by Moody, Mary
That was when I still thought there was no more to the antiques business than opening a little shop and giving it a cute name. I wanted one of those darling little shops, a sort of antique boutique. I had been a collector of antiques since childhood, but I soon learned that the business was a whole different ball game from collecting pretty things.
When the youngest of my brood entered high school, I opened my first shop, Olde Stuff. It was wonderful. I loved that shop. I thought of it as the fulfillment of a dream in my lifelong pursuit of antiques. But it was just the beginning.
Monty was an early caller. He admired my shop vigorously, which brought his good taste to my attention. He also welcomed me into the antiques trade, and though he may have had an ulterior motive, it was nice of him and made me feel good.
“I, myself, am in the junk trade,” he boomed.
“Junk trade?”
“Yes. Junk is the first level of the antiques business,” he said. “I, myself, find many beautiful objects that I bring to the auction houses and the antique shops. Yes, you people love to see me coming.”
Well, well, well. What an interesting point of view.
“I buy contents,” he said. “You got a cellar? I buy the contents. You got an attic? I buy the contents. You got a barn? I buy the contents.” He flung his arms around my splendidly crowded little shop. “I, myself, clean out your junk pile. The bitter with the sweet. I’ll even pay you to let me take it away.
“People love me,” he said with a slight bow of his head and shoulders. He said it often, and it always made me smile. But not everyone smiled at Monty’s diamond-in-the-rough candor. Some found him irritating, and others found him downright rude. That first day he explained in great detail how he purchased various contents, “and in tough times, I, myself, have even been known to buy out garage sales.”
His practice was then to sift through the contents for the treasures. After all, how did I think that all of those wonderful antiques were found in the first place? It was Monty, he himself, who found them, and sold them to the breathlessly waiting antiques dealers.
Ah! Monty was a picker. At the time I didn’t even realize that pickers existed. He was a good one. He knew who was selling what. He made it his business to bring exactly the right thing to the right dealer. Monty rarely missed a sale; he delivered the kind of thing that his customers enjoyed handling.
His day-to-day business occupied a small warehouse from which he sold the rest of the contents as used furniture. Though named Warehouse Used Furniture, it was known unofficially in the trade as Monty’s Contents.
The warehouse had two particularly interesting features. One was the little workshop in which the repair and restoration work went on, and the other was the room in which he stored antiques not yet passed on to dealers. The used furniture business was open only three days a week, but it was busy and looked to be thriving. The workshop and the antiques rooms were not open to the public; they were entered by invitation only, and Monty was surprisingly selective about invitations.
I came to understand that he had a system for choosing which dealers were to buy his wares. His system seemed, to me, more selective than his method for acquiring the antiques. I didn’t know the process, exactly, but I did know that when a chosen buyer failed to live up to Monty’s expectations, he was in for a long and complicated procedure before earning his way back.
The first few times that Monty visited my shop, I couldn’t wait to go home and report his pronouncements to Hamp and the kids. Hamp didn’t find my Monty stories as fascinating as I did, and the kids soon referred to me as being in the junk trade. So I curtailed the stories, but I was overjoyed when I met Natalie and we discovered that we both took great pleasure in knowing him.
Natalie and I came to view Monty as a stroke of luck. Our early dealings with him had met with his approval, and there was a big payoff for that approval. He took an interest in us, brought us special items, nurtured us. I suspect that my part in all this was to ride Natalie’s coattails. Monty had a soft spot for her. He’d been instrumental in redirecting her efforts toward more profitable ends. Natalie had understood and transformed her odd little business into the success it has become. Monty enjoyed Natalie’s good fortune, and basked in her rapt attention.
Now he was dead. Brimfield buzzed with the news. He was killed, I supposed, in a robbery. Monty carried a wad of cash with him that he flashed indiscriminately. I think he felt that it impressed people.
