Gilt by Association (23 page)

“And?”

“And what? You mean because she keeps calling me all the time with urgent messages, and sold that armoire to—wait a minute! You don't think she was in on something with the Kefferts, do you?”

“You never know,” Rob said quietly. “That's my point.”

The sliding glass door to the patio opened then and Bob stepped out bearing a tray with three steaming mugs.

“Don't bother to hide the contraband,” he said. “I can smell a jelly-filled donut a mile away. In Toledo I lived just around the corner from a bakery. So confess all your sins and help yourself to something hot to wash down all that fat and sugar.”

Rob and I obediently took our mugs. “What is this?” I asked pleasantly. It didn't smell like coffee, tea, or hot chocolate.”

“Try it, you'll like it,” Bob coaxed.

To prove we were good sports, and feeling guilty about the donuts, Bob and I sipped simultaneously. Just as simultaneously we spit out the hot broth.

“It's mizo,” Bob boomed, beaming in the moonlight. “Japanese fish stock soup.”

We shooed him from the deck and rinsed our mouths out with what little snow remained on the railing. In five minutes he was back.

“This time it's tea,” he said.

There was no sugar or cream on the tray, but my fingers and my mouth were cold from the snow. I took a mug and sipped greedily.
One
greedy sip. The concoction was definitely not tea.

“What the hell is this?” Rob said, his handsome face twisted in a grimace.

“Tea,” Bob said. “Japanese green tea. It's supposed to taste like that.”

We banished him from the deck until all the donuts were gone and our extremities numb. Then we made him fix us some hot chocolate.

R
ob and Bob have a well-appointed guest room, and I would have slept very soundly on the authentic Queen Anne bed, but I woke up about three o'clock in a sweat. Now, I know I am forty-eight years old and waking up in a sweat is something to be expected, but this one was different. This sweat was preceded by a dream in which C. J., her face at least ten times its normal size, was looming over me.

“To market, to market to buy a fat pig,” she kept saying. She was holding a machete in her huge right hand.

“But I'm not a pig!” Although my mouth seemed to be working, my lips definitely moving, no sound was coming out.

After a few minutes the giantess C. J. got tired of playing the market game and exchanged the machete for a sledge hammer.

“For your table, Lisa,” she grunted, raising the sledge hammer over her head.

“I'm not Lisa!” I screamed. That time my vocal cords worked. I woke up.

I lay there on the Queen Anne bed, panting, the covers thrown off. Apparently the Rob-Bobs were capable of sleeping through a hurricane, or else they were simply being discreet. Perhaps, in their optimism, they thought I had somehow managed to sneak in a lover.

At any rate, it was impossible for me to go back to sleep after that. Mama firmly believes that all dreams have some meaning, and that if we could learn to interpret them correctly, we would understand ourselves much better. In her mind, dream interpretation equals mental health. She keeps a notebook by her bed and jots down everything she remembers dreaming. She has done this on a regular basis ever since Daddy died.

I am not sure, however, that this discipline of hers has led to greater self-awareness. Perhaps I'm being too judgmental, but how self-aware can a woman be who lives in a time warp? Please don't get me wrong, my dear mama isn't psychotic by any means. I just don't think that cleaning one's house in pearls and crinolines is a sign of good mental health.

Still, there was undoubtedly something to be learned from my dream, if only that I shouldn't eat three jelly-filled donuts and two glazed ones that close to bedtime. I lay there awake for almost an hour, alternately trying to interrupt my nightmare and to block out the sound of Bob snoring. I assumed it was Bob. The snores were bass, and loud enough to wake the dead clear over in Ashville. It was a good thing Bob had moved south and not to Colorado, where he might have found himself responsible for starting a number of avalanches.

Another one of Mama's pearls of wisdom is that things come to us when our hands are open. There may well be some truth in this. Just as I was giving up on both interpreting my dream
and
a good night's sleep, a bizarre interpretation occurred to me. What if C. J. hadn't been saying “market,” but “
marquetry
.” One of the four Louis XV pieces displayed excellent marquetry, and that was the small table.

But what then did marquetry have to do with a pig? And why had she called me Lisa? Perhaps the pig was just something my brain had used to complete the “mar
ket” phrase, to have it somehow make sense to me. After all, that particular nursery rhyme was one I would recite almost daily to the children after their baths when they were little, while drying off their toes with a big fluffy towel. As for the Lisa part, my middle name is Louise, which sounds similar, but did C. J. know that?

