The Ming and I (16 page)

I
fed Dmitri and I fed the fungus. It was much easier feeding Dmitri. He is fourteen years old, and for the last ten of those years he has refused to eat anything except for one particular flavor and brand of dry cat food.

Although the fungus was no more fussy, it took awhile to boil up its brew, let it cool, and then slip the rubbery sucker into its new home. To the best of my knowledge the mushroom had survived my singing, but I wasn’t sure I was going to survive touching it, so I was immensely relieved when Wynnell showed up.

Because she was off duty, my friend felt free to wear a getup that had yet to receive its stitches. All the pieces—and there were at least ten of the brightly colored patches—were held together by safety pins. Another patch served as a head scarf, and yet another, suitably pinned, as a handbag. In all fairness, it was a striking and innovative ensemble.

“Did you get Greg’s message?” Wynnell asked.

“Mama told me. And he left a brief message on my machine. And I mean,
brief
—five words. ‘Sorry, Abby. Call your mother.’ I don’t know why, but Greg hates talking to machines.”

“Men!” Wynnell said sympathetically. She’s been
happily married to the same man for more than thirty years, but she’s a loyal friend.

“And it’s not like he isn’t used to machines,” I whined. “He talks on the police—”

“Lord have mercy!” Wynnell shrieked. “What is
that
?”

“That’s my ticket to eternal youth. It’s a giant fungus, and you drink the fluid that it’s been sitting in all week. It’s guaranteed to turn you into a whole new woman.”

“I like the woman I am,” Wynnell said stoutly. “Is this thing alive?”

“I certainly hope so. I plan to name him Freddy.”

“Well, I think he’s disgusting.”

“He’s only a plant, Wynnell. A mushroom. You like mushrooms—I’ve seen you eat them.”

The eyebrows fused. “In a salad or on a burger. Nothing that big and ugly. If your Freddy starts hovering over Charlotte, I’m getting out of town. Where on earth did you get him?”

I told her about my visit to Shirley. While we chatted I summoned the courage to remove Freddy from the refrigerator and slide him into a Corning ware bowl. I wanted to just dump him straight from the bag, but Shirley was adamant that I lay Freddy gently on top of the solution. “He needs to breathe,” she said. Thank God I didn’t need to burp him when he was done feeding.

Wynnell was gratifyingly interested in the details of my visit to Rock Hill. Her daughter, Estelle, had attended Winthrop as a history major, and Wynnell was pretty sure that Dr. Shirley Hall had been one of her professors.

“The woman’s a Yankee, isn’t she?” Wynnell asked.

I shrugged. “So many people are these days, it’s hard to tell.”

Wynnell’s eyebrows locked together in a frown. “I
don’t know why they hired her in the first place. A Yankee woman teaching southern history! Estelle said this woman doesn’t even like the South, so what is she doing here?”

Normally I try not to encourage my friend’s regional prejudice. I refused, for instance, to sign her petition that the state of North Carolina (Virginia is already a lost cause, in her opinion) erect a fence along its northern border, and require visitors from north of the Mason-Dixon Line to show their passports when entering. The fact that Wynnell got more than three thousand other folks to sign was a bit unsettling. This time, however, she had a valid point.

“Did you know she’s retired?” I asked, living dangerously.

“
What
? And she’s still here?”

“Not only that, but she claims not to have any friends in the area. That’s what’s so odd. Of course, Anne Holliday doesn’t have any friends, either, and she stayed on after Old Man Rose died.”

“That’s different. At least the woman is from Dixie.”

There are times when I should have my lips stapled together, and this was one of them. But Wynnell is my very best friend, and I had to tell
someone
who would believe me.

“Trixie Dixie,” I said. “Before she met Rose, Anne Holliday did tricks for a living.”

“She was a magician?”

“For some, I imagine. Most of the time it was probably routine. She was a prostitute.”

The hedgerow eyebrows arched up to meet her scalp. “No kidding? How did you find out?”

“Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“Wow,” she said, “and this woman’s on the board of the Upstate Preservation Foundation?”

I nodded. “Of course, the others don’t know. She
only told me because she wanted to make sure I understood that the real Anne Holliday was not the churchgoing tippler with a garden on her hat, but someone to be reckoned with. The real Anne has been around the block several times.”

“I’m sure she has, and all in a night’s work. But why did she need to impress you?”

