Poison Ivory (9 page)

“You see that ship down there being loaded?” Taiga asked. She hadn’t even turned around to confirm my presence.

“What about it?”

“Read the name—please.”

“S.S.
Taiga.
” My heart skipped a beat, but then, thank heavens, common sense took over. “What does that prove? Maybe you work here, you saw the name on the boat, so you tell me that’s your name as well, big deal. My name is Statue of Liberty. So what?”

“Abby, sarcasm seldom becomes anyone, and I regret to say that you are not the exception.” She opened her own bag, which I
know
came from Target, because I have one just like it at home. “Here, look at my license. As it happens, this was my daddy’s first container ship, and I’m getting ready to retire it. I own a fleet of them. Sixteen in all—but they don’t all sail into Charleston. Some are Los Angeles–based, while most of them sail between the Continent and New York.”

I stared in disbelief. “Why I’ll be dippity-doodled,” I finally said. “You really are Taiga Fünstergarten—with an umlaut. Or else you’ve stolen her wallet. Nevertheless, this doesn’t prove that this is your boat.”

“Ah, my dear Abby,” she said. And although she had to be at least a decade younger than me, she sounded like a tired old aunt. “If you represent the best of what this nation has to offer, then
we are in worse shape than I thought. Tell me, how many Taiga Fünstergartens are there in the Charleston phone book, listed, or unlisted?”

“Like I said, you could have stolen the ID.”

“With a photo of me included.”

“That can be doctored.”

“I’ll grant you that. So come, let’s get back in the car and we’ll drive around to the dock—although I know that a dock might not be your favorite location right now—and I’ll introduce you to the captain. Will that make a believer out of you?”

I know, she could have been bluffing even then, but I pride myself on picking up on the nuances of people’s voices, and Taiga sounded resigned, as opposed to anxious. I suddenly realized that she knew that I would eventually believe her; it was just a matter of her taking me through the tedious steps of proving who she was.

“Don’t bother yourself, dear; I believe you. But allow me to say, you are the first fabulously rich person I know who dresses like a—uh—”

“Regular person?”

“Yes, but a nonslutty regular woman, and that’s how it should be. Nowadays folks go shopping in spandex shorts and halter tops—Never mind that. Why did you kidnap me?”

“Saffron is just down the street. As I’m sure you know, they have fabulous desserts. We can talk over early tea—English style.”

Saffron Café and Bakery is one of Charleston’s culinary jewels. The menu for the main courses is predominantly Mediterranean, but the desserts
seem pretty much American to me—well, except maybe for baklava and the German chocolate cake. Everything, however, is good—no, make that superb. There is no such thing as getting a bad meal at Saffron.

“No thanks,” I said. “I just had bread pudding at Poogan’s Porch.”

“Then have a cup of coffee on me and watch me eat. It’s a better place to set a scene than standing on the roof of a parking garage.”

“Say what?”

“You’re better off not trying to figure out everything I say; I enjoy trying to be enigmatic.”

I shook my head, and then nodded vigorously. “You’re definitely an enigma, Taiga Fünstergarten with an omelet. You’re—”

“The word is
umlaut
, Abby, not omelet.”

“I stand corrected. Anyway, as I was about to say, you’re not only enigmatic, you’re also a bit ominous. I have the feeling that I really don’t have much say in the matter. Do I?”

Taiga smiled broadly.

W
hen I observed how moist Taiga’s hunk of German chocolate cake was, I decided a thin slice would be the perfect accompaniment for some mid-afternoon perk-me-up coffee. Taiga stuck with her aforementioned tea.

We made small talk until we were both served, and then I got down to business.

“Okay, Taiga, what’s this all about? Alfie?”

“Abby, playing the dimwit does not become you; you know his name is Conrad.”

“
Excuse
me?”

“My uncle, Conrad Stallings. You just had lunch with him a couple of hours ago.”

“Look, I was being droll, not dull—never mind. So he’s your uncle, huh? What are you two, some kind of tag team?”

