The Glass Is Always Greener (11 page)

Chapter 13

I
t stood aside as the door opened wider. My eyes opened wider as well. The Ovumkophs, bless their hearts, did not abide by the “less is more” principle. Instead they believed in gilding the lily, the furniture, the walls, even the floor tiles. If they did make it to Heaven and were privileged to walk the celestial golden streets, how would they ever know when they’d arrived?

“Wow,” I finally said.

“You don’t think it’s too much, do you?” There was an unmistakable challenge in the sheepdog’s voice, and a familiar Piedmont accent.

I gave the odd butler a closer look. It wasn’t really a dog,
of course
. It was a woman with an unfortunately large nose and volumes of hair—goodness gracious, and a bucket full of kittens! It was none other than Tina Ovumkoph herself! And in skintight jeans and—oops, when her hair parted for a second, I could see a shamefully low-cut blouse that displayed acres of boobelege. Okay, so maybe that’s not a real word, but it ought to be. This was serious hoochie-mama stuff that shimmied and shook, and which
briefly
made me consider batting for the other team. But only briefly, mind you.

“
Tina?
Is that really you?”

She sighed. “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Timberlake. Sunday is Oscar’s day off, on account of the Bible says we need to give our servants and beasts time to rest too. Oscar’s our butler, by the way.”

“But just out of curiosity, do you have a beast as well? Pastor Sam excluded for now.”

She didn’t even crack a smile. “Oh Mrs. Timberlake, I’m afraid you got the wrong impression somehow. Sam really is the kindest, most gentle man I know.”

“Then you must know some real brutes.”

She stiffened, an act that set the curtains of hair into motion. “I beg your pardon?”

“I saw how he tried, and succeeded, in controlling you at the restaurant. Or was that an act as well?”

Tina brushed a curtain of hair away from her face and practically jammed it behind her left ear. Meanwhile her gaze flitted side to side as if scanning the gold walls for the telltale reflection of a third party.

“I’m fixing to leave him just as soon as I can,” she whispered. “Believe me, I’ve been prayin’ about it right hard, and then today the Lord sends my dear cousin Calamity Jane, like an angel sent from Heaven, to show me the way. I just know it’s a sign. And now you sayin’ this.” She grabbed my hands and held them tightly. “Mrs. Timberlake, you too are like an angel—well, maybe a cherub. You know, one of them baby angels, on account of you being so petite and all.”

At that moment C.J. quietly entered the hall from somewhere behind her, and I desperately wanted to get her attention. I jerked my hands loose from Tina’s and reached up and patted—none too gently—her somewhat drooping cheeks.

“And you, my dear, are the biggest fraud since Bernard Madoff. And stop looking so surprised, will you? I know for a fact that you are not from Shelby, North Carolina. Neither are you related to the legendary, and practically sainted, Granny Ledbetter.”

I’ll say this for Tina. She was smart enough to know that she’d been bested. Rather than deny involvement and dig her hole deeper, she immediately sang like a velvet-throated canary.

“Okay, you’ve caught me; but if your people can cut me a deal, I’ll tell them everything there is to know about that thieving son of a—”

“Bless his mama’s heart,” I said. “I’m sure he broke it a million times when she was alive.”

At that point the big galoot was upon us, but I could tell by her expression that she was not yet a believer. “Abby, why don’t you want me to be happy?” she demanded.

“C.J., I
do
want you to be happy. I want you to be over-the-moon giddy with happiness, but Tina here is not your cousin. Go ahead and tell her, Tina.”

Tina nodded her confirmation. No doubt she was too embarrassed to turn around and speak.

“Look, C.J.,” I said, as I opened my pocketbook and withdrew a thick brown root that I’d purchased in the produce department at the Colony Square Harris Teeter on my way over to the Ovumkophs’ exclusive neighborhood. “I’m going to give Tina the Granny Ledbetter proof of kinship test.”

“What’s that?” Tina said. She held her hands up in front of her face.

“It’s a horseradish root. There isn’t a descendant of C.J.’s Granny Ledbetter—by birth or adoption—who isn’t capable of chewing his or her way through a root this size in two minutes flat. And then you have to sing the Ledbetter family anthem—backward and in Mandarin Chinese. Of course you already know all that.”

“But Abby,” C.J. said, “we—”

“Shhh, hush, sweetie. This is between Tina and me. Go ahead, Tina. Chomp away. I’ll start timing you.”

