The Ming and I (7 page)

“Oh?”

He definitely had my interest. In a country as
young as the United States, anything over a hundred years old is an antique, and anything over two hundred years old is as rare as a bikini top on the Riviera. On the other hand, a one-hundred-year-old chair in England would barely qualify as used furniture. Many dealers I know cross the great pond annually and buy containers of quality antiques at incredibly low prices. But fifteenth-century furniture and textiles, now that was stretching the envelope! Even for England.

“They say there’s a possibility that the Duchess of York will be there,” he said, sweetening the pot for me.

I will confess to being a royal watcher. I am especially fond of the House of Windsor. Since only Pat Conroy could invent a more dysfunctional family, the Windsors make my own seem normal by comparison.

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

He was blinking with the regularity of a caution light by now. “I kid you not. She’s great friends with the family. And even if she doesn’t show, the Countess of Worchester will. She owns a decorating firm, and acted as a consultant.”

“What time exactly?” I asked.

“The open house officially begins at eight, but it has no scheduled ending. I suppose it will continue through the rest of the weekend. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already begun. You know how that crowd is.”

“Boy, do I ever,” I said, absolutely clueless. “Unfortunately, Frank, I already have plans.” I tried not to sound too disappointed, but it must have been obvious.

“If it involves somebody else, bring them along,” he said gallantly. “The more the merrier. How about I pick you up at seven?”

“Well, uh, you see, my plans are down in Rock
Hill. I’ll be occupied until at least eight,” I said, which was true in its own way. “Maybe even nine.”

He shrugged. “No big deal. I’ll pick you up at nine. Oh, and wear something snazzy.”

I arched my eyebrows. “But of course.”

“It’s a date then?”

Believe me, I was torn between an evening of hors d’oeuvres with Mama and the docents, and partying with the rich and titled. Throw in the opportunity to gaze at a house full of exquisite treasures, and the chance to thumb my nose at Greg and thereby make him jealous, and I was suddenly willing—no, make that eager—to ditch the docents. Of course, I would have to speak to the docents sometime. But you only live once, right? Putting my quest for June Troyan’s murder on hold was not going to make her any more dead than she already was.

I told Frank to pick me up at Mama’s at nine, and then immediately called Wynnell to see if, by chance, she knew the proper way to curtsy.

W
ynnell hadn’t the foggiest idea how to curtsy, but she was amused by my call. Mama was not amused.

“You can’t do that to me, Abigail. I already made all the cold hors d’oeuvres, and I’m having the house professionally cleaned.”

“What?” To my knowledge, even Mama’s toilet bowls have never been scrubbed by anyone not wearing pearls.

“Scrub A Tub-Tub. It’s a new cleaning service out of Lake Wylie. They’re very particular. They’re here right now. I think I’m going to like their work.”

“Are they wearing pearls?”

“Heavens!” Mama said. “They’re all men.”

“I suppose they wear cute little outfits, though,” I said sarcastically.

“Black shorts and little white half aprons,” Mama practically cooed.

“No shirts? No shoes and socks?”

“Naked toes and naked torsos.” There is probably nothing as disgusting as the sound of one’s parent drooling libidinously. And who knew what Mama would be like after she got her tattoo!

“Anyway, Mama, something’s come up—”

“Don’t you dare, Abigail Louise Wiggins Timber
lake. After all the work and expense I’ve gone to just for you.”

“I’ll pay you back, Mama. Every penny.”

“Not to mention thirty-nine hours of excruciating labor, and Dr. Grady wouldn’t even let me have a spinal.”

“Please, Mama—”

“And then since you were allergic to formula, I had to breast-feed you until you were weaned. You got your teeth early, Abigail, and they were as sharp as a rat’s.”

“They have breast pumps, Mama,” I said futilely. I’d heard the story a million times, but there was no stopping it once it started.

“Those things hurt more than your teeth.”

“As a consequence you lost your figure forever,” I said, helping the story along. “What little remains of your breasts somehow manages to hang down to your knees. And since you haven’t lost your abdominal pooch, you’re convinced I still have a twin inside. Let’s not forget your stretch marks. They look like the remains of a taffy pull on a hot summer day.”

“You forgot my hemorrhoids and varicose veins,” Mama said dryly. “But never mind any of that. Just go ahead and abandon me. I’ll survive. Lord knows, if I could survive your daddy’s death, I can survive this, too.”

That did it. Mama as martyr was something I refused to deal with. And the nerve of her, dragging Daddy’s death into this. That made me really angry.

“Feed the goddamn hors d’oeuvres to the scrub squad,” I snapped, and hung up. It was the rudest I’d been to Mama since I was fourteen and convinced I’d reached the zenith of mental maturity. I can’t tell you just how much I regretted saying that.

