“You’ve talked to him?” asked Claire.
“I listened,” said Oh.
Pulling into the parking lot, Jane could see that it was every bit as fabulous as Tim had described. Some vendors had set up lights, giving their tables and boxes the look of theatrical set pieces. Others, with their wares illuminated by the glow of candlelight, gave their pieces romantic cachet. Jane fished her flashlight out of her purse, and Tim nodded his approval.
“You don’t want to buy a vase that’s mint by candlelight and crazed by daylight,” he said, referring to the network of fine lines and cracks underneath the glaze that devalued so much older porcelain and pottery.
Jane and Tim agreed to split up, circling the grounds from opposite directions. Bruce Oh said he’d tag along with Mrs. Wheel, and Claire, already sprinting toward a truck with furniture, said she’d meet them back at the car in a few hours.
“Claire seems to have recovered from all the police business,” Oh said pensively. He looked at Jane, who was already in her flea market trance, carefully using her flashlight to go through two red-haired women’s trunkful of vintage kitchenalia.
Jane hit paydirt at the third table. By candlelight she fell in love with a grouping of typewriter ribbon tins. She had a few at home that she had collected accidentally since they were being used to hold pins and hook-and-eye fasteners in an old sewing kit she had purchased. She had realized when she examined them that the small, round tins, with colorful designs and great graphics, were great collectibles in their own right. This sweet old man, wearing a T-shirt that identified him as the “tin man,” dealing out of the trunk of his car, was willing to part with all the tins for approximately four dollars apiece. Jane realized that meant that half were underpriced and half were overpriced. What decided her about the purchase, though, was a small, round, Kelly green “Typ O’Typ” tin that had random letters around the sides of the container. It was a gem, and Jane was a sucker for anything named something o’ something. She probably would have paid twenty-five for that one alone, although she would have had to answer to Tim for it later. She counted out Tin Man’s money and asked if he would throw in some of the mechanical pencils he had in a jar, and he told her to pick two. Jane was practically dancing, discovering two laminated Bakelite pencils in the jar, both advertising Michigan taverns. She took her folded plaid shopping bag out of her large, leather tote and shook it open.
“I’ll throw this in, too, honey; it’s a cutie and looks good with the Typ O’ Typ. End of the season and all,” he said, handing her a small rectangular tin, green with red corners. It was a tin for 7/16-inch “push thumbtacks.”
It was a cutie. On the bottom was a graphic of a girl in a turn-of-the-century skirt and middy blouse holding a picture she wanted to hang. Jane started. The manufacturer was the Moore Push-Pin Company of Philadelphia. The slogan was “Moore Push, Less Hangers.”
“You think Rick Moore is sending me a message to get back to business?” asked Jane, showing Oh the tin.
“I never dismiss anything, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh, “not totally anyway.”
They saw Annie and Mickey and Scott making their way around the grounds. Annie was carrying a large, two-handled basket overflowing with ribbons and old packages of rickrack and seam binding. She had a few remnants of fabric or tablecloths in it as well, and Jane asked her where she had found them. A quick gesture toward the other side of the parking lot, and everyone was off again.
This was where all of these junkers, restorers, craftspeople, and recyclers came alive—the marketplace of the forgotten and worn and worn out. From several yards away, Jane watched Glen LaSalle unroll paintings on canvasses that were all jammed into cardboard boxes scattered around a U-Haul truck. They watched Blake hold old wooden-handled tools first in one hand then in another, hefting the weight back and forth, checking for balance and feel. It was a gift, really, to see everyone at their most vulnerable, everyone wanting something.
Jane had filled her plaid bag with silver dessert spoons, crocheted pot holders, the typewriter tins, and two large jars of buttons. She had laughed out loud when she picked up a small wooden box that held at least two dozen elongated pennies, the kind you made yourself in a machine as souvenirs. Jane spotted a Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone picture among them and felt that she might have happened on a collection that belonged to one person, one family. Maybe she would be able to track their every summer vacation by laying out their reasonably priced souvenirs, hand cranked out by the kids at every stop along the way.
