A Cut Above

by Ginny Aiken

  “Come on!” I grab Max’s hand and drag him along.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You’ll see.” Once I reach my quarry, I give her my best smile and scan her junk—er . . . wares.

  “Well, aren’t you the sweetest couple?” she asks as she straightens four blue-and-white plates before moving a cut-glass bowl to an empty spot next to a copper teakettle.

  My impatience threatens again, but I bite it back. “Thanks. You have some beautiful things.” It’s true—some are beautiful, just not all. “Have you been selling here long?”

  “Since before we had these snazzy buildings put up and our rent hiked up.” She waves. “Even before flea markets became fashionable.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of local history, then.”

  A woman walks up to the booth, picks up a small, funny-shaped blue and white pitcher, and studies it intently. The booth owner’s attention zigzags between her customer and me. “It ain’t happened around these parts if I ain’t seen it, hon.”

  Behind me, Max murmurs, “Aha . . .”

  “Then you’re probably from around the area.”

  “’Course. I was born here.” She turns to the woman who’d asked about the pitcher’s price. “That’ll be twenty-two fifty. It’s a genuine, Occupied Japan, Blue Willow gravy boat and ladle, without even the tiniest chip on it.”

  They haggle some, and after the spirited back-and-forth, agree on a price of eighteen bucks.

  The buyer hands her a twenty, and the booth-keeper fumbles in her apron pocket for change. When the customer’s gone, her gravy boat clutched to her bosom in absolute joy, my new friend turns back to me.

  “Sorry, hon. I do need to make a living.”

  I take the hint. “How much is that bowl?”

  She points to the amber cut-glass piece she’d rearranged as we walked up. “This one?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Fifteen, for you.”

  Before I can get into my wallet, Max hands her a twenty. As the saleswoman gets the change, I fight to curb my again-stampeding impatience. She gives him his five, wraps my new “treasure”—you know I’ll never hear the end of this from Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona, don’t you?—while I gnash my teeth.

  “So you grew up here in Simpsonville?” I finally ask.

  “Not in Simpsonville proper, but out a ways. We did always go to church in town, though.”

  “Did you ever hear of Riverview Preparatory Academy?” “Oh sure,” she says, her tone dismissive. “That was that school where rich folks too busy to grow their own kids sent their girls. Us townies always felt so sorry for them.”

  Hmm . . . “Can you tell me how to get to the school? I’m having trouble finding a listing or an address for it.”

  “That’s ’cause it closed down back in the early seventies. Not too many free spirits wanted to go to a fussy, dressy, and awful pricey girls’ school back then.”

  Rats! “Did any of the students stay around this area? How about the teachers?”

  She shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  Think, think! Nothing brilliant comes to mind. So I thrust out the picture of the Duo. “I’m looking for my aunt and her friend. Have you seen them?”

  “Mona and Weeby?” she asks. “’Course I seen them. They bought a real nice brass spittoon from me yesterday. It’s not often I come up with spittoons. Or chamber pots. Didn’t have none of them, though.”

  So they’re Mona and Weeby to her. Chummy, don’t you think? “You seem to know them. Had you met them before?”

  A couple walks up and points at the crystal candelabra the vendor has sitting front and center on the antique chest of drawers at the back of her booth. She brings the beautiful piece forward, they ooh and aah, and money changes hands.

  My impatience soars. I tap my toe, cross my arms, stare at glass tchotchkes.

  The saleswoman smiles at me. “Mona and Weeby are two of my best customers. Regulars, you know?” She turns and grabs a sheet of newspaper to wrap the candelabra for the ecstatic new owners.

  “I’m sure I’ve seen a bunch of things they’ve bought from you. But you know, something you said rang a bell for me. Is there a chance you and Miss Mona might have met while you were girls? She went to the Riverview Preparatory Academy, you know.”

