All the Single Ladies: A Novel

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “I knew it!” I said.

  “My goodness! Now what?” Carrie said.

  “Is this something her landlady is saying is hers and not Kathy’s?”

  “Yes,” Suzanne said. “It sure is.” She spooned the grits into a serving bowl and covered it. “I knew it too.”

  “Well, that’s simply not true,” David said. “I bought that with her right after we were married. It’s from Kentshire Antiques in New York. I probably still have the receipt somewhere. It was a very valuable piece.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to be wrong. I’ll take that to the dining room,” Carrie said, and picked up the covered bowl. “Show him the linen press, Lisa.”

  I did and he said, “I’m less certain about that, but it looks familiar.”

  Suzanne then emptied the contents of the frying pan into another serving bowl and covered it.

  “Serving spoons, biscuits, and salad are on the table,” she said. “Okay! Come on y’all, let’s eat before it gets cold. And let’s figure out what we’re going to do.”

  “Suzanne?” David said. “You inherited Kathy’s entire estate, did you not?”

  “Yes, I did. But if there’s anything you’d like to have . . .”

  We began taking our seats at the table, weaving around Mike while he poured wine in everyone’s goblets.

  “No, no. Of course she left it to you. And I want you to have everything, but I have a question. Besides all the snuff bottles in that cabinet and the furniture, did you happen to find a letter opener and a magnifying glass? Old? Very ornate?”

  I think we all stopped breathing for a moment.

  “Yes,” I said, “we did. Excuse me. I’ll just grab my phone. Y’all start! I’ll be right back.”

  I zipped back to the kitchen, grabbed my phone, and hurried to the dining room. I quickly took my seat and began scrolling through the pictures again. I found the one I wanted and passed my phone to him.

  “Is that it?”

  “Thank God they’re not lost,” David said. “By the way, this is delicious. Grits, huh?”

  “Yes, it is,” Mike said. “Ground cornmeal.”

  “Like polenta. It’s fabulous, Suzanne,” Harry said.

  “Thanks. Why? Do they have sentimental value?” Suzanne said.

  “I’ll say they do. I gave them to Kathy to sell if she ever needed money. They’re Fabergé, signed, made in 1896. Those stones in the handles are pigeon rubies. They’re worth a fortune.”

  “What’s a fortune?” Carrie asked. “I thought Fabergé only made eggs for the czar?”

  “He did, but his studio also made other things like cigarette cases, inkwells, and perfume bottles. I couldn’t even begin to say what they’re worth. They’re priceless because they’re so rare. They’ve been in my family for over a hundred years.”

  “Well, then we’ve got a big fat problem,” Suzanne said. “Wendy Murray says they’re hers.”

  “Oh, no, they’re not. Wendy Murray is a common thief and a liar,” David said. “I can show you hundreds of family photographs with them in the picture. Why don’t we pay her a call after we finish dinner? ”

  “Excellent idea,” Harry said, not wanting to be outdone in machismo.

  “I’m in,” said Paul.

  “Me too,” said Mike.

  Who had the longest yardstick? Suddenly we had testosterone raining all around us like manna.

  “You ought to check out the value of those snuff bottles too, Suzanne,” Harry said. “Some of those things can be worth a lot of money.”

  “Really?” Carrie said.

  “No kidding,” Suzanne said. “What is snuff anyway? Is it like cocaine or opium? I mean, they’re obviously Chinese.”

  David wiped his mouth before speaking. “Yes. There’s a great history surrounding snuff, which is actually tobacco ground into powder. The Portuguese introduced it to the Chinese at the end of the sixteenth century. They thought it had medicinal properties to cure all sorts of ailments. The more intricate the design of the bottle, the more it’s worth.”

  “Kathy sure had a lot of them,” Paul said, looking over at the breakfront. “I haven’t had a chance to look at them but I’d like to. Some other time.”

  “Be my guest!” Suzanne said.

