A Penny Urned

by Tamar Myers

  There were no bushes planted around the back of the porch, and to avoid being seen from inside I had to literally crawl along the foundation. Circumventing the back steps was the biggest problem, but once I got safely around them, I felt like I was home free. Just a quick peek at Dmitri, and I’d hustle my bustle back to the cemetery office to call Albert. No need to call the cops, at least not yet.

  I plastered a reassuring smile on my face before raising my head to peering level. Dmitri is not the most sensitive male I’ve known, but he can read body language almost as well as Greg. At any rate, the occupant of Dmitri’s cage peered balefully back at me. Strange, but he’d grown quite a bit since I’d last seen him and—

  “Mama!” It was too late to stifle my scream.

  “Abby!” Mama screamed back.

  As soon as my shocked brain could give directions, I scrambled up the steps and practically ripped off the screen door. The dang thing wasn’t even hooked. Nor was Mama’s cage even locked. A simple metal bolt jammed through a hasp was certainly no match for my adrenaline.

  The door to the cage flew open, and Mama tumbled out. Close on her heels was my ten-pound bundle of joy. Of course, I hugged my mother first. I held her long and hard before scooping Dmitri up into my arms. But just between you and me, Mama smelled riper than my cat. I tried not to gag.

  “He wouldn’t let me use his litter box,” she wailed.

  “That’s okay,” I soothed. “It’s no big deal.” I put Dmitri carefully down and gave Mama another but more careful hug. “A good hot shower and a change of clothes will fix that. Did she hurt you?”

  “Oh, Abby, she was horrid. She didn’t hit me or anything, but she said the nastiest things. Made the most awful threats. Said if you didn’t deliver the money to some stupid statue in town, she wasn’t going to need to buy cat food for weeks.”

  I released my embrace. “Speaking of which, did she feed you? Did she give you water?”

  Mama nodded. “I had to share Dmitri’s water, but at least she gave me a bagel.”

  “How generous.”

  “She’s a greedy woman, Abby. You should have seen how her eyes lit up when I told her you wouldn’t have any trouble at all paying her silly ransom. Then I told her about the coin inside the urn—”

  “Mama, you didn’t!”

  “Of course I did, dear. I couldn’t let her think we Wiggins girls can’t pay our debts.”

  There would be time to chastise my mother later. “Well, the main thing is that she didn’t hurt you.”

  “She took my pearls!” Mama wailed even louder.

  I stared in horror and fascination at my mother’s neck. She looked positively naked.

  Mama put her hands over her throat. “Abby, don’t look! It’s indecent.”

  I tore my eyes away from the ribbon of flesh that had been covered by mollusk secretions for almost two decades. “Can you walk, Mama?”

  She took a few stiff steps. “I think so.”

  “Good, because we need to get out of here. No telling when that witch is coming back.”

  “Not without my pearls! She doesn’t wear them, so I know they’re still in this house—” Mama gasped a split second before I heard the screen door slam behind me.

  25

  I’m sure you’ll think I’m exaggerating when I tell you I jumped so high my head hit the ceiling. Please at least believe I jumped out of one of my sand-filled shoes.

  “Mr. Quarles!” Mama cried.

  I whirled. I was never so glad to see a man in all my born days. Albert Quarles was even more welcome than the anesthesiologist the day I delivered my firstborn, Susan. Dr. Lamaze, you see, had never anticipated a head that large.

  “Albert! Thank God you’re here!”

  “I just couldn’t sit home and wait, Abby.” He turned to Mama. “You all right, ma’am?”

  “Of course she’s not. They had her locked in a cage!”

  Mama stepped in front of me. “Let me tell it, Abby.”

  “Be my guest. But hurry, Mama. Lougee could come back any second.”

  Mama shuddered. “Well, it was just awful. She forced me into her car with a knife and brought me here. She wanted my daughter’s money, you see. Now that she’s an heiress, I mean. Anyway, she got really mad when Abby here didn’t follow the instructions on the ransom note—”

  “It wasn’t my fault the notes were mixed up.”

  “So that was it!” Mama turned back to Albert. “Well, like I was saying, she got really mad, so I tried to calm her down by telling her about the fabulous coin collection you said Lula Mae had.”

