Hidden Treasures

by Judith Arnold

  He hadn’t been back to that hole-in-the-wall town since he’d hit the airwaves with his scoop on the antique box and its glittering contents. But he’d heard the tourist business continued to thrive there. In fact, he’d heard that from the owner of the silkscreen company that produced the town’s commemorative T-shirts and, thanks to some clever negotiations, paid Derrick a ten-cent royalty on every shirt sold, that the town was planning to open a museum of some sort dedicated to the box. The box itself would not be featured at this museum, but photos of the box and its discovery would be on display for the numerous visitors who trooped through its doors. Derrick had suggested that Sonya look into a deal with the museum to show repeated broadcasts of the I’m Just the Messinger program he’d done on the subject. They could earn a fee for every showing. Money was money, after all.

  Even without the subsidiary deals, that show had drawn a large enough audience in its original airing—especially when compared with Derrick’s Jimmy Hoffa show, about which the less said the better—that Sonya had been able to jack up the price of his syndication contracts by a factor of three. Months after the broadcast, people were still coming up to him on the street and saying, “Hey, ‘I’m Just the Messinger!’ How about that box?”

  Not just people—women. His failure to connect with that redheaded sprite—what was her name? Some plant. Heather, maybe—was all but forgotten. His vibes seemed to be back in full working order, detecting signals far and wide. There he was, after all, on a sunny brink-of-summer day, taking lunch in a pleasant midtown trattoria with a sparkling gem of a young lady named Adrienne, who had the most charming giggle and world-class knockers. He’d just wrapped up work on a new story, a bit of intense investigative journalism tracking down rumors that the Flatiron Building was haunted by the ghost of a dentist who’d lost his life’s savings in the depression and somehow committed suicide with his pedal-powered drill. Derrick had brought a spiritualist into the building at night. They’d filmed auras with special cameras. Sonya had laid down a track of appropriately eerie music. Dr. Hufferspoin’s ghost was not found, but the search had turned up some interesting objects, including a mangled Barbie doll jammed into an air-conditioning vent and a package of American cheese petrified to the consistency of Sheetrock in a storage room in the basement. The show was scheduled for broadcast next week. Predictions were that it would perform strongly, especially since June wasn’t a ratings-sweep month and most of the network shows were in reruns.

  Adrienne leaned across the table to spear a taste of his scampi. He didn’t mind—she could eat the whole damn portion, as long as she kept leaning forward like that, affording him such a terrific view of her cleavage. His gaze followed her as she settled back in her chair, and then it slid past her to the window overlooking the sidewalk. “Excuse me,” he blurted out, astonished to have noticed, strolling past the restaurant, a pedestrian wearing a Rockwell—the Town of Hidden Treasures T-shirt. One didn’t expect to see that in midtown Manhattan. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart.”

  He bolted from the table, leaving Adrienne chomping on his shrimp, and raced to the door. He hadn’t caught the face of the person in the shirt, and now she was nearly to the corner, her back to him. She was tall, with a small, nicely curved butt and long, dark hair.

  “Hey!” he shouted, charging after her.

  West Forty-fourth Street was clogged with pedestrians, as usual, but either they recognized him and assumed he was chasing a major story or else they took him for a madman, because most of them hastily moved out of his way. Fortunately, the light at the corner was red, and he was able to catch up to her. Before she could step off the curb, he clamped a hand on her shoulder.

  She screamed and spun around.

  Erica Leitner! He couldn’t remember her friend’s name, but hers was emblazoned on his heart, since she’d done so much to salvage his professional reputation. “Well, hello!” he said in his smoothest interview voice. “Small world!”

  “Derrick Messinger?”

  “I was just having lunch,” he said, refraining from air-kissing her. He was a TV personality, but she was a Harvard alum dwelling in a small Yankee town. He didn’t think making kissy-kissy would go over well with her. “I glanced through the restaurant window and saw your T-shirt.”

