by Tamar Myers
“Just the same, I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“Well, you might want to watch what you say around the major.”
“Oh, Lord, what’s that man up to now?”
“I’m afraid our Major Calloway is fond of spreading rumors.”
It was my turn to show a little mercy. “Don’t let him get to you, dear. The old goat—I mean, the major—disapproves of everyone.”
“The rumors weren’t about me, Abby. They were about you.”
“What?”
“He’s going around telling people that he finds it a little strange that you took off for Pennsylvania the day after Purvis collapsed in front of your shop. He says that you paid Purvis a secret visit in the hospital that night. Of course that part isn’t true, is it?”
I was so angry that C. J.’s relatives down in Shelby heard my expletives. At least she claims they did.
“I told him that was nonsense,” Bob boomed, eager to defend himself.
“Well, you can tell him—never mind, I’ll tell him myself!”
I hung up and dialed the major’s house.
15
“You can call him back from our room,” Peggy said, and took her hand off the steering wheel long enough to pat my arm.
“Ah, but I want to hear what she says,” C. J. whined. “When our Abby gets started, she can really dish it out.”
“Hush,” Wynnell said. “Isn’t anyone else’s face burning with shame?”
“You mean because they kicked us out? Naw, I’ve been kicked out of restaurants tons of times. There’s not a restaurant in Shelby that hasn’t shown me the door.” C. J. sounded proud.
“We weren’t kicked out,” I snapped. “It was time to leave. Y’all had already paid the check, for Pete’s sake.”
“That Hans can kick me out any time,” Peggy drooled. “His hands are so strong!”
“Give it a rest, dear,” I said. “You’re not his type.”
Peggy jerked the wheel to the left and then over-compensated to the right. Meanwhile the rest of us tried to keep up with our dinners.
“Never put anything past a Redfern,” she said “Besides, my fortune cookie said that I would soon take the big plunge. Did you get a close look at Hans’s pants?”
“You have a dirty mind,” I said. “The slip in my cookie just said ‘Peace is a desired state of mind.’ That isn’t even a fortune, is it?”
“Ha,” Wynnell humphed, “my fortune was in German. For all I know, it really was a curse.”
C. J. bounced in the back seat with excitement. “Ooh, something like that happened to me once when I was visiting Granny Cox. I found this little slip of paper in my bowl of chili that warned me not to eat any, or I was going to get very sick.”
“Did you eat any?” I asked needlessly.
“Just a few bites. I couldn’t hurt Granny’s feelings after all.”
“And?” we chorused.
“Well, I got sick all right, but it wasn’t Granny’s fault. She had just got herself that new pair of seamless bifocals, and was having trouble adjusting. Of course, she ought to know better than to keep the ant bait up there on her spice shelf. If it hadn’t been for that label falling into the pot, the doctor wouldn’t have known what to give me for an antidote.” She guffawed with pleasure. “Antidote, get it?”
We groaned, as much from C. J.’s pun as Peggy’s driving.
“You drive like there’s no tomorrow,” I said to Peggy.
She seemed to take it as a compliment and smiled.
“Speaking of which, what are we doing tomorrow?” Wynnell asked.
C. J. and Peggy didn’t seem to have any ideas.
“How about you, Abby? What do you want to do?”
I grabbed a Triple A road map from a slot in the door and fanned myself. It was suddenly ten degrees hotter in the car.
“Y’all seemed to have such good luck at the auction today,” I said as casually as I could. “Looks like I need to do some catching up. I thought I’d rent that old wreck from the Mushroom Man again, and hit some sales. What about y’all?”
“Oh, there aren’t any sales tomorrow, Abby,” Wynnell said. “Not any public auctions, if that’s what you mean.”
“How do you know, dear?” I asked frostily. Believe me, it is hard to sound frosty when you’re forty-eight and flirting with your first hot flash. All right, so maybe it was just the Hunan beef. Southern ladies don’t sweat, they merely “dew,” but I was suddenly as damp as a boarding house bath mat on Saturday night.
“Red told me—” she caught herself.
“Aha!” C. J. squealed. “You see, she really was talking to a man with a red beard.”
“Shut up!”
I turned and gave my best friend a gentle, disapproving look.
The hedgerows meshed, but good breeding prevailed. “All right! I’m sorry, C. J., but sometimes you go too far.”
“Hey, no problem.”
Wynnell, a true lady, couldn’t leave it alone. “I heard about a quilt show in a town called Somerset. It’s less than an hour away, but you have to go through one of the longest tunnels in America. You could go with me to that. Maybe Peggy would like to drive.”
C. J., a southern lady-in-the-making, graciously accepted the invitation.
“How about it, Peggy?” Wynnell asked politely, her p’s and q’s clearly in order again. “We’d love to have you along.”
Peggy thought driving through tunnels was a hoot. “I’m game,” she said, not seeming to mind that she was an afterthought.
“Abby?”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not terribly fond of tunnels.”
“You didn’t mind the tunnels on the way here,” C. J. said.
“They were shorter,” I said in a tone that defied her to argue further.
