Monet Talks Read online

  I must admit that for a millisecond I was tempted to participate in Mama’s shenanigan. The St. Ophelia Ball is the event of the season. That’s all folks talk about for two months prior and two months post. The talk is, of course, all speculation. No one really knows what happens at that ball except for the attendees, and their thin patrician lips are sealed. But it was absurd to think we could pull it off, and even if we did, would we dare tell anyone? I, for one, would bust a gut trying to keep all that juicy gossip to myself.

  “Mama, my answer is no.”

  “Then I’ll ask C.J. She’ll do anything.”

  Boy, wasn’t that the truth. If my assistant accompanied my mother to the ball, Charleston society would never recover. And since Charleston is undisputedly the manners capital of the country, its decline would signal the end of Western civilization. Therefore, I had no choice but to accompany Mama and save the world as we know it.

  “Okay, Mama, I’ll be your date. But you’ve got to promise me you won’t do anything that Mrs. Crustopper wouldn’t do.”

  “But she’s confined to a wheelchair, and I want to dance.”

  “Mama!”

  “All right, dear. I promise.”

  Just for the record, I didn’t expect her to keep her word; Mama’s promises are meant to be broken. But at least I’d be along to handle damage control. The South might teeter as a result of our charade, but it wouldn’t topple.

  To be absolutely honest, by the time I got home that evening I was brimming with anticipation. The St. Ophelia Ball is held in the Daughters of Fine Lineage building. If you reside in Charleston and don’t know where that building is, chances are your lineage does not meet their standards. The Daughters of Fine Lineage are every bit as secret as the St. Ophelia Society, and it was only by accident that I stumbled onto this building on lower Meeting Street. I mean that literally. I’d gotten a pebble in my pump and was hopping about on one foot, and lost my balance. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on some steps, and when I looked up I saw a row of tiny brass letters above a door. THIS IS IT, they spelled. Then several weeks later I was eavesdropping on some customers, Linen Ladies all, and I heard the word IT bandied about. I put two and two together and got three hundred—three hundred years of blood so blue, members of this exclusive group are forbidden to donate their periwinkle plasma, lest it cause the nurses to panic.

  At any rate, both Mama and I had to work very hard to keep from spilling the beans over dinner. Just because Greg is no longer employed as a detective doesn’t mean he’s stopped detecting.

  “I smell a rat,” he said as he passed the roast.

  “I don’t smell anything,” Mama said, and wiggled her nose like Samantha on Bewitched. The woman prides herself on her olfactory powers.

  Greg turned to me. “Abby, what kind of nefarious plot are you two hatching?”

  “Nothing, darling. Would you like the gravy?”

  “What I’d like is to know how much trouble I have to prepare for. Will I need to bail you out?”

  “Gracious no,” Mama said. “This isn’t one of C.J.’s schemes.”

  “Mama!”

  “Aha,” Greg said, trying to mask a smile, “so you are up to something.”

  “But it isn’t illegal, darling. At least I don’t think it is.”

  “It’s definitely not,” Mama said. “Unless we resist when they try to throw us out.”

  Greg pressed his hands to his ears. “Okay, that’s enough. I don’t want to know the rest. Just remember that if I’m out shrimping, it may take a couple of hours for me to get back. Can you two stand to share a toilet in the holding cell with a dozen other women?”

  “No problem,” Mama said, without skipping a beat. She carries paper liners in her purse wherever she goes.

  I cut an extra large piece of pecan pie for my dearly beloved that evening. And behind closed doors he was the recipient of even more sugar.

  Tuesday is C.J.’s turn to open the shop. Because the big gal is so competent, I am used to sleeping in late, with nary a care in the world—that is, if my grown children, Susan and Charlie, are not going through some crisis, and Mama is behaving, and my cat, Dmitri, is not out to convince me that I should have gotten a dog instead.

  Dmitri can’t get enough of Greg’s fishy smell, so he spends the night curled up on my husband’s back. Greg leaves to go to work before five in the morning; thereafter the pussy with the passion for poisson usually seeks out the next best thing: moi. The trouble is, I am a back sleeper, and Dmitri weighs ten pounds and counting. Some mornings I wake up unable to breathe.

