Shadows at the Spring Show (3 page)

“I’m meeting with them later today,” Carole said. “But based on their reactions in the past, I’m not anticipating they’ll be able to do anything.”

“I’ll talk to the college’s ‘rent-a-cops.’ But they’re not law enforcement people. If there were a serious problem, the best they could do would be to call 911.” Maggie hoped the campus security force wouldn’t panic at the possibility of real trouble. They were more geared up to cope with students who’d had too much to drink, or who’d fallen asleep in the library and been locked in, than with any serious crime or violence.

“People who can keep an eye on things and call 911 would be a plus. I’m going to ask the police to patrol the gym area from the time the dealers start arriving until everyone has gone home.”

Maggie nodded. “They should be willing to do that. Have you any idea what kind of trouble is being threatened?”

“The note said ‘close down’ the show. I have no idea how.” Carole seemed calm, but her fists were clenched. “I’ve already arranged to get extra security for the agency offices themselves that weekend. Just in case. Most of the OWOC staff will be at the college, and there are papers at our offices that can’t be duplicated. Especially documentation from abroad. Any files destroyed might mean children who couldn’t come home. Or whose adoptions couldn’t be finalized.”

Maggie quickly reviewed all the possibilities. None of them made sense. This was a New Jersey suburb. A quiet community college hosting an antiques show to benefit an adoption agency.
Who would want to disrupt it? “I’d guess some crazy person is just hoping to make us nervous.”

“Believe me, I hope that’s all it is.”

But why? The question hung in the air, and Maggie couldn’t make it go away.

Chapter 3

Oliver’s First Meeting with the Artful Dodger.
Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith (1863–1935), originally done for
Scribner’s Magazine,
December 1911. From
Oliver Twist,
chapter VIII: “‘Hello, my covey! What’s the row?’ said this strange young gentleman to Oliver.” Smith studied with Thomas Eakins and Howard Pyle and was the best-known American woman illustrator in the early twentieth century. Although she never married or was a mother, she is remembered for her paintings and prints of children. 7.25 x 5.25 inches including printed border. Price: $40.

Maggie was glad Carole had told her about the threat. But that didn’t mean she was happy to know someone intended to disrupt the show in any way. Getting it organized had been enough of a problem.

She’d started by calling every promoter she knew for advice; then she’d contacted all the dealers she knew to ask them to add a show to their spring schedule. It hadn’t been easy. Most dealers knew six months to a year or more in advance which shows they would be doing. Many wouldn’t risk the time and money to do a new show. They’d rather take a chance on a show that had
been around for a while; that had an established base of customers. A new show could have a great location, wonderful dealers with exciting stock and strong advertising and still not pull in customers. Reputation and word of mouth sometimes took years to develop.

Maggie had tapped a lot of friendships and heartstrings. (“The show is to help children waiting for families!”) If the show wasn’t a success, facing those dealers wouldn’t be easy. And if the show was disrupted in any way . . . She didn’t even want to think about it.

There were exams and papers to grade at home. But how could she give students’ work the attention it deserved when her mind was on the show?

What would happen if someone was thinking of property damage? Some dealers would have their entire inventories in that show. Never mind the college’s reaction if its new Whitcomb Gymnasium was damaged in any way. Any kind of destructive act could not only mean antiques dealers losing their stock; it could mean Maggie losing her teaching job.

Maggie paused at the wheel of her faded blue van, unable to head home. She’d have to grade papers late into the night, but right now she needed to take her mind off whatever might or might not happen at the antiques show next week. There was nothing she could do about it now.

She wanted—no, she needed—to do something positive for herself.

A movie? A museum? A manicure? A long walk? A massage would be nice . . . but getting a last-minute appointment on a Saturday afternoon wouldn’t be easy. She tried to remember what she’d seen in the entertainment section of the paper the night before.

Yes! She turned the car southwest, toward Lambertville, a small New Jersey town across the Delaware River from New Hope, Pennsylvania. Lambertville was a center for antiques shops and malls, but Maggie headed for an elementary school
that was hosting a small paper show. Last night she’d ruled out going; it would take too much time, and she’d seen most of the paper dealers in the Northeast at the two days of shows in Allentown in April. But now she needed to take her mind off the antiques show she was running. Even if she didn’t find anything at the paper show, the distraction of checking out the booths there would help keep her calm.

Red and purple azaleas were blooming, and the last of the daffodils and the beginnings of iris and tulip blossoms brightened yards along the way. She passed farms where colts capered near their mothers and calves followed cows across meadows.

Perhaps three dozen vans or station wagons (no doubt dealers’ vehicles) were parked in a lot to the left of the school, and about twenty other cars were in the parking lot next to the entrance. Maggie paid her $3.50 to enter the cafeteria, now filled with rows of tables covered with all sorts of old paper and ephemera.

Paper shows were a world of their own. Antiquarian-book shows tended to be very serious, with high-priced merchandise. Antiques shows, although they might attract a few print or book dealers, featured furniture, glass, crystal, and all manner of household goods, often including vintage fashions and jewelry. Most print dealers did antiques shows; only a few did paper shows. Paper shows were buying grounds for print dealers.

Maggie walked slowly up the first aisle. The majority of paper dealers were men, and they made few attempts to dress up their booths in any way. Magazines, postcards, advertisements, books, instruction brochures, fruit-crate labels were all displayed (or piled) on cafeteria tables. Some dealers had brought wire “walls” on which to hang their merchandise, or folding bookcases to display books, but few had bothered with the niceties required at antiques shows—such as covering the tables with floor-length drapes. A paper show looked to the uninitiated like a flea market. To the collectors and dealers who shopped there, it was an adventure. You never knew what you might find on those cluttered tables.