Tina waved her arms wildly above her head. “I can’t eat horseradish! Get that thing away from me.” She had, by the way, totally lost her strong Carolina accent. If anything, she sounded a bit South Bronx.

“You see,” I said.

“And anyway, I already told you that I wasn’t an ignorant hick like that one.”

“
That
one?” I couldn’t believe how rude Tina was; it was further proof that she came from up the road apiece. All right, not everyone from up the road apiece is rude, or vice versa, but overall I think we Southerners are better at camouflaging our ugly feelings beneath a veneer of perceived manners. As Dr. Phil once said, “Perception is nine tenths of the law”—or something like that.

“Let me show you what a
real
Ledbetter can do,” C.J. said, and threw herself into the thick of things. Before I could react she’d snatched the horseradish root from me and had crunched her way through half of it.

“C.J., stop! I was just making that up! There is no such thing as a Granny Ledbetter kinship test; you ought to know that.”

She shoved the rest of the pungent root into her mouth, chewed a couple of times, and then swallowed. “Of course I know that, Abby. Granny makes them drink an entire pot of road apple tea. So far there’s not been one person willing to try the tea, not even when Granny found an emerald mine on her north forty.”

“North forty what?” I said.

C.J. gave me a pitying look. “Honestly, Abby, sometimes I worry about you.”

“She means her north forty acres of land,” Tina said. “Even a city slicker like me knows that. Honestly, Mrs. Timberlake, I see what she means about you.”

“Oh give it a rest,” I said. But I said it with a warm smile and stretched it out to nine syllables, so it wasn’t like I was being mean.

“Abby,” C.J. said, as soon as her car door slammed shut, “what took you so long?”

“So
long
? What on earth do you mean?”

“I expected you to pick me up at least an hour ago,” C.J. said.

“You did?” I said. “Did you call?”

“Abby, I’m only human; I forgot to plug my phone in last night. But I’ve been sending you signals.”

“Well,” I said, “I must have picked up on them eventually, because here I am. So, tell me, what was it like deep inside the Golden Palace of Excess?”

“You won’t believe what I saw, Abby.”

“Try me,” I said. “I’ve seen some pretty magnificent edifices: I’ve been to Versailles, the Vatican, Buckingham Palace, and of course our very own Biltmore Estate. At one time it was the largest private home in the country. So I can believe just about anything right now.”

C.J. chortled. “Ooh, Abby, I win! Think opposites.”

“
What?
”

“Drywall and cinder blocks; that’s it in all the other rooms. And linoleum floors—if they have any at all. Abby, that monstrosity back there is just an empty shell! It’s like the facade of a movie set.”

“It is?” I said. “No way! The guard shack is as big and comfy as my old house in Charlotte.”

“Yes,” C.J. said, “but it’s just for show. First of all, they didn’t want me tagging home with them, they just wanted a loan—a million-dollar loan. They said that they could tell by your handbag that we were loaded.”

“Huh?”

“Abby,” C.J. said accusingly, “isn’t that a twenty-thousand-dollar Bons Laeppa bag you’re carrying?”

“Yes, but I didn’t buy it, for crying out loud! Mr. Laeppa came into my shop one day and we started talking, and sort of hit it off, and then—well, how can I help it if the bonny Bons with the tight pair of buns found me a mite attractive?”

“Ooh, Abby, you’re awful. You better hope that Greg never hears you talking that way.”

“But C.J.,” I protested, “these guys are big-time con artists; they can’t be broke.”

“Yes, they can, Abby. They’re stealing from church folks, remember? And Granny said I should never be vain about my gift but, to put it plainly, their victims aren’t the brightest coals in the weenie-roasting pit.”

“You can say amen to that, sister.”

“Amen. Besides, Abby, just paying for the upkeep of the huge church, and then the outside of this place, and the gatehouse—”

“And property taxes,” I reminded her. “They’re immensely high in Charlotte, as you know, and yada, yada. But you certainly have a good point. Theoretically, at least, the not-so-good reverend and his two-toned wife could very well have needed that emerald ring in order to finish decorating.”

“Abby, you talk in riddles, you know that? Besides, Tina was supposed to inherit a million dollars—or have you forgotten?”

“Don’t sound so gleeful at the prospect of my memory failing. The thing is, she is not going to get that money for a long time—if ever now. And even if she does, she’ll have to be accountable for every penny. It’s not hers to keep, remember?”