  “You don’t say?” She shakes her head. “Couldn’t tell you if I saw her or not. Might have. But us townies didn’t get any chances to even say boo to them girls. They were kept behind the fence all the time.”

  “A fence!”

  “Looked more like a jail than anything else to me.”

  Poor Miss Mona. She certainly had gone the opposite way. She was warm, kind, generous, and didn’t have a snooty bone in her body. “I can’t imagine going to a school like that.”

  “Well, you don’t have to do much imagining. You can go look at the place if you want. It’s been sitting empty for years now, and what’s left of the fence is a mess. But it ain’t far from here. If you want to go see it.”

  Wow! A break. Umm . . . maybe.

  What kind? Beats me, but in the absence of other clues, hints, ideas, or anything that might help us, visiting the school feels like doing something. “Sure. Can you give us directions?”

  Max takes over—I’m not exactly gifted in the sense-of-direction category—and before long, we’re headed back out the way we’d come in.

  He aims his remote lock widget at his car. “Is there any reason we’re going out to some dilapidated old school?”

  “Do you have any better ideas?”

  “Nope. And that’s driving me crazy. But is this idea any better?”

  “Now you know where I’m coming from.”

  “I knew all along, but I hoped you might have had another brainstorm back there. One that gave you a hint what to do.”

  “I should be so lucky. I don’t have any ideas, good or bad. I’m just curious.”

  “Do you think they might have taken a side trip out there?”

  “Could be. You know them. They’re nothing if not spontaneous.” I recline my seat, hoping to ease my worsening headache. “I’m sure Miss Mona’s taken Aunt Weeby out there a dozen times . . . or more.”

  He slants me a look. “Don’t fall asleep. We’ll be there in minutes.”

  I close my eyes, and immediately the image of the Duo materializes, laughing, bickering, mothering me over the years even when I didn’t need mothering. In spite of all her money, Miss Mona is in most ways a carbon copy of Aunt Weeby—nothing at all like Doña Rosario.

  How could two women who grew up at the same boarding school turn out so different? It boggles the mind.

  As if in slow-motion, Creepella’s image slithers over theirs, hard, harsh, and dressed to ki— No!

  Not even as a cliché will I say that. I fist my hands to push myself up. The seat recliner button works again, and I stare out the window, not registering much more than tall trees and green shrubs. A few minutes later, Max flicks on the left turn signal. Through a thicket of brush on my side, I see a large stone and concrete marker sign. As Max guides the car up the rutted drive, I make out an R and a handful of other, less distinct letters. Evidence of swanky times long ago.

  The trees on either side have grown wild, creating a thick, lush canopy overhead. The shade gives me the creeps. It’s a tad gloomy for moi. And when we pull into the clearing, the grand estate takes me back to my teen years when I devoured gothic novels by the bushel load.

  A shiver runs through me.

  “It must have been nicer back then,” Max says.

  I study the Georgian brick building—can’t really call it a house, since it’s closer in size to Queen Lizzie’s digs at Buckingham than it is to my little cottage—and sadness fills me. It should be stunningly beautiful, but years of neglect have left it to die.

  And yet . . . the more I stare, the stranger everything seems. The windows on the first floor gleam in the sunlight, and the black paint on the front door and first-floor window
shutters is shiny and fresh. Way different from the peeling upstairs shutters.

  The fence the woman at the flea market had described lies in neat piles at the edge of the clearing to my left. I can’t tell if all the pieces are there, but it’s a decent-sized stack.

  “Someone’s been working out here,” I say.

  “I noticed.”

  When I take another close look at the building, I spot tire tracks leading around the side yard toward the rear. My heart starts pounding. The weeds are crushed. Those tracks are recent. “Did you notice those?”

  Max nods. “It’s time to call the chief.”

  “No way. You know he’s going to tell us to get out of here and leave everything to him.” Max goes to object, but I hold out my hand to stop him. “By now, whoever made those tracks is either gone or well aware we’re here. Do you want to risk them hurting the Duo while Chief Clark and his guys get around to getting here?”