Maggie passed five postcard dealers displaying their wares in long, low, marked boxes (“New Jersey Towns A–M,” “Halloween,” “Santa Claus,” “Automobiles”). Postcards weren’t of interest to her, but several people seated in front of the tables of postcards were intensely going through those boxes. They might be looking for cards picturing specific places, or printed by specific manufacturers, or on specific subjects. Postcards were collectibles many people could afford, and they offered an almost unending selection of variables to specialize in.

The next booth belonged to antiquarian-book dealer Joe Cousins. “Joe! How are you?” Maggie said. “What are you doing here? I hadn’t seen you in a year, and then I saw you at Allentown, and here you are again! I’m looking forward to seeing you at the OWOC show next week.”

“Hi, Maggie.” Joe grinned as he pushed a shock of thick brown hair back from his forehead. A year ago he’d inherited a more diverse art and antiques business, but after a few forays into the world of Art Deco and furniture he’d sold off the new business and was back to concentrating on the books he loved. Although now he could choose between staying at his home in Connecticut or his loft in New York City, his increased financial assets hadn’t changed his appearance. Today he was wearing his usual slightly baggy corduroy pants and a shirt that could have used ironing. “Don’t think I have anything you’d be interested in. You cleaned me out in Allentown.”

“It’s good to see you anyway.”

“This is a new show, so I thought I’d give it a try. Two new shows in New Jersey in two weeks is a little difficult. But”—Joe’s voice lowered—“I have a new friend, who lives out here. And he gets tired of driving to Connecticut or New York to see me.”

“Congratulations,” said Maggie. “And I’m really glad you’re doing the OWOC show. You’ll be the only antiquarian-book dealer there. Although I can’t promise dealers won’t bring books to decorate their booths.” Joe was one of the few book dealers who occasionally did antiques shows. He had a great
inventory of both nineteenth-century leather-bound sets and twentieth-century first editions.

“That’s never a problem,” said Joe as he stepped aside to let a young man in jeans enter his booth. “By the way, I’m cleaning out an estate library Monday and Tuesday. If I see anything you might be interested in, I’ll bring it to the OWOC show.”

“Wonderful,” said Maggie. “See you on Friday for setup!”

Joe knew exactly what sort of eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century natural history books Maggie was looking for: breakers, whose bindings were broken, which decreased or eliminated their value to a book dealer or collector, but which contained hand-colored natural history prints. Since the books were already imperfect, removing the plates could be done without guilt.

Maggie browsed through two other booths of books, but both collections were too modern for her business. She was looking for seventeenth-, eighteenth-, or nineteenth-century engravings or lithographs. Definitely not the photographs or pictures in mid-twentieth-century books.

“Have you any automobile repair guides from the 1930s?” she heard a young woman ask. Someone else was looking for Pennsylvania road maps from the early twentieth century. There were people who collected high school yearbooks or
Playboy
magazines or the cards that were packaged with single packs of cigarettes in the early twentieth century. Maggie paused at a booth piled high with comic books. She remembered reading
Archie
at a friend’s house the summer after sixth grade.

She was halfway through the small show. It had been fun to see Joe, but so far she hadn’t found anything for Shadows, her antique-print business.
Shadows
because old prints were shadows of the past that let us see the shape of the world as it once was.

Another postcard dealer. A poster dealer. Maggie paused again. She liked some posters, especially World War I recruitment posters, and the travel posters used by transatlantic steamship lines in the 1930s. But posters were very different from prints, and she didn’t know enough to invest in them. Just
enough to know their prices were high, and they took up so much space in her booth that they crowded out the prints she did know well, and that her customers looked for.

If she didn’t find anything today to add to her inventory, that was all right. It happened. But if you didn’t look, you wouldn’t know.

The next booth was full of children’s books, from early-nineteenth-century primers with woodblock engravings to Golden Books and twentieth-century first editions of children’s classics like
Charlotte’s Web
and
The Dark Is Rising.
There were even copies of the UK editions of the Harry Potter books, with the different covers for adult and child readers. Paper shows specialized in “old paper,” but the definition of
old
was increasingly flexible, and first-edition Harry Potter books were certainly collectible.

There was only one more booth, in the corner, filled with twentieth-century magazines. Cartons of
Life
and
Saturday Evening Post
issues and stacks of
National Geographic, Time, Good Housekeeping, Redbook,
and
Sports Illustrated.

There were a few magazines she looked for. December
National Geographics
in the 1940s had ads for Coca-Cola on the back covers that featured the classic Santa Claus that the Coca-Cola Company now reproduced as cards, toys, and prints. Maggie included a few in her portfolio of Christmas prints.

Twentieth-century ads weren’t exactly in the same category as eighteenth-century engravings. But they were collectibles for some people. Ads featuring dogs and cats, from White-Cat cigar labels (1890–1910) to the dog on a Ken-L Ration lithographed tin door push (1932), were hot sellers.

She sorted through the
Good Housekeepings
from the 1920s and found two that interested her. Both had covers of children by illustrator Jessie Willcox Smith. The address label on one cover had torn the picture slightly, but the other was in excellent condition. “How much to a dealer?” Maggie asked.

“Twelve . . . oh, you can have it for ten dollars,” said the
dealer, an elderly man whose clothes were immaculate despite the dust on some of his inventory.

“Okay,” said Maggie, handing him a $10 bill. Not exactly a treasure, but she could mat the cover, complete with the
Good Housekeeping
logo, and price it at $40. Although she preferred earlier prints, people loved Jessie Willcox Smith illustrations, and some collected her
Good Housekeeping
covers. They weren’t seventeenth-century astronomy engravings, but they might sell faster.