The Ming and I Read online

  “Your mother sounded desperate. She said she let the phone ring twenty times and you didn’t pick it up.”

  “That’s because I have no phone. Someone stole it.”

  “Oh.” C.J. glanced around the room. “That explains the mess.”

  I had been slaving all morning to put things back in order, and I didn’t appreciate her observation. But, in deference to her tender age and the fact that I was mad at Greg, not her, I held my tongue.

  “Mama’s always desperate about one thing or another. What is it this time?”

  “She just said to call her.”

  “And the other message?”

  “It was your boyfriend. You know, the one with those sexy blue eyes.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Really? Well, he must have known you didn’t have a phone, because he didn’t sound upset at all.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “He wants you to call him back.”

  “If he calls again tell him I’ve taken a slow boat to China. I hear that Beijing is the place to buy antiques these days.”

  “Does this mean what I think it means?” She actually sounded hopeful.

  “I just found out that, although he’s never been married, he has six children,” I said. “All of them by different mothers.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t seem in the least bit deterred. “Oh, my. There was a man back home in Shelby who had ten children by ten different mothers. The Woman’s Club had a fund-raiser and bought him a vasectomy. But during the surgery the knife slipped, and the man could no longer—Well, you know.”

  “Imagine that! The very same thing happened to Greg,” I said without batting an eyelash.

  C.J. swallowed. “Oh, my!”

  “But it was finding out about this secret society he belonged to that really did our relationship in.”

  C.J. took the bait. “You mean he’s a Mason?”

  “Close,” I said. “He’s a Dixonite. He wanted me to become one, too. Every month I would have had to dress up in a choir robe, wear a colander on my head, and recite the pledge of allegiance in Japanese—in front of four hundred people!”

  “You poor dear.” She shook her head in sympathy. “My daddy was a Dixonite—”

  “C.J.! Stop it. There’s no such thing.”

  “Are you sure? Because if not then my daddy lied an awful lot.”

  I didn’t know C.J. had a sense of humor. The woman was good—she wasn’t even cracking a smile—or else she was loonier than a night on a Maine lake.

  “Yes, well, finding all that out was painful, but I’ll get over it. C.J., may I use your phone?”

  She shrugged. “Why not, if it will save me from having to run back over here. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know.”

  I told her she looked young for her twenty-three years, and followed her back to her store.

  “Lord, child!” Mama said. “You had me scared half to death. My nose has been twitching like a rabbit in heat.”

  “It was only a glitch in my phone line, Mama. The phone company will have it repaired by tomorrow,” I said. There was no use worrying Mama with the truth. “What is it you wanted?”

  “Oh, that. It’s all set for Saturday evening. Here at my house.”

  “What?” Now I was scared half to death. Knowing Mama, she had arranged a wedding reception for Greg and me, or something equally as preposterous.

  “Why, the soiree, of course.”

  “What soiree?”

  “For the docents, silly. You said you wanted to meet them.”

  “But Mama—”

  “Of course I had to invite the board, too. Even that awful Red Barnes and his wife.”

  “He’s married?” Do you see how easy it is for me to get sidetracked?

  “Some society girl from Chester.”

  “I didn’t know Chester had any.”

  “Now, Abby, I didn’t bring you up to be catty,” Mama said, and rightly so. After all, who am I to talk? Buford was the muck beneath the ooze beneath the sludge beneath the slime on life’s scummiest pond. That shows you just how much taste I had.

  “How many hors d’oeuvres?” I asked.

  “A dozen hot, and two dozen cold, just like I promised,” she said indignantly.

  “What time?”

  “Seven till ten. And Abby, don’t wear that polka dot outfit you’re so fond of—it makes you look short.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Oh, Abby, I took a call for you this morning, since your phone wasn’t working. It was Miss Lilah Greene. I wrote everything down. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, Mama. Thanks. What was the message?”

  “She said you could start cataloging tomorrow night, if you want. She said to meet her at the front gate at Roselawn at seven-thirty. If you can’t make it, give her a call.”