  “You told her about the coin collection?” Albert sounded like he’d been sucking on a helium balloon.

  Mama nodded. “Of course I couldn’t give her any details, except for that penny your brother-in-law found in the urn. But I took the liberty of telling her there were hundreds of those and that if she let me go, she could have them all. But like I told Abby, the woman is greedy—”

  “Please, Mama, finish your story later. She could return any second.”

  “Your daughter’s right,” Albert said to Mama and reached into the inside left breast pocket of his cream-colored jacket. “We better go. But first I’m getting backup.”

  But then instead of pulling a cell phone out of his pocket, Albert withdrew a gun. A Beretta Model 92 series 9mm automatic pistol, to be exact. I know virtually nothing about guns, but I recognized this one. Greg is issued one just like it.

  After several labored breaths, during which the gun was pointed at my face, I managed enough extra oxygen to speak. I had never taken a speech class, however, so my delivery was a bit ragged.

  “Albert, dear, is this some kind of a joke?”

  “No joke.”

  “But this doesn’t make sense.”

  “It would make sense for you to shut up.”

  “But—”

  “I said shut up!” The gun wavered but steadied when it was even with my forehead.

  I clamped my lips shut, just as tight as a clam valve at low tide. Alas, Mama did not follow suit.

  “How terribly rude of you to speak that way to Abby.”

  “You shut up too!”

  That hiked my hackles, despite my fear and bewilderment. “Don’t you speak to my mama that way.”

  Albert adjusted his monocle with his left hand. “It appears that I hold the power here. I’ll speak any way I damn well please.”

  Mama sniffed. “I smell Yankee in your woodpile.”

  What a brave woman! Mama was trying to get him to point the gun at her! Well, no way, José. Mama’s biological recall date might be sooner than mine, but I wasn’t about to allow Albert to accelerate things.

  “That’s right,” I said, feeling my knees grow weaker with each word. “Your brother-in-law is twice the rebel you are. Yes, sir, it’s my guess that your granny put out for Sherman or one of his troops—no, make that all of his troops.”

  Albert’s eyes widened until the monocle slipped. He practically jammed it back into place.

  “I don’t have time for this, Abby. Just tell me where the coin is.”

  “Coin? What coin?”

  He turned the gun on Mama. “I’ll shoot her if I have to.”

  My heart pounded. I hadn’t the foggiest what he was talking about. There were lots of coins in my aunt’s collection. Which one coin could he mean?

  “I honestly don’t know what you mean, Albert.”

  “The silver dollar,” he growled.

  I shrugged. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Albert removed the monocle and tucked it behind the cream silk handkerchief in his lapel pocket. His dark eyes glazed over.

  “The 1804 silver dollar. In April 1997, one of these sold at auction in New York for $1,650,000. It’s the highest price ever paid for a single U.S. coin.”

  “So?”

  He absentmindedly twiddled the end of his black mustache with his free hand. “For years it’s been rumored th
at Lula Mae had one of these in her collection. Hell, it’s been more than rumored. She came right out and told me.”

  It was time for my eyes to glaze, which they did. I’m sure they resembled a pair of Krispy Kremes.

  “She did?”

  “More than once. She even talked about it in her sleep.”

  My eyes cleared. “That’s ridiculous!”

  Hitler’s twin smiled slowly. “Your aunt and I were lovers. We met when I was a teacher and she was going back to school to get her G.E.D. I was a young man then, not seriously into collecting, and she’s the one who really got me started. But she never would tell me where that damn coin was hidden. Wouldn’t even show it to me. Not a peek. When I broke up with her to marry Miranda, she swore she’d never tell me.”

  “Boohoo for you,” I said.

  “Yes, but he who laughs last laughs best, right?”

  “You’re not laughing.”

  “Neither did your aunt the night she drowned in a tub of champagne.”

  “You did it! You killed Aunt Lula Mae!” Dmitri rubbed against my ankles and meowed piteously.

  “I was a science teacher. How hard do you think it was for me to make my own cyanide? Stuff that couldn’t be traced. You can make it from cherry laurel, you know. And I have one right in front of my house.”

