by Tamar Myers
“Everyone—I guess,” Bob said. “Well, not the clergy. They’re not into badmouthing anyone. But the rest of the family—whew! Talk about dysfunctional!”
“Is the pastor there as well?” I asked.
“You bet your bippy. And with that weird wife of his. Then there is that bobble-headed uncle with the trophy wife—”
“Except that they’re as poor as temple mice and she really does love him, so despite her store-bought parts—the sum of which is marginally attractive—I’m not sure she can legitimately be called a trophy wife. Is Ben’s daughter Amy there?”
“The chubby girl? Yeah, along with three friends and they’re all weeping copiously, although according to Chanteuse those girls wouldn’t have recognized Aunt Jerry if they saw her walking at the mall.”
“We’re supposed to call her Chanti now.”
“Oh, are we? Well, I think that will be—”
“Careful what you say, dear. A mother is a hard person to distance oneself from, no matter how badly she behaves.”
“What are you saying,” he asked. “That you think she’s guilty?”
“No. Simply that you don’t want to put out too much negative energy to the universe because it has a way of coming back to bite you. Rob doesn’t see the same woman that we do; he never will.”
“Abby, how did you get to be so wise?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “If I was wise, my husband wouldn’t be stuck on a broken-down fishing boat with a man named Booger. Anyway, it’s your counsel I’m seeking now.”
“Ah yes, words of wisdom from the Toledo dullard,” he said.
“Stop that!” I laughed nonetheless. “Do you have wheels?”
“Yes, but they’re back at the hotel.”
“The hotel? You mean you’re not staying with Rob’s mom?” I asked.
“No, and neither is Rob. You should have seen the steam come out of her ears when he told her.”
“Well, good for him. Okay then, I’m coming up to get you, if that’s okay, and we’ll talk on the way over.”
“Over to where.”
“Over to where C.J. was last seen alive.”
Temple Beth El is located in Shalom Park off Providence Road. Shalom Park is home to two synagogues, the Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Family Service, Charlotte Hebrew Day School, and the Jewish Federation of Charlotte. This is a fine example of inter-organizational cooperation, and in fact many of the events held on the campus are open to the community at large. When I got to the light I saw Bob leaning against the sign; he was gasping for air.
“I would have driven all the way to the temple to pick you up,” I said.
“Girl,” he rasped, “haven’t you noticed that I’m getting a bit flabby?”
“Uh—no.”
“Too long of a pause,” he said, clearly disappointed.
“Then eat less,” I said, “or else exercise more. It’s just physics.”
“Exactly,” he said. “And that’s what I just did. Now where are we going?”
I filled Bob in on everything I’d done since coming back to Charlotte—well, just about everything. There are a few things I don’t even share with my husband.
“Finally I get a chance to scope out the pastor’s palace—and I do mean palace. Bob, you’re not going to believe this place. If you want to get rich, heal people on TV. Charlotte, by the way, is the place to do that kind of thing. There seems to be something in the air that’s very spiritual.”
“Why Abby, you didn’t even sound sarcastic when you said that.”
“I didn’t intend to; I meant what I said. Every year thousands of people move here from all over the country. And you wouldn’t believe how many of them start referring to this as ‘God’s country,’ and they aren’t being sarcastic either. Tell me, do you feel that way about Toledo?”
“Shut up and drive, Abby.”
“At least I’m not on the phone, and I’m not texting,” I said. “I think that people who text while driving should serve mandatory jail sentences.”
“Let me guess; you don’t even know how to text, do you?”
“I prefer conversation, thank you.”
“Spoken like an old fart—I mean, friend. So, Abby, what are you going to do when you find your guilty party? Lasso them and dump them in the lake?”
“Hey, that’s not fair. That’s exactly what Tweetie had planned for me. I was just defending myself.”
“I know; I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I’m just worried that you’re going to get in way over your pretty little head and then I’m not going to have anyone to pal around with.”
“I’m only collecting pieces of a puzzle, Bob. So far I haven’t even attempted to assemble them.”
“What are some of the pieces if you don’t mind me asking?” he said.
I waited to answer until the poor woman in front of me, who stopped suddenly, turned right. I could have gotten into the other lane had she been allowed to use her signal. However, anyone caught using his or her turn signals in Charlotte is immediately driven out to the city dump and executed via a firing squad. It is a very effective law, and one of the few that is consistently obeyed.
“Well,” I finally said, “except for the pastor and his wife, who seem to be raking in the moola by the offering plateful, the Ovumkoph clan appears to have a cash-flow problem. Perhaps even the pastor does; that’s sort of what I’m anxious to see. It’s hard to tell from just the outside of their McMansion.”
“Even Aunt Jerry?”
“Her too. From what I gather, she liked to taunt her sister with her over-the-top jewelry—but it was all fake. At least most of it. Jerry was a show woman—no different really than her nephew, except that she didn’t steal from anyone. But I don’t have any reason to think that she was living beyond her means. That’s something her bank records can prove.”
“Aaron and Melissa, on the other hand—well, the Joneses left them in the dirt two facelifts ago.”