  “Thanks, Mama. Really.”

  “Don’t mention it, dear. But don’t forget the favor you owe me, either.” She hung up.

  I dreaded calling Greg. Most probably he wanted to apologize, or he wanted me to apologize. In either case I wasn’t ready. There was only a slight chance it was business, and if so I was sure to be harangued.

  “Investigator Washburn here.”

  “You wanted to speak to me.”

  “I thought you might want to know that we’re releasing June Troyan’s remains to the custody of her daughter.”

  “She has a daughter?”

  “Lots of folks do,” he said dryly. “This daughter lives in Reno, Nevada. She’ll be flying in tonight, and flying back tomorrow.”

  “Oh.”

  “That should help some with closure, I guess.” As if he were a psychiatrist.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Also, I was able to lift six sets of prints from the doorknobs and two from the phone table, but they don’t match any in our files.” Did he expect my customers to have mug shots?

  “Uhn-hunh.”

  “There was no point in interviewing any of the other merchants on Selwyn Avenue, since none of them were at work when you got your call.”

  “You’re probably right. But back to June Troyan. Can I assume that you have already launched a thorough investigation down at Roselawn Plantation?”

  I could hear Greg fiddling with something, probably a chain of paper clips. Thank God he didn’t wear pearls.

  “Abby, I did send a man down there yesterday to ask a few questions.”

  “And?”

  “We didn’t get anything. None of the docents—or board members for that matter—drive a blue van, and no one remembered seeing one around.”

  “What does this mean?”

  “It means we look elsewhere.”

  “Where?”

  The paper clips were more annoying than Mama’s pearls. “Abby, let us handle the investigation.”

  “Frankly it sounds like you’re stumped. Well, I have news for you, Greg. I want my phone back, I want to stop being harassed, and I want whomever—”

  “Abby, unless this thief strikes again, there’s not much we can do.”

  “You mean the case is closed? You can’t just close a murder case because the body is being picked up tomorrow! Not when my life is at stake.”

  He sighed dramatically. “Abby, you’re being dramatic,” he had the gall to say. “So you had an annoying call, Abby, and someone stole your phone. But there’s nothing substantial enough to tie this in with the hit and run.”

  “Oh yes there is, buster,” I said, my dander rising. “He threatened to kill me, too.”

  “What? When was this?” I could practically feel Greg’s energy leap at me from the receiver.

  “Yesterday. He said he’d run me over if he didn’t get back the Ming.”

  “This happened yesterday? And you’re just now telling me?”

  “I was too upset this morning. I forgot.”

  “Withholding information that pertains to the case is an obstr
uction of justice, Abby. Just like when you and your friends cleaned up that vase.”

  I slammed down the receiver.

  He must have known I was calling from C.J.’s, because he called right back.

  As a favor to C.J., who was with a customer, I picked up. “Feathers ’N Treasures,” I said cheerily.

  “Cut the crap, Abby. This is serious stuff.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”

  There was a long silence. I hoped that he would go easy on the tongue biting, in case we got back together someday.

  “Abby, a moment ago you referred to this caller as ‘he.’ I thought you didn’t know the gender.”

  “I don’t. That just slipped out. I really couldn’t tell.”

  “If anything comes to you, Abby, anything at all, give me a call.”

  “I will.”

  “And be careful.”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay, then. ’Bye.”

  He took an excruciatingly long time to hang up, during which I was sure he was going to say something else. I’ll confess that when I finally hung up, there were tears in my eyes.

  8

  I bought a new phone for the shop and three new phones for the house. I subscribed to caller ID, but I still panicked every time I got a call.

  You can bet I watched my back when crossing the street. My front and sides, too. I nearly gave myself whiplash just crossing Selwyn Avenue. Just the sight of a blue van was enough to strike terror in my heart, which accounts for why I swerved up onto the bank in front of the Black-Eyed Pea on Tyvola Road in Charlotte.

