On the way home from Guale, I drove by the warehouse on Martin Luther King Boulevard, where they were going to have the Beaulieu estate sale in the morning.
I parked out front and stared at the place. For the first time I realized the old white brick building had once housed Cranman’s, my daddy’s favorite sporting goods store. My very first fishing pole had come from Cranman’s, as had the sleeping bag I took on my first Girl Scout camping trip.
The windows that had once showcased pup tents and racks of shotguns had long since been boarded up, and now the store entrance stood behind a sturdy chain-link fence.
Neon orange posters were attached every six feet along the length of the fence. “Important Estate Sale. Saturday—8 A.M.,” the signs said.
Important was an understatement, as far as I was concerned. Urgent was more like it. With the money I’d raised, I should have more than enough cash to buy the Moses Weed cupboard. If it was still there, and if the price hadn’t been hiked up.
When I got home to the carriage house, Tal’s flower arrangement was still on my doorstep. I picked it up and dropped it in his garbage can.
Jethro was thrilled to see me. I went in the kitchen and gave him a bowl of fresh water and a doggy treat, and I swear, he had a doggy orgasm right there on the kitchen floor. He followed me upstairs and lay down at the foot of my bed.
The Beaulieu sale was to start at eight. I packed my estate-sale kit: flashlight, measuring tape, magnifying glass, checkbook, and billfold. No thermos of coffee though. I was damned if my bladder would get me in trouble this time.
I set my alarm for 4 A.M. and dropped off to sleep, dreaming about dancing cupboards and singing chifforobes.
A cop, wearing a neon orange reflective safety vest, directed traffic around the old Cranman’s store. The curb in front of the building was lined with cars. I cursed but followed the cop’s directions and parked in a gas station parking lot a block from the store. I hoofed it back and joined a motley crew of about thirty people lounging or sitting against the chain-link fence in front of Cranman’s.
My buddy Nappy was in line four people ahead of me.
“Hey, Weezie,” he called, “you going in legally this time?”
I gave him a wan smile. The other people in line around me started whispering and looking at me funny. I sat down with my back against the fence and dozed off. Three hours later I woke up when people started jostling and talking. It was nearly seven-thirty. The line had grown—it stretched down Martin Luther King and around the corner beyond my sight. I stood up, stretched, and yawned.
Nappy caught my eye. “How long has it been like this?” I asked.
“Since about six. You missed the excitement. A dealer from Miami tried to pay somebody up in the front two hundred dollars for his place in line. The guys in back of him nearly lynched the guy.”
“I don’t need any more excitement,” I told Nappy.
“You got something in particular you’re looking for in there?” he asked. “I know you got a good look around the last time out.”
I bit my lip and motioned him closer. “Hold my place for a minute, will you?” he asked the woman behind of him.
He walked over to me. I put my lips to his ears. “There’s a pre–Civil War cupboard. Made at Beaulieu. I saw it last time, and it was marked fifteen thousand. If I could get it, I could set up my own antique shop.”
Nappy nodded knowingly. “You want me to tag it if I see it?”
“Absolutely,” I said, and I gave him a roll of my masking tape marked “Sold–Foley.” “If you grab it before I do, there’s a finder’s fee,” I told him.
“Good deal,” he said, winking.
As the line inched forward, a fight broke out in front of us. Normally Savannahians are too well mannered to brawl over an estate sale. But this was not a normal estate sale, and anyway there were people here from all over the East Coast. And for them, business was business.
A burly black man in a white T-shirt that said “SECURITY” threatened to relocate the instigators, and they quieted down. The security man proceeded on down the line handing out cardboard fans with numbers. Mine was number thirty-six.
I clutched it to my chest and said a little prayer and planned my strategy for finding the cupboard. Cranman’s had been closed for at least fifteen years, and I could no longer remember what it looked like or how it was laid out inside. All I could do was plan to move very fast through the store, looking for the cupboard’s tall profile.
At eight o’clock people started jostling forward. At eight-thirty I was at the door. At eight-forty-five I was inside. The place was jammed with stuff, all of it arranged in rows, on tables, and in glass cabinets.
I raced up and down the rows. I saw the Charm-Glow stove, the rows of McCoy flower pots, the Aubusson rugs, and the oriental rugs, which had been cleaned and unrolled for display. I ran up and down the vast old store, past stuff I would have drooled over any other day.
At 10 A.M. I called it quits. I fought my way to the checkout line, where a bank of women with calculators and credit card machines were ringing up people’s purchases.
“Who’s in charge?” I asked one of the young women.
She pointed toward the store’s old mezzanine level, the stairway to which was now roped off. “Up there. Her name’s Stephanie.”
I stepped over the rope and climbed the stairs. At the head of the stairs a woman stood with binoculars in one hand and a two-way radio in the other.
“Yes?” She didn’t look happy to see me.
“I’m looking for a cupboard,” I said. “I saw it when I visited Beaulieu for Anna Ruby Mullinax’s memorial service, and I know for a fact it was included in the original sale. But I’ve been all over the store, and it’s not here now.”
“If it was part of the estate, it should have been here,” she said, shrugging me off.
“It’s not here,” I said, “and I doubt somebody ahead of me bought it. It was listed last time at fifteen thousand. That’s not an impulse buy, and I was number thirty-six in line this morning.”
“Describe the cupboard,” she said, grabbing a typewritten inventory sheet.
“It’s a burled elm cupboard, nineteenth-century, with original glass. Made at Beaulieu. You’d have it listed as the Moses Weed cupboard,” I said. “Fifteen thousand,” I repeated. “I want to buy that cupboard.”
She scanned the sheet and shook her head. “No. Nothing like that.”
I lost my cool. “What’s your name?” I demanded.
“Stephanie Prevost. Why?”
“Because I want to remember it,” I said hotly. “This sale has been picked over. You’ve sold off the best stuff to a favored few dealers and I resent the hell out of it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice low.
“You do know,” I said. “I’ve already seen three different pieces that I know for a fact came out of Beaulieu for sale in antique shops in Bluffton. A cherry inlaid card table and two majolica oyster dishes. They were in the house before the last sale started. I saw them. But they’re gone now, and I know for a fact that you people sold them to Lewis Hargreaves. And now the Moses Weed cupboard is gone too. I don’t know who you are, lady, but I’m going outside now, and I’m going to tell every picker, every dealer I know, that you’ve already skimmed off the best stuff.”
“Who do you think you are?” she asked, her eyes blazing. “I’ve been getting this stuff ready for a month now. I personally did the inventory, and I can tell you unequivocally that nothing, and I repeat nothing, has been skimmed off. I’ve been fielding phone calls for weeks. I’ve personally chased dealers away from the house and the warehouse, because my sales start when advertised, where advertised. And I don’t preview.”
“Then how did Lewis Hargreaves get his hands on those pieces?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said grimly. “I was hired by the estate’s attorney, Gerry Blankenship, to run this sale after the last one was postponed. If you have any questions, you’ll have to ask him.”
“Damn straight, I will,” I said, turning to go.
She picked up her two-way radio again. “Security,” she barked, “there’s a woman up here on the mezzanine with me. I want her escorted off the premises.”