Nightmare in Shining Armor (4 page)

“A
bby, don't you have a burglar alarm?”

“I do. He's hiding under my skirt now.”

“That isn't funny, Abby.”

“Okay, so I've put off installing a security system.”

“Then don't you think we should call the police?”

“Wynnell, I don't really think there's an intruder. Dmitri acts crazy like this all the time. I'd feel better, though, taking a quick tour of the house, just to make sure all the doors and windows are locked. You coming with, or not?”

She glanced around the room. A small Tiffany lamp with a low-wattage bulb on the nightstand was the only illumination, and the room practically crawled with shadows.

“Coming.”

Armed as I was, I led the way. We hadn't gone but twenty feet when I stopped abruptly. Wynnell, for whom grace is not a virtue, plowed into me. Fortunately the woman has long arms and was able to catch me before I toppled off my height enhancers.

“Abby! What is it?” she hissed.

“I just remembered that I have a machete under my bed.”

“You
do
? Whatever for?”

“I bought it in Jamaica the last time I was there. It's actually an antique. It was used for chopping cane on a sugar plantation. Anyway, I was going to put it in my shop, but then decided it didn't hurt to have a weapon around the house. I'm not about to get a gun.”

“We should get it!” She gave me a little push.

I waved my arms until I caught my balance. “Be a doll, dear, and get it for me. I'd have to take off my stilts just to reach under the bed. I might even have to remove my dress, if the machete has been pushed back too far.”

“Oh no, you don't! You're not sending me in alone.”

“My bedroom is right there,” I said pointing to the nearest door. “Here, take this!” I thrust the heavy bookend at her.

She took it reluctantly. “Okay, but you're getting a burglar alarm. One that doesn't eat cat food.”

While Wynnell went off to get the knife, the beast in question lashed me repeatedly with his tail. I could tell by his fervor that he was no longer frightened, but hungry. Leave it to a male to be scared silly one second and ravenous the next.

Buford was that way. Only with him it wasn't fear, but amorousness. I used to envy other women whose husbands purportedly dropped off to sleep after fulfilling their marital duties. Mine
always wanted a steak dinner. One time he requested a—

A low cry from Wynnell interrupted my reverie. I started, as if suddenly awakened from a deep sleep.

“Wynnell?” I clomped toward the bedroom. “What's wrong, dear?”

Her response was an ear-splitting scream.

I twisted my right ankle in getting to her. In fact, I lost that stilt altogether. Poor Dmitri got stepped on more times than I care to remember, but somehow I managed to make it to my friend's side in a matter of seconds.

At first I could see nothing amiss. Wynnell was kneeling beside the bed, as if to get the machete, and she still had her head. Her
real
head. There didn't appear to be anyone else in the room with us—until Wynnell rocked back on her heels.

“What the heck is that?”

“Abby,” Wynnell moaned. “Oh, Abby, it's awful.”

I threw off the other stilt and sank into a pile of collapsed hoops beside my friend. Barely protruding from the dust ruffle was a metal helmet, but when I flipped up the bed skirt, I could see the entire suit of armor. The
same
armor I'd seen the mystery guest wearing earlier.

“Finders keepers, losers weepers,” I said. It was just a costume, of course, but very convincing. It would look splendid in my new foyer. Not that I would really keep the armor, mind you—well, maybe, if the guest didn't return for it.

“But Abby, there's somebody in there.”

“There
is
?” I started to lift the visor, but Wynnell grabbed my wrist.

“Trust me, you don't want to look.”

“Why not?”

“He's dead.”

“Dead?” I peeled her fingers loose with my free hand and opened the visor to see for myself.

Sure enough, there was a dead person in that suit of armor. And yes, it was an awful sight to behold. But Wynnell was wrong about one thing.

“This isn't a man,” I said softly. “It's Tweetie.”

 

Greg answered the phone at Mama's. “This better be Domino's Pizza, and you better be calling from just around the corner.”

“Huh?

“I have a starving crowd over here. Please don't tell me you're lost again.”

“Honey, it's Abby.”

“Abby! Where are you?”

“At home. Greg, something—”

“Hey, you're not still sulking, are you? Because your mama's party is really rocking. You need to get on over here.”

Mama's
party? I'd planned the party months ahead of time, compiled the guest list, had invitations printed up, and now Lady Godiva was getting all the credit.

I swallowed my irritation. “I'm not sulking, Greg. I called to tell you that Tweetie Timberlake is dead.”

“
What?
Say that again, Abby. It's kinda noisy in here. For a second I thought you said Tweetie is dead.”

