An Eggshell Present: An Abishag’s Fourth Mystery (Abishag Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  An Eggshell Present

  An Abishag’s Fourth Mystery

  ∞

  Michelle Knowlden

  An Eggshell Present: An Abishag’s Fourth Mystery

  Copyright 2014 Michelle Knowlden

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My heartfelt thanks go to:

  My Beta Readers (a dream team): Gary Bale, Rebecca Lang, Jeanine Gattas, and Kris Klopfenstein

  OC Fictionaires: for support over many years and especially for the encouragement and comments for this novella.

  Cover Artist: Bethany Barnette ([email protected])

  Cover Photo: Rebecca Lang

  For all your support: Janet, Neal, Jean, Gary, Debra, and Ken

  DEDICATION

  To my family with love

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Bainbridge Dictionary definition of Abishag

  An Excerpt from Jack Fell Down

  About the Author

  Bainbridge Dictionary, Seventeenth Edition, published November 2012 ,

  Abishag (also Abishag the Shunammite)

  last wife of King David, mentioned five times in 1 Kings

  from 1 Kings 1-3: Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. Therefore his servants said to him, “Let a young woman be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be in his service. Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm.” So they sought for a beautiful young woman throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not.

  Abishag (also Abishag wife, bed-warmer wife)

  In 1997, the state of Arizona legalized the practice of providing Abishag wives for comatose men that adhered to strict guidelines, contracts for the patient, patient’s family and service provider, and scale of payment for said services.

  In 2002 the US Congress, recognizing the need to standardize the practice of using Abishag wives as part of hospice care, limited providers to certified agencies and Abishag wives to licensed personnel. While an Abishag wife signs a marriage certificate with the patient’s power of attorney, it is the agency contract that defines her role, income during the patient’s last days, and severance pay upon the patient’s death. The terms of the contract have been updated by the Supreme court thirty-eight times between 2002 and 2011.

  In 2004, after the landmark case of Shulman v Miami Abishag Agency where it was argued that the emotional maturity required for Abishag services exceeded the current legal definition of adulthood, age restrictions were established: no females under the age of 18 shall be licensed as Abishag wives, and females between the ages of 18 and 21 are required to provide a parent’s signed consent for each contract.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Are you listening to me?” Kat demanded.

  I dragged my attention from the third eggshell present Sebastian had given me. Crushed mule bones frosted the butterscotch-colored eggshell, and the egg was secured inside a crevice of a six-inch plaster replica of Toro Peak.

  I folded my hands. “I’m listening.”

  Still wearing her Taekwondo dobok (or what I called the “white pajamas”) hours after our practice, she glowered. “I’m trying to help you. Sebastian’s going to ask you to marry him tonight, and you have to have a response.”

  He was twenty-five minutes late. He was never late.

  “The trick is to look receptive. Dog would never have asked me if I gave him that stony stare of yours.”

  What she called my stony stare was really an Abishag wife’s look of serenity. After being an Abishag wife three times, my face defaulted to it whenever I felt confused. Which was most of the time. People in general puzzled me.

  Sebastian usually did not. Besides my housemates Kathmandu and Dog (or Douglas), I felt most comfortable and most myself with him. I had known him for two years; he had been the grandson of my first husband, Thomas Crowder. We’d been dating since the death of my third husband, Professor Henry Telemann. Although I had to use Kat several times to translate the nuances behind something Sebastian said, I’d never resorted to an Abishag face with him.

  “Hopefully you’ve resolved all your issues with your parents, your rational romantic views, and anything dysfunctional you’ve picked up as an Abishag wife. Do you want to practice your answer to Sebastian?”

  She meant romantic rationalist: rationalist being what I am with the romantic coloring the logic. As a romantic, I believed in love and prince charming, in glass slippers, dragons, and gingerbread cottages. As a rationalist, I didn’t believe in happily ever after. Nothing lasts: not the love or the charming or the glass slippers.

  Over the past year, Sebastian had given me 95 eggshell presents—souvenirs of shared moments in the time we’d known each other, each a fragile, decorated eggshell enclosed securely in painted plaster mold of a mountain. Someone else had made the mountains, but Sebastian had carefully blown each egg, decorated it, and installed it in its mountain fortress.

  Since each artifact stood about six inches high and four inches wide, the mountains filled the shelves of three living room bookcases and another in my bedroom. Kat made sure I understood that this was Sebastian’s way of showing that I could trust to a lasting future together. Hard not to when surrounded by 95 hefty reminders.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  I caught Kat’s swift look at the mantel clock and knew she was worried, too. Distracted, she refilled my teacup. “Maybe what?”

  “That’s what I’m going to tell him,” I said. “Maybe I’ll marry him.”

