The Glass Is Always Greener

by Tamar Myers

  “Why look who’s talking, Mozella! First of all, I’m not divorcing him; he’s free to come along if he wishes. And secondly, I wouldn’t be throwing stones if I were you, given that you live in a palace of the finest, most fragile crystal ever created.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Mama squawked, and actually threw both halves of her breadstick in my friend’s triumphant, and until recently hirsute, face.

  Of course, as far as I was concerned it was all over now except for plucking the chicken. “By the way,” I said to Wynnell, “first you might try Sun City just over the border in Lancaster County, South Carolina. I’ve been told that they have every kind of activity imaginable, so I bet that they have fishing—or at least fishing trips. With all that stimulation, you might find that Ed won’t decline that fast.

  “Now on to you, Mama.”

  “What?”

  “If you added the word ever you’d have the most annoying word in the English language. I heard it on NPR—but I forget their source. Anyway, Mama, what’s your glass castle yet again this time?”

  She took a deep breath. “Well, I might as well get this out now. And just so you know, even Toy isn’t privy to this information.”

  Chapter 29

  Spit it out, Mama. The longer you try to drag it out, the harder it will get.”

  “I’m not a widder woman,” she said, cringing.

  “Please, Mama,” I begged, “we’re being serious here.”

  “She is serious,” Wynnell said. “Go on, Mozella, tell her the rest.”

  “When your father died—well, he didn’t die as quickly as you thought he did. After that gull hit him and he crashed the speedboat, how long do you reckon it was until I buried your daddy?”

  “A couple of days, Mama. I was eleven years old. I remember; you can’t tell me different.”

  “You remember a private prayer service that we had at the church—just family—but that’s all, because by then your daddy had been airlifted up to Duke. They were working on a new procedure—something that might reverse brain damage in people thought to be brain dead, who were being kept alive only by machines. You see, I was desperate, and I couldn’t pull the plug.”

  I began to cry. Silently. All these years later I didn’t even want to know how long Daddy may have lived after the accident. Because that wasn’t really my daddy hooked up to the machine, even if it wasn’t my right, or Mama’s right, to pull the plug.

  “What is your point, Mama?”

  “My point is that I couldn’t afford any of this. I was going to lose the house, and then most probably you kids, so when a lawyer suggested that maybe I divorce your daddy and let the state take over payments, I—Abby, I want you to know that I really struggled with that decision. So anyway, I guess then that my point really is that by the time your daddy passed on his own, I was a divorced woman. Technically, I guess, I have no right to call myself a widow woman.”

  I jumped out of my chair and hugged Mama so tight that she started to choke. Then I patted her back and made her take a couple of sips of her sweet tea.

  “Wynnell Crawford,” I said, measuring each word as carefully as I would the ingredients of a sponge cake, “that was so unfair. I didn’t need to hear that, and Mama certainly didn’t need to tell me that.”

  My intent was to stare across the table at Wynnell and make her feel so guilty that she would cry as well. But Wynnell is essentially a good woman, with a heart as big as the Piedmont, and she was already crying. The problem with my oldest friend is that both her conscience and her common sense buttons are located slightly to the right, and behind, her impulse button. If she were a car she would be recalled.

  “Mo-z-ella, Ab-b-by,” she blubbered, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I am so sorry. So, so sorry! Can you ever forgive me?”

  “We’ll try,” I said. “Won’t we, Mama?” I answered first, partly because I didn’t want Mama to jump in with an immediate pardon. Wynnell might be feeling the deepest remorse possible, but she still needed to swing in the breeze for a few minutes. Needed, not deserved.

  “Sun City does sound like a good fit for Ed,” Bob said.

  I smiled at him gratefully. “Yes, I think we should all take a look at it on our way home.”

  There still remained the not-so-small problem of Calamity Jane. As a means of penance I took Wynnell with me on my after-dinner hunch. Unlike on the coast, there are evenings in the Piedmont, even in August, where the temperatures become almost bearable after dark. This was one of those occasions.