“She is.” I practically shouted. In the background I could hear C. J. braying like a donkey while Mama sang “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree” at the top of her lungs. When she gets in her cups, which honestly isn't all that often, my petite progenitress hauls out her repertoire of World War II songs. It was during that time period, incidentally, when she met Daddy.

“Abby, this isn't some mean-spirited joke, is it?”

“No. I wouldn't joke about a thing like this. Tweetie's been murdered.”

“Hey, hold it down in there,” he shouted, his hand only half-covering the receiver. He got back on. “How? Where? When?”

“I think she was strangled. And it happened here. But I don't know when—well, tonight of course.”

“Strangled? What makes you think that?”

“Both her eyes and her tongue—never mind,” I wailed, trying to erase that awful image from my mind. “The point is, she's dead.”

“Did you call 911?”

“I'm tiny, Greg. I'm not an idiot.”

“Right. Sorry. Look, just sit tight. I'll be over in a flash.”

“You're at Mama's in Rock Hill,” I reminded him, and not without a trace of bitterness. “It would take you twenty minutes in a squad car to get back to Charlotte. It will take you at least thirty
in your own car. I could be tried and convicted by then.”

“Or it could take forty minutes if we keep chatting. Bye, Abby.”

I didn't have time to react. Before Greg could hang up, Mama was on the line.

“Abby, are you all right?”

I swallowed enough sarcasm to induce a bad case of indigestion. Unfortunately there was some left over.

“Yes, Mama, I'm perfectly all right. My party was ruined and now I have a dead woman in my house. Come to think of it, I'm more than all right. I'm fine as frog's hair split three ways”

“Abigail!” Mama said in a tone she hadn't used since I was a teenager. “What's going on? Why is Greg leaving?”

Mama claims she has the ability to smell trouble. She means that literally. Clearly the polyester wig and nude body suit were interfering with her sensory capabilities.

“Tweetie is dead,” I said flatly. “You didn't smell
that
one coming, did you?”

There was a long pause. “I'm coming right over, Abby.”

I softened. “No need, Mama. Thanks, anyway. Wynnell is here, and any minute the bell's going to ring and—”

It rang on cue.

“Gotta go, Mama. I'll call later.”

T
he paramedics were the first to arrive, followed only seconds later by the men in blue. The house was swarming with people when I answered the doorbell for the umpteenth time. Had I been wearing false teeth, I would have swallowed them when I saw the dead ringer for Tweetie standing on my front porch.

The woman flashed a badge at me. “Investigator Sharp,” she said in a high girlish voice. “Say, you look like you've seen a ghost.”

I stared at her in disbelief. She was the spitting image of the newly deceased—well, except that Tweetie had been a bottle blond, and this woman's hair color was obviously natural. One can always tell, you know. There is more to being blond than just stripping perfectly good brown hair of its pigment. At any rate, other than the origins of their respective hair colors, they were physically identical. It was as if they had bought their faces and figures from the same plastic surgeon, using the same catalogue of silicone body parts. There was, however, something different about the look in the detec
tive's eyes. And I'm not just talking about how it differed from the look in Tweetie's eyes when I opened that visor.
This
bimbo had an aura of cunning about her that the dead woman never had.

“Uh, uh, you look familiar.”

“Do I?” She held out a manicured hand. “You're Abigail Timberlake, right?”

I frowned. There are some pretty sick people out there in the world, and a few of them happen to be my friends. Could it be possible that this was all an elaborate practical joke?

“May I see your badge, please,” I said in a guarded voice.

“Certainly.” She actually handed it over to me. It was every bit as heavy and appeared to be as genuine as Greg's. I memorized the number before returning it.

“You can't be too careful.” I still wasn't sure the woman was telling the truth. Her striking similarity to the dead woman aside, the alleged detective wasn't dressed in a professional manner. The males I knew in the department generally wore khaki slacks and navy blazers. Neckties were de rigueur. The woman identifying herself as Investigator Barbara Sharp was wearing a black velvet dress that fell far short of her knees. It didn't do such a good job of covering her bosom, either.

“You're right about that. May I come in?” She sailed past me without waiting for an answer.

“Hey!”

“That's all right, Abby.” I felt Greg's hand on my shoulder. “Let her go. She has a job to do.”

I turned and threw myself into the arms of the man I loved. When all was said and done, what did it matter if he'd deserted me to make merry with Mama and her minions? He was here now that I needed him. That's what really mattered.

“You holding up okay?” he asked. Genuine concern was registering in those brilliant blue eyes.

“I'm okay—well, I guess I'm really not. This all seems so unreal.”

He squeezed me gently. “You're in shock. That's only natural. Did you tell the kids yet?”

