Poison Ivory

by Tamar Myers

  I crouched behind a large plastic trash can to take it all in for a moment. Someone had just dumped a massive amount of onion skins into it; but tears can be a small price to pay for the joy of eavesdropping.

  “I’m the meat chef at Maison de la Nez,” said a tall thin man with a prominent proboscis and a questionable French accent. “And I am telling you, monsieur, that there is something wrong with these steaks.”

  At that very second C.J.—bless her large and unsuspecting heart—sailed through the swinging door. “Ooh,” she squealed, “where did you get those lovely hippo steaks?”

  “You know hippo meat?” Bob asked.

  “Farm-raised pygmy hippo, right?”

  “Right, but—”

  “Hippopotamuses graze like cattle do, but they convert grass into protein at a much higher rate. The meat has a mild, porklike flavor. If people could learn to set aside their prejudices and try new things, hippo farms could be—should be—the wave of the future.”

  I popped out of hiding. My sudden appearance caused the faux Frenchman to produce a series of high-pitched squeaks and his face to turn as white as his three story hat.

  “Pardonnez-moi,” I said. “Je suis une imbecile grossier.” I turned to C.J. “Where did you learn about hippo meat?”

  “Silly, Abby, don’t you remember anything?”

  “Uh…I forget the answer to that question.”

  “Cousin Loquacious Ledbetter was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa back in the seventies. When the returned to Shelby he brought a pair of pygmy hippopotamuses home with him. Passed them off as a new breed of pigs. Of course laws were less stringent then—”

  Being the imbecile grossier that I was, I slipped back out of the kitchen and back into the Rob-Bob’s vast, and expensively appointed, salon. If you want to see Rob shudder, refer to the space as a living room or, God forbid, a “great room.”

  Every inch of the salon had been staged. Every fold in the heavy, floor-to-ceiling drapes was manipulated so the drape puddled just right when it hit the floor. The random stacking of books on the massive ebony coffee table was as random as planes landing at O’Hare. The various tableaux displayed on smaller surfaces around the room had been agonized over and reworked ad nausea. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that even the dust particles under the custom-covered sofas (should there be any) were arranged just so.

  Therefore it was safe to assume that having thirty-six people over for a buffet dinner had to be stressful for an anal-retentive man like Rob. The sound of a thousand nails scratching across a chalkboard would probably be soothing by comparison. However, for Mama’s seventy-fifth, he managed to keep it remarkably well together.

  Just about every man looks handsome in a tux, but Rob looks especially dashing. He keeps himself trim at the gym, tanned on frequent mini-cruises, and I wouldn’t doubt that it was Rob who turned John Edwards on to the four hundred dollar haircut. Although it was a “black tie optional” affair, most folks had opted to deck themselves out in their finest, so here and there I saw a bit of bling that put just the right amount of zing in the room. To top it all off, someone had thought to call the newspaper, which meant that come Sunday morning, Mama’s momentous bash was going to be splashed across the society pages.

  “That’s M-o-z-e-l-l-a,” I heard her tell the reporter from the Post and Courier. “My sixtieth birthday was really last Monday, but we had to postpone the celebration on account of I had to single-handedly apprehend a murderer.”

  Since the reporter didn’t seem to recognize me, I felt free to horn in on the conversation. “Belated birthday wishes, Mozella,” I said. “If you turned sixty last week, pray tell, how old are you this week?”

  “Well, of course I’m still sixty—although maybe I’m sixty-one. I’m certainly not seventy-five like some people think I am.”

  “That’s certainly too bad,” I said.

  “It is? I mean, I could be flexible.”

  “Mozella, let’s say that you were really eighty—which is a preposterous idea in this case—folks would say that you were the youngest looking eighty-year-old they had ever seen. On the other hand, if a seventy-five-year-old woman—not you, of course—tried to pass herself off as sixty, or even sixty-one, there might be some who would think to themselves that she’d been ridden hard and put away wet—if you know what I mean.”

