Poison Ivory (7 page)

T
here’s no need to confess anything, dear; I’ve already guessed. But I’ve seen a product advertised on TV that the manufacture claims can touch up your roots instantly—no muss, no fuss.”

“Hissss. I like that! And I thought you Southern women were as soft and sweet as overripe peaches.”

“We are. But you have heard of peach schnapps, haven’t you?”

“Touché. Anyway, my confession has nothing to do with my hair—which admittedly needs a touch-up, but the fact that I’ve been dropping by your shop from time to time and spying on you.”

“You have—oh, you’re just pulling my leg! Miss Willifrocke, I may not be the most observant person in the world, but even I would notice someone like you.”

Pagan threw back her head and laughed with apparent delight. “I used a number of disguises:
big hats, wigs, scarves, glasses, stage makeup. I must have been in the Den of Antiquity a dozen times.”

“Why?”

“Because I was walking up King Street one day and your window displays captivated me. Who does your displays, by the way?”

“Usually I do—although lately my assistant has been taking over.”

“And lately the quality has suffered. Anyway, I was so taken with your style that I slipped in to peruse your merchandise, and when I left I said to myself, ‘If this woman would decorate my house, instead of the arrogant, dichromatic Maurice, I would be a happy camper’—and I hate the outdoors!

“Look, I know that you’re not a decorator, but an antiques dealer, but still, I kept coming back, because I was drawn by your exquisite sense of taste. I just couldn’t help myself, and I was learning so much. And then it happened.”

As if on cue Gwen plunked down large ramekins of bread pudding in front of each of us. “Will there be anything else?”

“No,” we said in unison.

I glanced fleetingly at my tower of melting whipped cream and breathed in deeply the heady aroma of warm rum sauce. The truth be told, I couldn’t resist shoveling a huge bite into my mouth before following through on Pagan’s last statement.

“And then
what
happened?” I asked.

“Honestly, Miss Timberlake, your manners are atrocious.”

“But this is so good.” I smacked my lips. “Go ahead, take a bite.”

Pagan Willifrocke took three bites before she could speak again, and even then her mouth wasn’t clear of food. “What happened is that I had this brilliant idea for a television series. Of course it would star myself—I am, after all, a well-known TV personality, but you would be my costar.”

“Me?” Thank heavens I was between bites.

“Yes, you. Granted, you’re uncommonly—uh, petite—but not too unattractive, and like I said, you are a very talented designer. Think what this show would do for your business.”

“But I don’t even know what this show is about!”

“It would be a show about redecorating Lowcountry homes, using your shop, and your skills, to bring about the physical transformation, but my on-camera presence, as the narrator, to make the show happen. The series would be called ‘Where There’s a Willifrocke, There’s a Way.’” Her voice had risen an octave and her eyes were shining with excitement. “Oh, Miss Timberlake, can’t you just see it?”

“Yes, but—but it sounds like such a lot of work.”

“Don’t worry about that. There’ll be a production crew at your disposal: carpenters, painters, paperhangers, seamstresses, you name it. The
truth is that you’ll be the real star of the show, but”—she cackled evilly—“I don’t care, I want my name in the title and top billing. Let’s face it, Miss Timberlake, while it’s true that I’m hands down far more attractive than you, I don’t have the talent you do. When these fabulous looks of mine start to go, then what will I do? Open an antiques store?” She cackled again.

“What about a career as a motivational speaker? Or perhaps a therapist?”

“Nah, therapists are all a bunch of quirks.”

“You mean quacks?”

“I meant what I said. Miss Timberlake, I’m afraid I’m going to have to be pushy on this, but the network is breathing down my neck. They want to get ‘Where There’s a Willifrocke’ on the fall schedule, which means we will have to start shooting immediately.” She reached into a large, rather nice, but faux Gucci tote beside her and withdrew several papers. “If you could just put your John Hancock here, it will secure your position on the show until we arrange for you to sign papers formally with our lawyers. And initial it here, please.”

“Jeepers creepers, Pagan, this is moving awfully fast. How did you know to bring papers here? You didn’t know to expect
me
, did you?”

