A Killer Collection (16 page)

Turning down her bed sheets, Molly
stroked Griffin's soft brown and black fur as he curled up next to her. If
Keane was guilty of being an accessory, she was sure the police would follow
the trail created by the stolen pottery.

Inevitably, that trail would lead
them to George-Bradley's house, where they would learn about his friendship
with Keane from Bunny. Next, they would link the day of George-Bradley's death
with Keane's sudden exodus. They would interview people who knew both men, and
someone like Donald would tell them about the night George-Bradley called his
former friend a thief. Linking all these clues together, the police would
realize this was not a case of accidental death. They would ferret out the
truth about Keane and question him about the person he had helped murder a man
no one seemed to miss.

Satisfied that the mysterious
death of the infamous pottery collector was about to be solved by capable
professionals, Molly drifted off to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~

People need pots. You can see that from the way they love
to look at them, to handle and to buy.

—ROSEMARY ZORZA, from
Pottery: Creatiing With
Clay

A low fog hung out the window, holding the humidity
hostage. Blades of grass reached wearily upward as dewdrops weighed down their yellow
green ridges. It was early. Even the birds were silent. No cars passed by, lawn
mowers rested in their sheds, and children were still turning in their sleep,
dreaming of triple-decker ice cream cones and riding their bikes to the pool
where they would find the courage to dive off the high board.

Molly's alarm pierced the
tranquility with the high shrill of a Victorian policeman's whistle. Her cats
remained immobile on the bed, their eyes closed in tight slits as they burrowed
farther into their own feathery stomachs and ignored her movements as she
shuffled downstairs to make coffee.

Once she reached Lex's gallery,
she noticed that the parking lot was awfully full for an auction that didn't
begin for another two hours. Before the sale started, Molly typically
photographed the items she believed would bring the highest prices, but today
she could see this might prove difficult if mobs of people were trying to
preview pieces before the sale.

Clara agreed it would be a
challenge. "I told you to come last night!" She scolded her daughter
from her position behind the checkout counter. "How are you going to take
pictures with all these people around?"

"I'll manage." Molly
smiled at the signs of her mother's unusual nervousness, watching as she
scanned over her notes in the catalogue. Molly knew that organized, capable
Clara had the location of every item memorized and could run the sale in her
sleep, but her mother still worried. "Some courteous use of good manners
is all it'll take. People won’t mind standing aside for a few seconds. Don't
worry Ma, it's going to be a great sale."

Clara closed her catalogue and
frowned. "I don't know," she said gloomily. "I woke up with this
bad feeling that something was going to go wrong today."

Molly did not dismiss her mother's
instinctual feelings—like her own, they had too often proved correct.

"Like what? Lex has obviously
gotten a great deal of interest. I looked at the Internet bids last night and
many things have already reached their estimates and the sale hasn't even
begun."

Clara lowered her voice.
"It's not the prices. It's something else."

"You didn't say anything to
Lex about your vibe, did you?" Molly asked.

"Of course not." Her
mother gestured to where Lex stood chatting up one of his frequent buyers.
"He's already got a fever."

"Not again!" Molly
couldn't help grinning. Lex habitually ran fevers before one of his quarterly
sales. These were the ones that brought in the real profits for him. His weekly
sales just paid the rent, and since he and Kitty were dreaming of buying a new
home, this sale was especially important.

Molly watched him pat his forehead
with a handkerchief before moving on to refocus the projection screen. Lex also
hired people to hold the smaller items aloft so the crowd could view them with
ease. After they were sold, the items were brought to a cordoned off holding
area where they were later packed and given over to their new owners only after
a receipt was presented.

Between the Internet bidding and
the live bids. Lex needed a large crew to run one of his premier sales, and
though Molly enjoyed working the sales as much as Clara did, she found she
could not glean the details she needed for her
Collector's Weekly
article while dashing to and fro looking for a snuffbox or a set of sterling
spoons to hold up for the crowd.