  So as not to be too obtrusive, we parked in the public spaces adjacent to Amherst Green’s mail kiosk and around the block from the late Aunt Jerry’s townhouse. The shrill sound of cicadas screaming in the woods behind the development seemed to add a layer of protection to our adventure. If we could barely hear each other talk, then surely nobody else could.

  “How are we going to get in?” Wynnell all but shouted. “Don’t tell me you have a key.”

  “No, no key. We’re going around to the back. The garden gate is unlocked. And so is the bedroom window. I made sure of that.”

  She grinned. “You deserve your gumshoes. Abby, you’ve gotten to be as good as your husband at this.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind, I’ll tell you later.”

  “Okay.” The truth is I’d heard just fine. It was also true that I was developing quite a reputation for solving mysteries, which was a good thing, given that an uncanny amount had come my way over the past few years. At any rate, everyone likes a compliment, right?

  Wynnell was likewise impressed to see the beautiful palm garden, but she wasn’t surprised. She had a cousin over in Five Knolls who was also into palms, and had spotted several on her trip to Waxhaw.

  “Abby,” she said, after we’d let ourselves through the window, “I’m surprised that this is as tasteful as it is. I thought that maybe she slept in a giant pink clamshell supported by a quartet of blackamoors.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess you had to have met her. Jerry Ovumkoph was—uh—”

  “Tasteful?”

  “Yes. I’m telling you, Wynnell, I only knew her for five minutes, but it’s like she’s been burned in my brain.”

  “Abby, you’re sort of like that—to me, at least. When I walk into a crowded room and you’re there, somehow I immediately seem to find you.”

  “Aw shucks, Wynnell. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Does the same thing happen to you?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. It was the truth too, albeit for different reasons.

  “Abby, what is that sound?” Wynnell said.

  “I hope and pray it’s my hunch,” I said.

  “Abby, you know I have a hard time with Apparition Americans. I’m not like you or C.J. in that regard.”

  “They won’t hurt you,” I said. “Not usually. Besides, if we find my hunch in time she’ll remain a very large, pleasantly annoying American—the apparition part will just have to wait.”

  “You think that C.J.’s in here someplace?”

  “That’s what I’m betting on: that she never left the house. Now all we need to do is be quiet and listen.”

  “There!” Wynnell whispered loudly. “I hear it again. Do you think that’s Morse code?”

  “Whatever it is,” I said, “it’s coming from upstairs. Let’s go!”

  “Shouldn’t we call 911 first?” Wynnell said.

  “No. If it’s squirrels—”

  “Yeah,” she said, agreeing from experience. “Then they’ll think that we’re squirrelly.”

  We weren’t totally stupid, however. Wynnell carried a small fire extinguisher that she found sitting on the counter next to the oven in the kitchen, and I carried a croquette mallet from the hall closet. If need be, together we would club and smother whatever type of American awaited us upstairs, and if on the odd chance it turned out to be of the apparition variety, then we were psyched to run out the front door screaming.

>   Trust me; screaming really is just about all that one can do with a ghost. The carrying on, by the way, is merely for his or her ego. Apparition Americans can be quite flattered by excessive attention, and thereby rendered malleable. It is the ignored spirits that tend to be destructive and end up throwing things. But no ghost, ever, is capable of doing physical harm to a human being.

  At the top of stairs was a loft area that had been outfitted with a pair of antique couches. Both were upholstered in orange cut velvet with about a million puffs and buttons—really rather splendid if you got over the gauche factor. On the largest wall hung a large framed copy of the oil painting by Lord Frederic Leighton titled Flaming Jane, which depicts a reclining woman dressed in a flowing orange gown. The only other piece of furniture in the loft was a child’s rocking chair which appeared to date from Edwardian times.

  From the loft one needed to cross a bridge to reach the bedrooms, all of which were on the left front side of the house. But on the right, just past the bridge, was a door that presumably led to storage—perhaps even an attic. It was from there that the strange noises seemed to be coming.

  “Wynnell,” I whispered, “you’re older than me, right?”

  “What does that have to do with anything,” she snapped.

