Statue of Limitations (18 page)

“Mrs. Washburn,” someone behind me said, taking me totally by surprise. As I spun to see who it was, the candy wrapper sailed from my hand into the street.

“M
rs. Spanky!”

I was practically nose to breastbone with the Webbfingerses' maid. Who knows how long she'd been following me, if indeed she was, but she had to think I was nuts. This was the second time she'd caught me talking aloud to myself.

“Ma'am, you gotta minute to spare?”

“Sure thing, Mrs. Spanky.”

“Please call me Harriet, ma'am, remember? I don't stand on no formalities.”

I glanced around. Few tourists make it down this far on foot, and most of them who do stick to the residential side of Murray Boulevard. There wasn't anyone else within thirty yards of us. The woman must have been hiding behind the trunk of a palm tree. And why the heck wasn't she at work?

“Yes, Harriet, I remember. And you must call me Abby.”

“Yes ma'am.”

“There's a bench over there, would you like to sit down?”

“No ma'am, this will just take a minute.”

I edged closer to the seawall to take advantage of the breeze. “Sure, I've got a minute.”

“In case you're wondering, ma'am, I ain't at work because I've been helping Mr. Fisher pick out a coffin. The police say the body—I mean Mrs. Fisher—will be released this afternoon. I know, it should be the family helping out at a time like this, but there ain't nobody left in Charleston but a cousin over in Mount Pleasant, and she's teched in the head. Not that it's my place to say so. Anyway, we was coming back and I seen you out walking. Thought I'd run you down and speak my piece.”

I leaned against the seawall for support, in case Harriet's piece was particularly upsetting. “Go ahead, Harriet.”

Harriet planted her feet farther apart, as if she, too, was bracing. “It's about them shoes you left behind in the missus's bedroom.”

I could feel the color draining from my face. “I beg your pardon?”

“Ma'am, it ain't no use pretending with me. I knowed them little things was yours right off. Ain't no one got feet that small, except for a child, and them ain't children's shoes.”

“Uh, well, I don't know what to say.” Truer words were never spoken.

“That's all right, ma'am, I ain't judging. I'm a Christian woman myself, and ain't about to commit adultery, but I also ain't one to throw the first rock.”

“Excuse me?”

“Like in the Bible, when they stoned them adulteresses. Anyway, what you and Mr. Webbfingers done is between you and the Almighty. The Bible says ‘do unto others,' and the Lord knows Mrs. Webbfingers did unto others many a time, so I don't blame the mister none.”

I took a deep breath, but the warm moist sea air seemed to contain very little oxygen. “Harriet, I assure you that Mr. Webbfingers and I are not having an affair.”

The look in her eyes was one of pure disbelief. “Like I said, I ain't judging. And it ain't my business, excepting you being a newcomer to town, I thought you might like to know the way things is.”

“How are things?” I asked, with what seemed to me like remarkable calmness.

“Folks around here talk, ma'am.”

“You mean gossip, right?”

“Yes, ma'am. Stories have a way of getting around and blowed all out of shape.”

I tried to think of a reason why Harriet would be concerned about my reputation. Perhaps it was
because I treated her with respect, and had even asked her to call me by my given name—not that she had, of course. Or maybe she wanted to borrow money, or even come work for me now that Marina was dead.

“It ain't got nothing to do with you, ma'am,” she said, yet another person to read my mind. Perhaps I should consider growing bangs.

“Then whose reputation are you trying to preserve?”

“It's Mr. Webbfingers I'm thinking of. The Lord knows that woman put him through enough. I don't want to see him suffer no more, that's all.”

I'd had enough. “We are
not
having an affair. I am a happily married woman, and even if I wasn't, I assure you that Mr. Webbfingers would not even be on my radar screen.”

Harriet blinked. “You and the mister really ain't—” She blinked several more times before switching tracks. “What about them shoes, then?”

It's been said that every good lie should contain a kernel of truth, and I am quite capable of supplying a plate full of corn. “You were right about the shoes. They are mine. And believe me, they're not so easy to come by in that size anymore. It seems that feet have gotten bigger along with waistlines.

