Nightmare in Shining Armor (16 page)

“You go, girl!”

“What?” I looked up at a brand-new Regina. Gone was the pseudo-Southern Stepford wife. In her place was a red-blooded, all-American girl. Not that we Southerners don't have red blood as well, but you know what I mean.

“Abby—do you mind if I call you that?”

“Not if I may call you Regina.”

“Please do. Anyway, the same thing happened to me.”

“You stabbed the boy toy?”

“No, but I wish I had. We were having lunch at the club—say, you don't belong, do you?”

I shook my head. There was no point even in asking which club. I know she didn't mean the American Automobile Association, which, outside of my book club, the Blue Stockings, is the only nonprofessional organization to which I do belong.

“Well anyway, as I was saying, Donald and I were having lunch, when this Meredith woman with her—what did you call him?”

“Boy toy.”

“Yes! She'd been having a tennis lesson and they were still dressed in their whites. She claimed to have met me at some fund-raiser last spring. Of course I didn't know who she was from Adam, although the young man looked vaguely familiar. I'd probably seen him out on the courts. At any
rate, we didn't even invite them to sit, but they did anyway. Can you imagine that?”

“How rude,” I said sympathetically.

“Oh, but that was only the beginning. She said she liked the looks of my shrimp salad, and before I could do anything to stop her, she'd picked up my dessert fork and taken a bite.”

I gasped. Surely that was rude in all fifty states.

“Did you say anything?”

“I suggested she might like to order one of her own, and do you know what she said? She said it hadn't tasted all that good, so she ordered chicken instead. But that didn't stop her from taking two more bites!”

“With her used fork?”

“Yes.” Regina closed her eyes at the painful memory. “So you see, Abby, I was already distracted when I felt something rubbing against my leg under the table. At first I thought it was a cat or something, and was trying to figure out how one had gotten into the club, and then—well, it soon became very clear this wasn't a cat.”

“What did you do?”

“I told Donald I was feeling sick—which I was by then—and we came right home.”

I wanted to ask her just exactly
what
it was that Roderick was rubbing against her, but although we were now on a first-name basis, we weren't that close. In the end I decided it had to be one of his feet. Either that or my ex-husband Buford was not the poster boy for American manhood that he claimed to be.

“So when did Lynne Meredith tell you Roderick was cheating on her?”

“That very night. She called to say there was something she just had to tell me, and could she please come over. I told her we had plans for the evening, that we were going out, but she wouldn't take no for an answer. She asked if she could tell her problem over the phone. I said no as politely as I could, but it was like she hadn't even heard me. She plunged right in and told me the whole sordid tale.”

I could feel my mouth salivating in anticipation of the juicy details. “And?”

“W
ell, it seems
that
woman received an anonymous call from a female telling her where and when she could find the tennis instructor in bed with another woman. So that woman—”

“You mean Lynne Meredith, right?”

Regina showed her good breeding by restricting her eye rolling to a quarter of a turn. “That's correct. Anyway, as I was about to say, that woman raced over to her lover's house—they don't live together, you know—and found him in flagrante delicto with Tweetie Timberlake. There were, of course, words exchanged, in which the woman recognized the voice of the second Mrs. Timberlake.”

I gasped. Why on earth would Tweetie set herself up for exposure, no pun intended? Unless—that was it! To get back at Buford! Tweetie had been sleeping her way around town to punish one of the most powerful men in Charlotte. Had I not had two children to consider when Buford stepped out on me, I might have done the same thing. I wouldn't have slept with Ed Crawford, of course, but I might have had a good time playing with the boy toy.
Might
have. I'd like to think my morals exert a stronger pull than my hormones. It's just that I know I'm not perfect.

“Did you ever met the second Mrs. Timberlake?” I asked.

Regina shook her well-coiffed head. “No, but I'd seen her picture on the society page a number of times. I knew exactly who that horrible woman was talking about. At any rate, Ms. Meredith asked what I would do if I were in her place. Can you believe that? As if I would ever cheat on my Donald.”

I murmured sympathetic noises of disbelief and outrage.

“Perhaps it was unkind of me, Abby, but at that point I just hung up the phone.”

“You did?” My heart sank. No juicy tidbits were ever garnered from a phone in its cradle.

“I certainly did. Forgive me for saying this, Abby, but I was horrified to see that woman and her boy thing show up at your party last night.”

“That's boy
toy
,” I said kindly.

Regina waited for me to continue, perhaps even to apologize. Either way she was out of luck. I had people to see, and miles to drive, before I slept. But my visit to Regina had been far more productive that I'd dared hope. I'm no psychologist, but if you ask me, the two biggest motives for murder are greed and revenge. I saw both of those at play here. Roderick would have been very angry at Tweetie for potentially sabotaging the arrangement he had with Lynne Meredith, and hence the
revenge aspect. As for the greed, well—Lynne was the goose that laid the golden eggs, and as such, a far more valuable bird than Tweetie.