Cash is a useful tool. Buyers at Brimfield this week would be carrying large amounts. Sellers were more apt to sell at a discount, and sell quickly, when they knew that they would walk away with good old unreportable currency. I, and the rest of the antiques world, had often seen Monty pull a roll out of his pocket that he could hardly wrap his hand around.
I gently patted the wad I carried, and was reassured knowing that it was safe. Each morning at Brimfield, I start off with thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. I fold them and paper clip them together by fives so I can reach into my stash and remove as many, or as few, as I want, without fumbling. The stash, along with my credit card, my ATM card, and a few blank checks, is usually enough for anything I run into around the fields.
Occasionally I run into something requiring more cash than I have on hand, but usually I can produce enough earnest money to hold the deal down until I can come up with the balance. For years now banks have decked out vans and set up ATMs as portable branches; I use them infrequently. They’re never handy when I’m making a deal.
I drifted along, going through the motions of shopping, picking things up and putting things down, but I couldn’t concentrate, and my mind turned again to Monty. I left the field without a single purchase. I looked up and realized that I had been heading all the while toward the back of the field where his body had been found.
Silent Billy, Monty’s helper, stood at the edge of the activity. I watched him shift from one foot to the other. He drew his hands out of his pockets, chipped at the air, and then put them back in his pockets, where they found coins and stuff to jingle. He stepped forward and back, and then he rocked from side to side. Hands out again, he took off his cap. He ran his fingers across his hair and beard. I could hear the scratching sound his stiff fingers made against his stiff white hair.
Several varieties of policemen busied themselves at the scene, in addition to the town police. State cops, plainclothes cops, cops from nearby communities, and security company cops milled around. The earth, soft and damp in the spring, had been trampled. Tracks from a number of shoes and vehicles had pressed their patterns into it. Trampling the clues?
I moved toward Billy. He looked up and recognized me with a curt nod. What should I say? I’d known him for five years, maybe longer. The name Silent Billy is a slight exaggeration of the man. Almost anyone standing next to Monty for several years would appear to be silent, but in fact Billy really is as tight-lipped a man as you can find. He responds to questions, but he is a master of the one-word answer, and I never saw him initiate a conversation.
I walked over and asked if he was all right.
“All right,” he said, looking dazed. His voice, a gruff low rumble, always sounds as if he’s recovering from a cold. Whenever I hear him I fight the urge to clear my throat.
“What happened, Billy?”
“Murder,” he said.
“Do you know how it happened?” I said.
He looked at me. Always loaded with nervous energy, this morning he snapped with static. He leaned back on his heels, then rocked forward; his head bobbed as he looked over one side of the hill, then the other.
“Billy, I know Monty’s dead, murdered. Do you know what happened?”
“Don’t know,” he said.
It wasn’t a surprise. What did I expect?
Billy’s jaw moved, he looked at me—I thought he’d say something, but no words came. Nothing. Just silence.
That’s when a boy dressed as a policeman approached us, stood at attention, locked
his eyes into a space just over our heads, and announced that this was a crime scene, in case we hadn’t noticed the twenty-five or so policemen, the vehicles with flashing lights, and the yellow tape strung up as if another war were over.
Dismissed, and moving along as instructed, I turned, expecting Billy to drift along with me. The cop, growing into his role, took a breath and announced that Billy should come along with him for questioning.
Billy hesitated, looked over his shoulder at me, and said, “Help!” He looked afraid. The way I figured it, the guy doing the questioning would have more problems with the interview than Billy would. And then the cop amazed me. He put handcuffs on Billy. It took a minute for the idea to sink in that the cop was going to question Billy as a suspect, not as a person with information.
That made no sense. I knew in my gut that Silent Billy didn’t kill Monty, and I knew it without a doubt. Billy is a truly gentle soul who was far more than a Sherpa to Monty. He ran the workshop, refinished furniture, and made spectacular repairs. I watched their friendship deepen over time. Billy was the only helper Monty ever called his partner, and I truly felt that Monty had mellowed because of Billy’s ability to turn a blind eye to Monty’s irritating behavior.
