One of my dreams is to shop for antiques in the Far East and ship them back to the States for resale. So far I haven't had the courage to undertake something that grand.

But dreams are the foundation of action, and I was well on my way to building my castle in the sky when something landed at my feet. For a split second I thought that a squirrel had fallen from a live oak branch overhead. When I looked down, I saw a manila envelope, a padded one, similar to the envelope that Mama's crinoline had arrived in. Yet when I glanced around, there wasn't anyone within ten feet of me. There was, however, a smattering of sweltering tourists strolling in both directions.

Perhaps it was stupid of me, but I picked up the package and held it aloft. “Did anyone drop this?” I called.

A few people turned. No one responded.

“Someone dropped a package,” I shouted through cupped hands.

“Could be a bomb,” a tall woman with a mop of blond curls muttered. She strode swiftly away. Thank heavens the rest of the tourists paid no attention to her.

I examined the package. It had
my
name written on it—in small block letters, written
with a felt-tip pen. In fact, the letters were so tiny they ran together. But there was no mistaking that it read Abigail Washburn.

How could this be? I looked up. There was no one in the tree. I didn't for a second believe it had fallen from Heaven because, as everyone knows, that celestial city is directly above Australia. Besides, God has better penmanship than that—at least I assume She does.

I shook the package and heard a faint clink. Could I have lost some keys that were being returned? That would certainly explain how Monet's birdnapper had gained entrance to my shop. The only problem with this explanation was—I hadn't lost any keys!

Well, there was only one way to find out. With trembling fingers I ripped open the flap and peered inside. If I sat staring stupidly at the contents of the envelope, it was because I couldn't believe my eyes.

C
ould those possibly be Mama's pearls? Mama
never
took them off, not even when she showered. They were the last gift Daddy gave her, and in her mind, to remove the pearls would be to fully acknowledge that Daddy was dead and it was time to move on with her life. To take the pearls off would mean it was time to leave behind the world of crinolines, full-circle skirts, and pinched waists, of
Donna Reed
and
Father Knows Best,
of cars with fins, Bryl Creem, drive-in movies, and families holding hands as they walked to church—in short, the way the world was the day Daddy died.

A gemologist who attends Mama's church once remarked to Mama that her pearls were the finest he'd ever seen. He asked her if he could have the pleasure of examining them. Mama said he could, but on the condition that the pearls remained around her neck. When he was through—the examination took place in
the church kitchen—a very skeptical gemologist said that there was no way these pearls could look like that and be as old as Mama claimed. Mama didn't mind being called a liar, because she knew the truth. Except for a small nick on one pearl—thanks to my teething brother Toy—the gems were every bit as pearlescent as the day they were plucked from the sea.

I sifted the string of pearls slowly through my fingers, dreading what I might find. Sure enough, the third pearl from the center bore the telltale scar of my baby brother's tooth. With tears blurring my vision, I scanned the clumps of tourists in vain for anyone looking suspicious—well, there was one.

Out of perhaps fifty people, only one of them was dressed modestly, in a manner befitting a visit to one of the nation's most historic cities. This woman's outfit came to well below the knees, and her upper arms were covered, surely a blessing when the subject is over fifty. There was one caveat, however. The lady in question was a nun! I couldn't very well run after a nun to ask her if she'd lobbed a package into my lap. Could I?

You bet your best coon dog I could. Gripping the pearls tightly in one hand, my purse in the other, I raced after the nun like Mama's life depended on it. Just as I reached grabbing distance, I tripped on a root that extended into the
gravel walk and went flying. I flew right into the nun, knocking her down. I ended up on top of her, which, I'm sure, looked to the rest of the tourists as if I'd tackled the poor woman.

I scrambled to my feet, perfectly unharmed. “I'm so sorry,” I said.

The nun took longer to get up. There was the imprint of gravel on her bare shins and on the palms of her hands. Her wimple was askew and there was a look of utter terror in her eyes.

“Que?”

“I said ‘I'm sorry.'”

“No hablo ingles.”

“Oh my, you don't speak English, do you?”

Despite what sounded like loud protests in Spanish, I tried to help the woman up.

But the protests grew louder, and the next thing I knew, I went sprawling again. This time the nun dodged me, and I skimmed along the surface of the gravel walk like a water ski, sending up a spray of small pebbles. I came to a gradual stop, miraculously unhurt, only to be pummeled by a thousand fists. The louder I yelled and squirmed, the harder and more frequent the blows. Finally able to twist around, I beheld five hundred angry women, each of them swinging a monstrous black purse just as easily as if it were a bag of marshmallows.

