Nightmare in Shining Armor Page 7

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’re divorced. He still signs my checks.” He laughed. “Come to think of it, I guess he still signs yours, too.”

  “Not hardly. If you pulled your weight in the firm you’d know better. Buford played his good old boy card and got out of paying alimony altogether.”

  Malcolm whistled. “Man, that had to hurt. But if you hook up with me, Abby, I won’t treat you that way.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “What do you say, Abby? Just one date.”

  “Not for all the bran in St. Petersburg,” I growled. “You’re supposed to be comforting me, not hitting on me.”

  “Why can’t it be both?”

  “Out!” I pointed to the door.

  “Calm down,” he had the nerve to say.

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” I hobbled forward threateningly. “I said ‘out’!”

  “Who’s going to make me?”

  “Me. And if I need to, I’ll get help.”

  “You mean them?”

  The Rob-Bobs had discreetly disappeared into what they so charmingly call “the salon.” The muted strains of classical music could be heard through the closed door.

  “Either one of them could wipe the floor with you,” I said through clenched teeth.

  He had the temerity to laugh.

  I shook a finger at him in warning. “Rob has a black belt and Bob a brown.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not.” And I wasn’t. Rob did indeed have a black belt. It went nicely with his best suit. As for Bob’s brown belt, I bought the matching corduroys myself.

  Malcolm slid out of the rococo settee. Mercifully, there were no grease stains left behind.

  “Okay, I’m outta here. But if Buford asks, I did my duty, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Too bad about Tweetie,” he said, in the same tone he might have used to refer to milk gone sour.

  “Tweetie was no saint,” I said tightly, “but she didn’t deserve to die.”

  “Yeah, well, we all have to go sometime.”

  “You got that right.” I gave him a not-so-gentle shove toward the door.

  Caught off guard, Malcolm staggered a few steps. But when he regained his balance, he spread his legs in a stance of defiance.

  “We have to talk,” he said.

  I wasted no time. “Rob! Bob!”

  My buddies must have been sitting with their heads next to the speakers. No help was forthcoming.

  “We have to talk,” Malcolm said again.

  I glared at closed salon doors. “We have nothing to talk about, Mr. Biddle.”

  “I think we do. I think there’s been a big misunderstanding.”

  “On your part maybe,” I snapped.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “What?”

  “You’re right, Abby. I got it all wrong.”

  “You can say that again.”

  To my astonishment—and disbelief, I might add—Malcolm underwent a metamorphosis right in front of my eyes. The slime just seemed to melt away, uncovering a man who looked as vulnerable as my Charlie did his first day of school.

  “I’m sorry, Abby,” he said. There was not a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “I was given the wrong impression and never bothered to check things out for myself.”

  “What things?” I hissed. The man better not be playing me for a fool.

  “Buford—well, let’s just say I was led to believe that you had the hots for me.”

  “What?” If my shriek didn’t bring the Rob-Bobs running, nothing would.

  The doors to the salon stayed tightly closed as Malcolm continued. “It’s all my misunderstanding, of course, but I thought you were just playing hard to get.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard!”

  “Yeah, I realize that now. Again, I’m really sorry.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, even if that were true, this would be a hell of a time to hit on me. Finding a dead woman under your bed is traumatizing.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. That was really stupid of me. There is no excuse for my behavior.”

  I stared at Malcolm. He hardly looked like the same man. Was it possible I had been at least partly wrong about him?

  “What you did to your wife was despicable,” I said. “Do you have an excuse for that?”

  He shook his head remorsefully. “I shouldn’t have left her at a time like that. Sure, she was having an affair with her doctor—”

  “Come off it! You were having an affair with a bimbo named Miranda.”

  He blinked. “Say what?”

  “Give it up, Malcolm. Everybody knows. The fact that you got dumped is only half of what you deserved.”

  As if wounded by my words, he clutched his middle dramatically. “I need to sit.”

  “I said give it up. Your heart, if you ever had one, would be higher than that.”

