The Glass Is Always Greener (13 page)

Chapter 16

W
hen all was said and done, this was my battle to win; not Mama’s, not Wynnell’s, and not C.J.’s. Therefore, when a stuffed-to-the-gills Wynnell expressed a hankering to see a movie at the cineplex across the street, I insisted that she go. And Mama should go as well. It didn’t take much to get them to agree. It was when they were arguing about which film to see while they were still in the parking lot of the Texas Roadhouse that I managed to slip away unnoticed.

My immediate destination was Carolina Place Mall. I have always been fond of this shopping mall for the following reasons: the concourse is open and two stories tall, and since there is only one concourse, it is impossible to get lost. I used to love it even more when flags resembling white puffy clouds were suspended from the glass domed ceiling, but alas, nothing seems to stay the same—especially the good things in life.

Carolina Place Mall has a rocking food court where one can get falafel, as well as bourbon chicken, but I was so stuffed that I made my phone call from inside one of the stalls of the world’s best public restrooms (there are fold-down infant seats inside each stall as well as paper liners!). Even just the smell of a Big Mac or the sight of a chocolate-dipped cone might set me off hurling.

C.J., bless her oversized heart, answered on the first ringtone. “You have reached the number of a deeply hurt individual,” she said. “If you wish to leave an apology, you may do so now.”

“I apologize, C.J. This is Abby, by the way. And I really have no problem with the septuagenarian thing, because it’s not my business.”

“Abby! How did you know where to find me?”

Now that perplexed me. “I’m on my phone, C.J. My phone finds your phone wherever you happen to be, just as long there are towers to transmit the right signals.”

“No,” she said. “I mean here—at the mall.”

“You said you might come to the mall,” I said.

“No I meant
here
, here,” she said. I looked up to see C.J.’s oversized face peering down at me from above the right side of my stall.

“Aaaaaack!” I screamed. Yes, some folks actually do scream that way; I did. “Now look what you’ve done!”

“Hmm,” C.J. said matter-of-factly, “you might want to work on your modesty issues. Using the lavatory is a universal need, and as such there is nothing to be embarrassed about. Why, some of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon—”

“C.J.,” I said, “my cell phone landed in the toilet!”

“Ooh, Abby,” she said, “you should really fish that out before—”

“
You
fish it out!”

“Okey-dokey,” C.J. said. And she did fish it out. Just like that. She even rinsed off my cell phone and dried it as best as she could with paper towels before holding it next to a hot air dryer for a minute.

“Now what?” I said. “I can’t get a signal.” By then we had walked out of the restroom and into a lounge area equipped with sofas for the waiting loved ones of those who are inside micturating (did I not say that this was the world’s best restroom, or what?).

“Take it back to the hotel, Abby—we’re not that far—and use the hair dryer on it. I’ve done it before lots of times and it’s always worked for me.”

“You’ve dropped your phone in the pot repeatedly?”

“Ooh, don’t be silly, you little goofball; of course not. I drop it in my Slurpee—not on purpose, of course. Except maybe that one time.”

“Okay you big goofball; I’ll try it.” It’s impossible to stay mad at Calamity Jane for more than a few minutes. The woman doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. In fact I’m not sure that she has any bones; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she is all heart.

“Abby?”

“Yes?”

“I think you should know that we’re being watched,” she said.

“Who?
Where?
”

“Shhh,” she whispered. “It’s Aaron Ovumkoph. You’ll see the top of his head sticking around the corner—there to your left any second.”

And indeed I did. He was standing in the corridor that led to the food court, pressed up to the wall like a gecko, with only his bobbing head to give him away. His stance must have appeared totally bizarre to the folks who were constantly passing by him in the hall. Perhaps even a few of them were wondering how it was that he managed to keep his balance and not topple over backward.

“He’s been following me ever since I left you guys at the restaurant. He was waiting out there in the parking lot. I feel like I’m a spy movie—you know, like one of those old spy flicks starring Sarah Palin:
The Guns of Wasilla
,
The Wasilla Candidate
,
North by Wasilla
—”

“C.J.,” I said impatiently, “Sarah Palin has never acted in any spy movies.”

“If you so say, Abby,” she said, sounding not all convinced. Clearly this was not one of C.J.’s more lucid moments, so perhaps I’d given in to the power of suggestion and only imagined seeing the crown of a bulging head bobbing around the corner. Or not—because there it was again.

