Tiles and Tribulations Page 4

  “My God, what was that!” Ella Nolte was more afraid of the spirit than she was of our cranky medium.

  Madame Woo-Woo had impressive reflexes. She stopped the tape after just four words.

  “There is no need to be afraid,” she said, in a voice as soothing as chamomile tea. “We have made contact, that’s all.”

  “I heard a woman’s voice, but I didn’t hear what she said.” Hugh Riffle still had his eyes closed, but he looked tense, ready to bolt.

  Thinking that no one could see her, Madame Woo-Woo was grinning from ear to bangled ear. “The spirit said her name is Sarah MacGregor. I will ask her now to identify herself further.” She took a deep, theatrical breath before continuing. “Sarah MacGregor, please tell us more about yourself.”

  Several seconds elapsed. “I am mistress of this house. Who, pray tell, are you?”

  “My name is Madame Woo-Woo. Think of me as a bridge, Sarah MacGregor—between you and the world you left behind.”

  “But I did not invite you here. I must insist that you leave.”

  “I understand how you feel, Ms. MacGregor, but your house—this house—now belongs to someone else. You may not be aware of it, but you have passed over. It is time for you to let go, and get on with the next stage of your existence. I’m sure this is disturbing news, but I don’t know how else to put it.”

  “Tell her she’s dead!” C.J. slumped in her chair, to avoid detection. It was as futile as trying to hide a horse in one’s pocketbook.

  Madame Woo-Woo glared at the big gal. “As I was saying, Ms. MacGregor, it is time for you to complete the crossing.”

  “This is my house,” Sarah MacGregor said in her thick, uneven burr. “I will not leave. It is you who must do so.”

  “Perhaps if we gave you a gift, you would let us stay a short while longer.”

  “What sort of gift?”

  “How about money?”

  “Yes, a gift of money would be very nice. The repairs on this home are outrageous.”

  “Hmm, it just occurred to me, Ms. MacGregor, that giving you a gift of money might be a trifle difficult. You see, we are from another time—wait, I’ve got it! There is one among us, more sensitive than the others, who could collect the donations and deliver them to you.”

  “Aye, there is one among ye that seems more sensitive than most. Her name is”—Sarah MacGregor’s voice rose slightly, but her Scottish accent improved—“her name is Jane Cox. She’s the big girl sitting over there—”

  “What the hell!” Madame Woo-Woo’s head disappeared beneath the table. She surfaced a second or two later, her face as white as Casper’s.

  “Is there anything wrong?” Sarah MacGregor asked, her accent by now much improved.

  “Nothing is wrong,” the medium barked. She glared at me. “This séance is over.”

  Sarah MacGregor was as stubborn as her Highland forbears. “Nay, I shall not be dismissed like this. I demand that you and your minions leave at once.”

  “Silence!”

  “Nay!”

  Madame Woo-Woo dumped her chair for the third time. The séance was over.

  “Incredible!” Dr. Whipperspooonbill may have been one of the old guard, but he was not above talking with a ham biscuit in his mouth.

  “If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears,” Ella Nolte said, “I wouldn’t have believed it. You can bet this is going to end up in one of my books.”

  Hugh Riffle took a sip of the cheap red wine C.J. had provided. It seemed to suit him, because he immediately took another.

  “I wonder,” he mused, “if it’s possible to find out how this MacGregor woman died.”

  “She died in a carriage accident,” I said wickedly. “Last I heard the family still owns it. They have it stored in a garage somewhere.”

  “Do you think they’d sell it?”

  Before I could come up with a clever quip, Thelma Maypole grabbed me by an elbow and steered me to the far corner of C.J.’s drawing room. The hexagonal glasses reflected the lights from the overhead chandelier, making her look like she had a head full of fireflies.

  “You’re not fooling anyone with this nonsense,” she hissed. “I know that was you on the tape, at the end. And that last thing you said—that wasn’t even taped. I saw your lips move.”

  “Busted.”

  “Mrs. Washburn, we of the Heavenly Hustlers are a sophisticated and cultured group. We don’t normally attend séances. I personally agreed to come only as a favor to your mother, whom, I might add, is just a bit too eccentric to fit in.”