  “I get your point,” the reporter said. “If you’re going to lie about your age, then add years, don’t subtract. Otherwise you might just be getting people to pity you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why Abby,” Mama said with a laugh, “that’s the silliest notion I’ve heard in all my born days, and believe me, there have been plenty of them. But I guess if your theory is true, then I should at least fess up to real age, don’t you think?”

  “Be proud, Mama,” I said.

  The reporter, bless her heart, leaned in, pencil pressed to her pad, ready to scribble away.

  “I’m one hundred and three,” Mama whispered in a breathy tone, more reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe than a centenarian. “Ask me what I was doing the day the Titanic went down. Go ahead, ask.”

  The clinking of a metal utensil against a wine-glass was like an angel sent from Heaven. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Rob said, although he managed to get only half of us to shut up. Someone—I think it was a uniformed waitperson—slipped into the kitchen and retrieved Bob.

  “May I have your attention!” Bob boomed. In the ensuing hush one might have heard a human hair hit the floor, had anyone been so thoughtless as to shed one at that moment. “Before we open up the buffet line, our guest of honor has asked to say a few words.”

  “That would be me,” Mama said happily. To hearty applause, she pranced across the room to where the Rob-Bobs were standing. Then, as if it were choreographed, two muscle-bound men swung her up and set her gently on a dining room chair that was covered with Brunschwig & Fils cashmere (you can bet I wouldn’t have been allowed to stand on it). There followed more applause.

  “Doesn’t it warm your heart to see her so happy?” Greg said.

  I nearly jumped out of my dress sandals. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Shhh, she’s about to start her speech.”

  “Friends, family,” Mama said as she looked slowly around the room. “Thank you so much for sharing my eightieth birthday with me.”

  Mama waved aside the inevitable gasps and murmurs. “Yes, I know, some of you thought I was younger than that—but, I’ve decided to take a page from my dear daughter, Abby, who’s convinced me, via her own example, to be proud of my age. Abigail, tell them how old you are.”

  “Mama,” I growled, “not now.”

  “Oh, come on, dear. It’s only a number.”

  “Come on, Abigail,” some jerk said. “Humor your mother.” Far too many people found this funny.

  “I’m forty-eight,” I said. “There. Are you happy?”

  “Nonsense, dear,” Mama said. “I was twenty-five when you were born. That makes you—uh—”

  “Fifty-five!” the jerk hollered.

  “My wife is forty-eight,” Greg said. “I’ve seen her birth certificate.”

  Mama shrugged. “Nevertheless, what I’d like to say tonight is a big thank-you to my daughter for letting me be such an important part of her life. She didn’t have to do it, you know. She could have left me up in Rock Hill to rot on the vine, like an overripe tomato—or would that be a cucumber in my case, since I always seem to be getting myself into a pickle?”

  Surprisingly few people groaned, so I cut mine short.

  “At any rate, I’m sure it puzzled my family when I started spending some time with my very wealthy ex-son-in-law not too long ago. I might even have stepped on a few feelings. However, I hope that a ten-day Caribbean cruise for everyone here in this room on his megayacht, the Abby-Lone, will help erase any hard feelings. Lord only knows, my daughter is the single most precious thing in my life. Oh, and did I mention that my gr
andchildren will be joining us on this cruise?”

  “A cruise?” Rob shouted.

  That was a cue for one of the uniformed waitpersons to begin beating a child’s drum. At that, the doors to Rob’s study opened and out marched my children: Susan, age twenty-five who lives in New York City; and Charlie, age twenty-three, who had obviously flown in all the way from Paris.

  “Happy birthday to me,” sang Mama happily. She was off-key as usual.

  Everyone in the room joined Mama in singing the birthday song, even the waiters, and I doubt if there was a dry eye there. In fact, it sounded like even the chefs and their helpers were adding their varied voices; I thought I heard the meat chef from Maison de la Nez.

  “Speech, speech!” someone cried predictably afterward, but Mama shook her head. She knew when to end a production.

