The Ming and I (3 page)

“Her parents, then, or grandparents. In Rock Hill it’s not what you have, but who you know. And believe me, Ms. Troyan had some connection to
someone on the Upstate Preservation Foundation.”

He had the temerity to laugh. “Maybe, but I still say it’s money. Off the record, Abby, this old gal was loaded. She and her husband owned FarmTec Incorporated, the largest manufacturer of combines and tractors in the Midwest.”

I gasped. “Oh! Then she could easily have afforded that Ming.”

“What mink? She was wearing a rather plain brown dress.”

“Did I say ‘mink’?” I asked with all the innocence of a babe.

The Wedgwood blue eyes locked on mine. “Out with it, Abby.”

I took my foot out of my mouth. Fortunately it is only a size four, and I’ve had a lot of practice. Besides, I was going to tell him anyway—sooner or later.

Greg remained remarkably calm during my brief account of the day’s highlight, but as soon as I was finished, he exploded like a badly made firecracker. After a few minutes of banging and popping he settled down to a sporadic sizzle and became relatively coherent.

“Damn it, Abby! Goddamn it to hell. Withholding information is an obstruction of justice. You could get in big trouble for this. You know that, don’t you?”

My heart was pounding. I hadn’t meant to obstruct justice, and I certainly hadn’t meant to tick Greg off. All I had wanted was a little time to appreciate the Ming that had magically appeared in my shop.

“We don’t know that the Ming was hers,” I said quietly.

“But you said you saw her carry it into your shop.”

I swallowed. “I said I saw her carry an ugly gray
vase into the shop. The Ming is definitely neither ugly nor gray. So we can’t be entirely, one hundred percent sure it’s the same vase, can we?”

Greg rolled his eyes in exasperation. It was the first time I had seen the Wedgwood blues put to such poor use.

“Where is the damn thing now?”

I jumped up hotly. “I didn’t sell the damn thing, for Pete’s sake, if that’s what you’re driving at. You want it? You’ve got it. Just follow me—in your own damn car!”

I snatched my key ring off the hook by the front door, but purposefully left my purse behind. If Greg wanted to ticket me for speeding and not having a driver’s license on my person, so be it. But if that was the case, he could count on never having one of Mama’s home-cooked dinners again. Or anything from me.

G
reg didn’t follow me. He took a different route altogether, and he must have done some pretty fast driving himself, because he was waiting in front of the shop when I arrived. His time behind the wheel must have been therapeutic for him—he was actually smiling when I got out of my car.

“Hey, maybe I came off sounding a little angry back there,” he said, reaching for my hand.

“You were obnoxious.”

He withdrew his hand. “You got the keys?”

I glared at him, which was, alas, a wasted action because my face was in the shadows. “I am not a total idiot,” I said, and fumbled for the right key.

We both stomped our way back to the back of the shop. Of course Greg can stomp harder than I can, but I made up for it with my loud, drawn-out sighs of disgust.

“There, you see”—I pointed to the table behind the counter—” there’s your precious Ming. You happy now?”

“Hell no,” he said childishly. “I don’t see anything but some damn papers.”

That was it. I had lost all patience. I marched around the counter.

“Here—” I started to point, but my hand dropped
to my side in horror. The Ming was missing. There was nothing on the table but a stack of bills.

“Damn you, Abby, is this some kind of a game?”

My mouth opened and closed rhythmically, like a baby bird begging for its supper. Unlike the baby bird, I was mute.

“I don’t have time for this,” Greg said, and turned.

I found my voice. It was a couple of octaves higher than where I’d left it.

“The Ming was here, Greg! I swear!”

He turned halfway around. I could see that his hands were balled into fists, pressed up against his chest. Greg has never hit me. He has never even punched a pillow in my presence. But I must have driven him perilously close to the edge.

“This is a serious matter, Abby,” he said in measured tones. “You can’t be leading me on.”

“I know it’s serious,” I cried, “and I’m not leading you on. The vase was right here when I locked up this evening. I looked at it—touched it even—just before I left.”

I knew he believed me when I saw his posture change. His shoulders, which had been rigid, relaxed and his hands came down to his side. He faced me.

“Who else has a key?”

“Lots of people,” I confessed.

“What do you mean by ‘lots’?” he asked calmly.

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. They were hot. No doubt they would scald my cheeks when they rolled down, scarring me for life. I was so stupid I deserved such a fate.

I looked away. He was just a blur anyway.

“I lose keys easily. You know that. That’s why I keep them on a ring by the front door. But sometimes I still lose them. So I keep extra car keys hidden under the hood of my car, and my friends all have house keys.”