Well then the only way to test my own sanity was to lunge in the direction of the nodding noodle before it had the chance to get away. But what if there was indeed someone right around the corner (and either there was, or I was nuts)? What would I do? Grab him? Haul him into the lounge by his lapels and give him the third degree? Would I risk being embarrassed in front of the continuing parade of people?

And then there was an even worse scenario to consider: what if it
wasn’t
the man with the bobbing head, but another man? What if I exposed some father playing hide-and-seek with his child? Or some pervert wishing to expose himself to women on their way to, or from, the facilities? Why on earth was I even contemplating charging a virtual stranger just because a dear, sweet friend—one who thought that she was part goat and swore that Sarah Palin and Cary Grant smooched atop a Mount Rushmore that was located in Wasilla, Alaska—claimed she was being followed?

But there it was again; the bobbing head! Somewhere—perhaps it was from watching sporting events or movies about Visigoths or Vikings—I’d picked up the notion that a head-on confrontation required loud sound effects. Like grunts or roars. That said, I decided to give the owner of this disappearing noggin a bit of surprise. While engaging in an animated conversation with my good buddy from Shelby (not a difficult task), I edged closer to the wall. Suddenly I stepped sprightly out into the hall. However, what emerged from my thrush-size throat was not a boot-shaking bellow, but a squeak that would have attracted any male mice (or teenage Japanese girls) within earshot.

“It
is
you!” I cried.

“Mrs. Timberlake,” Aaron Ovumkoph said, “I have every right to be here; this is a public space.”

“But you’ve been spying on us,” I said.

“That’s nonsense,” he said.

“My friend here says that you’ve been following her.”

Aaron glanced around. “This is a high-traffic area. Let’s go to Penney’s and talk in the luggage area. No one ever seems to purchase luggage.”

“Yet somehow there are far too many people using the airport when I want to go someplace.”

“Touché,” he said. “Follow me.”

Chapter 17

I
thought that women in my generation had moved beyond sexism. Certainly I had. Yet here I was, following a bobble-headed man through a crowded mall, simply because he’d issued an order. How crazy was that? Talk about a cop-out!

Well, at least it was
doing
something. It’s sitting on my hands waiting for the guillotine blade to fall that turns me into a nervous Nellie. Poor Marie Antoinette; I hope she was allowed to have some needlework with her in those final hours.

But what do you know, Aaron Ovumkoph was absolutely right; we had the luggage nook all to ourselves—of course that might have been a fluke. At any rate, when we were approached by a friendly salesperson, Aaron introduced us as a happy family that was fixing to travel by supply ship to the island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. This island, he said, which was halfway between Africa and South America, was the most remote inhabited place in the world. He also told the salesperson that C.J. was our daughter and that she was going to marry an islander and settle down on the island. After the wedding we would likely never see her again; so could we please have some privacy? And yes, when we were through talking, we just might purchase some luggage for our trip.

“Hey,” I said, “your B.S. story worked like a charm.”

“If only it were,” Aaron said, bobbing more than ever. “We just got back six weeks ago. It took almost that long to get there.”

“Why I’ll be hog-tied,” I said. “There really is such a place.”

“I spent a year there,” C.J. said, matter-of-factly. “Once you get on, it’s hard to get off; no planes land there. I almost married one of those strapping hunks too, but aren’t you glad that I didn’t, Abby? Because then we wouldn’t be ex-sister-in-laws.”

In the words of Rob, I kvelled with happiness knowing that C.J. still loved me, despite any harsh words I may have thrown her way over the years. In fact, I was so moved that I hugged the lug from Shelby.

“Ooh, Abby,” she said, “would you care for a breath mint?”

“Does my breath stink?”

“It smells like roadkill, Abby.”

“In that case, thanks, but I’ll pass on the mint, just to remind you of how you took honesty a mite too far.”

Who knows, Aaron might have agreed with C.J. He took a few steps back and sat on a bright red suitcase, one easily large enough to contain my corpse, should I end up as one during the course of my investigation.

“Ladies,” he said, “now that we have some privacy, I’ll get right to the point. As I’m sure y’all agree, my older sister Jerry was your consummate eccentric.”

“I never met her,” C.J. said.

“Trust us, dear,” I said. “The woman could have been a character in a book.”

“Abby here is a bit eccentric,” C.J. said, with a straight face. “Was your sister more eccentric than Abby?”

“Oh much more,” I said. “Wasn’t she, Mr. Ovumkoph?”

