The Glass Is Always Greener (14 page)

He shrugged, and the poor man’s head practically became a blur. “Not that I could tell.”

“What does that mean?” I demanded.

“It means,” he said, “that I didn’t go around peering behind each bush—hey, where’s that goofy friend of yours?”

“Look here, buster, I’ll not have you speaking like that about my friends—C.J., where
are
you?”

“She probably stepped out into in the garden,” Aaron said. “Can you blame her? Sorry about that. The comment, I mean. I guess I’m kinda quick to pick on other folks’ foibles, given that I’m—I’m, well, rather peculiar myself. Or so I’ve been told. Multiple times, in fact, by my near perfect wife, Melissa. She can’t for the life of her remember why it is she married me, and not one of my handsome relatives.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Tell her that your brother Ben is too old for her, your nephew Rob is gay, and Sam is, well—she definitely came out ahead. You were the cream of the Ovumkoph crop—now there’s a tongue twister for you.”

He beamed. “You really think that I am?”

“Yes, I do. But for your Melissa. I still pick Rob, because he’s my best friend.”

“Oh.”

I flashed him a charming smile. “Don’t be hurt, silly. Just tell me what we do next. Look in Jerry’s jewelry box?”

“That’s actually not a bad idea. Sometimes the obvious place
is
the answer.”

Chapter 18

I
guess I expected someone like Jerry Ovumkoph to have shockingly pink bedroom walls, so I was a bit surprised to see the warm yet soothing terra-cotta finish. But dominating the master bedroom was a massive king-size bed, and I had to work not to picture Jerry in it dominating her string of loser lovers. Other than the bed, the furnishings were simple: just two matching mahogany nightstands with drawers. The walls were decorated with a couple of paintings reminiscent of Tuscany landscapes, although there was one small stretched canvas that was covered only with orange and red poppies. On a small table opposite the monstrous bed perched a wooden Celtic harp.

“Did she play this?” I asked.

“Surprisingly well,” Aaron said. “We all thought it was a phase at first, but I guess we should have known better. With Jerry, once something grabbed her imagination, it didn’t let go. By the way, ‘Greensleeves’ was her specialty.”

“I love that song,” I said. “You sister and I had a lot in common.” Then a wicked thought grabbed my imagination, which I couldn’t let go of.

“We even had the parade of loser lovers in common,” I said.

That stopped his head from bobbing for a nanosecond. “Are you a cougar as well, Mrs. Timberlake?”

“Grrrrrah! Practically jailbait, all of them,” I said. “But only practically, mind you—nothing illegal, I assure you.”

“But immoral,” he said.

“In whose eyes?” I asked. “The Bashilele tribe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are polyandrous. At least they used to be in the 1950s. You should read
The Witch Doctor’s Wife—
”

“Mrs. Timberlake, are we here to discuss literature, or find out where my sister keeps the real gem, and maybe—with a lot of luck—run across a clue that will point to her killer.”

Unless it’s one of us, I thought. And I’m pretty sure it isn’t me. Really, what were we doing in Jerry Ovumkoph’s bedroom anyway? Leaving fingerprints so that I could be arrested and spend the rest of my life behind bars playing maidservant to an amazing hulk named Big Selma? Odds are she would be anything but goofy, and not have one tenth the smarts of C.J. And another thing, I’m four feet, nine inches; whichever way you choose to run the stripes, it doesn’t matter—they won’t look good on me.

“It’s a phenomenal book,” I said. “The author’s best.”

He walked ahead into a divinely large bathroom. “Ah, the jewelry box. Would you care to open it, Mrs. Timberlake?”

“I’ll pass, thank you,” I said.

“What? Why not?”

“I’m too nervous, that’s why.” At least that much was the truth.

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Whether or not the stone is genuine is not dependent upon whoever opens the box. Go ahead; give the top drawer a gentle tug.”