“And your shop keys?”

“Just Wynnell, C.J., and the Rob-Bobs.”

I hung my head in shame, and the tears began dropping on my shoes. They weren’t that hot after all.

Greg, bless his soul, walked over and put his arms around me. I fully expected him to apologize for having yelled at me, but he didn’t. Which meant he was still mad. That’s true love, if you ask me—being able to comfort someone when you’re mad as hell at them.

“Tomorrow you talk to them. Find out if any of them—for any reason—might have borrowed your Ming.”

My tap shuts off easily. “My Ming! You mean I can keep it? I mean, if we find it?”

“Not very likely,” he said, and kissed the top of my head.

But he didn’t apologize. Not that night at any rate.

I approached the Rob-Bobs first, of course. After all, they were the only ones beside Mama and Greg who knew about the Ming.

“
Mais non
!” Bob boomed. He sometimes resorts to French when he’s highly offended.

“Abby, Abby, Abby,” Rob said, and I felt as if a cock had crowed three times.

“Not that I thought y’all had,” I said, beating a hasty retreat.

It was still ten minutes until nine, so I wandered over to Wynnell’s shop, Wooden Wonders. Wynnell and I met in the business, and we have only been friends for a couple of years, but I like to think of her as the older sister I never had. I do have a brother—Toy Wiggins—but he lives in California, where he works hard to look like he’s playing. Last we heard he was parking cars at Planet Hollywood at night, and patrolling the streets of Malibu by day,
in both cases hoping to pick up a starlet.

We shop owners are generally very busy in the minutes just prior to opening—straightening stock and such—so Wynnell was both pleased and surprised to see me.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, pulling me into the shop and locking the door behind me.

I nodded. There was no need to tell Wynnell that the homemade outfit she was wearing had given me a sudden fit of nausea. I had never seen such a conglomeration of patterns and colors—even Joseph’s coat of many colors would have paled by comparison. Don’t get me wrong. I am not putting down those less fortunate than myself. Wynnell can well afford to buy store-bought clothes—even the best—but suffers from the delusion that she is both a seamstress and a designer. Picasso might have agreed.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“
I’m
fine,” I wailed. “It’s the Ming!”

Wynnell’s shrub-size eyebrows fused in confusion. “What’s amazing?”

“Not amazing—a Ming! A genuine fifteenth-century Ch’eng-hua period Ming vase. A
tou ts’ai
!”

The eyebrows remained fused. “You aren’t making a lick of sense, honey! Are you sure you’re all right?”

I spit out my tale of woe. Wynnell has a face that law enforcement departments should copy and patent if they really want a foolproof lie detector. It was clear that I couldn’t have stabbed her any worse had my words been pitchforks and her heart a block of warm butter.

“So you think that I might have taken it?”

“Of course not!”

“Then why are you here, Abigail?”

“Well, uh—I—”

She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost opening time, and I still have work to do.”

“Wynnell, I’m sorry, I really am! I don’t know what got over me. Panic, I guess. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Please, Wynnell, forgive me.”

What began as a bushy-browed glare dissolved into a warm, slightly gap-toothed smile. “Help me do inventory next month?”

“Do we have to move those around?” I gestured at the jumble of heavy dressers, beds, and armoires that make up the bulk of the merchandise that packs Wooden Wonders.

“You bet you do.”

“Deal,” I said, and gave her a quick hug.

“You speak to C.J. yet?” she asked sensibly. C.J. was the youngest of Greg’s suspects and the most likely to borrow something without permission.

“Unh-unh. What if she doesn’t have it?” I wailed.

“Don’t worry, she’ll have it,” my pseudosister said, and patted me encouragingly on the back.

“But if she doesn’t?”

Wynnell scowled, hopelessly snarling her brows, I’m sure. “Then it’s the Yankees. I saw this TV documentary about a band of roving thieves—”

“I saw that same show, Wynnell, and the thieves were from South Carolina. Besides, my shop was locked when we arrived last night. What thief is going to break in, and then lock the shop behind him?”

Wynnell shrugged, unconvinced. The dear woman spots a Yankee behind every bush. If she had her way, the North Carolina Highway Department would erect barriers at the state’s northern border and screen all motorists. Perhaps make them say their vowels.

“Well, I don’t think it was stolen,” I said. “Just borrowed. I’m sure you’re right, though—C.J. must have it.”

Wynnell patted me again. “She has it, honey. But good luck all the same.”

C.J. said she didn’t have it.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean—if you did, it’s all right. Just give it back. No more questions asked.”

