Blanche Appleby always got what she wanted.
Well, nearly always. As owner of Seattle’s largest and most successful antique shop, All Things Old—”including me,” she often said—Blanche could afford anything she desired. This kept Jeff—and no telling how many other pickers—busy flushing out bargains, then reselling them to Blanche in order to keep her store’s inventory (and his own bank account) healthy.
Jeff always brought his finds to Blanche first. His reasons were purely mercenary: Blanche paid better than anyone else in the business.
She’d renovated an old warehouse down by the waterfront, customizing it into a three-story antique mecca. With the large parking lot, it took up a city block. The walls of the ground floor’s formidable main room stretched upward twenty-eight feet, and a massive oak staircase led to a gallery that bisected the room’s height. The Widow’s Walk, as Blanche had named the gallery, was edged all around with an elaborately scrolled wrought-iron railing. It showcased a fortune in antique porcelains produced by European factories such as Sevres, Meissen, Chantilly, Minton, and Vincennes.
The rest of the main floor was segmented into several large rooms, which housed everything from toys to swords, from cut glass to gas pumps, from furniture to books.
The basement was split in half. On one side was TLC (Tender Loving Care), for the do-it-yourselfers, with barrister bookcases in want of glass and chairs whose seats needed recaning. On the other side was George’s, named for Blanche’s late husband. George’s was jam-packed with antique tools, weathervanes, fishing gear, sports and railroad memorabilia, and architectural hardware. Although she showed no propensity toward discrimination of the sexes, Blanche Appleby assigned railroad china to George’s as well in order to entice those females who might not normally frequent such places.
Dominating the third floor was The Cabbage Rose, a tea room that offered a large luncheon menu including three varieties of quiche, several homemade desserts and, in answer to Seattle’s major obsession, more blends of coffee than any other establishment in the city.
When questioned about her penchant for naming the sections of her establishment, Blanche declared that she would call the bathrooms Fred and Ethel if she took a mind to. George and Blanche never had children.
Jeff rolled the ornate perambulator into the lobby. Around him, the wooden floors creaked and sighed under the steady current of people who had sought out Blanche Appleby’s coastal paragon. They, like so many others, had greeted the new millennium with a firm reach backward. When the population in general had looked in their garages on January first and found that hovercrafts hadn’t replaced their Oldsmobiles, they’d embraced the past as surely as they had anticipated the present.
He strolled past the large L-shaped counter where customers were stacked six deep, waiting to make their purchases as closing time neared. As he walked, his eyes darted quickly over the antiques, and he tried to identify what had been added and what had sold since his last visit. Not only was he always searching for items to add to his own collections, but also he liked to know what had been brought in by other pickers.
Blanche’s office was near the end of a long hallway. The door was open.
She was seated behind an immense French provincial desk, writing furiously in a ledger. Her fiery personality and bright red hair made her seem larger than she was. In fact she was only four feet eleven. Under the desk, her slippered feet were planted squarely upon a tapestry-covered footstool. She admitted to being seventy, but she neither looked it nor acted it.
He rapped the doorjamb lightly.
She looked up. “Jeffrey!” She closed the ledger with a thud. “What does my favorite treasure hunter have for me today?”
“Favorite? You mean I’m not your only picker?” Jeff tried for a hurt look, but he couldn’t wipe the grin from his face.
“I’ll give you this. You’re the only picker I know who doesn’t look like a picker.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Jeff retrieved the pram from the hallway and wheeled it into the office.
Blanche shot out of her chair. “I haven’t seen one of these in years!”
“I know you’re not old enough to have ridden in one like this.”
She wasn’t listening. “It’s more like a coach or a surrey than a pram. Watch this.” She worked some pulleys, and fringed side panels rolled up to give full view of the interior. Blanche caressed the tufted upholstery, scrutinized the weave of the wicker, tilted it to check underneath. She located a small brass identification plate. “Heywood-Wakefield. That puts it just before the turn of the twentieth century—the two companies were competitors before that. It’s an extraordinary piece, Jeffrey. Absolutely top of the line.” She turned to the bookcases directly behind her desk. From this reference library containing hundreds of volumes, she quickly chose a few books on wicker furniture, then sat at her desk and began leafing through pages.
While Blanche searched, Jeff thought about the food chain. So many factors came into play when dealing with antiques: the fickle public, regional demands, quality, condition. Today, Jeff had paid a hundred dollars for the carriage, and he could expect to get triple that from Blanche. She, in turn, would sell it for at least triple what she paid him, and the treasure would likely be snatched up and in its new home before the weekend was out.
Jeff took a slim brown leather-bound notebook from the breast pocket of his jacket. “There’s more, Blanche. You’re going to love me.”
“More than I do now? Impossible.” She motioned toward the chair opposite. “Have tea with me before you start traipsing back and forth. It’s been a day.”
