Death of a Rug Lord (21 page)

“Who knows,” Mama said, sounding wistful. “All the blood rushed to my head and I fainted after only nine minutes. I sure miss your daddy something awful, even though he did have some odd ways about him.”

“We're being watched,” I said.

“Of course, dear. I know folks think I'm a cashew short of a bridge mix because I dress the way I do. But Abby, I'm telling you, all your daddy has to do is glance down from Heaven and he can spot me right off, be
cause I haven't changed a thing since the day he died. Well, my hair—”

“No, Mama, she's coming out on the porch. What should I do?”

Mama gave a little gasp when she returned to earth and realized that the homeowner was now a broom length away from my car, but she recovered mighty fast. She leaned over my way, all smiles, while her manicured fingers slid under my right butt cheek and pinched hard. That was Mama's way of telling me to hold my tongue for the meanwhile.

I lowered the window on my side.

“Good morning,” Mama drawled, each word dripping in fine, Upstate honey (to heck with the marbles). “Are you by any chance Cora Beth's daughter?”

“No ma'am.”

“Are you sure? You look so much like her. It's the cheekbones, you know. Not many women are blessed like you. Sophia Loren comes to mind, and Angelina Jolie, but nobody else.”

“Why bless your heart. You know, you remind me of somebody as well: Mozella Wiggins. You wouldn't by any chance be her, would you?”

“
Her
? Oh my, whatever gave you that idea?”

“No, of course not, you couldn't be her. She was in Junior League with me, eons ago. A psychopath in the making, if you ask me.”

“A nutcase in the cracking,” Mama said.

“A teapot in the breaking,” I said.

Mama pinched me hard. “How could anyone forget her?” she asked. “I wasn't in Junior League—seeing as how it was out of my league—but everyone in Rock
Hill knew that wacko. By the way, I'm Miranda Sue Coldcutz—that's with a Z—and this is my daughter, Prunella Rae Washburn. Prunella has been living in Seattle for the last fifteen or so years, and I live in Charleston now in a retirement home. Last week she decided to pay her lonesome old mama a visit, and let me tell you, it's been wonderful! Then last night, on the spur of the moment, we decided to drive up here so I could show her some of the places I used to frequent when I was a girl, but everything has changed. I'm telling you, I've only been gone ten years myself, and I don't recognize anything anymore.”

The homeowner, who had every right to be suspicious, smiled. “I couldn't agree with you more, and I've been here the entire time. I'm Cynthia LaBec Whitely, by the way. Is there anything specific you're looking for, Miranda?”

“Prunella Rae,” Mama said, “close your ears. Cynthia,” she said behind her hand, while affecting a loud whisper, “didn't there used to be a large tree there and a dirt road—”

“Dead Man's Lane,” Cynthia said, and giggled. “But there was nothing dead about it on a Saturday night, was there? I swan, Miranda Sue. Half the war babies in Rock Hill were conceived there—including my very own Missy Kaye.” Cynthia, who was Mama's age, and thus quite beyond the age of innocence, blushed and giggled again.

“So I
was
at the right place!” Mama pinched me out of pure excitement. “What about that old textile mill—didn't we call it Putrid Mill, or something like that?”

The look on Cynthia's face said it all.

I
ndeed, we did call it that. Oh Miranda Sue, I can't tell you what a delight it is to talk to someone who remembers the old days. Wouldn't y'all like to come in and set a spell—maybe have some coffee and cinnamon rolls. They're not homemade, and I do apologize for that, but it's just me and the grandchildren. I'm babysitting for Silas and Marner, you see, while Missy Kaye and Bubba Jr. have themselves one last fling at the beach. Not that the kids wouldn't enjoy it, mind you, but we're talking about
Cancun
.”

“Silas and
Marner
?” I said. “How utterly literary of Missy Kaye and Bubba the Younger.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh don't mind my Prunella Rae,” Mama said. “She's suffering from the beginning stages of BAD, which is brain atrophy disease.”

Cynthia scratched her holy-roller bun. “I never heard of that.”

“It's a very rare condition, thought to be contacted by eating freshwater scallops from the Irrawaddy Delta. It starts with a headache, but by the time the sufferers
seek help, it's usually too late; the brain has already begun to shrink. There is nothing doctors can do to stop it. Eventually Prunella Rae's brain will end up being the size of a walnut, at which point she'll change her political affiliation before toppling over dead.”

“Shouldn't she at least be in a hospital?”

“Well, she certainly shouldn't be driving. I don't know what got over me that I allowed it.”

“A full-blown case of BAD I reckon, Miranda Sue.” I managed to say it without cracking a smile.

Mama pinched hard enough to make a tortoise yelp. “Unfortunately her condition brings on spells of rudeness, but it isn't dangerous.” She glared at me as her talons tightened. “You amuse yourself, dear, by taking a little walk while I go in the house with this nice lady and have coffee. You don't like coffee, dear, remember?”

“Yes, Prunella Sue, coffee very bad. Bitter taste. Me no like. Me like walk; look at pretty houses. Me walk that road,” I said, pointing to the unmarked road. “Other side nature. Me like nature very much better.”