When we piled out at the Roach Motel, I was feeling like the odd woman out. Granted, I did want time to myself the following day, but at the same time, I wanted my friends to be devastated at the prospect of not sharing the day with me.
My ambivalence turned to pure irritation when the major refused to answer his phone. I must have called fifty times, and since the phones in the deluxe suite at the Roach Motel did not have a redial feature, that was a lot of lying on my back. In the meantime an oblivious Peggy chain-smoked and ate pork rinds while she watched sitcoms on the fuzzy black and white TV. I finally fell asleep with Dmitri on my chest, his paw perilously close to my mouth.
The gals got an early start, and as soon as I was alone I dialed the major’s shop. It had occurred to me in the middle of the night that a career officer might prefer to bivouac in the field, so to speak, than spend a night in a house under siege. Sure enough, he picked up on the first ring.
“Major Calloway’s Antique Gun Emporium,” he said as cheerfully as only a Brit could at that hour of the morning.
“Don’t even think about hanging up,” I snarled. Rest assured that it was a ladylike snarl.
“I don’t have to talk to you,” he said, but didn’t hang up.
“But I do have to talk to you.”
“Make it snappy then, because I open up in a few minutes.”
I glanced at Peggy’s travel alarm. Pennsylvania and North Carolina are in the same time zone, and unless my roommate reset her clock, it was an hour and a half until his opening time.
“I know we’ve had our differences,” I said pleasantly, “but I’m hoping we can at least temporarily set them aside. I mean, now that one of our own has…”
I allowed my voice to trail only because I was uncomfortable using the “d” word, and passed away seemed too transient. After all, folks who merely passed away might take it into their heads to pass back into the scene again.
“What?” the major demanded. “You mean murdered, don’t you?”
“He was?”
“You tell me. You were with him when he collapsed. What did you do, slip some poison in his tea?”
“Purvis wasn’t much for tea,” I said. It to
ok every ounce of willpower I had to choke back what was pushing to come through my lips. Mama has often said that honey will catch more flies than vinegar.
“You know what I mean. How could you do it, Abigail? His Auction Barn was the best thing we Charlotte dealers had going for us.”
That did it. It was time to whip out the cruet of vinegar. What did I want with a fly collection anyway?
“You imbecilic blockhead! For the last time, I didn’t do it! And if you persist in spreading rumors that I did, I’m going to sue for defamation of character. I know a lawyer with both fins and scales, and by the time he’s through with you, you’ll be wishing you had O. J. Simpson’s bank account.”
I hung up feeling much better. It was true about the lawyer. Buford wouldn’t bother to spit at me if I was on fire unless the outcome somehow affected our children. Their good name—in this case his, as well—was sure to motivate him to come to my defense. With Timberlake the Timber Snake on my side, there was no chance of losing.
Mushroom Man tried to put a damper on my revived spirits by claiming his car was no longer available for hire. Then he did an about face and demanded double the rate he’d charged the day before. I would have argued with him—on principle, mind you—but as we were negotiating I glanced through the window and happened to notice a taxi pull up. The two men who emerged from the back seat were not on good terms with the driver, nor were they on good terms with each other. They were television journalists, judging by the mound of equipment that emerged from the trunk, but they were clearly from different networks. Things must be heating up in the Bedford Open.
I decided that Dmitri would play Watson to my Holmes that day. Leaving him locked in a closet for a few hours was one thing, but imprisoning him for the entire day was out of the question. Besides, there was a remote possibility that the Roach Motel had maid service, in which case he would be discovered, and we would both be thrown out on the street. There was nothing he could do to the Mushroom Man’s car, however, that would lead to his detection. A few thoughtfully placed scratches on the upholstery might actually improve the thing.
The First and Only True Church of the One and Only Living God of the Tabernacle of Supreme Holiness and Healing and Keeper of the Consecrated Righteousness of the Eternal Flame of Jehovah is actually closer to Bedford than it is to Hernia, but the latter claims it. With a name like Hernia, what is there to lose?
I drove past the church three times before I found it, a small, white clapboard building next to a sorry-looking trailer. The ambitious name was painted on a plywood sign above the door, but the letters were necessarily small. When I was growing up in Rock Hill I had friends with play houses larger than this house of God.
There was no proper parking lot, but the bare and rutted ground under a large oak next to the highway seemed to be the preferred spot. I parked in the shade of the oak and rolled up my window, leaving a crack two inches wide.
“You be a good boy,” I said to Dmitri. “Mama will be back in just a few minutes.” And then, being the good mama that I am, I opened the cellophane packet of catnip that I’d bought at the Giant Eagle in Bedford, along with two lemon-filled donuts, and sprinkled a pinch of the dried leaves along the back seat. As Dmitri rolled in ecstasy, I made my getaway.
I was surprised, but of course pleased, to find the church door ajar. I stepped inside the small, windowless building. There were eight short pews divided evenly along an aisle so narrow the offering plate could be passed back and forth without anyone having to get up. Three bare light bulbs hung in a row above the aisle.
I glanced around, but didn’t see a consecrated flame. There wasn’t even a cross of any kind. It was the plainest church I’d ever been in. In fact, the pulpit was a sturdy office desk set on concrete blocks.
“Welcome, sister!”
