by Lea Wait
Dinner, plus Diet Pepsi on the rocks.
If Al was right, then the police were looking at Rob Sloane and his son Jackson as suspects in Holly’s shooting. No one had mentioned a gun being found, so there couldn’t be direct evidence linking Rob’s gun to Holly’s wound. But it didn’t look good that her husband owned the same caliber gun she’d been shot with.
If they were still investigating suspects, the police must have ruled out other possibilities, like someone cleaning their gun across the street and shooting Holly accidentally.
It was Tuesday evening. The pizza was heating. She switched on the television; maybe somewhere there was good news.
“This just in.” The commentator interrupted Maggie’s thoughts. “The body of a man has been found in a wooded area of Somerset County, New Jersey. No identification has been made, and no cause of death has been announced. The Somerset County Police Department asks that anyone who believes they have information about this situation should contact them as soon as possible.” An 800 number flashed on the screen.
Somerset County, New Jersey. Maggie shivered. The newscast hadn’t mentioned any identifying information. No age, race, or even the town where the body was found.
If only she knew Jackson Sloane was safe at home.
Chapter 18
The Last Load. Winslow Homer wood engraving, from Appleton’s Journal of Popular Culture, August 7, 1869. Homer frequently drew haying scenes. This one shows two women and a man wearily looking over a recently mowed hayfield, an oxen-drawn, hay wagon in the background. 4.5 x 6.5 inches. Price: $150.
Maggie paced her study, her mind racing. She kept hearing the broadcaster’s voice: “The body of a man has been found.” How long had the body been there? Could it be Jackson’s? Or if Jackson was responsible for shooting Holly . . . could he have killed someone else? Maybe there were other missing men in Somerset County. Or maybe the body was of someone from another place. Someone who had just happened to die in a deserted wooded area in Somerset County, New Jersey.
It was already Tuesday night. Will and Gussie and Ben were arriving in less than twenty-four hours. Thursday night they’d be setting up in the gym. Friday morning she’d be arranging booth locations and tables, and she’d hoped to set up her own section of the booth she and Gussie would share before the other dealers arrived. That way she could concentrate on their needs on Friday.
Right now her inventory was only partially organized, and it wasn’t in her van. And she couldn’t focus on any of the mundane chores she had to get through.
What a joy it would be if someone were there to talk to.
She took a deep breath. Prints. She could manage prints. They wouldn’t talk back, and she had to get them ready. Thank goodness she only had to fill half a booth at this show.
Because of the adoption theme of the show, she’d decided to feature prints of children. They would also fit well with Gussie’s dolls and toys.
She needed to keep from thinking about a dead man lying in the woods. How was Holly coping? How would it feel, wondering whether the body found was that of your son? Maggie refused to allow the thought to fill her mind.
The first portfolio on her list held prints by Maud Humphrey (1865–1940). Humphrey was a major illustrator who worked out of New York City in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. She’d specialized in drawing babies and children. Maggie looked through the prints she had. The children were sweet and pretty and immaculately dressed. Maggie’s thoughts flashed to the bulletin board of “waiting children” at the agency. Those were not the sorts of children Maud Humphrey had painted. Not the sorts of children artists in the late-nineteenth century were paid to draw, especially for popular magazines, newspapers, and books. People liked to think of Victorian America as a gentle place, full of sweet and loving children.
Although there certainly were many American children in the late-nineteenth century living in squalid city streets and in need of love.
Maggie forced that thought from her mind. Today Humphrey’s work was more popular than ever. People collected it not only because of the charm of her drawings, but also because she was the mother of actor Humphrey Bogart. Supposedly mother and son hadn’t gotten along well, but any family issues hadn’t diminished the value of Humphrey prints.
Maggie put the portfolio near the French doors that opened onto a ramp leading down to her waiting van. Tomorrow Gussie would be using that ramp.