  That morning, however, Dmitri had resumed sleeping on Greg’s side, so I was running about la-la land with a naked Tom Cruise and a fully clothed Jack Nicholson when the bedside phone rang. At first I refused to answer, but when Tom threatened to put his clothes on—and Jack threatened to remove his—unless I picked up, I struggled back to the land of the sentient.

  My eyes were too bleary to read the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “Abby, I didn’t take him. I swear.”

  “C.J.?”

  “Please don’t be mad, Abby. I’ve looked everywhere. Even in the armoires and the highboy drawers. Not that he could have gotten in those by himself, mind you, but he could have had accomplices.”

  “C.J., please—”

  “Granny Ledbetter had a goat back in Shelby, North Carolina, that was an escape artist. Yes, I know, goats are famous for being able to escape from just about anything, but this one—we called him Homer—not only got out of his pen on a regular basis, but the next morning we’d find him locked up in Cousin Arvin’s closet. It happened about a billion times. Granny Ledbetter said it was trolls who did that, but Abby, I don’t think we have trolls in downtown Charleston. Although some of the tourists dress like that.”

  I shook my head to clear it of cobwebs. It was an exercise in futility.

  “What is missing, C.J.? Your granny’s goat?”

  “Don’t be silly, Abby. It’s Monet.”

  The cobwebs disappeared. “The mynah?”

  “Abby, are you hard of hearing?”

  I hung up, threw on yesterday’s clothes, and broke a few traffic laws getting to the store. Imagine the mixture of relief and irritation I felt upon discovering that verbose bird sitting safe and sound on one of his perches.

  “C.J.! That wasn’t the least bit funny. I could have killed someone driving over here.”

  “Frankly, Abby, your bad driving habits aren’t my fault. And this isn’t what you think. That’s not Monet in there. That’s a common starling—Sturnus vulgaris. They were imported from England, you know. In 1890 about a hundred of them were released in Central Park by a group that wanted to have every bird mentioned in Shakespeare flying loose on this continent. Well, they got their wish, because there’s about two hundred million starlings in this country now.”

  “What?”

  “It’s one thing to be hard of hearing, Abby, but not to listen is just plain rude.”

  “I’m listening, I’m listening.” I was also giving the so-called missing mynah a closer look. “Well, I’ll be! That is a regular old starling. How did that happen? I mean, a fancy starling like a mynah couldn’t have turned into a regular one, could it?” I knew that was stupid of me, but seeing is supposed to be believing, and I was trying my darnedest to believe.

  To her credit, the big gal chuckled only briefly. “That’s a stuffed bird, Abby. Like the kind taxidermists make.”

  “I’m calling the police.”

  “I already did that. They should be here any minute.”

  “Good. I know I’m going to regret saying this, but I was getting used to Monet. It’s going to seem very quiet around here until we get him back.”

  “Shouldn’t that be if we get him back? Somebody obviously went to a lot of trouble to do this. This wouldn’t have happened, Abby, if you’d given him to me.”

  Mercifully, the shop phone rang. I ran to get it.

  “Hello?” I
said, hoping it was the police, telling me they were just seconds away.

  “Is this Mrs. Timberlake?”

  “It’s Washburn now, but yes, this is the place that was burgled. I know it was just a bird, but I feel violated—”

  “Do you want Monet back?”

  “Excuse me?” I stared at the caller ID box. The number was blocked.

  “If you want him back, Mrs. Timberlake, then you have to give me the real Monet.”

  “Who is this?”

  I got a dial tone in reply.

  3

  The Charleston police force has officers who number among the finest in the world, but none of them were on duty that day. Officers Tweedledee and Tweedledum could not get it into pumpkin heads why I should be so upset over the loss of a bird. A real bird pooped, they bothered to inform me. At least a stuffed starling couldn’t spread disease. Nevertheless, they dusted for prints between calls on the loudest walkie-talkies on the planet. The only way I could get the cops to leave was to toss a box of day-old Krispy Kremes into the street.

