Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (36 page)

“You are so beautiful!” she crooned, stroking the dusty porcelain work top and gently fiddling with the chromed latch of the Hoosier cabinet cupboard, handled by so many generations of housewives before her eager, yet inexperienced, hands touched it. It was a
genuine
Hoosier, if the metal plate affixed above the top cupboards of the cabinet was to be believed, and she had no cause to doubt it. The latch of the long cupboard popped and the door swung open to reveal an intact flour sifter, mounted on a tilt-out pin.

“Wow,” Rebecca, Jaymie’s older sister, said, as she approached from the lawn below the porch railing.

“I
know
,” Jaymie said, standing back and tilting her head to one side, gazing at the piece with admiring eyes. “The latches work, at least the ones I’ve tried, even if some of them are rusty. And the darn thing still has the flour sifter intact! Do you know how rare that is? Most times someone has stripped it out to make more storage space. And it’s never been painted! Original oak. Someone really treasured this piece.”

She stepped back up to the cabinet and fiddled with the tambour door, a section that looked like the rolltop on a rolltop desk; it was near the porcelain work top and should have rolled up to reveal a storage area where glass spice jars, as well as baking tools and other cooking necessities, were kept. But the tambour would not budge. It was either jammed or broken, or moisture had caused the slats to swell, making them stick. That could be fixed, but it would temporarily keep her from finding out if it had more original parts hidden. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Jaymie said, glancing at her sister and stepping back so Becca could get a good look.

“That’s not what I was going to say, but … okay.”

“I’m going to bid on it,” Jaymie said, jotting down the lot number on her pad.

“What? Why?”

“Why?” Jaymie stuck the pad back in her purse and stared down at her older sister in disbelief. “Becca,
look
at it!”

“I am,” she said, eyeing it, a dubious expression on her round face. “It’s dirty and damaged. The side panels are chipped, the porcelain work top is scarred and the legs have water staining. It looks like crap. As far as vintage pieces go, I’d give this one a two out of ten.”

Jaymie marveled at how differently she and Becca could see things. Her sister was fifteen when Jaymie was born and almost seemed like a second mother at times; the message was always the same:
I am so much older than you,
she implied time and again,
that I know more and my ideas are better!

Becca was logical and pragmatic and had a numerical grading system for everything in life; two out of ten did not cut it. Anything worthwhile, from food to men to antiques, had to be a seven or better. Jaymie preferred to look beneath the surface to the heart of a piece, and this one had a heart of solid, twenty-four carat gold. “It just needs a little cleaning up. I love it, and I’m going to bid on it.”

“And put it where?” her older sister said, crossing her arms over her ample bosom, sensibly covered by a burgundy sweater to ward off the chill of approaching evening.

“I’m not sure yet,” Jaymie said, rubbing her bare arms. May in Michigan is changeable and moody, sun shining one moment and dark clouds scudding across the sky the next. Seduced by the heat of the late-afternoon sun, Jaymie had optimistically pulled her canvas sneakers out of the closet and had neglected to slip a sweatshirt or sweater over her pink T-shirt. The auction didn’t start until five p.m., and would likely run for hours; it would be dark and cold by the time they left, and she would be freezing. She shrugged, both at the cold and her sister’s gloomy assessment of the Hoosier. “I’ll find a place for it.”

“Jaymie, get real,” Becca said, still staring over the porch railing at her from the lawn. “The kitchen is packed enough as it is with all your crap. Vintage tins, old pots and pans, Pyrex bowls, bowls, bowls and more bowls
everywhere
! How many bowls can one cook use? The last thing we need is another big piece of furniture.”

“Do I call all your china and teacups
‘crap’
?” Jaymie shot back.

“My china and teacups are not cluttering the kitchen. I’m just saying there is no more room for another scrap of furniture or cooking junk!”

“You only live at the house every other weekend, so you don’t have to worry about it,” Jaymie said, going back to examining the Hoosier. Though they jointly owned the family’s nineteenth-century two-story yellow-brick home in Queensville, she was the only one who lived there full-time. It was truly a family heirloom, and had been deeded to Jaymie and Rebecca by their parents, Joy and Alan Leighton, who preferred the Florida heat and humidity to Michigan’s variable temperatures: too hot in summer, too cold and snowy in winter, and iffy in between.