  Her teeth clattered on the mug as large as a soup bowl. “That’s not an answer.”

  With no intended irony, I said, “Maybe he’s not coming.”

  “Maybe you should call him,” she shot back.

  I pulled my iPhone from my thrift store messenger bag. Gone were the days when I dressed in name brand clothing and accessorized only with posh purses and jewelry to please my previous boyfriend, lawyer Donovan Reid. Because he came from wealth, Sebastian cared nothing about its trappings. After Taekwondo practice, I’d put on an old Anne Klein dress that Jen, another Abishag wife, had tired of and given to me—berry-colored, sleeveless with a m
idriff twist—nicer than what I usually wore. Sebastian told me that we were celebrating my graduation from UCLA tonight so Kat pulled it from my closet.

  Besides all the turmoil of wondering where Sebastian was, feelings of loss and nostalgia filled me. Beyond whatever choice I made, I would be leaving our university housing. Now nearly August, we’d already lost most of our housemates in June when we’d graduated. I had lived here for three years, through times of poverty and wealth, times that included three comatose husbands.

  I would miss the mystery stews, morning pop tarts, and Monday night pizzas. I’d miss the bad plumbing, leaky roof, and chance encounters with our mysterious landlord.

  I would miss housemate Stanley talking about the latest science fiction convention while teaching me how to skirt past security firewalls. Last weekend, he moved into a Culver City loft, which would serve both as his office and living quarters. During our senior year, he had enough clients to start his own business installing commercial and private networks, and consulting on cyber security. He left behind his bowfishing recurve bow (from his archery phase—which had lasted about 10 minutes), Star Trek Deep Space Nine posters, and the house wired with a secure network.

  My phone call to Sebastian went straight to voicemail. I left a message.

  Only Dog, Kat, and I remained, and the rooms seemed to echo hollowly. Although Kat had also graduated this year, Dog still had another year of medical school. Even with their temp jobs—mostly working for my husbands’ estates, their school loans were colossal. Kat graduated with a double major in accounting and art but hadn’t yet found a legitimate job in either field. Generally I ignored her shady activities with a group of ex-felons called The Westwood Irregulars.

  Her voice quivering ominously, Kat asked, “Why are you telling Sebastian that maybe you’ll marry him?”

  “I’m not even sure he’ll ask me.”

  “I’m sure,” Kat said. When I sighed as I always did when she stated uncertainties as absolutes, she enumerated on her fingers. “One: when you’re in the room, he only looks at you. Two: twice he’s gotten involved in murder cases for you and saved your life each time. Three: he’s made 95 of those eggshell monstrosities. Four: he’s been hinting about it for a month. Five…do I gotta go on? The man’s obviously smitten with you.”

  My gaze skated past the bookshelves loaded with Matterhorns, Everests, Kilimanjaros, and McKinleys. “I know he cares, but marriage? He could just want to move in together.”

  She made a rude noise.

  “I’ll be 22 in September and Sebastian’s 23,” I said. “Most marriages that young fail.”

  “I was 19 when I married Dog.”

  I shrugged. “You’re not most people. Sebastian and I didn’t have parents with great marriages.”

  “So you’ve learned what not to do.”

  “Sebastian still has two more years before he finishes his doctorate. He won’t want to marry till after that.”

  “Who says? Neither of you need the money. You could work on a graduate degree, too.”

  “The only school that accepted me was in Missouri.”

  Even I felt the tiny pause fraught with tension.

  “Why did you apply to an out-of-state school when Sebastian has another two years to finish his PHD?” She spoke quietly, but something in her tight lips made me feel uneasy.

  “My back-up plan in case Sebastian broke up with me.”

  “You wanted to be far away ‘cause without Seb, your heart would break?”

  “Hearts don’t …”

  “Les …lie.” She dragged the two syllables out.

  I stood. “He’s over an hour late, and he’s never late. Since he’s obviously not coming, it’s a good thing I made a back-up plan.”

  ***

  My iPhone went off at four the next morning. It didn’t wake me as I hadn’t fallen asleep.

  Tina Crowder, Sebastian’s mother, sobbed in my ear, “Please come, Leslie. Sebastian’s been in an accident.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “He’s on life support.”

  I found Tina in the waiting room, her black hair escaping the silk scarf wound around her head. A tall, large-boned woman, she’d dressed in jeans and a simple tailored cotton shirt, dotted by brown stains. She held a cup of vending machine coffee in her shaking hands.

  She sprang from a chair when I arrived with Kat and Dog. I took the cup from her hand, passed it to Kat, and put my arms around her. Though she made no sound, I felt tears fall on my bare shoulders. I wished I could cry too since my eyes hurt being so dry.

