A Killer Collection (10 page)

Bunny paused again, sighing in
annoyance.

"Well, that may be the case,
but I'm telling you, he had his morning shot at home!"

Molly heard Bunny slam down the
receiver in anger. "Why don't you ask me if I'm glad that my husband had
diabetes?" Bunny raged aloud in her office, unaware that she

had an audience on the other side
of the door. "Why don't you ask me if I'm glad that he's dead?"

Molly backed quietly out of the
hall. Once she was standing in the yellow living room she coughed loudly

"Mrs. Staunton?" she
called innocently, walking back into the hallway.

Bunny poked her head out of the
office door, a manila envelope held protectively to her chest

"I'm sorry to interrupt you,
but I just wanted to let you know that there are a few pieces of pottery listed
in your husband’s inventory book that aren't on the shelves." Molly talked
faster as Bunny stared at her in disinterest. "Could they be anywhere else
in the house?"

"No. All of his pottery is in
that wing."

Molly shifted from one foot to
another. "Do you have a cleaning service?"

Bunny frowned. "We do. Two
wonderful ladies who’ve been cleaning for us for years. If they broke anything,
they'd tell me immediately. I have complete trust in them."

The phone in the office began to
ring again. Bunny scowled. "They were probably taken by some of his
collector
friends. They were always dropping by to see his collection, whether he was
here or not." She began to turn away, and then paused and added, "And
what did I care? I let them in. Now, if you'll excuse me." Bunny returned
to the safety of her office and shut the door before Molly could ask her the
names of these "friends."

Back in the main hall, Lex cocked
an eyebrow at her. "You're making a funny face. What did she say?"

"I'll tell you in the
car," Molly said, relieved that they were leaving.

The Staunton house might be
beautiful, but there were some dark corners in the polished mansion where
mysteries lurked. Why would a woman who hated her husband keep so many pictures
of him near her? Had George-Bradley received his daily insulin shot and then
absentmindedly given himself another one? Or had Bunny deliberately given her
philandering husband an overdose? And where, in a house that guarded its
secrecy beneath a facade of expensive decorators and immaculate landscaping,
were the missing pieces of pottery?

~~~~~~~~~~

The hands that held the rabbit were not gentle. They
were smooth and oily, missing the calluses of work and the coarseness that
comes with creation. They were damp, greedy hands that put too much pressure on
the clay's hollow neck. Strange smells that were not of the earth, but spoke of
dead trees and ink, seeped into the clay's pores, and it protested as the crush
of an old piece of newspaper encircled its form.

From its place in the darkness,
the rabbit could feel the sway of the man's body. It could smell the odor of
stale sweat lining the inside of the cloth pocket, carrying a pungent memory of
the compost pile outside of the potter's shed.

The potter's scent was
different. His was the smell of salt-tinged sweat, little rivulets of it
slipped down his arms and face as he turned like rainwater on a craggy stone.
The potter's scent was damp leaves, the hidden skin of pine bark, the soil
beneath the cucumber vines, newly sprung mushrooms, dried moss in the deep
wood. The potter was connected to the earth.

The clay was moving away from
its home now. It could feel the distance yawning wider and wider. The wheel
where it was birthed was gone. The movement was too fast, things passed by in a
blur of senses. It could feel the air changing, filling with too many scents of
man. Polluted, tainted.

The rabbit was afraid. There
were too many noises. Voices were raised. A woman was shouting, shrilly, like a
jay yelling over the ledge of its nest. Lights seeped in through the newspaper
but the rabbit felt more than saw the slow movement of shadows. Then it was
placed inside another cloth and felt the binding of tape wind around its body.
The hands were gone. All was still.

The rabbit could not detect any
sound, any sight, any smell. It had been made prisoner within a cave of
darkness. There was no hum of the potter's wheel or music from his radio. There
was no firefly glow from his swinging bulb or the afternoon sunlight leaning in
through the shed window like a heavy branch. The other forms of clay, the
brothers and sisters, were not here to provide warmth and memory in the night.

The clay was lost.

It longed to be back in the
riverbed where the darkness was innocent. If it could return to the moist womb
of its mother, it could be comforted by the weight of water and see the broken
stars swimming above. It longed for escape, to be unknowing, unborn, unmade.
But it had lost its power. The man who took it did not hear the calling.

In the darkness, the clay was
forgotten.