  She peered down, as if to refresh her memory of the T-shirt she was wearing. It was tucked neatly into a straight, knee-length khaki skirt. A purse was slung over her shoulder, and simple sandals protected her feet. No pedicure, he noticed, but then, they probably didn’t know what pedicures were in Rockwell. Her fingers curled around the handle of a wheeled overnight bag.

  “Well,” she finally said. “I succumbed and bought a T-shirt.”

  “I’m sure you made Glenn Rideout very happy.” He remembered the bartender’s name, too, for some reason.

  She smiled and shook her head. “I bought it from Pop Hackett. After Glenn sicced his slimy lawyer on me, I wasn’t going to give him any of my money.”

  “Really? He pursued a legal case against you?” Maybe there was a story in that. A juicy small-town-scandal follow-up.

  “His lawyer sued for ownership of the box. A judge in Manchester told him he was too greedy for words and threw out the suit. I’m afraid there’re some bad feelings between Glenn and me.” She looked mildly troubled by this.

  “So, what brings you to New York?” Derrick asked, tucking Erica’s hand around his elbow and leading her back toward the restaurant. He still sensed potential for a follow-up show on Rockwell’s most famous citizen. It wouldn’t hurt to cultivate her.

  She gently slid her hand free and drew to a halt. “I need to see Jed Willetz. I know he’s got a store somewhere in the city—downtown, I think he said. I can’t remember the name of it, though. And I don’t know my way around Manhattan very well.”

  “You’re a Boston girl. Of course you don’t know Manhattan.” He dug into an inner pocket on his silk-blend blazer, pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed. “Let me buzz Sonya. She arranged to keep in touch with Mr. Willetz when we got back to New York. She thought he might serve as our liaison with Rockwell. I’m not sure he agreed to, but she might—Sonya!” he said brightly into the phone when she picked up. “I’m a block from Times Square. You’ll never guess who’s standing here next to me.”

  “A hooker?”

  “Don’t be silly. They’ve cleaned up the neighborhood. No, Sonya, I ran into Erica Leitner, of all people. She’s in town, and she’s trying to locate Jed Willetz. You wouldn’t by any chance know the name of his store, would you?”

  “Erica Leitner? Listen, Derrick,” Sonya said, the words spitting out as fast as bullets from an Uzi. “You find out where she’s staying and do anything you can for her. We want exclusive rights to her. I don’t want anyone else getting their hands on her—Today or Nightline or Letterman. She’s ours.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Can we help her out?”

  “Of course we can help her out. I’m going through my files even as we speak—okay, here it is—City Resale. The address is in SoHo. You got a pen?”

  Derrick pulled a business card from the gold-plated card case he’d treated himself to as a Father’s Day gift, since he had no children that he knew of and couldn’t expect anyone to buy a gift for him. He plucked a pen from the pocket where he kept his good-luck rubber band and, on the back of the card, jotted down the address and phone number Sonya dictated. Then he handed the card to Erica.

  “Escort her down there yourself,” Sonya instructed him. “Treat her like a visiting dignitary. Flag down a cab and see her into the store, okay? I’m thinking part two, Derrick. ‘Rockwell Box, the Sequel.”’

  Picturing Adrienne and her bosom waiting for him back at the restaurant, Derrick winced. “Sonya, I can’t. I was in the middle of something when I spotted Erica.”

  “Something more important than your career?”

  He sighed. “All right. I’ll do it.” Before Sonya could issue more orders, he disconnected the phone
. “I’ll take you to Jed Willetz’s store,” he said, pantomiming a gallant bow.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “You’re a visitor to my town. It’s the least I can do.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow again and hustled her down the street toward the restaurant.

  “This isn’t downtown, is it?” she asked skeptically.

  “We’ll be taking a cab. I just have to do one thing.” He steered her into the restaurant’s vestibule, then released her hand. “Wait here—I’ll be right back.” Before she could object, he darted into the dining room, hurried over to the window table where Adrienne was busy scarfing down his scampi and said, “I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I’ve got to run.”

  “Why?” Adrienne asked, a buttery pink shrimp curled over her lower lip.

