by Tamar Myers
“What was it?” I said. “Do you mind sharing?”
Ben cleared his throat. “ ’If I should die before I wake, tell everyone my jewelry’s fake.’ ”
Mama and Conrad stared at Ben, as if waiting for a punch line to be delivered. I, however, felt like I had just been punched in the tummy. Of course! That was it! That was the key. Jerry couldn’t afford the genuine article, but she had found someone skilled enough to make copies that could pass for the real thing. And now, just six days before her predicted demise, she was dead.
“Excuse me,” I said, as I pushed my chair back and stood. “And please, y’all, don’t try to stop me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, dear,” Mama said, although she was reaching out to block me with her left hand at the same time.
Ben, being a good Southern gentleman, was on his feet by then. Conrad, who was somewhat restricted by the bulk of his obi, made only a token attempt to rise.
“Please don’t go,” Ben said. “Mrs. Timberlake, I apologize if I have offended you in any way. I realize that religion is one of the three taboo topics for the dinner table—”
“Give me a break,” Mama said. “There aren’t any taboo topics at my table, or Abby’s either. Now sit down, the both of you, and as soon as the line clears a little at the buffet, then we’ll all get up and fill our plates.”
I’m afraid that Ben had very persuasive eyes. “Your mama has spoken, Abby. You would be breaking a commandment in both of our faiths if you were to disrespect her.”
I at least gave myself the satisfaction of rolling my eyes before retaking my seat. “Since you insist, Ben.”
“Hey guys,” Conrad said, “I want to know what the other two forbidden topics are.”
“Politics and sex,” I said. “Which, here in the States, often go hand in hand.”
“Jerry and I never agreed politically,” Ben said. “Then again, she never quite agreed with anyone on that score. I swear, the woman was trying to get a rise out of her siblings—especially Chanti. They had a thing, you know.”
“A thing?” Mama said. “What does that mean?”
Ben suddenly looked miserable. “I shouldn’t be talking ill of the dead; it isn’t right.”
“Of course not,” Mama said. “But you weren’t; you were talking about Chanti. Am I right? The woman is a pain in the tuchas.”
“Mama!” I said.
Ben laughed. “You can bet your bottom dollar on that. Jerry and Chanti were always at each other’s throats. As far back as high school it had to do with guys.”
“Figures,” Mama and I said in unison.
“Jinx,” I said. “You owe me a Coke.”
“Then Chanti fell in love with this one guy—they were engaged to be married—but then Jerry steals him away. And then dumps him!”
“Men are jerks,” Mama and I said, speaking in tandem again.
“Hey,” Conrad said, “I feel that I must protest. Not all guys are like that.”
“Would you be speaking from experience?” Ben said. “You might sound more convincing if you take off that dress.”
“It’s not a dress; it’s a kimono.”
“Anyway,” Ben said, “and then Jerry had a minor heart attack; but still, you would think that it would be a good time to let go of grudges and come together as a family, right?”
“My family never wants to speak to me again,” Conrad said.
“Hush up,” Mama said, not unkindly, “and let the man speak.”
“But it didn’t mean squat for this family. Not squat. Chanti never showed up at the hospital. Neither did our brother Aaron. Of course no one ever expected our famous cousin, Pastor Sam, to show up.”
“And did he?” I asked.
Chapter 24
Ben shook his head and chuckled. “No. But if he had, he would have been under a lot of pressure to perform. There were two rabbis and a cantor there until she was out of the woods.”
“Well, good,” I said. “So then their prayers were answered.”
Ben shrugged. “Maybe. In my faith we don’t pray for miracles. We pray for strength and peace. We pray for hope and guidance. Most of all we give thanks for what we already have.”
“Just don’t make them prayers too obvious,” someone said. “Unless them’s Christian prayers.”