“What do you think Mom would say about all that stuff crowding her kitchen?” Becca pointed out.

Jaymie sighed. Becca could be so controlling, a trait she had inherited from their mother. She thought—again, because she was so much older than Jaymie—she had a right to tell her sister what to do, but Jaymie was thirty-two, not ten, so the fifteen-year age gap was not such a big deal anymore. “Okay, first, it isn’t her kitchen. She always hated it anyway. Thank heavens she didn’t modernize it in the eighties when she wanted to.” She shuddered, and continued. “But I know exactly what she’d say:
‘Jaymie, you can’t possibly like all this clutter!’
She would mutter something about ‘hoarders,’ then Dad would tell her to butt out. It isn’t their house anymore, and they shouldn’t care one bit what I do to it.” She gave her older sister a defiant look.

Becca couldn’t deny that; though Joy Leighton had come to the home in Queensville as a young bride in the sixties, she had never been fond of the old yellow-brick house. In fact, when the Leightons did come back north, in the sultry heat of midsummer, they were more likely to stay at the family’s cottage on Heartbreak Island, the heart-shaped island in the middle of the St. Clair River between Queensville, Michigan, and Johnsonville, Ontario, the Canadian town named in honor of President Andrew Johnson, back in the eighteen hundreds.

Heartbreak Island, split in two by a navigable channel, was shared by American and Canadian cottagers, a compromise reached in the early eighteen hundreds to settle ongoing land disputes that lingered after the War of 1812. To Jaymie, that compromise was symbolic of the ongoing friendship between two sovereign nations that shared the world’s longest undefended border. In honor of that unique friendship, Queensville and Johnsonville shared holidays. This late-May Friday ushered in the first Canadian holiday weekend of summer, the Victoria Day weekend. On Sunday and Monday Canadian visitors would flock across the St. Clair River to Jaymie’s hometown—Queensville, Michigan, was named in honor of Queen Victoria—to attend the long-standing traditional “Tea with the Queen.”

But still, while Jaymie lived in Queensville year-round and adored her touristy little village home, Rebecca Leighton Burke ran her own company, RLB China Matching, out of her home in the nearby southwestern Ontario city of London, halfway along the highway between Detroit and Toronto and perfectly situated for business. She had settled there when she married a Canadian, and now, even after the divorce, stayed to look after their grandmother, who lived in London, too.

Becca bought and sold old bone china and made a good deal of money doing it. If someone had broken an antique Spode platter or Minton teacup, Becca could sell them a replacement … for a premium price. Perhaps it was unfair, as they shared ownership of the family home, but Jaymie felt that, since she was the one who cared for it most, she should be able to do what she wanted, as long as she consulted Becca on any substantial changes.

“Look, Jaymie, I can’t discuss this right now,” Becca said, her glance returning to the back lawn of the old house, where the flatbed stage was set; the nattily dressed gentleman auctioneer was mounting the steps as they spoke, so the auction must have been starting in minutes. She glanced down at her notebook and said, “I only came to tell you that I’ll be bidding on an assorted box of teacups and saucers—that’ll be for the Tea with the Queen fund-raiser Sunday and Monday, in case we run out—the complete set of Crown Derby, the Minton tea set, and the box of Spode completer pieces.” She checked each one off as she named it. She looked up at her sister with a worried frown. “Oh, and, uh, Joel and his new squeeze are here. I just thought I’d better warn you.” She began to walk away, but over her shoulder she threw, “And don’t you dare bid on that Hoosier!”

Jaymie stood frozen, her hand on the dusty porcelain work top of the cabinet, as she overlooked the green lawn, dotted with buyers and gawkers threading back through the tables of auction lots toward the stage. Joel was at the auction? And he was there with Heidi? Crap! As she stood there, silent, undecided on whether to flee or stay, she listened idly to a murmured conversation taking place around the corner of the old brick farmhouse, one of many, no doubt, as couples and groups decided on their bidding strategy.

“Look, I’ll bid on it,” a man said, “you just stay in the back and make sure no one
else
bids.”

“How am I going to do that?” a second voice asked.

“I don’t know! Be creative.”

“But where
exactly
is the button?” The second voice was a mere whisper, too soft to tell if it was a man or woman, but the tone was urgent.

