One table was piled with linens and quilts. The choicer of these items were displayed on wooden racks, and Karen reached a covetous hand toward an appliqued quilt, each square of which had a different pattern.
"That's an album quilt," Cheryl said. "The squares were made by different friends-"
"I know, Julie had one. She sells these things for five and six hundred dollars. If I could get it for two hundred-"
"You won't," said another woman, who was subjecting the quilt to a searching scrutiny.
Karen stared at her. She was a pleasant-faced person, about Karen's age, with brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and laughter lines around her mouth; but Karen's viewpoint had changed. All other bidders were now potential rivals, and she was prepared to dislike each and every one of them.
"Are you going to bid?" she asked suspiciously.
"Probably. But I won't get it either. See that gal over there?" A flick of her thumb indicated a tall, white-haired woman dressed elegantly and incongruously in a knit dress, hose, and heels. "That's Liz Nafziger. She's got more money than God, and she collects linens and quilts. She can top any offer I could make, because I have to make my profit."
"You're a dealer?" Karen asked.
The woman nodded. "I have a shop in Harper's Ferry. Quilts, coverlets, old lace, vintage clothing."
"My friend is a dealer, too," Cheryl said proudly. "She specializes in vintage."
"Oh?" The other woman's smile faded; she and Karen studied one another warily. "Where's your shop?"
"I don't have one yet," Karen admitted. "I'm just starting. To be honest, I don't know what I'm doing."
"Sisters under the skin." The other woman held out a tanned dusty hand. "Helen Johnson."
Karen introduced herself and Cheryl. "I don't want to bid against you," she began.
"Boy, do you have a lot to learn," Helen said bluntly. "You bid against anybody and everybody, dear, and the devil take the hindmost. Don't bid against Liz, though, unless you want to run the price up just for spite. And speaking of spite, there's one you want to watch out for- see that fat little dumpling with the rosy cheeks and the sweet smile? She's got a place in Baltimore and she'll rearrange the boxes while you aren't looking."
"I don't understand."
Helen nudged the cardboard cartons under the table with her sandaled toe. "Well, suppose you scrounge around in these boxes and find something you'd like to have. You're bidding on the whole lot, but that one piece makes it worthwhile. So when your box comes up, you bid, and you get it cheap, and you think, hip hip hurrah- until you take a closer look and discover the one item you wanted isn't there. By a strange coincidence it happened to work its way into the box Margie just bought."
"It's very nice of you to tell me these things," Karen said humbly.
"You'll find it pays to stay on good terms with your colleagues in crime," Helen said. "We can help each other out now and then because we aren't competing, in the usual sense; our merchandise is one of a kind. If a customer comes in who is looking for a particular style or size I don't have, I'll send her on to you, and you do the same for me. If a check bounces on you, you warn me, and vice versa. Once you acquire a reputation for square dealing, people will be more likely to deal fairly with you. Don't expect any special favors, though," she added with a smile. "Not even from me."
"But doesn't it make sense for dealers to agree beforehand not to bid against each other-taking turns on the items they all want?"
Helen tried to look shocked. "Why, Karen, that's considered unethical, if not downright immoral." The amusement she had attempted to suppress surfaced in an unexpected dimple; grinning, she added, "I'm sure you wouldn't dream of doing such a thing, any more than I would. At least you shouldn't discuss it aloud."
She turned with apparent casualness to a heap of linens that had been left in a hopeless tangle by inquiring buyers. Helen's tanned, capable hands sorted swiftly through them.
"Nothing here," she announced. "Actually, I seldom buy at auctions. The merchandise is usually in terrible condition."
"Where do you get your stock?" Karen asked innocently.
Helen moved on to another pile of fabrics without answering. Karen was about to repeat the question when Cheryl nudged her. "Would you tell other dealers about your sources?" she whispered.
"Oh," Karen whispered back.
There were a few old dresses and bits of wearing apparel in the pile Helen was examining. One caught Karen's eye, and after Helen had tossed it aside she picked it up.
It was a dress made of ivory silk, the body unfitted, the modest neckline bordered with lace. A deep flounce of lace trimmed the hem, and rows of pearls, some of them missing, edged the neck and hipline. The rotted remains of a silk flower clung horribly to the left hip, like a big brown spider.