“Because she thinks she has something on me.” I filled my friend in on the unfortunate disappearance of my notepad, and its subsequent reappearance in bits and pieces.

“Someone’s framing you,” she said solemnly, “just as sure as you’re a picture that needs hanging.”

“Could it possibly be her? Trixie Dixie, I mean?”

Wynnell closed a pin that had come open in a strategic place, thereby sparing me a glimpse of her unmentionables, which in her case really are unmentionable. No word in English exists that adequately describes the undergarments Wynnell makes with the scraps left over from her outfits.

“Anything is possible, I suppose, but I’d bet my money on the Yankee.”

“De Camptown race is five miles long,” I said. “You’d be better off putting your money on the bobtail nag, and let somebody else bet on the bay. Shirley Hall might hate the South, but she likes me. She wants us to be friends.”

“Traitor.” She pointed to Freddy. “And no offense, Abby, but besides being a Yankee she sounds a little weird.”

I helped Wynnell adjust a pin that was digging into her left shoulder. “Okay, so she’s unconventional. Eccentric even. Isn’t eccentricity a quality we southerners cherish?”

“What about the Roach lady? You said before you didn’t like her. Maybe the feeling is mutual.”

“It is for sure; she told me to my face. I had lunch
with her today, you know. At Tam’s Tavern down in Rock Hill.”

“You don’t sound like bitter enemies to me.”

I laughed, remembering the expression on Gloria’s face when she saw me. “I invited myself. Ms. Roach was not amused. She’s tough as nails, and I don’t mean just her body, but I can’t picture her plowing into a little old lady with her car. With her fists, maybe, but she wouldn’t want to scratch that black Caddy. Besides, the woman is obviously a control freak, and a control freak wouldn’t try to shoot someone with a Civil War pistol.”

Wynnell cringed but didn’t correct my nomenclature. “That’s a gut reaction, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Your gut has been wrong before, Abby. It could be Ms. Roach. It could be that redhaired letch you were telling me about. It could be any one on the board, or any of the docents.”

“Et tu, Brutus?”

“My point is you are too trusting, Abby.”

She was right. When Buford told me he had run out of gas on our first date, I should have at least leaned over and examined the gauge. To my credit, I didn’t buy his story that he was dying from a rare form of cancer that struck only males, for which sex was the only cure.

“I wish Greg were back in town,” I wailed.

“There, there,” she said, and gave me a big hug. It was a short-lived hug, however, because the monstrous pin that held her bosom together was poking me fiercely in the nose.

I don’t know why the networks switch over to their summer programming as early as April. No doubt they’re in cohoots with the fashion industry, which insists on selling bathing suits in January, but never in July. Santa Claus is undoubtedly the mas
termind behind this fiendish scheme. Last year I saw Christmas decorations going up in some stores in late August. If somebody doesn’t put a stop to St. Nick and his accelerated calendar, we’re going to get so far ahead of ourselves we’ll lose an entire year.

There was nothing but reruns on TV that evening, I didn’t have the oomph to go out and rent a video, and I was fresh out of unread books. Frankly I was relieved when the phone rang.

“Greg?” I asked hopefully.

“This is Shirley Hall. I have to see you right away.”

The static was terrible, and I could barely make out what she said.

“There’s no need to worry about the fungus, dear. I’ve named him Freddy, and he’s doing just fine.”

There was a moment of pure static.

“Ms. Timberlake, this is very important. I need to see you. In person.”

“It’s after nine, dear, and we just talked this afternoon. Can’t we make it tomorrow?” I was definitely going to reconsider a friendship with the Yosilanti Yankee.

“This can’t wait. I think I know who killed June Troyan and Frank McBride.”

“Who?” If the receiver had possessed vocal chords, it would have screamed in pain.

“Oh, I can’t tell you over the phone. I have to show you—” The phone crackled so badly, I momentarily lost her altogether.

“What?”

“This has to be seen to be believed. It’s awesome.”

“I’ll be right over, dear.” There is nothing like a little adrenaline to put the zig back in my sagging zag. Freddy the fungus had a hard act to follow.

“Oh, no! Don’t come here. Meet me out at Roselawn.”

“
Now
? Like I said, it’s kind of late and Roselawn—well, I mean—”

“That it’s haunted?”

“Yes.” I felt like an idiot saying that. Especially to a retired college professor.

