Such Beautiful Deadly Things
By Heather Mosko
Chapter One
Funny how the new things are the old things.
--Rudyard
Kipling
Hurriedly
pushing through the dented metal door into the open warehouse space of W.L.
Candy’s Auction House, Carol Ann Miller was immediately enveloped with the
pungent smell of hot dogs and sauerkraut wafting out of the snack bar, the
thick cloud of pipe smoke that hovered above the old farmers who sat in the
corner solving the world’s problems, and the dusty, sometimes moldy, scent of
castaway items. It was a scent that filled her with excitement and
anticipation.
Would there be an
antique quilt buried under a pile of old sheets, or a rare china figurine among
the chipped Corelle coffee cups? Maybe an original Bakelite bracelet tossed
away, thought to be nothing more than a plastic bangle? Or could this be one of
those disappointing times when nothing interesting surfaced in the flotsam and
jetsam of someone’s life piled in boxes and stacked on shelves?
Carol Ann, who
everyone knew as C.A., tried not to look too closely at anything until she
found her best friend and business partner Lucy Rickman. They liked to go
around the room together, poking and prodding, turning jugs and vases upside
down to see if they were mass-produced or hand-thrown. She heard her name and
the smell of coffee grew stronger. Turning, she found Lucy holding out a
Styrofoam cup to her.
“Hey,
there you are.” C.A. took the cup.
“You’re
late,” Lucy said, adjusting the weight of the infant strapped securely to her
chest in a Snuggly, and then handing a Popsicle to Toby, the three-year-old
hanging on her leg.
Leaning
down to kiss the baby on top of her head and then tickling Toby behind his ear,
C.A. said, “I got hung up at the shop. My mother was late as usual getting in
to cover for me, and then Mrs. Johnson stopped by looking for more of those metal
frogs she collects. She wouldn’t believe we didn’t have any until she’d checked
every corner of the store.”
Sipping
her coffee, Lucy scanned the room. “Do you know where all this stuff came
from?”
C.A.
shook her head and walked over to the bulletin board, reading the notices
posted for real estate being offered up for bid in the coming months. W.L.
Candy usually auctioned off the household contents at their warehouse a few
weeks before the auction of the home and property. Running her finger down the
description of an old farmhouse that was going up for auction, C.A. tapped it.
“I’d bet it’s the stuff from this place. Mr. Pace died a few months ago and I
heard his wife was going to sell off most of their things and move to a little
place in town.” She looked around the room again. “Isn’t that Mrs. Pace with
her daughter and granddaughter over by the jewelry cases?”
Lucy followed her
gaze. “Oh, yeah. My aunt Fran is a friend of hers. They go to the same church.
Didn’t your grandmother know her too?”
Nodding,
distracted, C.A. scanned the rest of the auction notices. “Yeah, I think so.
Quilting club, maybe.” She looked over again at where the three women were
standing. Emma Pace in a shapeless yellow-printed dress and rubber-soled shoes,
her daughter in crisply creased navy-colored pants and white blouse, and the
youngest, presumably the granddaughter, in riding jodhpurs and sleeveless
shirt. “I remember my grandmother saying something about Emma’s daughter. What
was it? Oh, yes. ‘Debra likes to put on airs.’”
“That means ‘she’s
bitchy’ in grandma talk.”
Laughing, C.A.
turned back to the bulletin board. “Probably.”
As she studied the picture of the farmhouse
more closely, Lucy said, “Huh, nice place, old stone, in the family for
generations. This could be promising. We might find some folk art or pottery,
maybe even some good china.”
“I
wouldn’t count on the china. I’m sure the daughter got all that, but I think we
might find some handmade tools, maybe old benches or milking stools. They used
to have a dairy farm and there’s probably a lot of things from the barn that
they don’t even think of as antiques, just dusty old pieces of wood that have
been in the barn for a hundred years.”
Lucy
rubbed her hands together and C.A. saw the familiar treasure hunter’s gleam in
her eye. “Oh, let’s hope so.” Plopping the toddler down in the middle of the
floor, Lucy handed him a coloring book, a box of crayons and a bag of cookies.
She patted him on the head and then turned to C.A., “Come on, let’s start over
there.”