Bob laughed so hard that he was rude to my upholstery. “Abby, what if I was to tell you that Chanteuse—”
“Chanti,” I interrupted. “Remember?”
“What about Charade?” he said. “I like that even better.”
I laughed. “Go on.”
“Well, it’s no secret that she’s what we on the coast call shabby chic. Rob has to send her a check every month to keep the wolf from her door.”
“Forgive me,” I said, “but you sound a mite resentful.”
“Abby, how can you be so wrong sometimes? I am not a mite resentful; I’m mightily resentful. Yes, we’re doing very well with The Finer Things, but the downturn in the economy has really hurt high-end stores like ours. No offense.”
“Only a minimal amount taken,” I assured him.
“You see, Rob and I were hoping to hear the pitter-patter of little feet—”
Chapter 26
You plan to get a Chihuahua?”
“Remind me why I like you so much?”
“Oh Lordy, you weren’t planning to adopt me, were you? Mama wouldn’t like that.”
“Shut up and listen. I intend to stay home when we get our baby—well, I did. But Chanti keeps taking cruises and having these so-called necessary procedures to that unrecognizable minefield of a face, and my dear husband keeps forking over the dough whenever she asks. Do you think she could have a gambling problem?”
“Gambling? Chanti? I don’t know; I never thought about it before.”
“The reason I ask,” he said, “is that the way she burns through our money is one thing. But when I was in her bedroom I saw two lottery tickets tucked into the mirror on the vanity, and—”
We happened to be passing the Fairview Avenue entrance to South Park Mall, so I pulled into the nearest parking spot. “You were in her bedroom?” I shrieked.
I’m sure that to some people Bob might appear as ugly as homemade sin, but he has many very attractive attributes. For instance: he is totally without guile. He remo
ved his thick, horn-rimmed glasses and looked me straight in the eye.
“Last Mother’s Day, in addition to a sizable check, Rob and I gave her a studio portrait of us in a silver frame. She said she was going to put it beside her bed so that it would be the first thing she saw in the morning, and the last thing she saw at night.
“Abby, it was my marital duty to see if indeed it was on display. What if Rob thought to check, and it wasn’t there, and he got his feelings hurt— Why, I just couldn’t bear that.”
“Yeah, I bet you couldn’t. And if he took it up with his mother and it led to a big brouhaha, it would just break your heart, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m tearing up now, Abby, just thinking about it.”
“Ah, there, there.” I gave him a couple of pats on the back that bordered on friend abuse. “So, was the picture on display?”
“Of course not.”
“Figures. Still, shame on you, Bob. You shouldn’t be invading someone’s privacy that way. Even a woman like Cruella De Vil deserves a modicum of respect.”
“There were shackles hanging above the bed. And leather restraints tied to the bedposts.”
“Get out of town and back!”
“And that’s just for starters. But you’re not interested in that kind of talk; you made that clear.”
“Keep talking. A gal has a right to change her mind.”
“Well, I lied. I made that all up, just to see how you’d react.”
“And you caught me red-handed; I’m as guilty of being a hypocrite as John Edwards is of making a baby with Rielle Hunter while his poor wife was suffering from cancer.”
“Shhh, Abby, someone might hear you and you’ll get sued.”
“Don’t be silly. He admitted it. It’s been in all the papers and on 20/20. Plus we’re in my car, for crying out loud. You sound almost paranoid.”
“You think? Gee Abby, you’re a lot kinder than my shrink.”
“Sorry, Bob. I didn’t mean to go off on you like that. I didn’t get much sleep last night and my nerves are frayed.”
“You want to talk about it?” he said.
“No,” I said. “We should be talking about your plans to add poopy diapers to your daily routine.”
“Whoa! I take it back. Dr. Freidman may be kinder than you after all.”
“Oh Bob, don’t get me wrong; I said it in jest. You know that I think that there could be no better dads than you and Rob. But face it, neither of you is much at home with icky things. And your baby is going to give you ick—every single day; you can count on that.”
“Every day?”
“Every day—just as long as he or she is healthy.”
“Hmm,” Bob said. “Maybe we should think about adopting an older child.”
“Or perhaps a change of attitude. Being a parent guarantees that you’re not going to live an ick-free life.”
Bob rolled his eyes dramatically. “Yes, Mom. Can you stop with the lecture?”
“Sorry. They too come with the territory, as you’ll find out soon enough. But back to Cruella De Vil and the lottery tickets she has tucked into her mirror— Do you really believe they might mean something?”
“I checked the dates, Abby. They were purchased several years ago. They also look creased and a bit shopworn, like they’ve been carried around in someone’s purse or wallet since then. What happens to unclaimed prizes in North Carolina anyway? Is there a statute of limitations on collecting them?”
“Are you suggesting that Chanti might have taken the tickets out of Jerry’s wallet and is waiting for a more appropriate time to cash them in?”
“Well, that is possible, isn’t it? Maybe Jerry confided to her sister that she’d won a big prize, but for whatever reason, was afraid to cash in the ticket. In the case of a lottery ticket, I should think that possession would be more than nine tenths of the law.”
I nodded. “More like everything.”
Bob loosened his seat belt so that he could get to his wallet. “I wrote the numbers down, in case anyone would be interested.”
