“Tell me the game plan again,” BeBe said, slapping at a gnat.
I passed her my bottle of Avon Skin-So-Soft and she slathered the sickly sweet–smelling oil all over her body. We’d parked on the front lawn at Beaulieu and set up our folding chaise longues in the bed of the truck. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was free and I’d parked as close to the house as I could get. My brilliant idea about camping out had apparently been shared by at least two dozen other salegoers. There were real campers, trucks, vans, even a couple of pop-up tents, scattered all over the front lawn of the old house, despite signs everywhere that said No Trespassing.
I recognized most of the vans and trucks. They belonged to antique dealers and pickers from as far south as Jacksonville and as far north as Charlotte. The classified ad about the sale had run in the Savannah and Atlanta papers. “Magnificent Antebellum Plantation Estate Sale,” it had read. The ad took up four column inches and promised everything from advertising tins to zinc-topped tables. Positively mouthwatering.
There were even a few “amateurs” camping out that night. I pointed out a powder blue Eldorado parked in the shade of a huge old live oak.
“That’s the Einsteins,” I said.
“Really?” BeBe was impressed. “Like in the genius?”
“They pronounce it Ein-steen,” I said. “They run a jewelry store in Statesboro. They’re both in their seventies and they’re rabid collectors of cutglass. The newspaper ad didn’t say anything about glass, but if they’re here, they must have gotten the inside dope. They’re mean as cat dirt too. Bennie, the oldest one, has a walker. He’ll run right over you with it if you get in the way while he’s after a piece of Fostoria. And I’ve had Sammy, he’s the little one with the yellow mustache, snatch stuff right out of my hand before. So we’ll probably stay away from glass. Although I did see the most fabulous Fenton punch set—the punch bowl, the stand, twelve cups. Flawless. OK, if you can get to the punch bowl, do it. Last time I was here, it was on a sideboard in the dining room. Don’t just stand there and stare at it, scoop it all up and put it in one of the tote bags. There are some disposable diapers in there. Wrap ’em up in that. We can’t afford breakage. Count, to make sure somebody hasn’t snagged a couple of the cups. Ten cups is good, twelve cups makes it worth a couple hundred dollars more.”
Then I showed her the shiny silver half-ton van with the words L. HARGREAVES on the side.
“That’s Lewis Hargreaves. If you see him acting interested in something, be subtle, but try to grab it before he does. He’s the competition. And he knows what to look for.”
BeBe took out a cigarette and lit it. “Lewis. I know him. My God, Weezie. How do you know what’s what? How can you remember everything? You’re starting to intimidate me, and I don’t intimidate easily.”
“It’s like that television game,” I told her. “Supermarket Sweeps? You remember that one? Everybody stands at the starting line, they yell go, and the contestants run up and down the aisles grabbing stuff, hoping they’ll make it back to the checkout in the shortest time with the biggest cash register tape. All these people here are after the same stuff as us, probably. We just have to beat them to it. It’s kill or be killed.”
I pointed my paper cup of wine at a red truck parked not far from ours. “Except somebody like Nappy. He’s another specialist. Buys old records, paperback books, radios, clocks, and guns. Guy stuff. He picks for dealers up in Ohio and Indiana. Kind of weird-looking, because he doesn’t have a hair on his head. But he’s nice. He’ll sometimes pick up something at a sale that he knows I buy. I do the same for him.”
“OK,” BeBe said. She poured another glass of wine. It was her third. I was still sipping my first. “We stay away from radios or clocks.”
“Well,” I wavered. “I buy them if they’re cute. Like, if you see an old Bakelite radio, jump on it. For that matter, grab anything Bakelite. You know what it looks like, right? Sort of like old plastic, but with a glow to it? Usually it’s red, yellow, green, or amber. Or one of those cute little old alarm clocks with the metal clangers, or a traveling clock in a leather case. Nothing big. Only cute and little.”
“Cute and little,” she mumbled.