  “No, the hardest part was getting your aunt to invite me over for New Year’s Eve. I had to tell her that I’d left Miranda, that I’d finally seen the light. She’d had a string of beaus, as I’m sure you know, but none for years, and—well, lonely women forgive the easiest. But she still wouldn’t budge after all that time. Still wouldn’t even let me see that damn coin, so—”

  “So,” I said, snorting with anger, “you somehow tricked my aunt into ingesting cyanide, and then you made it look like she drowned in her champagne bath. Probably thought you were real clever too, because with all that champagne, no one would smell the characteristic almond smell of cyanide.” Dmitri, bless his heart, was rubbing against my ankles for all he was worth. The poor dear knew I was upset, even if he couldn’t understand my words.

  Albert smirked. “You’re a smart lady, Abby.”

  I wanted to smack that smirk off his face. “Apparently smarter than you. You were her lover once, for Pete’s sake. You’d no doubt been in her apartment many times. But yet you were too stupid to stage her death in pink champagne.”

  The smirk disappeared on its own. “Who told you this?”

  “The coroner.”

  “You’re lying!”

  Mama stomped her foot. “My Abby never lies!”

  Albert glanced at Mama, then looked back at me. He hastily put on his monocle, the better with which to think, I guess. Meanwhile the gun wavered ominously. Finally he cleared his throat.

  “Well, it looks like I’m going to have to cut my losses.”

  I cleared my throat as well. With my heart up in my esophagus, it was hard to breathe.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m going to have to kill you.”

  Mama and I gasped. “You’ll never get away with it,” she said.

  “I beg to differ. I have a fishing boat out on Tybee Island. Y’all would make good fish bait.”

  “Maybe I would,” Mama wailed, “but not Abby. She’s too small. You’d only catch a minnow with her.”

  “I could use her for crab bait.” He was shockingly serious.

  Mama stomped her foot again. “You’re an evil, ugly man. I knew that from the minute I laid eyes on you. You look just like Adolf Hitler.”

  Albert turned the gun on Mama. “Shut up, or I’ll shoot you now.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Albert. She’s just a crazy old lady. She suffers from dementia. She probably thinks you are Adolf. By tomorrow she’ll have totally forgotten your name. So just let her go. She won’t remember a thing. It will be much less suspicious if only I go missing. I have lots of enemies.”

  He clicked off the safety and moved away from the door. The gun remained pointed at Mama.

  “Start moving slowly to the door, Abby,” he said. “Any funny stuff, and I’ll blow your mother’s head from here to kingdom come.”

  I took a wobbly step in the direction indicated. Unfortunately Dmitri, who was practically wrapped around my legs, was most uncooperative. I did not intend to step on his tail, I assure you. The ensuing screech was far out of proportion to any injury he may have suffered.

  But the noise startled Albert, who froze in a moment of indecision. That’s all it took. Mama’s self-tutored karate chop brought Albert’s arm down parallel with his body. It was Albert’s own finger that slipped, squeezing the trigger.

  Apparently Berettas are very sensitive to the touch. Albert dispatched three bullets into his foot before dropping the gun. While the son of Satan writhed in agony, Mama, Dmitri, and I made our getaway.

  Fish bait, indeed!

  26

  “So, Abby,” Wynnell said, picking up the last pea with her chopsticks, “did you ever find that million-dollar coin?”

  It was amazing that after just a week in Tokyo, my friend had mastered the art of dining with a pair of wooden wands. It was even more amazing that Wynnell had come to her senses in such a short period of time and had safely returned to the bosom of a forgiving husband and a handful of forgiving friends.

  I was one of her friends who was still on the fence, so Wynnell had taken me out to lunch at Bubba’s China Gourmet on Pineville-Matthews Road. I had suggested the Sushi Barn, but my bristle-browed buddy said she’d had enough fish to last her a lifetime. In fact, she was throwing out her aquarium.

  “No, I never found it. At this point, I’m not sure it even exists.”

  “And you just gave the house, the coin collection, everything to this Amanda girl?”