~~~~~~~~~~

Throughout the civilized history of mankind, after the
gradual change from nomadic hunter and gatherer to settled farmer and animal
breeder, clay has probably been the most consistently used material for
improving the quality of life.

—ROBIN HOPPER, from
Functional Pottery: Form
and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose

On another humid Monday morning, Molly sat in the
newspaper’s break room, jotting notes on the Staunton collection. She liked the
buzz of peripheral noise as other  staffers talked and snacked around the
gurgling coffeepot.

She needed as much help as
possible to shut out the other buzzing in her head—the questions about
George-Bradley’s death and the whereabouts of his missing pottery.

Clayton, the self-titled Queen of Advertising, marched into
the room and sat down across from her.

"Well, Miss Thang,"
Clayton began, rolling up the sleeves of his silk peach sweater, "I’ve
heard some tantalizing news about you."

Aside from being the most
flamboyant dresser and the bread and butter of the paper, Clayton was an
infamous gossip. Molly had exchanged some catty comments with him about their
boss, and though Clayton might sling a few him, but aside from tossing verbal
barbs around the break room, he was a kind-hearted, loyal, and generous man.

Slicking his salt-and-pepper hair
into place, Clayton leaned back and examined her. "I do declare, Miss
Molly, you have a crush on Matt Harrison."

Molly squirmed in her chair and
did her best to look preoccupied with her notepad.

"Don't even try that act with
me. You know I have supersensitive radar when it comes to this kind of thing.
Besides, a little birdie told me y'all went to dinner together."

"Clayton, it was just a
working date."

"But you wish it was more,
don't you? He is a fine-looking specimen of a man!"

"Shhh!" Molly pleaded in
a whisper as another staff member came in. "So you found me out. What are
you going to do with this information?"

"Darling! What do you think
of me? And why look so glum? If I had your eyes and your complexion, I'd drive
straight to Hollywood and demand my own decorating show. I'd get it too."

"Thanks, Clayton, but I've
got some extra curves you don't have."

"Honey, you've got more
curves than a mountain road and there’s not a thing wrong with them. Marilyn
Monroe was no stick figure. There’s no such thing as an anorexic icon! Don’t
look now but I have seen your man checking out your—" He bit off the end
of his sentence as Matt entered the room carrying a brown bag in one hand and
chopsticks in the other.

"Hi, you two. Care for some
Chinese?" he asked.

"A man who eats fatty foods.
You are so sexy, Matt Harrison." Clayton twirled Matt's tie around his
finger. "Is this a Burberry? Oh, you just get more and more delicious!"

Matt nodded in assent and smiled.
"Thanks. Plates for you both?"

"Oh no, not for me!"
Clayton trilled. "I've had so many frozen mochas I just can't sit
still." He sauntered off, whistling.

"Molly?"

"Sure." She grinned,
pleased to be alone with him once again.

As he helped himself to pieces of
sesame chicken and steaming white rice, Matt asked Molly what she was working
on. She told him all about the visit to the Staunton mansion. She tried to
explain how fine the antiques were, but Matt was more interested in the
architecture of the house and in Bunny's phone call.

"Do you know who was on the
other end of the line?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. Not a friend.
Maybe an insurance agent or lawyer," Molly said. “She was adamantly
defending the fact that she hadn’t given her husband more than his usual dose
of insulin.”

"Maybe she was talking to a
doctor."

"Because of the additional
insulin found in his body?" she asked.

"Yes. There must have been
enough to catch someone's attention," Matt suggested.

"I still say he'd never
overdose on purpose."

Matt frowned. "But didn't you
say his marriage was on the rocks? If Bunny didn’t inject George-Bradley, maybe
it was self-administered."