I looked up over my shoulder into the immense jowly face of Bubba himself. It was like looking into the maw of a bloated hippopotamus sans the enormous teeth. (Bubba has only store-bought teeth and usually he forgets to wear them.) Whether from smoking at home, or crying over country lyrics, Bubba’s red eyes resemble maraschino cherries about ready to pop out of the slits in which they are housed. His numerous chins, every one of them as soft and smooth as a bag of freshly kneaded dough, sway with each syllable of the spoken word. In short, it is almost impossible not to stare at this legend of Pineville, North Carolina.
“We’re done with the praying,” Mama said. “Now we’re about to sample your delicious cuisine.”
“That’s what I like to hear, ma’am, a fine Southern accent like yours. Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I’m from Rock Hill, Bubba. Born and bred.”
Then the squished red cherries settled on the soon-to-be unemployed geisha. “What are you doing, girl, sitting with the customers?”
“I quit,” Conrad said.
“You can’t quit,” Bubba said. “I have to fire you.”
“Don’t be mean,” Mama said.
“He’s not being mean,” I said. “He wants to make sure Conrad can file for unemployment.” I tried my best to maintain eye contact with Bubba. “But you’re forgetting that this boy is an illegal alien.”
“What? He don’t look like no kind of Mexican to me.”
“I’m not,” Conrad said. “I’m from a rotten little town called Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.”
“You take that back!” Bubba roared. “Don’t nobody call Moose Jaw a rotten little town.”
Conrad was on his feet so fast that the beautiful, genuine faux polyester kimono split up the rear. He threw off the heavy black wig. Unfortunately, the lad tossed it a mite too far and it landed in another diner’s moo goo gai grits.
The diner whose grits had been violated by polyester locks was none too pleased. “Hell’s bells!” he shouted.
I swear I didn’t see Ben move, but like the true Southern gentleman that he is, he had both his hands over Mama’s ears, protecting the dainty things from being polluted by such crude language. And Mama, being the fragile Southern belle that she is, was so overcome at hearing Satan’s homeland referenced that she was on the verge of a swoon.
It just so happens that Mama has turned swooning into an art form. She puts one delicate hand up to her forehead, palm out, the other to her bosom, palm inward, closes her eyes halfway, and commences to sway. Because she’s vertically challenged, she can’t achieve a whole lot of lateral motion, so she makes up for it vocally. Her sighs and moans are reminiscent of the film When Harry Met Sally, and have no place in an eating establishment. When she started with the unseemly sounds, Ben let go of her ears and cradled her shamefully in his arms.
“Mama, stop that,” I begged, “or I’m leaving.”
Bubba was oblivious both to the profanity and to Mama’s theatrics. He’d blown himself up like a giant puffer fish and was looming over the boy from north of the border.
“What do you know about Moose Jaw, boy?” Bubba demanded.
Conrad had begun to back up. It was a tricky task, given the platform shoes and ripped kimono.
“I’m from Moose Jaw,” he said, his voice quavering. “But that’s in Saskatchewan, not North Carolina.”
“You know a woman by the name of Emma Rae Corntassel?” Bubba blubbered.
“Yes, sir, she plays the organ at my church. She’s like a hundred years old or something.”
“She’s eighty-nine, and she’s my mama.”
“Give me a break,” I moaned. “Is everyone on this tri
p going to turn out to be related to someone else up here? First it was Tweetie and the detective, although they weren’t relatives but bath mates, and then it was—”
But Mama had stopped mid-swoon. “Do you know what all this means, Abby?”
“No, what? You’re going to tell me that we’re related to Ben? Because if that’s the case, he’s going to have to drop his mitts. I’m sure that I read somewhere in the Good Book that we’re not supposed to lie with our relatives, and I’m not talking about misrepresenting the truth.”
“Don’t be such a smart aleck, Abby. That too is a commandment—and one of the Big Ten.”
“Touché,” Ben said.
“Shhh,” Mama said. “I prefer to handle my daughter alone. No, Abby, the significance of Bubba’s hidden Canadian origins means that he’s not a true Southerner—nor even a real Bubba. In other words, this restaurant is a sham.”