I studied the numbers. “Holy Toledo,” I almost shouted. “Those, my dear, look like they could just as well be the combination to a safe.”
“Or some secret spell she uses to make her broom fly.”
“Stop being catty, Bob, and listen.”
***
“Hmm,” Bob said when I was through telling him about the safes at Aunt Jerry’s Amherst Green house, “you might just have something there. Do you think that Chanti knew about the safes?”
“I don’t know. Maybe this dog won’t hunt and the lottery tickets are meaningless. But until I try those numbers, I won’t be satisfied. But first, we’re heading directly over to the Wicked Witch of the West’s house. Those tickets are just crying out to be liberated from that cramped spot behind the mirror, and you, as a newly minted Southern gentleman, have been given the honor.”
“Abby, you know that I love the South—well, parts of it, at least. I’m not particularly fond of no-see-ums and sweat getting in my eyes in April. But I absolutely adore y’all’s way of life.”
“Bob, do you really think that Chanti is capable of murder?”
“Aren’t we all? If circumstances were exactly right?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on, Abby. What if you had to choose between saving the life of a loved one—like your mama, or one of your children—and a stranger. Let’s say that by pushing a lever, somewhere someone on the opposite side of the world dies, but the life of one of your loved ones is saved. What would you do?”
“Bob, stop that! That’s an awful thing to contemplate, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the subject at hand.”
“Yes, it does. Babies on the other side of the world die every day because we don’t send them our pocket change for formula. We tell ourselves that it’s not our responsibility, it’s their government’s, whatever, and we can put them out of our minds because they’re so far away.
“But you see, it’s just a matter of degree. Maybe Chanti didn’t do anything to cause Jerry’s heart attack, but she could have intervened. Instead she watched and waited while her sister died. It may have been a passive act, but it’s still a crime, and in my book it’s murder. And why did she do this? Not to save the life of someone she did love, but simply because she hated her sister so much.”
“Bob, you know that if we can prove this, your partner might never speak to you again.”
“I know, Abby. That’s why you’re going to prove this. I’m just along as your bodyguard.”
Then, without further provocation, my tempestuous friend from Toledo burst into a deafening rendition of the theme song from the Whitney Houston movie The Bodyguard. Unlike Miss Houston, Bob sings bass. Poorly. I’m sure that he reached decibels so low that they were inaudible to the human ear, but which may have caused serious psychological damage to the elephants at Riverbanks Zoo down in Columbia. I shouted at him to stop, but to no avail, so I turned on a CD of Moroccan love songs as loud as my car player could go without blowing out on me.
I had a little practice sneaking out of Mama’s house as a teenager, and as far as I know, my comings and goings were never detected. But breaking and entering was taking it to a new level.
“I have to pee,” I said.
“You should have thought of that before,” Bob said.
“I would have,” I said, “if I’d had the urge. I didn’t then; I do now.”
“Well, hold it in for a few minutes. It was your idea to come here; I’m just along to protect you, remember?”
It turns out that we didn’t have to really break into the house per se, because Rob had a key, which he’d left behind in the motel room. That said, we decided that entering through the front door was the least suspicious thing to do in the eyes of the neighbors. We—or I should say, Bob—even scooped up the morning paper on the way in.
“Bob, be a dear and hand me the paper.”
“Abby, you said pee. I want to get
out of here as fast as I possibly can.” Nevertheless he handed me the Charlotte Observer still neatly folded in its protective bag.
I whopped him up the side of the head with all the news that was fit to print. “Coming here was your idea. You convinced me that Chanti was capable of murder—remember?”
Having spoken my piece I headed off to the downstairs water closet, which I knew to be located just off the kitchen. In my humble opinion this more recent addition is in a terrible location, being so close to food preparation. The one advantage it has is that one need not miss out on kitchen gossip just because nature compels one to use the facilities.
Of course there was no one in the kitchen at the time. There was, in fact, no one home at all, except for Bob. Chanti has a large house, and it’s on a quiet street, so it can get rather spooky in there—or so I imagine. It was on that account that I didn’t latch the bathroom door, but instead left it open just a crack; just enough to make me feel connected to Bob and the world beyond.
So there I was, blithely minding my own business, when I began hearing the voices. First a buzz, then loud and clearer, until they were in the kitchen, and finally just outside the bathroom door.
“This is the last time I’m asking you,” Chanti said. “What are you doing in my house?”
“Rob gave me the key,” Bob said.
“I don’t care if Moses gave you the key. Who said you could come in?”
“Your son,” Bob said.
Chanti snarled; I think she intended to laugh. “Whose house is it: his, or mine?”
“Yours,” Bob said.
“Then why do you think—” Chanti said. “Never mind, you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“I love your son, Mom,” Bob said. “May I call you Mom?”
“You most certainly may not!”
Way to go, Bob. Chanti was livid. What a brilliant way to deflect her. I couldn’t have thought of a better way myself.
“Do you play the lottery, Chanti?”
What? That wasn’t part of the plan. Not yet, for Pete’s sake.
“What are you talking about?” Chanti said.
“Don’t deny it. I found those tickets on your vanity mirror.”
