The Glass Is Always Greener (18 page)

“Anyway,” Ben said, “and then Jerry had a minor heart attack; but still, you would think that it would be a good time to let go of grudges and come together as a family, right?”

“My family never wants to speak to me again,” Conrad said.

“Hush up,” Mama said, not unkindly, “and let the man speak.”

“But it didn’t mean squat for this family. Not squat. Chanti never showed up at the hospital. Neither did our brother Aaron. Of course no one ever expected our famous cousin, Pastor Sam, to show up.”

“And did he?” I asked.

Chapter 24

B
en shook his head and chuckled. “No. But if he had, he would have been under a lot of pressure to perform. There were two rabbis and a cantor there until she was out of the woods.”

“Well, good,” I said. “So then their prayers were answered.”

Ben shrugged. “Maybe. In my faith we don’t pray for miracles. We pray for strength and peace. We pray for hope and guidance. Most of all we give thanks for what we already have.”

“Just don’t make them prayers too obvious,” someone said. “Unless them’s Christian prayers.”

I looked up over my shoulder into the immense jowly face of Bubba himself. It was like looking into the maw of a bloated hippopotamus sans the enormous teeth. (Bubba has only store-bought teeth and usually he forgets to wear them.) Whether from smoking at home, or crying over country lyrics, Bubba’s red eyes resemble maraschino cherries about ready to pop out of the slits in which they are housed. His numerous chins, every one of them as soft and smooth as a bag of freshly kneaded dough, sway with each syllable of the spoken word. In short, it is almost impossible not to stare at this legend of Pineville, North Carolina.

“We’re done with the praying,” Mama said. “Now we’re about to sample your delicious cuisine.”

“That’s what I like to hear, ma’am, a fine Southern accent like yours. Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’m from Rock Hill, Bubba. Born and bred.”

Then the squished red cherries settled on the soon-to-be unemployed geisha. “What are you doing, girl, sitting with the customers?”

“I quit,” Conrad said.

“You can’t quit,” Bubba said. “I have to fire you.”

“Don’t be mean,” Mama said.

“He’s not being mean,” I said. “He wants to make sure Conrad can file for unemployment.” I tried my best to maintain eye contact with Bubba. “But you’re forgetting that this boy is an illegal alien.”

“
What?
He don’t look like no kind of Mexican to me.”

“I’m not,” Conrad said. “I’m from a rotten little town called Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.”

“You take that back!” Bubba roared. “Don’t nobody call Moose Jaw a rotten little town.”

Conrad was on his feet so fast that the beautiful, genuine faux polyester kimono split up the rear. He threw off the heavy black wig. Unfortunately, the lad tossed it a mite too far and it landed in another diner’s moo goo gai grits.

The diner whose grits had been violated by polyester locks was none too pleased. “Hell’s bells!” he shouted.

I swear I didn’t see Ben move, but like the true Southern gentleman that he is, he had both his hands over Mama’s ears, protecting the dainty things from being polluted by such crude language. And Mama, being the fragile Southern belle that she is, was so overcome at hearing Satan’s homeland referenced that she was on the verge of a swoon.

It just so happens that Mama has turned swooning into an art form. She puts one delicate hand up to her forehead, palm out, the other to her bosom, palm inward, closes her eyes halfway, and commences to sway. Because she’s vertically challenged, she can’t achieve a whole lot of lateral motion, so she makes up for it vocally. Her sighs and moans are reminiscent of the film
When Harry Met Sally
, and have no place in an eating establishment. When she started with the unseemly sounds, Ben let go of her ears and cradled her shamefully in his arms.

“Mama, stop that,” I begged, “or I’m leaving.”

Bubba was oblivious both to the profanity and to Mama’s theatrics. He’d blown himself up like a giant puffer fish and was looming over the boy from north of the border.

“What do you know about Moose Jaw, boy?” Bubba demanded.

Conrad had begun to back up. It was a tricky task, given the platform shoes and ripped kimono.

“I’m from Moose Jaw,” he said, his voice quavering. “But that’s in Saskatchewan,
not
North Carolina.”

“You know a woman by the name of Emma Rae Corntassel?” Bubba blubbered.

“Yes, sir, she plays the organ at my church. She’s like a hundred years old or something.”

“She’s eighty-nine, and she’s my mama.”

“Give me a break,” I moaned. “Is everyone on this trip going to turn out to be related to someone else up here? First it was Tweetie and the detective, although they weren’t relatives but bath mates, and then it was—”

But Mama had stopped mid-swoon. “Do you know what all this means, Abby?”

“No, what? You’re going to tell me that we’re related to Ben? Because if that’s the case, he’s going to have to drop his mitts. I’m sure that I read somewhere in the Good Book that we’re not supposed to lie with our relatives, and I’m not talking about misrepresenting the truth.”