Pulling
an elastic band from her purse and sweeping her long blond hair into a
ponytail, C.A. nodded at the corner where Lucy was pointing. “I’ll take the
boxes on the floor and you take the shelves.”
The
five-foot-nothing Lucy stared up in consternation at her almost six-foot
partner, putting her hands on her curvy hips. “I don’t think so, Stretch. I’ll
take the boxes on the floor.”
“Oh.
Right.” C.A. looked down her aquiline nose at Lucy as if it were the first time
she’d noticed the woman was almost a foot shorter than she was. “Sorry, I don’t
know what I was thinking. I’ve been so flaky lately. Do you know I even lost my
keys the other day? I never do that.”
“I’ve
noticed. You left all the receipts out Monday night, I found them in the
morning when I opened up still sitting on the counter.”
C.A.
picked up a salt-and-pepper shaker set off the shelf that was shaped like
Little Bo Peep and one of her sheep. “Did I? Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong
with me. I’ll pull it together. I guess my head’s already in New York. I’m
leaving in a week and I don’t even have everything priced and cleaned yet.”
A
gust of cold air swept through the stuffy room as the metal door swung open to
admit another customer. Lucy looked over to see who had come in. “Well, well.
Will you look who’s here? I think he’s
the reason your head’s been up your butt lately, not the New York trip. You’ve
been going to New York every month for the last eight years and you’ve never
gotten flustered before, but since Mr. Moony Eyes over there got to town you’ve
been walking around acting like…like…your
mother.”
Sharply
sucking in her breath, C.A. glared at Lucy. “I have not been that bad.” Although she had to admit, she did get a little
light-headed when she saw Steven Shipley. He was walking towards the snack bar
wearing his usual faded jeans, work boots and cable knit sweater, the collar of
a worn flannel shirt peeking out the top. His gray eyes were reading the list
of the day’s soup specials as he ran a hand through his shaggy salt-and-pepper hair.
“Close your
mouth before you start drooling,” Lucy said in her ear.
C.A.
frowned at her friend. “Listen, Stumpy, Steven has nothing to do with anything.
He’s just a competitor, another dealer on Antique Row, nothing more.”
“Rrrrrrright.”
Lucy chuckled as she studied the fabric of an old apron she’d found in a box
full of kitchen items.
Returning
her attention to the shelves, C.A. moved aside some machine-made glass vases
and found a small clay pot. There was a promising maker’s mark on the bottom, but
on closer inspection she realized it had a crack and wasn’t a very attractive
color so she put it back.
After
awhile, Lucy said, “I don’t get it. You have how many guys in New York begging
you to move back there? And they’re sophisticated and cute, yet you show no
interest in any of them. Then this so-so looking guy from East Podunk comes to
town and opens up a shop a few places down from ours - something that usually
gets you all ramped up and competitive by the way -- and every time I see you
near him you’re all dreamy-eyed and you have the goofiest-ass look on your face
I’ve ever seen.
C.A.
arched an artfully waxed eyebrow. “I never look goofy.”
“A
few month ago I would have agreed with you, my friend, but now I swear I see
that dumb-ass look on your face every time he…”
“Hey,
ladies, how’s it looking in here today? Anything worth bidding on?” Steven
walked up behind C.A. and stood close to her, his arm almost touching hers. She
silently cursed the goosebumps popping out on her bare arms, hoping Lucy
wouldn’t notice.
“Haven’t seen a
damn thing yet, Steve-o,” Lucy said. Giving him a sly smile, she continued,
“You know, we were just talking about you.”
C.A.’s
eyes grew larger as she looked at Lucy and tried to furtively shake her head.
“Yep,
I was just saying to C.A. here that it was time we ran you out of town.”
Steven
chuckled. “Oh, really? Well, I might not be that easy to get rid of.”
“The
last guy who owned that shop you bought went out of business in six months. He
couldn’t compete.”
“Ah,
well. He was probably a hack, an amateur. You’ve got some real competition this
time around, Lucy.” Steven looked right into C.A.’s eyes as he finished his
sentence. “I plan to stay in Shrewsbury a good long time.” He was so close that
she could see the creases around his eyes. He waggled his eyebrows at her and
headed towards the opposite side of the room.