“No. I’m feeling light-headed. I either need to sit on the edge of the tub, or go outside for a minute. You know what? I think I’ll just step outside. I’ll go join C.J.—wherever she is. Who knows what that goofy gal is up to.”

“Dang it, Mrs. Timberlake, I thought we were past that.” He grabbed a tissue from a faux marble box and used it to keep from leaving fingerprints. But although he opened every drawer—he even pulled them all the way out of the six-story box—we didn’t find the emerald ring. We didn’t even find any genuine jewels, other than a pair of commercial-grade ruby earrings, something undoubtedly meant as everyday wear by the deceased.

“I’ll check the closet,” I said, just as Aaron let loose with a string of invectives. Although I have reached a point in my life where mere words cannot offend me, I also feel that I have the right to protect my spirit from verbal garbage. Such vitriol does not just go in one ear and out the other—not with doing damage. A little bit of one’s soul is worn away in the process, like sandstone in fast-flowing river.

I grew up in the house of a woman who I believed to be the South’s most eccentric female. Yet, after only five minutes in Jerry Ovumkoph’s spacious closet, I was ready to strip Mama of her title. It is my firm conviction that if I’d been shown Jerry’s closet without any backstory, and been asked the following multiple-choice question, I might have given any of the three answers below.

Question: To what use is this space being put?

Answer A:
Storage room for a clown school
.

Answer B:
Closet for a seventy-five-year-old lady
.

Answer C:
Overflow storage for a fabric store run by very messy clerks.

There were a few conventional pieces of clothing—Western-style, that is. Apparently Rob’s Aunt Jerry was a great fan of Indian saris, which as a rule contain many yards of cloth. But these saris seemed to have staged a rebellion, and at least half of them had somehow managed to slip off their hangers to become jumbled with matching shoes. Now they were fighting it out in a death match over floor space.

It soon became apparent that the only way to effectively search the room (a closet this large could almost be a midsize room) was to pull everything out. For the time being, the nearby garden tub was as convenient a place as any to dump things, and that I did—willy-nilly.

“Mrs. Timberlake! Mrs. Timberlake, what are you doing?”

“Clearing out a few things,” I said grumpily. I was no longer focused. Surely we were wasting our time sorting through this mess.

“Hey, that’s my sister’s stuff you’re throwing around. Be more careful, will you?”

“Sorry,” I said, “but I have this feeling.”

He must have picked up on my mood. “Feeling?” he snapped. “What kind of feeling?”

“Call it a hunch,” I said. “Woman’s intuition. There’s something back here under all this stuff—maybe a safe or something.”

It was true, I did have a hunch, a very strong one in fact, but it had just come over me that second, even as I was telling Aaron about it.

“I don’t mean to rain on your parade, Mrs. Timberlake,” he said, “but I don’t put too much truck in a hunch. At least not enough to mess with my sister’s things like this.”

“Mr. Ovumkoph, your sister’s things
are
a mess, and as for my hunch, my friend Magdalena Yoder, up in Pennsylvania, says that a hunch from a woman is worth two facts from a man.”

He reared back, no doubt surprised by the strength of my emotion. “Somehow I doubt that, Mrs. Timberlake.”

I pulled aside a pile of assorted brightly colored silks. “Hunch verified,” I said, taking care to keep any trace of smugness out of my voice. Attitude was not going to take me where I wanted to go.

“What?” he barked. “Let me see?”

I plopped my petite patootie right in front of the heavy metal box. “On the other hand,” I said, “maybe we shouldn’t be pawing through a dead woman’s things.”

“Move,” he growled.

I scooted aside so that he could see the small safe that was bolted to the floor. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Any chance that you might know the combination?” I said.

“No need; the door isn’t even closed all the way.” He swung it open and I scooted back in to get a close-up view.