“No.”

“Would you like me to tell them?”

I shook my head. Both Susan and Charlie would still be up. Neither of them had been close to their stepmother, and while telling them would be awkward, sad even, it was certainly manageable. Telling my ex-husband was another story.
That
could go either way. Depending on the mood he was in, Buford might well burst into tears over the phone, or he could just as easily launch into an angry diatribe, accusing me of killing Tweetie.

“Has anyone called Buford?”

“I don't know. I gave his number to one of the uniformed officers.”

Greg kissed me. “You call the kids, while I check on things. If nobody's called Buford, I will.”

“Thanks, dear.”

While my real-life knight, who owns no armor, charged off to gather information, I called the kids from the phone in my den. First Susan, who was enjoying a semester abroad in a small village in
southern France, and then Charlie. I was surprised to get Susan so easily.

“You want me to come home, Mama?” she asked. My daughter prides herself on her acting ability, but I could see right through her.

“There wouldn't be much point to it, would there, dear? I mean, she'll probably be buried by the time you could get here. Anyway, don't you have midterms or something coming up?”

“Yeah, right,” Susan said, jumping too easily at my manufactured excuse. My daughter, I knew, despised the woman who'd torn her family apart.

My son, Charlie, who attends Winthrop University in Rock Hill, was not particularly saddened, either. He volunteered to come and spend the night with me, but I could tell by his voice that he wasn't keen on sleeping in a house where a corpse had just been discovered. I graciously turned him down.

I had no sooner hung up when Greg came into the room with Wynnell and Investigator Sharp in tow. I did another double take.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“As well as can be expected. They're upset, of course”—I decided to be utterly honest—“but they're not heartbroken.”

Greg nodded. “Abby, the investigator would like to ask you a few questions.”

“Now?”

Investigator Sharp stepped forward. “Yes, Mrs. Timberlake. It's routine in situations where foul play may have been involved.”

“
May
have been involved? Look, Tweetie was definitely murdered.”

“Well, that is for forensics to determine, isn't it? Until we get the coroner's report—”

“Tweetie did not kill herself,” I said through gritted teeth. “She certainly didn't stuff her own corpse in that suit of armor and shove it under my bed.”

“Hey Abby, simmer down,” Greg whispered.

“I will not!” Nothing makes me want to pipe up like being told to simmer down.

Investigator Sharp was sporting a smirk. Greg may not have seen it, but I'm sure Wynnell did.

“Mrs. Timberlake, I was hoping you'd be more cooperative.”

“I'm very cooperative,” I snapped. “But I'm not the only one you should be interviewing. Why start with me?”

That surprised her. “Who else was here all evening?”

“My friend Wynnell Crawford here. She found the body.”

Wynnell scowled behind fused brows. “You sent me into that room, Abby.”

The investigator looked Wynnell over, and apparently deciding she looked harmless, turned back to me. “Mrs. Timberlake, it was your party. I prefer to start with you.”

Greg poked me in the side with a long tan finger. “Cooperate,” he said just above a whisper.

“Do I have a choice?” Mama probably heard my whisper all the way down in Rock Hill.

Investigator Sharp surprised me by laughing. “You're feisty. I like that. And since you're being blunt, I'll return the favor. You could refuse to talk, but that wouldn't look good for you. You could ask Greg to stay, but that wouldn't look good for him. I'm the one who's been assigned to this case.”

I looked at Greg.

He nodded. “She's right.”

“But aren't I supposed to call my lawyer?”

“Abby, you're not a suspect. She just wants to ask you a few questions. She's not going to shine a light in your eyes, or tie you to a rack.”

“Then fire away,” I said to prove I was both innocent and game.

“Is the dining room okay?”

“That would be fine,” Investigator Sharp said in that high, girlish voice I found so annoying.

I led the way, limping. I was pretty sure my right ankle wasn't broken, but it was definitely sprained. I'd exchanged my hoops and stilts for sweats and slippers, but walking was still a chore.

“What happened to your foot?” At least the investigator could see the obvious.

“I fell.”

“When?”

“It has nothing to do with the case, I assure you.”

She let it drop and I showed her to the carver's chair at the head of my new dining room table. Actually, it isn't new at all, but seventeenth-century English. It is, however, new to me. At any rate, a normal person would have commented about how
beautifully appointed the room was. Investigator Sharp seemed oblivious to taste. She reached into a snakeskin attaché case and removed a palm-sized tape recorder, which she set on the table in front of her. Then she crossed her long shapely legs, balancing a stenographer's pad on her knee.

I stared at the dinky device. “You're going to tape me?”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“Well, no—but couldn't you just write everything down on your pad?”

