by Moody, Mary
His face reddened, and he looked irritated. “This rocker is a fine piece of American craftsmanship, even with its surface imperfections. It’s worth every cent I’m asking, and probably more,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Truly, I’m picking it up for a friend and this is over the limit she gave me.”
He thought about it. “I’m only here until tomorrow morning, and I’d hate to drag it back home. I can knock off fifty dollars.”
It was more than I should pay, but it was a fine-looking rocker. As I stood there looking at it, my appreciation grew. After all, I had only paid $35 for the other rocker. That would still only average out to $242 each. Not too much more than Al’s guidelines.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
The boys were chatting with Mr. Hogarth at the Patio when I arrived at two o’clock. They were enjoying their success. Coylie had found some railroad ephemera that pleased him, and TJ was happy with a small wooden dulcimer.
“I don’t think it’s antique,” he said. “But it’s older than I am, and I’m sure it’s handmade.”
“Is it a toy?” I asked. It was very small.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ll bet it was made by a father for his child. I just tuned it. Listen.”
His huge hands plucked the strings of the little instrument. He can play anything. The soft, sweet sounds of an old song came to life. What was that song? A fellow nearby held up his hand, pointed at TJ, dove into his wagon, came up with a fiddle, and joined in.
I couldn’t remember what the song was, but I loved the gentle sound. Mr. Hogarth began clapping his hands in time with the music, and soon people around us joined in, and then with a flourish the song ended. The crowd applauded. Someone said the song was “Red River Valley.” Of course!
This kind of impromptu happening was not unusual at Brimfield, but there had been fewer light communal moments this time around than there usually were. TJ and Coylie were delighted with the feeling that had suffused the event. Mr. Hogarth, too, had lightened up. He’d had some mood swings lately, was not his usual self.
Before we collected the furniture that I had waiting for me around the field, I took TJ to the tool dealer I had visited earlier. He and the dealer made instant friends of each other when TJ said that he was in the metal business, too, and the dealer caught on that he meant metal music.
“I almost called my scrap metal business Metallica, but my son’s an attorney, and he told me that could be troublesome,” the dealer said.
While we waited for TJ, Coylie told me that he’d been thinking about lace. “If it’s as strong as you say, it’s a perfect weapon.”
“Why so?”
“It’s silent, no big bang. No blood splash-back as with a gun, or especially with a knife. And best of all it’s easily available, and probably not traceable.”
I couldn’t come up with a way to trace the lace. Maybe it was the perfect weapon.
TJ finished up with the tool dealer, and he and Coylie got into the big rental truck and followed me to fields where I had furniture waiting. Then we drove to Al’s, where they made quick work of loading my stuff from the van and the barn into the rental truck.
With that job finished, Coylie took TJ into Al’s. I tidied up my almost empty van, and when I got to the kitchen they were already at the table tearing into Al’s treat for this afternoon, lemon squares. We visited, and I told Al that I had found another rocking chair for her, and that it was a little pricier than she had been looking for.
She shrugged. “It must be special,” she said.
Good. I nodded agreement, and before we could discuss it any further, I got up, announcing that we had to get TJ back on the road to the Cape. Our leaving created enough of a flurry that I never did mention exactly how much I had paid for the rocker.
Al packed lemon squares for both boys, and we all said good-bye to TJ at the end of her driveway. I drove Coylie back to his campsite. Not much going on there.
“Where are the campers who were here yesterday when Billy was here?” I asked.
Coylie pointed to two tents nearby. I called “Hello” in front of the tents, but there was no answer.
“Do you know their names?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“I’ll try to catch them early tomorrow,” I said.
15
I had an errand in Worcester. I avoided the Mass Pike in favor of a shortcut over Dead Horse Hill. The road crested, dipped, and crested again, unveiling, at every level, a woodsy New England that is fast disappearing. I coaxed the van up a series of climbs. Spring greens exploded out onto the road. Crystal pools mirrored the vegetation. Streams rushed by, bashing and bubbling against stony beds.
