I listened for the line to go dead. It didn’t.
“You called me at four o’clock in the morning to tell me you missed me, and to invite me to the picnic?”
It was at least four twenty now, but this was no time to correct her. “Well, sure, pretty much.”
“Lucy, thanks. I’ve been grappling with issues that are beyond me. I needed to get away from the pressure.”
“That’s right, Natalie. Pressure’s no good for anyone. You need to get it out of your system.” Tell me what you know.
“Life’s so short, Lucy. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own circumstances. Then there was the Monty thing, and I went away for a few days to think.”
“What Monty thing, Natalie?”
“He was murdered, Lucy,” she said. “Surely you must know that.”
Jesus Aitch Christ. “Of course I do, Natalie.” I took some deep breaths. “Where did you go for this retreat?”
She sighed. “A lovely place, near Barre. Peaceful and gentle feeling. They have a code of silence. A kind of Eastern harmony.” Another sigh.
Oh, Natalie, get off the stick. I gathered my wits together and said, “It’s good to get away and examine your problems. It makes the picture clearer, brings solutions into focus.” God, I was starting to sound like her. My own picture was clearly muddy.
“Yes, I’ve been addressing my fear.”
“Your fear?” Finally. Now, let’s get down to cases.
“Yes, I’ve been fearful of the implications of collaboration.”
“Collaboration? What do you mean, Natalie?”
“I’m contemplating effectuating the domestic context.”
“Oh.” This is all wrong. She’s speaking Natalieze. She only does that when . . . “Natalie, are you speaking of a relationship?”
“Of course,” she said. “You’re inquiring after the reason for my retreat, aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. This was going to drag on forever. It was going exactly nowhere, and it was time for me to leave. “But since I have you on the line, let me ask if you know anything specific about Monty’s murder.”
The line went dead.
Shit.
I grabbed the can of marble polish, stuffed it in my purse, and signaled Monica that it was time to leave. As we got settled, I mentioned that she’d have to ride back home in the truck with TJ, and this was her last chance to change her mind about going to Brimfield.
“No way,” she said.
A few miles beyond the Bourne Bridge we stopped at a diner that might have pleased Edward Hopper. In minutes we were back on the empty road, with the smell of coffee and breakfast sandwiches filling the van. We nibbled and sipped in quiet comfort, and neither of us reached for the radio. The van hummed, happy to have the road to itself.
Monica understood that there was something peculiar about my phone call to Natalie. I had a feeling that she was turning it over in her mind, and that she wanted to bring up the subject. I was not about to volunteer any information about the murder, and plotted what I should say if she inquired.
After a while she asked, “Is Natalie an antiques dealer, too?”
Piece of cake. I have enough Natalie stories to fill every minute of the rest of our trip, and then some.
23
“B
efore I ever met Natalie, I knew her as ‘Sacrifice,’ ” I said. “She wasn’t quite an antiques dealer, but she was on her way.”
“Sacrifice?”
“Yes,” I said. “At that time, I always scanned the classified ads—still do. I never want to miss a treasure returning to the market. Once in a while I hit pay dirt. But at that time, I noticed an ad that had been showing up almost weekly, and it always began with the word ‘Sacrifice.’ ”
“What did that mean, sacrifice?”
“Oh, it went something like, ‘Sacrifice. Leaving area. Must get rid of,’ and then it would list some items, usually things I had no interest in, such as kitchen tools, or secondhand maple furniture, or kids’ toys. Or sometimes the ad would say, ‘Sacrifice. Moving to smaller quarters,’ and so forth. And then one day it said, ‘Sacrifice. Tiffany lamp, must sell.’ ”
“And you bought the lamp!” Monica guessed.
I looked at her, snorted, and turned back to the road. “No way. Don’t forget, I’d been reading those ads regularly. As green as I was, I knew that anyone who’d been selling that tag-sale junk was never going to have a real Tiffany lamp. But, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t until much later that I came to realize that about ninety percent of the ‘Tiffany lamps’ in antique shops aren’t Tiffanys, either.”