  “Just that you’ve lived a longer, fuller life. Therefore, you wouldn’t mind opening that door, would you?”

  “In your dreams,” she said, and gave me a push.

  One can either spend a night quivering under the covers, or waste no time in leaning over the bed to face the monster beneath. Sometimes it’s not a matter of choice. When Wynnell pushed me, I landed against the door with a thud. A second later whatever lay beyond responded with a multitude of thumps and groans. To be honest, I was a mite miffed that Wynnell had actually laid hands on me, and since I would never touch her in return, I decided to channel that anger to help me slay the dragon.

  “Come on out!” I roared, as I flung open what was indeed an attic door. (And yes, this mouse can roar—well, sort of.)

  “It’s C.J.!” Wynnell actually did roar. “Look at her. She’s all bound up!”

  I looked. If it wasn’t for the top of the big galoot’s shaggy head of dishwater blond hair, and her enormous hands and feet, I wouldn’t have recognized her, so thoroughly was she wrapped in duct tape.

  “Call 911,” I said, and leaped forward to begin the rescue process. I may not be a Boy Scout or a Saint Bernard, but I am a well-prepared antiques dealer, which means that I carry a Leatherman around in my purse wherever I go. This handy-dandy tool can do just about anything, except write good reviews in Kirkus.

  “Hold it right there!” a deep voice said.

  I didn’t have to turn my head as much as a millimeter to identify the speaker. “Go ahead and do your worst, Bob.”

  Chapter 30

  Bob! Bob! Bob!” Wynnell seemed to be barking her alarm.

  “You can kill us, dear,” I said, feeling remarkably calm, “and then go your merry way. It might be days before we’re found. But it might be hours. Who knows, depending on which buttons Wynnell pressed on her phone, it might be minutes.”

  “Abby, shut up, will you?” The order came from Wynnell, who’d found her voice; not from the criminal Bob.

  “I’m not done speaking. If this was a book—”

  “Which it’s not; so you’re going to piss him off. Then we’re going to end up like C.J.—big balls of duct tape. Except that you’ll be a little ball.”

  “Both of you just shut up,” Bob boomed. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “Remind me to feel sorry for you,” I said. “How do you think C.J. feels right now? You can do what you like to me, Robert Steuben, but I’m going to cut her loose.”

  Without as much as throwing a single glance to the lout from Toledo, I pulled out my trusty Leatherman tool and began to liberate my ex-sister-in-law with the questionable DNA.

  “Stop that! I’m warning you!”

  That’s when I did turn to him. My eyes must have been flashing with anger, because I remember him recoiling.

  “Shame on you, Robert. Shame, shame, shame! I am one of your very best friends—no, I will go so far as to say that next to Rob I am your very best friend. You can’t hurt me. You are a man of integrity. Whatever you did here, you did because you temporarily lost your way; it wasn’t because you’re an evil man.”

  “Yes, he is,” Wynnell said. “He’s a bad, bad, man.”

  “Chanteuse is the bad, bad woman,” Bob said, his voicing cracking like an adolescent’s. “I saw her take the ring off Aunt Jerry’s finger. God forgive me,” he sobbed. “I don’t know how I managed to get caught up in this.”

  “Help me get C.J. unbound,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”

  “Abby, don’t listen to a word he says,” Wynnell yelled. “Run for your life!”

  I bent my head so that the microphone taped to my chest picked up every word clearly. “Did you get everything you needed?” I asked.

  I nestled back against my husband’s strong, tanned arms, and took pleasure in the gentle rocking of the boat. Across our laps sprawled fifteen pounds of happily purring pussycat. Dmitri loves being aboard The Charming Abby because it means that there will eventually be fresh fish on the menu—even for him. These two very important men in my life and I were on our way to the Florida Keys. The trip would last however long it took; there were no rules except that at no time were either Mama or Booger allowed across the gangplank.

  “Hon,” my beloved said. “Have you gotten over the shock yet?”

  “Not really. I can be doing the most mundane thing—like sifting Dmitri’s litter box—and then poof! Suddenly it hits me.”