“But wait a minute,” I said aloud. “It's not about what C. J. knows, but what I know.”

And then it hit me, not like a ton of bricks, but like a ton of Mama's homemade pound cakes—which she insists on baking from scratch, when any grocery store sells much better ones, and at a fraction of the cost.

“
Liseuse
!” I shouted. “
Table liseuse
!”

Seconds later there was a rap at the door, and Rob stuck his head in.

“You all right, Abby?”

“I got it!” I turned on the bedside lamp and jumped out of bed before remembering that I was wearing one of my shorter flannel nightgowns and that it had a tendency to creep up,

Rob discreetly averted his eyes while I jerked the darn thing down. No harm done.

“I'm fine,” I shrieked, and pranced over to him and gave him a big hug.

It was at that moment that fate decreed Bob should appear on the scene. A lesser man might have felt threatened by what he saw. The prancing and hugging had hiked up my ornery gown again.

Bob barely blinked. “What's up?”

Rob had the presence of mind to peel me off him. I was too excited to think straight.

“Our little Abby seems to have had an epiphany,” he said calmly, much to his credit.

“Yes!” My brain was starting to kick in, in high gear, so I pranced over to Bob and gave him a hug as well. Let him chew on that, if he still had any doubts.

“What is it?” Rob said. “What's going on in that pumpkin head of yours?”

I released Bob. Rob is, after all, the more jealous of the two.

“My pumpkin head has just thought—in my sleep, mind you—of the most likely place for the document to be hidden!”

“What document?” Bob asked. His brain was obviously still playing catchup.

“The document that has turned the Barras bunch into bloodthirsty bludgeoning burglars.”

“Stop alliterating and elucidate,” Rob said.

“Maybe over tea,” Bob suggested sensibly.

Rob and I groaned.

“Real tea. American tea—English, whatever. The kind you can put cream and sugar in. Or lemon, if you like.”

We cautiously agreed.

“So you see,” I said, over a cup of real tea, “the marquetry table that I gave C. J. to keep for me might be more than it appears.”

“Not a
table liseuse
?” Bob boomed.

“Exactly.”

“I don't get it,” Rob said.

I wasn't surprised. There is too much about the antique business for any one person to know everything. That is why any antique dealer worth his salt will have a shelf full of up-to-date reference books, and enough humility to call in an expert from time to time. I certainly would not have known about
table liseuse
had I not combed through some period reference books in preparation for the estate sale. Even then, I had no reason to suspect that the marquetry table was anything than what it appeared to be.

“A
table liseuse
is a small mechanical table of the latter part of the Louis XV period,” I said, trying not to sound pompous. “These tables often have well-concealed panels
that open to reveal secret compartments. More often than not the compartment contains a stand that unfolds, and upon which you can prop a book.”

“And I can't think of a better way to conceal one of those compartments than with marquetry!” Bob bellowed. “Abigail, you're a genius!”

I shrugged modestly. “We don't know yet if it is a
table liseuse
. And even if it is, the compartment might be empty.”

“Hmmm,” Rob said ominously. “Hmmm.”

“What?”

He flashed me what I suppose was meant to be a reassuring smile. It came across stiff and foreboding.

“Who did you say was keeping the table for you?”

It hit me like two tons of Mama's pound cakes. “My God,” I moaned. “You really think it's her?”

Rob's steady stare was his answer.

“Well, I don't,” Bob said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “If C. J. had this table, and access to its secret, there was no reason for her to kill again. This Ramsey guy, maybe, but not Lottie Bell.”

I swallowed hard. “I gave it to her
after
Lottie Bell was murdered.”

“And she is young and strong,” Rob said. “I could see her stuffing a body into an armoire.”

“Y'all are getting carried away,” Bob said. It was the first time I'd heard him say the word “y'all,” and it brought a smile to my lips despite the gravity of our conversation.

“Well, there's one way to settle this matter once and for all. I'm going to march straight over there and give that damn table a thorough examination, like I should have done in the very beginning.”

Rob's stare had turned to blankness. “What does that prove? Either you find a hidden compartment or you
don't. If there's anything of value in it, do you think she's just going to leave it there?”

“Besides,” Bob said, “if she has already offed two people, what makes you think she's going to stop at a third?”

“‘Offed' What is that? Toledo tough talk? But, you're right,” I said. “We'll all go over there together.”

Rob grabbed me by both shoulders. “Whoa! This sounds like a matter for the police. Or that boyfriend of yours.”

