Monet Talks Page 5

  Although I consider myself to be a neat dresser, I always feel a bit dowdy in the designer’s presence. A stout woman in her middle years, Cat dresses with a flair that borders on theatrical. On this particular day she was wearing a fire-engine-red sleeveless sheath that had been cut low in front to emphasize her deeply tanned and somewhat wrinkled bosoms. Lavender eye shadow neither complemented nor accentuated dark brown eyes and bottle-brown hair. From sagging earlobes dangled chandelier earrings that were rumored to contain three carats of flawless diamonds—each.

  I was greeted by an assistant, who then scurried to the back room to fetch Cat. She appeared seconds later, proceeded by a cloud of perfume.

  “Abby,” she said, unable to arrange her Botoxed brow into a suitable frown, “you’ve been a very naughty woman.”

  “I have?”

  “Don’t play coy, dear. You knew how much I wanted that fabulous birdhouse. But ten thousand dollars—well, even the nouveaus aren’t going to pay that retail.”

  The nouveau riche, or just nouveaus, as Cat called them, are the legions of doctors, lawyers, and real estate agents that have supplanted the planters of historic Charleston. Although we sometimes joke about them to ourselves, we take their money very seriously.

  “I’m not planning on reselling the birdcage.”

  One brow struggled in vain to rise. “You’re not?”

  “It speaks to me,” I said, resenting the fact that I felt I had to explain myself.

  “Funny and naughty,” she said, and shook her head just enough to make the diamonds dance. “Tell you what, I’ll give you fifteen thousand, but only because you’ve always been fair to me.”

  “No, what I meant was that the cage itself speaks to me—well, not literally. But I’ve always wanted to travel to India and see the real Taj Mahal. I’m afraid this is as close as I’m going to get.”

  “I was there last winter. It was a disappointment.”

  “Then I should be glad I haven’t spent the money to visit the real thing.”

  “A tomb’s a tomb, I always say. Okay, Abby, you drive a hard bargain. Sixteen five, and we’ll call it a day.”

  I smiled. The view from the catbird’s seat can be fabulous, especially for someone as vertically challenged as myself.

  “Cat, if you didn’t like the Taj Mahal, why would you want to pay so much for a birdcage replica?”

  Her scarlet lips came together in a soft smack, and I could see the wheels in her head pick up speed. “Actually, it’s for a very wealthy client. Fell in love with it at the auction—said he must have it for his new home on Legare Street.”

  “Then why didn’t you snag it on Saturday? If he’s that rich, I mean.”

  “Well, you seemed so determined, and like I said, you’ve always been fair to me. It wasn’t until I saw the look on his face—when the gavel fell—that I realized how much he wanted it.”

  “Who is this client—if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “He wants to remain anonymous. I’m sure you understand that, dear.”

  “I see.” I slipped a business card from my purse and held it out. “Give this to him, would you, please? Tell him to check in from time to time. Who knows, I could tire of that thing tomorrow and slap a price tag on it.”

  There are limits to expressing shock when one’s muscles are frozen by toxic mold. “But you wouldn’t just put it on the market like that, would you? Not without telling me.”

  A very wise person once told me that silence is the most powerful weapon there is, mightier even than the pen. Unfortunately, it is hard for my lips to stay sealed, unless there is a piece of candy behind them.

  “Sure, I’ll give you a call.”

  She nodded. “Abby, you still haven’t told me why you came here this morning.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I just got this shipment in from Aiken, South Carolina, most of which is to die for. Although a few appear to have been died in—but that’s part of the charm of old things, isn’t it? Gives them that certain patina, don’t you think? For instance, there’s a grandfather clock, which C.J. swears used to belong to her Granny Ledbetter—oh, my gracious! I totally forgot about C.J. She woke up with a nasty toothache and I promised to spell her so she could go to the dentist.”

  With that I turned and fled. I’m not very good at lying, unless it involves my age, and even then I don’t see the point. Why pretend to be younger than you are, and have people think time has treated you badly? Better to add a few years, and leave them with the impression that genetics have been kind to you.