Inside the main room, groups of
buyers clustered before the display cases, carefully examining the selections
of southern pottery, some of which were from George- Bradley's collection. A
sign taped to the sliding glass doors read,
Please do not handle the
pottery. Ask for Assistance
. It was being completely ignored as collectors
and dealers raised pieces out to the light, searching for minute cracks or
flakes to the rims.

They swiveled jugs upside down,
looking for the potter's stamp or a date. Each did their best to appear
disinterested in the piece they examined, setting their faces into ambivalent
masks as they ran their fervent fingers over the curves of clay. It was always
the hands that gave their desire away.

Molly spotted Donald scrutinizing
a pottery poodle glazed in earth brown. She watched Donald's face as he angled
the piece and bobbed his head up and down so that his bifocal glasses could
absorb all the details. Brows knit in concentration; he replaced the handsome poodle
in its case and made a note in his sale catalogue. He liked the piece.

"Are you planning on buying
up the whole showcase?" Molly greeted him with a teasing pat on the arm.

"Hello!" Donald hugged
her warmly. "I might not be able to afford the prices today, but that N.
Fox jug in the third case is a keeper." He glanced worriedly at the stream
of incoming buyers, more of whom were filtering wide-eyed into the room like
fish released into the open sea.

"Looks like a lot of people
waited to preview until today," Molly said, following his gaze.

"It sure does," Donald
agreed. "I came on Monday night so I could take a long look in private.
It's good to have a friend
inside
," Donald nodded in acquiescence
in Clara's direction, "but I still like to get here early and get my
seat."

Molly looked over at the end of
the first row and saw Donald's name taped to a chair.

"I'd better snap photos of
some of these pieces before the showcases get too mobbed again." She
excused herself and got to work taking photographs of the items she expected to
fetch the highest prices.

It was almost impossible to
interview bidders before a sale. They were too preoccupied and reluctant to say
anything that could indicate their preferences. Molly focused on taking all the
photos she could, then ambled over to the front desk where Kitty was
registering bidders and handing out reserved seating cards.

"Hey Kitty." Molly
greeted her friend with a quick hug. "Is it going to be a full
house?"

"And then some," her
friend said as she patted the pile of bidder numbers. They were already up over
the hundreds.

"We had to rent extra chairs,
and people will still be standing."

Lex came over in search of his
absentee bid sheets, his eyes darting about without settling on anything. Kitty
placed an arm on his chest and handed him a bottle of water and three aspirin.

"You burning hunk of man,
take these and I'll get you the sheets. I know exactly where they are."

Lex kissed her cheek and downed
the aspirin. Molly got some short quotes on his feelings about the prime pieces
in the sale, but then he was hailed by several prospective buyers and had no
more time for chatting.

"We've got a problem,"
Clara said gravely as she appeared from the back room, holding one of the
cordless phones in her hand. "Wade just called. Craven threw his back out
last night and neither of them is coming! What are we going to do?"

Wade and Craven were experienced
auction workers. They could lift the heaviest pieces of furniture without
breaking a sweat and courteously help customers load their goods at the end of
each sale.

Molly looked at her watch. It was
9:30 and the auction was scheduled to begin in thirty minutes. Two of the four
men had called out sick. The other two were new and would be scrambling to move
and locate all of the furniture during the sale. Also, there was so much
pottery to be displayed, taken to the back, and carefully wrapped without
damage. It was a serious problem.

"I don't think Will and Mike
can handle the whole job!" Kitty wailed dramatically in between chewing on
her nails. "They are too green!"

"They don't have any
choice!" Clara snapped. "Today is the day Will learns what a mantel
is." And she hurried off to find her victims.

Just then, Will shuffled in and
grabbed a soda off the patron's buffet table. Clara appeared with hands on
hips, a clear sign that she was unhappy. "What kind of outfit is that for
working a sale?"