“Now where was I? Oh yes, like I said, the shoes are mine—but I certainly didn't leave them there because I was having an affair. You see, I stepped
in some gum the last time I was at La Parterre—you know how hard that can be to remove, 'specially from the tread—and Mrs. Webbfingers said she was about to go to the cobbler's anyway, and she'd dropped them off to have them professionally cleaned. Obviously she got them back, but hadn't gotten around to calling me.”

It was a mite far-fetched, but not an implausible story. Although cobblers are a dying breed, they do exist, and a lot of their business does come from repairing shoes that are too valuable to throw away when in need of mending. Old money never likes to throw anything away, especially not thousand-dollar loafers.

Harriet took her sweet time considering my explanation. “You got gum on both shoes?”

I nodded vigorously. “Don't you just hate that when that happens? I mean, how hard can it be to find a trash can, or stick it behind your ear or someplace until you locate one? Why just look at the sidewalks in our beautiful city—they look terrible. You wouldn't find gum blobs all over the place in Singapore. Or cigarette butts for that matter.”

“Ma'am?” I was starting to lose her.

“Of course our mayor, bless his heart, would never support an ordinance that required litterbugs to be caned. What a shame. But the courts wouldn't stand for it, either, I'm afraid. Can you
imagine the number of suits that would be filed if such a law were to be enforced?”

“Mrs. Washburn, there's something else I'd like to talk to you about, but my dogs are killing me. You mind if we sit?”

“Not at all, dear.”

I led the way to the nearest bench. Harriet moved sprightly for someone her age, until I remembered that she wasn't nearly as old as she looked. From then on her slowness irritated me, but I held my tongue. When we were both settled, facing the harbor, she sighed dramatically.

“You ain't fooling me none, Mrs. Washburn. I know who you really are.”

If I hadn't been holding onto the wrought-iron handrail, I might have toppled from my perch. “I beg your pardon!”

“You're with the police, ain't you?”

“I most certainly am not!”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. What on earth would make you think such a thing?”

“Well, you ain't no decorator, that's for sure. Them rooms you did don't look like no motel I ever stayed in.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

“But if you ain't the mister's honey, there's got to be some other reason you got the job.” We
stared at each other for a few seconds before her face turned as white as Confederate jasmine. “Lord have mercy! It's you and the missus that was having the affair.”

“What? Absolutely not! I don't swing that way, never have, never will—not that anything's wrong with it.”

“Oh there's plenty wrong with it. Just read your Bible.”

I smiled. “Harriet, is that maid's uniform you're wearing made of polyester?”

She looked baffled, but pleased that I'd changed the subject. “It's one of them blends. Polyester don't breathe good enough, and I ain't about to iron cotton every morning—not with all the other work I have to do.”

“I understand. I just thought you might like to know that the Bible says you're not allowed to wear clothing made out of more than one kind of material.”

“
My
Bible?”

“I'll bet it does. Try reading Leviticus, chapter nineteen, verse nineteen,” I said, grateful that the Rob-Bobs had drilled that bit of biblical trivia into me. I slid to my feet. “Well, I really need to be going.”

To my great surprise she grabbed my right arm and pulled me back, slamming my buttocks
against the hard slats of the bench. “I ain't through yet, Mrs. Washburn.”

“Really, Harriet, I am not interested in arguing theology.”

“I ain't, either, Mrs. Washburn. It's them guests I want to talk about.”

I ignored my throbbing coccyx. “What about the guests?”

“Some of them ain't who they says they is.”

Resuming my perch, I gave her an encouraging smile. “Please, tell me everything.”

She reached into a battered black purse she'd placed between us. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

I considered the ramifications of an honest answer. “Go ahead.”

Her leathery hands performed a rite they were obviously used to. Her first inhalation lasted several seconds, like she was sucking life from the cigarette, and not the other way around. When she finally exhaled through her nostrils, the harbor breeze pushed the smoke air into twin puffs, conjuring up a dragon in my mind.