  After I locked the door behind them, I tried calling Greg, but by then he was well out into the ocean and couldn’t be reached. I needed comfort then, not harebrained schemes, so the next person I called was my best friend, Wynnell Crawford (I have several best friends, by the way). Wynnell is also an antiques dealer, although her shop, Wooden Wonders, is in West Ashley, not on the peninsula.

  “That’s terrible,” she said, after I explained what had happened. “Abby, you must feel so violated, having your shop broken into like that.”

  “That’s exactly what I feel. But the police didn’t seem to care about that. All they wanted to do was flirt with C.J.”

  “Let me guess…Officers Tweedledee and Tweedledum?”

  “You got it. Wynnell, it makes me sick to my stomach to think that someone not only has the key to my shop, but knows my security code.”

  “Abby, do you know that for sure?”

  “The lock wasn’t forced. And it was locked again when C.J. arrived this morning. I guess it’s possible I forgot to set the alarm last night, but you know how I am.”

  “One check short of obsessive-compulsive?”

  “And that phone call—it didn’t make a lick of sense. The real Monet. I’ve never had a Monet painting in my shop, and I’ve certainly never owned one. And that creepy stuffed starling.” I shuddered. “Wynnell, what kind of demented person would do such a thing?”

  “Is that a question, Abby, or do you just want to be heard?”

  “Both!”

  “Well, I hear you. I’m also afraid you’re not going to like what I’m about to say.”

  I sighed. “You’re not going to blame it on a Yankee, are you?”

  “They’re a strange bunch, Abby. Just yesterday a group of Yankee tourists came into my shop. They were headed out toward Middleton Plantation but had gotten lost. Of course I gave them directions, but do you think they bought anything? All they did was use my bathroom.”

  “To be fair, Wynnell, you only sell furniture. And you don’t ship. What did you expect them to buy?”

  “Just the same, never trust a Yankee, my daddy always said, and he was right. I bet you dollars to doughnuts it was a Yankee who stole your bird.”

  “As long as we’re being fair, Wynnell, your daddy’s mama was a Yankee.”

  “You don’t need to be insulting,” she said, and hung up.

  I waited by the phone while I counted the seconds. It rang precisely at ten.

  “Hello.”

  “Sorry about that, Abby. I know I’m kinda touchy on the subject, seeing as how I’m not a purebred Southerner like you. But back to your problem. You need to change the locks, of course, and your security code. Also, I don’t think you or C.J. should work alone until you learn what kind of kook you’re dealing with.”

  “Good advice. Maybe I’ll just close the shop altogether for a few days. Mama’s been wanting me to spend some time with her, and C.J. has been asking for some beach days.”

  “It must be nice,” Wynnell said pointedly.

  When we both lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, we were more or less on equal footing. But now I’m an S.O.B. and Wynnell is a W.O.T.A. That is to say, I live South of Broad Street on Charleston’s coveted lower peninsula, and my buddy lives West of the Ashley River. There is nothing wrong with being a W.O.T.A.—some of the best people are—but the area South of Broad is said to contain the fifth highest concentration of wealth in the nation. Sure, I would lose money by closing my shop, but it wasn’t going to make much of a dent in my personal finances.

  “Business has been slow,” I said, lying through recently capped teeth.

  “Whatever. Abby, promise you’ll call if you need me?”

  “I promise.”

  “I gotta go. Some customers just walked in.”

  Before I hung up I heard her talk in the high-pitched voice she uses when she’s pretending to talk to customers. Before I locked the doors to my shop for the next few days, I would put a sign in the window directing my customers to Wynnell’s shop, Wooden Wonders, well West of the Ashley.

  I was still upset when lunch rolled around, so some of my other best friends, the Rob-Bobs, insisted on taking me out to eat. Their shop, The Finer Things, is doing so well that they now have an assistant, Simone Dupree. The girl speaks perfect English, but can put on a French accent at the drop of a syllable. If she tilts her nose skyward, the Rob-Bobs’ sales head that way, too. FYI, the lunch offer was just for me, which was just as well, because C.J. was already out on Folly Beach, searching for skin cancer.