  “What? You think my mother is too eccentric for your silly little club? Why just look at your—”

  My guardian angel must have usurped Madame Woo-Woo’s body for a second, because the medium’s black claws dug into my other elbow and I was pulled across the room to the opposite corner, before I could shoot my mouth off. Unfortunately, my angel didn’t stick around.

  “What the hell was that all about?” the real Madame Woo-Woo demanded.

  “Ms. Maypole and I were talking investments. What do you think about the recent stock market swing? Is this a good time to sell?”

  “I meant what were you trying to pull back there at the table?”

  “Oh, you must be referring to the tape incident. The one you rigged under the table.”

  “Mrs. Washburn, telling fortunes and conducting séances is what I do for a living. Illusion is part of my job.”

  “Oh, is that what they call it these days? I call it swindling—no, I call it extortion. You threatened dire consequences if folks didn’t pay up.”

  She took a step forward into my comfort zone, her ruffles brushing my knees. “You’re one to talk. You sell used furniture at a premium.”

  “That’s different. Antiques have an intrinsic value. In fact, most of them are better made than contemporary pieces. And besides, I don’t threaten my customers. You know, Madame Woo-Woo—or whatever your real name is—I have half a mind to turn you over to the authorities. I’m sure the police can find some charge to stick you with, and if they can’t—well, I’m sure the Better Business Bureau will be all ears.”

  “You little bitch!”

  She said it loud enough so that all eyes, including Ms. Maypole’s myriad orbs, turned on us. I felt like the time I went down the water slide up in Fort Mill, wearing my yellow and white polka dot bikini, and my bottom piece stayed behind. That was a wax job gone to waste, if ever there was one.

  “Please,” I whispered, “can’t we take this outside?”

  Instead of doing me the courtesy of answering, Madame Woo-Woo swayed like a long leaf pine in a hurricane. Then, like most of the pines during Hugo, she toppled over.

  Mama called 911. In the meantime, Sondra Riffle, who knew CPR, and was convinced Madame Woo-Woo had suffered a heart attack, tried to revive the medium. Dr. Francis Lloyd Whipperspoonbill, it turned out, had been trained as a veterinarian, not a people doctor. Thanks to Sondra’s efforts, Madame Woo-Woo was still alive when the paramedics arrived, and since C.J. lives practically within the shadow of the Medical University of South Carolina, there appeared to be hope.

  “She landed right on top of me,” I said to Sergeant Scrubb, without looking directly at him.

  The detective, whom I’d had the privilege of meeting on a prior occasion, is a dead ringer for Ben Affleck. Normally, I find it hard not to look at Sergeant Scrubb. Heck, I’ve even fantasized about him—well, never mind about that. My husband Greg was in the room with us, and even though he still smelled like raw shrimp, he was all I had eyes for. Besides, I was in enough trouble as it was.

  “But you weren’t hurt?”

  “My hoops deflected some of the impact.”

  “Thank God for that,” Greg said.

  “Some of the others reported that you and”—Sergeant Scrubb consulted his notes—“Golda Feinstein were involved in a dispute.”

  “Golda Feinstein! Madame Woo-Woo’s real name is Golda Feinstein?”

  “According
to the authoress, Ella Nolte, who seems to know her best.”

  “Author.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I think they call them just authors these days. I mean, you don’t hear anyone say ‘engineeress,’ do you? Or ‘detectivess.’ Now that would be just plain silly, wouldn’t it?”

  Sergeant Scrubb looked to Greg for help. My beloved merely smiled and shrugged.

  The cute detective sighed. “Back to the matter of this alleged dispute, Abby. What can you tell me about it?”

  “It wasn’t a dispute exactly. She was just pissed—pardon my French—because I almost exposed her as a fraud.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “No one told you?”

  He started to shake his handsome head, but caught himself. The end result is that he cocked his head, which made him all the cuter.

  “Suppose you tell me,” he said.