I stood. “You've been very gracious, Regina. The tea and cookies were absolutely delicious.”

“I'm glad you liked them,” my impromptu hostess said somewhat stiffly. I could tell she was still miffed because I'd corrected her.

We headed for the door, just as the bell rang. Instinctively I hung back.

“Go ahead and answer it,” I urged. “I'll wait right here. I just remembered there is something rather important I forgot to say.”

Poor Regina looked like a couch potato who'd been asked to choose between the remote and a bag of chips. She did a little two-step that got her nowhere, but when the bell rang again, the die was cast. I retreated further into the living room while she practically sprinted to the door.

“Oh,” I heard her say. “I didn't expect you this early.”

“I would have called, but I lost your number.” This speaker was male and sounded vaguely familiar. “And,” he added, an edge of accusation to his voice, “you're not listed.

“Well this is rather an awkward time, you see, because I have company.”

There was either a long pause, or the parties at the door were whispering. Unable to contain my curiosity, I crept in their direction. I would have tiptoed but my sprained ankle prevented that.

“Do you still want it?” he asked.

I froze.

“Yes, of course I still want it. At first I thought it was too big, that it wouldn't fit.”

“Did you measure your space?”

“This morning. It will fit fine. But like I said I have a visitor.”

The man at the door mumbled something that I couldn't follow, but I very clearly heard Regina say my name. Throwing caution to the wind I stepped boldly in their direction, and in so doing placed my foot in such a way that a lightning bolt of pain shot up as high as my armpit. My howl of pain was short-lived, because I hit the floor like a chicken on a June bug. For a moment I didn't even know what had happened to me.

The next voice I remember hearing was Regina's. “I'm sure she'll be all right,” she was saying, as she slid an ottoman under my injured extremity. I was lying at a forty-five degree angle across one of the rose couches.

“Well, well, well,” the man said, shaking his head. He towered over me, his face in the shadow, but I recognized now the voice of Moses, AKA Allan Bills, the antique dealer from Charleston, South Carolina.

“A well is a deep hole in the ground,” I said.

“That joke wasn't funny even in the fourth grade, Abby. Surely you can do better than that.”

I glared up at the giant. “I thought you went back to Charleston.”

“Not without transacting a little business first.
Otherwise this trip would have been a total waste.”

“I don't see how you can say that. Didn't you have fun dumping that bowl of punch on my Berber?”

He chuckled. “That was mildly amusing, yes.”

“And I'm sure you plan to tell everyone you know in Charleston about that fiasco of a party.”

“Of course.”

I struggled to my good foot. “Then your trip was worth every penny you spent on it. You don't need to be undercutting my business by selling to my customers up here.”

“Abby,” Regina said with surprising sharpness, “who I buy from is really not your business.”

She was right, of course. But Alan Bills had the entire low country of South Carolina at his disposal. He didn't need to peddle his wares up in Charlotte. In fact, it just didn't make sense. There were too many fine shops in the area. Whatever it was he had, I was sure Regina Larkin could find locally. That didn't stop me from being irritated.

“For your information, Mr. Smarty Pants,” I said, reverting to the fourth grade Abby, “I'm moving to Charleston, and I plan to open a shop there. How will you like it if I poach some of your customers?”

Alan Bills, who was dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved navy polo shirt, didn't look anything like Moses by the light of day. His sneer, however, was worthy of pharaoh.

“
You
opening a shop in Charleston? Boy, that's a laugh.”

“I don't have to stand here and be insulted,” I humphed, and limped to the door.

Regina suddenly remembered her Southern manners and flew to open it. “Abby,” she said softly, laying a well-manicured hand on my shoulder, “what I said about that Meredith woman and her, uh, plaything—”

“You mean boy toy, don't you?”

“Yes, well, you won't repeat that, will you?”

“Don't be silly, dear.”

That wasn't good enough for Regina. “Abby, do you promise?”

I tried to slip past her. I am not a habitual gossip, mind you, but this tidbit might come in handy in assuaging Mama, assuming she wasn't wild about my forsaking the house next door and moving to Charleston. Besides, you never know when a promise made in good faith will suddenly turn on you, biting you on the behind.

Regina grabbed my left arm. “Abby, promise!”

I crossed the fingers on my right hand. “Okay, I promise.”

The talons released me, and she arranged her lips into a smile that would make a Junior Leaguer proud. “Y'all come back now, hear?”

“Y'all is a plural term,” I said meanly. “You should know that by now.”

I stumbled to my car, thoroughly ashamed of myself, and not a little bit pleased.

 

I drove less than a block before pulling over into the shade of a massive laurel oak that was just beginning to lose its leaves. It was time to think, time to lay out a strategy. Exercising my gray cells gets increasingly difficult with the passing years, and I now had to contend with the distraction of a throbbing ankle. Not to mention—at the risk of being crude—that Bubba's Chinese buffet was seeking a quick exit.