"Their marriage has been
strained for years. Why would he commit suicide because of that
now
? He
could have just gotten divorced. He wouldn’t need to kill himself. Plus, I
think the person who really suffered in that marriage was Bunny."

"Why do you say that?"

Molly told him about the
photographs. "It was like she was creating a dream world. She had all
these smiling pictures of her and George-Bradley, like they were the perfect
couple. Poor thing. Her biggest fault was that she didn't like his stuff. She
probably never thought her indifference to his collection would eventually doom
their relationship."

"I do feel sorry for her.
Still, she seems to have woken up from her dream world if she's selling all of
his belongings this quickly. Seems to have recovered pretty fast, if you ask
me."

Molly swallowed a delicious bite
of spring roll. "Just in his part of the house. I bet, that when she
redecorates, she puts up more pictures and creates a kind of mausoleum to their
marriage."

"People will do anything to
get over losing someone..." Matt murmured, turning his face away.

Molly saw that he had suddenly
withdrawn but couldn't figure out what she had said to drive him away. She
tried to draw him back by wondering aloud. "But that still leaves the
questions of the overdose and his missing pottery?"

"The pottery could be
anywhere, and who knows what was going on in his mind the morning he took those
shots," Matt said flatly.

"You should have seen how he
kept the pottery. It was perfectly arranged, labeled, and routinely dusted.
It's missing. I feel it. Do you think George-Bradley's mistress, Susan, snuck
into their house? There's something fishy about the double insulin injection
theory, too. I saw something in George-Bradley's face, Matt. He was surprised
in the end. Shocked. You can't easily shock a man like that," she stated
animatedly. "There's been foul play, I know it in my gut, and I'm going to
try to find out what happened."

"How?" he asked, looking
at her curiously.

"I don't know, but I'm
supposed to be doing these articles, so I have an excuse to interview people in
his circle. I'm going to call some of the suspects from the kiln opening, like
Susan Black. It seems that many people hated George-

Bradley and it just so happens
Swanson has me meeting with my first source of inside information tomorrow,
twelve o'clock sharp. That's when I will be interviewing a rival collector, a
man named Hillary Keane. George-Bradley cut him in line
and
insulted
him. He ought to have a great deal to say," Molly stated resolutely.

Matt smiled at her stubbornness
and laid a tentative hand on her arm. "Just be careful. Curiosity can get
you into trouble, especially if you happen to be right and this man’s death was
no accident."

Puzzled by Matt's abrupt swing in
mood, Molly was nonetheless delighted by his tender smile and the feel of his
hand on her arm. She felt like it was burning heat right into her.

~~~~~

Molly loved her days off. On Sundays she’d often hang out
with Clara or Kitty. Tuesday was the day to spend all morning in pajamas with
coffee and a good book. Her two cats, Merlin and Griffin, would curl up on the
sofa with her as she lounged about, reading and watching the Weather Channel.

This Tuesday could not follow the
usual pattern. She had her interview with Hillary Keane at noon and needed to
fight off her lethargy with a shower and strong coffee.

Her cats eyed her with
disappointment as she came downstairs dressed for the day.

"Sorry, guys." She gave
them each a pile of treats. "Mom's got to work today."

Because Molly’s mind was filled
with possible interview questions, the ride to Asheboro felt shorter than
usual. Molly consulted the directions Swanson had written in his illegible
scrawl and turned off a back road just south of Greensboro. Winding through the
countryside, she felt her spirits lift. She was excited about comparing Hillary
Keane's collection with George-Bradley's. And she couldn’t stop thinking about
the spark she’d felt when Matt had touched her arm. She turned up the oldies
station and sang along with Elvis to "Viva Las Vegas."

A few miles north of Asheboro, she
turned onto a smaller street lined with single-story brick homes and two-story
bungalows from the 1960s. The lots were large and covered by massive trees and
rolling lawns, but the houses were rather dingy and not as well kept as Molly
had expected. Disappointed, she searched for house numbers, knowing that a
ranch-style house could only hold so much pottery.