  “Well, tell your forensics team to get down on their hands and knees because there’s a tiny little cassette recorder taped to the underside of the dining room table. Madame Woo-Woo used it as a prop, to make her customers think she was communicating with a ghost. And yes, that is my voice on there as well, because, you see, I found the recorder before the séance and decided to give the medium a dose of her own medicine.”

  Greg grinned, but said nothing.

  “What exactly was her medicine?” Sergeant Scrubb asked.

  “Extortion—well, that’s what I call it. She was pretending to be a ghost who demanded money. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I can’t imagine anybody falling for that scam. Still, I don’t like frauds, so I thought I’d put a stop to it.”

  Sergeant Scrubb jotted a note or two down on a palm-sized pad of paper. “I know of even crazier scams that have worked. Well, I guess that’s it for now, Abby—oh, except for one thing. If you don’t mind my asking, why are you and your mother dressed like that?”

  I could feel my cheeks redden. “It was Mama’s idea. Since the real ghost is antebellum, Mama thought she would feel more at home if we dressed in period clothes. Unfortunately, Mama and I were the only two who could fit into them.”

  “It’s a pretty good fit, if you ask me,” Greg said with a wink.

  I felt like an actor who’d forgotten her lines and had to ad lib. “Would either of you like something to eat? There are still some ham biscuits left, and hardly anyone touched the cake. It’s triple layer chocolate, by the way, with double fudge frosting.”

  “Cake would be nice,” Greg said.

  We were sitting around a small table in what C.J. planned to turn into a breakfast nook. Originally the space had been a butler’s pantry, and there was evidence to suggest it may have started out as an oversized, manually operated lift. Charleston homes are subject to flooding, and many are built a full story off the ground. At any rate, it made a perfect interrogation room, lacking only a naked light bulb to live up to its dramatic potential. The antique ginger-jar lamp C.J. had on the table just didn’t cut the mustard.

  The cake was sitting on a kitchen counter, just yards away. I got up to get it, but hadn’t gone half the distance when Greg leaped to his feet and pulled me around the refrigerator where we couldn’t be seen by Sergeant Scrubb.

  “Hon,” my husband whispered, “I think you’re leaking.”

  “Leaking?”

  “You’re trailing water—or something.”

  I turned and looked behind me. Sure enough, a trail of drops glistened on the dark ancient planks of C.J.’s floor.

  “Damn! That’s all Buford’s fault.”

  “What?” Greg was truly alarmed now. “Do you need to go to the doctor?”

  I smiled at the love of my life. He’s as dense as ebony, but my welfare is always first and foremost on his mind.

  “You see, Mama and I pinned bags of ice inside our skirts, to keep us cool. While we were doing it the subject of Buford came up—he’s in town by the way—and I got distracted, and must have pinned one of the bags upside down. You know, with that zip closure on the bottom, instead of on top.”

  “Abigail Washburn,” Greg said folding me into his arms, “you’re a mess, but I love you anyway.”

  “I love you too, you big bucket of bait.” No matter how hard my hubby scrubs, he still smells like his work.

  We kissed. We didn’t exactly get carried away—Greg, for one, disapproves of PDAs—but we did manage to brush up against C.J.’s refrigerator. Incidentally, the big gal is one of those folks who keeps her life on display, held in place by a variety of magnets, most of them freebies. Just from perusing the outside of C.J.’s refrigerator, I could tell that she was adored by an eight-year-old niece named Samantha with a face full of freckles, had a dentist appointment in two weeks, disagreed with the late Ann Landers on wedding etiquette, needed to order more pine straw to use as mulch, was at least thinking about having some spider veins removed, had recently changed insurance companies, owned season tickets to the Dock Street Theatre, and had an inexplicable interest in Viagra.

  It was the corn on the cob magnet holding up the newspaper clipping on Viagra that I inadvertently knocked loose. The magnet itself was easy enough to retrieve, but the clipping assumed a life of its own, sailed into the nearest wall, and slid back behind the refrigerator. To make a long story short, my arms were too short to retrieve it, and Greg’s too thick. Therefore, we had no choice but to pull the fridge a few inches away from the wall.