“Don’t be such a smart aleck, Abby. That too is a commandment—and one of the Big Ten.”

“Touché,” Ben said.

“Shhh,” Mama said. “I prefer to handle my daughter alone. No, Abby, the significance of Bubba’s hidden Canadian origins means that he’s not a
true
Southerner—nor even a real Bubba. In other words, this restaurant is a sham.”

Mama is no fool. And she’d spoken quietly so that only our immediate party was privy to her words. As they registered in Bubba’s well-padded brain his face went from rage red to a shade of gray not included on most color wheels for obvious reasons.

“I’m going to be sick,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” Mama said. “We’re all entitled to our own deceptions. You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”

“No, ma’am. I stopped here overnight on my way to Disney World. It was Christmas Eve, thirty years ago this past December. I wanted to try some Southern food, but the only restaurant open was this Chinese place, so I bought it, brought in a local chef, and voilà, that’s how Bubba’s was born. It was in the paper, but folks have kind of forgotten about it over the years, which is just fine with me. I think it helps that they think I’m Southern.”

“Moose Jaw
is
in the southern part of the province,” Conrad said kindly. After all, the boy didn’t need to be helpful.

“Well, in that case,” Mama said, “your secret is safe with us, but we expect free meals in perpetuity. And Conrad gets his job back.”

“With a twenty-five percent raise,” Conrad said, proving that he was adapting to American ways really well.

“
What?
” Bubba said.

“That means,” Mama said, “that we’ll be dining—”

“I know what it means,” Bubba said, resorting to his old self. “It’s called extortion.”

“Mama, what do you know about false advertising?” I said in a voice loud enough to rouse Daddy from his permanent resting place over the South Carolina border in Rock Hill.

“Okay,” Bubba said, “but no alcohol.”

“I know plenty,” Mama shouted, attracting the attention of the Clintons, who were vacationing on Hilton Head.

“Dang, y’all drive a hard bargain—eh?” Bubba was clearly a beaten man.

Wynnell was on her way back from Waxhaw so we agreed to meet at the South County Library to further strategize. Charlotte, by the way, has the best library system of any city I have set foot in. South County Library, for instance, is open seven days a week and has ample parking. For a book lover like myself a library card is the next best thing to getting a gift certificate with unlimited credit at your favorite bookstore. This library even has a muffin and coffee stand.

While I waited for Wynnell I sat outside in the courtyard, by the fountain, and chowed down a blueberry cheese Danish, which I washed down with a café latte grande with brown sugar sweetener and cinnamon sprinkles. I’d asked for full-fat milk. My friend Magdalena Yoder, a Mennonite farm woman up in Pennsylvania, lives by the motto that “fat is where it’s at.” Of course she’s lucky and has genetics on her side. But sometimes it is nice to give the tongue the full treatment: to reacquaint it with the joy of living—so to speak. At any rate, this was my lunch, so it needed to have a “stick to the ribs” element.

Having satiated myself on just half the Danish, I shamefully shared the other half with a flock of boldly advancing sparrows. I’m not sure that the library personnel would have approved, and I may have shortened the life of some of the more cholesterol-challenged birds, but how could I say no to those cute little faces? A pushover, that’s what I am. So what the heck was I doing trying to investigate a murder if I couldn’t even shoo away a bunch of “mice with wings”? Acting foolishly, that’s what. Well, that seemed to be the story of my life.

I brushed the last of the crumbs off my lap and because the fountains and street traffic rendered it too noisy to make a phone call in the courtyard, I made my way through the library and out to the parking lot again. This time the “victim” of my paranoia was the member of the Ovumkoph-Goldburg clan who was least affected by Aunt Jerry’s death.

“Hey Abby,” Bob whispered, “I can’t talk now, we’re with the rabbi.”

“Oops. Sorry. Rob’s that broken up, is he?”

“Not really. Hang on a second while I step outside.”

I hummed the theme from
Exodus
to myself as I waited. The movie, starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, is one of my favorites, and one that I think the younger generations of today would do well to watch.

“Abby? I’m back.”

“Bob, really—”

“It’s all right. We were going over the final plans for the funeral service. It’s tomorrow afternoon, by the way, at two
p.m
.”

“You’re kidding! I mean, obviously you’re not, but how can this be? A memorial service, maybe, but the morgue won’t release a murder victim until—”

“That’s just it, Abby. Aunt Jerry wasn’t murdered.”

Chapter 25

S
he died of natural causes.”

“
What?
”

“I bet that word’s been said a lot this weekend.”

“
What?
You’re not making a lick of sense, Bob, which is unfortunate. I called you because you are—were—the sensible one in the gang.”

