by Tamar Myers
“But you’re sure? That she’s Swedish, I mean?”
C.J. rolled her eyes. “Abby, I know Swedish when I speak it. That’s what we talked in, of course. Ingebord is from Jukkasjarvi, up above the Arctic Circle.”
“That sounds weirdly familiar,” I said. I wasn’t being sarcastic.
“Maybe that’s because you read about the ice hotel.” C.J. took a deep breath, always a dangerous sign. “It’s built out of just ice, you know. Walls, ceilings floors, everything. There’s even an ice chapel. It sleeps a hundred guests—not in the chapel, of course, but in the rooms. And do you know what, Abby? The temperature in that hotel is always below freezing. Between minus four and minus nine centigrade, as a matter of fact. Ooh, and the really neat thing is that they tear down the entire hotel every spring and build a new one the next year.”
Mama rolled her pearls instead of her eyes. “Are you sure this ice hotel is in Sweden and not Shelby?”
“No, Mama, this for real,” I said. Then, realizing how disrespectful that might have sounded to C.J., slapped my mouth gently. “I’ve read about the ice hotel in travel magazines. I think it’s an interesting idea, but I couldn’t stand to be that cold.”
Greg gave my thigh a slow squeeze under the tablecloth. “There are ways to stay warm,” he murmured.
I couldn’t believe how amorous a single day off was making my hubby. I had half a mind to sneak over to the shrimp boat docks in Mount Pleasant some night and cut an irreparable hole in his net.
“Why, sugar bear—”
“Ooh, Abby, you’re not going to get all yucky on us, are you?”
My sugar bear blushed. “Ladies, excuse me a minute,” he said, and got up.
I watched him walk in the direction of the men’s room. “C.J. how could you?”
“How could I what, Abby.”
“Embarrass him like that!”
“She’s right,” Mama said, much to my surprise. “Abby and Greg haven’t you-know-what for ages. You should have let them be.”
“Mama!”
“Well, it’s true, dear.”
“Even if it was, how would you know?”
“I don’t hear the bedsprings,” Mama said. “Lord knows, when you get to be my age, sleep doesn’t always come easy. Some nights I lie awake until three in the morning.”
I must have been the color of port wine. “Maybe we keep the springs oiled.”
“I don’t hear the headboard either. Why, your Daddy and I—”
“Stop it!” I had both hands clamped as tight as I could over my ears. The part of me that believes my mother is still a virgin wanted to keep it that way.
I hummed softly to myself, and C.J. and Mama continued to discourse—I could see their lips flapping—until Greg returned. They so distracted me, it took me a minute to realize Greg was talking as well.
My ears rang when I finally released them. “Say that again, please, dear.”
Greg laughed and nuzzled the closest ear. “I said, your mama must be talking about sex again.”
“You got that right,” I growled.
Greg laughed again. “Hey, I was just on the phone to Sergeant Scrubb, and C.J. was absolutely right.”
“She was? I mean, about what?”
“Brunhilde Salazar is an alias for Ingebord Simonson. She is indeed Swedish and from that little town with the ice hotel—and don’t think for a minute I’m going to try and pronounce it.”
“You see?” C.J. cried.
“But why the ruse then?” I asked. “Is she in the country illegally?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s apparently because she has a horrific employment record.”
I was all ears, even if they weren’t quite up to par. “Details, dear.”
“Well”—Greg glanced at the other two women—“maybe it’s best if I wait until, uh—”
“Until we vamoose?” Mama said. She answered her question by standing, which meant that Greg stood, too. “Come on, dear,” Mama said to C.J. “Let’s you and I do some shopping. “I hear that the vintage clothing store on King Street—Granny’s Goodies, I think it’s called—sometimes has crinolines for sale. Do you know how hard it is to buy knee-length crinolines these days?”
“But we’re supposed to all go to the movies in Mount Pleasant,” C.J. whined.
“You can still go,” I said. “Just let me have a few minutes alone with Greg.”
“You said you. Abby, does that mean you’re planning not to come?”