"How pretty," said the romantic Cheryl, seeing the dress as it had once been, not as it was now. "What period is it, Karen?"
Karen glanced at Helen. "Late twenties or early thirties, I think," she said timidly.
Helen nodded. "It's in terrible condition. The lace is hopelessly rotted and most of the beads are gone."
"But the fabric of the dress is in good shape," Cheryl said.
She was right; there were not even perspiration stains, which, as Karen had learned, made a silk garment useless to a dealer. Perspiration rotted silk and left a stain that no cleaner could remove.
"It's a wedding dress," she said.
Cheryl laughed. "She must have got married in January, in an unheated church. Or else she was the calmest bride in recorded history."
"But who would sell her wedding dress, or her mother's?" Karen asked. "I bought a veil from someone the other day; honestly, it's enough to make you a cynic about marriage."
"It was mine," said a voice behind them.
An arm reached out and seized the dress. The arm belonged to an elderly woman wearing a cotton house dress and faded sneakers. Her lined, deeply tanned face was bare of make-up and her hair had been pulled back into a tight, ugly bun. Her eyes, deep-set under bushy gray brows, fixed on the dress with strange intensity.
"Mine," she repeated in a crooning voice. "I wore it in 1931. I was seventeen years old. Henry was thirty-eight. Quite a catch, Henry was. A member of the legal profession, from a fine old family. I poisoned him in 1965."
With no change of tone or expression she tossed the dress onto the table and stalked away.
"What did she say?" Karen gasped.
Helen chuckled. "Mrs. Grossmuller is a little…" She twirled her finger alongside her ear.
"She didn't really poison him, did she?" Cheryl asked, fascinated.
"Who knows? He was a judge, and reputedly one of the meanest bastards in the state. Mrs. G. was never arrested, anyhow."
Helen wandered off, with a casual flip of her hand. The shed was filling up and the auctioneer came in to start the sale.
As Karen had expected, Helen bid on the wedding dress. So did Mrs. Grossmuller. She started the bidding at "two bits" and kept repeating the same amount in a stentorian voice, which the auctioneer blandly ignored. He knocked the dress down to Karen for twenty-five dollars. She knew she could replace the rotted lace from pieces in Mrs. Ferris' collection. Repaired and restored, the dress would probably sell for two hundred dollars or more. Vintage wedding dresses were popular with young brides who went in for the nostalgic look.
She bought a few other garments and had to be forcibly restrained from bidding on a Bavarian chocolate set to which she had taken a fancy. It went for a price at least as high as anything Julie would have asked. Helen had been right about the album quilt; the collector she had pointed out bought it for $675.
It was late afternoon before Karen and Cheryl decided there was nothing else they wanted. They paid for their purchases and gathered up their belongings. As they left the building, Helen Johnson raised a beckoning hand, and they stopped to speak with her.
"Here's my card," she said, handing it to Karen. "Come by or give me a call sometime."
"That's very kind of you," Karen said.
Helen shrugged. "As I said, we can sometimes give one another a helping hand."
"I don't have a card yet." Karen dug in her purse, found paper and pencil. "Here's my address and phone number…Thanks a lot, Helen."
"Don't thank me till I do something for you. Oh-oh, here comes Mrs. Grossmuller; excuse me if I make myself scarce. I've heard that story about her poisoning dear Henry too many times."
She glided gracefully out of the danger zone, but Karen, trying to pick up the chairs and clothing she had set down when she wrote her address for Helen, was fairly caught.
"Changed my mind," Mrs. Grossmuller announced. "I don't want to sell my dress. Give you two bits for it."
"But I paid twenty-five dollars," Karen protested.
She expected a scene and was not looking forward to an argument with the old woman who was, despite her age, heavy-set and formidable-looking. To her relief and surprise, Mrs. Grossmuller suddenly changed her mind.
"Oh, well, that's all right then. You might's well have it as anyone. What did you say your name was?"
Somewhat reluctantly, Karen told her. "How do you do," said Mrs. Grossmuller, in an abrupt change to stateliness. "I am Mrs. Henry Grossmuller. Judge Grossmuller's widow. I poisoned him, you know. In 1965."