Mama is no fool. And she’d spoken quietly so that only our immediate party was privy to her words. As they registered in Bubba’s well-padded brain his face went from rage red to a shade of gray not included on most color wheels for obvious reasons.
“I’m going to be sick,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” Mama said. “We’re all entitled to our own deceptions. You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”
“No, ma’am. I stopped here overnight on my way to Disney World. It was Christmas Eve, thirty years ago this past December. I wanted to try some Southern food, but the only restaurant open was this Chinese place, so I bought it, brought in a local chef, and voilà, that’s how Bubba’s was born. It was in the paper, but folks have kind of forgotten about it over the years, which is just fine with me. I think it helps that they think I’m Southern.”
“Moose Jaw is in the southern part of the province,” Conrad said kindly. After all, the boy didn’t need to be helpful.
“Well, in that case,” Mama said, “your secret is safe with us, but we expect free meals in perpetuity. And Conrad gets his job back.”
“With a twenty-five percent raise,” Conrad said, proving that he was adapting to American ways really well.
“What?” Bubba said.
“That means,” Mama said, “that we’ll be dining—”
“I know what it means,” Bubba said, resorting to his old self. “It’s called extortion.”
“Mama, what do you know about false advertising?” I said in a voice loud enough to rouse Daddy from his permanent resting place over the South Carolina border in Rock Hill.
“Okay,” Bubba said, “but no alcohol.”
“I know plenty,” Mama shouted, attracting the attention of the Clintons, who were vacationing on Hilton Head.
“Dang, y’all drive a hard bargain—eh?” Bubba was clearly a beaten man.
Wynnell was on her way back from Waxhaw so we agreed to meet at the South County Library to further strategize. Charlotte, by the way, has the best library system of any city I have set foot in. South County Library, for instance, is open seven days a week and has ample parking. For a book lover like myself a library card is the next best thing to getting a gift certificate with unlimited credit at your favorite bookstore. This library even has a muffin and coffee stand.
While I waited for Wynnell I sat outside in the courtyard, by the fountain, and chowed down a blueberry cheese Danish, which I washed down with a café latte grande with brown sugar sweetener and cinnamon sprinkles. I’d asked for full-fat milk. My friend Magdalena Yoder, a Mennonite farm woman up in Pennsylvania, lives by the motto that “fat is where it’s at.” Of course she’s lucky and has genetics on her side. But sometimes it is nice to give the tongue the full treatment: to reacquaint it with the joy of living—so to speak. At any rate, this was my lunch, so it needed to have a “stick to the ribs” element.
Having satiated myself on just half the Danish, I shamefully shared the other half with a flock of boldly advancing sparrows. I’m not sure that the library personnel would have approved, and I may have shortened the life of some of the more cholesterol-challenged birds, but how could I say no to those cute little faces? A pushover, that’s what I am. So what the heck was I doing trying to investigate a murder if I couldn’t even shoo away a bunch of “mice with wings”? Acting foolishly, that’s what. Well, that seemed to be the story of my life.
I brushed the last of the crumbs off my lap and because the fountains and street traffic rendered it too noisy to make a phone call in the courtyard, I made my way through the library and out to the parking lot again. This time the “victim” of my paranoia was the member of the Ovumkoph-Goldburg clan who was least affected by Aunt Jerry’s death.
“Hey Abby,” Bob whispered, “I can’t talk now, we’re with the rabbi.”
“Oops. Sorry. Rob’s that broken up, is he?”
“Not really. Hang on a second while I step outside.”
I hummed the theme from Exodus to myself as I waited. The movie, starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, is one of my favorites, and one that I think the younger generations of today would do well to watch.
“Abby? I’m back.”
“Bob, really—”
“It’s all right. We were going over the final plans for the funeral service. It’s tomorrow afternoon, by the way, at two p.m.”
“You’re kidding! I mean, obviously you’re not, but how can this be? A memorial service, maybe, but the morgue won’t release a murder victim until—”
“That’s just it, Abby. Aunt Jerry wasn’t murdered.”