  It was then that I pushed Send on my cell phone and spoke to the man upstairs. I do mean that literally, by the way. Phillip Canary, who was being paid handsomely for his gig, was not at all put out about having to wait in the Rob-Bob’s media room with a cold beer and a large screen TV until he got my signal.

  Eightieth birthday, or not, I’m telling you, it was a sight to see Mama’s face as Phillip came down the stairs, serenading her with “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings.”

  Epilogue

  Mr. Curly (aka Lord Bowfrey) was charged with two counts of murder and impersonating a United States customs officer, as well as smuggling into the country just over three hundred tons of banned ivory. However, he turned state’s witness in exchange for extradition to his home country of Zimbabwe.

  Lady Bowfrey was convicted of two counts of kidnapping, as well as smuggling into this country just over three hundred tons of banned ivory. She was given a life sentence to a prison somewhere in the Carolinas. After a year on prison food she has lost 126 pounds and is no longer confined to her wheelchair. She has acquired a special friend named Tamika and reports being happier than she’s ever been. She has also started a women’s self-help group called Bitches with Stitches.

  Afterword

  I was born and raised in what was then the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), in the geographical center of Africa. It is a vast area of land that sprawls across the equator and contains a variety of wildlife habitats. In the northern region small herds of pygmy elephants follow ancient trails through dark, mysterious rain forest. But I was born in the south, where the sunlit savannahs butt up against the southern reaches of the rain forest and the elephants achieve normal size, like they do in East Africa.

  My parents were missionaries to the Bashilele tribe, which at that time were renowned for their elusiveness (they were head-hunters who drank from human skulls) and for their prowess as hunters. They were not poachers; the men hunted game solely for their cooking pots. They hunted with six-foot, tightly strung bows, and were assisted by beautiful, but barkless, little hunting dogs known today as basenjis.

  Larger animals could not be felled immediately by the arrows, but were chased on foot until they “bled out,” much as Americans hunt deer with arrows today. Elephants and hippos, however, possess hide that is several inches thick, and arrows are generally only a mere nuisance to them. The traditional way to hunt them was to dig a large pit, into which sharpened stakes were positioned pointing upward. The pit was then covered with branches and leaves. With any luck the animals wandered into the pit, but barring that, they were driven to it by beaters. This method of hunting dates back to prehistoric times and was used by cave dwellers to hunt mammoths.

  The Bashilele did not posses modern weapons of any kind. They owned no guns; in fact, it was against the law for them to do so. They were, however, very skilled at crafts. One observant man, a hunter named Kabemba, had been recruited as a soldier by the Belgian colonialists. When he returned to his village, he was able to perfectly reconstruct, by memory, a functioning musket, as well as musket balls. Where he got the necessary gun powder, I don’t know.

  One day a herd of elephant cows and their calves (the bulls are solitary) passed within two miles of our house. Upon hearing, via the talking drums, that the elephants were approaching, Kabemba climbed into the branches of an acacia tree. He had with him only three homemade musket balls. The unsuspecting herd walked single file beneath him, and as soon as the last cow passed, he fired the gun, hitting the elephant in the soft spot directly behind her ear. The musket ball entered the large elephant’s brain and she sank quietly to her knees. She died instantly. It was truly one shot in a million.

  The year was 1952. I was four years old. There was great excitement in the village and on the mission; everyone ran through the bush to see the elephant and to congratulate the mighty hunter. Kabemba instantly became a hero, and a legend throughout the district. No man before him had ever been brave enough to attempt to shoot an elephant with a homemade gun. Killing an elephant was a community activity. No one had ever managed to do so alone; it literally took a village.

  My daddy lifted me up and placed me on the dead elephant’s back. He held me up so I could look in her ears. That night, and for days afterward, the entire village feasted on elephant meat, while the drums recounted the hunter’s cleverness and bravery. If the bullet had only wounded the elephant, she could have easily knocked the small acacia tree over and trampled Kabemba. It is most unlikely that he would have had time to refire his homemade musket.