Mrs. Grossmuller trailed them to their car, chatting amiably. Except for occasional references to the murder of her husband, her conversation was perfectly lucid until Karen and Cheryl were in the car and Karen had started the engine. Then Mrs. Grossmuller thrust her head in the open window and grinned fiendishly at Karen.
"Twenty-five dollars, eh? Thank you, my dear, I admit the money will not be unwelcome. But you're loony, you know; the dress isn't worth two bits."
The last they saw of her she was wandering down the line of parked cars.
"You don't suppose she's driving, do you?" Cheryl exclaimed.
"How else could she get here?" Karen steered carefully across the bumpy field. "Just because she has a little bee in her bonnet doesn't mean she's incompetent."
"So you say," Cheryl remarked skeptically. "One thing about this business, Karen: you sure meet some fascinating people."
THEY
stopped for supper at a country inn, to avoid a sudden thunderstorm that rumbled through, turning the road into a shallow, running stream. Karen felt self-conscious about entering a restaurant in her sweat-stained, rumpled clothes, but when Cheryl explained to the hostess that they had been auctioning all day, the woman nodded understandingly. "Fred Behm's? Hear he had a good crowd. Hope you were lucky."
They shared a half carafe of wine in the low-ceilinged, candlelit dining room and Karen found herself talking about things she hadn't even told Ruth. Cheryl did not need wine to loosen her tongue; she talked to everybody, including the waitress, in a way that would have left Jack in a state of horrified disgust. The conversation bore useful fruit; the waitress knew of a place in Woodsboro that might be for rent, all fixed up; it had been a craft shop.
She also knew Mrs. Grossmuller. "Poor old soul, she's a little strange. Not crazy nor nothing, she can take care of herself all right. Just kind of-well-strange. They say she's got millions stashed away, but the way she acts you'd think she was dirt poor. Want your coffee now or later?"
"I like places like this," Cheryl announced. "People are so friendly. Not like Washington."
She admitted she missed her friends back home. Some of the people she had met through Mark were nice enough, but they weren't interested in the things she cared about. Karen sympathized; but when she hinted that Mark should not have forced such an incompatible role on his sister, Cheryl was quick to defend him.
"He doesn't make me do anything I don't want to do. I never go to those really formal parties with him; I don't know the right way to act, and I'd just embarrass him. But I owe him so much, and I like to do everything I can to help him."
"I'm surprised you don't want to rush back tonight to get his dinner," Karen said. She regretted her sarcastic tone as soon as she spoke, but Cheryl appeared not to notice it.
"Listen, I'm in no hurry to get back, believe me. Tonight is the Murder Club, and those guys-"
"The what?"
Cheryl giggled. "That's what I call it. It's just Mark and a buddy of his sitting around drinking beer and arguing. They argue about everything under the sun, actually, but Tony is a cop-a detective-and he's interested in crime."
"I suppose he would be," Karen agreed. "But isn't that rather a busman's holiday for him? I'd think he would get enough of crime at work."
"Yeah, you would, wouldn't you? But the cases they discuss are old ones-classic unsolved crimes, Tony calls them. One time I remember they spent the whole night arguing about some king of England who murdered his two little nephews. Only Mark said he didn't."
"Richard the Third?"
"I guess so. That's right, you know all about history." Cheryl looked at her respectfully. "It was all Greek to me. But you know, some of them are kind of interesting. I'm real squeamish-I never would go hunting with Joe, even though I am a damned good shot-but there's something about those old cases, they happened such a long time ago they don't seem real. More like a book."
"So Mark thinks Richard the Third was innocent," Karen said, amused.
"Oh, you know Mark, he'll argue about anything. He takes the opposite side just to get Tony mad. There was one time when they had a big fight about something that happened back in the 1850s-the Bell Witch, I think it was-"
"Witch? That's not crime, that's pure superstition."
"Sure, you know that and I know that-and Mark knows it too. He likes to get Tony riled up. Tony says everything has a rational explanation, and when Mark starts talking about poltergeists and haunted houses, he just about blows his stack."
"I think I'd like Tony."
"You'll have to meet him. He's a nice guy."
"But not when the Murder Club is in session. I can't imagine how anyone could find that sort of thing entertaining."