“He's not my boyfriend.”

“Ex-boyfriend, whatever. My point is, this is definitely not something three amateurs should be messing with.”

“I agree,” Bob said. He glanced at the kitchen clock. “It's only twenty to four. What do you say we try to get some sleep. We can call your detective in the morning. Nothing is going to change significantly between now and then.”

“But—”

“Nighty-night,” Rob said. He kissed the top of my head, like I was his baby sister.

“And don't you do anything foolish,” Bob said. He patted my cheek.

They could not be dissuaded from crawling back under their warm covers in the middle of the night. What kind of friends were these? I wanted friends who were willing to risk hearth and home, to leave no stone unturned in our mutual quest for justice. Pulling a feather-filled comforter over their heads was not what I had in mind.

“Nighty-night,” I said cooperatively.

I had long since learned from my kids the importance of feigning compliance before defiance, so I trotted off to the guest room like a good little girl. About twenty minutes later when Bob's loud snores gave the all-clear sign, I dressed and slipped silently down the hall and out the front door. The Rob-Bobs had a lot to learn about raising children.

T
he streets were as deserted as church is the Sunday after Christmas. No doubt sensible people were still in bed and/or had listened to the weather forecast. The partially melted snow had refrozen during the night, turning Charlotte into the world's largest skating arena.

“'Twas two weeks before Christmas and all through the streets, not a creature was stirring without wearing cleats,” I chanted as I skillfully steered my car out of its third spin.

If you relax, I discovered, and do exactly what they teach you in drivers education about turning into the skid—even though it sounds unnatural—it isn't all that bad. Provided you aren't driving very fast to begin with, and the streets are deserted. I at least had the desertion part in my favor, and was able to make it to C. J.'s without any injury to my car, and only minor injury to the garbage bin some lazy homeowner had neglected to bring in.

I may be impetuous, but I am not stupid. I've seen my fair share of crime movies. I knew it would be risking life and limb to just charge into C. J.'s house and accuse her of two murders. But I also knew—thanks to Hollywood—that people are all the time getting away with serious crimes, simply by driving away in the middle of the night. If I wasn't going to sleep anymore anyway, it surely
didn't hurt if I kept an eye on C. J. until dawn when we called the police.

C. J. lives in a modest, two-bedroom rental house. She claims to eschew apartments because she likes her privacy. If you knew C. J., however, you would probably draw the same conclusion I have, which is that it is the apartment owners who eschew C. J. and her quirky ways. At any rate, I circled her block twice, awakening only two dogs, who were apparently too cold to howl for more than a few seconds. I finally parked on the street, three houses down on the left, as you face her house. From where I sat I could see the corner of her carport, her car reassuringly inside. There was not much else to see. The drapes were drawn in front of the scaled-down picture window, presumably as a precaution against the cold.

It was rather exciting being on my first stakeout, almost fun, except that I had woefully neglected to bring any of the amenities that scriptwriters provided for their detectives. A huge thermos of cafe au lait and another half-dozen donuts would have hit the spot. A couple of feather ticks—like the one my erstwhile friends were snuggling under—would have been most welcome as well. It was too risky to let the car idle in order to keep the heat going, and far too cold to just sit there.

After about five minutes I began to fear that unless I moved around a little, I was going to spend my Christmas holidays as a Popsicle. My choices were to abandon my stakeout or rev up my internal furnace by getting a little exercise, like maybe a casual stroll past C. J.'s house.

It wasn't easy closing the car door behind me without making a sound, but it was virtually impossible to walk on the sidewalk that led past C. J.'s house. She and her slovenly neighbors ought to be sued for shirking their snow and slush removal. The sidewalk was solid ice. I was forced to walk across the fronts of the narrow lawns on crunchy, frozen snow. You can bet I avoided the bare
spots where the neighborhood's dogs had contributed to snow melt earlier when temperatures were warmer.

I knew C. J. didn't have a dog, and her immediate neighbors didn't seem to, either, so I saw no harm in cutting deeper into her lawn for a closer inspection of her house. Of course I took precautions. There is a sporadic but overgrown hedge that lines the driveway and the street side of the walk from the driveway to the front door. Being short has its occasional advantages and I was able to dart—as much as frozen snow allows that—from clump to clump and crouch behind them, without being seen from her house. Of course the house across the street was another matter, but since its front yard was in far worse shape than C. J.'s, it seemed obvious to me that the owner was not the early-rising type.