“Duh,” C.J. said, and slapped herself up the side of the head with enough force to knock the average man off his feet. She often does this to acknowledge the times when she’s been the one to say something foolish. I hate it when she does so. A woman of lesser brainpower would have the knocked the smarts right out of herself years ago.

“Stop that,” I said. “Did they say anything that might implicate them in the murder of Sam’s poor Aunt Jerry—may she rest in peace?”

“Thanks for fitting that lowercase P in there; it makes it easier to read.”

“Say what?” I said.

“Never mind,” C.J. said. “But to answer your question: on the way over to their house, before I knew they were really poorer than church mice—well, than
most
church mice, on account of there are a couple of mice up in Shelby—”

“C.J.,” I said, “if you don’t put a lid on that Shelby story I’ll pull into the driveway of that really big house over there, open all the windows, and scream.”

“Abby, that’s not a house; it’s an assisted living home.”

“All the better,” I said.

“Okay, okay, you don’t need to get your Spanx in such a snit. What I was about to say is that I asked Tina to recommend a really fine jeweler, and she didn’t even have to think about it. Of course when she did think about it she got mad and accused me of setting a trap; but I just continued to play the part of the dumb hick and said it was on account of I needed to sell some scrap gold. I think she was so relieved that she didn’t ask why I needed a fine jeweler for that.”

“Why I declare,” I said. “You really are as smart as a tree full of owls.”

“Thank you, Abby. Although adult owls—when not rearing chicks—are usually solitary. You must be thinking of starlings, which are not native to this country, and are—”

“What’s the name of the jewelers?”

“Temptation Rocks. It’s at South Park Mall and it’s open until six. But be a pal and drop me off at the library first; it’s right on the way. There are four books in there I have yet to read.”

I smiled. “Will do.”

Chapter 14

T
here are those who love to shop at South Park Mall. Then there are those who are afraid to enter without an exit plan, such as a line tied around her waist, a GPS, and a flock of homing pigeons. I say this with great respect, as I am a woman who loves to shop. And while there are probably worse fates than a life lived out wandering in perpetual search of a mall exit (assuming the food court is half decent and the restroom stocked with paper and seat liners), I do have a hunk of a husband waiting for me back in Charleston. There is also a very handsome, very hairy, younger male whom I would miss terribly: my cat, Dmitri. (And yes, I do think that the pronoun
whom
should be used with cats; they are just as human as many men I’ve known.)

But in order to get to Temptation Rocks I had to traverse a labyrinth of hallways laid out in what was, to me, a very confusing floor plan. The layout was rendered even more torturous because the stores are upscale establishments like Neiman Marcus and Tiffany’s; places where I would normally not shop, but can’t help popping into nonetheless. This is where the GPS comes in helpful, especially if you get the kind that scolds you harshly for deviating from the proscribed path.

At any rate, Temptation Rocks had an understated display window, and I walked past the space twice without noticing it. It was essentially just a gray satin background punctuated by one recessed, brightly lit niche about the size of a PC monitor screen and perhaps six inches deep. The interior of the niche was lined in pale blue velvet and showcased just one gem: a knock-your-socks-off ruby and diamond necklace that was priced at a mere $899,999.99.

As when entering a few other fine shops of its ilk, I had to be buzzed into Temptation Rocks. The woman who let me in wore a badge that proclaimed her to be Hildegard. Her long, golden brown hair was braided tightly and coiled on the crown of her head like the beginnings of a folk art basket. Her perfectly round cheeks were heavily rouged and brought to mind the pair of Gala apples I’d packed in Greg’s lunch bucket before leaving to drive up here.

Hildegard immediately held out a silver tray bearing Baccarat crystal champagne glasses that were certainly no more than half full. “Would you care for some champagne, madam?”

“No thank you; I’m more of beer gal.”

Hildegard recoiled as if she’d been approached by an untouchable. “There is a food court at the end of this hall, and to the left. Perhaps they serve that beverage there.”

“I didn’t come here to drink.”

She appeared to sniff the air as she surveyed the rather impressive rock on my left ring finger. “Oh. Then how may I be of service?”

I made a show of trying to look around her. “Is there a jeweler on the premises?”

“Why do you wish to speak to a jeweler?”

There is an art to delivering that “just so” dismissive look, the one that says that the speaker had no business asking such an impertinent question, and would do well to mind her own business from here on out. I learned that art by watching Rob, who learned it from a former lover who was purportedly minor royalty: he would have been a Portuguese prince had that country kept its king.

