A Killer Collection (2 page)

She had received a pile of books
to read, but her mother warned her that the written word could never compete
with the real thing. Molly would have to meet the potters and see them working
in person to fully understand why people went wild over their wares.

Molly's mother, Clara Appleby, had
once owned a thriving antique shop. Over time, she discovered that she hated
being tied to retail hours and dealing with finicky customers, so she switched
her business and became a dealer in southern folk art pottery. Instead of
renting and maintaining a costly shop space, she now conducted business using a
simple Web site and a "shop" located in the log cabin on her
property. Customers could visit by appointment only.

Clara's own house was filled with
pottery of all shapes and sizes and she was well known as an expert on all
things made of clay. Molly repeatedly teased her that she bought more to keep
than to sell.

"You have to go to kiln
openings to get the pottery at reasonable prices. Dealers can turn right around
and double their money by selling the pieces they get at openings on the
Internet the same day. Plus, some of these potters only make two batches a
year. That puts a big limit on supply. You've got to grab them fresh out of the
kiln," Clara lectured animatedly.

Molly threw her mother a sideways
glance. "Sounds like a scam to me. Dealers wait for those two kiln
openings a year and go crazy, buying up everything the potter has, right? I
mean, the potters limit the supply and the demand increases, causing normal
people to get up with the chickens. Pretty clever."

