Tiles and Tribulations Read online

  Greg, who is every bit as handsome as Rhett Butler, scooped me up in his arms and carried me into C.J.’s living room. But instead of spreading me gently on a comfortable sofa, he propped me up on a straight-backed side chair.

  “Abby, I’ve got something to tell you.” They say confession is good for the soul, and being only a nominal Episcopalian, mine could use all the help it could get.

  “Me too, dear. Remember last Sunday when you thought you’d flown me to the moon three times? Well, I only made it there once.”

  Even though my vision was dimming in death, I could see Greg blush. “I faked it one of those times too, hon,” he said, “but what I wanted to tell is that you’re not dying.”

  “Yes, I am. Just behind your head I see the light.”

  Greg turned and looked up. “That’s C.J.’s chandelier. And anyway, you weren’t poisoned.”

  “Of course I was. We all were.” Although I must admit, despite the agonizing pain in my gut, the rest of me was feeling pretty chipper. It was hard to imagine how I was supposed to accomplish “letting go” and “floating to the light.” Perhaps I’d receive departure instructions. In the meantime, I would take advantage of my strength, to speak my peace. “Greg, I want you to know that these few months we’ve been married have been among the happiest days of my life. And I’m sorry I nagged you about leaving the toilet seat up and dropping your socks and skivvies just any old where. I’m also sorry I threw your swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated in the garbage, although now that you won’t have me, it’s perfectly all right for you to retrieve it. There are a few things, however, you still might want to keep in mind—”

  Greg covered my mouth firmly, but gently, with one of his huge hands. It smelled of raw shrimp and assorted fish culled from his daily catch.

  “Abby, please listen. I don’t think you were poisoned because in the phone call Scrubb got from the hospital, the attending physician told him that while Madame Woo—uh, Miss Feinstein—died of respiratory failure, there was no apparent sign of gastronomic distress.”

  “Mmmb, mmmb, mmmmmmb.” Even I couldn’t tell what I was saying.

  “So you see, Abby, it wasn’t something y’all ate. The doc made it plain that he is just guessing at this point, but he thinks it may have been a spider. Possibly a black widow.”

  “Mmb mmb?”

  “It could have happened at C.J.’s house. The spider might have been under the table—”

  “Mmb!”

  “More likely she was bitten by something earlier in the evening. Spider venom often takes a couple of hours to work its way through the blood stream. There weren’t any bite marks that the doc could see. Black widows like to hang out between sofa cushions and under toilet seats, so the groin area seems to be the most common target. Doc said Miss Feinstein’s groin—”

  I may be tiny, but adrenaline is a powerful thing. I ripped Greg’s hand away from my mouth.

  “TMI!” I cried. I sat forward on the straight-backed chair. Thank heavens it didn’t have any cushions.

  Greg grinned. “I knew that would get to you. How are you feeling, Hon?”

  I took a few seconds to consider. “Surprisingly, I feel much better.”

  “That pain in your gut all gone?”

  “Yes, but what about all those people in there?” The moaning and groaning coming from C.J.’s kitchen made it sound like the setting of an old Boris Karloff movie. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the resident apparition—whatever her real name was—packed her ectoplasm bags and skedaddled. I sure the heck wouldn’t hang out in all that commotion, given the option.

  “We’ve called for two ambulances—just to be on the safe side. They should be here any minute. But what we suspect is happening out there is nothing more than mass hysteria.”

  “Say what?”

  “Mass hysteria. You see it on the news every now and then. Some office worker starts feeling lousy—blames it on fumes—and the next thing you know the whole building is being evacuated. The imagination is a powerful thing.”

  “Oh God,” I moaned.

  “Abby, you’re not feeling sick again, are you?”

  “No, I’m feeling like a fool.”

  Greg kissed the top of my head. “Well, you’re my fool, and you always will be.”

  “Thanks—I think.”

  We heard the sirens.