“Very well, madam,” Hildegard said. She set the silvery tray on a mahogany stand by the door to the shop. Then she carefully locked that door, before trotting around the counters and through a velvet curtain. Did I mention that she trotted on three-thousand-dollar high-heeled sandals by Victor Illuminati, the blind, but oh-so-gifted Italian designer who is all the rage this year among those who are truly in the know?

I didn’t have to wait long. In fact, I was having a good time admiring the pretties in the nearest case when out from behind the curtain hurried a middle-aged man who carried with him the look of a hunted animal. Right behind him trotted the expensively dressed hostess. She cast me an evil look before resuming her post right inside the door.

“Yes? How can I help you?” The jeweler spoke with the slightest of foreign accents; not Yankee, mind you, but possibly Eastern European.

I held out my hand in the limp fish position. Much to my pleasure, he actually took and kissed it.

“My name is Abigail Louise Wiggins Timberlake Washburn,” I said. After all, European society is ancient, and Europeans respect people with family connections and complicated genealogies.

“Ghurtpen Chergonia.” I had him print it for me. Even then I wasn’t quite sure of his first name.

“Mr. Chergonia, I have heard wonderful things about your work.”

“My work?”

“Your skill! You’re supposed to be the best, you know. Everyone says that.”

“Who is
everyone
, madam?”

“Connoisseurs of fine workmanship, that’s who. Like the Ovumkophs, for instance.”

“Forgive me, madam, but I do not know these people.” He turned away and began a slow sideways retreat.

“Oh well, Ovumkoph is just one of many names, of course.” I put my hands to my mouth as if I wished to whisper in his ear. “I can hardly use their
real
names now, can I?” The low-pitched, cultivated chuckle I emitted was also learned from Rob, who no doubt also picked it up from his Portuguese paramour, he of the purified plasma.

The jeweler turned and beckoned me to follow him. As I did so, the hostess became quite agitated.

“You can’t go back there, ma’am.” Her accent, by the way, had shifted suddenly from BBC British to Piedmont American. “Mr. Hunter, the owner, will be very upset.”

“Oh? Where is he? I’ll ask his permission first.”

“He don’t work on Sundays. It’s just me and this foreign guy. Look, I don’t want no trouble. I don’t want to get in any trouble with Mr. Hunter neither.”

“Either.”

“What?”

“I think you meant
either
. Anyway, I have no desire to get you into trouble. I just want to see a sample of Mr. Chergonia’s craftsmanship. He’s an artist, you know.”

“Uh-uh, get out of town!” she said to the jeweler. “What do you paint? Can you paint a picture of my mama’s dog, Cotton? It’s Mama’s birthday the day after Labor Day but we’re fixin’ to have a cookout down at my cousin Trudy’s place over in Tega Cay. It’s right on Lake Wylie. I mean the deck actually extends right over the water; you can spit right down on the fish if you’re so inclined. And they actually go for it, like it was fish food. I guess they ain’t very smart.”

“What an interesting idea—spitting on the fish; I’ll have to keep that in mind should my husband and I ever decide to build on the water. Or swim in it.”

Hildegard glanced at the door, and seeing it still securely locked, risked a bawdy laugh. “Oh honey, that water has seen a lot worse than that, and folks still swim in it. It’s the lake; not the shower.”

“Gotcha,” I said with a knowing wink. I gave her what I hope was interpreted as a friendly wave and trotted off after the mysterious European on my $39.99 Naturalizers.

***

I am not so stupid as to reveal the exact location of the safe in the backroom at Temptation Rocks, but I will say this about its contents; many of the rocks I beheld were so beautiful that I was sorely tempted to—well, to drop a wad of cash. What else? The trouble was that even though I am well-off, I am not
that
well-off.

It used to be that glittering gems advertised personal wealth, but that was back in the cavemen days before the technology existed to make cheap fakes—and I mean really cheap. It’s possible to pick up some rings for five bucks or less in tourist traps that will make heads turn, if only for a minute. Because this is the case, because the bling factor can be achieved for so little, there really isn’t a whole of impetus to spend huge amounts on the real thing. Not when there are lots of other status symbols to spend it on. I, for one, would only pay a fortune for the real McCoy when it came to rocks, if I’d checked everything else off my want list, and that included a new Mercedes-Benz.