“Bully!” one of my attackers screamed.

“Pick on someone your own size!” another shouted.

“And they call this the Holy City,” a third voice muttered. That comment hurt me most of all.

 

“So Abby,” Bob said, returning with my drink, “how many women were there exactly?” My drink, by the way, was a diet cola, and we were sitting in a booth of the Subway restaurant on East Bay, not far from the scene of my crime. After managing to escape from the nun's benefactors, I'd called my friends on my cell phone. They'd been incredulous at first, then nearly busted their guts laughing, but had now settled into their serious, nit-picking stage.

“There were five hundred,” I said—okay, maybe minus the hundred, but they came out of nowhere. Besides, it was none of their business.

“Good for them,” Rob said.

“Excuse me?”

“Hmm, let's see. A nun gets assaulted in broad daylight, in a heavily trafficked area, and no one comes to her aid—what would that say about us as a society?”

“But I wasn't assaulting her!”

“You're lucky you didn't end up in jail, Abby.”

I was still clutching Mama's pearls in my left hand, which I now waved. “I thought she might have been the courier. Obviously I was wrong.”

“What makes you say that?” Bob asked.

“Well, because—she, uh—didn't even speak English.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she said that she didn't.”

“I'm the Prime Minister of Canada,” Bob said. “Do you believe that?”

“Of course not.”

“Then who is?”

“I don't know,” I wailed in exasperation. Sadly, I'm not alone in my ignorance.

“My point is, Abby, that saying so doesn't make it so. That nun could have been a drama student from the College of Charleston.”

“Ditto for those five hundred women,” Rob said.

I flashed him my tongue. “What do I do now? Go to the police with these? You know what they'll say. I don't have proof, but they'll write it up, yada yada yada.”

Rob slipped into my side of the booth and started rubbing my neck. “Where's Greg?”

“Still dealing with his best friend's marital crisis. But he should be home at any time. Do you think I should call him?”

“And tell him what? That an angel dropped Mozella's pearls in your lap, which caused you to go berserk and tackle a nun?”

“Wait until he gets home,” Bob said. “It will be easier telling him face-to-face.”

I took a deep breath. “I suppose while I'm at
it I should tell him I broke into Bubba Johnson's house and searched every room, including his armoires.”

“Abby, you didn't,” my friends cried in unison.

“I'm afraid I did. But it wasn't really breaking and entering, because nothing got broken. I used a key—good golly, Miss Molly! I still have the key!” I dug in my pocketbook and removed the evidence. “What do I do now?”

Rob grinned. “Let me guess. Under the mat, right?”

“Fake rock by the fountain. Come on, guys, what should I do?”

“Toss it into the harbor,” Bob said.

Rob and I stared at him. Bob Steuben, the good Catholic boy from Toledo, breaks eggs, not rules. Perhaps my life of crime was rubbing off on him.

“Well, I was only an eighth grader,” he said quickly. “They were my uncle's car keys, which I sort of borrowed, so that I could sort of borrow his car. Afterward I got to thinking that if he were to have them checked for prints, I could end up in big trouble, so I tossed his key ring into Lake Erie. It had all his keys on it, even his mailbox key.”

“And why would he check his keys for prints?” Rob asked, before I could spit the words out.

“Uncle Bob was a weird bird; you never knew what he would do. And like I said, I was just a kid. I had a right to be paranoid.”

Rob winked knowingly at me. “Yup, I guess you did. But Abby, he's right about the keys. Putting them in a fake rock is just a break-in waiting to happen. If he ever finds out they're missing, maybe he'll wise up. But enough of that, what did you see in the mansion?”

“Birds.”

“Besides birds.”

“Just birds, I'm telling you. Maybe thousands of them. Even a collection of dead birds. It was really creepy.”

“But what about furniture? Anything interesting?”

“No antiques, Rob—in fact, no furniture except for the kitchen and one bedroom.”

“Wow,” Bob said, “and that's a huge house. Maybe six thousand feet or more. Abby, this has got to be your guy.”

“Somehow I don't think so. Bubba also has a birdcage collection. Some of them are fabulous. I think he had a legitimate reason for wanting the Taj. Whoever it is that has Monet—and Mama—obviously wants something more.”

Rob patted my back. “Darling, you look like you could stand to eat something. Tell me what you want. Your wish is my command—but I recommend their wraps.”

Bob reared back in his seat like he'd been slapped. “We are not going to lunch in a fast food restaurant.”

“Maybe you're not, but I am. How about you, Abby?”

“No thanks, I'm really not hungry. But you go ahead.”