"It takes a ton of hard work
to make this kind of pottery. We're not talking about pansy pots or coffee
mugs. These art potters may have spent ten years learning how to make something
perfect come off the wheel. I can't explain it to you. You just have to see it
for yourself. You'll learn to love it all—the kiln openings, the pottery
festivals, outbidding someone for a piece you just have to have at auction.
Trust me, it's a complete addiction! People will
absolutely
kill for
this stuff, you'll see."

~~~~~

It took about an hour and a half to reach Seagrove from
Hillsborough, and the two women pulled onto a dirt and gravel road Matted with
a plywood sign that read C. C. Burle Pottery in rough, worn letters. The
narrow, tree-lined drive was already packed with cars and the sun had barely
begun to warn the sky of its imminent arrival.

"Look at all these
cars!" Molly exclaimed. She had expected to see a dozen at most.

"We're late," her mother
scowled. "We are going to have a horrible place in line. Just park
anywhere. Hurry, hurry!"

Molly squeezed her mother's sedan
in between a makeshift row of pickup trucks and noted several other luxury cars
farther up the drive toward a rusted metal barn. The mix of people gathered in
front of the bam was just as interesting. There were men in overalls and others
in button-downs and khaki pants. Several women wore frumpy, flowered dresses,
and others dressed in pants, sweater sets, and pearls. Molly felt comfortable
in her white blouse and khaki pants—one of the standard uniforms worn to a
casual southern event. Her eyes, which had felt puffy and swollen in the car,
now darted around wildly as she tried to soak in all the details.

"I'm going to look over the
pottery. Get in line," her mother hissed urgently and prodded her forward.
Molly walked quickly up the drive to a patch of scraggly grass located between
the barn and the potter's workshop.

Molly got in line behind the small
cluster of buyers who appeared to be calmly chatting next to a rope. The thin
strip of twine served as the divider between the customers and the three tables
loaded with pottery. Molly noticed that the calmness on people's faces was
likely a charade. Nervous glances were thrown back and forth between the other
buyers, the tables of pottery, and the ticking face of a watch. Tension sat in
the air like a low, heavy thunderhead.

"This isn't too bad."
Her mother returned from examining the pottery. She counted out the twelve
buyers ahead of her and smiled, pleased with their spot in line. "With two
of us, we should easily get three or four pieces. Let's decide on what we're
going for."

Molly followed her mother's eyes
toward the pottery. In the young light, it was effused with a glow that only
pieces made by hand seem to carry. Molly noticed a brown and white pitcher with
a snake curling around the top. The snake's mouth was open as if to strike,
revealing a red tongue and two rows of sharp, white clay teeth. As she scanned
the rows of face jugs, churns, pitchers, roosters, and crocks on the other
tables, more people began lining up behind them, whispering to one another.

"I like that snake
pitcher," Molly announced to her mother in a normal voice.

"Shhhhh!" her mother
hissed apprehensively. "Don't say what you're going for or you'll draw
attention to it. Then everyone will think you've noticed something
special."

"Oh, sorry," Molly said
quietly. "Which pieces
are
we going for?"

"Those two roosters on the
table to the far right, that face jug with the crying eyes on the center table,
and your snake pitcher."

Molly scanned the tables until she
had located the two large red roosters with sharp, angular beaks and tails. On
the center table, a jug decorated with a grotesque face leaked white glaze from
its porcelain eyes. Molly grimaced.

"That's not very
attractive."

"You'd change your mind if
you sold it for $500 on eBay."

"I certainly would."
Molly nodded. "So how does this work?"

"At exactly eight o'clock, C.
C. will cut the rope and everyone will make a mad dash for the pottery. You
have to have a good jump off the line—that's very important."

Molly giggled. She began imagining
a wild animal stampede, complete with pushing and shoving, pottery smashing,
and women screaming.

"This is pretty nutty,"
Molly said.

"Uh huh. Just you wait,"
Clara said, then turned her head in the direction of a car with a powerful
engine approaching the spot where they stood.

A large black Mercedes raced up
the driveway toward the line of apprehensive buyers, forcing people to
grudgingly step aside. The freshly waxed car stopped abruptly in front of the
barn, spraying dust and bits of gravel into the air. A portly man with a shock
of white hair slowly lifted himself out of the driver's seat and raised his
hands to the watching crowd like a conductor ready to begin a symphony.

"All right, y'all can start.
The Pottery Man's here now!" he called in a loud, brassy drawl.

"Who is
that
?” Molly
asked her mother, who was now frowning.

"
That
is
George-Bradley Staunton. He's a big-time collector and a full-time
jackass."

"Oh," said a surprised
Molly, for her mother rarely used expletives.

The jackass in question began
moving up the line, shaking hands with reluctant men and flirting with all the
women. A partially smoked cigarette dangled from his mouth and he paused to
light another one whenever he began a new conversation. He wore a white linen
suit with a peach shirt and tan leather loafers. He had loose cheeks and his
neck was so thick that it seemed to have swallowed his chin. The formless neck
and bulging green eyes gave him the overall look of a bullfrog. He dabbed at
the beads of sweat on his forehead with a ratty, monogrammed handkerchief and
moved toward Molly and Clara like a king receiving the acquiescence of his
subjects.

"Well now, if it isn't the
beautiful Clara Appleby! And this fine lookin' lady must be your sister."