Dead Horse Hill still shelters a few small orchards, one-man farms, and picturesque woodlands—a patchwork bound together by mossy old stone walls.
The carton with the vase and hammer rested snugly on the passenger seat next to me. With a little luck the vase would revert back to “museum quality” before the day was over. I’d begun to feel uneasy about the hammer. I worried that I’d made a mistake buying the silly thing.
I crested the last hill and caught a fine view of the city below. When we’d lived in this area it was the first time that a place had provided me with a sense of contentment. Thinking about that made me feel good. I reached the last bump before the final steep grade and treated the van to a splendid plunge down the hill. It screamed “Whee!” in delight as we descended.
I drove toward Webster Square, which may have actually been a square at one time. It’s been a sprawling, busy neighborhood for as long as I’ve known it. The emissaries of franchise-land are more fully represented now than when Hamp and I settled in the area. The fast-food chains and gas stations have been joined by hardware outlets, lube joints, nail salons, convenience stores, and video emporiums.
None of this competition seems to have choked off the zeal of the local entrepreneurs, who still offer an innumerable variety of goods and services. The area is busy with cars, pedestrians, baby carriages, dogs, and bicycles. It teems with color and noise and movement. The three-deckers that are still abundant throughout the city are packed together tightly here, and the smattering of elegant but shabby old Victorians still give testimony to the fact that the neighborhood began with higher aspirations.
Hamp and I moved to Worcester the day after he finished graduate school. We, and our rapidly hatching flock, settled at first into a three-decker in the heart of Webster Square. It was low rent then and it’s low rent now. It was great fun.
I eased into Edgar-the-auto-body-guy’s driveway and parked the van as far out of the way as I could manage. The yard was busy with activity. Cars were being worked on in the mild spring sunshine, and more cars waited their turns. The garage doors were open across the front of the building. The hammering and clanging of the work blended nicely with the eruptions of music coming from several radios, each playing full blast and tuned to a different station, inside and outside of the building. The squawk of a police scanner clawed the air for its share of the melee.
There was a busy feeling at Edgar’s Auto Body Shop. Things were chugging right along for Edgar. But no Edgar in sight. I wondered if he’d seen me coming and ducked. I took the carton with the cloisonné vase and the hammer out of the van and headed for the small office in the corner of the building just as Edgar stepped out of the door.
“Hey, Loose Lady, how-ah-yuh?” he said and smiled, which is something he does with his whole face. Then he noticed the box I was carrying and his smile froze.
“Oh, no, Loose Lady, you ain’t gonna con me into another one of them antique projects.” It began as a statement, but ended as a question.
“Of course not, Edgar. I don’t do conning, but I do have this vase, and you did tell me yourself that you’re one of the few left who can do this sort of work. That you were trained when cars were made of steel, not plastic.”
“Aww, Loose Lady, that’s what I get for braggi
ng. I never shoulda done it,” he said. “Lookit the business I got here. Lookit the jobs I got waiting for me. I got work here. Real work. Respectable work. I ain’t no vase repair guy. Jeez, Loose . . .” His words hung there.
Edgar was sorry he had, long ago, while repairing one of my early fender benders, shown off his metalworking skill. He was proud of his work. He had done it to cheer me up. And it had. Immeasurably.
I didn’t learn how to drive until we moved to Worcester. Prior to that we lived in the cocoon provided by graduate school, and I didn’t mind trotting around for anything I needed, or waiting for Hamp to chauffeur me on my errands. That changed, of course, when we moved out into the real world, where I quickly learned how to drive well enough to acquire a driver’s license, but not well enough to stay out of trouble.
I engaged in a number of minor accidents, fender benders really. Some were my fault, but several took place when the car wasn’t even moving. I happened to be behind the wheel, though, so I was given credit for them. Hamp, at first sympathetic, began to be irritated by the situation.