At twenty-three, C.J. is the youngest, and incidentally newest, dealer on this street. She’s just a kid, really, a fact that I often overlook, because she is so precocious. After all the tears I’d shed, I certainly had no intention of making her cry.

“There, there,” I said, patting her back awkwardly. I am no Wynnell.

“How can you blame me, Abigail, after all I’ve done for you?”

“I didn’t blame you,” I said, patting harder.

And I hadn’t. I had only intimated that she might have the vase. Whereas she had concluded that I thought her a criminal, just one cell away from death row. This was pure C.J.

Jane Cox is her real name, but we call her Calamity Jane behind her back—hence the initials. She thinks—at least we all hope so—that we have bestowed upon her a fond nickname, using her reversed initials. No doubt she is unaware that she jumps to conclusions faster than a cat leaps from a red-hot stove. But she not only jumps to conclusions, she runs with them. To the extreme.

“As long as no one trusts me, I should turn to a life of crime,” she said, still weeping.

“I trust you, dear,” I said, patting even harder.

“Folks didn’t trust my cousin Erval, either.”

“You’re not your cousin.”

She looked down at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Erval wasn’t really my cousin, just an orphan boy my church took in. But we were as close as twins, Abigail. Anyway, one day when we were about ten, a dollar bill got stolen off the offering plate at church.

“Deacon Cauldwell swore he’d seen Erval take it.
Miss Emma put it in, and by the time it got to Miss Cory, the dollar was gone. Erval was the only non-tithing suspect sitting between the two of them.

“What can a ten-year-old say to an accusation like that, Abigail?”

I stopped patting long enough to shrug.

“Well, there was nothing for Erval to say. The next thing we knew, Erval took off—left Shelby plum behind, and headed up over the mountains. Nobody heard from him again.” She took a deep, much-needed breath.

“Until four years had passed. And then there it was—right there in the
Shelby Gazette
. Erval Snicker had been arrested for murder in Tennessee! Not just one person, but three. The youngest mass murderer in the state’s history—and all because Deacon Cauldwell accused him of stealing a dollar he didn’t take.”

I stopped patting altogether. “I didn’t accuse you of anything, dear. I’m terribly sorry I even brought the matter up. Please forgive me.”

C.J. rubbed the tears from her eyes with fists twice as big as mine. “I might not have stopped at just three,” she said. “Seventeen is my lucky number.”

I apologized again and scooted back to my shop lickety-split. In the future I would be careful to stay on C.J.’s good side.

Greg called around ten. “Any word on the Ming?”

“No. They all swear they haven’t taken it. In fact, I may have made a few enemies.”

“Is there anyone else who might possibly have a key?”

His tone was so formal, it nearly broke my heart. And all because I wanted to fantasize that some stupid vase was mine. How could I have let my daydreams get in the way of common sense? Who
knows; if the damn thing had been an Etruscan urn of exceptional beauty, I might have sold out my children.

“No one, Greg.”

“Not even your mother?”

“Mama’s time warp doesn’t go back past Victorian, and she’s not into Oriental.”

“But does she have a key?”

“I don’t remember. I’ll ask her.”

“Do that,” he said, and hung up. Just like that. No good-bye, no lip smacks. Nothing but a dial tone.

M
ama picked up on the first ring. “My nose was twitching,” she said smugly.

My mother claims her proboscis is capable of smelling the future. There have been enough coincidences for me to keep an open mind, although I won’t be totally convinced until she takes her shnoz to Vegas and comes back a millionaire.

I asked her about the key.

“You gave me a key once, Abigail, but for the life of me I wouldn’t know where to lay my fingers on it now. It may be in my box at the bank. You did say it was in case of an emergency—in case something happened to you. Are you all right, dear?”

“I’m fine, Mama.”

“It isn’t cancer, is it, dear?”

“No, Mama. There’s just been a little mix-up, and a rather valuable Ming vase seems to be missing.”

“Is that the vase you were telling me about at supper, dear?”

“Yes, Mama. You didn’t borrow it, did you?”

There was a stunned silence.

I should have slapped myself, asking my own mama a question like that. After all, I had just offended three friends, and all but alienated the fourth with the same question, and none of them had suf
fered through thirty-four hours of painful labor on my behalf.

“Mama, I’m sorry,” I said quickly, “I shouldn’t even have asked.”

More silence, but I could hear her pearls clicking against the receiver, which meant she was angry but had at least come out of shock.

“It’s just that I’m in big trouble, Mama. That Ming may have belonged to June Troyan, the woman who was killed by that hit-and-run driver yesterday.”