As I saw it, there were two more visits to be made before I could dine with Greg. But in which order? Although it would probably get me nowhere but deeper in trouble, I felt a need to return to the scene of the crime. Not
my
crime, but that of whoever killed the Widow Saunders. Perhaps there were clues to be gleaned from her secretary, pretty-boy Caleb. Clues that would exonerate me of any suspicion. I wasn't really worried that I would be charged in the old woman's death—I didn't have a motive as far as I could see—but it would be nice to get that bullying Barb off my back.

The second item on my agenda was far more important. I did have a motive to kill Tweetie—albeit a rather stale motive. Revenge is a dish best served cold, Shakespeare said, but this was ridiculous. No one could eat from a dish more than four years old, no matter how well it had been chilled. Still, the woman had been found dead in my house, under my bed. It behooved me to come up with a suspect other than myself or my best friend Wynnell, for that matter. If indeed Lynne Meredith's tennis in
structor did the dastardly deed, I stood as good a chance as the police of getting him to confess.

I fumbled around in my glove box, found the cassette recorder I take with me to flea markets to help me keep track of bargains, and tucked the tiny machine between my breasts. It was a tight fit. Magdalena Yoder, a friend of mine up in Pennsylvania, has a sister who totes a minuscule mutt around in her bra. In fact, Magdalena sometimes carries a kitten around in hers. Of course, neither of those ladies is as blessed in the mammary department as yours truly. I had to loosen my straps and set the back hooks on the most generous setting, and even then a wrong move might accidentally activate the contraption.

Please believe me when I tell you that I'm not a total fool. Before heading for the Meredith estate I checked my pepper spray. It worked fine. I would have called Greg, or Mama, to tell them of my destination, except that I don't own a cell phone, and Myers Park is not exactly spilling over with public booths. I know, I should get with it and purchase one of the little contraptions, but until they prove conclusively they don't cause brain tumors, and until I can master the art of putting on mascara on the move, my petite palms shall remain phoneless while I'm not at home. I'm just not that coordinated.

Fortunately, both the Meredith and Saunders homes are within a five-mile drive from the Larkin house, just in opposite directions. Without my
bum ankle I might even have attempted to walk to Lynne's. I drove, however, and using the caution I pride myself on having, I made sure her neighbors knew I was there. After the third honk, even Lynne got the idea.

“Abby,” she called from her open front door, “what the hell are you doing?”

You see what I mean about Lynne Meredith being from up the road a piece? I stuck my head out the window and hollered back.

“I didn't mean to do it! My seat belt was stuck, and while I was trying to undo it, I sort of bumped the horn. I'll be right there!”

She started to come toward me, but I slid out onto my good foot and slammed the door behind me. The retort was almost loud enough to set off her neighbors' alarms.

Lynne held the door open for me, frowning, as I hobbled up her flagstone walk. Just as I reached the steps, Roderick appeared over her shoulder. His eyes were lit up like a jack-o'-lantern with
three
candles. If the poor misguided soul was anticipating a ménage à trois, he was out of luck. The temptation to rub one's hands over a man's abs is no indicator of promiscuity. Greg is, and will always be, the only man for me.

“Hey y'all,” I said brightly, but loud enough for neighbors to hear two doors down, “mind if I come in?” I suppose a really wise Abby would have planned to conduct the interview on the front porch, but I suspected the brazen Buckeyes were
more likely to spill their guts in the privacy of Lynne's sumptuously appointed home.

“Sure, come on,” Roderick said.

Lynne's furrowed brows were in need of more cotton seed. “We were just about to go out.”

“No, we weren't.” Roderick was even denser than I.

“Come in then,” Lynne snapped. “But the place is a mess and I don't have a thing on hand to serve you.”

Even a pseudo-Southern woman always has
something
to serve, if only just a glass of milk past its expiration date. Nevertheless, I was happy to be given entrée. I'd been to the house on several occasions to supervise the placement of pieces purchased from my shop. In all fairness, Lynne has impeccable taste. Her preference is for French Provincial, although she has couple of English Regency pieces tucked in conspicuous places. If her definition of a “mess” is an open magazine on the coffee table and a box of facial tissues in their original cardboard container, then I am doomed to spend eternity wandering through a maze of teenagers' bedrooms.

“Have a seat,” Lynne directed.

“Mind if I use the bathroom first?”

Lynne shrugged. “But it's an even bigger mess.”

I took my chances. The
Reader's Digest
on the tank lid had a bent cover, and the bottom edge of one of the hand towels was not quite parallel to the floor. I masked my gasp with a flush.

When I returned I chose an armchair that had its
own footstool. My ankle was beginning to feel like Wile E. Coyote at the end of a Road Runner cartoon. If my foot took a notion to just fall off before the end of the day, I would not be surprised.

Lynne and Roderick sat on a settee facing me, across the “messy” coffee table. Lynne wore an expression of annoyed wariness, Roderick's face radiated pure lust.