4
Unnerved by this turn of events, I drifted by tents thronged with people but didn’t hunt for treasure; I couldn’t really think. The idea that Billy was accused of killing Monty was incomprehensible. My mind stuttered with a flood of information and contradictions. I walked along faster.
Billy joined Monty after we’d moved to the Cape. He went about his business, helping Monty and fixing furniture. Monty said Billy could fix anything made of wood, could bring it back to life.
But Monty complained about Billy’s judgment. He told me that Billy spent as much time and effort repairing the old cheap furniture that came under his hand as he did on the fine stuff.
“If I tell him to repair five items down at the warehouse, he’ll start with the one closest to where he’s standing, and he’ll spend as much time on a piece that will earn us five bucks as he will on one with a hundred-dollar profit.”
I thought about their relationship and continued along the fence until I approached the front gate. Monty’s criticism hadn’t seemed to bother Billy. At the gate, I parked Supercart, walked out to Route 20, and turned west. I moved along, increasing my speed until I was going at a pretty good clip. I don’t walk often enough, and after a while I began to enjoy it. It calmed me, made me feel better. I decided to walk the length of the marketplace along Route 20.
Billy usually came along when Monty delivered goodies to his customers across the Cape. He never said much after hello, but that was hardly noticeable since Monty filled our visits with stories, gossip, and news about what was happening in shops across New England. Billy once interrupted Monty to point to the pieces of a small Dunhill humidor stand that I’d acquired for a pittance because it was in extremely poor condition.
“Good stuff,” he said.
I laughed and agreed. “I’ve been fiddling with it for months. I’m not even sure that all of the pieces are there.”
Billy looked it over, turned to Monty, and said, “Can do.”
Monty told me that if I liked, Billy would fix it for a nominal bench fee. I have a little workspace in an alcove by the shop’s back door. While I cleared the workbench, Billy went out to the truck to get his tools. He returned with a long, heavy-looking metal box and an old black leather bag reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell doctor’s bag.
“Let’s see if Billy can work it out,” Monty said.
Billy worked something out that I still have trouble believing, even though I watched. In about twenty minutes Billy had the humidor back together. It was fine-looking. Its legs took it up to about three feet high, with a small drawer as well as a sealed cabinet. Each piece fit into the next perfectly.
As the wood came to life under his hand, Billy came to life, too. He even chatted a bit, explaining in his scratchy delivery what he was doing. There are people who can’t imagine that a man can have a relationship with wood, but watching Billy, anyone could see it. He took jars and rags out of his doctor’s bag, and he cleaned and polished the humidor, which finally looked like the masterpiece it was meant to be. But he wasn’t finished yet. He took a small pocketknife and made a tiny mark under a corner column.
“Mine,” he said, and dabbed over his mark with his special polish.
Monty and I applauded the work—it was beautiful—and Billy mentioned that he signs everything he works on.
“If he fixes it, he signs it,” Monty agreed.
“The used furniture, too?” I asked.
“It’s all used furniture to Billy,” Monty said.
I thanked Billy, and he looked pleased. Monty told me to pay Billy directly. But he didn’t leave it at that; he made one of his annoying little speeches advising me not to begin buying junky furniture for Billy to fix.
As if I would do that. At any rate, Monty went on a bit, telling me that if I wanted to have Billy fix anything, I had to go through Monty to make the arrangements. He turned it into one of his little jokes: I was not to take advantage of Billy; the only one who could take advantage of Billy was Monty himself. I thought about that day, remembering that both he and Billy stood smiling at me while Monty announced his silly rules.
I had walked a little over a mile to the end of the last field, so I turned around, and before long I became interested again in what was happening around me. Brimfield was buzzing with sound and movement, and full of treats for the eye.
Some Limoges dishes caught my eye. Pink flowers, lovely, no price tag. I can always sell Limoges, and pink flowers are the easiest to move. These were in fine shape. No chips or cracks, no scratches from an indifferent dishwasher, mechanical or human. There were eight small plates and one dinner-sized plate.