Gussie and Will! They were arriving tomorrow and she hadn’t even turned on her computer to make sure they hadn’t had a last-minute change of plans. Or had any questions. Or . . .
What had the world been like without computers and answering machines? More peaceful, no doubt. Sometimes being informed was overrated.
She skimmed three spam messages (she did not need a new mortgage, an internationally based supply of Viagra, or a business contact in Liberia) before finding the note from Gussie.
Dear Maggie,
Thinking of you! I know you’re zooming around with last minute details, so I don’t expect you to answer this. I just wanted to assure you we’ll be seeing you tomorrow! Ben finished packing his suitcase three days ago. Can you tell I haven’t taken him to an out-of-town antiques show for several months? He’s very excited about visiting you again. Here it is the last minute—we’ll leave tomorrow morning—and I’m still dithering about how much of my inventory to take with me and what to leave in the shop. My sister will be watching Aunt Augusta’s Attic, as usual when I do shows. After this month I’ll owe her several dinners and some babysitting since between your show (I can’t help thinking of it as your show, even if I know it is the Our World Our Children show) and the Rensselaer County show at the end of the month, she’ll be shop-sitting a lot. Thank goodness I can settle in for a couple of months at home after that.
Has the agency heard from their anonymous correspondent again? And how is your friend Holly? I know you’re busy, but let me know!
See you tomorrow, probably between 2 and 4.
Love, Gussie
Maggie read the note over again. She hoped Gussie was all right. Gussie became exhausted more easily now than she had a couple of years ago. Two out-of-town shows in one month was pushing it. In the last year Gussie had cut the number of shows she did in half and was concentrating on her shop. Maggie felt a wave of guilt for asking her to do the OWOC show, but Gussie would have been hurt if she hadn’t been asked. Friendships were complicated.
Dear Gussie,
I’m a bit panicked about everything that has to be done by tomorrow, but I’m fine, the weather is okay, and there have been no more anonymous letters.
Was it wrong to keep the anonymous telephone call to herself? Not when Gussie and Ben were going to be staying with her. Why worry Gussie any more than she already was?
Holly is better, but I haven’t heard whether they’ve found whoever shot her. The planning for the show is going pretty smoothly, but I’ve just started pulling my own inventory together. I’m going to feature prints of and for children. Okay with you? I figured it would go with your booth, and you know Kate Greenaways as well as I do, so it would be easier for you if anyone asked questions when I wasn’t around. Give Ben a hug for me and tell him I’m looking forward to seeing him. See you tomorrow!
Maggie
P.S. If I’m not home when you get here, have Ben check with Jerome and Ian next door. I’ll leave a key with them. My schedule is a bit unpredictable just now!
No message from Will. She hadn’t written to him yesterday, either, Maggie thought guiltily.
Dear Will,
Can hardly wait to see you tomorrow. It’s a long drive from Buffalo. Be sure to get lots of rest and coffee and drive carefully! I want you intact and in my arms. Soon. I won’t expect you until tomorrow night. Gussie and Ben should be here in the afternoon. In the meantime I’m staying busy with last-minute planning details and figuring out what I’m going to display at the show. At least the semester is over. I can concentrate
on only one job for a change. Although managing this show is taking more time than I ever thought it would. I have nightmares about truckloads of tables arriving and being the wrong lengths, or sizing the booth spaces and finding I measured the gyms wrong to begin with, or, worst of all, having no one come. No dealers, no customers. Never again will I volunteer to run an antiques show!
Maggie
(If you have time—pick up some wine from that vineyard we liked upstate!)
No more excuses. Maggie looked at her portfolios, poured herself a small Edinburgh crystal glass of Dry Sack, and added a twist. She’d savor her sherry and then sort through more children’s prints. She needed to check her Jessie Willcox Smith prints to make sure their labels were straight and prices correct.