I was still charged up—filled with lots of angry energy—when I closed my shop that day; so after changing clothes and grabbing a quick bite at Bojangles, I headed straight to Roselawn. It wasn’t even dusk yet when I arrived, but already the back of the house was in deep shadow.

It wasn’t ordinary shadow, either; everything seemed to have a magenta tinge. And although it had been an exceptionally warm day, the minute I stepped out of my car, I felt chilled to the bone. Even if I hadn’t heard the horrible story about Uma, I would have thought the place weird. Thank God I had remembered to bring an industrial-size flashlight with four extra batteries and an extra bulb.

The back door, which had been easy for the lithe Lilah to open, was tighter than Buford’s fist at alimony time. Only by pretending that it was Buford was I able to summon the necessary strength to force it open. I flicked on the flashlight, found the overhead light switch, and turned it on.

“Anyone here?” I called.

Call me superstitious, but I believe in the possibility of ghosts. As Albert Einstein said, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to run the human machine in life, and it is reasonable to believe that it just doesn’t disappear once we die. Albert believed in an afterlife, and so do I. But I have read that in some cases this energy—call it a soul, if you choose—is unable to leave the world behind. This phenomenon is most commonly associated with murder victims or with those folks who, for whatever reason, had important emotional business to attend to at the time of their deaths. At any rate I thought it only polite to announce myself on the chance, however slight, that I was disturbing the specter’s supper hour. Even a Yankee ghost deserves that consideration.

Maynard didn’t answer, so I proceeded with con
fidence—more or less. Frankly I did feel a little nervous, all alone in a deserted mansion off a lonely road in the hinterlands of York County. However, Miss Lilah had permitted me a brief but tantalizing look at the items in storage, and I was eager to get to work. Motivation can go a long way in combating the willies.

I paused at the bottom step of the grand stairway that connected the drawing room and the second floor with a sweeping arc. A flip of a switch illuminated a dusty chandelier at the top. I turned it off and on a couple of times. It worked fine. Quite stupidly I stashed my rather cumbersome flashlight in my rather sizable pocketbook, and then, because there was no Lilah present to censure my behavior, I virtually sprinted upstairs. In my haste I didn’t even think about turning out the drawing room light.

Some truly lovely things were stored on the second floor, which was itself a work of art. There were six bedrooms in all, each with its own fireplace. The mantels were all carved oak, presumably Irish like the one downstairs. The friezes, moldings, cornices, and wallpaper were all original to the house and, except for some serious fading in one room, were in remarkably good condition. Either the Rose family raised their children out in the slave cabins, or they were strict and effective disciplinarians. In just one hour my children could have “distressed” that house to a far greater degree.

The only real concession the Roses had made to the twentieth century was the installation of a single bathroom. Apparently they simply renovated a large closet, cramming in the necessary features as space permitted. The result was a jigsaw puzzle of ceramic pieces. Theoretically (I did not try it!) one could sit on the john, dangle one’s feet in the tub, and brush one’s teeth over the sink all at the same time. Ad
mittedly it would take a tall contortionist, but it could be done. Since the bathroom would be used henceforth only by staff, and only sporadically, there were no plans to improve the space.

I can’t say enough how impressed I was with Lilah Greene. “The good stuff,” as she put it, had all been tagged, specifying the room in which it had been found at the time of occupancy. Any known history, oral or written, had been meticulously noted on the back of each tag.

Alone now, without her looking over my shoulder, I felt free to browse and poke around the goodies at my own pace. A child alone in a video arcade could not have felt so happy. I picked up a tag on a rather sturdy brown desk. It read:

I shook my head. I had some serious work to do. The desk in question was Chippendale, but from Philadelphia, not Boston. The blind fret carving on the frieze, a feature favored by Thomas Affleck and other Philadelphia masters, told me that. The date, therefore, had to be between 1770 and 1780. As for the wood, it was definitely mahogany, not cherry.

With great anticipation I opened the drawers and peered into the cubbyholes. Alas, they were as empty as a schoolboy’s head on the last day of summer vacation. Perhaps Miss Lilah had relocated them to an area just for documents.

At least an hour passed, during which I was so engrossed in my pleasurable task that I forgot all about my troubles, and ghosts for that matter. But as I was reading the tag on a bowfront dresser, I not only heard but felt a thud. I could feel it vibrate through my feet.

“All right, Maynard,” I said, dropping the tag. “If this dresser is yours, I’ll leave it alone. How about this? Is this yours?”

I ran my fingers lightly along the slanted front of a George III bureau, circa 1750. It was walnut, inlaid with satinwood and oak. I could scarcely believe its state of preservation. It almost looked new. If Jimmy Carter, president of the United States, could lust after women in his heart and then announce it to
Play-boy
magazine, then Abigail Timberlake had every right to lust after a piece of fine furniture. Especially if she told no one.

My soul filled with lust, and I stood there in a trance caressing the warm, hard wood as if it were a lover. My fingers lovingly traced the sides of the piece and started on the back. Suddenly my fingers stopped, as did my heart. Was that a metal screw I felt?