  8

  To hear Mama tell it, having one’s stomach pumped is worse than childbirth. C.J., who’d never given birth, compared it to a root canal. I have a feeling they were both exaggerating, but a tube down one’s nose cannot be fun. On the way down, their respective tubes met with a bit of resistance, the result of which was that neither woman felt much like talking for a while.

  I excused C.J. from work, and she came and stayed with us for two nights. The second day I caught the two of them laughing so hard I feared for my upholstery. Then it was back to work for the big gal, and back to the assorted bosoms of her compadres for my madre.

  In case you’re wondering, not one of the Heavenly Hustlers had had a legitimate case of food poisoning. Or any other poison for that matter—unless you count the alcohol level in Hugh Riffle’s blood. It’s a darn good thing he hadn’t breathed too close to any of the candles in the room that fateful night.

  At any rate, with things finally back to normal, I took a day off to work on C.J.’s tiles. I went prepared, toting my own cleaning supplies—paint remover, a mild detergent, soft towels—and a book on Portuguese tiles. I didn’t plan to use the paint remover without first testing it on a very small area, perhaps no larger than that occupied by my former husband’s heart, if seen in cross section.

  C.J. and I have keys to each other’s houses. When I let myself in, just as calmly as if I owned that house, I noticed that one of the neighbors was just a wee bit too busy sweeping her front steps. I know that virtually every neighborhood has its Gladys Kravitz, so I smiled at the woman and said hello. Her response was to turn an expensively upholstered back.

  I stepped inside a house that was as dark as a stack of black cats. Because I am a firm believer in the existence of Apparition Americans, and because I am adverse to stubbing my stubby toes, the first thing I did was to turn on all the downstairs lights. I started with the foyer and proceeded to the living room, then the formal dining room—site of the aborted séance—and ended with the kitchen. When I flipped on that last switch—I wasn’t going to bother with the minuscule breakfast nook—I let out a long, loving sigh. Works of art, especially rare antiquities, deserve a little veneration.

  But something was wrong. My eyes were refusing to cooperate. Since I hadn’t come near anything mind-altering since the early nineteen seventies, I could only blame it on the light—or lack thereof. C.J., like Mama, belongs to the school of thought that favors low wattage and ruined eyes, over high energy consumption. This, however, was ridiculous. I couldn’t even see the damn tiles. The fridge had been pushed back in place, of course, but the outline of the other tiles should have been visible through the orange paint.

  I rubbed my eyes, and when that didn’t work, I tugged at the bottom lids. That little trick has been known to help me focus when alternating between TV and a good mystery by Edie Claire. Alas, my ocular orbs were obstinate, and all I could see was a flat orange wall. I ran to the wall and traced it with desperate fingers, searching for any indentation, as if I were a mountain climber on a sheer rock face. Nada. That wall was as smooth as a politician’s tongue.

  “What the heck?” I pulled the refrigerator away from the wall. The space behind it was also smooth. And clean. Where were all the dirty tiles?

  I hoisted my petite patooty up on the nearest bar stool to think. I don’t think with my patooty by the way—it’s just that my knees were feeling a little weak. There were just two possibilities as I saw it; I’d only dreamed that there were antique Portuguese tiles on C.J.’s kitchen wall, or I was dreaming now.

  In the old days one needed to pinch oneself to see if one
was awake, but today all one needs is a cell phone. I dug into my bag, extracted a device barely larger than a walnut, and called Greg on his shrimp boat. He picked up on the second ring.

  “Abby? What’s wrong? Never mind, I’ll be right there. I’m turning the boat around as we speak. I can be there in two hours.”

  “Greg, darling, I’m not hurt. And you don’t even know where I am—”

  “You’re at C.J.’s, hon.” I could barely hear my beloved over the sound of his diesel engines and a myriad of gulls. “Wow! But that’s just a lucky guess. So I am at C.J.’s. Was I here two nights ago as well? And did I accidentally happen to discover a wall full of antique Portuguese tiles?”

  “Hon, you’ve already made your point on that score. Why are you trying to rub it in?”

  “I’m not! Just tell me, dear, ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Were there antique tiles on C.J.’s kitchen wall?”

