Curse of the Gypsy (38 page)

“But where
exactly
is the button?” The second voice was a mere whisper, too soft to tell if it was a man or woman, but the tone was urgent.

“Never you mind,” the first speaker said. “Do you think I’m gonna tell you?” There was a moment of hesitation, then, “Look, if I knew, I’d already freaking have it. It’s in there somewhere; we’ll figure that out once we get out of here. Just do as I say.”

The second person said something, but too quietly to catch.

“Yeah, well, too bad if you don’t trust me, you’re just gonna have to. We’re in this together, I told you, just you and me. Don’t attract attention. I don’t wanna tip anyone off that we know where the button is.” The voices faded.

Jaymie shook herself and focused. The little snippet of conversation, weird and out of place—the voices were silent now, so the speakers must have moved off toward the auction stage—brought her back to the reason she was there, the auction. She had driven her van over for Becca, who was acquiring stock for the business, but also to look around for herself and her own collection, vintage cookware and old cookbooks. She was bidding on a couple of lots of both, so she had better get going.

And yet … she stood, looking over the lawn from her sheltered, quiet spot on the long wood veranda on the back of the big house, shaded by vigorous trumpet vines that coiled up the supports and along the railing, overhanging the roof. The auctioneer was taking the podium, delivering his rules on decorum at the auction. Lesley Mackenzie of Mackenzie Auctions, a gentleman in his seventies, was recognizable as a “character,” and he prided himself on it. He wore a pinstripe suit with a string tie, a black bowler hat and handmade spats. When he walked, he did so with a cane, but it was pure affectation, for he was as vigorous as a thirty-year-old.

Was bidding on the box of vintage Pyrex cookware and the collection of old cookbooks worth facing Joel and Heidi? Joel, who had hurt her by leaving so suddenly? Heidi, who as a svelte twenty-seven-year-old was a few years younger and quite a few pounds lighter than Jaymie?

What hurt so much about their pairing, Jaymie supposed, was not knowing. Had she done something to make Joel fall out of love with her? Why hadn’t he talked to her before leaving? Still … it had been six months since Joel moved out of her home and directly into the arms and house of his new girlfriend, Heidi. It was past time that Jaymie moved on, too. She tilted her chin up and decided; Joel Anderson was
not
going to chase her away from this auction.

She walked along the porch to the steps, descended and strolled across the soft, thick grass in step with a tall, elegantly dressed woman who appeared out of her element at a farmhouse estate auction. But maybe the woman was after the same Royal Crown Derby china as Becca; Jaymie hoped not. Her sneakers soaked from the dew that was already beginning to dampen the grass, Jaymie squeaked on and joined the crowd in front of the auctioneer’s stage. Lesley finished his speech with a flourish of his cane, saying no one would be allowed to dally or delay, rudeness or bullying would not be tolerated, and his decision would be the final and binding one in any dispute. He played fair, and expected them to do so, too. It was a sizable crowd, some seated on chairs near the stage but most milling about behind and around the chairs.

As the sun descended behind the pines that lined the farm laneway, a fresh breeze rustled through the green spring leaves and blush-pink blossoms of the stately plum just behind the auctioneer’s trailer stage. The enormous tree was long past the age of bearing good fruit but still bloomed and grew vigorously, shedding a last shower of pastel petals as a vigorous breeze swayed the branches.

Lesley, as stalwart as the noble plum tree, began the bidding, using the assorted box lots to get the crowd focused and going. This was the time to get some stuff cheap, and Jaymie pushed through toward the front, picking a spot among those standing to the left of the stage. She glanced around and instantly caught sight of Joel, his arm around Heidi, standing on the other side of the seating area, but Jaymie took a deep breath and ignored him.

She was going to bid on a box of assorted cookbooks, and another box lot of vintage cookware that had some nice condition Pyrex glass refrigerator dishes, melamine dishes and a few random cooking tools, as well as some odds and ends. She and Becca, by previous arrangement, ignored each other. It was too easy to get distracted by chatting while the auction was going on, so they stood several yards apart, Becca waiting patiently for the lots she was interested in, referring to her notes and the photos on her digital camera.

Lesley had his youngest grandson, a boy of about eleven, hoist the box of cookbooks up. “Lookee here, now,” Lesley said. “A whole carton of cookbooks! Food’s the same no matter the century, so snap ’em up and get into the kitchen. And I’m not just talking to you ladies,” he finished, with a saucy wink.