Chapter 25
She died of natural causes.”
“What?”
“I bet that word’s been said a lot this weekend.”
“What? You’re not making a lick of sense, Bob, which is unfortunate. I called you because you are—were—the sensible one in the gang.”
“The dull Yankee from Cleveland?”
“You’re not dull; you’re just not as eccentric as the rest of us.”
“And I’m not from Cleveland either. I’m from Toledo.”
“Oops again.”
“What I’m trying to say is that you’re the most normal.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
I took a deep breath as I chose my words carefully. “Please tell me, Normal Bob, what were Aunt Jerry’s natural causes? Did she have a heart attack?”
“Bingo. It turns out that she had a very bad heart this time. According to her hospital records she’d been coded four times in the previous year.”
I gave my gray matter a second or two to process this information. “Are you saying that she almost died four times in the previous year?”
“Technically she did die, but, of course, thanks to modern science, was brought back each time. Aunt Jerry knew that she was literally a heartbeat away from meeting her Maker at any given moment. That’s why she gave herself the going-away party.”
“Okay. Now it all makes sense. So at some point during the party, maybe when folks are eating and therefore distracted, the Angel of Death decides to code her for a fifth time.”
“Abby, you’re so dramatic!”
“There, you see? I’m definitely not normal. Anyway, she must have been somewhere off by herself—like maybe the restroom. Then someone comes along, but instead of helping her, takes the ring off her finger and stashes her body in the freezer.”
“Exactly. In fact, the coroner ruled that she was already dead when she was put in the freezer. The odds are that she went peacefully, and was robbed afterward. At least that’s what we prefer to believe.”
“Of course. But what happened to her is still a crime, right?”
“Of a major sort. If you ask me, whoever it is should be bound hand and foot with duct tape and laid across a fire ants’ nest.”
“Bob! How terribly Southern of you: fire ants indeed!”
“Abby, you know me. You know that I’m such a pacifist—well, I am not a vegetarian, I will admit that, as I do love my emu and musk ox meat—but I would never wish physical harm to another human be
ing. But Aunt Jerry was the beloved flesh of my beloved, and besides, the thought of robbing the dead is just so revolting that it makes me spitting mad.”
“Well then let’s spit together, Bob, and leave the fire ants alone. They can turn on one another, you know. Tell me, were the police as forthcoming about any leads? The two dingleberries I spoke with this morning were on my tail. As if I could lift a hundred pounds of deadweight—oh goodness, excuse the pun. It was inadvertent, I assure you.”
“I believe you, Abby. You’re not that droll; trust me on that. The police wouldn’t tell us a thing, Abby. Not a dang thing. Abby, do you think that I’m being too sensitive?”
The right answer was “probably.” “I’m sure you’re not, sweetie. What is it?”
“Rob’s mother is, of course, the prime organizer, and she’s putting all the family in the front row. That includes Rob, but it doesn’t include me. I’m supposed to sit in the second row, in what she calls the close friends section.”
“Screw that,” I said.
“Why Abigail, I knew I loved you for a reason,” Bob said.
“What does Rob say about that?” I said.
“We haven’t had time to talk about it,” Bob said. “She’s in there flapping her jaws right now. Say Abby, you wouldn’t happen to know the whereabouts of this Uncle Ben character, would you?”
“Actually I do. He’s at Bubba’s.”
“As in China Gourmet?” Bob said in amazement.
“Righto,” I said. “But without the Bubba, eh?”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said. “But what about him?”
“Well, apparently the entire family is here at the temple meeting with the rabbi and cantor, everyone that is except for Uncle Ben. He’s the one who supposedly looks like Rob, right?”
“Not supposedly,” I said. “He’s a dead ring— Oops, hush my mouth!”
“And a bit of a scoundrel from what I’ve been led to believe,” Bob said.
“By whom?” I asked. I was honestly surprised.