  “Okay. They’re probably ready for us to make a move, so watch yourself. You don’t want to give them any more reason to act.”

  Fear steals my next breath. “I’ll be careful,” I say when I can function again. “It’s just that I can’t sit and wait any more than I can turn around and leave.”

  He gives me one of his here-we-go-again sighs, but doesn’t argue any further. Instead, he kills the engine. “Let’s be quiet, then. That small element of surprise might be all the protection we have.”

  It might make a difference. Then again, it might not.

  Another look at the abandoned school sends a shiver right through me. I sigh. I can’t take the chance.

  I glance at Max and spot the glint in his eye. He’s got me. We might not want to go this alone, after all. “Fine. How about you call the chief?”

  “I’ll call him. But he might not get too worked up about our finding a ruin someone’s starting to restore. It could take some convincing.”

  “Maybe, but it is the school both Miss Mona and Doña Rosario went to. It’s within spitting distance from the Duo’s fave flea market. And they did go junking but never came home.”

  He shrugs and flips open his phone.

  “Exactly.” As Max waits for the chief to answer, I nod toward the crushed grass. “Trust me. That wasn’t Big Foot.”

  “Wait for me—Hello, Chief Clark.”

  I let them talk. I don’t interrupt even when I think I can tell the story better, and again find my patience challenged. While he gives directions to the school, I walk toward the tire tracks. Behind me, Max spits out a hurried goodbye, and two seconds later, grabs my hand.

  “Together,” he says, his whisper serious.

  I nod, but keep on walking. Then we reach the corner of the old school building. What I see knocks my world off kilter. Behind the house, its trunk yawning open, all four doors gaping wide, is Miss Mona’s brand-new Jaguar. Worse yet, at the far end of the clearing sits a brand-new, platinum-colored . . . good grief. It’s a Bentley.

  My stomach lurches. I feel sick.

  My worst fears have come true.

  The madwoman got to the Duo before we could.

  1800

  I take a step toward the cars, but Max claps a hand on my shoulder. “Easy,” he whispers. “You don’t know who’s here— or where they might be hiding.”

  Everything inside me shrieks “Who cares?” but I don’t say it. That would really freak Max right into his most protective posture. And I have to find the Duo. So I settle for nodding.

  We make our way to the Jag, careful not to mess up any prints or the tire tracks. Who knows what Chief Clark is going to need to build his case?

  Spread out over the Jag’s backseat are the spoils of the Daunting Duo’s shopping expedition. There’s the brass spittoon, a large, solid contraption that has obviously seen its share of use. Next to it, four chamber pots, three trimmed in red and the other in blue, all of them wearing dings, dangs, and chips, evidence of long years of service. Four newspaper-wrapped lumps suggest additions to Aunt Weeby’s English transferware collection, and on the floor, leaning against the seat, there’s a weird metal contraption I’m not sure I can identify. It’s cylindrical, about three feet tall, and consists of metal bars held in their circular positions by round iron constraints at the top, middle, and bottom.

  Doesn’t matter much to me what its original purpose might have been. “Look,” I tell Max. “A weapon.”

  Yeah, yeah. He gives me one of those you’re-nuts looks, but so what? He’s going to want something to bash a head or two. Me? I’m taking the spittoon. It looks sturdy enough for some head-bashing of my own.

  Then, making the least amount of sound, we approach the former school building. Only when we’re a few feet away do we hear voices inside; those thick brick walls muffle a whole lot of sound. A glance in each of the eight first-floor windows of the main section of the structure reveals nothing. But as we go around the corner, the voices grow louder. Max gestures for me to follow.

  We make the turn around the corner and hug the contours of the long wing. As we approach the last window, the voices are getting much louder. The nice, shiny, unbroken and new window is open, and the argument inside, in Spanish, spurts out, breaking the peace in the clearing with venom and rage. Too bad we can’t understand a word being said. We’re at a real disadvantage.