“Never you mind,” the first speaker said. “Do you think I’m gonna tell you?” There was a moment of hesitation, then, “Look, if I knew, I’d already freaking have it. It’s in there somewhere; we’ll figure that out once we get out of here. Just do as I say.”

The second person said something, but too quietly to catch.

“Yeah, well, too bad if you don’t trust me, you’re just gonna have to. We’re in this together, I told you, just you and me. Don’t attract attention. I don’t wanna tip anyone off that we know where the button is.” The voices faded.

Jaymie shook herself and focused. The little snippet of conversation, weird and out of place—the voices were silent now, so the speakers must have moved off toward the auction stage—brought her back to the reason she was there, the auction. She had driven her van over for Becca, who was acquiring stock for the business, but also to look around for herself and her own collection, vintage cookware and old cookbooks. She was bidding on a couple of lots of both, so she had better get going.

And yet … she stood, looking over the lawn from her sheltered, quiet spot on the long wood veranda on the back of the big house, shaded by vigorous trumpet vines that coiled up the supports and along the railing, overhanging the roof. The auctioneer was taking the podium, delivering his rules on decorum at the auction. Lesley Mackenzie of Mackenzie Auctions, a gentleman in his seventies, was recognizable as a “character,” and he prided himself on it. He wore a pinstripe suit with a string tie, a black bowler hat and handmade spats. When he walked, he did so with a cane, but it was pure affectation, for he was as vigorous as a thirty-year-old.

Was bidding on the box of vintage Pyrex cookware and the collection of old cookbooks worth facing Joel and Heidi? Joel, who had hurt her by leaving so suddenly? Heidi, who as a svelte twenty-seven-year-old was a few years younger and quite a few pounds lighter than Jaymie?

What hurt so much about their pairing, Jaymie supposed, was not knowing. Had she done something to make Joel fall out of love with her? Why hadn’t he talked to her before leaving? Still … it had been six months since Joel moved out of her home and directly into the arms and house of his new girlfriend, Heidi. It was past time that Jaymie moved on, too. She tilted her chin up and decided; Joel Anderson was
not
going to chase her away from this auction.

She walked along the porch to the steps, descended and strolled across the soft, thick grass in step with a tall, elegantly dressed woman who appeared out of her element at a farmhouse estate auction. But maybe the woman was after the same Royal Crown Derby china as Becca; Jaymie hoped not. Her sneakers soaked from the dew that was already beginning to dampen the grass, Jaymie squeaked on and joined the crowd in front of the auctioneer’s stage. Lesley finished his speech with a flourish of his cane, saying no one would be allowed to dally or delay, rudeness or bullying would not be tolerated, and his decision would be the final and binding one in any dispute. He played fair, and expected them to do so, too. It was a sizable crowd, some seated on chairs near the stage but most milling about behind and around the chairs.

As the sun descended behind the pines that lined the farm laneway, a fresh breeze rustled through the green spring leaves and blush-pink blossoms of the stately plum just behind the auctioneer’s trailer stage. The enormous tree was long past the age of bearing good fruit but still bloomed and grew vigorously, shedding a last shower of pastel petals as a vigorous breeze swayed the branches.

Lesley, as stalwart as the noble plum tree, began the bidding, using the assorted box lots to get the crowd focused and going. This was the time to get some stuff cheap, and Jaymie pushed through toward the front, picking a spot among those standing to the left of the stage. She glanced around and instantly caught sight of Joel, his arm around Heidi, standing on the other side of the seating area, but Jaymie took a deep breath and ignored him.

She was going to bid on a box of assorted cookbooks, and another box lot of vintage cookware that had some nice condition Pyrex glass refrigerator dishes, melamine dishes and a few random cooking tools, as well as some odds and ends. She and Becca, by previous arrangement, ignored each other. It was too easy to get distracted by chatting while the auction was going on, so they stood several yards apart, Becca waiting patiently for the lots she was interested in, referring to her notes and the photos on her digital camera.

Lesley had his youngest grandson, a boy of about eleven, hoist the box of cookbooks up. “Lookee here, now,” Lesley said. “A whole carton of cookbooks! Food’s the same no matter the century, so snap ’em up and get into the kitchen. And I’m not just talking to you ladies,” he finished, with a saucy wink.