Bad Blood (8 page)

“I don’t think so, not if Chucky was right. This one was small, with lots of blond hair. And laughing, as though tearing around town on two wheels was funnier than anything.”

I kissed her skinny hand. She pulled it back, laughing. Then her face got serious. “Is Jimmy in trouble, hon?”

“I don’t know. But Brinkman’s looking for him, and the state troopers. Just to ask him some questions, for now. But I don’t want Jimmy to do anything stupid if Brinkman finds him.”

“Oh, lord. Sheriff Brinkman would love that, wouldn’t he?”

“Yeah, he would. Keep an eye out for him, will you, Ellie? I’ll see you later.”

I stepped out into the afternoon. Lighting a cigarette, I looked up and down the street. A yellow dog wandered, sniffing, along the sidewalk opposite. The stoplight at Main and Spring changed. No one was at it.

It was a big county. Finding a dark, heavy-set girl named Alice, if that was all I had to go on, could take weeks.

And there was another problem. I had a client. I’d taken Eve Colgate’s money to follow a trail that was already four days old and getting colder by the minute.

I reached in my pocket, found the list of antique shops I’d made a century ago, this morning at Antonelli’s. I looked at my watch. Two o’clock. If I was smart about it, I could get to the places I’d targeted and be back at Antonelli’s by six-thirty or seven. If the place was open—and if I knew Tony, as soon as MacGregor was through with him and MacGregor’s boys were through with his cellar, he’d be open—maybe Tony would talk to me.

If he wouldn’t, maybe the Navy would let Chuck Warren talk to me.

Either way, at least I’d get a drink.

6

ONE OF THE
antique shops on my list was in Schoharie, down Main Street from the Park View. A wooden sign in the shape of a sheep hung over the sidewalk. The proprietress, a thin, quick woman, was very nice, but as far as Eve Colgate’s silver, I came up dry. I gave her the number at Antonelli’s, asked her to call me if anything like what I’d described turned up, and left.

I decided to hit the farthest of the other shops first and then work my way back across the county. I U-turned in the middle of Main Street, went south where Main turns into 30 and 30 turns into a four-lane highway. Down here in the valley there was nothing dramatic about this road, but it was fast. Even where it was only two lanes, it had been widened and straightened, something they did to the old roads around here when they didn’t build new ones to bypass them entirely. Now 30 cut right through some of the farms that had looked so timeless and sure from the hills. Not a few farmers had retired to Florida on what the state had paid for the fields I was driving through. Asphalt was a cash crop, up here.

I turned off 30 onto a narrow road that lead up into the hills past Breakabeen. The shop I was headed for was a few miles outside town. Town was a post office, a bar, a grocery, a Mr. Softee, and a dozen houses strung out along a crossroads.

Just beyond the point where the last of the houses disappeared behind me there was a road leading up to the right—probably a driveway masquerading as a road, like mine. Faded script letters on an arrow-shaped sign told anyone who cared to know that The Antiques Barn was a half mile up.

The first hundred yards was respectable, but after that the road was badly kept, full of potholes and mud. The Acura had good suspension—the old ones did—but I wouldn’t cut a diamond in it, even on the highway. I was glad to get out of the car onto ground that wasn’t moving.

The Antiques Barn was a real barn, big, with flaking red paint and double square doors wide enough to drive a combine through. Those doors weren’t open. Neither was the person-sized door cut into one of them, but it gave when I turned the knob. As it opened, it rang a set of sleigh bells hung on the jamb.

I stepped over the high wooden threshold into a dusky, dank room where plates and pitchers, candlesticks and jewelry, walking canes, hats, boots, and thousands of books lay in piles on wooden furniture of every description. The piles had an air of having been undisturbed since time began. Each piece, including the furniture, bore a square ivory-colored tag with a number written on it in a spidery hand.

The room went on forever, disappearing into the dusk, and it seemed I was alone in it. “Hello!” I called into the aged air. Nothing happened. Maybe in here nothing ever happened. I called “Hello!” again, louder; then went back
to
the door and rattled it, ringing the sleigh bells again and again.