  “They’re amazing,” Carrie said. “So many tiny details.”

  ­“People spend money on the craziest things. I read somewhere that some guys paid over three thousand dollars to buy an X-­ray of Hitler’s brain,” Mike said. “Carrie? Would you pass the biscuits?”

  She passed them right away and he took one. I wondered if Mike was a little irked with Carrie. I thought her attraction to David was obvious but Mike seemed unbothered.

  “Really?” David said.

  Mike nodded and slathered his hot biscuit with butter. No, Suzanne had not made the biscuits. She smartly purchased frozen Callie’s biscuits from Harris Teeter, telling me how much easier they were to bake. I agreed. Mike passed the basket on to me. I took one and handed the basket to David.

  “Don’t leave this table without trying one of these,” I said. “You can’t buy these in Minneapolis.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, and we all laughed.

  Hello? He owned a chain of grocery stores. If he wanted them, he could introduce them to the midwest and West Coast and have them any old time he pleased. What was I thinking? I was glad geography wasn’t on the quiz.

  It was around eight forty-­five when dinner was finished. We asked each other if it was too late to take a ride downtown to confront Wendy.

  “Yes, it’s too late,” David said. “But that’s why we should go now. I think the element of surprise might work for us, not against us.”

  “I agree,” Harry said. “I mean, should we wait until the sun is shining to be polite? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Let’s go,” Mike said, and Paul nodded his head.

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  I was plenty nervous but cautiously optimistic because all the men were coming and we had David with us, who, I knew, would take no bull from Wendy. So we left the dishes, squeezed into Gertrude’s land yacht, because it was the only vehicle we had that could accommodate all of us, and drove downtown.

  We pulled up in front of Wendy Murray’s house with the bare yard and got out, gathering on the sidewalk. There were lights on all over the house.

  “What’s the plan?” I said.

  “Who’s going to ring the doorbell?” Carrie said.

  “You ladies stand back,” David said. “Let the men handle this.”

  David’s commanding demeanor took over like Navy SEALs were on the job. We gladly did as we were told. Our last encounter with Wendy had scared the devil out of me. So Suzanne, Carrie, and I stood back while David, Paul, Harry, and Mike banged on her door nonstop until she answered it, only cracking it open ever so slightly.

  “What do you want? Go away! Or I’ll call the police!” She slammed the door.

  “Let us in,” David said, “or I’ll call the police!”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” she shrieked.

  “Yes, I will! Let us in!” David said.

  “Open the door!” Harry said, his courage clearly bolstered by David’s.

  “No!” Wendy screamed. “Go away!”

  “You know what you stole and it belonged to my wife!” David said. “I can prove it!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she yelled.

  A light went on in the house next door and then another across the street. Noise in this neighborhood was cause for alarm.

  “Give it all back peacefully or I’m calling the police,” David said.

  “You’re trespassing! I have a gun!” she said. “And I’m not afraid to use it!”

  I saw a light go on in another house on the o
ther side of Wendy’s.

  “It’s probably stolen!” Carrie yelled.

  “Hush!” said Suzanne.

  Oh dear God, I thought. What are we doing here?

  “What kind of scum steals from the dead?” Mike said, yelling.

  “Just give us what we came for!” Paul said calmly but loudly.

  “No! You can’t come here like this!” Wendy screamed. “You have no right!”

  “Yes, we do!” David yelled, and he was so loud it made me dizzy.

  David Harper was Hollywood handsome but he had a Conan the Barbarian temper to go with his looks.

  Just then, the men pushed the door open and got inside. Wendy ran deeper into the house and suddenly I was terrified. Everything was happening too fast.

  “Y’all!” I said. “We have to protect the men! Call 911! She has a gun!”

  “Come on, Lisa. You know she’s lying!” Carrie said.

  Suzanne said, “What if she’s not?”

  I ran toward the door and slipped inside. Suzanne and Carrie were right behind me. We cowered in the foyer. I’ll admit it, we cowered, but for good reason. We were honestly frightened.