“Miss Timberlake, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m somewhat of a psychic. Now before you get freaked out, I’ve got to explain what I mean by that: I’m not the woo-woo, here’s your fortune, kind of psychic, but I get these really
strong feelings, you see. Oh heck, why am I trying so hard to convince you? Why don’t I just resort to my backup plan? I know you’re tempted to think of them as your competition, but—I don’t mean to be cruel here—they’re in another class altogether.”

“Whom are you referring to? Are you referring to my friends at The Finer Things?”

“The name says it all, doesn’t it?”

“Give me those papers!” The Rob-Bobs are my best friends, but they are also my chief competitors, and
they
didn’t have a show.

I scribbled where told to, but barely heard another word she said. I might as well have been sitting in Mama’s church on a spring day listening to her priest drone on and on about our fallen natures, while outside just plain old nature beckoned me to take a walk along the waterfront.

It was my cell phone that brought me back to reality. A man’s deep voice—a soothing voice, despite a lot of background noise—politely inquiring about the ad in the paper. Yes, I’d said, looking Pagan straight in the eyes, the ivory was still available, and yes, I’d be happy to meet with him. Just tell me when and where.

“You can’t do this,” Pagan Willifrocke said. She had the temerity to grab my wrist as I stood back from the table.

I snatched the papers with my free hand. “Yes, I can. I didn’t even have a chance to read these.”

“And you won’t!”

The moral to this story, if there is one, is never play keep away with someone whose reach far exceeds yours. Pagan recovered the papers as easily as if she’d taken candy from a newborn baby. Then, upon stuffing them safely back into her faux Gucci tote, she strode angrily from the room, sticking me with the check.

I stared at her retreating bottom: it was disgustingly tight, like a snare drum. “Are you still there?” I said to the caller.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m at Poogan’s Porch now,” I said. “Are you downtown?”

“Yes, ma’am; I have a stall in the City Market.”

The City Market is a two-hundred-year-old institution that is a tourist’s delight—unless said tourist is claustrophobic, or has a migraine. Then it’s like wading in ankle-deep molasses through a maze, while hundreds of very large people pop up right in front of you. At least this is what I hear from my dear sweet husband, Greg. He says he’d rather roll on a bed of hot coals that stretches from Charleston to India than have to look for me in the City Market during the Christmas shopping season.

“How interesting,” I said to the soothing voice. “What is it you sell?”

“Velvet paintings.”

“Even more interesting. There used to be a woman who sold velvet Elvis paintings, velvet Jesus paintings—”

“I bought her out.”

“Wow. So you do the same stuff?”

“A lot of it the same. But this year velvet political paintings are the hot sellers. Velvet Obamas, velvet McCains, of course for a long while there it was velvet Hillaries.”

“Cool beans! Are they campy?”

“They’re supposed to be. Of course some folks think they’re as serious as a three car collision, and that’s all right with me too, on account of it’s the paintings that pay the bills. Who am I to interpret art—even if I created it? Right?”

“You’re darn tooting.”

“So, Miss—uh—”

“Nagpa Frockewilli,” I said. Perhaps I could think faster on my feet if they weren’t a mere size four.

“Now that’s a new for me. What is it, Greek?”

“Israelian”

“You mean Hebrew?”

“Yes, of course. Silly me, I keep forgetting my English translations.”

“My name is Phillip Canary,” he said. “Like the bird. Hey look, I’ll be here until six, so you can just come by anytime you like and we can talk. How does that sound?”

“Super. I’ll see you in twenty.”

Poogan’s Porch is said to be haunted by the spirit of a lonely, frustrated woman. While I am seldom lonely, I do get frustrated from time to time, and it seemed that this particular afternoon the Apparition American resident of Poogan’s Porch was
doing her best to assist in the process. I’m not sure I can even enumerate all the things that happened to slow my departure—besides my credit card dropping from my fumbling fingers and getting wedged between two boards of the restaurant floor—but it took me much longer than twenty minutes to even leave the place.

Once outside, into fresh, unhaunted air, I strode quickly up Queen Street and turned left on Meeting. Two blocks later I crossed Meeting and went over to where the famed Market Hall stands as a majestic landmark. On the second story of this picturesque building is the Museum of the Confederacy, which is run by the Daughters of the Confederacy (although I doubt if many of them are really old enough to have been part of it), and behind it stretch the four long sheds of the actual market.