I think I would have stopped short of going all the way to her front door if I hadn't seen that faint crack of light. Not coming from underneath the door, but along the side of it. C. J.'s front door was ajar.

I froze. Almost literally. That's how long I crouched there. Perhaps C. J. was on her way out, and had just popped back in to get her car keys or something else she'd forgotten. Perhaps she had been keeping track of me all along, and the open door was a part of her surveillance. Or maybe it was a trap.

When my toes had become totally numb, and my nose was running faster than an Olympic sprinter, I concluded that Jane Cox had not forgotten her car keys and gone back in after them. And given the fact that the front door had a little window at the top, she was probably not watching me through the crack. Either she had forgotten to close the door behind her the night before, or something was seriously amiss.

I would have bet good money on the latter. Any woman who owns her own antique shop at age twenty-three, and rubs shoulders with mature adults on a daily basis—not
to mention one who had probably offed two people—is not likely to forget to lock up at night. But if something was amiss…

“Oh no,” I moaned. “What if it's not Jane. What if I've been stupidly standing by while whoever it really is offs Jane?”

The thought made me sick. In the time it takes a teenage girl to fall out of love, I found myself switching sides. Jane the probable aggressor was now Jane the possible victim. Jane the aggressor had been almost too easy to believe. Jane the victim broke my heart. Poor girl, first orphaned, and now this.

“Now what?” I asked myself. Mumbling aloud under stress is, I believe, a genetic trait. At least in my family. Answering one's own question is as well.

“Now you go straight back to your car and drive like a bat out of hell to the nearest public phone,” I said.

My feet ignored their mistress and headed up along the driveway, closer to the walk that led to the house. If I knew them, they were going to propel me right up to that front door and beyond. There was simply nothing I could do about it.

I pushed the front door open slowly, trying to ignore the widening gap of light that could surely be seen by anyone in the house across the street,
if
they happened to be looking out the window. Perhaps at this point it was better to get the neighbors involved. Let them call the police.

My feet forced me inside. The light, which I wanted to gather up in my arms and push back into the house, was coming from a single small lamp on an end table by the couch. The house was utterly silent, not a fridge humming, nor a furnace purring. It was as if I had caught the house between breaths.

“Jane?” I whispered.

Silence.

“Jane?”

The furnace kicked in then and answered me with a roar. I jumped almost high enough to see what St. Peter wears under his skirt.

“Damn it!” I said. “You're such a little coward, Abigail. There's obviously nobody here but you and your shadow, and you almost left it behind. Now get a grip on yourself.”

Having chastised myself, I closed the front door and turned on the overhead living room light. For a twenty-three-year-old, C. J. had rather sophisticated taste. The room was done up in Federal style, most of it used reproductions I would wager, but here and there I saw something that might be the real thing.

It wasn't too bad going through the house, as long as I could turn on an overhead light in each room first. Fortunately the house was just old enough that virtually every room had a light fixture smack dab in the middle of the ceiling. Those squared, etched glare plates in some, globes in others.

The kitchen was country, the real stuff. Outside of that and the living room, everything else appeared to be early garage sale. Apparently C. J. couldn't afford to decorate with her own stock. Not many dealers can. The garage sale stuff was tastefully arranged, however. I'll grant her that.

I called her name in every room, but there was no answer. Understandably I did not check the closets, or under the beds. Fortunately the shower was glazed glass, and half-open. There did not appear to be a body stashed in the tub.

I returned to C. J.'s bedroom and picked up the phone receiver. I glanced at my watch. It was only five-fifteen. Too early to call Greg without a legitimate excuse, and breaking and entering on my part—well, I had found the door open, so breaking couldn't be added to my list of
sins. Still, Greg would be pissed, and who could blame him? To be roused by a phone call from an on-again, off-again girlfriend at that ungodly hour would be more than enough reason. In fact he might be so pissed at me that he would run straight to the already half-filled arms of Hooter. I decided to call anyway.

C. J.'s bedside phone was one of those complicated jobs attached to an answering machine, the kind that makes Mama think all Japanese engineers are the devil's spawn. It even had a feature that allows you to see the number of the last person who called. Out of curiosity—not nosiness—I pushed that button. In for a penny, in for a pound, I told myself and dialed the number displayed.

“You have reached Broken Tree Nursery,” Garland Riggs said. “We value you as a customer. At the tone, please leave your name, number, and a brief message. We will return your call as soon as possible.”

I hung up.