  Given my state of mind, it would have made sense to forgo my meeting with Miss Lilah and spend the evening at home, my doors barricaded, watching “Seinfield.” But Mama didn’t raise me to make sense. I would like to think she aimed for “plucky.” Even as a girl, I never lay trembling in bed, waiting for the bogeyman to come out of my closet or reach up from under the bed and grab my feet. Not little Abby Wiggins. Mama thought I kept a broom in my room because I was a clean freak. Little did she know that as soon as she turned out the light and closed my door, I turned my light back on again and ferociously jabbed every remaining shadow with my wooden lance.

  If Greg and his staff weren’t going to poke under the bed for me, I would have to do it myself. This time I was better armed, with a can of pepper spray, a fistful of keys, Buford’s old fish scaler (how I ended up with it, Lord only knows), and a long-handled shovel. The bogeyman wasn’t going to get me without a struggle.

  Lilah was true to her word. At precisely seven-thirty, just as the sun was starting to set, she pulled up to the gate and lowered the window of her mint green Cadillac.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I hope it wasn’t too long.”

  “I just arrived myself,” I said. It was a white lie. I’d been lying in wait for the bogeyman for at least twenty minutes. But except for a skunk family crossing the road, there had been no traffic.

  “We’ll park in back,” Lilah said. “The back door is easier to open.”

  She raised her window and drove ahead of me between the massive brick pillars of the open gate. I watched her silver chignon grow smaller for a moment while I entertained some rather silly thoughts. If Lilah was the bogeyman then she was a stupid one, because Mama knew exactly where I was, and with whom. But Lilah, the Rock Hill legend, was anything but stupid. Her degree from Winthrop aside, the woman was brilliant—so smart, in fact, that several U.S. presidents have picked her brain while ensconced as houseguests at her vacation home on Kiawah Island.

  I shifted into drive and followed the shrinking chignon down a long, narrow dirt lane. Old live oaks arched overhead, shutting out the last of the fading light. It was like driving through a tunnel, and I immediately put my lights on. The chignon and Cadillac disappeared around a bend, and I had to brake hard to avoid smashing into an oak. Miss Lilah, it seemed, had a heavy foot. It took some fancy driving to keep up with her and still stay intact.

  Even at that rate it took us several minutes to reach the clearing where the mansion stood. It was, of course, lighter in the clearing. I hadn’t seen the main house since I was a child. It took my breath away then; it took it away now. The set designers for Tara should have done their homework in Rock Hill.

  The first thing one notices are the Ionic columns. They are two feet in diameter at the base and twenty-two feet tall—twenty-four of them in all. There are three aboveground floors to the mansion, although from the outside the top floor appears to be merely a jumble of gables, chimneys, and eaves. The two lower floors are separated by a wide veranda, which in turn is guarded by a black wrought iron fence. Scores of tall windows, each with its pair of black wooden shutters, punctuate the white walls.

  But the most important feature, in my book at any rate, is the pair of stone staircases that curve away from the massive front door and sweep around to meet each other on the front lawn. They give the impression of embracing arms, that Roselawn in its heyday welcomed visitors.

  I reluctantly followed Miss Lilah around the back of the house. There I saw a cluster of buildings—a small village, really—that I had forgotten about. Summer kitchen, washhouse, storage sheds, slave quarters, barns; Roselawn had required a large supporting cast, most of whom were there without their consent and received no pay. And if half the stories told around the fire at local Scout meetings were true, Old Man Rose, the Civil War plantation owner, had been an exceptionally evil taskmaster. Virtually every building on the premises was said to be haunted by the souls of his anguished victims. It was a wonder the freed slaves didn’t burn the place down after the Yankees missed it.

  “Are any of those buildings open to the public?” I asked. “I mean, just imagine the stories they could tell if walls could talk.”

  “I’m afraid we haven’t had time to get around to them yet. Maybe next year.”