He started the bidding at an optimistic ten dollars, but Jaymie held back, waiting and watching. No one bid. “C’mon, folks! Whatta we got here … let’s see.” He reached in and flipped through some of the cookbooks, rattling off titles, but the crowd was getting restless, so he restarted the bidding at a buck. Jaymie stuck up her hand. Someone else halfheartedly bid two, but when Jaymie went to three dollars the other person dropped out. She wrote her purchase down in her notebook, lot number and final bid.

Lesley, a longtime friend of one of Jaymie’s favorite neighbors, septuagenarian Trip Findley, winked at her. “Now there’s a catch, lads!” He pointed his auction gavel at her. “The girl’s pretty as a picture—blue eyes, brown hair up in a sweet ponytail, rounded in all the right places—and she can cook, too!” he crowed, as laughter rippled through the crowd.

Jaymie wanted to sink into the ground at Lesley’s ill-timed witticism, and even more so when she saw Joel smile and bend over to listen to Heidi, as she cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered something in his ear. Jaymie took a deep breath and once more turned away, ignoring them.

Several more lots of household items went for bargains, and finally the box of Pyrex dishes and cooking utensils came up. Jaymie crossed her fingers as the bidding started at five dollars. Soon, it was just her and another bidder still in it. She scanned the crowd as she bid, and when she saw her competitor was DeeDee Stubbs, another friend and neighbor from Queensville, she called out, “What d’you want in the box, Dee?” There must be one specific thing she was after, because DeeDee was no Pyrex collector.

The plump woman, the same age as Rebecca, peered through the crowd, shading her eyes from the slanting sunlight. “Jaymie! It’s you I’m bidding against? I only want the
Partridge Family
lunchbox!”

“Let me have the lot and I’ll gladly
give
you the lunchbox.”

“Done!” DeeDee called out, “I’m out of it, Les. Jaymie can have it.”

The old man had a look of mock severity on his face as he glared at Jaymie. “You’re cutting into profits, young lady! Not the done thing, and you know it.” Another ripple of laughter flowed through the crowd at his chiding.

Jaymie shrugged. “Sorry, Les! But nobody
else
wants it; I’m just speeding up your auction.” Another wave of laughter followed as she got the box for twenty dollars, and the auction moved on, fast-forwarding through several more lots.

The jewelry, art, antique furniture and anything more valuable from the estate dissolution was going to a big auction house in Detroit, but somehow the entire collection of Royal Crown Derby had been spared, and Becca successfully bid on it, spending a rather large sum to get it. Jaymie knew that her older sister would triple or quadruple her money on the Crown Derby set by breaking it up. It seemed to Jaymie that the family china of two generations ago should stay together, but Rebecca pointed out that nobody wanted it that way. Her buyers were replacing individual pieces that had been broken over the years, or were acquiring place settings or missing serving pieces to add to their own sets. It didn’t do to get sentimental about business.

The crystal lot came up, and then some silver plate, so Jaymie tuned out, melting back among some taller folks and watching. It was an oddly assorted crowd. She recognized some people: the local farmers there to bid on the farm equipment and antique tools; DeeDee, who attended to beef up her inventory of fifties, sixties and seventies kitsch and TV tie-in merchandise for her online selling; and a few more. Joel and Heidi bid on a vintage fur jacket and a steamer trunk, then drifted away.

But the strangers were fascinating, as always. There were young couples buying up the necessities of life: pots and pans, small appliances, and lots of cheap dishes. And there were those who were clearly there for just one item; the non-functioning grandfather clock, old paintings—smoke-stained and grimy, but potentially worth money if you had a good eye and a willingness to gamble—a set of six farm chairs. If she’d had room, Jaymie would have bought the sturdy farm chairs herself, but their Queensville house was fully furnished—overstuffed, actually. Despite Becca’s admonition, though, she
was
going to buy that gorgeous old Hoosier kitchen cabinet, so she’d stick around until its lot number came up.