I could see that Monica didn’t know where I was going with this tale, but I was just getting my second wind, and I continued with my story.
“Well, it was a quiet day—probably a quiet month, back then—and to amuse myself, I called, asked a few questions, and I began to feel bad for the poor soul who answered the phone. She was confused, she had kids screaming in the background, and it was clear that she wasn’t trying to put something over on someone looking for a Tiffany lamp.”
“How did you know that?”
“For starters, she was asking something like twenty-five dollars for the lamp.”
“A dead giveaway,” Monica said, rolling her eyes.
“Right, and wait until you hear the rest. When I asked where I could see the lamp—I had always wondered where Sacrifice was located—she gave me an address in my building. The building where I had my antique shop.”
“And you hadn’t noticed?”
“Yes and no. When I rented that first shop, in Worcester, I picked a run-down building where the rent was cheap. There were a few struggling businesses in addition to mine on the street floor, and there were apartments on the two floors above us.
“I’d been there a short while when Natalie rented a little apartment upstairs. I used to see her arrive. She’d gather up her two tots, and her bags, and bundles, and get them upstairs. Then she’d rush back down and drag up several pieces of furniture, or cartons of stuff. She had a big old-fashioned station wagon, and there was always something in the back for her to drag upstairs.”
“So she lived there, above your shop?”
“No. I thought that she was slowly moving herself in. But it turns out that she didn’t want to actually live there, she just wanted it to look as if she lived there.”
Monica looked at me, and I smirked. I had time to tell her about Natalie’s business. We had almost two hours left before we reached Brimfield.
So I told her about Natalie selling used furniture because she didn’t think she had the skills to do anything else, and she didn’t think she could afford good child care, and furthermore she didn’t want a bunch of strangers trampling through the tiny dream house that they had bought just before she was widowed.
Monica listened quietly, asking an occasional question, and before long, though I’d intended not to bring Monty into the picture, I found myself telling her how Monty had found us, helped us, and had encouraged Natalie to develop an antiques business, which left the secondhand business to him. And then, of course, I blabbed everything I knew about Monty’s murder.
We pulled into a parking lot not too far from today’s action.
“I need to run over to May’s before we get in line. I have to talk to Coylie,” I said.
“I have a cell phone, if that would be easier,” she said.
“You do?”
“Everyone has one, Lucy. Philip told me that you’re technophobic, but they’re easy, I’ll show you.”
“I’m not anything phobic,” I said, bristling. “I just don’t want to be on call twenty-four seven.”
“That’s sensible, but you can turn it off when you want to be ‘out of range.’ Mine is turned off right now. I’m saving the battery. When I get home tonight, I’ll plug it in and recharge it.”
“Didn’t I read somewhere that you could be tracked down no matter where you were through your cell phone?”
She laughed. “Yes, if you have the FBI and the CIA after you. But if it’s only the family, or almost anyone else, I guarantee you that if you turn it off, they can’t get to you.”
I didn’t know that, but I had no wish to say so. Instead, I explained that we couldn’t call Coylie because he had lent his phone to someone—in fact, the very same someone that I’d been trying to reach. I steered us over, introduced the two, and told Coylie that I hadn’t been able to reach Frankie so far, but that I’d left messages.
“I tried him, too, and got no answer, but when I called his home phone they said that he was still on the road, but that he should be arriving home by midmorning today.”
I took his home number and said I’d try him there, later. Monica again volunteered the use of her cell phone. I took the information I needed, and both Monica and Coylie gave me a lesson in cell phone use, using short declarative sentences, and giving me extremely simple directions. I sensed some condescension, but decided that it was better for me to learn how to use the phone than to get upset about their patronizing tone.
That done, Coylie gave me an envelope Baker had dropped off earlier. It held several excellent photos of the candlestand. So, we were on our way. Coylie couldn’t join us. He would keep his booth open until just before the picnic. On the way over, I spotted Mr. Hogarth. He was, of course, headed the same way we were going, and I maneuvered us right into his pathway.
