Larceny and Old Lace

by Tamar Myers

  Mama smoothed the skirt of her gingham apron and then lightly fingered a strand of pearls. She wears pearls when she cooks, just like Beaver's mother. But Mama's are real.

  "I wasn't talking about the threats against your Aunt Eulonia. I was talking about your Aunt Marilyn. She's coming up from Hilton Head for a visit next week."

  I choked on a bite of chop, and Mama had to pound my back to get me going again. "Here? Aunt Marilyn? Did she call or write?"

  Mama shook her head. The naturally brown hair swung gracefully and then settled neatly back into place. She's sixty-nine years old and there isn't a gray hair to be seen. The next person who asks if we're sisters is going to get a clop in the chops. While I am proud to own my age, I draw the line at owning Mama's.

  "She didn't call or write. But I can smell it. There's trouble brewing for sure."

  "You didn't tell her about the camellias, did you?"

  As a reward for my impertinence Mama plopped another chop on my plate. "No, I did not!"

  "Next week, you say?" Mama's nose has an accuracy range of up to two weeks if the pollen count is down, but it was September, a bad time for nasal detecting.

  "Wednesday, I think. Tuesday, at the earliest."

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief. There was still time to do something about the camellias, if I could only figure out what. It was Buford's fault, of course. If he hadn't kept the house I could have afforded to remain in Myers Park, near my children, and not too far from my shop.

  Thank God, Aunt Marilyn came to the rescue. She owns a modest but respectable house on Ridgewood Avenue, just a skip from my shop, and two hops from my old stomping grounds in Myers Park. Aunt Marilyn wanted to retire to Hilton Head but didn't want to sell her house, "just in case the coastal scene bores me." Aunt Marilyn is Mama's sister, but you'd never know it. Mama is a lady. Aunt Marilyn is a woman who firmly believes she is God's gift to men. Any man. Her last name is Monroe, and she claims to be the inspiration for the Marilyn Monroe. Platinum hair and all.

  "I met that Norma Jean girl at a party," she once said. "She was a frowsy little thing with dishwater hair and no attitude. She took one look at me, and immediately I could see those brain cogs turning. Next thing I knew, there she was, on the cover of TIME, with my name and my face. And my bosom buddies." By that she meant her breasts; Aunt Marilyn has no buddies, just lovers.

  Because I am her only niece, Aunt Marilyn agreed to loan me her house—rent-free. Of course there were strings attached. The house has to be available for her exclusive use whenever she is in town (fortunately, almost never). There are other strings, but the biggest string, which is as thick as the transatlantic cable, is that I am not allowed to make any changes, no matter how temporary, in either her house or her yard. Nothing. Nada. For instance, I am allowed to cook using only her pots and pans. I may place only her dishes on the table. I may not add as much as one chair to the inventory. I have to use her linens on my bed (although I am permitted to use my own toothbrush and wear my own clothes). These restrictions, although frustrating, are manageable. They have in fact saved me oodles of money. But the stickler, the source of impending trouble is the fact that I may not plant any new flowers or shrubs in her garden, nor remove any that are already there.

  Last fall (which just goes to show you how frequently she visits) I experienced a moment of insanity in which I purchased two beautiful double camellias and planted them on either side of the front door. Last winter, despite record cold temperatures in Charlotte, they produced an abundance of exquisite blooms. Everyone on my block, and many casual passersby, complimented me on these flowers. There is no way, short of a lobotomy, that I will agree to dig these camellias up.

  And don't kid yourself. Aunt Marilyn will go ballistic when she sees them. It will be either me or the camellias. Probably both. Even Mama, whom Aunt Marilyn adores, will not be able to calm her.

  In all honesty, perhaps I made the situation a little worse than it needed to be. I should have left the painted plaster poodles in their places and planted the camellias off to the side. Then they might have stood a fighting chance. But the poodles were peeling and chipped, and the butt of more jokes than a blond at a MENSA convention. Then, too, I probably added insult to injury when I somehow managed to lose the pair of pink plastic flamingos that flanked the bird bath.