Nonetheless, I gasped in reverent appreciation, in part because of the elegant gold settings that surrounded so many of the stones. I was particularly fascinated by a ring that looked identical to the one that Aunt Jerry had wished to bequeath me, except that this treasure sported a golden centerpiece.

“It’s a twenty-two-carat golden beryl from Namibia. German cut. Here, hold it up to this light so that you can see the facets. Beautiful, no?”

“Beautiful, yes. Did you make the setting?”

“Yes, madam. Lost wax process. It is an original design, although I have used it since on five other rings.”

I shivered with delight. Surely this feeling was akin to what matadors felt when they were finally coming in for the kill.

“Were they all golden beryl?” I asked.

He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “No. One was aquamarine—that is a kind of beryl too, you know.”

“Yes.”

I may have sounded impatient, because his rejoinder was slightly combative. “You don’t see good aquamarine in American stores; not like in Europe. Now in Japan—only the best there. The Japanese know their stones. Here, mostly the stores sell junk. A good aquamarine is—”

“—deep blue, the color of the ocean when you’ve sailed out beyond the continental shelf.”

He stared at me. “Ah, so you are not a dilettante!”

“Nor an expert either. I’m just a lover of gems.”

He motioned for me to sit on a padded stool that had arms and a back. After I’d hoisted my petite patootie into place, he perched on an identical stool.

“Which is your favorite gemstone?” he asked.

“That depends. Can we, for the sake of this discussion, eliminate the human suffering aspect?” I was dead serious. Most gemstones come to us from Third World countries where they are “mined” under appalling conditions. The workers—often children—are little more than slaves, working twelve-hour days either under the blazing tropical sun or deep under the earth in danger of suffocation at any time. For their labor they are a paid a pittance, sometimes not even enough to sustain them physically. After all, what does it really matter if they die on the job? There is always someone to take their place.

“I guess that we would almost have to eliminate the human suffering element, or we wouldn’t have any gems, would we?”

“Actually, there is a lot of gem mining in parts of North Carolina. Some of it is essentially backyard pits. But honestly, what I’d really like, if the human suffering factor was not an issue, would be a Mogok ruby from Burma.”

He nodded. “That famous ‘pigeon blood’ red. The stones with the fluorescence that can’t be matched by their Thai counterparts.”

“Yes, and all we see are Thai rubies, am I right? Little, itty-bitty ones.”

He laughed. “So you like big stones—like this.”

“Unfortunately, I do. And what’s that famous saying? You can have anything you want in life; just not everything. An eye-clean Mogok ruby the size of this golden beryl would cost five times as much as my house in Charleston—
South
of Broad Street. What about you? What’s your favorite stone?”

“Madam, I do not know anything about the house prices in Charleston, but I too would not be able to afford my first choice of an emerald from the famous Muzo mine in Colombia. If it were eye-clean—impossible! But with a garden of slight inclusions, then maybe. Emerald is a beryl too, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Madam, you know everything.” He sounded astonished rather than miffed.

“No, but I know a lot.” Play your cards close to your chest, I reminded myself; there was no point in divulging to Mr. Chergonia that my well of knowledge was about to run dry.

He sighed, and locking his fingers, put his hands behind his head. “Then you must know that some gemstones are easier to replicate than others, and that a lab-created emerald has the same physical properties—that is the word, yes?”

“Yes. And yes, it is exactly the same as a natural emerald, except that it took months to grow, rather than tens of thousands of years.”

“There are many times I cannot tell a good synthetic emerald from a natural one, except for under the microscope. As for the glass imitations, they are always greener. Ha, now I make a little joke.”

“Excuse me?”

“You have a saying, yes? The glass is always greener on the other side of the wall.”

I thought of correcting him, but thankfully thought better of it. “That is what we said in my country,” he said. “We had many prisons. But now I want to tell you something truly amazing. This emerald that I desire, the one from Muzo with just a little bit of garden and which is the perfect color of ferns—you know what are ferns?”

I leaned forward on my stool. “Yes. I know what ferns are.”

He leaned forward as well. “I have seen this emerald—right here in my shop. I have held it my hands; I have touched it to my lips. I am telling you, madam, it exists. This fabulous stone is right here in Charlotte, North Carolina.”

“Yes, I know.”

He recoiled ever so slightly. “You have seen it?”

“Yes. I believe that I own it.”

The jeweler shook his head wearily. “Madam, please, it has been a long day. Either you know that this stone is yours, or you do not. It is not a matter of faith.”