“That woman who calls herself Estelle Zimmerman—you know, the one who's trying to look young but ain't—I knowed her when she was just a kid.”

“You're kidding!”

“No ma'am, she and Mr. Webbfingers was sweet on each other. Only back then folks called
her Mary Estelle. Simonson was her family name—don't that sound foreign to you?”

“Not really.”

“Just between you and me, Mrs. Washburn, all them foreigners should go back to where they came from, and leave this country to us real Americans.”

“My friend Alma Cornwater shares those sentiments.”

Harriet frowned. “Don't know anybody by that name. Anyway, like I was saying, Fisher Junior and Mary Estelle was students together up at the college. Hung around here all the time. Word was they was fixing to get married—though I didn't never see a ring or nothing. Their families was close, too. There was always a bunch of folks at the house, and just me to do all the waiting.” She took another long drag.

“Don't stop there! What happened to the romance?”

She waited until the second pair of puffs dissipated. “Mary Estelle found herself another boyfriend, is what happened. Some Yankee tourist she met at the beach. Mrs. Webbfingers—Fisher Junior's mama—was fit to be tied. Took to her sickbed for weeks.” She gripped my arm again. “Guess who had to take care of her, waiting on her hand and foot twenty-six hours a day?”

I resisted my impulse to inform her that even
Charleston days are not that long. I did, however, gently peel her fingers from my arm.

“My guess would be you.”

“As if I didn't have my hands full enough. Harriet, be a doll and do this. Harriet, darling, would you bring me a fresh glass? This one has a ring around it.” She gulped another lungful of smoke. “I wanted to ring her neck, that's for sure. But I needed me this job. Had me a little boy to support. And back then jobs was hard to get if you didn't have no kind of education. There wasn't all them fast-food restaurants and the like, where you could get a job real fast. I thought of maybe working for another family, but what I heard from my friends, them rich families is all alike. Besides, I had me a place to stay—in one of them rooms you fixed up—and I always found me a way to sneak food from the kitchen.”

“How fascinating.”

She dropped her cigarette and mashed it into the pavement. “It was due me. It wasn't like I was stealing. Stealing is a sin in both our Bibles.”

“I wasn't judging. Please, tell me more.”

“There ain't much more to tell, except that I nearly dropped my teeth when I seen this woman who calls herself Estelle Zimmerman prance into the place, acting like she never been there before. Then when I seen her and Mr. Webbfingers meet
ing like they was strangers—shoot, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I knowed right then there was trouble brewing—of course I had no idea it would be the death of the missus.”

“What was the expression on Estelle Zimmerman's face when she saw you?”

She made me wait for her answer while she lit a new cigarette. “Ha! She paid me no-never-mind. Looked right through me, like I wasn't even there.”

We sat in silence for a moment, while she puffed and she pondered. So I was right. There was a connection between the Webbfingerses and at least one of the bed and breakfast guests. But since Mary Estelle—assuming that was really her name—and Fisher Webbfingers had once been an item, they obviously weren't siblings, as was the fictional case in Ramat Sreym's cheesy-sounding mystery. That sort of thing doesn't happen in the South nearly as much as stand-up comedians would have you believe—okay, so maybe excepting certain parts of Arkansas.

I broke the silence. “What about the other guests. Do you recognize them?”

Harriet squashed her second cigarette. “Not them folks from California. But them other foreigners—Mrs. Washburn, I may have been wrong about them.”

“How so?”

She fished yet another cancer stick from her faux leather bag. “Well, ma'am, the more I think about it, the more I recollect seeing her face. Of course it was a lot different back then, it being forty years ago and all. Now that good-looking young fellow that's supposed to be her husband, I seen him before, too, only he hasn't changed a bit. But that don't make any sense, does it?”

I would like to say that at the moment of my epiphany, trumpets sounded, the breeze turned cool, and a handsome young man in a sarong handed me a margarita. Instead, I got bitten by a sweat bee. I slapped my arm so hard a welt appeared, but the critter got away.

“Harriet, is it possible that Nick Papadopoulus is the son of the man you knew so many years ago?”