by Dave Daren
I pursed my lips as the numbers were called out, and Thompson gestured wildly at the crowd.
The painting ended up being sold to an elderly couple sitting two rows in front of me and over the low, crackling din of the speakers, I could hear them as they discussed how they planned to remove the painting to make use of the frame.
After the painting’s auction slot, the next handful of items were all things that I could easily mark off my list, and I began to wonder if maybe the painting had just been a fluke, perhaps that someone had simply forgotten to write it down.
But the next item, a deep blue, velvet jewelry box complete with a heavy looking diamond necklace and pair of earrings to match, also wasn’t anywhere on the list. Neither was the set of speakers, the sticker-covered laptop, or the box of cutlery.
I frowned as I tried to come up with some reason for unlisted items being auctioned off that wasn’t nefarious, or at the very least, an option that wasn’t suspicious.
I opened up a separate note in my app and quickly typed out all of the unlisted items before I switched back to my original list. While there was a lull in the bidding racket, I skimmed over the entire page.
I was surprised to see that everything on the list had already been marked off as sold. I hadn’t realized how many things had been sold already, and I felt a pit start to form in my stomach as the crowd stayed put.
Clearly, this was a regular occurrence at these auctions. None of the items being auctioned now seemed like the sort of things that would be seized in a raid at first glance, and I couldn’t help but wonder if any of the items belonged to Natalie, Jackson, or Todd.
“Now,” Thompson boomed over the microphone. “We’ve come to our last item. Sorry to say we aren’t going out with a bang this month, everybody, but what can I say, the fish just weren’t biting this month, and the pond was a little dry.”
A low, polite chuckle seemed to roll over the audience, and I couldn’t help but feel a little sick to my stomach at the implications of his words.
“Bring it on up,” Thompson said and waved his hand to gesture a deputy up to the stage.
It was Jenkins again that took the precarious steps that led up to the platform with a large wooden… thing cradled in his arms.
Jenkins pivoted to face the audience again, and I felt my breath catch in my throat and my heart pound just a little faster in my chest.
To my left, Evelyn seemed to notice the sudden, rapid change in my posture, and she looked over at me with a quizzical raise of her eyebrows.
But I didn’t address her unspoken question as I stared at the mantlepiece clock in Jenkins’ arms. I didn’t need a closer look because even from where I sat, yards away, I could tell that it was the heirloom Jackson had described to me the day before when he spoke with Brody and I.
Thompson cleared his throat and started to call out a starting number.
It felt like something else possessed my body as my hand flew up into the air.
“Twenty,” I called out to match the bid.
My own voice sounded foreign to my ears as I realized that I had just placed a bid in a potentially corrupt auction to get back a family heirloom for a man I had just met.
I doubted this is what my mother meant when she told me I needed to get out more.
No one else spoke for a moment as numerous heads swiveled back toward Evelyn and I. My hand still hovered in the air over my head, and I cleared my throat.
“Twenty,” I repeated again with my voice a bit firmer this time, a bit louder, a bit stronger.
I watched as an expression I couldn’t quite explain flashed across Thompson’s face. Behind his sunglasses, his eyes were unreadable, but I got the unshakeable feeling he was staring right at me.
The silence only lasted for a second more before a man a few rows up from me called out “twenty-five”, and the bidding took off from there.
After a few rounds of calling bids, I realized that the only people who seemed to want to bid on the clock were men I recognized as deputies, and then it hit me.
They were closing ranks in front of me.
They’d known I was in the audience, and it seemed like they were begrudgingly willing to let me watch the auction, but there had been some sort of silent agreement that I wasn’t allowed to bid or win.
Thompson hated me, sure, but I hadn’t anticipated that his hatred would trickle down to his underlings, even though it made sense. If Thompson was being paid off by Knox, it meant there was a chance more people that worked at the sheriff’s department had been on his payroll as well, or that they at the very least benefited from his under the table dealings.
And I had taken all of that away.
The bidding process flew by me in a blur as the numbers crept up higher and higher.
Evelyn openly stared at me as I threw my hand up yet again.
“Two-hundred-and-fifteen,” I called out without a waver in my voice.
Thompson had definitely started to stare at me then, but I couldn’t help but bid on the clock. I’d seen the desperate look Jackson had on his face when he explained the situation.
He hadn’t asked me to get his clock back, but it was the right thing to do, and I didn’t know who I’d be if I didn’t go out of my way to help someone that needed it.
Another deputy bid on the clock, and then another, and then another. The price crept up as we all continued to call out numbers in rapid sequence.
“Four-hundred-and-fifty-five,” I called out and finally, no one said a word in rebuttal.
I waited with bated breath as Sheriff Thompson took his sweet time to give out his standard call.
“Four-hundred-and-fifty-five,” he started and let the words linger for what felt like far longer than he’d waited for any of the other auctioned items. “Going once… going twice… sold to Archer Landon.”
He spat my name out of his mouth like a flavorless piece of gum, and I heaved a sigh of relief as I sank down into the backrest of my chair. He slammed his hand against the podium, and the sound echoed over the speakers like a gunshot, but I didn’t even care.