“That’s why you have to meet me there.”

“Couldn’t we at least drive out there together?” The broom-wielding Abby had been swept away by the ghost of Maynard, and in her place was a spineless jellyfish.

“I’m down in Great Falls, Ms. Timberlake. Roselawn is halfway between here and Charlotte. See you there in about forty minutes, give or take.”

I called Wynnell’s house, but nobody answered. Surely she hadn’t gone anywhere else in her pinned-together frock. Then I remembered the time Wynnell attended a church picnic in a pinafore made out of recycled paper bags. The forecast had called for sunshine, but this was the Carolinas. Thunderstorms pop up as unexpectedly as spider veins. In just one minute Wynnell’s pinafore dress was reduced to soggy pulp; the next minute Wynnell was wearing less than even her husband had seen her wear in several years. There was simply no telling where that woman would go in a cloth dress held together by sturdy metal pins.

The Rob-Bobs were my second choice as ghost-buster backups. Good buddies both, they were always there to lend a helping hand when needed.

“Sorry, no can do,” Bob boomed.

“I’ll let you cook supper for me again,” I promised rashly.

Rob got on the extension. “Sorry, Abby, but we’re having a little get-together here tonight. It would be rude if we left our guests.”

“A party? And I’m not invited?”

“It’s a support group for gay adult southerners whose partners are Yankees. GASPY. Tonight the
partners are included. We’re trying to teach them how to make proper biscuits and gravy, but
some
of them are proving to be slow learners.”

In desperation I called C.J.

“Hello?” she said sleepily.

“I didn’t wake you, dear, did I?”

“Actually, you did.”

I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t even ten.

“You’re too young to go to bed with the mockingbirds,” I chided her. “You should be out having a good time, and I’ve got a great idea.”

“I’m tired, Abby,” she said crossly. “I’ve had a hard day. I just want to go to sleep.”

“Nonsense, dear. You haven’t even heard my idea. Remember that nifty adventure we had the other night?”

“Abby, I’m not going back to that horrible haunted house, so you can just forget it.”

“We won’t be alone, dear. A friend of mine will be meeting us there. She’s a big woman, not like me or Mama. I’m sure if there’s any trouble, she could protect us.”

“Never go to a haunted house at night with a big woman,” C.J. muttered.

“Excuse me, dear?”

“My uncle Billy-Bob was dating this big girl back home in Shelby—”

“How big was she?” I asked politely.

“Huh? Abby, do you want to hear this story or not?”

“You could tell me on the way over to Roselawn,” I said sweetly.

There followed a moment of silence during which I feared I’d lost her. “C.J.?”

“Are you ready to listen?” she asked at last.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She took a deep breath. “Well, Uncle Billy-Bob took this girl—Betty Jo, I think her name was—to
this vacant house on the edge of town. He was planning to make out with her, you see. Only neither of them had a flashlight along. So they’re sneaking around in this empty house—which was as dark as a well digger’s ass, you see—when all of a sudden a bat or something comes flying right over their heads. They both scream and jump, but the next thing you know Uncle Billy-Bob can’t find Betty Jo. Not anywhere. He even goes home and gets a flashlight, but no luck.”

“Lord have mercy!” I gasped loudly, just to cheer her on.

“Well, the next day Uncle Billy-Bob and his brothers, Uncle Bobby-Bill, and Uncle Bibby-Boll, go back out there to help him look for Betty Jo.”

“You’re making that up,” I said. “I mean about the brothers’ names,” I added quickly.

She sighed. “Yes, you’re right. There is no Bobby-Bill.
His
name is really Bolly-Bib, but he was arrested for dancing too closely with a sheep at the Harvest Moon Ball, and the family is ashamed. I’m not supposed to mention his name. You won’t tell on me, will you?”

“My lips are sealed. So what happened to Betty Jo?”

“That’s the awful part, Abby. They searched all day long, and every day for the next three weeks, but they didn’t find her. It wasn’t until a year later, when the house was being torn down to build a Harris Teeter, that they discovered Betty Jo. Of course she was dead by then. Hardly more than a skeleton.”

“Ugh!”

“Apparently there was a secret trapdoor, and she had accidentally stepped on it and landed in a soundtight little room. Ever since then Uncle Billy-Bob has been a couple of horses shy of a herd—if you know what I mean.”