Jerry Ovumkoph had a collection of jewels guaranteed to make a duchess drool. There were two compartments in the safe: the top section was devoted to diamonds and gold set with diamonds; the bottom level contained pieces decorated with colored stones, such as sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and aquamarines. However, a cursory glance revealed that it did not contain a ring set with a monstrous emerald of the highest quality.

“Now what?” Aaron said. There was accusation in his voice.

“My hunch was that we’d find a safe somewhere in this jumble,” I said. “I didn’t claim that we’d find a smoking gun—so to speak.”

He kicked at a pile of bras and underclothes at the other side of the closet. “Ow! Damn it!”

“What is it?”

He shoved aside the delicate underthings. Victoria had no secrets that evening.

“Another safe.” He knelt.

“Let me see,” I said breathlessly, “let me see.”

He snorted. “Bit of a hypocrite, aren’t you?”

“Well, the damage to our karma is already done. Now it’s your turn to scoot.”

“Cheese and crackers, but you’re a bossy one. I bet Mr. Timberlake gets tired of you right quick.”

“You’ve got that right; Buford generally can’t stand me. Now scooch!”

But there wasn’t much to see; just more of the same. Except that this safe had a couple of fabulous pieces of royal jade in it, plus a tsavorite garnet and diamond necklace that made me request a moment of silence so that I could seriously review my morals. Aaron Ovumkoph seemed like the kind of guy that could easily be talked into abandoning his morals. No one needed to know that we’d discovered the pair of safes, not even the mysteriously truant C.J.

“But we can’t,” he said out of the blue.

“
What?
”

“
You know
—what you’re thinking.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking? Maybe I’m thinking about what I had for breakfast.”

“It wouldn’t be right, and it’s against my religion. I’m surprised it’s not against yours.”

My face burned. “Who says that it isn’t—assuming you’re even correct. Which, by the way, I most sincerely doubt.”

“Now we add lying to the list.”

“
List?
There is no list!”

“Of course
if
we did, I’d be the one to do the dividing, since you obviously can’t be trusted.”

I took a deep, cleansing breath. I swear that it was this extra second that allowed my eyes to settle on what looked to be a diamond pendant suspended from the green garnet necklace. However, at this angle light was passing through one of the planes, rather than being reflected back at me, which could mean only one thing: the magnificent diamond was actually a cubic zirconia. Braving the wrath of Aaron I picked up the entire necklace.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he demanded. “You put that back.”

“Gladly,” I said. “But first come have a look-see in the vanity light. This necklace isn’t real.”

“Yes, it is. I remember my sister wearing that with a green silk—whatchamacallit—”

“Sari?” I said.

“Yeah. Anyway,” he said, “she wore it at the Purim Ball just last year, and you should have heard all the ladies complimenting her.”

“As well they should have,” I said, “because it
is
very beautiful; there is no denying that. However, I’m afraid that these stones are all cubic zirconia—even the large diamond.”

“Bullhockey!” he shouted. “You’ll say anything to get your hands on this stuff.”

“Here, take this,” I said. “I bet everything else in both safes comes under the category of replacement jewelry. Either Jerry had the real stuff stored somewhere else, and kept this just to remind her what she had, or else—well, she had this stuff made up because she was forced to sell the real jewelry.”

When a bobble-headed man flies into a rage, it is wise to plan an escape route. Not being entirely foolish, I stepped slowly to my right, so that I was directly in line with the bedroom door.

“If she was that desperate, Mrs. Timberlake,” he said through lips that were drained of blood, “how could she possibly leave millions of dollars to anyone in her will?”

I put one foot solidly behind me, ready to take off. “We don’t know for sure that she
did
, do we?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

“Did you actually read the will?” I said.

The dome of his head was as white and shiny as a freshly peeled boiled egg. “Hold your horses there, little lady. Are you accusing my sister of making that all up? Of staging that will ceremony just for show?”

“I’m saying that it’s possible,” I said, as I made my escape into the master bedroom. “C.J.? Where are you, C.J.?”