Evelyn gave a slow shake of her head as she stared at me in what could have been anything from awe to agitation.
“For a clock?” She asked with an incredulous tone.
I scrubbed my palms over my face and felt a thin sheen of perspiration. I couldn’t tell if it was from the heat or the anxiety of the bidding war I had just been engaged in.
“It belongs to Jackson Qualley,” I said as a way of explanation. “The man who told us about the auction. It was a family heirloom from his grandmother.”
A look of understanding flashed across Evelyn’s face as she realized why I just spent nearly five-hundred dollars on a rather ugly clock.
The adrenaline that had coursed through my system started to cool down, and I felt the intense urge to take a nap, but another crackle came over the speakers that pulled my attention back to the parking lot.
“Thank you for attending the auction, and I’ll see all of you next month,” Thompson said and clapped his hands against the sides of the podium again.
I looked around and saw that most of the people in the audience had already risen to their feet and begun to file out of the roped-off section of the lot and back toward their cars.
Everyone that wasn’t heading back toward their vehicles seemed to have started to congregate at the doors of the building I’d assumed was where they kept the items for bidding.
I pushed myself up to my feet with a grunt before I extended my hand down toward Evelyn, even though I knew she’d turn down my offer of help. And sure enough, Evelyn pointedly ignored my hand as she rose gracefully to her feet. I couldn’t help but give a grin at her predictable behavior, and despite her hard stare, I couldn’t hide the grin that crept across my face.
“Well,” I said and nodded over my shoulder toward the squat building. “Shall we?”
I didn’t wait for her answer before I carefully stepped out of the row of ch
airs and started to make my way across the asphalt. I kept my pace just slow enough that she’d be able to catch me but wouldn’t scold me for acting like she was slow and feeble.
It was a song and dance we’d been through multiple times already, and it had gotten old early on in our relationship. But I’d realized at some point that as long as I made it look like I wasn’t waiting for her, Evelyn wouldn’t try and smack me with the battering ram she called a purse.
We fell into step together as we followed the last stragglers from the audience over toward the line that had formed outside the building, and I slid my hands in my pocket just to make sure I had my wallet as we slowed to a halt at the end of the line.
“Do you have that much cash on you?” Evelyn asked, and I wondered what she’d say if I said no.
“I don’t need cash,” I said. “Or at least, I shouldn’t. The auction’s website said they could take cash, check, or card.”
I just prayed that Sheriff Thompson wouldn’t blatantly disregard the pre-established rules of the auction to attempt and further screw me over. But then again, I wouldn’t have put it past him.
He held a grudge with more venom than anyone else I’d ever met, and I’d once dated a woman in law school who remembered the singular time I spelled her name wrong and cited it as a reason for us to break up months later.
The line trickled down at a snail’s pace, but I didn’t quite mind. After being seated for so long, it felt nice to be able to stand and stretch my legs.
As the sun beat down over my head, I glanced at my watch to see how much time had actually passed since the auction started at eight in the morning. I was shocked to see that it had been nearly two and a half hours. It had felt like no time at all, but maybe that was just because of the speed of the bidding.
The asphalt was hot under the soles of my tennis shoes, and for a split second, I was jealous of Evelyn’s breezier-looking outfit until I remembered she had worn heels.
By the time we made it to the front of the line and into the mouth of the building, another fifteen minutes or so had passed. But then, Sheriff Thompson stood in front of me, and for the first time that morning, I was able to look him in the eye.
He had hooked his sunglasses in the front of his shirt collar, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit vindictively pleased to see his face had taken on a little more color everywhere except for where his sunglasses had sat.
I thought it made him look like a particularly pissed-off raccoon.
“Landon,” Thompson said, and he seemed none too pleased to see me, but I smiled anyway.
“Great to see you again, Sheriff,” I said with a polite nod while behind me, I could have sworn I heard Evelyn snort. “I can’t believe I never knew about these auctions.”
I said it with a casualness I didn’t feel and worked to keep my hackles lowered and my suspicions off of my face.
Thompson squinted at me as he seemed to try and figure out what angle I was working.
Suddenly, I was very glad that Brody and I had decided against trying to talk to him about the alleged wrongfully taken items. If we had, I doubted Evelyn and I would have even been able to sit down at the auction in peace.
“I don’t know what you want, Landon, but don’t go sniffing around where you don’t belong,” he said, and it felt almost like a threat, but not quite.
I continued to smile and pulled my wallet and other hand free of both my pockets before I pulled out my debit card and extended it toward Thompson. I ignored his cryptic little message and continued to play dumb.
“I’ve been needing a clock for my apartment,” I said as if this were a normal conversation and not a borderline standoff.
Thompson stared at me without moving for a second longer before he snatched my card from my outstretched hand.
I watched as he slid the black, magnetic strip through a small, white, square card reader plugged into the headphone jack of a bulky-looking phone.
He tapped his stubby fingers against the phone a few times with my card still trapped in his hand before he finally handed it back to me.