His thin lips pursed as he struggled to say something, and then perhaps thought better of it. In the end he closed his eyes and bobbed his head to the tune of “Yesterday” by Paul McCartney.

“She was!” I said.

“Cheese and biscuits, Abby,” C.J. said. “You don’t have to bite our heads off.”

“Anyway,” Aaron said, as if nothing had happened, “she often did inexplicable things. And one of those things was to have a copy made of an emerald ring that she often wore—uh, you saw it, Mrs. Timberlake.”

“Actually, I didn’t; I saw the genuine article. That was when she gave it to me.”

“I’m afraid you’re incorrect; she gave you a copy.”

“Look, Mr. Ovumkoph, I’m not a gemologist, and I only saw it for a few seconds, but I’d be willing to bet my friend’s hooves here that it was the real McCoy.”

“Pardon me?” he said.

“No, pardon me; I was being a smart mouth. But it
was
real, trust me. That’s what took me by surprise so much. I mean, nobody wears big-ticket items out in public anymore—except maybe Queen Elizabeth II and a few lucky, but very nervous, stars at the Academy Awards. The insurance premiums would be through the roof. Most of the bling one sees is fake, although admittedly some of it is quite convincing to the untrained eye.”

“And your eyes are trained, Mrs. Timberlake?” Aaron said.

“Last summer at the beach,” C.J. said, “Abby told me she could spot a circumcised man from fifty yards away.”

My face burned with embarrassment. I was guilty as charged, but it was girl talk, and it had to do with a visiting French swim team, and they were prancing around in their Speedos trying to impress a group of coeds from the College of Charleston. And just for the record, none of them was.

“I did not!” I said.

“Did too,” C.J. said. “But just so you know, Mr. Ovumkoph, I am a certified gemologist.”

That nugget of info nearly knocked me on my tiny tuchas. “No kidding, C.J.? Are you certified by the American Institute of Gemology, or something Granny Ledbetter cooked up?”

Uh-oh, I immediately regretted saying those words. Had they been words on paper—like in some whacky, totally unbelievable paperback novel—I would have ripped out the offending page, stuffed it in my mouth, and forced that sucker down my gullet. But these were spoken words, and there was nothing I could do. No doubt they would ring in C.J.’s ears for years to come.

The curious thing about spoken words is that they have the power to morph, yet somehow remain the truth. Quite possibly, years from now, my dear, sweet friend from Shelby would play tapes in her head of things I’d never said, but which she could swear were true and still pass a lie detector test. Yes sirree Bob, I’d just screwed myself royally.

“Abby,” C.J. said, interrupting my flow of self- chastisement.

“Oh, honey, I—”

“I want you to know,” she said, “that I totally forgive you for that very insensitive and presumptuous remark.”

I gasped. “You
do
?”

“Abby, with all your experience, I would have thought that you knew that since I belonged to LAGS—the Ledbetter American Gemological Society—there is no need for me to belong to anything else.”

“Well, uh—yes, of course,” I said. C.J., whose back was turned on Aaron, couldn’t see that the man was making twirling motions next to his ear. Cuckoo, cuckoo, he was saying with his index finger; this woman is nertz to Mertz.

“Ooh, Abby, I love you,” she said.

“I love you too, C.J.,” I said.

Aaron walked so fast I had trouble keeping up; then again, I have trouble keeping up with most men without having to break into a trot.

But we caught up with him at his SUV—an old model that appeared to be filled with flea market junk.

“Merchandise,” Aaron said with surprising curtness. “I don’t have room for it in my shop. Mrs. Timberlake, you being smaller, would you mind sitting in back?”

“We could take my mother’s car,” I said politely.

“We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but her car is clean—I mean, empty.”

“Mrs. Timberlake, are you insulting me?”

“No, of course not.”

I crawled in the back and situated myself between a pagoda of stacked lampshades—some of them still in their original plastic wrap—and a tower consisting of old phone books. As we took the first turn onto Pineville-Matthews Road it became exceedingly clear why Aaron was so adamant about stuffing me into the backseat; essentially I was to act as a divider, a brace to keep the phone books from toppling over and denting the lampshades. This would have been a lot easier on me had the phone book tower not exceeded my height.

“You all right back there?” someone said a couple of times, but I was so busy trying not to get killed by
The Real Yellow Pages
that I didn’t even have time to answer. At least my struggle to stay alive made the ride to Jerry Ovumkoph’s house go by fast, even though I had no idea where we were, or how we got there.

“This is Amherst Green,” Aaron said. “Very nice brick town homes, but hardly the place you’d think someone like Jerry would live.”

