Houses of Stone (31 page)

The road was a narrow two-lane stretch of macadam. Water flowed through the ditches on either side. Peggy slowed and pulled to the right as a pickup approached, taking up more of the road than was its due. "Damned farmers always think they own the road," she grumbled. "Why
have you got your hands over your eyes? Relax, I know what I'm doing."

The auction house was a rambling, flat-roofed structure set among fields green with growing crops. A big tentlike structure flanked one side of it, and a graveled parking area the other. More parking was available across the road, in a field that had been mowed but not paved. It was a sea of mud and flattened weeds that morning; since they were early, there was space available in the graveled lot.

Peggy cast a professional look over the other vehicles. "Look at the license plates. New York, Pennsylvania, Florida . . . Dealers. I was afraid of this. He must have advertised in antique papers clear across the country. Get your sneer in place."

Karen followed her into the building. When she saw the interior she stopped and stared in consternation. Peggy had not overstated the size of the job. The large room was crammed with objects in haphazard array, tables piled on top of bureaus and sideboards, cardboard cartons heaped atop one another, long tables covered with stacked quilts and linens and china. There were more cartons under the tables. To the right of the entrance was a small platform with a desk and high stool—the auctioneer's podium, Karen assumed. Glass cases on either side held smaller, choicer objects; the overhead lights glinted off silver and crystal. At the back of the room, opposite the podium, a stout, aproned woman was dispensing coffee and doughnuts to several men who leaned on the counter talking and laughing.

"Old, favored customers," Peggy muttered, indicating the men. "They've been here before. Let's get some coffee and do a preliminary survey together."

She had stripped for action, leaving her coat and umbrella in the car, and was professionally attired in dungarees, denim shirt and heavy laced boots. Karen was glad she had been warned to wear old, comfortable clothes; the bare cement floor of the building was already marked by wet, muddy footprints.

Carrying a Styrofoam cup, she trotted obediently after Peggy as the latter walked along the rows of merchandise. Before they had gone ten feet, everything began to blur in Karen's mind. She understood why Peggy had insisted she bring a clipboard. Several of the dreaded dealers carried them too.

They finished their circuit of the room and their coffee simultaneously. Tossing her empty cup into a stained oil drum outside the door, Peggy flexed her arms and spoke.

"They save the big stuff like furniture and silver till later in the day. They'll start with the miscellaneous objects they don't expect will bring much—like those cartons. I'll let you excavate the ones on the floor, if you don't mind. My knees are giving me hell in this wet weather. Drag things out and dig to your heart's content, but be sure to put everything back in the same box you got it from."

Abject panic gripped Karen. "Suppose I miss something. I don't know what I'm looking for!"

"Neither do I." Peggy grinned broadly. "Have fun."

Karen didn't have to feign an expression of distaste as she dropped to her knees. Not only was the floor far from clean, but the contents of the boxes were thick with grime.

There were—she counted—thirty-seven cartons under the tables. She had finished inspecting them and moved on to another pile of boxes when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Ready to take a break?" Peggy asked. "It's eleven-thirty."

"So late?" Karen carefully replaced a collection of soft-drink bottles and rose to her feet. "This was a wasted morning. You wouldn't believe the junk! Why on earth would anyone buy a stained, chipped, ceramic bedpan?"

"I hear people use them for planters," Peggy said, and grinned at Karen's horrified expression. "Chacun a son gout. Come on. There's a powder room of sorts; we'll wash up and then have a spot of lunch. The food's usually good—homemade soup and pie and sandwiches."

They had to wait for service; several others had decided on an early lunch in order to avoid the crowd that would appear at one o'clock, when the viewing opened to the public. Seating herself in one of a row of chairs that lined the wall, Peggy unwrapped a country ham sandwich and took an enormous bite.

Karen sipped her soup and looked around the room. "There are more people here now. I don't see any familiar faces, though."

"Bill will turn up, never fear. And you are going to be very sweet and polite."

"Oh, right. Do you suppose Dorothea will have the gall to make an appearance?"

"If she does, you'll be polite to her too," Peggy said firmly.

"I'll distract her with witty conversation while you inspect her for cat scratches." Karen laughed. "I don't know why, but I'm beginning to enjoy this."

"I thought it would get to you."

"It has a weird fascination," Karen admitted. "The treasure-hunting instinct, I suppose."