  I still say I had no choice but to scream when I saw what else lay behind that ancient avocado green appliance.

  6

  “Abby, are you all right!” The concern in Greg’s voice was touching.

  “I’m fine, but just look at that!”

  “Yeah, she should dust behind here sometimes, but that’s no cause to shriek. You nearly busted my eardrums.”

  “It’s not the dust bunnies!” I shrieked again, partly out of frustration, and partly just for good measure. “It’s the wall behind the fridge.”

  “What about the wall?” Sergeant Scrubb was peering over my shoulder. He had, of course, joined us by then, as had everyone who was at the pseudo-séance—except for poor Madame Woo-Woo, AKA Golda Feinstein.

  “It’s not just a wall,” I said. It was all I could do not to call him an idiot. “It’s the tiles on the wall.”

  “Frankly, dear,” Mama said, “they look ugly to me. I can see why the former owner painted over the rest of them. I would have too, only I would have used some color other than tangerine. Maybe a nice pale peach.”

  “That paint is a sacrilege,” I sputtered. “If my guess is right, those are early seventeenth-century Portuguese tiles. C.J., where do you keep your paper towels? And bring me a little water, would you?”

  “Seventeenth century,” Mama muttered. “Why that would make them almost three hundred years old.”

  “More like four hundred,” I said. A lot of folks, even some within the antique business, don’t seem to understand that the first century wasn’t over until one hundred years after the birth of Christ. There seems to have been a lot of millennium confusion as well—although that didn’t affect the price of my merchandise. Instead it resulted in an invitation to a bang-up party with a live band and a karaoke machine, not to mention a roast pig with an apple in its mouth. Even though it was a year early, Greg got plastered and sang “House of the Rising Sun” so off key that even the roast pig wept tears of anguish. Either that, or I was inebriated as well.

  “Here, Abby.” C.J. had trotted over with a two-quart Pyrex bowl filled with fresh water, and a clean dishtowel. I couldn’t have asked for better service.

  With the crowd pushing around me, and in some cases towering over me, I dipped one end of the cloth in the water and gently dabbed at a tile. Progress, if any, was slow. Untold years of kitchen grease and airborne dust had formed a stubborn film. Even a vigorous scrub with the water-soaked cloth did no good.

  “C.J., got any Fantastik?”

  She hopped to it. Now, I would never recommend this to my
clients, and it was really very foolish on my part, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and I was desperate to prove my point. Besides, I couldn’t be positive I was looking at a treasure; there was always the off-chance Mama was right.

  I sprayed a small area of one tile, and immediately wiped away the chemicals. To my great joy and amazement, the grime was lifted and the tile appeared undamaged. I worked on the rest of the tile until it gleamed like the day it was first glazed. When I was done, I stepped back—after having to elbow a few people aside—to gaze on my handiwork.

  “Not bad,” Mama conceded.

  “Not bad? It’s in perfect condition.”

  “What’s it supposed to be?” Maybe it’s his detective training, but Greg has to see the whole picture before he can even venture a guess.

  I grabbed the other end of the towel and wiped two more tiles clean. “That’s a flower, and there you have part of what looks to be a cherub. See the fat little face and a portion of a wing?”

  “Big deal,” Ella Nolte grunted. “They’re just old tiles, and they aren’t particularly well painted.”

  “These old tiles,” I said, willing myself to remain calm, “could be worth upwards of three hundred dollars.”

  Ella snorted. “I paid three hundred dollars for my handbag. Like I said, big deal.”

  “Each.”

  “Abby, you’re joking!” Mama pushed forward for a better look.

  C.J. shook her equine head. “She’s not. We’ve sold individual tiles for that much at the shop, haven’t we, Abby?”

  “You betcha. And a complete scene—well, we don’t know what this wall contains, do we? There could be a fortune under that hideous orange paint.”

  “Abby,” Greg said, his voice full of pride, “you never cease to amaze me. How could you tell by looking at that”—he pointed to a tile in its original state—“you would get this?” He pointed to a clean one. “And how the hell did you know they were Portuguese?”