“I’ll certainly try.”
“She’ll be there,” Mama said. “Greg, you make her come.”
“I can’t make Abby do anything she doesn’t already want to do,” Greg said.
Despite a little residual ringing in my right ear, I could hear the pride in my husband’s voice.
It was decided that Greg and I would meet Mama and C.J. in front of the Palmetto Grande at four o’clock. We would take pot luck with the movies. Whichever one began closest to our arrival would be the one we watched. All three of us women were pulling for the silent movie about men; Greg, on the other hand, yearned for spilled guts and a few broken bones.
Mama and C.J. elected not to eat dessert in favor of popcorn and candy later at the show. Mama, I knew, continuously watches her weight in order to look good in cinch-waisted fifties-style dresses, but C.J., I am convinced, had finally figured out that by skipping out now, she could get out of paying for lunch. No doubt she regretted having already offered to spring for the movie. (Please don’t get me wrong; the girl is as generous as a busload of nuns when it comes to her time, but when it comes to her pocketbook, C.J. can be as tight as last year’s blue jeans.)
At any rate, since Greg couldn’t decide between the pecan pie and the bread pudding, he ordered both. I ordered just coffee, but reserved the right to sample each dessert an unlimited number of times. If I recall correctly, that privilege was stated in our wedding vows.
“So tell me everything,” I said, as soon as the coast was clear. By that, I mean more than just the absence of C.J. and Mama, but the diminished likelihood that either of them would return. Just to expedite their second departure, I’d checked under the table and on the chairs to make sure neither had left any props behind—purses, glasses, and such.
Greg had reseated himself across the table from me so that we could talk face to face. Squeezing my thigh was going to be a bit more of a challenge for him, but playing footsie was definitely less awkward.
“Abby, you’re not going to believe the kind of luck that Swedish housekeeper has had.”
“Try me.” Chances are she’d never been rendered unconscious and stuffed in a suit of seventeenth-century Italian armor like I once was.
“Well, she was right when she said her husband combusted—only it wasn’t so spontaneous. He fell asleep smoking. He was dead drunk at the time.” He held up a hand, knowing, perhaps from experience, that I might interrupt. “That was her first husband. And that was in Sweden. Her second husband was an American, a tourist in fact, who had come to see the ice hotel. He brought her to the States to live, but then, just a couple of months later, he fell off the roof while cleaning out gutters. Broke his damn neck. Husband number three, also an American, got the radio-in-the-lap-while-you’re-bathing treatment.”
“Electrocuted?”
“Yeah. What a way to go, hunh?”
“Was it her fault? And that fall from the roof?”
“No evidence, Abby. In none of those three cases. But it gets even better.”
“No, wait, let me guess. Husband number four got his tie caught in the garbage disposal and by the time she could get there and turn it off, he was mincemeat.”
Greg smiled. “You’re getting the picture. Only this time it wasn’t a husband, but a client. Like C.J. said, Ingebord trained as a masseuse. She was giving a massage in Savannah when the table collapsed.”
“That killed him?”
“The man had a history of heart problems. Slamming into the floor like that sent him into cardiac
arrest.”
The desserts arrived. We held off conversing until the waitress left, and it was then I discovered she’d put the bread pudding in front of me. Not wanting to hurt her feelings—in case she turned around—I took a bite. It was warm and covered with a gooey sauce that made my teeth invite calories. Gladly, in fact.
“Anything else?” I asked when the bowl was half empty.
Greg was grinning like a cat at a mice convention. “Isn’t that enough?”
“So, no more victims, eh?”
“I mean,” he said, “haven’t you had enough of my dessert?”
I pushed the dish across the table. “What about my question? Were there any more victims?”
“No, that appears to be it.”
I have an agile tongue and was able to lick that part of my face adjacent to, but outside, my lips. I was even able to manage a quick lick to the tip of my nose. Don’t ask me how breading pudding got all the way up there.
“So, how does a woman with that kind of history secure employment with one of the finest families in Charleston?”