  “It could be the biggest scoop of my career. You know how it is for us journalists. Here’s fifty dollars.” He dropped a few bills onto the table. “That should cover everything, including dessert. Try the tiramisu. It’s supposed to be incredible here.” He kissed her on the crown of her head to avoid the shrimp, then sprinted back to the vestibule.

  Erica was gone.

  SHE DIDN’T NEED Derrick Messinger accompanying her to Jed’s store. More important, she didn’t want him accompanying her. That he’d glimpsed her while having his lunch had been pure coincidence. It was a huge, crowded city, but he’d chosen to eat at a restaurant just a block from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

  She hadn’t driven to the city. Not knowing her way around, she wouldn’t risk navigating through such a traffic-clogged place, and she suspected that parking the car in a garage for any length of time would wind up costing more than the bus fare. She’d figured she would find a telephone directory somewhere, and in the Yellow Pages, under “Furniture, Used” she’d get Jed’s store address. Or she’d try the White Pages and get his home address. She’d hoped to track down his address via the Web, but Internet service was iffy in Rockwell, and after she’d gotten disconnected six times she’d given up. She’d also tracked down his father at the Moosehead, but he’d insisted he didn’t have Jed’s address. “I got his cell phone number,” Jack had offered between slurps of beer.

  Erica had Jed’s cell phone number, too. But she didn’t want to phone him. If she did, he’d either beg her to come—not terribly likely—or ask her not to come—fifty-fifty odds, she calculated. If she came, it might be to spend a little time with him, or a lot. This trip to New York couldn’t be just about him, though. If she was truly prepared to step into a new life, it was the life she had to evaluate, not a man who might or might not be a part of that life.

  So she’d traveled to Manhattan to feel it swirling around her, to hear it, smell it, wander among the shadows of its towering buildings. She’d come to compare it with Rockwell. She’d come because a public school on the Upper West Side had been very impressed with her résumé and wanted to offer her a position on its faculty.

  Why not? she’d thought. She could be impulsive. She could dream new dreams if the old ones weren’t coming true.

  She’d come to check out the job, the city, the environment. She’d come to find out if this was a place where her new dreams could take root. But for some reason, she couldn’t concentrate on any of those reasons for this trip until she saw Jed.

  As the cab swept her downtown to the address she’d read from the back of Derrick Messinger’s business card, she closed her eyes and took deep breaths. She had no idea what to expect. He could have a girlfriend here, or several. He probably did. His invitation for her to join him in New York was more than two months old. He might not even remember her anymore.

  Oh, but she remembered him. She remembered everything about him—his eyes, his smile, his chronically mussed hair, his low voice. His protectiveness, not just when she’d been fighting off Toad Regan but when she’d been inundated by reporters shoving microphones and cameras into her face. She remembered his humor, his blunt candor and his refusal to use his lousy relationship with his father as an excuse for everything that might be wrong in his life. She remembered his willingness to listen when she wanted to talk, and to kiss when she wanted to be kissed.

  The more she’d remembered in the weeks since he’d left Rockwell, the more convinced she grew that she loved him.

  It was crazy. She’d known him such a short time. He was a junk dealer who’d never been to college, while she’d earned herself two Ivy League degrees. He was a small-town boy who’d chosen the big city, and she was an urban girl who’d chosen the small town. She had no idea if he liked Dave Matthews or the films of Almodóvar.

  The cab double-parked. “This is it,” the driver called through the partition.

  Erica passed him the fare plus a two-dollar tip and got out of the cab, dragging her suitcase behind her. Jed might panic when he saw the bag, but he didn’t need to. She had a room reserved at the midtown Marriott. She’d intended to check in and wash up before attempting to track Jed down, but the instant Derrick had handed her his card with the address of Jed’s store written on it, she hadn’t been able to think about anything else but finding him, seeing him, forcing herself to acknowledge how crazy it was for her to be in love with him. Before she made any more life-altering decisions, she needed to find out whether she’d made the biggest mistake of her life by giving up on Rockwell and all her old dreams.

  “You haven’t given up,” she whispered to herself as the cab drove away. “You’ve chosen something new.”