Taiga swallowed and daintily patted the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “My uncle is the only family I have left. I’ll be the first to admit that he’s eccentric in an upper class sort of way, but he’s not crazy, Abby. He’s certainly not dan
gerous. Like many of the old families of Charleston, and throughout the Deep South, he’s still living in another era.

“But for Uncle Conrad Stallings—he was my mother’s brother—that era happens to be when Britannia still ruled the waves. He married an English tea planter’s daughter in Malaya—now Malaysia—after World War Two. It was during the last gasp of the British Empire, but for Uncle Conrad it was like coming home. He’s a man born out of his time. Really, Abby, he should have been born two generations earlier.

“At any rate, Uncle Conrad’s bride died two years later in childbirth, and then not long after that Malaysia became an independent country. Did my uncle tell you about the house my mother built for him on James Island?”

During her rather long recital I’d been wolfing down my cake. The number of calories I’d managed to consume that day was plum amazing. A highly creative person—like, say, an author—might suggest that I was eating for two, but that would be medically unlikely, given my current stage of life. Whatever the reason, if I continued inhaling carbohydrates as a way to deal with stress, I might soon have to bounce to work, rather than walk.

“No, although your uncle proposed marriage, we neglected discussing where we would live.”

Taiga sighed. I’d obviously disappointed her again.

“Abby, no one lives in the house my mother built; it was destroyed by Hurricane Hugo. You
should have seen it. My mother had it decorated to look like what an English planter’s house might look in the highlands of Malaysia. But what’s germane to this conversation is that in the gentleman’s sitting room—the den, if you will—she had on display some first rate trophies and a really fine collection of ivory.”

I licked my fork for the second time and was considering a quick pass over Taiga’s still untouched icing when I realized it was my turn to speak. “Um—let me guess, so the real reason you kidnapped me is so that you could convince me just how badly your
eccentric
uncle needs to buy my ivory collection. Since you’re a veritable Miss Money Bags, Miss Fünstergarten, why not just buy him a small African country and let him shoot elephants? That will allow him to feel
veddy
British.”

Taiga leaned over the table. At first I thought she might be protecting her cake, but then she started to whisper. “I would have replaced his ivory sooner, but I respected the ban—oh crap, that’s not the whole truth. I don’t like breaking laws. I might risk millions of dollars in business deals, Abby, but I obey these kinds of laws. Then when I followed my uncle to Chopsticks today and overheard the two of you—well, somehow it didn’t seem like such a big deal.”

I recoiled in surprise, and my response was anything but a whisper. “You were
spying
on us at Chopsticks.”

“I was seated right behind you.”

“But I didn’t see you.”

“Why
would
you notice a frumpy woman in gray clothes?”

“Harrumph,” I said. “Tell me, how many times have you heard that word this year?”

“Seven times. I belong to ASS, the Archaic Speech Society. I make a point of using ‘harrumph’ and other seldom used heard words at least once a week.”

“Back to the subject at hand, dear—”

“Abby, please don’t say no, before you’ve had a chance to drive out and see Uncle Conrad’s simulated tea plantation.”

“But I—”

“You can bring a friend—like that Amazonian who works for you, or your unibrowed best friend, or your petite mother. Or that cute husband of yours.”

“On one condition.

“Name it.”

“You buy me a piece of cake to go, for that Amazonian, and another for my shop assistant with the caterpillar eyebrows.”

It was a done deal. What’s more, when I got home that night I discovered that Taiga Fünstergarten had every dessert in the display case packed up and sent over to my house. My petite mother and cute husband were too busy feeding their faces to be the least bit suspicious.

When Greg and I moved to Charleston five years ago, we asked Mama to move down with
us. At the time, she was ensconced in the house that she and Daddy had raised us in, up in Rock Hill. Although Mama had grown up there, and had many friends in the area, the only family she had left was a cousin who raised laboratory rats, and who was, to be brutally honest, a bit squirrelly.