  At any rate, it was because I tend to flub fibbing that I headed straight from the frying pan and into the fire.

  6

  Martin Gibble fancies himself the most knowledgeable antique dealer in Charleston. I won’t argue with this, but surely Rob Goldburg comes in a close second. I, on the other hand, would fly completely under Martin’s radar were it not for the fact that last year I outbid him on an unprepossessing little table that turned out to have been made right here in Charleston in the early eighteenth century, and which I resold for ninety thousand dollars. I suppose there would be no good reason for me to further rub it into Mr. Gibble’s face and mention that I paid a mere fifty bucks for this piece of history.

  So it was with mixed feelings that I rang the bell beside the door of Encore on King Street. Through the glass I could see Martin wrinkle his patrician nose before buzzing me in. He turned his back to me as I approached.

  “Hello, Martin.”

  “Abby.”

  “It’s going to be another hot one.” Weather talk may be trite, but it’s seldom controversial.

  “Yes, I suppose where you come from this could be considered hot.”

  Martin Gibble is a native Charlestonian, born in one of the mansions that fronts the Battery. It is a fact that he trots out within minutes of meeting a new person. If he dislikes you, he trots it out in every conversation thereafter as well.

  “Martin, one doesn’t get credit for where one is born. Or to whom, for that matter.”

  He turned. “Excuse me?”

  “Unless, of course, before conception, one is offered a choice. If that’s the case, and I chose not to be born in Charleston, I must have had good reasons.”

  Patrician nose aside, Martin has the messy hair and facial stubble currently popular with celebrities. He looks more like he’s been on a three-day bender than he does stylish. At any rate, he scratched his chin with nails that had been lacquered a transparent pink.

  “Are you just here to taunt me, Abby?”

  “It’s about the birdcage.”

  “Aha, so you are here to taunt.”

  “Martin, I didn’t realize what I was getting when I outbid you on that table last year. We both thought it was a knockoff until Antiques Road Show came to town. I was going to use it in my potting shed and—”

  “So you say.”

  I bit my tongue while I counted to ten in Portuguese. It is a language of which I have only a tourist’s knowledge, so Martin got an extra second of grace when I made a false start.

  “Back to the birdcage, Martin. I wanted to tell you that I have no plans to resell it.”

  “Your point in telling me this?”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was going to make a huge profit from it.” There was no need to add “like last time.”

  He snorted and started to turn, but stopped abruptly. “What about the bird?”

  “What about him?”

  “Surely you’re not going to continue to let that bird crap in a ten thousand dollar replica of the Taj Mahal.”

  “Well—”

  “Abby, I know we don’t get along—never have—but I’m asking you a favor, as one connoisseur of beautiful things to another. Please,” he said, almost imploringly, “don’t let that stupid bird crap one more time in that exquisite piece of art.”

  I don’t know which surprised me the most: his strange, and somewhat moving, request, or his assertion that we’d never gotten a
long. To the best of my memory, we’d gotten along quite well until the Keeno brothers came to town.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, trying to appear unruffled. “Monet will not be crapping in that cage today.”

  He tugged on his right earlobe, home to a sizable diamond stud. “Am I supposed to believe you capitulated this easily?”

  “Believe what you want,” I said, and flashed him what I hoped was an enigmatic smile.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What gives, Abby?”

  “Monet’s missing.”

  “What the—” The diamond stud popped loose from his ear, pinged off the inlaid surface of a Louis IV commode, and disappeared under a row of French high chests.

  “Oh gosh, I’m sorry!” I cried and dropped to my knees.

  “That can wait,” Martin said with astonishing sharpness.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s only a CZ. I mean, why wear the real thing to work, right?”

  I hopped to my feet. “Right. And I promise not to tell anyone.”

  “Good one, Abby. So fast with the quips. Perhaps I misjudged you.”

  “Most likely you didn’t.” I started for the door.

  “The bird!” he shouted. “Did you say it was stolen?”

  I pivoted slowly. “Stolen? Oh no, I think you heard wrong. Monet isn’t stolen; he’s simply misplaced.”