Except for the black silk top hat, Mr. Hogarth was dressed rather staidly for him. His wide black suspenders clamped a plaid shirt in place and kept his voluminous khaki pants at full mast. A tall man, he claims he’s shrinking, but he still reaches more than six feet. The top hat added another foot to his height.
He doffed his hat and bowed deeply to Monica when I introduced them. Monica looked over at me, checked my reaction, and was satisfied that we were in the presence of a friend. Mr. Hogarth stepped between us, put a hand on each of our shoulders, and steered us in the direction of the only opening for Friday, J & J Productions. I basked in our high degree of reflected visibility.
“This place is often called the Girls’ Field,” he told Monica.
“That has the ring of political incorrectness.”
“The girls referred to are the daughters of the original founder of the whole Brimfield shebang,” he said. “Fifty years ago they were ‘the girls’ to him, and they became the Girls to the regulars here.”
“The term seems to be less an issue than the fact that they changed the opening hour today to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary,” I said. “That’s why we got to sleep until four this morning.”
“I guess I should be grateful for that,” Monica said.
When we reached the entrance we saw TJ near the front of the line. He waved at us with the rolling motion that is an invitation to come on over, but I knew better. Line jumping is a subtle art at Brimfield and has to be done with sly cunning. This is one of those fields that has a well-organized opening procedure that excels at keeping things evenhanded. But, just in case we were inclined toward disputing that convention, there came from the crowd a rumble of warnings and comments, reminding us that cheating would not be tolerated in broad daylight.
TJ grinned at his faux pas, and seemed to be forgiven by the crowd since he showed an acceptable level of embarrassment, nicely matched with his obvious youth. He was all in black again today: jeans, T-shirt, and vest. Black does make people look tall and slim, I thought, before I caught myself. He’s at least ten inches taller than I, and probably thirty or more pounds lighter. His tallness and slimness weren’t merely an illusion because he was wearing black.
Mr. Hogarth led our little group to the end of the line, where he and I engaged in our Alphonse-and-Gaston act—“You go first.” “No, you first.” “No, ladies first.” “No, age before beauty”—until Mr. Hogarth humbly accepted the spot ahead of me in the line. As he always does.
We nodded hello to several people around us, and the line got longer immediately after we were in place. With about an hour to go, the numbers get serious. Multitudes of buyers gather.
“Several years ago, I watched a young couple get married in this line,” Mr. Hogarth said.
“Really?” Monica asked.
Someone nearby in the crowd answered, “I remember that. It was another great moment at Brimfield.”
“That couple met in this very line the year before they married.”
Monica looked at me with a huge grin. “I wonder what’ll happen this year,” she said.
“All I want to happen today is some good shopping,” I said. I was happy she had come along; the lack of sleep was getting to me, and her exuberance perked me up, made it easy to kill an hour in the line visiting.
The clock worked its way around to eight a.m., and we were off. Mr. Hogarth disappeared without a trace. We’d planned to meet again at the Patio. I told Monica that I always turned right when I entered a field, then scanned every booth, some quicker than others, then up and down every aisle. Not complicated, but consistent. “That’s Mr. Hogarth’s method, except that he always turns left,” I said.
We stopped almost immediately so I could look at a small table. A leaf-shaped dish caught Monica’s eye, and she picked it up and looked it over. She hesitated. It was pretty.
“Do you love it?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I love it,” she said. “I like it, and I can afford it. But I don’t know if I love it.”
“Visualize it doing something,” I said.
“Doing something?”
“Yeah, like holding macaroni and cheese, or bonbons, or . . .”
She laughed. “I’m not sure,” she said.
“If you’re shopping for yourself, there’ll be plenty here that you’ll have no doubt about.”
“I think this one’s not for me,” she said, and she put it down.
“Nor this table for me, so let’s move on.”
She looked at several things along our way. It slowed me down, but it was interesting to watch her getting into it. When we reached Muriel’s tent, we looked around. It was a large tent where several sellers had joined together to sell their wares. Muriel had organized the group, and she had picked her sellers carefully; the tent was loaded with superb objects.