"Mmm-hmmm. One never knows what gem may lie buried under the dreck. There are stories—most of them apocryphal, I admit, but some true—of people who've found a diamond bracelet in a box of costume jewelry, or a rare bit of porcelain jumbled in with cheap cups and saucers."

"There wasn't any rare porcelain among that lot," Karen said decidedly. "How about you? Any luck?"

"Some of the furniture is rather nice. A cherry lowboy, with original brasses, a carved fruitwood buffet with a marble top—"

"You haven't got room in your house for any more furniture."

"No." Peggy's eyes took on a faraway look and she murmured the phrase that, as Karen was to learn, is the motto and the heartfelt prayer of the dedicated auction buff. "But if it goes cheap ..."

"Is furniture all you looked at? There's a hell of a lot of stuff here, Peggy, and we don't have time—"

"I looked in every drawer and opened every door, kiddo. People sometimes overlook small objects. But no, that wasn't all I looked at. Finished? Come on, then, I want to show you something. And keep your face under control!"

She led Karen behind the podium. The wall was hung with paintings, many of them in ornate gilded frames. "I may bid on a few of these," she said, without troubling to lower her voice. "Isn't the lady in the bonnet divine?"

She glowered at them from the canvas, her lined, unsmiling face framed by white frills. The fingers of the hands folded on her knee looked odd; there appeared to be more of them than there ought to be.

" 'Divine' is hardly the word," Karen said dubiously. "How could you stand to have that face glaring at you? The artist's knowledge of anatomy
wasn't exactly ..." She stopped with a catch of breath, and Peggy jabbed her hard in the ribs.

"The dog's anatomy is even more peculiar," Peggy said. "But I love him. Look at his imbecile expression. These are primitives, you ignoramus, and they'll probably fetch high prices. Too high for me, though I'll take a crack at them. Did you see the frames?"

She drew Karen behind the podium, where a stack of frames stood leaning against the wall. "If you can't do better than that I'll leave you home tomorrow," she whispered, stooping. "Didn't you even think about family portraits?"

"I never dared hope for anything like that," Karen whispered back. "God, wouldn't it be wonderful? A frontispiece for the book—a jacket cover . . . But the portraits don't seem to be labeled, and we don't even know her real name!"

"So we acquire everything from the right period," Peggy said cheerfully.

"That nasty-looking old woman can't be she."

"Oh, God give me patience! We'll discuss your romantic prejudices tonight, in private." Lowering her voice even more, she continued to sort through the frames. "Get ready for this. If you so much as gasp, I'll slug you."

The frame she extracted from deep in the pile was a cheap, mass-produced affair, of a type that can be still purchased in any drug or department store—narrow strips of light wood in a standard eight-and-a-half-by-ten size. It was not new; the grain of the wood was stained with grime and the nails at one corner had come loose. The picture it enclosed was defaced by straight lines, one perpendicular and one vertical, and it was so dark Karen couldn't make out the subject.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Does it remind you of anything? Keep looking."

As she stared, shapes emerged from the background. Human figures, or the upper parts of them. Two people? Husband and wife, perhaps? A pity about those defacing lines . . . Then the connection Peggy had tried to evoke struck her, and she understood the meaning of the lines across the painting. It was an oil painting, not a print or a watercolor. The old paint had cracked off when the picture was folded.

"Branwell Bronte's portrait of his sisters," she whispered. "It was folded too. I can't make out who—"

"I've already had it out in the light, and I don't want to draw any more attention to it. You'll have to take my word for it—there are two women, not the usual portrait of a husband and wife. That's about all I could tell, but if it were cleaned and restored . . . Shall we go for it?"

"My God, yes! This is incredible!"

Peggy returned the portrait to its original place. "Don't get your hopes up, this is probably two other people. I figure it's worth a try, though, and if you can keep your big mouth shut and your big brown eyes from shining, we might get it cheap."

"I will. I swear. I—"

"Shut up," Peggy said amiably. "Back to work now. We haven't even looked at the books."

They spent the next half hour examining the contents of the glass cases—just in case, as Peggy said. The cases had to be unlocked by the woman in charge, and she kept a watchful eye on the objects, some of which were small enough to be slipped into a pocket or handbag. Her imagination fired, Karen examined every piece of jewelry and every ornament. It was a deflating experience, however; some of the old jet and garnet jewelry was attractive and, according to Peggy, fairly valuable, but the oldest dated, according to the same expert, to the mid-nineteenth century.