Oh wandered over to a food truck where an entrepreneur from two towns over had come to sell coffee and doughnuts when word got out that Moonlight Market was being held. He brought Jane a coffee, and they paused in the middle of the frenzy for a momentary recharge.
A woman with wildly curly hair gathered on top of her head in antennaelike ponytails asked Oh if his tie was for sale. He shook his head.
“I get that all the time,” he said to Jane. “Claire says I should name a price and make some money. She is confident she can always find more.”
“But you don’t like getting caught up in the buy and sell?” asked Jane.
“Gifts, the ties are gifts from my wife, so I could never sell them. She says it’s the only sentimental thing about me, but it doesn’t seem sentimental. Seems impolite to think about not keeping them. Even if they are,” he looked down at the tie he was wearing, “sometimes silly.”
Jane sipped her coffee and looked left and right. This was marvelous, a moonlit madness that everyone here shared. There was the hope of finding your heart’s delight, whatever it might be. The one thing you wanted and needed and had to have, and tonight, because you were in the right place at the right time, would have. And for however long it lasted, that romance of the marvelous thing would make you happy.
Jane was about to explain this whole love story to Oh when she looked straight across the field at a truck illuminated by two work lamps clamped to the sides of the bed.
Broken furniture and old air conditioners, alley pickings of every sort, were piled high. Sitting on top of Mount Debris was something else, though. It looked like a well-made table, what once might have been a valuable antique, now a dented and broken throwaway. Tom, of Tom’s Trash and Treasures, was lifting it down for two people to get a better look.
Jane hurried across the field with Oh following. She managed to tell Oh that it was the table she had seen earlier. Behind the couple who were looking at the table was another man, pretending to be totally enraptured by an old turquoise high-fi set with detachable speakers, but Jane could see that he was studying the table and listening to Tom and the couple discuss it.
“Nah, it was a throwaway, too. Found it in the alley. It’s a good one though. Anyone can see that’s solid wood, not one of your new glue-and-sawdust models.”
The couple wandered off, but the dealer who was feigning interest in the speakers and disinterest in the table stayed close. He watched others come and tap the table, look underneath, examine the legs. He was joined by someone who looked like he could be his brother, just a taller, thinner version of the same man.
“Well,” he whispered, “is it a Thornbury?”
“Might could be,” he answered. “If it is, the old man doesn’t know it, though. He wants to get rid of it for twenty-five dollars.”
“Buy it,” the tall version hissed.
“I can get it for less,” the other one answered.
“Shit,” said the brother or the partner. He had only glanced away for a moment, but the couple from earlier had come back and given Tom a twenty and were now carrying the table to the parking lot.
“You cheap bastard, now I have to go to work,” the tall man said, following the couple to their van. Jane and Oh followed, too, pausing long enough to look at various tables, hoping to deflect anyone who might suspect them of stalking the table and its buyers. Jane saw Claire a few tables over and asked Oh to go get her so she could size up this piece of furniture.
/> “Looks like a Thornbury,” she said. “Hard to tell, though, without looking at the construction. It’s in bad shape.”
“Would it be worth speculating on for twenty-five dollars?”
“Honey, anything’s worth speculating on for twenty-five dollars. Tim’s got you on way too small a budget,” Claire said. “If it’s the real deal, a Roger Thornbury–made card table, it’s worth thirty thousand at auction, even in that shape.”
Jane, Claire, and Bruce watched tall man cajole and wheedle the couple, brandishing a tape measure like a sword. He seemed to be trying to convince them that he had run to measure the space for this old table in his summer cabin; he had an odd, awkward space to fill, and his wife was going to kill him if he didn’t come home with it since she had said it would fit—he had been the one who’d insisted on measuring. He didn’t know how much they had paid, but he was willing to give them fifty dollars just to spare himself the aggravation.