“Because none of the deaths could be linked to her.”
“Even the collapsing massage table?”
“Manufacturer’s defect.”
“If she’s so innocent, then why the alias?”
“Good question, and Scrubb is working on that. The suspect—”
“Aha! So she is a suspect!”
“Unofficially, yes. He did question her, of course, and she said it was to escape the bad publicity associated with the table incident. That, given Savannah’s proximity to Charleston, it might have made it in the Post and Courier.”
“Did it?”
“One small paragraph. No picture. Nothing except the name to link her. She said she was desperate for a job, and didn’t want to go back to Sweden. Too cold and too many taxes.”
“Still,” I said skeptically, “Amelia Shadbark, scion of Charleston society, didn’t bother to check the woman’s references?”
“She asked for them, of course, but only gave them a glance. That’s all most folks do, in fact. We all like to think we’re pretty good judges of character. Face it, Abby, in the normal course of events, a housekeeper does not have to do brain surgery.”
“True, but the Brunhilde Salazar persona is every bit as abrasive as industrial grade sandpaper.”
“Which, apparently, is exactly what the grande dame needed at that point in her life. What better way to keep malingerers from pestering you?”
I retrieved the now-empty bread pudding dish and gave it a good wipe down with my index finger. I know, that was the height of bad manners, but as long as I was never going to be fully accepted into Charleston society, what did it really matter? It’s not like I was being unkind.
“Would two of these malingerers”—I smacked my lips—“just happen to be her children, Constance and Orman?”
“I didn’t hear the whole case, Abby; I talked to Scrubb for only a few minutes. But speaking of a few minutes, we—we don’t have to be at the theater for another hour and a half.” He waggled his eyebrows playfully.
“But on a full stomach?”
“I’m game if you are.”
“You’re on.”
What goes on behind my closed doors is not anyone else’s business. I will say, however, that it was of such high caliber that Greg didn’t seem to mind in the least giving my regrets to Mama and C.J. at the movie theater. Perhaps he even assumed that would be the case from the get-go, because he merely warned me to watch my back before departing to meet the ladies.
I left the house a few minutes after my beloved did, fully outfitted for the job at hand. I was wearing a fresh dress—and yes, it was linen—and carried with me a large designer tote bag; large enough to contain a bottle of Evian, a small pair of binoculars, my cell phone, and a Three Musketeers candy bar. The last item had been plucked from the freezer, sealed in a small sandwich bag, and now nestled in a large freezer bag with numerous ice cubes.
There was, of course, a method to my madness. The water was to guard against thirst generated by the hot Charleston sun, the binoculars were for spying, the cell phone in case I got into trouble, and the chocolate because even a well-fed girl can never have too much of a good thing. Besides, when the ice cubes melted I could pour the runoff on my toasted tootsies. I was, after all, wearing open-toed sandals. I just didn’t expect to jump out of those sandals before I’d even reached my front gate. “Jeepers-creeper!” I cried, dropping the tote so I could clamp both hands over my pounding heart in order to keep it in my chest.
18
“Sorry, Abby. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Bob Steuben had apparently been standing right next to the wrought-iron stair railing. Maybe it’s because he’s so thin, but I didn’t see him until he reached out and touched me.
I plopped my behind on the nearest step until I could catch my breath. Unfortunately, that step was hot enough to fry not only an egg on, but a rasher of bacon as well. I picked my bacon up in a hurry.
“Bob, what is it?” At least with me, pain and annoyance tend to go hand and hand.
“He’s gone!”
“Who’s gone?”
“Rob, of course.”
I grabbed one of Bob’s manicured hands and pulled him up the steps and into the house. Then, before I did anything else, I stashed the Three Musketeers back in the freezer.
“Now then,” I said, taking a much more comfortable seat, “where has Rob gone?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know. We always spell each other for lunch. Usually we take turns on who goes first—depending on who’s hungriest, or has a doctor’s appointment, that kind of thing. Rob asked for an early lunch today so he could get his oil changed and tires rotated before the lunch crowd arrived. Anyway, he left just after eleven and hasn’t come back.”