“You’re thinking more like Pastor Sam’s house,” I said. “Am I right?”

He stared at me. “You’ve been there?”

I returned his look. “I’ve been a friend of this family for years, just not of your particular branch.”

“Good one, Abby,” C.J. said, and then rightly gave her own mouth a light slap.

Aaron slammed the door and strode up the short walk. While C.J. trotted anxiously behind him, I took my time. Forsooth, I was awestruck.

Despite it being the dog days of summer, the massive terra-cotta bowl that baked in the sun just off the small front porch blazed with color. I identified orange, yellow, and white star zinnias, deep blue angolinas, and another variety of zinnia, this one hot pink. From a tall urn on the porch spilled dark purple petunias, and from another hung an equally impressive curtain of peach-colored million bells.

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Aaron said. “She had a green thumb. Wait until you get inside.”

“How
are
we going to get inside?” I said.

“This is America,” he said. “How else?” He flipped over the welcome mat, and finding nothing there but a roly-poly, ran his fingers along the lintel, and then after striking out again, tipped the urn containing the million bells.

“Bingo!”

When we stepped inside I knew exactly what he meant by Aunt Jerry’s green thumb. One could see all the way through her town home and to the courtyard in back. The focal point of this vista was a lion’s head fountain that spilled into a formal lily pool that was raised about two feet off the ground and surrounded by stone. It was flanked by raised planting beds that were also built with stone.

On either side of the fountain, and dominating the planting beds, were two spectacular palm trees. Their large fan leaves added such an exotic, tropical look that I forgot for a moment that we were still in Charlotte.

“Wow,” I said again. I hurried forward to get a closer look through the bank of ceiling-to-floor windows. The lush courtyard appeared to stretch the entire length of the town home. It too was filled with a profusion of flowers, but what really impressed me was the number of palm trees.
Real
palm trees.

“I can’t believe she was able to grow palm trees in Charlotte,” I said.

“Ooh Abby,” C.J. said, “those aren’t just any palm trees; those are Windmill Palms.
Trachycarpus fortunei
. They’re native to southern China, Japan, and the Himalaya Mountains. But they seem to do just as well in the clay soil of the Carolina Piedmont as they do back home. Westfield Road, right off Selwyn Avenue here in Charlotte, is practically lined with them.”

“Well, I’ll be darned,” I said.

“Ladies,” Aaron said impatiently, “can we stop talking about gardening and get to the task.”

“Which is?” I said.

“We’re here to look for Jerry’s safe,” he said. “Remember? To prove to you that ring she was wearing the day she was murdered was a fake. Honestly, Mrs. Timberlake, I had you pegged for brighter than that.”

“You hold your brace of mules,” C.J. said, matching his impatience. “Abby might not be the ripest grape on the bunch, but she’s got an IQ of one twenty-five, which makes her totally adequate for just about any job—even President, as far as the Electoral College is concerned.”

“
What?
” I said. “How do
you
know my IQ score?”

“You told Wynnell and me once when you were drunk,” C.J. said.

“That just goes to show you that you should never trust a drunk woman,” I said.

“Amen to that,” Aaron said. “And Aunt Jerry was often in her cups.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Yes, well, she claims to have had a hard life, beginning with her childhood, but you don’t hear Chanti or Ben complaining about that.”

“I don’t mean to be argumentative,” I said, “but we all process things in different ways.”

He responded with a soft grunt. “Yes, her husband died. That was all very sad, but she didn’t stay a grieving widow for long. Oh no, not Jerry. She had a succession of failed love relationships. Sounds better than a parade of loser lovers, doesn’t it?”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Mrs. Timberlake, my sister may have been as old as the hills, but her heels were just as rounded—ha ha, what do you call that sort of wordplay?”

“Confusing.”

“He means,” C.J. said, “that he had a slutty sister.”

“Ah, the big one is correct. And the men all seemed to be younger than her—some of them even extremely so. Now what does that make her in today’s lingo?” He tapped his chin, which set his head to bobbing like a metronome. “Yes, a lioness!”

“A cougar,” I said curtly. “It seems to run in the family.”

“Oh, you must be referring to Ben’s runaway wife in the Antipodes. Just so you know, she’s not related by blood; we’re Jewish, not Mennonites or Amish. We’re not that into marrying cousins, even if they are just second or third cousins.”

“Back to the boyfriends. Were any of them there at Ben’s house the day she was killed?”