I adore Mama, as does Greg, and she adores us, and for the most part it has been a mutually beneficial arrangement. We provide my mother with companionship and security, and she cooks fabulous dinners and keeps us from ever getting bored. (As my friend Lydia once said, “Your mother is like a short Jim Carrey with breasts.”)

Initially I was worried that a senior citizen from a small city like Rock Hill would have a hard time adjusting to the sophisticated likes of one of America’s last bastions of culture. But the fact that Mama is stuck in the year 1959 makes her a perfect fit for Charleston. All she had to do was plug into Grace Episcopal Church, join a book club, and seek out the local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the Confederacy, and Mama had more connections than a jumbo box of Tinker Toys.

One would have thought that after consuming all those sweets, Mama would have experienced a sugar crash. Instead, she donned a plum-colored satin dress—full circle skirt, of course—with a self-covered belt that cinched a waist that still measured in the twenties. She slipped her tireless
feet into plum-colored satin pumps, and since it was still the fifties, and it was winter, she set a plum-colored hat upon her silver head (according to Mama, only harlots and movie stars dye their hair—myself excluded).

“How do I look?” she said.

“Like a million bucks,” Greg said, although he was too busy watching
Wipeout
to even glance at her.

“Will your bag be plum as well?” I asked.

“Of course, dear. In my day there was no such thing as overcoordinating. Don’t believe those fashionista men on
Oprah
; they have v-jay-jay envy.”

“Mama!”

“Oh Abby, you’re such a prude.”

“And you’re such a contradiction; neither June Cleaver nor Margaret Anderson would ever have said that.”

“Yes, but both those characters would be dead by now. So tell me, how do I look?”

“Awesome as usual, Mama.”

“I do, don’t I?” she purred. “It’s the prunes, you know. They’ve been proven to keep wrinkles away.”

“Where are you going, Mama? To play bridge?”

“Heavens, no; I gave that up for Lent.”

“It’s not Lent yet. Is it Blue Stockings then?” That’s the name of Mama’s erudite book club. She doesn’t exactly
read
the books, but she does comment on them.

“On a Saturday night? We may be older, Abby, but we have lives too. Who would want to stay in and discuss some boring book on a Saturday night?”

“Then what
will
you be doing?”

“Give it a rest, hon,” Greg said, without tearing his eyes from our fifty-two-inch wall-mounted screen. By the way, when we first bought this monster, it seemed large; now it barely suffices.

That’s what tipped me off! I still didn’t know if Greg and Mama were in cahoots, but I did know that my dearly beloved tends to take a more enlightened position when it comes to feeding and caring for his mother-in-law. My husband’s basic philosophy was that Mama is an adult and can do what she pleases, as long as she is of sound mind and does not unduly hurt herself.

It’s the “sound mind” part that we disagreed on most. “Let’s not forget, dear,” I said, drawing myself up to my full four feet nine inches, “that she is
my
mother.”

“Amen, hallelujah, and pass the peas,” Mama said, “I hear his car now.” She darted into the hall closet like a purple martin, and emerged with a mink stole.

By then my turncoat husband was on his feet, insisting that he help his mother-in-law with the difficult process of laying the stole across her narrow shoulders—a
stole,
for Pete’s sake. It’s not like it had sleeves.

Fortunately, that meant she was ready when
the doorbell rang and I didn’t even have to look at the Timber Snake, much less invite him in. Nonetheless, the quiet evening at home together that Greg and I had planned was about to get even quieter than either of us had anticipated.

“Gregory,” I said archly, “just so you know, there will be no jumpy-jumpy for you tonight,”

“Jumpy-jumpy? What’s that?”

“You’ll just have to wait to find out.”

There was indeed no jumpy-jumpy for Greg, although I was jumpy all night, because Mama didn’t return until six in the morning. I slept fitfully, if at all, and would have called the police, except that my ex-detective husband insisted that it would do no good. She was an adult of sound mind, yada yada yada. And when I tried to jump out of bed at six, I found a strong pair of hands restraining me.