I already knew that the Rob-Bobs do not brown bag it in the back of their shop like so many other dealers do. Heavens, that was far too déclassé for the gourmand Bob. As for Rob, he’d rather eat my cooking than have to suffer through two of Bob’s meals in one day. Emu salad sandwiches and yak butter tea do not float his culinary boat.
“Did you call the car dealer?”
“Yes, and he wasn’t there.”
“Jiffy Lube?”
“Not there, either, Abby. I called every establishment in the Charleston phone book that was likely to provide those services. Nada.”
I thought of suggesting he call the Medical University of South Carolina—our nearest hospital—and inquire about accident victims, but the idea of a car wreck had to originate in Bob’s own highly suggestive mind. There was obviously no need to suggest Rob might be having an affair.
“How can I help you, Bob?”
“Well, uh, I don’t know.” Bob buried his face in his large bony hands. For the first time I noticed he had the hairiest knuckles I’d ever seen.
“Would you like me to come over to the Finer Things and hang out with you until he gets back?” I asked. “We could confront him together when he does.”
He looked up. “No!” he said with surprising vehemence. “I’m not a baby.”
“Needing a friend doesn’t make you a baby. I’d be happy to do it.”
Sometimes, and I’m sure my friend Magdalena Yoder would agree, being a friend requires one to fudge a little on the truth. And the truth in this case is that I wanted nothing more than for Bob to solve his own problem, and leave me to solve mine. Bob, who is frankly a bit on the homely side, has always been jealous of Rob’s friends and acquaintances. Rob Goldburg is, after all, a very handsome man. I think he looks like James Brolin back in his Marcus Welby days.
“No, Abby, I don’t need you to baby-sit me. But please tell me how you managed to get through it when Buford cheated on you?”
I suppose there are those who would say there is no equating a twenty-year heterosexual marriage that produced two children to a six-year-long gay relationship that doesn’t even inclu
de a pet. I say they’re wrong. Love is love, and pain is pain.
“It hurt like hell when I found out Buford had been cheating on me,” I said. “But I found out because he told me—when he announced one night, just after we’d made love, that he wanted a divorce.”
“Ouch.”
“You’re telling me. He pretty much said that he was trading me in for a younger model because she had a firmer body—silicon though it was. Anyway, my point is, I had proof my husband was cheating on me. It came from the ass’s—I mean, horse’s—mouth himself. There was no speculation involved.”
“Abby, you really had no clue that Buford was seeing Tweetie?”
“None. Of course the kids were both in high school, so there was already a lot of drama to keep me distracted—but Buford was sneaky. He got away with it because he’s smart. And Rob’s smart as well. Too smart, in fact, to make up alibis that he knows can be easily checked out—unless what he’s up to is a surprise. I mean a good surprise. Even smart men can screw up big time when it comes to planning surprises. I think it’s because they’re so often clueless themselves when we plan for them. Men! Go figure!”
“Nu, so what am I? Chopped liver? Thanks a lot, Abby!”
I smiled. Bob is a WASP from Toledo, Rob a Jewish man from Charlotte. Bob will most likely never acquire a Southern accent, but he has managed to pick up the odd Yiddish phrase.
“Sorry, dear. I guess I forgot you were, uh—”
“A man?”
My feet may be only size four, but they’re still a mouthful. “Don’t put words in my mouth!” I cried. “There’s no room! What I’m trying to say is, you and I are buddies. By not lumping you with other men, I was paying you a compliment.”
He grinned. “I’ll settle for that. So, Abby, what is your advice for me? Just go back and reopen the shop? Carry on like it’s business as usual? But when Rob returns—if he does—then what?”
“He will. Trust me on that.”
“But do I confront him? What do I say?”
“That’s a hard one. If you can stand it, wait a couple of days. But only if you can manage to not act all weird about it. If you can’t—well, at least try to listen to what he has to say.”