Jane admired the young couple; they remained impassive during the whole speech. The wife whispered something to the husband, and he told tall man that his wife was suspicious. Was he an antiques dealer who knew something they didn’t know? The man laughed uproariously. He was good, Jane gave him that. He insisted he didn’t know a Chippendale from a chipmunk; he just knew he wouldn’t be out of the doghouse for months if he didn’t come home with that table. Would they take a hundred dollars?
The couple took $125, and the wife shook her finger at the man and told him they better not turn on the Antiques Roadshow and see him standing between the Keno brothers. He laughed again and shook his head.
As soon as the couple had walked away, Claire walked up to the man. “Is it a Thornbury?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, “but I have to find out.”
“Do you have a card?” asked Jane.
“Ask my stupid, cheap brother over there. I don’t want to do anything dealerlike while that couple might be watching. She’d come over here and peck my eyes out.”
“Would you take five hundred for this right now?” Jane asked.
“No,” he said, “although by tomorrow I’ll probably be kicking myself. Do you have a card?”
Jane shook her head. She was beginning to think she’d better get some. Jane Wheel, PI, picker-investigator.
“How will you authenticate this table?” Oh asked, as he offered to help him carry it to his truck.
As they walked away, Jane heard him telling Oh that there was a place nearby called Campbell and LaSalle…
A little after 4:00 A.M. they were headed back to Campbell and LaSalle. They had fished out the market and were happy shoppers; but more important, for Jane, she had seen the Brewster chair plan in action.
She knew as soon as she saw the table on Tom’s truck that it was the one she had watched being “distressed” earlier that day.
And scanning the crowd, spotting another interested party watch the drama of the tall dealer scam the young couple out of a potentially valuable antique, she saw him. Standing tall, hands shoved into his pockets, hat pulled low, Jane could picture him as she had seen him earlier that day, wielding a hammer against that poor, defenseless table.
The problem, she now realized, with figuring out who at Campbell and LaSalle might have a reason to carry out a forgery plan, to make such elaborate copies and set them free in the world, was that she had thought there had to be a money motive. For someone to have fooled Claire with the fake Westman chest or pulled a switch when she picked it up, Jane had believed someone had to be looking for a profit. Hearing the story of the Brewster chair, however, expanded the possibilities.
What if someone wanted to make these forgeries for fun? Just to prove he could do it? He wouldn’t sell them; he’d just release them into the dealer/shark-infested waters of country antiques and watch them swim back to Campbell and LaSalle for restoration and authentication.
No one was sleepy when they got back to the compound. No one even looked tired. Everyone who had sneaked out now filed into the lodge with their purchases, hoping that Cheryl and the staff had been tipped off about Moonlight Market and planned breakfast to begin even earlier than normal. The coffee was on and a basket of muffins and scones sat on the sideboard. The kitchen hummed with activity, and there remained an excited buzz among those residents who had gotten away with something by sneaking out.
Since Jane had been semirecruited by Murkel, she was surprised she didn’t feel at all guilty about sneaking out or seeing everyone else sneak out. Well, why should she? It was Jane’s job, as she saw it, to help Murkel make sure no one got away with murder. The Moonlight Market had provided the perfect opportunity to piece the puzzle together.
She hadn’t said anything to Tim, Oh, or Claire in the car on the way back though, because there was one more piece that she had to figure out. If someone wanted to play a trick, work a scam like the Brewster forgery, and didn’t care about making money from it, why would anyone be killed over it? Why had Rick Moore killed Horace Cutler, and why had someone killed Rick Moore? What was at stake?
Jane had begun telling Oh some of her thoughts when Tim and Claire brought coffee over to the table.
“What would Belinda St. Germain say about that bag of stuff, Janie?” asked Tim. “Looks to me like you’ve violated your parole.”
“No, I was reading that book while you all were at dinner,” said Claire, “and as long as you get rid of an equal number of objects, you can have new stuff.”
“I’m afraid you don’t know Jane very well; she can’t get rid of anything,” said Tim, laughing.