  He pushed past me and virtually threw himself down on the settee. “It’s not my heart,” he gasped. “It’s an ulcer.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t have to believe me.” He took a couple of deep breaths, his handsome face twisted in a grimace. “What you said before—I never touched Miranda.”

  “Sure you did. Tweetie told me.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Ah, Tweetie. She would have said that. Miranda was her best friend. The doctor was Miranda’s husband. Apparently Tweetie twisted things around a bit.”

  “Is that right? Well, I’ll just ask her!” Realizing what I’d said, I clapped a hand over my mouth. I clapped it hard.

  “Well, you can’t do that now, can you?” he said softly.

  I plopped my mouthy self on the hassock. Tweetie had told me the tragic details of Malcolm’s affair over lunch at the Red Lobster. I remember that day clearly; the restaurant had inexplicably run out of shrimp scampi and I’d had to console myself with an extra cheese biscuit. At any rate, my ex-husband’s current wife had made me promise not to tell a soul, and so far I’d kept my word. They only people I’d shared the sad story with were Mama, Wynnell, C. J., and my daughter, Susan. Oh, and the Rob-Bobs, but that goes without saying. Surely Tweetie hadn’t meant that I not tell them.

  “You really didn’t cheat on your wife while she was in the hospital for a hysterectomy?”

  He looked stunned. “A hysterectomy? Is that what Tweet said?”

  “Yes. You could have at least waited until she was home again.”

  “It was liposuction, and she didn’t even stay overnight.”

  “Oh my.”

  He shook his head. “That Tweetie. She really had it in for me, didn’t she?”

  “Why was that?” I asked weakly.

  “Because I convinced Buford not to run for the Senate. Apparently she had big dreams. Senator’s wife, then governor’s wife, and then finally First Lady.”

  The thought of Tweetie Bird in the White House made me shudder. I don’t mean to be disrespectful of the dead, but if that had happened, during the very next election America would have voted into office a communist government. Either that, or a fundamentalist right-wing government so strict they required their head of state to take a vow of celibacy.

  “I’m so sorry, Malcolm. I got the story all wrong.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  Although Malcolm smiled, I could see he was still in pain. “That’s all right. Now that everything’s straight, between us, let me ask you again. Are you all right, Abby?”

  I told Malcolm that I was not all right. How does one erase such a gruesome sight from one’s memory? How does one go to sleep in a house where a woman was brutally murdered? Now I’m not saying I believe in ghosts, and I’m not saying I do—well, okay, I do.

  It seems perfectly logical to me that a soul which has been forced from the body under sudden and unusual circumstances might be confused, unable to find its way to the spirit realm. Or in some cases, unwilling. I was touring the Civil War battl
efield of Manassas—where the Battle of Bull Run was fought—one foggy morning when I got separated from my group. As I was stumbling about the moors, barely able to see my feet, I encountered a beautiful young woman in period costume. Thinking that she was a guide, I asked her for directions back to the exhibit hall. After all, the dewy grass was soaking my shoes and I had to use the restroom—desperately—or even more of me was going to get wet. There is no shame in cutting one’s losses, you know.

  The auburn-haired beauty had a wicker picnic hamper hanging on one arm, a coarse brown blanket tucked under the other. Her large gray eyes appeared to see right through me.

  “Which way to the front?” she asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My Edward is serving under Brigadier General Irvin McDowell. I have come to watch righteousness prevail.”

  “Oh, a Yankee,” I sniffed on Wynnell’s behalf.

  Instead of responding, the young woman simply disappeared. Just like that, she evaporated before my eyes, melding with the fog. As she did so, I felt the hair on my arms stand up.

  Later, back at the information center, I learned that the women of Washington had come out in mass, laden with picnic baskets, to monitor the battle’s progress from distant hills. Much later, in a poem, the title of which I now forget, I read of a maiden named Emily “with eyes so fair” who, while on her way to watch her lover triumph at Bull Run, wandered afield and was killed by a stray cannonball. According to the poem, the missile was launched by the Federals, quite possibly by her sweetheart himself.