“Smalls, we call them,” I said. “Here’s what you’re looking for, BeBe: Anything blue-and-white porcelain. Miss Anna Ruby had a lot of that. Make sure it’s not chipped, unless it’s just marked rock-bottom, say a platter for ten dollars or under. English is best, American is OK, I don’t buy Japanese. Silver—but only sterling. Look on the bottom for the hallmark. Linens. There should be tons of linens. Look for damask tablecloth and napkin sets, printed luncheon cloths from the forties, linen sheets and pillowcases, bedspreads, anything in the Victorian white category. Paintings are great. The walls are covered with them. Get the old prints, the—”
“Stop!” she hollered, plugging her fingers in her ears. “Enough already. God, I thought this was supposed to be fun. You’re making it all so serious.”
“It is serious,” I said, pulling her hands away from her ears. “A sale like this comes along once a decade, if that. The Mullinaxes were true connoisseurs. They bought the finest of everything. And they never got rid of a single thing.”
“All right.” She sighed. “Smalls. Sterling silver. Oil paintings. I get the picture.”
“You can get furniture too,” I added. “I’ve got a roll of masking tape in your bag. I’ve written ‘Sold—Foley’ all over strips of it. When you see a piece you like, slap the tape right on the front. If the piece isn’t too big for you to move, try to take it to the cash-out person. Tell her you’re putting it in my pile. Try to find good old painted wood pieces, or oak or pine. Ignore the junky mahogany stuff from the forties. Concentrate on country kind of stuff. You know, like I have in my house.”
“Had in your house,” she said sleepily. “But I thought there was some cupboard you were after.”
“The Moses Weed. I’ll deal with the cupboard,” I said firmly.
“Now. About the attic and the basement,” I continued, “and the closets. Very important. You know how I am about vintage clothes. Make sure you check closets. In every room. Grab all the clothes you can—everything except seventies polyester. I know it’s in, but I don’t do disco. Old hats, shoes, and handbags are good too. Look for alligator. I can sell that all day long. And don’t forget to check dresser drawers. Vintage lingerie is wonderful.”
“Dead people’s panties? That’s yucky.” She yawned again. “Too tired. Tell me in the morning.”
I looked over and saw that she’d nodded off, the cup of wine still balanced on her chest. “That’s right,” I whispered. “Sleep. We’ve got to get up at five to be in line.”
“Weezie?” Her eyes fluttered open again. “You and Daniel. I sensed something there. Heat. Definite heat. Did you ever, sort of, date?”
It was hot, but I felt a chill creep up my spine. “Once, maybe. In high school. It was nothing, Babe. Go to sleep.”
She yawned. “Can’t believe you didn’t hang on to a hottie like that.” Then she was asleep.
I tried not to think of Daniel Stipanek. Tried not to remember that long ago summer day and the feel of Spanish moss on my back. I drank the last of the wine and drifted off to sleep myself.
A mosquito was droning around my face. I slapped at it, yawned, tried to roll over, and realized I had a pressing need to pee. Damn. Never should have had that second glass of wine. I looked at my watch. It was 2 A.M.
My lawn chair made a creaking noise as I sat up. Jethro heard me and sat up too. He let out a low-pitched whine.
“You too?” I whispered. He whined again.
Now what? I’d planned to make a run to McDonald’s in the morning, for coffee, a newspaper, and a pit stop. But I needed to go right now. In another couple hours, people would start lining up to get into the sale.
I hopped down from the truck bed, and Jethro followed. I stretched and yawned and led him away to a nearby tree where the lucky dog got to empty his bladder.
More people had arrived since I’d dozed off to sleep. There were maybe seventy or eighty vehicles parked in and around the lawn. I looked up at Beaulieu’s darkened windows. A bathroom, I thought. If I could just borrow a bathroom.
OK. I started out thinking about a bathroom. But soon I was thinking about that silent old house. And how in just a few hours, the place would be teeming with crazed antique dealers and collectors. What I needed was a little head start. A little sneak preview. I reached back into the truck, got my flashlight, and, on second thought, tucked the plastic sack that had held BeBe’s wine in the waist of my jeans.