The Charleston City Market is not a flea market, nor is it, as some have suggested, a place to buy upscale gifts at bargain prices. It is, however, the place to buy “something” for that person or persons back home who stayed behind to water the lawn, take in the paper, or scoop the litter box.

If you want to buy an authentic pashmina and spend well over a hundred dollars for it, shop on Kings Street. Buy an even prettier shawl for a fraction of the price in the City Market. As for the authenticity of either shawl—they both bear very similar, if not identical, labels. Some items are peculiarly Charlestonian, like benne wafers and sweetgrass baskets; some things are generi
cally coastal, like carved pelicans and porpoise sculptures. There are leather wallets, handbags, T-shirts, costume jewelry, and, for at least the last four years, velvet Elvis paintings.

Phillip Canary’s stall was exactly where I remembered it. I could see velvet paintings hanging from a clothesline and perched on easels, but I couldn’t get anywhere close enough to get his attention because of the crush of people that had gathered to watch him paint. In such a situation, what was a well-bred Southern lady to do? Holler? I think not.

“Achoo!” It was a fake sneeze, but very convincing. I followed it with five more, in quick succession. Although most folks haven’t caught on to the role that handshakes play in spreading disease, the sound of a sneeze, especially one that is up close and personal, is enough to making anyone recoil. Every time I sneezed, when someone pulled back in either alarm, or disgust, I slipped right past him. Or her. Before you could say
gesundheit
, I was in the front row.

Phillip Canary had neglected to mention that he was an extraordinarily handsome man. He was built like a quarterback, and his shoulders and pecs strained against a sweatshirt that appeared to be a size too small, although the bright yellow color of the garment was the perfect foil for Phillip’s dark brown skin. His tightly curled black hair was cropped short. His skin was clear, his nose broad and symmetrical, and his lips full and well-defined.

He had yet to spot me, so I studied his work. There were indeed a number of velvet Elvis paintings: young Elvises, mature Elvises, fat Elvises, a presumably dead Elvis with wings. There were also several velvet Jesus paintings, including a black Jesus, and a black Jesus with Elvis standing together under a rainbow. But it was his political paintings that drew the most comments from the crowd.

“Now looky there, at that painting of President Bush standing in a pit surrounded by all them flames. What in tarnation do you reckon that’s s’pose to mean?” The speaker was male, and may well have been from the sticks of South Carolina.

“I think that it means that he’s in hell, where he belongs,” said a woman, whose rigid control of her diphthongs tipped me off to her status as a tourist from one of the square states.

“Well, he ain’t dead, so there.”

“Oh my, what do we have here? Nancy Pelosi pole-dancing? Now
that’s
disrespectful!”

“Serves you right, missy.”

“Hey, watch who you’re calling missy,
mis
ter!”

I might have called a time-out on the quarreling, middle-aged children, but Phillip looked up then and we made eye contact. Perhaps he’d seen me leave or enter my shop sometime and I looked familiar. At any rate, he stopped painting, and oblivious to the stares and murmurs of the crowd, he walked over to me.

“It’s in the trunk of my car. If you’ll keep an eye on my money box, I’ll go and get it.”

“Get what?”

“Your painting, of course.”

“What painting?”

“The nude Hillary. You wanted her on the unicorn, but without Josh Brogan, am I right?”

“Absolutely.” I winked. Oh what fun! I’d only met this handsome man, and I’d been recruited to be in on a game of some kind. This was my kind of sleuthing.

Phillip was gone one minute, and upon his return he handed me something wrapped in plain brown paper. Instinctively, I opened it.

“Oh my stars!” I exclaimed. “It
is
Hillary in the nude—and she’s riding sidesaddle, no less. You could have at least crossed her arms. When a woman reaches a certain age, those puppies relocate. Really, Mr. Canary, no one looks good with their nipples in their lap.”

The crowed roared with laughter.

Emboldened by the thought that I might someday be a stand-up comedienne, I continued. “Who, pray tell, was your model for this depressing take on the female form?”

Phillip frowned. “Why you, of course, Mrs. Dougherty.”