“I suppose I could, but that would take too long. I plan to write down only those things which seem to be of obvious importance at the moment.”

“But Greg said you only had a few questions!”

She tossed her blond locks in a dismissive manner. “Mrs. Timberlake, how well did you know the deceased?”

It was time to regain a little control. It was, after all, my house.

“First,” I said, “please, call me Abby. I only kept Timberlake for professional reasons. The real Mrs. Timberlake is upstairs. Dead.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The
deceased
, as you call her. Her name is Tweetie Timberlake. She was married to my ex-husband. So you might say I knew her fairly well.”

I'm not an expert at reading upside down, and her penmanship left a lot to be desired, but as far as I could tell, Investigator Sharp wrote everything down. Word for word. It took forever. Quite possi
bly she hadn't mastered some of the harder letters, like capital T's.

“Abby,” she finally said, “you may call me Barb.”

I nodded, but said nothing. Clearly she was trying to disarm me with this gesture of familiarity.

My silence didn't stop pen from moving on pad. “And how would you describe your relationship?”

“It was civil. Well, maybe not at first, but what can you expect? She snatched my husband out from under me—uh, I don't mean that literally—and disrupted my children's lives. But it's been several years, and I had made my peace with the woman. In fact, because of our age difference, it's almost like I saw her as another daughter.”

“I see. So you completely got over your resentment?”

“Well, I suppose there were vestiges of—hey, I didn't use the word ‘resentment,' did I?”

Barb smiled. “But would you say the word fits?”

“Not really. Sure, I remember what she did to my family, but I don't dwell on it. I certainly didn't wish her any harm. Like I said, I felt sort of motherly toward her. Lord knows the woman could have used a better one. You might even say Tweetie and I were friends—at the least we were united against a common enemy.”

“Oh? Who?”

“Buford. My ex, and her present. They're still—well,
were
—still married. Tweetie was incapable of supporting herself, and since Buford is Charlotte's
finest divorce lawyer, alimony is not a given. Tweetie had decided to stick it out until she was sure of her options.”

“I see. Tell me, why was the deceased incapable, as you put it, of supporting herself?”

“Tweetie is the quintessential blond joke. Line up ten of her and you get a wind tunnel. Give her a, uh—” I suddenly remembered I was talking to a blond. “Tweetie was a
bottle
blond,” I added hastily. “I'm sure that makes a difference.”

Barb appeared unaffected by my reference to color preference. “The second Mrs. Timberlake never worked?”

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “She was working as an exotic dancer when Buford met her. But she had no college or formal job training, and would never have gone back to dancing. Not after having a taste of the good life.”

“I suppose a job as night clerk at a convenience store was not an option?”

“Would it be for you? If you were in Tweetie's circumstances, I mean? She may not have been accepted by everyone in her milieu, but she did a lot of work for charity, and because of that, had a good number of friends on the social register. No, I think Tweetie's only option was to find another mate with Buford's connections.”

Barb's writing hand was a blur. “You certainly seem to have done all right on your own.”

I ran my fingers through hair the color of dark chocolate. I'm genetically blest. Gray is only just beginning to creep in along the temples, and it's
more silver than gray. Icing on the cake, Mama calls it.

“I had a passion for antiques,” I said. “It's easier when you have a passion.”

Barb vigorously underlined something. “Okay, let's talk about the party. Was Mrs. Timberlake an invited guest?”

“Of course. So was Buford. Only he had to be out of town on business.”

“I see. Well, you certainly are a broad-minded woman, Abby.”

I fell for the bait. “Look, I'd rather have invited Newt Gingrich and Dennis Rodman. I would have, too, if I'd thought they'd have come. The party was to impress people.”

“I see. Were there crashers that you know of?”

“It was a costume party,” I said irritably. “Some of the guests were able to completely disguise themselves.”

Barb nodded. “Like the deceased.”

“Oh, no! Tweetie didn't come as a knight. She came dressed as Little Bo Peep.”

“Little Bo Peep?”

“She even brought a live sheep.”

Barb scribbled furiously. “Who came as the knight?”

I shrugged. “I haven't the slightest. It never said a word.”

“Who arrived at your party first? The knight, or Miss Peep?”

“Miss Peep, as I recall.”

“Who was the first to leave?”

“Uh, well—that was a bit more confusing, seeing as how I had a virtual riot on my hands. Come to think of it, I can't remember either of them leaving. They certainly didn't throw potshots at me like some of the other guests.”

Barb's pen hovered above the pad like it couldn't wait to deposit more ink. If indeed she was writing only the most important points, I could be in trouble.