Edgar took pity on me. He stopped replacing the old car’s parts with new ones, and began hammering out my various bumps and dents. That made it a little less expensive. He joked that I was one of his “preferred customers,” and assured me that I was lucky I didn’t drive a new plastic car. Edgar is a good person. I’m sympathetic that he feels a lesser man when he repairs a vase, but his attitude makes no sense to me.
“Just take a look at it,” I said, and pulled the cloisonné vase from its newspaper swaddling in the box, holding it up for him to see.
He looked away from the vase and contemplated the garage walls. He took a sidelong peek at the vase, tried to avoid another look, but couldn’t. He finally let his eyes rest on it.
“It’s that enamel stuff, huh?”
“Cloisonné.”
“Yeah, cloisonné,” he said, and he looked at me. “Why do you do this to me, Loose Lady?” He approached the vase but didn’t touch it. His eyes were drawn again to its lines. “Enamel over bronze, a little silver in there, too,” he mused. “Old bronze can be brittle, you know, and when that old brittle stuff busts, not even I can fix it.”
As he lifted the vase from my hand, he made a cooing sound. Calming the vase? Himself? With both hands, he turned it, caressing its surface with his palms. Warming it, weighing it, imprinting its design against his palms.
Then he nodded. He had made an agreement with himself. He held the vase by the neck with both hands and slid his thumbs down inside. I watched. He pressed his thumbs against the inside of the bronze. We stood, still as statues, me watching Edgar, he watching some distant place. Seconds passed quietly; then the vase made a hollow popping sound. We looked at it. Fixed. Edgar-the-auto-body-guy smiled.
He handed the vase back to me and he said, “There. Now don’t come back here again unless you need your car fixed. I don’t repair antiques, and someday I’m gonna break one-a them things. Then all hell will break loose, Loose Lady.”
“Edgar, it’s beautiful,” I said, and it was. “What do I owe you?”
“The same as always, Loose Lady: nothing for vases. But I’m warning you, if you break your car again, you had better bring it here to be fixed. Or I’m calling in my markers.” He was smiling again.
I wondered if he would accept my gift in the right frame of mind. Maybe it would antagonize him. If he didn’t like it I’d plead insanity.
“Edgar, I have something here for you. . . .”
I gave him the hammer.
“Here, Edgar, it’s a . . .”
“I know what it is. It’s a dolly.”
“. . . hammer of some sort.”
“It’s not a hammer, unless you see an anvil as a hammer. It’s a dolly. It’s beautiful, Lucy. This is handforged, you know.” He held it gently and looked at it.
“Yes, I know.” I didn’t know. But if he liked it, he might as well think that I was aware of something special about it.
“It’s beautiful,” he repeated. “Where did you get this?”
“At Brimfield, where I got the vase.”
“Brimfield? That’s where the guy up the street was murdered,” he said.
Not exactly up the street, but by neighborhood standards, Monty’s Contents was in the vicinity.
“Did you know him, Edgar?”
“Not really. I knew who he was. I seen him around, him and his helper. But I can’t say I knew him.”
“They come in here?”
“Uh-uh, not here. Last time I seen ’em was in the Viet restaurant across the avenue. I like their seventysevens.”
“Me too. They call them summer rolls where I live now.”
“Yut, well, just before the murder, I saw Monty giving the quiet guy a bad case of grief,” he said, nodding.
“Oh?”
“Yut, then when I heard about the murder, I goes, that was brewing the day I seen ’em.”
“What happened?”
“Well, the quiet guy just sat there, taking the dressingdown Monty was giving. But Monty wouldn’t quit; he just kept nagging. You couldn’t help but hear him. Everyone in the place heard him. He kept bitching about a table or something. He goes, you shoulda never done that. That’s the worst thing you coulda done, and on and on. Never do that again, he goes, unless I tell you it’s okay.”
“It was about a table? What about it? Anything else?”
“Nah, he was rankin’ on the guy, but it was the same thing all over again. He really trampled the guy. I felt like punching his lights out myself.”
“Was there any actual punching, Edgar?”