“Abby, hon—”

“Don’t you ‘hon’ me. How would you feel if it was
your
mama in my mama’s shoes?”

“Shocked and relieved.” Greg’s mother is—and I will try to put this kindly—a religious fanatic who wears her hair in what he refers to as a “holy-roller bun,” and who firmly believes that Satan controls the airwaves. I think Greg would be happy if his mother became Amish, because outwardly she’d have to make precious few changes, but it would undoubtedly make her a kinder, gentler person.

“Greg, I can’t take this anymore! The ick factor alone is about to kill me.”

Much to the surprise of both of us, I let him put his arms around me. “Abby, we don’t know for sure if the ick factor is even warranted. Jumping to conclusions might be the only form of exercise your friend Magdalena Yoder gets, but it can lead to a serious case of egg on the face—and trust me, that’s not your best look. Since you seem determined to play the adversarial role, at least allow me to play devil’s advocate, and I’ll try and get the details. But you have to stay out of it. You hear?”

“I hear.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

I feigned sleep for the next hour, but even Mario Lopez couldn’t have kept me in bed when I smelled bacon frying in my kitchen. I hopped out of bed and, without bothering to put on a robe, stormed off to confront my minimadre. Yet when I saw her standing in front of the stove in a pale blue silk dress and a white organza apron, I saw Betty and Bud Anderson’s mother, not my own.

“Coffee, dear?” she asked.

“Funny, I couldn’t smell that over the bacon.”

“It’s Virginia ham. Only the best for my daughter.”

On her way to get the coffee she peeked into the top oven.

“Mama, what’s in there?”

“Why, biscuits of course.”

“Mama, what are you doing?”

“What I always do on Sunday morning: I’m cooking breakfast for my loved ones.”

“Your loved ones are always asleep at this hour on Sunday morning.” I yawned to prove my point.

“Let me stir the grits, dear, and I’ll be right with you.”

I poured my own coffee and dumped in extra sugar, hoping to get a better jolt. The second I sat down again, a fifteen pound blond male jumped into my lap and started to dance. Well, sort of. Dmitri is always happy to see me awake in the morning, even if he’s spent the night in my bed. And I love him enough to be arrested in at least three states, but it is dang hard to sip one’s coffee with a cat’s tail whipping across one’s face.

While I was setting him on the floor and gently urging him to show his affection elsewhere, Mama resumed her explanation. “If you must know,” she said, careful to avoid eye contact, “I’m going to Sunday school this morning,”

I sputtered a mouthful of dark, sweet fluid. “Whoa! This I’ve got to see. I’m coming too.”

“I’m going to St. Michael’s.”

“
Why
? You belong to Grace. If you’re going to switch, at least switch to St. Stephen’s or St. Mark’s.” The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina is, by and large, extremely conservative, and its officials were outraged at the nomination of Gene Robinson, an openly gay bishop. St. Stephen’s and St. Mark’s have reportedly been much
more accepting of gays than most area Episcopal churches.

“The person I’ll be attending with does not approve of gays, Abby.”

“What do you mean by ‘approve of’?”

Mama suddenly found it necessarily to stir the grits vigorously.

I jumped up. After all, the ham slices needed turning—or more likely, to be removed from the stove altogether.

“Mama, are we talking about Buford? Because when we were married, he wasn’t homophobic.”

“Well, he’s not dear—not socially. He just feels that in the religious sphere, they should submit to—uh—majority rule.”

“Repent and disappear? Mama, the Rob-Bobs are like sons to you. They certainly treat you better than your own son, Toy, whom, by the way, I’ve always suspected was—uh, never mind.”

“Was what, dear? Were you going to say
gay
? Well, I asked him, and he said he wasn’t.”

“And Toy’s never lied?”

“I knew you’d say that, so I asked him again. He said the same thing: no. And even if he was, Abby, you know it wouldn’t matter to
me
. You know that I am very tolerant, and I taught you to accept everyone—Why shoot a monkey! My biscuits are burning!”