Lucy
picked up a silver-plated mirror that was lying on the bottom shelf and held it
up in front of C.A., who turned back towards her friend and looked straight
into the mirror. Staring back at her was a pretty blue-eyed blond who usually
wore a slightly haughty expression, but now had a slack-jawed, gaping grin on
her face. “Oh, my God, you’re right.”
For
the rest of the afternoon C.A. did her best to ignore Steven and concentrate on
the task at hand, which was to sort through a huge collection of practically
everything that could be accumulated in a fifty-year marriage that hadn’t been
handed down or moved to the small rancher in town. There were pots and pans,
dishes, linens, blenders, toasters, records, stereos, curios, lunch boxes,
license plates, car parts, tools, board games. Whatever you could possibly have
bought in a lifetime was up for bid, and there was a dealer there with an
interest in each of them. There were those who specialized in vintage toys,
others who focused on china and silver, still more who only picked over the
tools.
Lucy and C.A.’s
shop, Miller’s Fine Antiques, held a little of everything. Their customers
tended to be tourists and interior decorators who were looking for authentic
and unusual items. Both women had a good-eye in general for quality and
marketability, but each had their own specialty as well.
Fabrics
were Lucy’s passion. She could spot a well-made 1950’s print tablecloth at a
hundred-yards even with two feet of cheap polyester drapes piled on top of it,
and an authentic Amish quilt might be buried at the bottom of an unpromising
looking Sears hope chest and she’d still sniff it out. It was her hand that
draped Miller’s in an enviable array of tablecloths, linens and bedding.
High-end
items like china and fine furniture were what caught C.A.’s attention. She
could pick up a plate and without turning it over tell you when it was made,
who manufactured it, approximately how many were produced and if it were worth
the cost and effort to bid on it. She knew a lot about a great many things,
like pottery, handmade furniture, crystal and silver, and she had learned it
all while working for her great-aunt Trudy at her shop in New York City.
Much
to her family’s dismay, C.A. had not gone on to college after high school.
Instead, the day after graduation she’d boarded a bus in Lancaster headed for
New York City. Once there, she went directly to SoHo where her great-aunt Trudy
had a small antiques shop that catered to New York’s interior designers. Trudy
had welcomed her grandniece into the business and over the next seven years had
taught her all she knew in hopes that C.A. would take over the shop one day.
When Trudy had died eight years ago, C.A. had done just that.
Trudy
had also willed a studio apartment in the East Village to C.A., making it easy
for her to stay on in New York if she’d wanted to, but C.A. had felt suddenly
alone in the swarming crowds of the city and decided to move back to her small
hometown in southern Pennsylvania, where a surprisingly lively antiques trade
had sprung up along Main Street. As soon as she moved back, C.A. had set about
converting the first floor of her late grandparents’ old Victorian home into an
antique shop. She moved above it in one of the two apartments she’d made on the
second and third floors. Her mother, Mattie, lived in the other.
Bringing
Lucy into the business had been a natural fit. Their friendship had begun in
kindergarten and had never wavered, even through C.A.’s years in New York. Lucy
was an enthusiastic partner in the little shop and happily dragged around her
growing brood - the current count was four -- to the auctions and sales.
C.A. had kept the
shop in SoHo as well, catering to a list of clients both she and her great-aunt
had been cultivating for years, many who eagerly came by appointment when she
was in the city to look at the best of the treasures C.A. and Lucy discovered
on their outings. And since the age of digital photography and the Internet,
C.A. could communicate efficiently with her clientele and instantly zap them
pictures of anything she came across that might be of interest to them. Her
career was lucrative and fulfilling. Her love life, on the other hand, was not
so satisfying.
Not
that she didn’t date and enjoy a casual relationship from time-to-time, but for
the most part, C.A. loved her work and was fulfilled by it. She’d given up
expecting to find the kind of relationship Lucy shared with her husband. She
enjoyed her shop, her friendships, and even in a perverse way, her hippie
mother who drove her half-crazy. Until Steven Shipley had opened his shop two
doors down from Miller’s Fine Antiques, she’d felt completely in control of her
life.
Now, she found herself in the midst of piles of junk
at W.L. Candy’s staring furtively over the top of a dustyleather-bound book like a lovesick teenager, hoping Steven wouldn’t turn around and catch her ogling him. Lucy caught her instead.