The house was absolutely dark. A single naked lightbulb shone on the backside of the house, over what looked like the kitchen door. I tried the doorknob. Locked, of course. Pressed my face up against the glass in the door and shined the flashlight. I could see a night-light plugged into a wall socket near the kitchen counter. All the contents of the cabinets had been emptied onto the counters. I could see gorgeous old yellowware mixing bowls, stacks of Fiesta ware dishes, mugs and platters, blue spatter-ware dishpans and roasting pans and coffeepots. Everything I saw I would have bought. On top of the blue enamel 1920s Charm-Glow stove somebody had set up a big commercial coffeepot, along with a stack of foam cups and packages of creamer and sugar. Supplies for the people running the estate sale. Was somebody in the house, I wondered? Nobody I’d talked to seemed to know who would be running the sale. None of the local people who ran sales had been asked. In fact, most of them were like me, parked outside, dying to get in.
I walked around to the parlor side of the house and up the steps to the covered porch. The floor-to-ceiling windows were all closed and fastened securely, the drapes pulled tight. Obviously, whoever was running the sale didn’t intend to give any previews. I followed the porch around to the front of the house, stumbling now and then over a rocking chair or a stray garden tool. A quick flicker of my flashlight showed the porch had been packed with the kind of thing I usually find in garages at estate sales; yard tools, gardening equipment, old folding wooden chairs, galvanized tubs, wooden buckets of nails, dozens and dozens of flowerpots. One stack of flowerpots caught my eye. I bent down. They were pastel glazed, with playful patterns of tulips and bluebirds and sunflowers. I turned the top one over. Bingo. It was really the real McCoy. Pottery, that is. I sorted through the stack quickly. There were six McCoy flowerpots, two Roseville, all of them marked ten cents. Antique shops in Buckhead sold plain McCoy for thirty to fifty dollars apiece; Roseville like these would go for at least sixty dollars. Score one for Weezie.
But where to hide them? I looked around, saw a huge, overgrown boxwood at the edge of the porch. I took the stack of pots, lay down on my belly, and slid them underneath the shrub.
Now I really did have to pee. I did a kind of quickstep around to the porch on the other side of the house. The windows to the dining room were closed tight, drapes drawn. Double damn. This side of the house was in total darkness. A malevolent old magnolia towered over the porch; its topmost branches leaning up against and nearly covering the wall. I played the flashlight against the side of the house. A second-story window was nearly level with one of the branches. And it had been left open maybe six inches.
As a kid, magnolias had been my favorite climbing trees. The branches were thick and low and the foliage so dense you could never see a kid at the top of the tree throwing water balloons at kids riding by on their bikes.
I leaned down and got right in Jethro’s face. “Stay,” I said sternly. He yawned and lay down. I shoved my flashlight in the waistband at the back of my jeans, hitched a leg over the lowest branch, pulled myself up, and kept on going.
At ten feet in the air, the view of the branch nearest the window looked a lot thinner and scarier than it had from the ground. But the threat of wetting my pants—in public—and having to stay in said pants during the sale of the century kept me moving.
I shinnied out to the end of the limb, swung my left leg over, and leaned precariously in toward the wall of the house. Steadying myself on the branch with one hand, I reached out and pushed upward on the window. Stuck. I gritted my teeth, put both hands on the rotted window sash, and gave it a shove.
Slowly, it inched upward. When it was halfway open, I leaned my torso into the window and slithered through, tumbling in a heap onto the floor.
I was in! I snapped on my flashlight. I was in a small bedroom dominated by a massive carved four-poster bed heaped with stacks of old clothing and linens. Water-stained rose-trellised wallpaper covered the walls. But for the first time in at least twenty years I paid absolutely no attention to the stacks of junk piled nearly ceiling-high in the bedroom. Never mind the antiques. I needed to find a bathroom.
There were two doors in the room. One was narrow, painted white. I opened it, and a stack of hatboxes fell on my head. A closet. It was jammed with clothes. Faded cotton housedresses, drifts of netting and chiffon, silk and brocades. Reluctantly, I went to the other door. It led out into the hallway.
I didn’t dare turn on a light. I played the flashlight around the wide hall. Four more doors. Lock-kneed and cross-eyed with agony, I opened two doors, found two more bedrooms. On the third try I found the loo.
High-ceilinged with yellowed tiles, a clawfoot bathtub and yes!—an ancient, but apparently working, commode.
