Finders Keepers (4 page)

“We’ve got fifteen books here, folks,” the auctioneer announced. “Maybe a first edition or two, you never know. Looks like
Moby Dick.
An old family Bible.
Withering Heights.”

As the bidding began, Zachary stifled a chuckle at the auctioneer’s butchering of the classic title. Elizabeth offered ten dollars. The price quickly rose to twelve, fifteen, twenty.

“Twenty-five,” Zachary said loudly when the auctioneer was ready to call a sale.

“All right, I’ve got twenty-five. Do I hear thirty?”

Elizabeth lifted her hand. Zachary raised the price to thirty-five. She turned and scanned the crowd for her rival as she bid forty dollars on the lot of old books.

“Fifty,” Zachary called.

At the sight of him, her cheeks flushed in fury. Eyes fairly spitting blue fire, she raised it to fifty-five. Enjoying the battle, he upped it to sixty. Sixty-five. Seventy. Nostrils flaring, she set her hands on her hips and called out seventy-five.

Zachary acknowledged her victory with a slight nod. Fuming, she stalked over to the cashier and paid for her purchase as the old man began gathering up the books.

“Let me help you with that,” Zachary said. “I understand you’ve got a bad back.”

Boompah’s sparse eyebrows lifted. “Ach, you better not to tangle with Elizabeth. She is a fighter, that one. You will lose the battle.”

“Will I, now?” He picked up a stack of books that included the old Bible. “I’m a pretty tough competitor myself.”

“But you are not yet fighting Elizabeth.”

“I believe I am.” He faced his opponent as she pushed between two bystanders. “Good morning again, Miss Hayes. I thought I’d help you get your purchases home.”

“I don’t need your help,” she said through clenched teeth.

“It’s no problem.” He started toward the two-story brick shop. “I’m not busy anyway. Might as well do what I can.”

“You’ve done enough. If you wanted the books, why didn’t you just take them yesterday when you had the whole house to yourself?”

Her breathing sounded labored as she crossed the grass behind him. “This was more fun,” he replied. “I’ve never bid on anything except design jobs. Perhaps if you had let me join you for coffee—”

“We had tea.”

Balancing the stack of books against her hip, she fumbled her keys from the pocket of her skirt and opened the shop door. A sweet musty scent, mingled with the fragrance of wax candles, filled the large front room. As Zachary’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he made out the shapes of cupboards, tables, and rocking chairs. He set her books on a glass-topped counter and studied the room while Elizabeth worked her way around, switching on old lamps with fringed shades or painted glass globes. His first impression echoed Phil Fox’s sentiment. Ratty-looking junk. Who would pay good money for this?

“Excuse me, but I’m going to put on some tea,” she said, clearly dismissing him. “Thanks for your help.”

“I go now too, Elizabeth,” Boompah called after her. “Better open the market before Mrs. McCann comes to do her shopping.”

“See you later, Boompah!” Her voice held a light, friendly note.

“Mrs. McCann is the librarian,” the older man confided to Zachary as he settled his hat on his head. “With Mrs. McCann, you don’t want to be late for nothing. If you think an overdue book makes her mad, you ought to see her when she can’t buy her groceries!”

The door closed with the ring of little brass bells, and Zachary leaned against the counter, his arms crossed. So this was the town where he’d cast his lot. A musty antiques shop. A corner market. A library. Not bad. Maybe he’d even feel like part of the neighborhood one day. The idea appealed to him.

Now that he could see a little better in the dim light, he realized Elizabeth had arranged the shop into casual groupings of related items. One corner held a huge wooden cabinet filled with matched sets of old china. A table nearby had been laid out as if for dinner, with a creamy white cloth, heavy silverware, and dishes printed in a deep red pattern. Another area resembled a kitchen, with colorful tin cans stacked on white cabinets, fruit-printed dish towels hung up for display, and collections of green-handled implements. A bedroom area featured a large carved headboard, more linens, stacks of lamp shades, baskets filled with sachets, and piles of pillows.