  "Spill it," Mama said. She was washing her plate before putting it in the dishwasher.

  "Camellias," I grunted.

  Mama pivoted on five-inch heels. A manicured hand clutched at the cultured pearls. "You didn't!"

  "I did. Two of them. Mama, you've seen them many times. You even admired their flowers. You just didn't notice they were new additions. Maybe Aunt Marilyn won't notice them either, because they're not blooming now."

  "I don't keep a diagram of my yard with a coded and dated list of everything I ever planted," Mama said. Hers was not an encouraging tone.

  "You don't suppose she'll miss those awful poodles, do you?"

  Mama blanched. "You're kidding!"

  "But the flamingos weren't my fault, Mama. It was like they just flew away."

  Mama pulled on her pearls so hard that she began to gurgle, something the Beaver's mother never did.

  "Mama, they were embarrassing. Even the garbage man cringed when he picked them up. When you think about it, I was doing Aunt Marilyn a favor. She should thank me."

  Mama let go of her pearls and began fanning herself with her apron skirt. "My passport doesn't expire for three more years. You're welcome to borrow it, dear."

  There is a lot to be said for a positive attitude. I'm not sure just how it works, but perhaps there really is something in that mind over matter stuff. Who knows, our positive energy, if it's channelled correctly, might even be able to affect other people's actions.

  But that's something mothers should teach their daughters, not the other way around. Still, it's never too late to learn, so I stood up straight, squared my shoulders back, and gave her my gummiest smile.

  "Maybe Buford will have a change of heart and up my alimony. Then I could afford a place of my own." That I would even consider accepting more money from Buford shows you how desperate I was.

  Mama turned and began to wipe down the inside walls of the dishwasher before loading it.

  "Maybe your Aunt Marilyn will decide to become a missionary to Botswana. Mother Marilyn, the people will call her. When she dies, the Pope might even make her a saint."

  "I see."

  I finally did. I was a goner. If I didn't yank up the camellias by Wednesday and replace them with the poodles, I was going to have to yank up my own roots and find a new abode. Unfortunately, most of America had matured beyond pink flamingos and plaster poodles, so they would be difficult to replace.

  Not that moving would be difficult; my roots on Ridgewood Avenue were rather shallow. Since Aunt Marilyn wouldn't allow me to rearrange anything in her closets, I pretty much lived from a suitcase.

  "Of course, my door is always open," Mama said.

  "Thanks, Mama," I said, "but—"

  I should have noticed that her nose was twitching. It must have been, because the phone rang.

  "Wiggins residence, Mrs. Wiggins speaking." Barbara Billingsby couldn't have said it better.

  There was a moment of silence while Mama listened.

  "Lord have mercy," I said, imitating Mama under my breath. No doubt the aging glamour queen had outfoxed Mama's nose and was practically on her doorstep. I was up the creek without a paddle.

  I had to be right. Mama was speaking in hushed tones, her expression grave. The pearls slipped through her fingers like worry beads through the hands of a Turkish pasha. She steadied herself against the wall with one hand and held the phone out to me.

  I got up slowly, swallowing extra hard to push down my heart. "Don't tell me," I said, "she's already been to the house, and it's all over except for the yelling."

  Mama shook her head, her eyes glistening. "That isn't your Aunt Marilyn. This is
about your Aunt Eulonia, up in Charlotte." She paused and scraped at something microscopic with the toe of her pump. "Eulonia Wiggins is dead."

  "Oh shit," I said.

  I am not the lady my mother is.

  "She was murdered," Anita Morgan told me over the phone.

  "What?" I gripped Mama's receiver tighter.

  "Strangled," she said smoothly. "I saw her myself. There was a bellpull around her neck."

  "What?"

  "A nineteenth-century English bellpull. Had a rooster embroidered on it. Rather nice, actually. Although some of the fringe in the tassel was matted."

  "What?" Sometimes it is normal to sound stupid.

  "You know, how at the end of the tassel—"

  "Not that. What do you mean you saw her?"