Afterward, I stood in the hallway, listening. Had anyone heard the groan of the cast-iron pipes, the gurgle of water? The old house was still except for the creaking of floorboards under my feet and faint, skittering noises in the walls. Roaches. This was Savannah, after all. Everybody has roaches, except my parents. Pest control is one of my father’s hobbies.
Well, I was in, wasn’t I? No alarms had sounded. No harm in checking around. I headed down the stairs, clinging fast to the handrail, which teetered at every touch.
At the bottom of the stairs I paused again, trying to get my bearings. The people organizing the sale had been busy. Long tables lined the walls of the hallway, heaped with a hundred years’ worth of bric-a-brac.
My hand came to rest on a mismatched pair of chunky Georgian silver candlesticks. One stick’s base was squared-off, the other round. They were tarnished and dented, and the tape that bound them together said ten dollars. It was too dark to see the hallmark, but they were still a steal. I took the plastic bag out of my hip pocket and stashed the candlesticks there. My hip brushed against the table and I grabbed to catch the bibelot I’d knocked over. Holding my flashlight on it, I saw it was a Staffordshire porcelain shepherdess grouping. Without thinking, I scooped it up and checked for a price sticker. It was marked twenty-five dollars. Not dirt cheap, but I knew I could turn it at half a dozen shops right here in town. I took a dish towel from a stack of linens and wrapped it around the shepherdess, adding it to my stash.
The bag was getting heavy. It was time to go. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a glint of metal amongst the linens. I bent down closer. A beautifully worked wooden box lay open on top of the linens. The box was fitted with faded purple velvet. Nested inside were two small, exquisitely inlaid pearl-handled revolvers.
I frowned. Firearms are not my specialty. There were too many knowledgeable gun dealers in south Georgia, and I knew too little about them to take a risk. But even my untrained eye could see that these were something special. I picked up the box for a closer look. A heavily chased silver plate adorned the lid. I squinted, but couldn’t read the worn engraving. It didn’t matter. From what little I could tell, these were probably Civil War presentation pistols. There was no price sticker. They went into the bag with the candlesticks and the china shepherdess.
Squaring my shoulders, I headed for the front parlor. I held my breath as the flashlight flickered over the far corner, the one where the cupboard had been.
It was there. I exhaled. The cupboard had been cleared of the china and its doors were flung wide. I tiptoed over, felt the satin-smooth patina of the wood. An index card was taped to the inside back. In block printing were the words “Elm corner cupboard, original to Beaulieu plantation. Signed, dated 1858, authenticated.” The next line on the card made me gasp. $15,000.
I snapped off the flashlight, stuffed it in my back pocket. The adrenaline rush was suddenly gone. The price of the Moses Weed cupboard was fair, but it might as well have been $150,000. I’d come to Beaulieu ready to gamble, but somebody had raised the table stakes way over my limit.
It was time to go. I felt limp with fatigue and disappointment. I’d lost my heart and my nerve. No more death-defying tree climbs for me. I’d just go out the back door and slink back to my truck.
But what to do with my booty? Now that the Weed cupboard was out of my grasp, I might as well make a go of the other treasures. I needed a place to hide the bag, someplace off-limits, where prying hands and eyes wouldn’t scoop them up before I came in at the legal starting time. Someplace as far away as possible from the card table near the front door where the checkout stand would surely be located.
Upstairs. There was a narrow closet in the bathroom. A linen closet, no doubt. I could hide the bag under the inevitable sheets and pillowcases. My knees wobbled as I climbed the stairs.
I went into the bathroom, shut the door, pressed the push-button light switch. I was too tired now for caution. Holding the bag with my left hand, I jerked at the closet door with my right. Stuck. Heat and moisture had made the wooden door swell and warp. I set the bag down on the tile floor, grasped the doorknob with both hands, and tugged. It gave a little but still wouldn’t open. I stood back a little, bent my knees, and pulled again.
The door flew open and I heard something. Not the skittering of renegade roaches. Something heavy, sliding onto the tile floor. I looked down. Caroline DeSantos looked up at me, her head crimped unnaturally to the side, legs stuck straight forward. She was still wearing the three-thousand-dollar Briaggi dress. Only now the cream silk bore a huge crimson blossom in the middle of her chest. Caroline DeSantos wouldn’t have been caught dead in red. Only now she was.