  She turned to survey the building. It was huge, occupying a corner, the first floor consisting of showcase windows filled with household furnishings—wood pieces, upholstered pieces, lamps and accessories, some apparently vintage and others merely tacky. She’d expected his store to be smaller and more modest. Actually, she’d expected it to be something along the lines of the town dump in Rockwell, where Jed’s father worked.

  This emporium was no town dump. Through the windows she saw the silhouettes of people moving around inside—customers and staff. City Resale was no one-man operation.

  But one man had created it. Jed. He’d taken junk and turned it into something valuable.

  Anxiety seized her. What if Jed was too busy to see her? What if he said he was too busy because he didn’t want to see her?

  “Stop it,” she ordered herself. “You’re strong. You can handle this.”

  Reminding herself she wasn’t the sweet, gentle earth mother she’d once aspired to be, she squared her shoulders and steeled her spine. No matter how hard she’d tried, she had never come close to that ideal. Her garden was a disaster, a war between weeds and extremely militant zucchini vines. Her cooking skills remained pathetic. Her last attempt at baking bread had nearly set her house on fire. After that, a new cricket had taken up residence in her oven. Whenever she’d turned it on, the cricket had screeched. She’d viewed that as a sign.

  She would never be an earth mother. All the L.L. Bean apparel in the world wouldn’t turn her into a rural native. She was what she was—a nice Jewish girl from Brookline who’d earned degrees at Harvard and Brown, who could take on a classroom filled with eight-and nine-year-olds and emerge victorious—and she might as well stop running from her identity.

  Bracing herself with a deep breath, she wheeled her bag around the corner to the front double doors. Above them a sign read City Resale. She pulled the door open and went inside.

  The showroom resembled a cross between a furniture store and an antique shop. Sofas, chairs, tables and armoires were arranged in semicoherent groupings around rug remnants, then piled high with afghans, vases, old leather-bound books, dinged and scratched chess sets and assorted other tchotchkes. Framed mirrors, lithograph prints and portrait paintings of dreary, forgettable ancestors hung on the walls.

  Erica meandered through the showroom until she found an available clerk. A young, pretty blond clerk. Jed worked with this woman. He worked with lots of women and lived in a city filled with lots more. He’d slept with Erica only be
cause she’d been the new girl in Rockwell, the most convenient female in that tiny town. In New York, every female was convenient.

  Stop it, she silently scolded herself. If Jed didn’t consider her convenient enough for his purposes anymore, well, she didn’t want to be convenient, anyway. She wanted…She wanted to accept the life she was designed for, she wanted to accept herself, and she wanted, if possible, Jed to accept her.

  “Excuse me,” she said, claiming the cute blond clerk’s attention. “I’m looking for Jed Willetz.”

  “He’s upstairs,” the clerk told her.

  Erica surveyed the store in search of a stairway or elevator. “How do I get upstairs?”

  “You’re not allowed up there. It’s not open to the public.”

  Erica wondered whether the clerk was being deliberately difficult or was merely dense. “Then how can we get Jed downstairs?” she asked.

  Merely dense, she decided when the clerk frowned for a minute, then nodded enthusiastically, as if Erica had just come up with a brilliant idea. “I’ll phone upstairs and ask him to come down,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Erica followed her to a small office off the showroom, convinced that if she didn’t walk the clerk through each step of this task, it wouldn’t be successfully completed.

  The blonde’s ponytail swayed saucily as she reached across the desk for the phone, punched in three numbers and listened. “Hi, Jed? Some woman in the store wants to see you.”

  Some woman, Erica thought, pinching her lips. She’d never thought of herself as some woman before. Derrick had treated her like a returning hero, not just some woman.

  The clerk listened for a minute, then hung up. “He’ll be down in a couple of minutes,” she reported.

  Erica thanked her again and moved away from the office, wheeling her bag behind her. She paused to inspect a cherry sideboard, which wore a few nicks but looked warm and graceful, and a set of four ladder-back chairs with a dark walnut stain, and a Deco-style vanity table with a cloudy three-paned mirror. That people actually discarded such furniture astonished her. It was good solid stuff.