“The dull Yankee from Cleveland?”

“You’re not dull; you’re just not as eccentric as the rest of us.”

“And I’m not from Cleveland either. I’m from
Toledo.
”

“Oops again.”

“What I’m trying to say is that you’re the most normal.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

I took a deep breath as I chose my words carefully. “Please tell me, Normal Bob, what were Aunt Jerry’s natural causes? Did she have a heart attack?”

“Bingo. It turns out that she had a very bad heart this time. According to her hospital records she’d been coded four times in the previous year.”

I gave my gray matter a second or two to process this information. “Are you saying that she almost died four times in the previous year?”

“Technically she did die, but, of course, thanks to modern science, was brought back each time. Aunt Jerry knew that she was literally a heartbeat away from meeting her Maker at any given moment. That’s why she gave herself the going-away party.”

“Okay. Now it all makes sense. So at some point during the party, maybe when folks are eating and therefore distracted, the Angel of Death decides to code her for a fifth time.”

“Abby, you’re so dramatic!”

“There, you see? I’m definitely not normal. Anyway, she must have been somewhere off by herself—like maybe the restroom. Then someone comes along, but instead of helping her, takes the ring off her finger and stashes her body in the freezer.”

“Exactly. In fact, the coroner ruled that she was already dead when she was put in the freezer. The odds are that she went peacefully, and was robbed afterward. At least that’s what we prefer to believe.”

“Of course. But what happened to her is still a crime, right?”

“Of a major sort. If you ask me, whoever it is should be bound hand and foot with duct tape and laid across a fire ants’ nest.”

“Bob! How terribly Southern of you: fire ants indeed!”

“Abby, you know me. You know that I’m such a pacifist—well, I am not a vegetarian, I will admit that, as I do love my emu and musk ox meat—but I would never wish physical harm to another human being. But Aunt Jerry was the beloved flesh of my beloved, and besides, the thought of robbing the dead is just so revolting that it makes me spitting mad.”

“Well then let’s spit together, Bob, and leave the fire ants alone. They can turn on one another, you know. Tell me, were the police as forthcoming about any leads? The two dingleberries I spoke with this morning were on my tail. As if I could lift a hundred pounds of deadweight—oh goodness, excuse the pun. It was inadvertent, I assure you.”

“I believe you, Abby. You’re not that droll; trust me on that. The police wouldn’t tell us a thing, Abby. Not a dang thing. Abby, do you think that I’m being too sensitive?”

The right answer was “probably.” “I’m sure you’re not, sweetie. What is it?”

“Rob’s mother is, of course, the prime organizer, and she’s putting all the family in the front row. That includes Rob, but it doesn’t include me. I’m supposed to sit in the second row, in what she calls the close friends section.”

“Screw that,” I said.

“Why Abigail, I knew I loved you for a reason,” Bob said.

“What does Rob say about that?” I said.

“We haven’t had time to talk about it,” Bob said. “She’s in there flapping her jaws right now. Say Abby, you wouldn’t happen to know the whereabouts of this Uncle Ben character, would you?”

“Actually I do. He’s at Bubba’s.”

“As in China Gourmet?” Bob said in amazement.

“Righto,” I said. “But without the Bubba, eh?”

“What?”

“Never mind,” I said. “But what about him?”

“Well, apparently the entire family is here at the temple meeting with the rabbi and cantor, everyone that is except for Uncle Ben. He’s the one who supposedly looks like Rob, right?”

“Not supposedly,” I said. “He’s a dead ring— Oops, hush my mouth!”

“And a bit of a scoundrel from what I’ve been led to believe,” Bob said.

“By whom?” I asked. I was honestly surprised.

“Everyone—I guess,” Bob said. “Well, not the clergy. They’re not into badmouthing anyone. But the rest of the family—whew! Talk about dysfunctional!”

“Is the pastor there as well?” I asked.

“You bet your bippy. And with that weird wife of his. Then there is that bobble-headed uncle with the trophy wife—”

“Except that they’re as poor as temple mice and she really does love him, so despite her store-bought parts—the sum of which is marginally attractive—I’m not sure she can legitimately be called a trophy wife. Is Ben’s daughter Amy there?”

“The chubby girl? Yeah, along with three friends and they’re all weeping copiously, although according to Chanteuse those girls wouldn’t have recognized Aunt Jerry if they saw her walking at the mall.”

“We’re supposed to call her Chanti now.”

“Oh,
are
we? Well, I think that will be—”

“Careful what you say, dear. A mother is a hard person to distance oneself from, no matter how badly she behaves.”

“What are you saying,” he asked. “That you think she’s guilty?”

“No. Simply that you don’t want to put out too much negative energy to the universe because it has a way of coming back to bite you. Rob doesn’t see the same woman that we do; he never will.”