“I thought
her
name was Prunella,” Cynthia said to Mama, signs of doubt flickering across her eyes.

“BAD is an awful disease. The heartbreak is worse than that of psoriasis.”

“Why I declare: the things you learn every day. So how about it, Miranda Sue, are you coming in for coffee?”

“I don't mind if I do.” Mama's sugary drawl had been replaced by a trill of delight. “But before I do that, just to make sure that Prunella Rae doesn't get lost, how far does that road go now?”

“All the way down to the new mill. And it's paved too, every bit of it.”

“New mill?” Mama and I asked in unison.

“Yes, where my Missy Kaye and her husband work. It's still a textile mill, as a matter of fact, but from what I hear, very upscale. Miss Kaye says they make one-of-a-kind Oriental rugs for movie stars and the super rich. What we used to call the la-dee-da types.”

“Like Felicity Shamming's family? She moved to Rock Hill from Greensborough in the fifth grade, I believe.”

“Exactly,” Cynthia said. “Gee, I haven't thought of her in at least thirty years.”

“They were here only one year, weren't they? Two at the most. I heard they moved away because there was nobody here who could properly appreciate the quality of their home and its extraordinary furnishings. Honestly, it put these modern-day McMansions all to shame.”

“Good one, Mama,” I said. “I assume they took their fine furnishings with them when they left, but what happened to the house? I don't remember hearing about a Shamming house when I was growing up.”

“Her lucidity comes and goes,” Mama said quickly, her nails digging into a one-inch chunk of my buttocks.

Cynthia gave me a pitying glance. “The same thing happened to the Shamming house that happens to many mansions across the South, and probably across the country; it got turned into a funeral home.”

“I don't remember that either,” I said. “We had houses that had been turned into funeral homes, but nothing
that
spectacular.”

“The disease,” Mama muttered. “It breaks my heart.”

“It must be just awful,” Cynthia said.

“Yes, Mama's awful,” I said, “just awful.”

Cynthia took several long steps backward. “Miranda Sue, are you sure she'll be all right on her own out here?”

“She'll be fine as frog's hair split three ways. The doctors assure me that she has at least two months to go before she gets to the walnut stage.”

Mama pinched me again before climbing out on the passenger side. If I'd have had a bean burrito for breakfast instead of sausages, I might have gotten revenge.

“Have fun with the boys,” I said.

“Marner is a girl,” Cynthia said, and turned quickly away. Mama, who was obviously enjoying her role to the hilt, followed closely behind.

 

In my opinion, roads are meant to be driven on, preferably in motorized vehicles, and as long as I kept my cell phone at the ready, it was probably a lot safer if I drove than walked. After all, a dachshund has longer legs that I do, and if I were to be chased on foot, I would undoubtedly end up having to dive into a thicket of brambles somewhere along the way.

But it was smooth sailing down that unmarked asphalt road. Halfway there I left the houses behind and drove through second growth mixed pine and hardwood forest. Although I thought I knew what to expect, upon turning the last bend I was so taken aback that the gum literally fell out of my mouth. I popped my sugar free Dentine back in and stared.

To both my left and right sprawled a parking lot
with dozens of empty spaces—possibly even hundreds. In fact, there was not a car in sight. This was exactly how it should have been in the Upstate region of South Carolina on a Sunday morning. Had Jesus himself reported for work, he'd have been given a stern lecture on the evils of desecrating the Sabbath and sent home.

At any rate, ahead of me loomed a typical turn-of-the-century mill building, with its castlelike brick facade, but this one sported a fresh coat of white paint. Its many windows were flanked with wooden shutters in good repair, their bright turquoise color perhaps hinting at the beauty contained within.

There were no signs of any kind: no arrows to direct incoming trucks; no proud company logo; not even any reserved parking spaces. It was this very omission of information, rather than anything that I
did
see, that set the alarm bells off in my head. Being my mama's daughter, however, has doomed me to a life of not taking anything at face value.

The first thing I had to decide was how to play this card. Should I park facing the exit and near the woods, or should I play it cool and pull right up to the front door? In the first scenario, I could practice my creeping and skulking skills, but in the second scenario, I was Miss Somebody: a dye or yarn saleswoman, perhaps one whose flight had gotten her in a day early and who decided to drive out to familiarize herself so she wouldn't feel so stressed come Monday morning. That was just the sort of thing folks did all the time to soothe their nerves and give themselves a leg up on the competition.

In the first scenario, if I were caught, I would pretend to be a curious Sunday driver—unless it was Big Larry doing the catching. In that case I would scream bloody murder and beg for mercy.

Scenario number two called for much better bluffing skills. What if the person—or persons—who stopped me called my bluff by stating that this mill produced its own dyes and all its yarn needs? I'd be much better off selling some obscure metal machine part named after George Eliot's Silas Marner, something that nobody in their right mind had ever heard of, because it didn't exist: such as a calibrated
renram
brace for metrically calibrated
salis
looms. If challenged, I'd have to act puzzled at first, and then angry, blaming my secretary for his incompetence in lining up this appointment.