  “You know there were.” Despite the background noise, Greg sounded pissed.

  “Greg, please just humor me. What’s my middle name?” For some strange reason, in my dreams it is always Elizabeth.

  “Your middle name is Louise. Abby, what the hell is going on?”

  My middle name is Louise. I slipped off the stool, staggered over to the wall, and touched it one last time.

  “Greg,” I said in a voice as piercing as any gull’s, “then C.J.’s been robbed.”

  “Robbed? Abby, it sounded like you said ‘robbed.’”

  “That is what I said. And you’ll never guess what was stolen.”

  “Some of the tiles?”

  “More like the entire wall—well, not the wallboard itself, but every single one of the tiles is gone. And not only that, whoever did it painted the blank wall orange again.”

  “Abby, are you by yourself?”

  “Yeah. C.J.’s running the shop and Mama is off gallivanting.”

  “Then listen to me very carefully, hon. Get out of the house now.”

  “Well, I’m not planning to hang around, but I was at least going to call the police first.”

  “Don’t. Get out now.”

  “Greg, the paint is dry. The tile thief is long gone.”

  “You don’t know that. Perps often really do return to the scene of the crime. I want you to start moving right now—calmly—and just head right on out the door. You hear me?”

  “I hear you.” I also heard heavy footsteps on the ceiling above me. My blood turned the temperature of a good martini, and I was out of there like a scalded dog.

  I called the police, and while I waited for them to come, I called on Mrs. Kravitz. She was still intently sweeping her steps, which by that point, could have passed the white glove test. At any rate, I had to speak twice before she looked at me.

  “Can I help you?” she finally asked. She held her broom in front of her, both hands gripping the handle, as if it were a lance.

  “My name is Abigail Washburn. Mrs. Abigail Washburn. I’m a friend of your neighbor, Jane Cox. I was wondering if you happened to see anything unusual over there the last couple of days.”

  “Unusual?”

  “Well, like people coming in and out.”

  Gladys Kravitz had a round chin the size and color of a marshmallow—and I don’t mean the miniature kind. She pointed it upward in disdain. “There are always people coming and going over there. You should know, you’re one of them.”

  “Yes, but I specifically mean in the last two days.”

  She lowered the chin in order to make eye contact. “Nobody in the last two days. But that bunch that was there the night of the ambulance—well, you’d think they lived there.”

  I smiled patiently. “That’s not quite the case, ma’am. Only the fake gypsy—Madame Woo-Woo—had been there before.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “No ma’am!” Then I remembered Mama. “Well, my mother has been there. She was the other one in the hoop skirt.”

  “Ah, her. She’s the ringleader.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Gladys Kravitz didn’t appear to be convinced of my innocence. “You’re not from here, are you?”

  “I’m from ‘off,’” I cried. “But I live here now. Besides, what does where I was born have to do with this?”

  The chin inched skyward. “Mrs. Wiggins, here in Charleston we require building permits before remodeling.”

  “Even in ‘off’ we require building permits. What has this to do with my mother?”

  “She’s the one who lets the others in. Always when Miss Cox isn’t home, of course. She must be the contractor.”

  “A contractor in crinolines? I’m sorry Mrs. Kravitz—uh, whoever you are. But this doesn’t make a lick of sense. Can you start at the beginning?”

  Her grasp on the broom relaxed as she began to grasp that I was truly clueless. “Well, it all started about a month ago when your mother and her friends started showing up on a regular basis. Like I said, they come when Miss Cox isn’t home. They always come dressed for work—even your mother.”

  “Get out of town!”

  Her grip on the broom handle tightened. “My family has lived here for three hundred years, Mrs. Wiggins. I have no intention of getting out of town.”

  “That’s just an expression of incredulity. Sorry about that. What does my mother wear to work?”

  “Blue jeans.” She spit the words out, like one might expel a bite of rotten fruit.

  “So that explains why she got them! But how do you know the jeans are for work? And what makes you think it’s remodeling? Have you been over there?”