  “She’s my aunt’s rightful heir. In a more perfect world she would have gotten it all anyway.”

  Wynnell nodded and managed a bite of Jell-O with her chopsticks. Bubba’s China Gourmet prides itself on the quality of its fruit-filled gelatin squares served up on a wedge of iceberg lettuce.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m surprised Albert Quarles’s wife wasn’t in on his crimes. You did say she had Yankee blood, didn’t you?”

  I smiled patiently. “Not everyone Yankee is a criminal, dear. Lougee Hawkins and her sister Ashley both belong to Daughters of the Confederacy—well, they did, at any rate—and they’ve been preying on tourists for years.”

  Wynnell speared a slice of banana. “How so?”

  “Ashley worked at the Heritage, as you know, and she had a good eye for who had big bucks and who didn’t. Her usual shenanigans involved credit cards, but she wasn’t above stealing directly from the guests’ rooms. Lougee, on the other hand, had this totally different persona as a tour guide. Called herself Wilma Pridgen. She used to be a beautician, worked on a couple of movies shot down there. Anyway, when she got herself all dolled up and wore that hideous hat and those pearl-rimmed glasses, even her neighbors didn’t recognize her.”

  “What were her crimes? I mean, besides what she did to your mama? And speaking of whom, how did she get her pearls back?”

  “Lougee was wearing the pearls when she was arrested. And as for her crimes—well, she picked tourists’ pockets. With her getup she looked so wholesome no one ever suspected her.”

  A chunk of Jell-O wobbled on the compressed tips of Wynnell’s chopsticks and then fell, hitting the Formica tabletop with a splat. It was her first mishap.

  “Drat!” She set the utensils down. “Abby, these women sound like petty thieves, not kidnappers. I’m surprised they had the nerve to do what they did.”

  I shrugged. “They got greedy—thanks to Mama blabbing about the fortune I’d inherited—and they got in way over their heads. Sergeant Albergeria said she doubts Mama would have come to serious harm. Both sisters sang like canaries, and both said they were on the verge of letting Mama go and fleeing for the hills of North Georgia.

  “Albert Qua
rles, however, is another story. He probably would have fed us to the fishes. And all because of his obsession with some stupid coin.”

  “Which may not even exist,” Wynnell said, and waggled her eyebrows at our waitress to get her attention. Perhaps the waitress thought Wynnell was coming on to her, because she studiously avoided us.

  I raised my hand and waved.

  “Oh, my God!” Wynnell started gasping like a fish out of water.

  “What is it, dear? Are you choking?”

  “Y-your ring! I just now noticed it.”

  I fanned my fingers. “Isn’t it a beaut? Greg and I made it official the night I got back.”

  “Congratulations, Abby!”

  “Thanks. It’s not the biggest stone in the world, but he did mind his Cs, and maybe someday I’ll trade up.”

  “Platinum?”

  “Nah, just white gold.”

  “What matters is that you’ve got yourself one heck of a man.”

  “I know. And so do you. That promise of Ed’s was really something. For every time he played golf, you two would—well, you know what I mean.” I blushed.

  Wynnell waggled her brows again. “Indeed I do.”

  “Even C.J. seems to have prospects. Calvin Bleeks—the mortician who cremated my aunt—called her last night. Wants to come up and see her this weekend.”

  “How did they meet?”

  “Who else? Mama!”

  Wynnell smiled knowingly. “This morning C.J. asked me to call her Crystal.”

  “Oh, no! She’s not on that second-sight kick again, is she?”

  “Come to think of it, she did say something about that. Said to remind you she dreamed your mama was in a pet carrying-case, which to her is not that much different than a kennel. Said she was right about Albert Quarles, too.”

  I sighed. “The girl is going to be insufferable from now on.”

  “Maybe this Calvin Bleeks will keep her too busy.”

  “Maybe.”

  The waitress scurried by, and although Wynnell waggled and I waved, the young woman ignored us again. Wynnell glared at her retreating back.

  “I guess I’ll just have to pay up front.”

  We stood simultaneously. Lunch was Wynnell’s treat, of course, but I knew that when it came time to settle the bill, some protestation was expected. I dutifully played my part.