  At any rate, even if you do not believe in ghosts, surely you will agree that the joy I once experienced living in my new house was now a thing of the past. Tweetie herself might not return to haunt me, but the memory of her corpse would. No, there was nothing left for me to do but sell the house. Undoubtedly news of the murder was in the morning Observer and on television, and only a ghoul would make me an offer.

  Malcolm gave me hope, however, because before he left he gave me the name of a contractor who could remodel the master bedroom in such a way that I wouldn’t recognize it, yet the integrity of the house would remain unchanged. Apparently this fellow made a living redoing rooms in which folks have died, and murders were his specialty. I thanked Malcolm, apologized again, and was in the process of closing the front door behind him when I heard the voices in the stairwell. So loud were they that even the Rob-Bobs, sequestered behind their salon door, heard them—or so they told me later.

  “Abby’s not going to forgive us just because you promise to give her a ride,” the first one said.

  “What if I promise not to buck?”

  I sighed in resignation. There was no point in trying to avoid Mama and C. J. It would be like a child trying to outrun puberty. Unless you were Michael Jackson, you didn’t stand a chance.

  “Abby’s always been afraid of horses,” Mama said. It wasn’t true, of course. “Maybe that’s where we went wrong last night.”

  “My Granny Ledbetter always wanted to own a horse,” C. J. said, launching into one of her infamous Shelby stories. “Only she and my granddaddy were too poor to buy one. Then one day, for Granny’s birthday, Granddaddy dressed up the milk cow, Clarabelle, to look like a horse. He tied a fake mane around the cow’s neck and glued some extra hair to her tail.

  “Man, did Granny ever love her horse. She rode Clarabelle—only she was called Trigger now—around the farm so many times that the poor thing up and died. Of course Granny was very upset, but she was a practical woman, and like I said, she was very poor. Anyway, she had Granddaddy butcher Trigger, and that night they sat down to the best meal they’d had in years.

  “Well, Granny couldn’t get over how good the horsemeat tasted. This was right after the war, and folks in France had even less to eat than we did here. So Granny canned what was left of Trigger and sent it to our French cousins in Paris. Back then no one in France had ever tasted horsemeat, you see. But they all thought they had when they tasted Trigger, and, well, the rest is history. To this very day horsemeat is very popular in France, and all because Granny wanted a horse.”

  “I don’t think Ledbetter is a French name,” Mama said skeptically.

  The women emerged from the stairwell onto the landing and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Mama was back in her uniform of Donna Reed–era duds. The vintage ensemble consisted of pink and white gingham dress with full circle skirt held aloft by layers of crinolines, pink hat and gloves, pink shoes, and her ubiquitous pearls. The last was a gift from my daddy, and to my knowledge Mama has never taken them off. Not even to shower.

  “Mama,” I said, just as calmly as if I’d been expecting her, “aren’t you pushing it with the pink? I mean, isn’t that a spring color? Why, today’s the first day of November.” I know that was cruel of me, but people who take fashion so seriously, albeit four decades late, deserve to have their noses tweaked. Besides, Mama made me wear an off-white wedding gown, on account of walking down the aisle in snow-white would have been a lie.

  Mama, who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing white between Memorial Day and Labor Day, turned the color of her pumps. She patted her pearls, a sure sign of distress.

  “I’m planning ahead. Our Saviour,” she said referring to her church, “is putting together a new directory for spring, so I’m having my picture taken today. How would it look if folks see me wearing fall colors next April, when the booklet comes out?”

  “Well—”

  “Besides, Abby, I didn’t come all the way up here to talk about fashion. I came to give you this.”

  She handed me a black envelope.

  11

  I stared at the strange packet. It appeared to be made out of black construction paper, folded and taped to resemble a business envelope in size and shape. A small rectangle of white paper had been glued to the front side, and upon it my name stood out in bold red letters.