My jump qualified me for the Guinness Book of World Records, at least in the category of women four-foot-nine and under.
“Holy shit!” I said. Please understand that I seldom swear, and never in a church.
“Guard your tongue, sister.”
I stared at the man, who had risen like a phoenix between the pews. He looked like an upended mop in khaki work clothes. Beneath the full head of yellow gray hair was a face too narrow to be contained by prison bars. It was a grizzled face, and the part not covered by yellow gray stubble was heavily lined. I took him to be at least fifty, although I may have been well off the mark. As Buford would say, the man in tan looked like he had been rode hard and put away wet. At any rate, he was holding a bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap in one hand, and a wad of paper towels in the other.
Meanwhile, I could feel his eyes appraising me. I was wearing white cotton slacks, a red-and-white-striped tank top, and white open-toed sandals. I knew instinctively that he did not approve. Perhaps it was because it was not yet Memorial Day.
“Is the reverend here?” I asked between gasps.
“We have no titles here. All have been ordained by the eternal flame of Jehovah and are equal in the sight of the Lord.”
“Well, is there at least someone in charge?”
He dropped the paper towels and held out his hand. “That would be me. Richard Nixon.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No ma’am.” His tone made it clear that Richard Nixon never kidded. “You may call me brother, if you like, but it isn’t my title. We are all brothers and sisters in the Lord.”
“Abigail Timberlake,” I said and took his hand. My greased palm was the price of diplomacy.
He motioned me to sit. I chose the pew directly across the aisle from him. He sat turned, facing me, but I chose to face the makeshift pulpit. I felt like I was about to make confession.
“What can I do for you, Miss Timberlake?”
“I came to see you about one of your parishioners,” I said.
He looked confused.
“One of your members.”
“Which one?”
“Her name is Leona Teschel.”
“Ah.”
“Do you know her?”
“The woman is a saint.”
“Is she, now?”
He waved his bean pole arms, knocking a roll of paper towels to the floor. It rolled beneath the bench in front.
“The Lord gives, but Leona Teschel is his earthly agent.”
“She is?”
He waved his arms again. “This is all her doing,” he said.
“I see.”
“You ought to see the Sunday School rooms out back. They’re real swanky.”
Sunday School rooms? Had he meant the green mobile home with the dented side and the sagging steps just outside? I realized with a start that Richard Nixon was being sarcastic. “So, how do you really feel about Leona Teschel?”
He was on his feet in less time than it took Buford to have sex. “She’s the spawn of Satan!”
“Please don’t mince words.”
Richard Nixon pounded the bench back with the bottle of Murphy’s Oil. “This used to be a thriving little church, Miss Timberlake. Sixty-five baptized members, believe it or not.”
I tried to imagine sixty-five people crammed in that little space. Maybe, if they were built like me. Or children.
“Go on,” I urged gently.
“We were growing by leaps and bounds. We had plans for a larger building. We had a property picked out right in the center of town.”
“Bedford?”
His face got even narrower. “Hernia, of course. Bedford is a den of iniquity.”
“Please, continue.”
Brother Nixon slid back into the pew. “Anyway, sister, Leona Teschel was one of our more well-to-do members—”
“Leona?”
“Sister, do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Every word, brother.”
“I’m afraid it’s not a very pretty story.”
I leaned back against a hard, but well-polished bench. “Shoot.”
16
Richard Nixon
ran his free hand through the graying thatch on his head. His hair was so thick it hardly looked real.
“Even with the good offerings we were taking in, it was going to take us a while to get up that kind of money. None of us had any experience in fund-raising, you see. Then along comes Leona Teschel. You could see right away that the woman had money—drove this big fancy car and all. Then I learn that her husband was the owner of Bedford Tool and Die Company.
“Call it greed, sister, ’cause that’s what it was. When Leona Teschel offered to invest our savings in her husband’s company, I jumped at it. Of course the Elders had to go along with it too, but it seemed like a sure thing. You see, the Bedford Tool and Die Company was expanding, on account of an automobile plant that was planning to start up in Somerset. Leona had a newspaper clipping telling all about the start up—it was some German company, I think. The article said the plant would bring four thousand jobs to Somerset, and that the support industries, like tool and die companies, were going to profit big time.
“Well, sister, we took a vote and it was unanimous. It was like the good Lord was deciding for us. We turned over every cent we had to Leona Teschel and her husband’s tool company. Eighteen percent return, they said. We couldn’t get anything like that from a bank, you know.”
“Of course not.”
“But the Bible warns us about greed, sister, and it warns us about the likes of the Teschels. They took our money, but the automobile plant never moved to Somerset. Bedford Tool and Die Company, which had already started their expansion, suddenly went broke. We lost it all.”
It was hot in that cubbyhole of a church and he was sweating. He picked up the discarded paper towels and wiped his face. Bits of shredded paper towel clung to the stubble.
“But it wasn’t just the money we lost, sister. We lost the confidence of the people. The flock. One by one they quit and joined the big churches in Hernia and Bedford.”
“How many sheep did you lose?” I asked politely.
He picked a scrap of paper off his chin. “We have eleven left, sister. Not counting me.”