Rob hopped to his feet. He has the metabolism of a teenager—when not faced with Bob's cooking. I could sense that Bob was both hurt and angry. But if he was hoping for an apology from me, he was out of luck. Rob put up with more of his partner's culinary nonsense than I ever could. The poor man had a right to eat what he wanted every now and then.

“I know what you're thinking,” Bob suddenly boomed, almost causing me to spill my cola.

“I'm sorry, Bob—except that I'm not sorry—oh heck, I'm not sure what to say.”

He grabbed my hand, the one holding the pearls. “It's all right, Abby. I know that I can be overbearing when it comes to food. There's no need to apologize—” I felt him tug gently on the pearls. “Hey, do you mind if I look at these for a minute?”

Actually, I did mind. If they couldn't be around Mama's neck, then they should be in contact with me, since I was her flesh and blood. It seemed almost sacrilegious to wear
them around my neck, but I couldn't very well just carry them around in my hand, could I? Then again, I didn't want to be weird about it, either.

“Just for a minute,” I said, handing them over like I was passing my firstborn to a clumsy baby-sitter.

Bob took the gems solemnly and began to slip them through his fingers as if they were worry beads. Then he frowned.

“What is it, Bob?”

“Just a second.” Then, before I could utter a single word of protest, he brought the pearls up to his mouth and began to rub them against his teeth.

“Bob!” I shrieked.

Besides Rob, there were three customers and two employees in the Subway shop. All of them stopped what they were doing to stare at me.

“They aren't real,” Bob said calmly.

“What?”

“They're fakes, Abby.”

I snatched back Mama's pearls and patted them gently against my blouse. “Papa loved Mama with all his heart. He never would have given her simulated pearls and then lied about it.”

“I'm sure your papa didn't. I'm saying that these aren't your mama's pearls. Abby, you know as well as I do that the first test for au
thenticity is to rub them against your teeth. Fakes will feel smooth, but the real McCoy will feel gritty.”

“But what about this nick? Mama's pearls have one in this exact spot.”

“Look closely, Abby. That's a fresh nick.”

“But that doesn't make a lick of sense.”

“What doesn't?” Rob asked. He had two wrap sandwiches, one of which he set down in front of me. Bob looked fit to be tied.

“Bob said these pearls are fake,” I said, “even though they have a nick right there. See? Why would someone send me fakes when they have Mama, who has the real thing?”

“Maybe they don't have Mozella, darling.”

“Come again?”

Rob slid back in next to me. “Let's review the facts: first your bird goes missing, then Mozella, then you get her petticoats, and now this. When was the last time you got one of those bizarre calls from the bird? Before, or after, you got the petticoats?”

“They're crinolines, dear. But now that you mention it, the last time I got one of those calls was before that package arrived at the shop.”

“And where was it, Abby? I mean, exactly.”

“In the alley, leaning against the door.”

“Don't you think it's a little odd that whoever—let's call it a guy for now—left the
package outside, when he presumably has a key?”

“Yes, but—oh man, I'm so confused.”

Rob began patting me on the back like I was choking, which I was, in a way; I was mentally choking on my thoughts. But just as the Heimlich maneuver, not patting, is the preferred way to alleviate choking on food, there must be some other way to clear our thought conduits.

“Please,” I begged. “That hurts.”

“Sorry, Abby, I was just trying to be pastoral.”

“Rob wanted to be a rabbi when he was growing up,” Bob said.

I looked at my handsome friend. “Is he kidding?”

“No. But it was a short-lived phase, right between cowboy and Davy Crockett.”

My cell phone rang. Normally I turn it off when I'm in restaurants, and I absolutely always do when at the movies or in church, but we were originally only stopping by Subway for something cold to drink.

“It's blocked,” I said.

“Answer it anyway,” Bob said. “I've got a feeling it's important.” Apparently, before the days of caller ID, Bob had a reputation of being able to guess who was calling. But this supposed psychic ability of his did not apply to anything except telephones.

“Hello,” I said.

“Abby?”

“Who's calling, please?”

“Pretty dish.”

“Excuse me?”

“Four and twenty King.”

My heart pounded. “Please—whoever you are—please don't hurt my mother. I'll give you whatever it is you want—” I got a dial tone.

“What did they say?” my friends demanded in unison.

My hand was shaking so bad I dropped my cell phone, which then skidded across the table and landed in Bob's lap. I waited until he handed it back before answering.

“It was definitely Monet again. He said ‘pretty dish,' and then gave me an address on King Street. Whose shop is at 24 King?”