The pearls stopped clicking. “June Troyan?”

“Yes, Mama. Did you know her?”

“Of course I knew her. Why didn’t you tell me her name last night?” Mama was back to normal.

“I didn’t know anything about her last night. Did she live in Rock Hill?”

“She lived in Tega Cay,” Mama said, referring to a lakeside community about fifteen minutes north of town, “but she was a member of the Apathia Club.”

Apathia is a social club to which Mama tried for years to gain entree, but when she was finally admitted, she had turned the gals down. It was her way of snubbing them back. But Mama still saw many of the members on a weekly, if not daily basis. They all lived in her neighborhood, shopped the same stores, and attended the same cluster of churches. A few of them were even in her bridge club. In Rock Hill politeness is a given, and dirty laundry is never aired in public. Back stabbing is relegated to the privacy of one’s home, and then only shared with one’s closest friends or spouse. A voodoo doll vendor could make a killing in my hometown.

“Did you know she was a docent at Roselawn Plantation?”

“Yes, I guess I did.”

“So you knew that Roselawn was already open to the public?”

“Of course, dear, everyone in Rock Hill knows that. You really should move back to town, Abby. Then you’d know everything that’s going on. You could have your old room back.”

“Thanks, Mama, but I have my own house now, remember?” I tried not to sound as sarcastic as my own kids, but for a brief moment I empathized with them.

“I saved all your stuffed toys, Abby. They’re in the attic, all sealed in airtight bags. Next to your prom dresses.”

“Mama, do you know anyone at the Upstate Preservation Foundation?”

A sudden, furious clicking told me my question had offended Mama. She probably not only knew them, but had undoubtedly turned down invitations to their homes.

“If I wanted to become a docent, Mama, who would I speak to?”

The clicking slowed.

“I’m serious, Mama.”

It stopped.

“Okay, Mama, so I want to snoop around a little. I won’t get into any trouble or make a pest of myself. I promise.”

“What do you hope to find, dear?”

“I don’t know. More about June Troyan, I guess. Maybe I’ll learn something from the other docents. Roselawn Plantation is the only clue I have.”

“That’s only part of it, isn’t it?”

“Excuse me, Mama?”

“You’re miffed, aren’t you? Your feelings are hurt because you’re a Rock Hill native and an expert on antiques, and yet no one from the foundation even as much as asked for your advice.”

“Mama!”

“Admit it, dear. And believe me, I understand totally. Imagine the Apathia Club taking all those
years to invite me to join, when our ancestors were among the very first settlers in Rock Hill.”

“Okay, so I’m unhappy that the place is already open for business and I didn’t even hear about it. Just tell me who’s in charge, Mama.”

“I forget,” Mama said, but I knew she was lying. It was a mother’s lie of protection, however, which is almost always justified.

“They could at least make me a docent,” I said doggedly. “Even an honorary one.”

“It would have to be an honorary position,” Mama said, “because your shop is a full-time job, Abby. I hardly get to see you as it is.”

“I could help out part-time, Mama. Is it open in the evenings?”

“I’m pretty sure it is not. But I could ask.”

I smelled a favor in the asking.

“In exchange for what, Mama?”

“You know quite well, dear. Tiny Tim’s Tattoo Palace on Cherry Road.”

It was another incredibly busy day at the shop. I hate to have to say this, but the hit and run was definitely good for business. Although the day had started out sunny, it was drizzling by noon. Still, the customers continued to pour into my shop.

The
Observer
had carried a rather graphic description of the incident, and a number of folks wanted to know the exact spot where June’s body had come to rest. I had, of course, removed the Louis XIV chair that June had inadvertently dismantled, but the rest of the display remained the same—that is, until I discovered that the items in the immediate vicinity sold like hotcakes. Thanks to a ghoulish public and my own lack of good taste, I spent the bulk of the day hauling merchandise over to the window display area. The rest of my day was spent at the cash register.

I even went so far as to unplug my phone—a first in my shop’s history—but not soon enough.

“Hello,” I said breathlessly, having just returned from the window display. “Den of Iniquity here—I mean, Antiquity!”

“It’s me.”

It was a familiar voice, but I couldn’t place it. “Me who?” I asked politely.

“You don’t need to know who I am. But I know who you are.”

“Ah, you’re the Lock, Stock, and Barrel person,” I said. “I recognize your voice.”

“You do not!”

“You bet I do, dear. Androgynous, muffled—what’s not to recognize?”

There was a long silence, but no sound of pearls clicking, so I knew it wasn’t Mama. “I want my Ming,” the caller said at last.

