She’s coming to,” I heard C.J. say. “Look, her beady little eyes are beginning to flicker.”
I purposely flickered my beady little eyes for a moment or two longer than necessary, before even attempting to sit. The foul-smelling warthog had apparently landed square across C.J.’s broad shoulders, and being a rather ancient specimen—the hoofed creature, not my employee—split in two, eventually depositing yours truly on the hardwood floor.
“How many fingers can you see?” the Colonel asked, and held up three digits so crooked that, to my beady eyes, they at first looked braided.
“Twenty-four,” I said, just to be obstreperous.C.J. pulled back one of my eyelids, as if that would tell her something. “Guess again, you silly goose. No one has twenty-four fingers. Not even Granny Ledbetter.”
“What is your name?” The Colonel was clearly concerned that I might sic a personal injuries lawyer on him.
“Wighelmania Ledbetter,” I said weakly. C.J.’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “Auntie Wighelmania Ledbetter?” I’d learned early on in our friendship that the big galoot had an aunt with an even weirder name than Mozella, my minimadre’s moniker.
“I’m one and the same,” I croaked.
“But you don’t look a day over sixty, and my Auntie Wighelmania will be ninety in September.”
I sat up. “Thanks a lot, C.J. It’s me, Abby, and I’m not even fifty.”
She grinned. “I knew it was you, Abby. Did you hurt yourself?”
“Nope. Thanks for breaking my fall.”
Now that he knew I was okay, the Colonel was not amused. “You’ve destroyed my warthog, Miss Timberlake. Do you know how much it will cost to replace it?”
“No, but I’d be happy to look for one on eBay.”
“I see. Will the one purchased on eBay have been shot by me—a single shot, mind you—while on safari to Tanzania with my first wife, Esmeralda?”
“Hmm, probably not.”
“Most assuredly not. Miss Timberlake, at the very least you can refrain from being a smart-aleck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now tell me what you are doing in my house, and in that stuffed animal in particular.”
“Well, we brought you a fruit basket—”
“Abby, he knows.”
“He does?”
“I told him everything. But I made him promise not to tell anyone that I work for the CIA, and that you’re my flunky.”
“I am?”
“Which still doesn’t explain what y’all were doing in my house. Surely Roberta’s murder is not of national interest.”
“With all due respect, sir, she was found on your property, which lies near the harbor. The entire coastline is of national interest.” Of course I felt terrible alluding to the dead in my boldfaced lie, but frankly, I am far too cute to spend time in the slammer.
“Abby,” C.J. whined, “you’re supposed to let me do the talking.”
“Sorry, sir. Sometimes I get carried away.”
The Colonel, whose shoulders had been sagging in grief, stiffened. “Sir?”
“Oops, did I say that?”
“Indeed, you did.”
“Apparently Agent Coccyx didn’t tell you everything.”
C.J. laughed. “Ooh, Abby, you’re so silly. That was Cousin Mortimer Ledbetter from Middlesex—”
“Ladies!” The Colonel’s voice boomed like a cannon, rattling the windows. “Enough of this nonsense. You have until the count of three to explain your presence. One, two—”
“I found a skull in a gym bag that was in the storage shed I bid on Saturday and the two stupidest policemen who ever lived had me arrested but my husband got me out and then I learned the skull belonged to a female gorilla but before that your maid and maybe lover chased after me to the seawall and tried to tell me something very important but that night she was murdered and the police came to ask me questions again so I start thinking this must be connected somehow and asked more questions of my own and learned that you were a big game hunter who sold endangered animal parts to a broker in Hong Kong and then this very same broker’s daughter has her life threatened so then I come back here to look for some answers and that’s when C.J. bless her oversized heart finds a secret passageway which I get trapped in and the next I know I land on top of her—” I started to black out.
“Bravo, Miss Timberlake. I do believe you hold the world’s record for the longest sentence.”
I could tell C.J. was shaking her head just by the breeze it created. “Nuh-unh. You should read Joseph Conrad.”
The Colonel chuckled. “Actually, I have. It was reading the Heart of Darkness that inspired me to visit Africa. It was also my cure for chronic insomnia.”
“Hey,” C.J. said, “you don’t sound mad anymore.”
“Sir,” I said, “I mean you, sir, Colonel, not her sir, because she isn’t one, does this mean you won’t call the police?”
“Let’s just say I’m willing to put that on hold for a moment while I consider the situation at hand.” He rubbed his chin, his eyes half closed, as if his movements had been scripted for community theater. “Well, Miss Timberlake, I must say, you certainly have a problem. But before I address it, and what I think your options might be, I would like to make a few things perfectly clear.
“First, I stopped hunting over forty years ago when I realized that certain species were headed for extinction. I resent any implication by Ms. Wou-ki that I might still be involved in illegal animal trade. And the second is, well—I think I know who killed Roberta.”