“I like this place,” he said as Elizabeth entered from the back.

“Holy moly, you nearly scared me to death.” She set a teapot on the nearest table and let out a deep breath. “What are you still doing here?”

“I’m shopping.”

She rolled her eyes. “See anything you can’t live without?”

He looked into her appealing face and almost gave an answer he knew he’d regret. Of course he could live without a woman. This woman, in particular, had no use for him whatsoever. So why
was
he hanging around?

“Perhaps some books?” she said. “I’ve expanded my inventory, but they won’t be cheap.”

“Tea.” He straightened and lifted a thin porcelain cup from the counter. “I’m not a man who likes to miss his morning tea.”

“Oh, please.” She picked up the teapot and carried it to a small table set with a bowl of sugar cubes, silver tongs, a warming plate, and a collection of flowered cups. “The cup you’re holding is for sale. Twenty-five dollars, Mr. Chalmers. If you’d prefer, you can use one of these that I keep for my customers.”

“No, I’m attached to this particular cup. I simply must have it.” He held it against his cheek. “It’s me, don’t you think?”

She fought a grin. “Then get over here and let me dust it before I pour your tea.” He obeyed, enjoying the sight of her slender fingers on the soft white cloth. “Why aren’t you at the auction? Or are you just interested in your bottom line?”

“I’m more interested in why you find me so unpleasant.”

She looked up. “You don’t care a bit about Grace.”

“I didn’t know Grace.”

“You’re selling off all her things.”

“I don’t need her things. I have an apartment full of things.”

“And you’re going to tear down her home.”

“I’ll be lucky to get a bulldozer here before it falls down.”

“That is bunk! Grace kept the house in the best shape she could manage.” She poured, splashing hot droplets of tea on his hand. “I know Bud Huff went over there and fixed the roof for her two or three times. He and his father, Al, were always ready to help when she had a plumbing problem. There’s no air-conditioning, but Grace grew up in a time when a lady relied on her fans. Besides, there’s a nice breeze from the river almost every day.”

“And there are termites in the first-floor woodwork.”

“So exterminate them.”

“Cracked windowpanes.”

“Replace them.”

“A leaky basement.”

“Seal it.”

“Do you think I’m made of money?”

“You will be after your little auction today.” She crossed her arms and eyed him evenly. “You said you’re an architect. Preserve the house.”

“What for? I don’t need a drafty old house. I need new offices. I want a place to settle down and make my living. When I heard I’d been left this estate, I realized this was my answer.”

“Sell me the house, Mr. Chalmers.”

“What?”

“Sell the mansion to me. I’ll fix it up.” She turned and began rearranging a display of cut glass, but he had heard the telltale tremor in her voice. “I’ll set up my shop downstairs. Nick and I can live upstairs. Name your price.”

“You couldn’t afford it, and I’m not selling.”

“How do you know what I can and can’t afford?” She whirled on him. “You know nothing about me. You know nothing about this town. You think you can just come in here and tear down the cornerstone of Ambleside. Well, I’ve got news for you, buster. Around here we don’t destroy the old just to make way for the new. We value our heritage.”

“Chalmers House is
my
heritage.”

“This was your heritage.” She picked up the old Bible and thrust it at him. “These pages are a record of Grace Chalmers’s life. The words meant something to her. If you’d cared at all, you could have saved this Bible. You could have read her notes and learned about who she was and how she was a part of you. Grace gave you her house. She gave you every piece of furniture, every picture, every doily she’d ever crocheted. And you put it all on the auction block. So don’t talk to me about heritage. Your heritage is heading off to antique shops and garage sales all over the United States right now. If you tear down Chalmers House, you might as well be bulldozing Grace’s whole life.”

She slammed the Bible on the counter, grabbed a wad of tissues, and headed for the back room. Zachary stared after her. All he’d ever intended was to make his personal dreams come true—and he was grateful to this unknown aunt for making that happen. Now it appeared he was publicly destroying the very foundation of a town.