Cigarette smoke was exhaled in their direction.

Molly made a visible effort not to
recoil from the man's heavy hand, which was resting possessively on her upper
arm. He leered at her and her mother, raking both of them from head to toe with
his eyes while his thin lips stretched into a snakelike smile eerily like the
one on the pottery pitcher.

"You two charming ladies must
have gotten up purty early to come on over here and save my spot in line!"
he announced, laughing. His breath smelled so strongly of tobacco that Molly
almost gagged. She turned her face away and pulled fresh air into her lungs.

"G. B., we're way too far
back for you," her mother purred with false sweetness. "You need to
be much farther up to get the good stuff."

"Young missy," he said,
offering Molly a dough-like, clammy hand, "I am George-Bradley Sherman
Staunton IV, but you can just call me George- Bradley. Are you a new collector
I now have to contend with?"

"No." She shook and then
withdrew her hand quickly and wiped it dry on the back of her pants. "I'm
a writer for
Collector's Weekly
. I'm doing a series on North Carolina
potters. This is my first kiln opening."

"Well, they're all as
different as marbles in a bag. I hope you've got your racin' shoes on, girl,
'cause this here big boy is after some five pieces this mornin'."

"Good luck to us all,"
Clara said and turned away in polite dismissal.

With one last lecherous glance,
George-Bradley Staunton moved up the line.

"Lord, what a slime! Does he
sell used cars or lots of prime swampland?” Molly asked.

Her mother laughed. "He
doesn't really need to work. His wife has a very large trust fund, but
officially, he's a real estate attorney. He's got 'Esquire' on his cards along
with that mouthful of a name."

"He oughta have 'Sewer
Breath, Esquire' on them instead."

"Oh, he's a sleaze, there's
no doubt about it, but he's got the premier pottery collection of central North
Carolina, next to that man at the front of the line." Clara jerked a thumb
toward a nervous-looking, middle-aged man wearing a red and white checked shirt
tucked into jeans.

"Who is he?" Molly
asked.

"He has an odd name. Hillary
Keane. He's the first one on the scene at any major kiln opening."

Molly observed Keane as he
struggled to take off his silver spectacles. His hands looked swollen and
gnarled, as if crooked branches had replaced the fingers and the knuckles had
been transformed into wrinkled walnuts. Awkwardly, Keane removed his glasses
and tried to clean them against his shirt, but dropped them helplessly on the
ground instead. The woman next to him retrieved them, and he gave her an
embarrassed smile. Fumbling, Keane replaced the glasses on his narrow nose and
cast a cautious glance to the left and right before once again fixing his
anxious eyes on the pottery.

"Anyway," Clara returned
to the original subject of their conversation, "as difficult as it may be,
everyone wants to be George-Bradley's friend for those rare days when he feels
like selling a piece or two."

"Have you seen his
stuff?"

"Not in person. I've only
heard about it from friends. His wife is always at home, and she doesn't like
pottery or the people in the business, so not many are welcome there. I'd give
anything to snoop around that house. Did I ever tell you what happened at this
opening last year?"

"No."

"Oh my stars, this story is a
legend!" She lowered her voice. "Everyone was waiting for C. C. to
cut the rope, just like we are right now. When he did, George-Bradley sprinted
off to get some piece that he had to have. He knocked two people over getting
to it."

Molly looked around at the tight
spaces around the tables and considered the size of the current crowd. She
thought about George-Bradley's wide girth. "I can see how that would
happen."

"Yes, but one of the people
he knocked over was an elderly lady, and she was hurt badly." Clara’s face
was solemn.

"How?"

"She broke her leg!
George-Bradley shoved her so hard that she fell sideways in a twisted heap. She
spent a week recovering in the hospital and had to hire someone to help her get
around the house after she was released. She told everyone who caused her
accident too. George-Bradley denied it. Never even apologized. And we all saw
what he did with our own eyes."

"That is shameless!"
Molly let a judgmental scowl fall on George-Bradley's barrel-round back.

"Forget about that greedy
lawyer. C. C. and Eileen are heading our way."

The potter, wearing the
traditional denim overalls that seemed to separate the potters from the
collectors, moved shyly toward the line and greeted a few friends. He was in
his late seventies and moved with the slow stiffness of a man who has spent
dozens of years working in mills and bent over a potter's wheel. Molly noticed
that the other potters were hanging off to the side, out of line, drinking
coffee and humorously watching the tense buyers. One of them looked familiar.

"Isn't that Sam Chance?"
she asked Clara as her eyes met those of a short, kind-faced potter with white
hair and winking blue eyes. "It is!" Molly waved, and Sam held up his
coffee cup in a smiling salute.

Occasionally, Sam Chance would go
to area schools as a visiting artist. He’d set up a wheel and demonstrate
pottery-making techniques to the amazement of the student body. Last year, he
had come to Molly's school, and she had watched, spellbound, as he threw jug after
jug for her sixth-grade students. The art teacher had arranged for several
North Carolina artists to be guest teachers for a day. In addition to Sam,
there had been a folk art carver who cut up logs using a chain saw and turned
them into alligators and giraffes. There had also been a storyteller who
recounted Appalachian tales while having the class sketch the
"feelings" her stories invoked. Molly had asked to sit in on each of
these lectures and found them as rewarding as her students.

"Do all the area potters
visit one another's kiln openings?' she asked her mother.