“I’ll get rid of twelve things in my purse right now,” said Jane, “while I figure something out.”
Jane pulled a handful of odds and ends from her purse and stared down at them. Solving this murder was going to be easier than sorting out this stuff. She made each card, each pencil, each highlighter, each key ring, each yo yo (where had she picked up two yo yos?), each notebook stand for one of the Campbell and LaSalle residents.
She knew who wasn’t taken seriously, who might want to prove himself as a master craftsman, and who wouldn’t have to care about making money from it. That was easy. She made her Bakelite compact stand for him. It was at least as well carved and attractive as Blake’s handsome face.
“May I have your attention, campers?” said Murkel, who had come in from the office. He was the only one in the room who actually looked like he had been awake all night. Oh nodded at him and gestured slightly toward Jane Wheel, who was laying the contents of her purse out on the table. Jane nodded, too, as if to say, I’ll have this worked out in a minute; but Murkel did not look satisfied.
“Although I explained that no one was supposed to leave the grounds for any reason, it seems there was quite a caravan into town last night, this morning, a few hours ago.”
“Moonlight Market,” said Annie brightly. Jane would make the black Bakelite squirrel call that said on the side it was made in Olney, Illinois, stand for Annie. She had wanted Rick to stop blocking her chi.
“We’re all back,” said Scott, fixing mimosas at the sideboard. That’s the way to start a Monday morning. Jane took her green EZ Way Inn key ring and made it stand for Scott. He wanted money or at the least a dental plan.
Mickey sat down and started buttering a muffin. Mickey could be the Bakelite dice she kept in a leather pouch. He wanted Rick’s spot as Blake’s right-hand man. And he maybe wanted Annie, too. He’d kept his eyes on her the whole time he slathered butter on his pastry.
Jane found a wrinkled buckeye to stand for Silver and a pack of Life Savers for Martine. Geoff and Jake came in, and Jane found two pink pearl erasers to stand in for them. Jane knew that Geoff and Jake just wanted a place to do their work, Silver needed to get rid of negativity, and Martine wanted a book contract and a little Oprah glory. She wanted to be Belinda St. Germain, for heaven’s sake.
Glen and Roxanne were sitting in the club chairs. When Blake took a seat at the table, Roxanne got up and came o
ver to him and he absentmindedly kissed the top of her head. Jane hadn’t seen her at the Moonlight Market, but that didn’t surprise her. You only had to meet Roxanne once to know that she didn’t need stuff to make her happy. She was one of those self-contained people. As long as she had this place to run and Blake to take care of, she would be happy.
“Since everyone’s up and at ’em so bright and early, maybe this would be a good time to have a group discussion of Rick Moore’s murder,” said Murkel.
Jane found more purse detritus to stand for Glen and Roxanne. A Zippo lighter for Glen and a…what was it her mother had been saying constantly? “A round peg in a square hole?” Is that what she had found to represent Roxanne? Jane told Oh she needed Murkel to stall for two minutes before he started the meeting.
Jane stood up and looked at the circle of objects in front of her on the table. If Annie saw this up close, she might think Jane was laying out her own version of the feng shui compass. Jane looked it over once, picked up a few things, then excused herself.
She needed to check the direction it was pointing one more time.
19
You might think your mind is not as cluttered as your closet. Go right ahead and tell yourself that, my dears. When you are finally honest with yourself, however, you will look inside that kitchen drawer, awash in old batteries, twist ties, expired coupons, spent candles, and half-empty matchbooks, and you will see, instead of a drawer, a mirror.
—BELINDA ST. GERMAIN, Overstuffed
When Jane came back in, Martine had cornered Oh, who was being defended by Tim. Murkel was talking on a cell phone; and although no one had left, the novelty was wearing off. Everyone was restless, wanting to get to their nests and look over their Moonlight Market treasures. Only Blake looked content, stirring his coffee and smiling at what he had wrought.
Martine was holding a folder over her heart with her right hand, and she patted it with her left, as if calming an infant.
The Wrong Stuff Page 21