But who, Jaymie idly wondered, were the two people talking about the mysterious and valuable button? She scanned the crowd. Was it someone she knew? Hard to tell just from a whisper. There were lots of folks she recognized; with DeeDee was her son, Arnie, and her brother Lyle’s latest girlfriend, Edith. Jewel Dandridge, owner of Jewel’s Junk, a funky little shop in Queensville, was scouting the auction, too. She had just bid on a lot of five boxes kindly described by Lesley as “unique, undervalued treasures”; in other words, broken junk. In her hands they would become weird and wonderful works of art. Bill Waterman, a local handyman, had bid and won a lot of obscure tools, to add to the collection he kept in his barn, on display. He was in the process, he’d told her the summer before, of writing a history of the handyman, and the vintage tools were to be photographed to illustrate his book. As a collector herself, Jaymie knew most of the other people in the village who were fellow collectors.

But there were many more at the auction she didn’t recognize. One fellow was notable because he did nothing but wander aimlessly through the crowd. The second time he squeezed past the same people a couple of them gave him that irritated look one does when impatient with someone, but not ready to confront them. He, however, appeared oblivious and kept wandering.

A middle-aged couple, wealthy-looking and faintly bored, stood watching the action. Jaymie had spotted them outside the Queensville Inn just that morning while she was shopping across the road at the Queensville Emporium in advance of Becca’s arrival. The dark-haired woman, elegantly dressed in a black suit with a black-and-white silk flower pin on the lapel and diamond earrings, was the one Jaymie had walked beside back toward the auction site when she’d left the porch. The couple whispered to each other but didn’t engage with anyone else in the crowd, keeping themselves separate in some miracle of aloofness. There was an actual personless circle around them, as if they had a commoner-shunning force field. The husband, a distinguished-looking silver-haired gentleman, bought a small painting, but if they bid on anything else, she didn’t catch it.

There was another fellow in the crowd she recognized by sight; he was staying next door to her, at Anna and Clive Jones’s bed-and-breakfast. He was handsome in an overly clean-cut way, perfectly groomed, almost beautiful, with dark collar-length hair and a chiseled jaw. He turned as she eyed him, caught her look and smiled. Jaymie, mortified that he had caught her staring, turned her gaze to the front, feeling the blush rise in her cheeks.

“Lot number one-sixty-eight,” Lesley intoned, looking down at his pad as his grandson held up the cardboard box, “is a mixed batch of sewing paraphernalia: rickrack, needles, bobbins, thread, a large jar of buttons, assorted other sewing oddments. Who numbered this junk lot to come up so late?” He gave his grandson a mock-severe look, then turned his gaze back to the crowd. “Who’ll give me five dollars?”

Buttons! Jaymie slewed her glance around. No one looked interested, but that didn’t indicate anything at an auction, where a poker face was an asset. “One,” she said, shooting her hand up, wondering if this was the lot that held the potentially valuable button. Someone else in the crowd bid two, she bid three, then several others joined the bidding. She tried to see her competition, but she was placed badly and could only see hands. She was curious enough, though, that she went to fifteen dollars, at which point she won the box and glanced around for disappointed faces. Nobody appeared disappointed or upset; most looked bored. If it was what Lesley said it was, she had overpaid. She added it to her notebook.

The sun was sinking, the shadows lengthening, and it was getting colder. A stiff, earth-scented breeze swept across the newly sown fields and tossed the stately pines that lined the long driveway. As the bidding continued, Jaymie rubbed her bare arms, glad that the crowd kept the breeze from making her even colder than she was. Becca bought a box of antique linens, and another of inexpensive china teacups and mismatched saucers, useful for the Tea with the Queen fund-raiser they would be helping with Sunday and Monday.

It was a long-standing tradition in Queensville. After church on Sunday, old Mrs. Bellwood, gowned in a black bombazine dress and jet jewelry, her gray hair done up in a bun and adorned with a lace-edged mantilla and a jeweled coronet, would majestically rustle over to Stowe House to preside over the birthday tea as Queen Victoria. She would repeat her performance on the Canadian holiday Monday, for the benefit of their visitors from Ontario, who would come across on the ferry or by water taxi for the day. If the weather was nasty, she would ride in a carriage provided by Mackenzie Auctions, and the tea would be held in the parlor of Stowe House, the oldest house in town, now owned by wealthy micro-systems inventor Daniel Collins. If the weather held, though, tea would be served on the lawn. Becca was in Queensville for that very reason: she supplied all the china.