“Nah, like I said, the quiet guy just sat there, browbeaten.”
“And that was the day before the murder?”
“I think it was two days before. Yeah, two days. The whole neighborhood is talking about the murder, and that ain’t gonna change quick. His place was just broken into.”
“Monty’s Contents was broken into?”
Edgar, who didn’t know that appellation, explained that he had, less than an hour ago, heard his police scanner say that Warehouse Used Furniture had been B&E’d. “The police are probably still over there right now,” he said.
Wow.
I left Edgar’s. My plan had been to then zip over to Coney Island, but, with the slightest of detours, I drove by Monty’s Contents for a bit of a gawk. I didn’t intend to go into the place, only to notice if the police were still there. Approaching the building, I saw Matt’s BMW parked by the side door. Other than that, the lot was empty. No police cars, nor was Billy’s truck there.
I pulled up next to Matt’s car and went into the place. It turned out that Silent Billy was there. He must have been chauffeured by his attorney, Matt. I would have loved to have seen the meticulous Matt driving the scruffy Silent Billy anywhere, but I missed it. Billy nodded hello, and Matt said, “You missed the excitement, Lucy.”
16
“The burglar didn’t get what he came for,” Matt said. Billy stood nearby, nodding silently.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Billy says nothing is missing,” Matt said. He seemed to be taking his role as mouthpiece literally. “The police were here for a few minutes; they didn’t look for fingerprints. They thought we might have scared the perp away when we arrived.”
I turned to Billy. “I’m glad you’re free,” I said.
“He’s not exactly free,” Matt said. “The police would like this to be temporary. They’re working overtime to put him back inside.”
Bad news. I wondered if the police knew about the rift at the restaurant, but didn’t bring it up. “How did the perp get in?” I asked.
“The outside door was easy,” Matt said. “It has a simple lock. It was jimmied. Monty recently got concerned about the lock and bought a new one, as well as an alarm system, but he hadn’t had time to install it.”
“The inner doors were forced, too. The office door and the antique room door took more ef
fort,” he said.
Billy motioned for us to follow him through the huge dusty warehouse. Used furniture was lined up in long unbroken rows of tables with tables, sofas with sofas, lamps with lamps. No attempt at decor had been made. We passed the workshop and the antiques room; neither looked any different from usual. Next we passed the tiny room with a cot in it; then we were at Monty’s office.
What was left of the office door hung open. The door and the wooden frame were splintered. We looked into the tiny office. It was a sight to behold. Small and overcrowded, with papers and stuff everywhere. A large battered walnut desk and chair took up a lot of the space. A file cabinet and an old-fashioned Coke machine were squeezed tight to each other against the wall to the right of the desk.
Stacks of papers, miscellaneous objects, and boxes filled with oddments covered every space, including the floor. Billy tiptoed quickly around the stuff to the file cabinet. There, he picked up a shoe box that had been set on top of some magazines. He riffled through it and pulled out a lock and several components of an alarm system. He held the pieces out for me to examine.
Everything looked the way it should. I wondered if I was expected to tinker with the parts. I flicked the lock back and forth. It opened and closed just as it would if it were installed in a door. I wasn’t sure how to tinker with an alarm system, so I didn’t.
“Do you suppose it was the murderer, after the rest of Monty’s cash?” I asked.
“What do you mean ‘the rest’?” Matt asked.
“Well, whatever he took when he killed Monty probably didn’t satisfy him, so he came back here and—”
“The murderer didn’t take any money from Monty. He had a roll of bills in his pocket when they found his body, Lucy. It came to almost seven thousand dollars.”
How could that be? I was sure the motive had been robbery. “You mean he wasn’t robbed?” I said.
Matt cocked an eyebrow and stretched his mouth wide in a tight line. “Isn’t that what I just said?” He murmured impatiently.
Well, of course it was, but I was having a little trouble assimilating that information. I handed the lock and alarm assembly back to Billy. That made everything different. Very different. Monty had not been killed in a robbery that went bad.