About four years ago she’d “retired” some of her Smiths, after taking them to several years of shows. It was time to bring them out again. If an antique dealer’s inventory was large enough, he or she took different merchandise at different times and let some “rest.” But you couldn’t just pick up an old portfolio or carton, put it in your van, and then unpack it at a show. Retail values varied over the years, both up and down; labels and the tape holding the mat to the backboard dried; and despite caution, dampness might have damaged a print. She’d have to check every one of the Jessie Willcox Smiths before she could make sure all were ready to load.
All of her portfolios of artists who specialized in drawing children, or in illustrating books for children, were waiting. She pulled out a thick brown envelope of illustrations done by Randolph Caldecott (1847–86). Not many people today remembered who he really was, an illustrator born in the English countryside who decided as an adult that sketching was more interesting than his career at the Manchester and Salford Bank. Antiquarian book dealers knew his hand-colored wood engravings of traditional eighteenth-century scenes and his sixteen “toy books”: tiny books that illustrated old rhymes or nursery rhymes. Caldecott was only thirty-nine when he died while on a sketching trip to America.
Today people might not recognize his drawings, but many knew his name. In 1936 the American Library Association introduced an annual award for an illustrator of children’s books and named it after Randolph Caldecott. The name Caldecott was now on a gold seal affixed to some of the best illustrated children’s books in America. Maggie tried to keep a small portfolio of Caldecott illustrations in her inventory at all times.
Now she only had five left. She wrote herself a reminder in a small green notebook she always carried in her pocketbook: “Look for more Caldecotts!!!” In the meantime, the five she had would have to do for the OWOC show.
Her Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) portfolio was much thicker. Two years ago an elderly woman had brought a small Altman’s shopping bag to a show Maggie had done on Long Island. “These were my mother’s,” she’d confided in a wavering tone. “I’m afraid when I was a girl, I loved them as much as she did. I hate to part with them, but with the price of medications these days . . .” She handed Maggie the worn bag containing twelve of the small original Beatrix Potter books published between 1901 and 1913. Unfortunately, they were, as their owner explained, “well-loved.” The covers were off, and many of the pages were separated. Some pages had been colored with crayons, and a good number were torn. Several books had been put together with tape, and the tape had left marks on the pages. “I took them to a book dealer, but he said they weren’t worth anything. But you like pictures. Maybe you can find a use for them.”
A book dealer wouldn’t be interested in them: they were “breakers,” books with broken bindings, in the worst of condition. But although Beatrix Potter books were still in print and had become a brand now encompassing stuffed animals, lamps, wall hangings, and furniture, these pages from the original books held a charm missing from even the best reproductions today.
Maggie’d paid the woman as much as she thought they were worth (and a bit more), and then faced the challenge of deciding which pictures were worth matting and showing to customers, and which weren’t.
Condition, of course, was a primary consideration. Crayon marks might be marks of love, but they ruined any monetary value in the page. As did tape marks. And mothers and grandmothers who might buy these prints wanted Potter scenes they recognized. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, of course, and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny. But some of the scenes in The Roly-Poly Pudding or The Tale of Two Bad Mice were obscure, or the images so small they couldn’t be seen and admired on a wall.
Not for the first time, Maggie wondered why none of the major illustrators for children were parents themselves. Beatrix Potter had been a solitary woman brought up by servants in London and in England’s Lake District. Her brother Bertram was sent to boarding school, but Beatrix stayed home with a governess. The solitary child began keeping journals and notebooks of sketches when she was in her early teens.
She admired Randolph Caldecott’s drawings and tried to imitate them, but then developed her own style. She was especially inspired by nature, and by her own pets, whose ranks included hedgehogs, rabbits, snails, frogs, a tortoise, and several mice. In her twenties, while caring for her parents, she wrote illustrated letters to her friends’ children. In 1900 she copied some of those letters and sent them to Frederick Warne & Co.
They rejected The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Instead of giving up, Potter had 250 copies privately printed, in black and white. Warne himself saw the finished version and changed his mind. They would publish Peter in color. Beatrix Potter’s career had begun.
