The Ming and I Read Online Free PDF Page B

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? Whoknows; 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.

5
    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,