“Excuse me?” I felt my heart drop down into my stomach. If it wasn’t for my small pelvis, it might have hit the floor.

“You heard me. I said, ‘I want my Ming.’ Do you want me to spell it for you?”

I took a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, courtesy of Lamaze. “Describe it.”

“The same vase Ms. Troyan carried into your shop the day before yesterday.”

It is times like this I could kick myself for not subscribing to the caller ID service my phone company offers. I should, at the very least, keep a cassette recorder by the phone, and record these kinds of calls. By replaying them when I am not so stressed, I might be better able to pick up on clues. Not that I get many mysteriously ominous phone calls, mind you.

“I don’t have your stupid vase,” I said loudly, my dander rising. Fear and anger are the flip sides of
the same coin, and in my case the coin was spinning like a whirling dervish.

There was a muffled gasp. “What did you do with it?”

“I didn’t do a damn thing with it, because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Listen,” the voice growled, “if I don’t get my vase back, the same thing that happened to Ms. Troyan might happen to you.”

“So you’re the hit-and-run driver,” I said stupidly.

Androgynous hung up.

I hung up as well, but was still staring stupidly at the damn machine when it rang again. I snatched up the receiver, angrier than the day Buford announced he was trading in my forty-plus years for Tweetie’s forty-plus bosom.

“Your calls have been traced,” I spat. “No doubt the police are right outside your door, waiting to pounce on you.”

“Mama?”

“Charlie!”

“Mama, I didn’t make all those 900 calls. Phil made at least half of them. Derek made some, too.”

“Charlie—”

“Mama, please don’t tell Daddy. I promise I’ll never make them again, and I won’t let the guys make them, either. I’ll even help you out at the shop this weekend, but please don’t tell Daddy.”

“Charlie, dear, he’ll see them on the phone bill.”

“He will?”

I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, and my kids more so. But why it is my kids just assume they can get away with their many misdemeanors is beyond me. Surely they know about such things as phone and credit card bills, and that the school does call and report their absences. I like to think that they have always gotten caught. Still, I shudder to think of the possibility that they might, in fact, be
getting away with oodles of things—so many things that the few times I catch them misbehaving aren’t even worth remembering.

“Charlie, dear, the best thing you can do is to tell your daddy right away. Tell him before the phone bill comes. You’ll save yourself a whole lot of grief.”

I could hear Charlie gulp. “But I can’t, Mama. He’s already pissed at me.”

There were three customers lined up at the counter, waiting to buy. One was actually waving a fistful of money. I recognized the man, fat but well-groomed, always a big spender. What was a mother to do?

“Why is Daddy angry?” I asked.

“Because I don’t want to be his clone, that’s why!” Ironically when Charlie is angry he sounds just like his father.

I glanced at the man waving the money. In his other hand he was holding a sixteenth-century Castelli painted porcelain box with a lid. One slip of his pudgy middle finger and the lid would shatter on the counter, along with the box’s value.

“You’re not his clone, dear. You are your own person,” I said as patiently as I could. “You’re free to be whoever you want.”

“So I don’t have to be a lawyer like Daddy, do I?”

I bit my tongue. Buford is the prototype lawyer of all the lawyer jokes. I should have checked him for a dorsal fin when we were on that water slide. That Charlie wouldn’t become a lawyer like his daddy was my daily prayer.

“You want my money or not?” the cash customer called.

I nodded and gave him a little wave. “You had talked about becoming a teacher,” I said to Charlie. “Winthrop has a good education program. You could stay with Grandma.”

“Uh—I don’t think so,” Charlie said.

“No, of course not. You should experience dorm life. I’ll talk to your father tonight.”

“Mama, I don’t want to go to Winthrop.”

“Where then?”

“I don’t want to go to college at all.”

There were now five people lined up at the counter, and the boor in front was now waving the box instead of his money.

“What do you mean you don’t want to go to college? Charlie, in today’s world a college degree is a must. It’s like high school used to be.”

“Mama, you don’t need a college degree to be a vacuum cleaner repairman.”

“What?”

“That’s what Derek’s going to do. He says there’s big bucks in it. Everyone has to vacuum, right? And with the economy like it is, people are going to want to hang on to their old vacuum cleaners longer. Right? Derek figures that we can make eight dollars an hour easy. Maybe more if we move to a really big city like Atlanta.”

The fat-fingered, cash-carrying customer said it was my scream that made him drop the porcelain box along with its lid. Since I do have a “You broke it, you bought it” sign prominently displayed, he had no legal recourse but to pay. I did agree to meet him halfway, which paid for my cost. Nonetheless, I lost a customer forever.