I peered closely at my lover, then recoiled in horror. It was a phony, a reproduction. A good one, mind you, and it was undoubtedly worth a pretty penny, but not top dollar.

I dashed over to the Chippendale desk from Philadelphia. I swear I held my breath for the time it took me to give it a thorough examination, and when I was done my sigh of relief would have blown out a birthday cake full of candles twenty paces away. The desk, at least, was the genuine article.

It was a mixed bag. I reexamined every piece, and I am ashamed to say that only about half were the real McCoys, the other half just stunning imitations. At least the late Old Man Rose knew where to shop for the latter, because believe you me not all fakes are created equal.

Still, what was I going to say to Miss Lilah? The woman was expecting good news. She was going to be devastated, maybe even angry, to find out that
half of Roselawn’s furniture had been manufactured within the decade.

And what about my feelings? I had never felt like such a fool. I actually felt worse than the first time I discovered Tweetie’s hot pink lipstick along the waistband of Buford’s boxer shorts.

Even we Episcopalians are taught that God is omniscient, but ghosts? How did Maynard know what I was thinking? And who gave him the right to laugh?

That’s right! Maynard was laughing, alternating between low guttural sounds and high-pitched squeals, like pigs grunting at a trough.

It’s true what they say; one’s hair does stand on end. But I have short hair, and I had been having a bad hair day all along. My point is that I was scared, but not reduced to a quivering mass of jelly. I was, after all, Abigail the broom-wielding shadow slayer. Still, I was unnerved enough to head straight downstairs, out of Maynard’s territorial claim.

I was so intent on my departure that at first I failed to notice the light in the drawing room had been extinguished. It wasn’t until after I had tripped over my own pocketbook, and was almost sent sprawling, that the situation became clear.

“Damn you, Maynard,” I said, fumbling for the light switch.

To my great relief, the lights came on, but I had reason to be horrified nonetheless. There, right in the middle of the drawing room, practically centered on the antique Aubusson carpet, was a huge, rhythmically undulating white mass. No, it wasn’t Maynard, or Casper, or any other denizen of the spectral world. It was nothing more than Red Barnes’s bare ass.

“Oh my God—”

“What the hell?” Red glanced at me over his
shoulder while the tart beneath him continued to squeal in ecstasy.

“Mr. Barnes!”

Red rolled over and sat up, in the process revealing something even more grotesque than his naked butt. I averted my eyes.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he roared.

Shakespeare was wrong. Hell has no fury like freshly converted fear.

“You bastard!” I screamed. “How dare you scare me like that?”

Red had managed to snatch up some piece of clothing—a shirt, I think—but the tart was still as naked as Eve before the fall.

“Me? What I do here is none of your goddamn business, missy. But you—”

“I’m here at the invitation of Miss Lilah,” I said, and I think I managed to say it rather regally.

“Hell. You could at least warn a body that you were here.”

“My car is parked out back,” I snapped. “And I had the lights on, and my purse was sitting right here on the bottom step. How much more warning do you need?”

“We always park in front,” the tart said.

“Shut up,” Red growled.

“And I suppose you always find the lights on, Mrs. Barnes?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m not Mrs. Barnes. I’m—”

“I said ‘shut up!’” Red smacked her with the back of a ham-sized fist.

The girl squealed, this time in pain.

“You son of a bitch,” I said.

There is one advantage to carrying a large, overloaded pocketbook. Especially one that contains a heavy flashlight. Red Barnes got tit for tat.

He stared at me stupidly, too stunned to react. I stretched a hand out to the girl.

“Come on, I’ll get you out of here.”

“I ain’t going nowhere with you, missy,” she hissed.

“My name isn’t Missy,” I said calmly, and scurried from the drawing room through the dining room and out the back door. Just as it was closing behind me I heard Red Barnes bellow with rage. But I was out of there, halfway down the oak-lined lane before he had a chance to get his pants on.

“Please, Mama,” I said. “Pretty please with sugar on top?”

I had foolishly asked Mama if she minded postponing the party. Although Frank had agreed to pick me up at nine, I didn’t want to miss a minute of the royal bash.

Her necklace whirled through her fingers. It amazes me that despite constant and vigorous use, Mama’s pearls look none the worse for wear. Daddy must have bought her cultured pearls with exceptionally thick nacre, or else they were natural and worth a fortune.

“What if I said I’d taken all those hors d’oeuvres and donated them to Pilgrim’s Inn?”

There was only one answer. “I’d say you were the saint I always knew you to be.”

“Ha!” The pearls slowed to a pace reminiscent of worry beads.

“Have you?”

“Well, I should have. After all that hard work, and then you turned on me like that!”

“Mama, I didn’t turn on you. I just foolishly accepted an invitation to a party. There’s a rumor that royalty will be present—”