  “This was under the door, Abby. I thought you might want to have it.”

  “Oh Abby, you look worried,” C. J. said. She turned to Mama. “I told you we should have opened it first.”

  Mama thrust the letter at me. “I don’t think it’s a bomb, dear. I tried holding it up to the light but—”

  “Mama! You did open it first, didn’t you!”

  She hung her head, which made her just my height. “I was just looking out for you, dear.”

  “For shame,” I said.

  “For shame,” C. J. agreed.

  I snatched the strange black envelope from Mama and ripped it open. In the process, I ripped its content, a single sheet of typing paper. Not that it mattered. The message was written on only one half. Red block letters, drawn with a felt-tip pen, spelled out three simple words. You will pay.

  Dazed, I let envelope and papers flutter to the floor. I’ve already paid enough to last a lifetime. I paid when Daddy died. Mama didn’t mean to take her grief out on me, but I was handy, and older than my brother, Toy. I paid when Buford and I got divorced. Never mind that he got custody of Charlie. In the kids’ eyes, I was to blame for the fact that their father took up with a woman young enough to be their sister.

  C. J. picked up my trash. “Oh, Abby, you don’t think it’s Buford, do you?”

  “Buford?” Mama snapped. “Why Buford?”

  C. J. shrugged. “Maybe because he thinks Abby is somehow responsible for Tweetie’s murder. It happened at her house, didn’t it?”

  Mama gave C. J. a warning glare. “It wasn’t Buford. He’s a snake all right, but he’s also the father of my two precious grandchildren. Buford would never hurt their mother. No, it’s probably just one of those people who was bad-mouthing Abby at my house last night.”

  I snapped out of my reverie. “Who was bad-mouthing me?”

  “Why, everyone, dear.”

  “Names,” I hissed. “I want names.”

  “Well, there was Moses—I mean, Alan Bills. Said he’d never driven so far for nothing before. Said he had a better time the night he rented Isht
ar.”

  C. J. nodded. “I loved that movie. But I don’t think it was Mr. Bills who sent you this note. I think it was either Geppetto or Pinocchio.”

  Mama scowled. She hates to be challenged.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I heard them say they were so mad at Abby, they were never going to shop at the Den of Antiquity again.”

  “Not them, too!” I wailed.

  Mama sniffed. “They may have been mad at Abby, but they weren’t half as mad as Neptune and the mermaid. They said they’d had to give up a party at the mayor’s.”

  C. J.’s eyes widened. “The mayor? Wow! Wait until Granny Ledbetter hears that I know someone who knows the mayor.”

  “Lynne Meredith was lucky to have even been invited to my party,” I mumbled. “The mayor indeed!”

  “What did you say?” Mama asked.

  “I said that when she gets to heaven, Lynne Meredith will ask to see the upstairs.”

  C. J. giggled. “Ooh, Abby, you’re bad.”

  “You’re darn tooting. What else did my ungrateful guests have to say?”

  “Does Irene count?” Mama asked. “I mean, she’s your shop assistant, and she had to come.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  They nodded.

  “Well, spare me the details.”

  “You sure?” Mama asked. “Because I’d want to know if it was me.”

  “Is it about my party, or work?”

  “Both. But mostly work.”

  I sighed and ushered them inside the Rob-Bobs’ apartment. Their neighbors didn’t need to know what a Scrooge I was—well, in Irene’s eyes at any rate. I don’t care what anyone says, I am not obligated to pay for my employee’s Lasik surgery. Not at a thousand dollars an orb. Irene should pay for the procedure herself, or else content herself with the bifocals, for which my plan does provide.

  “Spill it,” I said, closing the door behind me.

  “Well, dear, Irene said it was no surprise Tweetie was found dead under your bed. Not after that fight you two got into last week.”

  I clutched my chest and staggered backward until my thighs found the silk hassock. Only then did I allowed my knees to give out.