“Sign,” he said without any further explanation as he turned the phone toward me.
I saw a digital dotted line on the shockingly bright screen. I reached out and used the tip of my index finger to scribble my signature and had barely finished writing before Thompson snatched the phone back. It gave a chime as the sale apparently went through, and Thompson nodded to one of the deputies at his side while I slipped my debit card back into my wallet, and then my wallet back into my pocket.
The deputy, a man I didn’t recognize with hair so vibrantly auburn it looked orange in the poor lighting of the building, shuffled off out of my line of sight for a moment before he came back into view.
The clock I had just paid nearly five-hundred dollars for sat in a cardboard box that had, if the outside label was any indication, once been used to hold alcoholic seltzer.
I gave a sharp inhale that I couldn’t quite stifle as I realized why exactly the clock was in the box.
While it hadn’t been a particularly attractive or stylish piece of decor, there had been something almost charming about the old-timey-ness of the piece and its broad, curving wooden frame that held a yellowed clock face.
I stared in horror at the remains of the clock.
The clock face had been cracked in numerous places, and it looked as if the minute and second hand had practically been knocked loose. Two of the four wooden arches that had surrounded the clock were broken off the frame and rattled loosely around the box, and that was only the damage I could see from the outside.
I swallowed back the anger that had welled up inside my throat and fixed a hard look at Thompson, who smiled like the cat that had eaten the canary.
I didn’t care that I had spent nearly five-hundred dollars on a newly broken clock, but I certainly cared that Thompson had decided to destroy the clock.
“It fell,” the deputy said with a shit-eating grin of his own.
I could feel the anger and rage as it vibrated under my skin, and I suddenly became incredibly aware of Evelyn’s presence behind me, and her hand resting on my arm. I swallowed back my anger and instead offered the two men a flat, placid smile.
“Accidents happen,” I said as calmly as I could manage, but I didn’t quite manage to squash the shake from my tone.
The deputy, who’s name I didn’t know, thrust the box out toward me, and I heard the broken pieces of the clock rattle against the cardboard. I worked to keep the new wave of anger from rising up to the surface as I took it from his hands.
“Sheriff,” I said instead of goodbye and gave a tilt of my head in his direction.
I turned on the balls of my feet and started back out onto the asphalt with Evelyn nearly tripping over my heels.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Landon,” Thompson called after me, and I could hear the grin in his tone.
I wanted to hit him, but I made do with tightening my grip on the box. I clasped the cardboard so hard that I nearly dented it.
“What a sack of shit,” Evelyn said pleasantly once we were outside.
I exhaled a sharp breath through my nose and handed the box to her willing arms as I pulled my key fob from my pocket and quickly unlocked our doors.
I took the box back from Evelyn as she lowered herself into the passenger seat before I handed her the box again and nudged the door shut with my hip. I made my way back around to the driver’s side and sank into my seat. I curled my hands around the steering wheel as I took deep, steadying breaths and counted backward from ten in my mind.
Evelyn looked down at the box in her lap and reached up to gently prod at the damaged clock face.
“It could be fixed,” she declared. “I know of plenty of clocksmiths in the area.”
A thin laugh broke out of me as I dropped my head down against the steering wheel with a dull thud.
“How the hell do you know clocksmiths?” I asked, and the brewing tension in the ca
b of my car dissipated into nothing but an unpleasant memory as I straightened up and slid my key into the ignition.
Before she could answer, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw several deputies emerge from the building. They were watching my car, and one of them finally started to move toward us.
We needed to get out of that damn parking lot.
Chapter 8
The ride back to Landon Legal was tenser than I would have liked as both Evelyn and I seemed lost in our own thoughts, or maybe she was just giving me time to work through my emotions over what had happened at the auction.
I couldn’t shake the restless feeling that coursed through me that told me we had stumbled onto something bigger than just coincidence like both Brody and Evelyn had tried to tell me.
They hadn’t wanted us at that auction for a reason, and I had the feeling that it was because things weren’t up to snuff.
I dropped Evelyn back off at the Landon Legal office with a curt nod in her direction, and she leaned into the passenger’s side door to get a good look at me after she stepped out onto the sidewalk. She set the broken clock in the box down on the newly emptied seat and kept her stony glare fixed on me.
“You aren’t going to do anything stupid, are you?” she asked.
It was obviously a question, but somehow it didn’t feel like one, as if she already had an answer in mind and was just waiting to hear it said aloud.
I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel and shook my head.
“No,” I said with a resigned sigh. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. To be honest with you, I don’t even know what stupid thing I could potentially do.”
I gave her a small, what I hoped was reassuring, smile, as I spoke.
She pursed her lips as if to dispute my statement, but she didn’t seem sure how to do that.
“You could show up guns blazing to the sheriff’s department and demand to talk to Thompson,” she suggested before she seemed to regret saying that aloud at all.
I laughed and shook my head because I had briefly considered that, but quickly put it aside when I thought about all the actual guns in the sheriff’s office.