Will's cap covered his eyes
completely, and he had to peek out from under its brim to read the listing. As
he snaked away from Clara's glare in order to review the listing of furniture
he was to move, Molly noticed an odd shadowing on his skin. Browns, greens, and
blues swirled around his eyes like smudges of paint. The left side of his lower
lip was bloated and hung slightly forward, and a small cut worked its way
through his upper chin.

"What happened to you?"
Molly asked in concern. She didn't really know Will or Mike well as they were
relatively new crewmembers, but she was shocked into bluntness by the sight of
his bruises.

"Got in a fight," Will
mumbled, a gleam of pride in his sunken eyes.

"When? Last night?"
Molly couldn't believe he had been out carousing the night before one of the
big sales.

"Nah, Thursday," Will
said nonchalantly and walked off.

"Looks like you lost!" a
bent old lady who was a regular buyer called after him, cackling maliciously.

Finally, it was time for the
auction to begin. The last stragglers took their seats while those who were too
edgy to sit found places to stand behind the back rows. Lex came to the podium
to make his opening announcements. Molly winked encouragingly at Clara as her
mother surveyed the crowd, her crew poised to begin the frantic pace. From his
elevated platform, Lex reminded the crowd that all of the items had been
available to preview for over a week and that all purchases were final. Most of
the audience talked through his opening speech, having heard it all a dozen
times before.

"And lastly, thank you all
for coming. Let's get started, shall we? Lot 1. We have a fine gentleman's
shaving stand out of cherry. Excellent patina on this early piece. Let's start
it off at $100. Now $150. Now $200. Thank you."

Just as the item closed at a
selling price of $750 plus buyer's premium, the power went off. The lights
winked out and the humming computers went silent. The projection screen turned
black and the air-conditioning ceased flowing through the vents. The crowd sat
agog for a fraction of a second, before turning about in their chairs and
twittering animatedly with their neighbors.

Lex was frozen at the podium, but
as he blinked his eyes and began to step down, the power snapped back on. He
wiped his forehead in a dramatic gesture of relief and the crowd laughed.

"Can you reboot?" he
called over to the two girls running the computers.

"Yeah, just give us a
minute."

While Lex entertained the crowd
with a story about another auction disaster, the computers were brought back to
life and the image of Lot 2, a painted humidor, leapt onto the projection
screen. Molly looked at her mother, whose mouth was set in a thin line of
concern. Was this the event she had had a premonition about?

Then, Mike, the other new
crewmember, pushed past Molly's seat in order to retrieve a cast-iron urn
placed in a far comer. She recoiled at the strong smell of stale beer and cigarette
smoke that hung in a tight cloud around his body. She also noticed that he bent
to pick up a pottery jardinière instead of the iron urn.

"No, not that one," she
whispered to him, pointing to the correct piece, "that one in the
comer."

He turned to thank her, his eyes
bloodshot and puffy with fatigue. As she watched him reach out to grasp the
urn, she saw that his hands were shaking. He was certainly not in a good state
to be carrying valuable antiques. As he moved to grab the urn by its rim, she leaned
over again, turning her nose away from his barroom odor.

"Grab it by the handles or
the base. You'll drop it that way," she scolded. "And you'd better
drink some water."

If Lex had any idea Mike was still
inebriated on the day of his big sale, he would burst, but that reaction was
nothing compared to the wrath Mike would face from Clara should he disturb the
flow of the sale. With the veteran workers absent, Molly could see that the
expectations set for Mike and Will were just too high. She was torn between
sympathy and disgust for the irresponsible boys.

When Clara next came her way,
loading her hands with two crystal decanters, Molly warned her of potential
disasters.

" Mike’s got a nasty
hangover," she whispered.

"Hangover? The boy is dead
drunk!" Clara retorted and whisked her items up to the front.

Twenty lots later, Mike was
nowhere in sight.

"Molly." Kitty appeared
at her side, gripping her arm like a vise. " Mike left. He just
left!"