I stopped because I thought I heard a voice. I listened, ready to go back to my sleigh bells; but I was right. Faintly, from somewhere beyond a clutch of stuffed chairs in the center of the room, came words, and with the sound came movement, a figure shuffling toward me out of the primordial twilight.

“Yes, yes!” it muttered as it inched along, placing objects from a pile in its arms onto bureaus and bookcases like a glacier depositing rocks. “My, my!” The figure came very, very slowly to stand before me. It was the figure of a man, round for the most part. His age was unguessable, as was the actual color of his hair, now a thick dust gray.

He squinted up at me over dusty glasses that seemed to have been forgotten at the end of his nose. “You must learn to curb your impatience, young man. It will get you nowhere in life.”

“I’ve been there already,” I said. “I didn’t like it.”

He sniffed, “Well,” he said. “Well. An impatient young man like yourself hasn’t come here to browse. You’re looking for some particular item. Yes; you know precisely what you want. Not for yourself; a gift most likely, for someone who”—he peered at me intently—“who assuredly would rather have you at home by the fire than running all over hell-and-gone seeking out the perfect gift. But you won’t hear of it, so we’ll say no more about it. What was it you wanted?”

I stared at him. “Old silver,” I said. “Was that just for me, or can you do it all the time?”

“Some people,” he sighed. “Some people could benefit; but they won’t learn.”

He turned and moved off with the speed of an acorn becoming a mighty oak. I followed. Luckily we were only going around a glass-doored breakfront to an alcove where wooden shelves were piled high with platters, plates, and carving knives, teapots and baby spoons. I don’t think it took us more than an hour to get there.

“Here.” He made a round, inclusive gesture. “Here is old silver. But you, of course, had a particular piece in mind. What was it?”

“A teapot. I called earlier; I may have spoken to you.”

“I’ve spoken to no one on the telephone today, young man. Perhaps my wife . . .” He turned a full circle like the light in a lighthouse. “I don’t see her now, but she’s in the shop somewhere.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said hastily. If he went wandering off to find her it might be years before. I saw him again. “Is this all your silver?”

“You’ve looked at none of it yet, but you’re unsatisfied?”

I didn’t need to look at it. Everything was covered with a layer of dust so thick that the dust itself was probably on the National Register. Nothing had been put on these shelves in the last few days.

“Is this all your silver?” I asked again.

“Well,” he sighed, reached up onto the shelf. “As to teapots, this one, for example, is particularly fine.” He blew a cloud of dust off the graceful pot in his hands; it settled on my shoes like snow. He handed the pot to me. I took it,
turned
it, examined it. He was right; even tarnished as it was, it was beautiful. I handed it back.

“I do have something particular in mind.” I described Eve Colgate’s teapot, the chased floral pattern, the scroll handle. He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.

“Young man, I can’t help you. If you really are going to insist on a pot of that description, good luck to you; you will waste more time searching for it than the finding of it will be worth.” He looked at me sadly in the dim light.

“Well, thanks anyway,” I said. “You’ve been a great help.” I started to leave before I got any older.

“Wait,” he said from behind me as I rounded the breakfront and reached for the door handle. “Young man, come back and look at these. They’ve only just come in. There isn’t a teapot, but if the one you describe is to your taste, these may be also.”

I let go of the door handle, not without a pang of regret. I circumnavigated the breakfront again and found him kneeling in the dust, unwrapping newspaper from around a small silver tray. A pair of candlesticks, already unwrapped, stood on the floor beside him.

Bingo.

He smiled up at me. “You’re pleased. My, my.” He handed me the tray and clambered to his feet.

They were a set, the tray and the candlesticks, as extraordinary as Eve Colgate had said they were. The minutely detailed pattern of grapes and grape leaves that covered the tray was repeated on the candlesticks’ shafts.

“Where did you get these?” I asked.

He frowned. “Young man.” He shook his head. “If you
find
them beautiful, you mustn’t worry about provenance. They are silver, I assure you. A pedigree does not ensure that they will give you pleasure, only that someone else will be willing, someday, to give you cash.” He peered again. “And you do not strike me as a man to whom that matters very much.”