He couldn’t disagree with her about that. He sat.
She flipped the intercom switch. “Trudy, would you have the kitchen add another setting to my tea tray? Jeffrey Talbot is going to join me.”
“Yes, Mrs. Appleby.”
Blanche located the carriage in a book that covered fifty years of wicker furniture. Jeff recognized the volume. He had the same one in his home library.
“I thought it would be in this one.” She looked up expectantly. “So, what else do you have for me?” She clapped her hands together twice, as if doing so would make all of it appear before her eyes.
Ceremoniously, he read to her from the list he’d compiled that afternoon. “There’s a Tiffany lamp, turn of the century, I think; tons of old silver; a box of stuff for George’s; and—you’re not going to believe this—a roomful of Napoleonic items: Dresden statuary, books—”
“My cabaret set?” She bolted from her seat.
He stared at her for a moment before he realized what he’d done. A sinking feeling overtook him. How could he have been so careless? No excuse came to him, and all he could figure was that the run-in with Hamilton had thrown him off his game more than he’d thought.
“Blanche, I’m sorry. No.”
She lowered herself back into the chair. She flipped the intercom switch again and asked Trudy what was taking so long with the tea. There was no response. She stood and paced the room.
Trudy’s voice came over the store’s loudspeaker, announcing that All Things Old would close in fifteen minutes and customers should make their way to the main counter with their purchases.
Blanche returned to her desk. After a few moments, she sat and gave Jeff a slight smile. “It’s my obsession, not yours. You’re just doing your job. And, Lord knows, I’ve exhausted enough leads over the years, searching for that tea set. I should be accustomed to disappointment.”
She gazed for a while at the small lacquered box that she kept on the corner of the desk, then opened it and removed from it two old photographs.
Jeff knew what they were. One was of Blanche’s mother, the other of the cabaret set Blanche had been searching for since she was a young woman. Jeff carried his own copy of the tea set’s photo in his wallet, along with a photocopy of the set’s letter of provenance.
“She died fifty-seven years ago today.”
“I’m so sorry, Blanche.”
A faint clatter could be heard from down the hall. Blanche propped the photos against the lacquer box as a small-framed girl in a blue calico dress shuffled in with a large silver tea service expertly balanced on her left shoulder. She bent her knees and slid the tray onto the credenza behind Blanche.
“Trudy, honey, I didn’t mean for you to do this.”
“I don’t mind.” Trudy poured the steaming liquid. “The Cabbage Rose is shorthanded today.”
The two women were complete opposites, and Jeff was still surprised at how well they seemed to get along. Trudy Blessing, Blanche’s personal secretary, was a quiet and unassuming young woman of indeterminable height. Jeff had never seen the girl stand up straight. She seemed perpetually stooped, as if pulling in to herself. Jeff couldn’t be sure whether this was out of some odd attempt at self-protection or whether it was simply a result of extreme shyness. She wore her mousy brown hair straight, with blunt bangs like one might find on a six-year-old. Her pale skin, unadorned by cosmetics, appeared even paler behind dark-rimmed glasses that looked like two saucers on her face.
In defense of her hiring choice, the older woman had said, “Put two spitfires under the same roof and somebody’s going to get burned.”
No chance of that here.
Trudy served the pair, then quietly left the room. “When are you leaving for Michigan?” Blanche asked.
Jeff said, “I fly out tomorrow morning.”
“They say the island will be stunning this year. The leaves are already turning, thanks to the heavy rains and early cold snaps.”
“Then I should feel right at home, shouldn’t I?”
Blanche chuckled without comment. One of many common bonds the two had was their love for Seattle’s rainy climate.
They drank in silence, neither of them touching the plates of sandwiches and scones that Trudy had placed on the table.
Jeff studied the woman who sat across from him, saw the tiredness in her face. The brief visit to her past had aged her, and her efforts to be sociable couldn’t hide it.
After she’d finished her tea, she carefully placed the old photographs back in the box. “It’s not so much that I miss her, although there’s that, too, of course. But I miss the memories, the things we shared during our brief time together. That tea set was the only thing she had to give me, and I’ll never forgive the man who sold it out of my hands.”
Jeff drank his tea and said nothing. He didn’t dare share the rumor with her. If it turned out to be false, she’d be devastated. And she’d already been hurt enough. But he had heard that the cabaret set—Blanche’s cabaret set—would be a last-minute addition to a special auction at the Annual Antiques Festival on Michigan’s Mackinac Island.
When Blanche had first told him of the set, she’d also told him that she trusted him to be fair regarding the price if he ever acquired it. He trusted her, as well. He could purchase the set with the assurance of recouping his money. He wasn’t concerned with making a hefty profit on this one—just enough to cover his expenses.
The important thing was to get Blanche’s cabaret set back for her. And he was going to do that, no matter what.