  When she finally let me go, I drew her to a chair. “Tell us what happened.”

  Kat and Dog hovered near the vending machine. When I glanced their way, I saw Kat leaning against Dog, his arms around her.

  Tina’s eyes welled with tears again, and she hunted in her bag for tissues. I pulled out a packet and handed it to her. An Abishag wife is always prepared for grief.

  “Thank you, dear. He’d been on his way to Santa Monica from my dad’s place in Palos Verdes when a car struck him near the Strand. Hit and run. He was riding Duarte’s old motorcycle.” Usually Sebastian drove a beater car, but since his was in the shop, he had been using his brother’s castoff motorcycle.

  Each sentence seemed to send shudders of pain though her. “I told Duarte to get rid of that thing when he finished school. Deathtraps. Oh, Leslie, if you could see Sebastian. My poor son. What that thing did to him.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Sebastian’s strong and stubborn. He’ll be fine.”

  A sob caught both of us unaware, and she held a wad of tissues against her mouth to stop more from escaping. “The doctor said most don’t survive with injuries of this sort.”

  “Dog?”

  He nodded and left the waiting room. I heard the tinkle of coins in the vending machine, and then Kat put a steaming cup of coffee on the table between Tina and me.

  “Sebastian’s not like most people,” I said. “He’ll survive.”

  She didn’t believe me. “If you saw him …”

  “May I?” I asked.

  From behind Tina, Kat shook her head. Did she think I couldn’t handle whatever the accident had done to him?

  Tina looked uncertain. “They say only family…” She stiffened. “Come with me.”

  I followed in her wake, summoning every Abishag technique I’d used through two years of murders and three dying husbands to plaster a look of serenity on my face.

  Tina pulled me tight to her side when the charge nurse approached us. “She’s his fiancée.” Without waiting for a response, she steered me to his bed.

  My third husband had taken a bullet through the skull, and died weeks later with gauze around his head. Although I’d known him before he’d been shot, I only remembered him still as death and wearing a turban like the one the man wore in the bed before me.

  Everything within me rejected the idea that the patient in ICU Bed Six was Sebastian Crowder. I registered the splints, bandages, raw abrasions, the purpling under eyes swollen shut, wires, tubes, and the ventilator breathing for him.

  “That’s not Sebastian.”

  I spoke aloud, but Tina had already forgotten me as she sat in a chair on his left side. She clutched the bed rail with one hand, firm and sure, while her other hand plucked uncertainly at his pillow and blanket, afraid to touch him.

  Resolutely and internally, I chanted my soothing Abishag mantra: Peace like a river. Serenity like a lake. Calm like me.

  I found an unoccupied chair, my mind shying from who had used it last, and placed the chair on the right side of Bed Six. I tried to find Sebastian in the remains of the man there.

  I gently took his hand, wincing at the splints on three of the fingers. Swollen and boneless, it didn’t feel human. I knew Sebastian’s hand: the way it clasped mine when we first met, the familiar feel of it on my elbow and cheek. This hand wasn’t his.

  The man in Bed Six was about the length of Sebastian. He was short like his dad,
only an inch taller than me and I was just 5’2”. I’d never met his father. He’d left Tina not long after Sebastian was born to start another family in Ohio. Sebastian didn’t seem to resent an absent dad, having found in his grandfather the only dad he needed. He used the Crowder name as easily as if he’d been born to it. I’d seen pictures of the Ohio father and recognized Sebastian in his height, eye color, jaw-line and unruly hair.

  The remains of the man in Bed Six showed only the cruel violence that had de-constructed him. As I held his hand in rigid serenity and wondered how this poor man had been identified as Sebastian Crowder, I noticed a small thing.

  A few locks of his hair had escaped the heavy bandages around his head. It was dark like Tina’s. Unlike hers, Sebastian’s always looked shaggy, as if cut with kitchen shears. Nothing else about the man in Bed Six was Sebastian, but those strands lying on the pillow and framing the battered face belonged to him.

  “It’s time,” the nurse said from the door.

  Her eyes awash with tears, Tina stood. “We’re only allowed fifteen minutes a visit.” She walked towards the exit, listing slightly.

  I touched a bit of his hair. “I’ll be back soon.” I wanted to promise him everything would be okay, but those words stuck in my throat.

  Holding Kat’s hand, Dog stood as we entered in the waiting room. “I talked to the attending.” Then he told us everything that was wrong with Sebastian in such a flood of words that I heard nothing except there was almost nothing right about Sebastian.

  He hesitated and then asked Tina, “Did Sebastian ever tell you what his wishes were in a situation like this?”

  I frowned. “What …?”

  Kat put her arm around me, stemming whatever I’d intended to say. I knew what Dog meant. I just didn’t want to hear it.