  "Oh that. Well, I stayed late tonight to unpack a shipment, and I decided to go straight from there to prayer meeting. You know, after that big breakfast this morning at Denny's—and then I broke down and had a hero brought in for lunch—I didn't need much of a supper. A salad at home after prayer meeting would have been just fine."

  I prayed for patience. "Get back to your point, Anita. When and how did you see her?"

  Anita sighed. "I was getting there. Like I started to say, I was headed out toward prayer meeting when I noticed a light on in your aunt's shop. Well, call it the Spirit moving, or whatever, but I decided to drop in and ask her along. I mean, just because a lot of people don't like her none—her being so stubborn and all—doesn't mean that the Lord don't."

  "That's mighty Christian of you, Anita." I was sincere.

  "Well, I knocked on the front door but she didn't answer. I knew she was in there, though, because your aunt ain't about to give Duke Power and Light more than their fair share."

  She paused, presumably for me to agree. I didn't.

  "Well, when she didn't answer I walked around to the back. I found the door halfway open so I went on inside. I started calling her name, but she didn't answer. I was just about to dial nine-one-one when I saw her lying on the floor behind her register. The bellpull was around her neck."

  "She was dead? I mean, then?"

  Anita coughed. Despite her convictions, she smoked like a sausage factory. "I'm not a doctor, Abigail. I didn't even want to touch her, but I did. I tried to feel for a pulse on her wrists and her neck, but I couldn't find any. When the paramedics arrived, they confirmed it. Was she saved, Abigail?"

  I bit my tongue. I was raised Episcopalian. Words like "saved" and "born again" make me uncomfortable.

  "She went to church, regularly," I said.

  "Well, if she was saved, then we can all rejoice. She went to be with the Lord. Right now she's probably singing with the angels, or maybe out walking them golden streets. Looking for her mansion. Whatever she's doing, you can be sure she's having a wonderful time."

  "I'm sure she is," I said dryly. "What did the police have to say?"

  "The police?"

  "You know, the men in blue."

  "Yes, well, the police asked me a bunch of questions. Was I alone when I found her? What did I touch? How well did I know her? That sort of thing."

  "Did they have any ideas who might have done it?"

  She coughed again. "You don't think they'd tell me if they did, do you? Except of course that whoever done it left that bellpull behind."

  "They said that?"

  "Not exactly. But then again, that's obvious. Your aunt didn't have anything like that in her shop. Her stuff was all—you know—junk."

  I thanked Anita for calling. Perhaps I was a little curt, but that woman gets under my skin easier than fat cells. It was still sinking in that Aunt Eulonia was dead, and Anita already had her traipsing about heaven inspecting real estate. And there certainly was no need for Anita to bad-mouth a dead woman's merchandise.

  The phone was on its hook three seconds before it rang again. I answered.

  "I don't have time for this, Aunt Marilyn. If you want, I'll move out tomorrow and take those camellias with me. Right now I've got more important things on my mind."

  "Mrs. Wiggins?" a male voice asked.

  I glanced at Mama. She was sitting now and looked as pale as the pork chop bones.

  "This is her daughter, Abigail Timberlake. May I take a message?"

  There was a pause, accompanied by what sounded like papers rustling. "Well, yes, you'll do just fine. Even better maybe. I'm Detective—"

  "Is this about my aunt, Eulonia Wiggins?"

  He was silent for a few seconds. "Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid I have some bad news for you."

  I let the detective tell me his version of the story. Since Anita was the source for most of it, his story matched hers pretty well. He, however, said nothing about the bellpull belonging to my aunt's killer. Neither did he try and paint pictures of her cavorting in heaven.

  "I'd like to come around tomorrow and ask you a few questions," he said, without giving me a chance to ask any of my own.

  "You mean to my shop?"

  "The Den of Antiquity, right?"

  "Yes, sir. What time?"

  "Pick a time. Maybe when you generally have the least customers. That way we won't disturb them, and they won't disturb us." The words sounded ominous, but the voice didn't.

  "Well, I don't know. Business tends to be pretty steady. I open the shop at nine, and I close it at five. You could come before or after those hours."

  "How about over the lunch hour? Don't things slow down a bit then?"