"I'll bet this was jumbled together in a box in the attic," Peggy muttered. She had whipped out a jeweler's loupe and gave an appearance at least of professional competence as she squinted through it. "A lot of the stones are missing, and some are chipped."

"You got it," said the custodian, visibly impressed by the loupe. "The good jewelry, if there was any, must've been sold a long time ago. Guess the old guy forgot about this collection. If you'd seen the place, you'd see how he could. Took us two months just to sort through the stuff."

"You'll get good prices for some of these, though," Peggy said consolingly. "Antique jewelry is skyrocketing. I might have a try for this garnet necklace; it's in pretty good shape."

Karen had lost interest. "Are you almost through here? The place is filling up, it must be after one."

"A few more minutes," Peggy said, indicating a pile of jet pieces to the attendant. "You don't have to hang around."

Karen headed like a homing pigeon for the boxes of books. They had
called to her all morning; only a stern sense of duty had enabled her to resist. She hadn't rummaged among old books for a long time. It was like breaking your diet.

Some of the Cartrights had been readers. As she moved on from box to box, she began to see a pattern. Few books were as early in date as the ones Lisa had acquired—"pilfered," most likely, Karen thought. One large group dated from the late eighteen hundreds—an eclectic collection of novels and essays, poetry and drama, biographies and travel books. Another sizable lot had dates in the teens and twenties of this century. She recognized some of the best-selling authors of that period. Could they have belonged to the old man who had recently died? If so, he had stopped buying books in the early thirties. The Great Depression? Possibly. A pile of condensed books, much later in date, gave her pause until she realized they must come from Uncle Josiah's scavenging period. The books were worthless, people couldn't give them away—except to pack rats, collectors of junk, like the old man. A shiver of pity ran through her. What a horrible thing to happen to someone. His had not been a house of stone in the literal sense, but he had shut himself up in a prison as impenetrable—that of his lonely, suspicious mind.

She was rummaging through a box of ledgers and recipe books when Joan appeared, sinking cross-legged to the floor beside her. Giving her friend an abstracted "hi," Karen continued to rummage.

"Finding goodies?" Joan plucked a tattered paper-covered book from her hand. It bristled with clippings and scraps that had been stuck between the pages. "Best-Loved
Poems of the World.
This doesn't look very enticing. She's cut poems out of the paper too. 'A Mother's Lament for her Dead Infant.' 'Thy tiny brow now marble-cold in death ..." Yucko."

She tossed the book back into the box. "Have you been here all day? Then you need a break. Come on, I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

Karen returned the other books to the carton. "Oh, all right," she said abstractedly.

Joan hauled her to her feet. "The warmth of your welcome touches my heart. Where's Peggy?"

"Somewhere around." Karen scanned the room. "Where's Sharon?"

"She hates auctions. After she dropped me she went to the motel. I figured I'd hitch a ride back with you and Peggy."

"Son of a bitch," Karen exclaimed.

"If it's that much trouble, never mind." Following the direction of Karen's intent stare, she let out a gurgle of laughter. "Oh, I see. It is the son of a bitch. You've upgraded him from bastard, have you?"

Meyer was watching them. He smiled and raised a hand in greeting. Karen smiled and waved back and went on walking.

"I'm making nice, following orders from Peggy," she said. "That doesn't mean I've changed my opinion."

"If you don't want him, how about introducing me?"

"It may come to that," Karen muttered. "Excuse me. I'm going to wash my hands."

When she returned, Joan was waiting, guarding two cups of coffee and two pieces of pie. Karen realized she was starved.

"One of the reasons I come to auctions is the food," Joan announced, scraping her plate. "I think I'll have a piece of red devil's food cake next. I need nourishment. Do you know what I had for lunch?"

"I don't want to hear about it."

"No, you don't. What can I do to help? Tell me what you're looking for and I will work my fingers to the bone."

"Early papers and books," Karen said vaguely. "But you needn't sacrifice yourself. We've covered most of the stuff."

"Including the barn?"

"What barn?"

"The barn out in back. The stuff for Sunday's auction is there. They won't move it in till tonight or tomorrow morning."

Karen gaped at her in horror. An entire barn, packed from roof to rafters . . .

"That's probably where Peggy is," Joan said. "I'll go look for her. You've still got a couple of hours," she added consolingly.

"See you later." Karen fled back to the books.

By the time she had finished with them it was after three-thirty. A suspicious survey of the now crowded room told her Meyer was not there. He was probably in the barn too, damn him.