  The men were in the living room and from where we stood we could see David’s reflection in the hall mirror as he picked up the magnifying glass with the matching letter opener and tossed one piece to Harry and the other to Paul. Mike grabbed an ancient saber from over the fireplace where it hung, pulled it from its sheath, and pointed it toward Wendy, who had just reappeared with a pistol. She was shifting her aim from David to Harry to Paul to Mike. I don’t think she even knew Suzanne, Carrie, and I were there. Carrie crouched and pressed 911 on her keypad and hit send. Then she whispered the address.

  “Put them back on the table or I’ll blow your brains out,” Wendy said. “You’re all trespassing and there’s not a judge or a jury in this world who would convict me for killing you.”

  “Listen, put the gun down,” David said. “Just put the gun down. You know what you’ve done, and unless you want to go to jail, you’ll put the gun down.”

  “That’s right,” Paul said. “The police have been called, and they’ll be here any minute.”

  “No, they haven’t,” Wendy said, and aimed her gun at Paul. “You’re bluffing!”

  “No one’s bluffing, Wendy. Do what we’ve asked you to do,” Harry said.

  “I can take her and get her gun, Harry, if you’ll move aside a bit,” Mike said.

  Suddenly Wendy spun on her heel and fired a shot in Mike’s direction. He fell to the floor wounded.

  I covered Carrie’s mouth with my hand to muffle her scream. There was genuine fear in my eyes and in all our eyes.

  “Anybody else want to die tonight?” Wendy said. “I’ve got a lot more bullets.”

  “Let’s calm down, okay?” Harry said in the voice he reserved for hysterical patients and family members.

  “Come on, now,” David said, “we only want what’s ours. You know that.”

  “Do I? How do I know that? For all I know, you’re here to rape me, rob me blind, and kill me.”

  “Rape you?” Mike said from his place on the floor.

  “Be quiet, Mike,” David said. “We’re here for these two items and two pieces of furniture.”

  “What are you saying? Are you insane?” Paul said to Wendy. “We’re not interested in you! Put the gun down!”

  “Yeah, just calm down,” Harry said. “You really don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  In our haste we had made no provision in our plans for moving the furniture. In the end, it wouldn’t matter, but at that moment I realized we’d done something that was extremely foolhardy all across the board.

  I heard a patrol car outside. Two policemen appeared and rather roughly pulled Carrie, Suzanne, and me from the foyer to the street.

  “What’s going on?” one of the officers demanded.

  “Hurry, there’s a back entrance!” I said.

  “Hurry!” Suzanne said.

  “She shot my husband!” Carrie said. “Oh God!”

  “Calm down, ma’am. Where’s the door?”

  Carrie, Suzanne, and I ran into the courtyard with the police while they called for backup. They kicked in the door to Kathy’s room, the door to the hallway, and the door into Wendy’s part of the house.

  “Stay here and don’t move,” one officer said to us.

  There was a loud skirmish, but we couldn’t see what was happening.

  “Let go of me or I’ll shoot you too!” Wendy screamed.

  “Like hell you will,” a man’s voice said.

  There were a few more shots fired and a scuffle of furniture being turned over and glass breaking. Finally there was relative quiet. Calls were made for an ambulance.

  Against orders, Carrie ran inside the house to be with Mike. I didn’t blame her. I would’ve done the same thing if Paul had been shot. Suzanne and I followed her inside, inching along slowly, wanting to be certain the violence had ended. In the living room, there stood Wendy in handcuffs, being read her Miranda rights.

  “ . . . and if you can’t afford a lawyer . . .”

  “Oh God,” I said. “What happened here?”

  Carrie was on the floor with Mike’s head cradled in her lap. Wendy’s bullet had gone into his shoulder. There was blood all over them.