  I suggested Sticky Fingers on Meeting Street as our lunch spot. You can get just about any style of ribs there, but the very best, in my opinion, are the Memphis Dry. They are so good your tongue will reach out and slap your face silly. The meat is served with side orders of baked beans and cole slaw. Perhaps it was not their intention, but the owners of Sticky Fingers have hit upon a formula that ensures their delicious meals will be remembered for the rest of the day.

  At any rate, the Rob-Bobs’ real names are Rob Goldburg and Bob Steuben, respectively. Rob is tall, handsome, and in his early fifties. Bob is—well, he’s still in his thirties. Rob, who hails originally from Charlotte, is the epitome of a Southern gentleman. Bob is from Toledo, Ohio. Rob is the antiques expert in Charleston. Bob fancies himself a gourmand.

  After we’d ordered our drinks—sweet tea all around—Bob complained, as usual, that we weren’t eating lunch at their place.

  “It wouldn’t have been any trouble, Abby. You know how I love to cook.”

  Knowing what was coming next, whether I invited it or not, I humored him. “What would have been on your menu?”

  “Poached quail eggs on toast points with hollandaise sauce, chilled asparagus aspic, and a piping hot sweetbread soufflé.”

  “He means thymus glands,” Rob growled. “From calves. We had them last night.”

  “From calves? Aren’t you afraid of getting mad cow disease?”

  “Moo-ve over,” Rob said, and poked his partner good-naturedly. “You’re taking up too much table space.”

  “I don’t get my sweetbreads just anywhere,” Bob said. “I special order them from a ranch in Argentina, where mad cow disease has never been found.”

  “He also orders rhea meat from that ranch.”

  “What kind of meat?”

  “Rhea,” Bob said. “It’s a large, flightless bird, kind of like an emu or an ostrich. In fact, it’s the largest bird in the Americas. Gets up to five feet tall. I’ve been ordering just the steaks so far, but I’m thinking of ordering a whole one for Thanksgiving. Yes, I know, the air freight will be a killer, and I’ll have to hunt around for an oven to fit it—maybe a bakery, or someplace like that—but just think, I’ll be able to invite everyone I know over to dinner.”

  “For their last meal,” Rob quipped. “Remember what happened when you made the eel flambé?”

  “That was a fluke.”

/>   “No, that’s when you served whale. Maybe you should order a live rhea, and Abby can ride it to dinner.”

  “Guys, I appreciate your attempts to distract me, but I can’t stop thinking about the break-in. It gives me the heebie-jeebies when I think of how I might have been in the storeroom at the time. And that horrible stuffed starling. This is a sick person.”

  “Or a student from the College of Charleston.”

  “You’re kidding—aren’t you?”

  Rob shook his head. “It could have been an initiation prank. School’s just starting. This city is flooded with kids. And then there are the Citadel cadets. If I was thirty years younger—”

  “Which you’re not,” Bob said.

  “But it couldn’t be kids,” I protested. “How would they know my alarm code?”

  “Are you positive you set it?”

  “Of course I am. You know that I make a ritual out of it every night, unless, of course, it’s C.J.’s turn to close. And last night was mine—oh my gosh!”

  “Abby, you’re pale as a sheet. What is it?”

  “Mama came in right before closing. We got to talking in the storeroom, and I remember thinking about closing—intending to close—but then I walked Mama out to her car, and then I got in mine, because I was so distracted by the thought of crashing—uh, never mind. I guess maybe I didn’t. Set the alarm, I mean.”

  “Whoa,” Rob said, and waved the waiter away. “Back up a bit there, girl. What were you so distracted about?”

  “Do you have to know?”

  “Absolutely,” they said in unison.

  “Mama wants us to crash the St. Ophelia Ball.”

  Rob whistled in admiration. “She’s something else, that Mozella.”

  “We have a friend who crashed the St. Ophelia Ball,” Bob brayed. The man has a bass voice that is the envy of bullfrogs everywhere. “He said it’s a cinch if you smell like mothballs and don’t move too fast.”