  “Can you see inside?” I ask.

  Max shakes his head. “The window’s just a bit too high. The property slopes down from the front of the house.”

  “Tell you what. Let me climb on your shoulders. I’ll be careful, and we might get an idea what’s going on.”

  He frowns. “I can’t let you do that. It’s too dangerous—”

  “It’s more dangerous to let time go by for Miss Mona and Aunt Weeby. Who knows what’s up with them? Come on. Don’t be such a drag.”

  Max mulls over my suggestion, but doesn’t seem too moved by my argument.

  “Quit wasting time. Get down on your knees, and let’s get this show on the road.”

  While he looks ready to argue again, he does squat and help me scramble up. Once I’m settled, and let me tell you, it’s not the most comforting and secure place to sit, he stands slowly and approaches the window. I lean one hand on his head for balance, and in the other, I clutch my spittoon.

  I pray. Oh, yes, indeed. I turn to the Lord for mercy, for protection, for wisdom and courage. I figure I’d better cover all the needs that come to mind since this is such a loony-tunes effort on our part, I probably will want every one of them met before I’m done.

  The closer Max gets to that open window, the harder my heart pounds. My breath grows shallow and my hands turn into blocks of ice.

  Did I ever mention once upon a time I used to be scared of everything? Well, I did. When I was a little girl, even shadows gave me the willies. Now here I am, approaching a bunch of drug smugglers and murderers, and I’m doing it in a way that gives them all the advantages.

  Smart—not.

  A truism that’s reinforced when I get my first look into the room. Creepella and her buddy are standing toe to toe, rage in their faces, arms waving wildly as they each try to make a point. The man has a gun in one hand. One of those wildly waving hands.

  Against the far right wall sits a couch, Aunt Weeby propped in one corner, Miss Mona in the other. Both ladies sport silver duct tape bracelets and muzzles and matching fear-filled eyes.

  “They’re there,” I whisper.

  “Shh!”

  I snort. “Those two couldn’t hear an elephant stampede, they’re arguing so loud. So what do you want to do next?”

  “Is the Duo there?”

  “Yep. On an old couch, tied up, and their mouths taped shut.”

  “Weapons?”

  “I see one—the man’s armed.”

  “Then we have to distract him. Maybe we can get him to come outside. Whatever we do, we want that gun as far from the Duo as possible.”

  “You got it. What’s the plan?”

  “Plan?
What plan? I’m winging it here.”

  I was afraid he’d say that. An itch starts up right between my brows, and I scrub the back of the hand with the spittoon against the offending patch of skin—I’m not letting go of that fistful of blond hair; it’s my one and only anchor. While scratching, a wacky idea occurs to me.

  “I know what we can do. You still have the weapon you picked up from the Duo’s junk haul, right?”

  He raises the metal thing so I can see it. “Have umbrella stand, will travel.”

  “It’s an umbrella stand?”

  “Yeah. What’d you think it was?”

  “I didn’t. I had no idea that’s what an umbrella stand looks like.” An especially shrill shriek spews out the window. I wince. “They’re getting more steamed by the minute in there.

  I don’t want that gun to go off by mistake.”

  “How about telling me what you want to do with the umbrella stand, then?”

  “Oh! That’s right. Let me down.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  But he does squat ever so slowly. Once I’m back on terra firma I feel much better—but I don’t tell him—and wave my spittoon. “Here’s our soldier’s helmet.”

  You know, it’s a little disconcerting when every time you tell something to the man you love he looks at you as though you’ve grown eight heads to go along with the original one God gave you. But I gotta cope.

  “Look. We want to distract the gunman, and neither you nor I want to get plugged doing it, so the best thing to do is wave the stand with the helmet on it, and hope it looks enough like a human to draw him and Creepella out of the school.”

  Max smacks his forehead. “You know I’m in trouble when your goofy ideas start sounding good.”

  “You got a better one?”