  Gladys Kravitz shuddered. “Gracious, no! But they’re always dressed like workers, and sometimes they come in a van with stepladders and paint and such. Once they even had a truck deliver plywood and wallboard.” The chin had been edging upwards, and she lowered it again to give me a penetrating look. “Mrs. Wiggins, what on earth is going on over there?”

  “Beats me! Just wait until I get my hands on Mama.”

  The wail of an approaching siren must have drowned out some of my words. “You beat your mama?” Mrs. Kravtiz asked. Both chin and broom were held protectively in front of her as she backed up the steps.

  Thank heavens the police had arrived.

  The two blue-clothes officers were courteous and reasonably bright. But because I continue to live in this beautiful city, I will not use their real names. The female officer I’ll call Cheech, and the male officer Chong.

  “You said the wall was stolen, but it’s right there.” Cheech was a plain woman with the no-nonsense air of a high school librarian—well, at least the librarian at my school. Miss Bernice Utternot had a stare that could make incorrectly filed books line up on their own, in complete accordance with the Dewey Decimal System.

  “I said tiles were stolen from the wall.”

  “The wall looks unmarked,” Cheech said. She ran a sturdy finger along the wall. “There is no evidence to support the fact that there were tiles here.”

  “Well, there were tiles here. Dozens of them, in fact.”

  Chong, who was by far the shortest officer I’d ever seen, couldn’t keep his eyes off me. In fact, they went straight to my ring finger, where they registered a flash of disappointment, but then moved slowly over the rest of body. He seemed to like what he saw. Perhaps I was the first full-grown woman he’d ever met that he actually towered over. Whatever it was, I had the distinct feeling that I turned him on.

  “Did you observe them being taken?” Chong asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Were you alone when you discovered them missing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you alone a lot, Mrs. Washburn?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Cheech cast her partner a Miss Utternot look. “Were there any other witnesses who saw the tiles on the wall?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. At least eleven people, including Sergeant Scrubb.”

  “Sergeant Scrubb the detective?”

&nbs
p; “Yes, ma’am.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two nights ago. When the incident happened.”

  “What incident was that?”

  “When Madame Woo-Woo the psychic got poisoned. Everyone else got poisoned too—well, they only thought they had. Still, they insisted on going to MUSC and having their stomachs pumped. But then, you already know all about this, I’m sure.”

  Cheech nodded curtly. “That,” she said wagging a finger, “was a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

  “I don’t think so,” I ventured. “I’m pretty sure my mama will be getting a bill.”

  “It was still a misuse of resources. What if there had been a multiple vehicle accident on I-26? Those ambulances would have been needed.”

  “You’ve got a point, but just for the record, I was not one of the folks who used them.”

  “Well”—she gave Chong a look that was clearly an order—“we’ve got to get back to work.”

  “This is your work,” I said, with the patience of a saint.

  “There was nothing in Sunday’s report about tiles.” She touched the wall one last time. “There’s nothing here, Mrs. Washburn. There never was. Have you considered counseling?”

  “I’m not crazy! And what about the footsteps I heard upstairs? You haven’t even been up there yet.”

  Chong waved his arm like a schoolboy. “I’ll go up there with Mrs. Washburn.”

  “I don’t think so. Y’all have the guns, not me.”

  “Neither of us is going upstairs,” Cheech barked. She turned her broad back on me and started out the kitchen door.

  That’s when I lost control. You have to believe me when I say I’ve never done anything remotely like this before. I don’t know what possessed me to grab a copper tea kettle—half-filled with water—from C.J.’s stove and fling it at the freshly painted wall. But I did.

  And that’s when the peculiar odor filled the room.

  9

  It smelled at first like a dead hamster. Just for the record, I haven’t had a whole lot of experience smelling dead hamsters, although my son Charlie had a pet hamster named George that disappeared one fine day in May. When, after a thorough search, the little fellow wasn’t found, we assumed he’d made his escape through the window since there was a hole in the screen. It wasn’t until October, when we turned on the furnace for the first time that season, that we learned what really happened to George.