  “I never would have pegged that boy for a criminal,” Greg said.

  “That’s because he’s not!”

  Greg sat up in our bunk, an act which made Dmitri jump off and trot away. “Darling, you can’t be defending him. Not after he stuck the old lady’s body in the deep freeze.”

  “But she was already dead by then. And he wasn’t thinking, Greg. Bob has always had a problem with jealousy. That’s why he followed Rob up to Charlotte, after saying that he didn’t want to go along. And even though he was invited to the party. Anyway, he showed up just as Chanti was robbing the dead, so he thought—and yes, it was wrongheaded thinking—but he thought that he could blackmail her into accepting him fully into the family.”

  “And she was caught with her pants down, so what could she say—”

  “But you can never blackmail someone into feeling a certain way,” I said.

  It had been Chanti who followed Aaron, C.J., and me to Jerry’s house, and when C.J. got too close to discovering the safes—which Chanti thought contained real jewels—Chanti forced her into the attic at gunpoint, and then tied her up. Bob really hadn’t known about that until much later. But the scene in Chanti’s kitchen—that was all a put-on. Bob and Chanti were in it together as thick as thieves. Small wonder, that; they were thieves. There really was no excusing Bob that, but how much pain did Rob need in his life? And if Chanti’s dying brother, Ben, thought he was doing something noble for his sister, then who was I to intervene? Besides, if Ben went to jail, it might stop Mama from marrying him, and Mama was my business.

  “Oh Greg,” I said. “I’m so confused.”

  “You need a beer, hon,” Greg said.

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “I think I need to talk to Mama’s priest.”

  “Well, I need a beer,” Greg said. “Be a doll, babe, and make a run to the galley and bring me back a cold one.”

  “Cold what, dear?”

  His sapphire blue eyes widened in surprise. “A beer, of course.”

  “But darling, you are just as capable of carrying a can of beer as I am.”

  “Touché,” he said, and hopped out of bed to fetch his own refreshment. But when he returned he was carrying a second beer, one intended for me.

  I drank the proffered libation before calling
Mama’s clergyman. But rest assured, the appointment I made to talk with him was for after Greg, Dmitri, and I returned from the Florida Keys.

  I received two postcards today from loved ones that have put me in a reflective mood. It’s funny that the postcards should arrive at the same time, because they came from such faraway, unrelated places.

  One postcard was from Mama. She’s finally found her calling, albeit somewhat late in life. It’s a long story, but the gist of it is that she was discovered by the talent director of one of the many cruise ships that dock in Charleston harbor. He was looking for a “mature” torch singer. He must have been having a particularly good day when he hired Mama because she fit exactly one third of his requirements.

  Anyway, she styles herself the Lounge Lizardess and somehow manages to sing Doris Day songs with the achy-breaky undertones of Hank Williams. It’s a very small ship that now pretty much restricts its run to the rough seas between Punta Gorda, the southernmost city in the world, and the northern ice shield of Antarctica. Mama claims to never have been happier; in fact, she’s so happy that she’s thrown out all her crinolines and full circle skirts. When Greg asked me how I felt about this, I said, “To each his own and que sera sera.”

  The other postcard was from the Rob-Bobs, who are taking their second honeymoon in Europe. The card was mailed from Andorra, a tiny country tucked up in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Rob had pleaded guilty to stashing Aunt Jerry in the freezer—his motive was greed—but since it was his first offense, and the court had yet to see anyone quite so contrite—or white—as the immigrant from Toledo, he was given a five-year sentence, which was then instantly commuted.

  At any rate, the Rob-Bobs had swung by Andorra specifically to see C.J. and her Andorran husband, Guillermo Chevron. C.J. was on the Internet searching for angora sweaters (frankly this seems a little macabre to me, given her supposed DNA). Instead she came across a site advertising a “sweaty Andorran,” and not being one who reads postings carefully, C.J. contacted the listing, and the next thing you know we were all welcoming this handsome brute of a man—six feet four with Mario Lopez dimples and abs—into the family.