  The next evening Mama served us elephant burgers for supper. She’d cooked them in a pressure cooker to make sure they were tender, before browning them in a cast iron skillet on our wood-burning stove. Mama didn’t tell us that we were eating elephant meat until supper was over. And she waited another full day to confess that our portion of elephant meat came from the trunk. Mama had heard somewhere that the trunk was the tenderest part of an elephant, so that was what she had arranged to buy from Kabemba.

  Mama’s younger brother bought one of the elephant’s feet from Kabemba. He intended to make an umbrella stand out of it. Unfortunately for all of us, Uncle Ernie knew nothing about taxidermy, or curing hides, and subsequently the foot stank horribly. Soon Mama, who was his big sister, ordered him to throw it out. Uncle Ernie threw the elephant’s foot out, but not very far—just over the edge of the front lawn. That night a pack of jackals dragged the foot hither, thither, and yon, as they tried to scavenge the interior of it for meat. The next day Daddy commented that the poor elephant’s foot had probably traveled more when it was off the elephant than when it was still attached to her.

  The grassy hills among which we lived were well-watered, and many of the valleys contained small forest-rimmed lakes. There was a local legend of an “elephant graveyard,” a special lake where old and injured elephants went to die. It was said that the elephants knew instinctively where this place was, and when death approached, they sought it out, but they did so only if they were not being pursued. A badly injured elephant might prolong its death for hours, maybe even days, until it knew for sure that it could enter the waters of this mysterious lake unseen.

  My daddy was determined to find the “elephant graveyard.” He reckoned that there must actually be several of them, and that after eons of time they must be chock full of valuable ivory. It was his dream to find one of these lakes, drain it, and become a multimillionaire. He would then use his fortune to buy a Bible for every soul in America (Daddy firmly believed that Americans needed saving just as much as did the Congolese).

  Finding the “elephant graveyard,” and claiming its ivory, became our annual New Year’s Day quest. Armed with an elephant gun, as well as a double gauge shotgun, and accompanied by a “snake spotter” from the Bashilele tribe, my father would set out from the house every New Year’s Day to seek his fortune. My two older sisters and I trotted along behind him. Mama, who was on the heavy side, never came along, but occasionally we were joined by other curious missionaries, those who were willing to thrash through the bush all day in search of a pipe dream.

  One year a middle-aged
American woman wearing high-heeled pumps decided that she would hike with us to investigate a little lake that had just been “discovered” in a valley about ten miles away by foot. There was no path, and Daddy and the “snake spotter” had to chop their way through head-high elephant grass. When we got to the special valley, there wasn’t even a lake, much less a stash of ivory—but we had a fine picnic next to a termite mound. As for the lady in pumps, a heel broke off before she’d walked half a mile, so she turned around and limped home.

  Daddy never found the “elephant graveyard.” In the years since our New Year’s Day excursions, this region of Africa has witnessed tribal war, civil war, and an almost unparalleled population explosion. Soldiers and political potentates have hunted some big game species almost to extinction with the aid of automatic weapons and helicopters.

  Some areas that were once set aside as game preserves are now hemmed in on all sides by starving refugees, and as a consequence are heavily poached. To put it kindly: although there has been valiant effort given to conservation by many of the game wardens—some of whom have paid with their lives—the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains a land of conservation potential.

  About the Author

  TAMAR MYERS is the author of fourteen previous Den of Antiquity mysteries: Gilt by Association; Larceny and Old Lace; The Ming and I; So Faux, So Good; Baroque and Desperate; Estate of Mind; A Penny Urned; Nightmare in Shining Armor; Splendor in the Glass; Tiles and Tribulations; Statue of Limitations; Monet Talks; The Cane Mutiny; and Death of a Rug Lord. She is also the author of the Magdalena Yoder series, is an avid antiques collector, and lives in the Carolinas.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Den of Antiquity Mysteries by

  Tamar Myers

  POISON IVORY

  DEATH OF A RUG LORD