“How much for the dishes?” I asked, pointing. I didn’t refer to them as Limoges.
“They’re Limoges,” he said.
“Pretty,” I said, and drifted to the next table.
The dealer, sensing that I was losing interest, named his price.
“A little high for odd pieces,” I said.
“That’s a cake set.”
Surprised, I laughed out loud. “Good save,” I said, and it was good. Sets of anything have a higher value than odd pieces or singles. I’ve created sets on occasion myself. Depending on which pieces of China or porcelain have survived, they become a soup set, a sherbet set, a salad service.
Grinning, he said, “I’ve been toying with calling the ashtrays that are going for almost nothing wine coasters.”
I rolled my eyes and pointed to the Limoges. “Can you do any better than that?” I often ask.
He could, and I took them. It’s no trick to ask for a better deal. The trick is not to come on like gangbusters. He wrapped my Limoges in newspaper, and because I was without Supercart he gave me a plastic grocery bag, along with a witticism warning me not to swing the bag. I moved off toward Supercart. With a calmer mind, my thoughts returned to Silent Billy.
The shopping was therapeutic, but I was stumped for a way to help him. I knew he was incapable of killing anyone. I also knew that the police were unlikely to find my opinion that he didn’t any more valid than I found their opinion that he did.
Billy had asked for help, and I struggled to figure out a way to help him without getting into trouble myself. I’d promised Hamp I’d stay away from crime; let the police handle police business. It’s not a problem that comes up frequently, but I had, on occasion, helped a friend or two out of trouble. Minor scrapes. I’d been successful, too. Except for the time I got shot.
Prior to that Hamp had paid little attention to my forays into “helping people.” In an emotionally weakened condition, during my recovery, he’d extracted my promise. I’d caved. My pain and embarrassment at letting myself be shot had magnified the tiny kernel of truth to his claim that I’d drifted blindly into a foolhardy adventure.
It wasn’t that way. Not really.
But Billy had asked me for help. So I needed to figure out how, then get the right people involved, and then bow out. I was stumped. I have trouble talking to the police, because I usually see things a different way than they do.
I do know Matt Whitney, but I hesitated to use that connection. Matt is a customer of mine. He’s a big defense attorney, and a big customer, and a Big Man. I couldn’t ask him to help Silent Billy, but maybe I could ask his advice on how to get help for him. Otherwise, I didn’t know what to do next.
Matt is a hard guy to talk to. He’s impatient and somewhat curt, and conversation with him is a little like being cross-examined. Then, too, I had the feeling that he was unlikely to help anyone who couldn’t help him in return. I searched my mind for other options, but decided, by default, that I had to call Matt.
I hate to talk on the phone. I don’t like telephones. I don’t like being connected to another person by a device that’s smarter than I am. I’m uncomfortable when I can’t touch the person I’m talking to. And phones are like dogs, you know—they can tell when you don’t like them.
I realize I’m going against the grain here, and it has nothing to do with the mechanical aspect of telephones. It’s just the power that telephones have over people that bothers me, and now they even have power over other machines. My kids have tried to convince me to get a cell phone—for emergencies, they say. So far their emergency calls have been for me to run some errand they don’t have time for. A cell phone would only keep me on duty 24/7.
So where were these phones when I needed them? Brimfield was becoming more crowded by the minute, but I didn’t see a single soul with a phone, not even a stranger. I might have to ask to borrow one.
It’s hard to find a public phone lately. I walked along, and was relieved to find a phone-on-a-stick, one of two planted side by side along Route 20, convenient to the thundering compressors of the nearby food concessions. People were shrieking into both when I arrived. Trucks slowing to a crawl on the overburdened road added their rumble to the growing din. When I took my turn, I could hardly hear the dial tone over the noise. The man on the next phone was shouting something about a trapunto quilt.