  “Misplaced?”

  “Well, you know C.J. She was cleaning his cage over the weekend, and put him in a drawer in for safekeeping. Now she can’t remember which one.”

  “Drawer? Like a dresser drawer?”

  “Yup, or maybe it was a cupboard. I just hope we can find the poor thing before he starves.”

  He stared at me for what seemed like an eternity, but I refused to look away or add to my story. Do you see what I mean about silence being a powerful weapon?

  “I think you’re both nuts,” he finally said.

  “And with you, we’d make a nice bridge mix,” I said, and bolted for the second time that morning.

  When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and the weak ones, like myself, head right for food. I had several hours to kill before lunch, so I headed across the street to my shop, where I keep a stash of chocolate bars in case of an emergency. It’s anybody’s guess when the next big earthquake will hit Charleston, but if it’s anything like the killer quake of 1889, at the very least the roof will collapse and I could be buried in the rubble for days. Much better to be buried with Mounds bars than without.

  C.J. must have seen me coming, because she flung open the door to the Den of Antiquity just as I was about to push. As a result, I went sailing through the air as if I’d leapt off a bridge while bungee-jumping, but of course I didn’t have as far to fall. And a floor is much less forgiving than an elastic cord.

  Two pairs of hands helped me to my feet. “Abby, are you all okay?”

  “Wynnell! What are you doing here?”

  “I heard about Mozella. I came to help.”

  “How did you hear about Mama?”

  “Bob called me, and then I called C.J., but she didn’t know where you were—”

  “Abby,” C.J. said, her big gray eyes brimming with tears, “I thought we were friends.”

  “We are!”

  She shook her leonine head. “Friends confide in each other. Besides, Abby, Mozella was my best friend. You should have told me.”

  “She’s right,” Wynnell said, as the hedgerows above her eyes met.

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. But I didn’t want to worry y’all, and anyway, it’s not like there is any proof she’s been kidnapped. I haven’t even told the children yet. For all we really know, Mama’s off discovering herself again.”

  Susan and Charlie are my college-age offspring. The man who supplied the ingredient necessary for their conception was my first husband, Buford Timberlake. I used to hate Buford, but after he finally apologized for his mistreatment of me, and having learned that there is nothing to be gained by hate—except for a sour stomach—I let go of that crippling emotion.

  “Your mama does do some strange things from time to time,” Wynnell agreed, “like that time she ran off to Cincinnati to join a convent.”

  “And got kicked out for wearing curlers under her wimple and singing on the stairs.”

  “Cousin Sister Leviticus Ledbetter had a pimple under her wimple,” C.J. said, absolutely deadpan. Wynnell and I both sighed, a fact that the big galoot must have interpreted as encouragement. “And it wasn’t just an ordinary pimple, either. It looked exactly like St. John the Baptist—before he lost his head, of course. It even had his dimples.”

  “Hold it right there,” I said. “Nobody knows what John the Baptist looked like.”

  The enormous gray eyes, now dry of tears, held me in a steady gaze. “Are you calling the Vatican a liar?”

  “No. And just so you know, C.J., the Vatican isn’t a person, but an institution.”

  Her gaze shifted as those eyes executed a quarter turn. “I know that, silly. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, so anyway, folks for miles around came to see Cousin Sister’s pimply pate—she had to keep her head shaved, you see—but it got to itching really bad, so the convent doctor gave her this prescription cream to use on it, which she did, but the next morning St. John the Baptist was gone, and it was back to being just an ordinary zit. Except for one of the dimples. It still had one of those, so it looked like a Smiley face without the eyes, but nobody was willing to pay to see that.”

  “A simple dimpled pimple under a wimple,” I said. “What a moving story.”

  “Abby, are you making fun of me?”

  “Maybe just a tad. Look y’all, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got work to do.”

  “You mean sleuthing work,” Wynnell said. “Give us assignments, Abby.”

  “Ooh, Abby, please,” C.J. begged. “Cousin Agatha Ledbetter, up in Shelby, was a private eye. So maybe it runs in the family.”