  "Twelve would be fine."

  "Sorry ma'am. I'll be on another case then. I was thinking more like one o'clock."

  "Well, uh, you see—I mean—"

  "Don't tell me I forgot! Today is Erica's tenth wedding?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "On All My Children. I thought Dmitri would hang on to her longer than that."

  "Well, it wasn't his fault!" I caught myself. Staring me in the face—rather, chatting in my ear—was a man with a pleasant voice who was obviously also a fan of AMC. An opportunity to meet such a man, even if (sigh) he was married, should not be missed. "Yes, well one o'clock might be fine after all."

  "I promise we'll talk only during commercials," he said.

  "And between customers," I reminded him gently.

  The next morning I found the Major waiting outside my shop. It was one of those September mornings in Charlotte when you felt summer was never going to let go. At nine in the morning it was already eighty degrees, with the humidity high enough to poach a pedestrian in three minutes flat. And there was the Major, standing in the full sun, wearing some sort of khaki uniform, complete with a pith helmet.

  "Late British Raj," he said. "Came from an English officer murdered in the Punjab. Circa nineteen thirty-nine."

  I took a closer glance, looking for bloodstains. I am not a rubbernecker or a ghoul. I am, however, intensely interested in learning how to get stains lifted out of old fabric. The Major's uniform looked spotless to me. Not even sweat stains in the obvious places.

  He read my mind. "The officer was garroted. Sort of like your aunt, I imagine."

  "Excuse me?"

  The Major put his fists together and rotated them. "You know, strangled with something."

  "Excuse me!"

  "Well, it's all a part of life, you know. Nothing to get so upset about."

  "Well!" I fumbled, trying to find the right key to unlock the door. If I had the sense of a tadpole I'd stick bits of colored tape on my keys to make identification easier. It would be a wise thing from a safety point of view, and with shop neighbors like the Major, a personal point of view as well.

  "Allow me," the Major said. He fished one of his own keys from the depths of a khaki pocket and had my door open in less time than it takes to blink in a sandstorm.

  "Where the hell did you get that?" I snatched the key from him. It was identical to mine.

  The Major attempted a laugh. Thank God there weren't any mockingbirds in the vicinity. It wasn't a sound I'd like to hear repeated.


  "Well? Where did you get it?"

  "I have keys to all the shops on Selwyn Avenue. To ones that belong to our dealers association, at any rate. Y'all gave them to me at our very first meeting, remember?"

  I most certainly did not remember doing such a crazy thing. I did remember that someone had made a suggestion along those lines. Something about being able to keep an eye on each other in times of need or emergency. But I distinctly recalled that the suggestion got nowhere. After all, we didn't know each other well enough then. Had we known each other, the suggestion would never have been made.

  I slipped through the door and would have locked it behind me had it not been for one of the Major's boots.

  "I never gave you my key," I shouted. I was angry. I felt as if I had been violated.

  The Major had to remove his helmet to get his face right up to the door. His hair which he wore parted in the middle, remained impeccably combed.

  "Ah yes, now I remember. You didn't give me your key. Your aunt did."

  "What?"

  In my surprise I had relaxed my diligence. The Major was now foursquare inside my shop. I picked up a heavy cut glass decanter. The time to strike was now, before he put the helmet back. Anyone who knew him would agree that it was justifiable homicide.

  The Major wisely refrained from taking a step closer, thereby sparing his part, not to mention a perfectly beautiful piece of glass.

  "You weren't at the second meeting, were you? Well, the subject came up again. That time we voted on the key thing. I was elected to be the key keeper, since my shop is the most centrally located."

  "Except for my aunt's," I said.

  "You wouldn't expect a woman her age to run up and down the street performing errands of mercy, would you? She could barely stand on her own two feet."

  I drew myself up to my full four feet nine. Unfortunately I had decided to wear flats that day.

  "She had no business giving you that key. I'd rather keep it under a stone. Of course, not the one you crawled out from."

  I had meant to be offensive, but Major Calloway had a tough hide. When he died I wanted a pair of shoes made from it. Make that two pairs and a matching handbag.