“Where did you get them?”

His round eyes blinked in his round face. “Some people . . .” he quoted himself sadly. “A young lady brought them. She was given them by her grandmother and doesn’t care for them. Though I must say she seemed a refined young lady; I was surprised at her taste, but—”

“When?” I interrupted.

“When? Saturday.”

Three days ago. “Did you know her?”

“Not I.”

“Can you describe her?”

“Oh.” His face took on a faraway look. “Oh, my, she was lovely. Petite; with golden hair, not straight and pale as straw the way they wear it now, but thick and golden, like summer sunlight. Red cheeks glowing from the cold; shining eyes. Standing at the threshold of womanhood, but still with a child’s eagerness and joy. Lovely.”

“And you believed her?”

“Believed her? In what way?”

“These things are stolen,” I told him.

“Stolen?” He looked at me as though I should be ashamed of myself. “Stolen? Oh, my, young man, you are—”

“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “These things are among a group of items stolen from a client of mine last
Friday
.” I handed him my card. He looked at it and then at me. He handed it back.

“Young man, you have been less than forthright with me.”

“You do your business your way, I do mine my way.”

His face took on a stern and schoolmasterly look. I went on, “Do you get much of your stock that way, total strangers bringing in pieces this valuable? Happens every day?”

“Of course not. What is there that happens every day? My stock, as you call it, comes to me from many sources. Much of it I go in search of. Some is brought here by acquaintances or strangers. Without being immodest, I may tell you that this shop is known for handling only items of the highest quality. A young lady with such valuable items to sell would naturally—” He broke off, his open mouth forming a perfect circle. “Young man! I hope you are not implying that I knowingly—”

“I don’t think I am.” I picked up the tray and the candlesticks. “I want these things back and I’ll pay for them—assuming the price is reasonable. But I want to know everything you remember about this girl. Did she bring you anything else?”

“No, just this set.” He pursed his lips. “Stolen . . . you’re sure? Yes, yes, of course you are; a young man like yourself is always sure. Really, I can’t tell you very much else about her. A dazzling smile, a promise of secrets. Enchanting. Many years ago, I would have been tempted to play the prince to her Rapunzel.”

“Was she alone?”

“She came in here alone, though I believe someone waited in the car for her.”

“What kind of car?”

“A truck, actually, I think, a blue truck,
the
kind that rides high on its wheels.”

“And she didn’t give you her name, tell you where she was from, where her grandmother lived?”

“No, no.” He shook his head. “Really, young man, such a charming child—”

“Never mind. If you remember anything else, or if she comes back, give me a call at this number, okay?” I wrote the number at Antonelli’s on my card and passed it back to him.

He looked at me as though it were I who had opened Pandora’s box and let evil loose on the world.

The price of the tray and candlestick set was very reasonable, although it was more cash than I had in my pocket. But it didn’t matter.

He took my American Express Card.

I started the car, swung it around, and headed back down the pockmarked road. The silver was carefully wrapped and in the trunk. I’d had on my gloves when I’d handled the pieces, so I had fair hopes of being able to lift a good set of prints from them, including the shop owner’s.

I had less hope that anything I found would be useful. The golden young lady’s prints wouldn’t be in anyone’s computer unless she had a criminal record, which seemed unlikely.

But she might have been working with someone who did.

I walked around that thought slowly in my mind, looking
at
it from all angles. The sun was thin above the overhanging pines and a breeze was coming up. I was driving with the window open, as usual; I could smell the dampness in the air. Maybe rain, maybe snow. The road surface modulated from potholes to asphalt and I shifted gears, accelerating as the road curved. I reached for the radio dial.

Suddenly I slammed on the brakes. The car rocked to a stop about six feet from a Chevy truck parked square across the road.

The truck was big, black, and empty. It filled the shadowed road ditch to ditch. I threw the Acura into reverse, but not in time. Two figures leapt out from the darkness under the trees. They had guns, one each. They came up even with my front windows and stopped, on either side of the car. The one on my side spoke loud and fast.

“Turn the car off!”

I turned the car off.