  I wondered aloud if the teenagers of Rock Hill knew about all those empty buildings. It looked like make-out heaven to me.

  Miss Lilah was clearly shocked. “They are all locked,” she said firmly, “and I am the only one who has a key. I would never tolerate a situation like that.”

  My face was still stinging from her aristocratic rebuke when she—ever the lady—softened.

  “For some reason, this back stretch of lawn gets unusually dark at night,” she said, producing a flashlight. “We’ve seen to the indoor wiring satisfactorily, but the paving lights we installed are always shorting out. We’ve had four electricians out here, and not one of them can find the problem.”

  “Ghosts?” I suggested lightheartedly.

  Miss Lilah had a laugh like porch chimes in a gentle breeze. “That would be Samson’s fault, then.”

  “Samson?”

  She pointed into the gathering gloam at the nearest outbuilding.

  “Samson was a house slave who jumped the broom with Rebecca, a kitchen girl.” By that she meant the pair had gotten married, slave-style. “According to the story, Rebecca was beaten for some minor infraction, and she foolishly tried to avenge herself by poisoning the dinner guests one night when the Roses were entertaining. Rebecca had no lethal poisons in her possession, and it’s doubtful she meant to kill anyone. However, she was able to lay her hands on some noxious herbs and give everyone a proper bellyache.

  “Unfortunately Rebecca confided her misdeed to another kitchen slave named Uma. It turned out that Uma was a stoolie. Rebecca was sold to a rice planter in the low country, and Samson never saw her again. One night when it was much darker than this, and the Roses were away, Samson killed Uma. Slashed her throat with one of the kitchen knives. Right here where we’re standing. Supposedly it’s Uma’s blood that shorts out the wiring, even with the proper grounding.”

  I glanced down at the ground that Uma’s blood had cursed. It seemed inordinately dark, considering we were still in red clay country.

  “Do you mind if we go inside?” I asked. “It’s getting rather cool.”

&
nbsp; My heart sank when Miss Lilah flipped on the lights in the dining room, the first room we entered. Anne Holliday was right. At least to a precursory glance, Roselawn was no treasure trove of priceless antiques. No English Chippendale appeared to have survived the treacherous Atlantic voyage, no hand-carved rice beds and sideboards had been hauled up from Charleston, no family heirlooms brought south from Virginia.

  Oh, it was furnished, and amply so, but everything was Victorian. Late Victorian. True, the pieces were authentic and in good, if not excellent condition, but it was not the kind of collection that normally produced a fifteenth-century Ming vase of exceptional value. Granted, one cannot judge an entire mansion by just one room, but those first pieces I saw would, if sold individually, bring in only hundreds of dollars at an auction, not thousands. Certainly not millions.

  Miss Lilah read my mind as clearly as if it contained the headlines on a supermarket tabloid. “The good stuff is upstairs, dear. So far only the ground floor is open to the public. We’re using the upstairs rooms for storage.”

  “I see. Then Miss Holliday—”

  Miss Lilah waved a manicured hand. She was too much of a lady to interrupt vocally.

  “Miss Holliday is not an expert on antiques. But you are. That’s why I took you up on your kind offer.”

  Flattery will get you anywhere you want to go with me—well, almost. It worked for Buford. But I would like to think I have matured at least a little since the water slide. At least I didn’t throw myself into Miss Lilah’s arms and nibble her ear.

  “Thank you, Miss Lilah. You don’t know how good that makes me feel, especially coming from you. You’re a legend around Rock Hill, you know that? I’ve been a great admirer of yours my entire life!”

  She smiled graciously. “That’s very kind of you, dear.”

  We walked from the dining room into the drawing room, and came to a stop in front of an enormous fireplace. I caught my breath. The carved oak mantel was worth all the furniture that I had seen so far put together.

  “Irish?” I managed to ask.

  She nodded. “Dublin, 1758. Old Man Rose’s great-great-great-great-grandfather brought it over from the family seat. It should be worth a pretty penny, I imagine.”