After far too much deliberation, I chose to sell the very expensive and much needed renram brace (every commercial loom needs at least one). I parked my car directly in front of the entrance, left the engine running, and casually walked up and tested the doors. Of course they were locked. What a doofus I was—wait just one cotton-picking minute! The door on the left wasn't flush with the one on the right. That meant the mechanism hadn't latched properly when it was shut. And sure enough, with a jerk and a tug, it came right open!

The most astonishing thing of all was that no alarm deployed. Was this a trap? It had to be. Anyone bright enough to set up a successful counterfeit carpet business was not going to leave it unguarded and unlocked on a Sunday out of laziness or forgetfulness. I was al
ready a goner and so was Mama: coffee with Miranda Sue, my hot cross buns! And here we thought we were being so clever, so droll. Oh well, life was a terminal illness, wasn't it? None of us got out of the experience alive; it all boiled down to when and how—not
if—
we croaked. Wasn't awareness of that little fact supposed to make impending death easier? Ha, if only I could believe that.

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. As long I was up Dead Man's Creek without a paddle, I owed it to myself to see what sort of operation Magic Genie Cleaners was running up here in the old Putrid Mill building.

The foyer was well-lit because it was capped by a skylight, but a wise Abby would have taken a quick peek and then hightailed it out of there. But oh no, I just had to see what was on the other side of a pair of solid oak doors straight ahead that seemed to beckon me. The fact that they too were unlocked could only be a sign that for once fate was on my side.

I'm still not sure how it happened; I just know that the second set of doors closed behind me before I could find the light switch. I tried turning the knobs every which way but Sunday but finally had to concede that somehow the doors had become locked. Now there I was, in a space as dark as a well digger's shoe soles, without an exit strategy. Poor Greg was going to have to shop for a child-size coffin. Or maybe not. If I could stop panicking long enough to gather my wits—a darn hard thing to do in the dark—I might think of
something
.

The doomed Abby was debating with her Pollyanna
side when I heard the outer door close. The argument ended abruptly as instinct took over and I flattened myself against the nearest wall. Immediately I began to feel my way to a corner so that I had only to kick and bite in one direction, should I be attacked in the dark.

“I saw her come in here,” a man's voice said. “And I assume, since that‘s her car outside—”

“Never assume anything,” a woman snapped.

“Yes sir—I mean, ma'm.”

“Just shut up and keep looking.”

The voices were familiar. The man certainly wasn't Big Larry. Nor Andy. Nor Fig. I'd never heard Big Tina speak, so the female could be her. (I've known some very large women who had very small voices, and some tiny women with the vocal chords of a grizzly bear.) But not only were these voices familiar, I'd have been willing to swear on a night spent with Cousin Imogene's rat collection that I heard these two voices before and in conjunction with each other.

Why slap me up the side of the head and call me Charlie Brown! The voices in the dark belonged to the ducal dummies of some made-up European country. And here I thought we'd managed to give them the early bird slip; not a single car had driven past as we chatted with Miranda Sue. And while I don't have the eagle eyes Greg sometimes accuses me of having, surely I would have noticed a vehicle in the rear mirror as I drove down to the mill. Instead, it was as if this buffoonish pair had dropped from the ceiling in the outer lobby, and let me assure you, Tom Cruise they were not.

“Shall I cut on the lights?” the man asked, using our charming Carolina turn of phrase.

“You do,” the woman growled, “and your ass is grass.”

“Does that mean I'll be fired?”

“Let's put it this way—you're fired anyway, but I definitely won't take you back if you cut on the lights.”

He said nothing in response. As a matter of fact I heard nothing for what seemed like many minutes. Perhaps they had heard me and were quietly, slowly, moving in my direction. At any second they might reach out and grab me. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl, and I was torn between the desire to scream and get it all over with or—and this I found very strange—to fall into a deep, all encompassing sleep.

The rational Abby, the one who, it might be argued, had been on a long summer vacation, fought hard to follow a third course of action, and that was to do as little as possible. I had to breathe, granted, and so I did. I also resolved to remain standing, as that took up less floor space than sitting and might make detection from above more difficult. Other than that, all I needed to do was remain alert and listen in the dark.

Remaining alert—ah, that was the hard part. I tried praying, which was a huge mistake; my consciousness began a rapid descent into Never Never Land. In order to put the brakes on the sand man's coach, I tried thinking about sex. Alas, that too was a total bust. In movies, not only can the heroines gyre and gimble with Wade, somehow they can manage to do so with broken ribs, and with bullets whizzing past their ears.
I, on the other hand, couldn't generate a spark of lust; George Clooney could have trotted by naked and I wouldn't have given a darn (assuming I'd seen him, of course).

Without any outside stimulus it was impossible to judge how much time had passed when I came to the conclusion that I had to do
something
or risk turning into a fossil. It seemed at least an hour had passed since I'd heard their graces' voices—if indeed I'd even heard them. Maybe the stress brought on by trespassing had caused me to hallucinate. I wasn't exactly your perfect buttoned-down coed in college, and on one or two occasions—okay, it was just one—I'd experienced a genuine, chemically induced hallucination, and let me tell you, hallucinations can seem awfully real. Perhaps Big Larry had managed to somehow taint our breakfasts.