  “Was her last name Christie?”

  “You’re being mean again.”

  “Sorry, C.J.”

  “That’s okay. So Abby, are you going to give us our assignments now?”

  Silence may be the world’s most powerful weapon, but guilt comes in a close second. “Sure,” I heard myself saying. “Wynnell, let’s start with you. I would very much appreciate it if you went to see John Norman—you know, the owner of the Lowcountry Auction Barn up on Rivers Avenue. There was a beautiful blonde who was bidding furiously against me, and a black man—mmm—maybe in his sixties.”

  “You mean African-American.”

  “Yes. The blonde, by the way, is European-American. At any rate, see if you can get their names and phone numbers from John. You may need to sweet-talk him a little, which is why it’s best to do it in person. But a good-looking woman like you should find it a piece of cake.”

  Wynnell grinned so wide I was afraid her dentures might fall out. “Sure thing, Abby. I’ll get right to it. Do you want me to call you on your cell with the information?”

  “That would be super. And just so y’all know, I’m meeting the Rob-Bobs at Chez Fez for lunch today.”

  “And me?” C.J. was bouncing around like a nine-year-old on Christmas morning. “What’s my job?”

  “C.J., yours is the most important job of all. I’m putting you in charge of the command center. I need you to answer the phone, coordinate shipments and arrivals, maintain the economic status quo, and, of course, monitor the comings and goings of suspicious people.”

  “In other words, Abby, you want me to stay right here and sell your merchandise.”

  “That’s putting it harshly.”

  “Why does Wynnell get to have all the fun? Why don’t I get a real assignment?”

  “Because you have a job,” I said gently. “Besides, I wasn’t exaggerating when I said yours was the most important job. What if Mama calls here—this is where she’d expect me to be on a normal day—and no one is here to answer? What if that was the only c
all she was allowed to make?”

  C.J. hung her head. “If anything happened to Mozella, and it was my fault, I’d never forgive myself. I’d have to do what Cousin Exodus did.”

  “I thought her name was Leviticus.”

  “That’s his sister. Cousin Exodus is a boy, silly. Whoever heard of a girl named Exodus? And anyway, he ran off to Vegas, not a convent. You see, he wanted to be a bouncer, on account of he was a big guy—well, most of him was.” She paused to giggle. “He had the tiniest—”

  I ran to my desk, unlocked the middle left drawer, and waved a Mounds bar above my head. The delicious combination of dark chocolate and chewy coconut brought C.J. and Wynnell over at a fast trot. C.J. had already switched off her storytelling mode and was gearing up for a sugar high. Like I said, I keep those bars around for emergencies.

  Chez Fez is currently Charleston’s most talked-about eatery. A lot of rednecks, as well as a few reasonable people, disliked the idea of an “Arab” restaurant. Never mind that “the Fez,” as it is called now by its regulars, is all about good food and fabulous entertainment, and has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

  From the second one steps in off the street, one is transported to the land of Aladdin and Scheherazade, but with a pseudo-Moroccan spin. The interior of the restaurant is entirely filled by one large white tent. Maroon velvet draperies tied back with gold tassels form the private eating areas. Diners sit cross-legged on genuine faux Oriental carpets, or recline against brightly colored rayon pillows brought all the way from Pier One Imports. The food is served on beaten brass platters, laid on tables of simulated mother-of-pearl inlay.

  In the center of the room is a circular stage topped with a white plastic garden gazebo from Home Depot. Inside a trio of musicians—two flutists and a drummer—plays haunting desert melodies. About every twenty minutes the tempo picks up and from the direction of the kitchen a bevy of bovine beauties bounce in and proceed to shake their stuff. There is one dancer for every table, and they position themselves so close to the diners that even if you close your eyes against the sight of rolls of jiggling fat, the smell of cheap perfume, fanned by the fluttering of polyester veils, still assaults the senses. Even the most parochial guest soon realizes that these are not professional belly dancers, but bored housewives bused down from North Charleston and Hanahan.