And Frederick Warne asked her to marry him. Unfortunately, he died during their engagement.
Maggie tucked the pile of small matted prints back into the Potter portfolio. Peter Rabbit had always been a special favorite of hers; after all, he was a spunky maverick rabbit and had escaped (if barely) capture by Mr. MacGregor. Maggie remembered a Steiff Peter Rabbit among the stuffed animals in Gussie’s inventory. Like many Steiff animals, it was hard. Steiff animals were made to collect, not to cuddle. Luckily, other manufacturers made cozier versions of Peter. Maggie wondered if someday she’d have a chance to choose one of those for her own child. If she were a parent. And if her child were young enough to need an animal to hug at night. Although everyone needed something, or someone, to hug at night.
Since Michael’s death Maggie’d slept next to a pillow turned lengthwise that she could snuggle against. Children weren’t the only ones who felt alone in the dark.
Thinking of the dark brought back her fears about the antiques show.
In two days she’d be at the Whitcomb Gymnasium supervising the company putting down the floor coverings.
On the surface, all seemed in order. But she couldn’t forget that the show had been targeted by someone. She was the show manager. Somehow she had to prepare for the unexpected.
Dealers’ issues she could manage. Too little food or too few parking spaces could be worked around. She’d alerted the police, and campus security. What more could she do? Maggie imagined the worst-case scenarios.
Someone could pull a fire alarm. They could call in a bomb scare. Or—she swallowed deeply—there could be a real fire. Or a real bomb.
More likely, thank heavens, the show could be disrupted by people. Protesters, maybe. But protesting what? The motive for all of this was murky. Or what about vandals? In any case, there would probably be more than one person involved.
Maggie shuddered. If a person or persons were determined to be violent, there were also guns. And Rob Sloane’s gun was still missing.
Chapter 19
Pomfret Russett. Lithograph of three views of a green apple done “on stone by F. J. Swinion,” and published by R. H. Pease, Albany, for Natural History of New York, 1851. 8.5 x 11.75 inches. Price: $60.
Classes had been over for a week, but Wednesday was the official last day of the semester. Claudia had piles of papers for each American Studies professor to verify or fill out or sign. Maggie spent the morning at her desk on campus. Claudia was a treasure at times like this
. Never once had Maggie been late with a required document, and it was all to Claudia’s credit. At this stage in the teaching year, students, unfortunately, were the lowest priority. Feeding the great paperwork mill in the administration offices was the all-consuming goal.
“Maggie, I’ve been reading, and I just wanted to make sure you knew.” Claudia stood on the other side of Maggie’s desk, a grim expression on her face.
“Yes, Claudia? You’ve been reading. What?” Maggie pulled her thoughts away from the two makeup exams she still had to schedule.
“I’ve been reading about—that.” Claudia pointed to the second of the Diet Pepsi cans Maggie had finished in the past two hours.
“You’ve been reading about Diet Pepsi?”
“Not just Diet Pepsi. All diet sodas. They’re not good for you, Maggie.”
“No?” Maggie asked in mock disbelief.
“Have you read the ingredients on this can?” Claudia delicately picked up the offending can with two fingers. “This is serious. This stuff has no vitamins in it. No minerals. Not one thing that is good for you. It has zero nutritional value.”
“But it has caffeine, which must be a nutrient,” Maggie replied, trying to find some humor behind Claudia’s serious expression. It was the last day of the semester. She didn’t really need a lecture on nutrition.
“I knew you wouldn’t pay attention. But I’m concerned about your health. That’s why I wanted to talk to you before vacation, since I’ll bet you drink a lot of that stuff during the summer.”
Maggie nodded. “True.”
“I read on the Internet that the chemicals they put in to sweeten soft drinks can kill you. They might cause brain cancer. Or bladder cancer. Or stomach ulcers! You should be drinking milk. Or water. Or juice.”