  Suzanne took one look at Mike and the pooling blood and passed out cold on the floor. Harry scooped her up and laid her on the sofa. A police officer stepped over to stop Harry.

  Harry said, “It’s all right, Officer. I’m a doctor.”

  “So what?” the officer said, then softened. “I’m gonna want to see some ID.”

  “You bet,” Harry said. “Carrie, apply pressure to the wound.”

  “Help’s coming, Mike,” Paul said, and put his arm around me. “You’re gonna live,” he said to Mike.

  “Jesus!” David said. “That woman’s one crazy bitch! You okay, pal?” he said to Mike.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, “it just hurts. A lot.”

  “Okay, okay!” A detective showing his badge from the homicide department came in through the front door with three or four or maybe six crime-­scene investigators. “Nobody touches anything. Let’s turn on all the lights.”

  I started to reach for a light switch and he yelled, “Not you, ma’am. Please! Let’s let my ­people do their job. Thank you. This is a crime scene. Nobody’s going anywhere until I get some answers.”

  Mike, of course, was taken to the hospital, and Carrie, although she begged relentlessly through a flood of tears to be allowed to go with him, was made to remain with us.

  Over the next four hours, we answered so many questions our heads were spinning. We finally got our story out and the detective in charge was stunned.

  “I’ve never heard a story like this. And believe me, after twenty-­five years on the force, I thought I’d heard it all!” he said.

  One officer took Suzanne back to the beach house to get Kathy’s will, which would verify her ownership of the items. They believed David that he had in fact given the items to Kathy if she ever needed emergency funds.

  “Google me,” David said.

  The detective’s partner did in fact Google David and showed the results to his partner. The lead detective shook his head.

  “None of you folks have ever even had so much as a parking ticket,” he said. “And this woman pushed you over the edge so easily . . . why?”

  David said, “Because a pigeon blood ruby, similar in color but smaller in size, sold last year at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong for over seven million dollars. Never mind the fact that signed Fabergé pieces are worth a fortune on their own.”

  Seven million dollars? Holy hell! Suzanne was rich! We were completely dumbstruck.

  “I had no idea!” Suzanne said when she f
inally found her voice. “David, these belong to you.”

  “No, they are yours. That’s how Kathy wanted it and I couldn’t agree more,” David said.

  She looked like she was going to faint again. So did Harry.

  “You ­people do realize that you should’ve just come to the authorities, don’t you?” the detective said.

  “Yes, of course,” David said. “But by the time we made you understand the enormity of the crime and the urgency involved, those objects could’ve been sold to someone on the other side of the world and lost forever. And, these nice folks made me see how unreliable and unpredictable Ms. Murray was. I started the whole thing. This is really my fault.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Paul said. “We came here of our own free will.”

  “Yes, we did,” said Harry.

  “She’s a raving lunatic,” I said, “and a liar of the highest order.”

  “That may be. You all do understand that while the majority of the crimes committed here tonight belong to Wendy Murray, all of you carry some blame? We don’t really like our citizens running around and taking the law into their own hands like Charlie’s Angels and friends.”

  “Really?” Carrie said. “What did we do wrong?”

  “Forceful entry, for starters? And, you know, this might go to trial? Therefore, the magnifying glass and the letter opener have to be entered into evidence.”

  “Detective? Does the police department of Charleston really want to take responsibility for holding something with that kind of price tag?” David asked.

  The detective thought for a moment before speaking. “To be perfectly honest with you, I think there is no precedent for a situation like this. I’ll have to ask the chief. What time is it?”

  “Ten after three,” Paul said.

  “Oh gosh,” the detective said, and sighed. “He hates it when I get him out of bed.”

  The chief of police was consulted and the situation was explained. When the detective finally got off the phone, he looked at us and said we should go home and get some sleep.

  “I’m gonna let our CSI guys take some pictures of the magnifying glass and the letter opener, and I strongly encourage you not to come back around here to take anything else.”

  A man with a camera stepped over and took pictures.