“Abby, how did you get to be so wise?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “If I was wise, my husband wouldn’t be stuck on a broken-down fishing boat with a man named Booger. Anyway, it’s your counsel I’m seeking now.”

“Ah yes, words of wisdom from the Toledo dullard,” he said.

“Stop that!” I laughed nonetheless. “Do you have wheels?”

“Yes, but they’re back at the hotel.”

“The
hotel
? You mean you’re not staying with Rob’s mom?” I asked.

“No, and neither is Rob. You should have seen the steam come out of her ears when he told her.”

“Well, good for him. Okay then, I’m coming up to get you, if that’s okay, and we’ll talk on the way over.”

“Over to where.”

“Over to where C.J. was last seen alive.”

Temple Beth El is located in Shalom Park off Providence Road. Shalom Park is home to two synagogues, the Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Family Service, Charlotte Hebrew Day School, and the Jewish Federation of Charlotte. This is a fine example of inter-organizational cooperation, and in fact many of the events held on the campus are open to the community at large. When I got to the light I saw Bob leaning against the sign; he was gasping for air.

“I would have driven all the way to the temple to pick you up,” I said.

“Girl,” he rasped, “haven’t you noticed that I’m getting a bit flabby?”

“Uh—no.”

“Too long of a pause,” he said, clearly disappointed.

“Then eat less,” I said, “or else exercise more. It’s just physics.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And that’s what I just did. Now where are we going?”

I filled Bob in on everything I’d done since coming back to Charlotte—well, just about everything. There are a few things I don’t even share with my husband.

“Finally I get a chance to scope out the pastor’s palace—and I do mean palace. Bob, you’re not going to believe this place. If you want to get rich, heal people on TV. Charlotte, by the way, is
the
place to do that kind of thing. There seems to be something in the air that’s very spiritual.”

“Why Abby, you didn’t even sound sarcastic when you said that.”

“I didn’t intend to; I meant what I said. Every year thousands of people move here from all over the country. And you wouldn’t believe how many of them start referring to this as ‘God’s country,’ and they aren’t being sarcastic either. Tell me, do you feel that way about Toledo?”

“Shut up and drive, Abby.”

“At least I’m not on the phone, and I’m not texting,” I said. “I think that people who text while driving should serve mandatory jail sentences.”

“Let me guess; you don’t even know how to text, do you?”

“I prefer conversation, thank you.”

“Spoken like an old fart—I mean, friend. So, Abby, what are you going to do when you find your guilty party? Lasso them and dump them in the lake?”

“Hey, that’s not fair. That’s exactly what Tweetie had planned for me. I was just defending myself.”

“I know; I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I’m just worried that you’re going to get in way over your pretty little head and then I’m not going to have anyone to pal around with.”

“I’m only collecting pieces of a puzzle, Bob. So far I haven’t even attempted to assemble them.”

“What are some of the pieces if you don’t mind me asking?” he said.

I waited to answer until the poor woman in front of me, who stopped suddenly, turned right. I could have gotten into the other lane had she been allowed to use her signal. However, anyone caught using his or her turn signals in Charlotte is immediately driven out to the city dump and executed via a firing squad. It is a very effective law, and one of the few that is consistently obeyed.

“Well,” I finally said, “except for the pastor and his wife, who seem to be raking in the moola by the offering plateful, the Ovumkoph clan appears to have a cash-flow problem. Perhaps even the pastor does; that’s sort of what I’m anxious to see. It’s hard to tell from just the outside of their McMansion.”

“Even Aunt Jerry?”

“Her too. From what I gather, she liked to taunt her sister with her over-the-top jewelry—but it was all fake. At least most of it. Jerry was a show woman—no different really than her nephew, except that she didn’t steal from anyone. But I don’t have any reason to think that she was living beyond her means. That’s something her bank records can prove.”

“Aaron and Melissa, on the other hand—well, the Joneses left them in the dirt two facelifts ago.”

Bob laughed so hard that he was rude to my upholstery. “Abby, what if I was to tell you that Chanteuse—”

“Chanti,” I interrupted. “Remember?”

“What about Charade?” he said. “I like that even better.”

I laughed. “Go on.”

“Well, it’s no secret that she’s what we on the coast call shabby chic. Rob has to send her a check every month to keep the wolf from her door.”

“Forgive me,” I said, “but you sound a mite resentful.”

“Abby, how can you be so wrong sometimes? I am
not
a mite resentful; I’m might
ily
resentful. Yes, we’re doing very well with The Finer Things, but the downturn in the economy has really hurt high-end stores like ours. No offense.”

“Only a minimal amount taken,” I assured him.

“You see, Rob and I were hoping to hear the pitter-patter of little feet—”