Or maybe Elizabeth Hayes had a screw loose. She certainly was passionate about the whole thing. He set his cup on the counter—the tea untasted. So much for a little harmless flirtation. This was obviously not the time or the place.

And Elizabeth Hayes was not the woman for him.

“What color are my eyes, Mommy?” Nick asked as he sat with his mother on the porch swing, watching the sunset pinken the bluffs that lined the Missouri River. “Magunnery says they’re green.”

“Montgomery is right.” Elizabeth leaned her cheek against her son’s warm head. “You have green eyes and shiny black hair.”

“But you have blue eyes and brown hair. Mrs. Henderson said we get our eyes and our hair color from our parents, so I think we’re going to have to find us a daddy.”

This leap of logic was so typical of Nick that Liz merely sighed and stroked his arm. She never fully understood the way his brain worked, and clearly his orphanage years had left the child with some interesting mental wiring. She’d found that if she listened hard, she could usually make sense of his thought processes.

“I need a daddy with green eyes and black hair,” Nick explained, “so I’ll look like my parent.”

“Well, sweetheart, the color of your eyes and hair came from the woman in Romania who carried you in her tummy until you were born. And you were shaped by God into my very special son. Most of you is just like me.”

He pondered, swinging his skinny legs that didn’t quite reach the floor. “I think that man who was at Grace’s house on Easter would make a good daddy for me. He has green eyes and black hair.”

Elizabeth reflected on Zachary Chalmers, whose auction had cleaned out the mansion a week before and who hadn’t been seen in Ambleside since. “That man was a stranger,” she declared, hoping this would brand him an undesirable.

“It doesn’t matter, Mommy. You see, I have to get a paper and draw a tree on it for my teacher. And then I’m supposed to write down my mommy and daddy, and then my grandma and grandpa, and then write the color of everybody’s eyes and hair. So if we could get that man to be our daddy, I could draw my tree the right way.”

Second-grade genetics studies.
Great,
Elizabeth thought,
just great.

“I’ll help you draw your family tree, Nick,” she said. “We’ll make it so it shows how special you are.”

Nick was still swinging his legs. “I liked that man we saw at Grace’s house. He was tall, and he talked really nice. He would be a good daddy for me.”

“Because he has green eyes? Nick, it takes much more than that to be a good parent. I’m your mommy because I love you, and I take care of you every day. God gave you to me.”

“But you could share me with a daddy. Magunnery has a daddy.”

“Montgomery’s mommy is married.”

“You could get married.”

“I could, but I haven’t found the right man.”

“What about the man at Grace’s house?”

Elizabeth let out a breath. Nick had a tendency to get stuck on an idea and not let it go. He would turn it one way and then another until he had worked it out in his mind. In the process, he could just about drive his mother up a wall.

“Elizabeth?” Boompah ambled around the corner of the house and waved at the pair on the porch swing. “Here are some little cakes for you to serve with your tea at the shop tomorrow. I put them in the cart where I keep the bent cans and the old bread for two days. Nobody bought. So, I was thinking of Elizabeth. Maybe my little Nikolai would like to eat some, too.”

Elizabeth and Nick got up and went to meet Boompah as he presented the bag of stale cakes with a little bow. In a personal quest to make up for Nick’s years of malnourishment, the old man regularly donated odds and ends from his grocery store—torn boxes of cereal, dented cans, day-old bread, slightly wilted vegetables.

“Thank you, Boompah,” she said, giving the old man’s leathery cheek a kiss. “You’re so sweet to think of us.”

“I better to tell you something,” he murmured, speaking low. “That man came back to town today. The nephew of Grace Chalmers. He rented an apartment here, do you know? Go down Walnut Street, turn right, left, right again, and there it is. Looking over the river. He bought a lot of groceries, let me tell you. I think he likes to cook on the barbecue grill—you know, steaks, chicken, hamburgers. He bought charcoal, that’s why I think I’m right about the barbecue.” Boompah winked and tapped his forehead.