The Longest Yard Sale (4 page)

CHAPTER 5

We followed CJ up the block a little ways. He rubbed his face. “Something else is going on. What is it?”

Carol and I exchanged glances. Carol clamped her lips together in a firm line but moved her head in a “you tell him” motion.

“Carol called me last night. Someone stole a painting from the store,” I said.

“You knew this when we were together last night?” CJ asked.

Carol's eyebrows popped up as she looked back and forth between us.

“Yes,” I said. I looked at Carol. “He doesn't mean
together
together. I fed him, and we talked.”

“I know neither of you filed a police report,” CJ said, “because I don't remember hearing anything about it at the station.”

I nudged Carol with my elbow. “It's your story.”

She didn't look too happy with me. Carol explained she was painting a copy of
Battled
for a client, that it appeared to have been stolen, and that she'd decided to start over instead of worrying about what had happened to the copy.

“How far along were you?” CJ asked.

“All the way done. Except for signing it.”

CJ studied Carol's face. “Did you forge West's name on it?”

“No!” Color rose in her face for the first time that morning. “I'd never do that. I was going to sign my name,” she said.

Carol stared back toward the store when she said it. I wondered if there was something she hadn't told me last night and wasn't telling CJ now.

“Have you told your client?” CJ asked.

“No. I have another three weeks. It's enough time to recreate it.”

“Who's your client? Any chance he wanted it unsigned?” It was the the same question that I'd asked last night and that Carol had ignored.

Carol paled again as she thought about that. “No. He said he wanted it for his home. That he was a revolutionary war buff.”

CJ looked at her, waiting for Carol to answer his other question.

She looked down at her nails and picked at a fleck of paint on her index finger. “I'm not sure who my client is.”

CJ rubbed his face again. “How can you not know who your client is?”

“We talked over the phone,” Carol said. “He paid a deposit with a cashier's check that he mailed from a PO box in Boston.”

“Did you call him to tell him about what happened?”

Carol blew out a long stream of air. “I don't have anyway to contact him.”

“How can that be?” I asked.

CJ glared at me with one of those “stay out of this” looks.

Carol turned toward me and grabbed my hand.

“He said he wanted to stay anonymous. When he called, a number didn't show up. It said ‘private.'”

“You didn't ask why?” CJ asked.

“I did in the beginning, but the terms were very generous—if I didn't ask a lot of questions.”

“That didn't worry you? Seem odd?”

“Not really,” Carol said, but she gripped my hand tighter.

“Why you?” CJ asked.

Carol dropped my hand. “Why not me? I have a good reputation in this area. I'll start over and get the job done. There's a bonus involved if I complete the project in the time he gave me.”

“So somewhere out there is a very good unsigned fake of
Battled
?”

“You're making it sound like I've done something criminal. I haven't. I wasn't going to forge West's signature on it. I made it very clear—in fact, I insisted that I would sign it with my name.”

“The voice on the phone didn't sound familiar?”

Carol took her time answering. “No. I'm sure it isn't someone I know.”

“How were you going to deliver the painting?” he asked.

“The guy told me he'd be in touch near the deadline and arrange for pickup then.”

“Did he know it was almost finished?” CJ asked.

Carol shook her head. “I haven't talked to him for a while.” She twisted her hair around her finger. “When can I reopen the store?”

“We'll have to get search warrants. It will be several days,” CJ said.

“I don't have several days. I need to paint, and I have classes scheduled.”

“You can sign a form giving us consent to search. That will speed things up.” CJ looked around the shop. “We'll do everything as quickly as we can. I've got to go.”

CJ left. We heard voices coming from Carol's store and strained to listen.

“ID says Terry McQueen. Heard of him?” a female voice asked.

We looked at each other, but before we could say anything, Pellner stuck his head out the door. “Come on, clear out.”

We slid off our stools and followed him out.

“What's going on, Pellner? Where'd CJ go?” I asked.

He gave me his best cop stare, one that a few months ago would have had me shaking in my boots if I'd been wearing them. It didn't intimidate me anymore—not as much, anyway.

“Can we go?” I asked.

“Mrs. Carson needs to sign this form first,” Pellner said. He handed Carol a clipboard with a document on it. She moved to sign it.

“Don't you need to read through it first?” I asked. “Or have a lawyer go over it?”

“I trust CJ,” Carol said, as she signed.

Pellner took the clipboard back. “Don't tell anyone what you saw in there.” Pellner tipped his head toward the store.

“Was he serious?” Carol asked as we walked down the block.

“He was,” I said. “Do you know Terry McQueen?”

“No. I've never heard of him.” Carol looked like she was about ready to throw up. “Do you know him?”

“I don't think so. Could he be one of your clients?”

“No. I
don't
know him.”

“You told CJ everything you knew, didn't you?”

“Yes. I'm going to go talk to Brad. I don't want him to hear this from someone else.”

“Does he know you were getting paid to copy
Battled
?” I asked.

“No. I don't tell him how to run his department at the veterans' hospital, and he doesn't tell me how to run my business.” She sounded more confident than she looked as she bit her bottom lip.

I stopped in front of DiNapoli's. “Want to come in?”

“I've got to run. Besides, they aren't open.”

I smiled. “They are for me. Call me if you need me.”

Rosalie hurried around the counter and unlocked the door to the restaurant. I stepped in and breathed in the aroma of rising dough and tomato sauce. She glanced at my outfit and raised an eyebrow.

“It's not what you think,” I said, not wanting her to think I'd spent the night with Seth. I'd told them about Seth one night when they were asking about how things were with CJ. “I fell asleep in them. Then Carol rousted me and didn't give me a chance to change.”

Rosalie nodded. While she wasn't happy that CJ pushed me to get back together, she didn't necessarily like my relationship with Seth. I plopped down at a table, weary beyond what I could imagine. Angelo brought over a large cup of inky-looking dark coffee. “Here, this will help.”

I wrapped my hands around the white mug, warming them. I hadn't even realized I was chilled until now. The mug was sturdy and serviceable. A lot like Angelo, it could be counted on to fulfill a need. I took a sip and gave a little shudder. It was good, and the perfect temperature. Angelo's coffee was always the perfect temperature. I'm not sure how he did it, and he never answered me when I asked.

“It's not any of that sissy coffee you find out there.” Angelo waved his hand in the general direction of Great Road. “Carmel whatevers and flavored this and that. It's ridiculous.”

Rosalie put a hand on Angelo's arm before he really got going. “Let Sarah talk or rest if that's what she wants to do.”

I took another sip of my coffee. It was bracing, and right now I needed bracing. Rosalie disappeared into the back and came out with a thick shawl and put it around my shoulders. I wrapped it around me until I was swaddled tighter than a baby. Then I realized I couldn't reach my coffee, so I loosened it just a bit.

“Somebody died at Carol's shop,” I said. My voice shook. I gripped the mug tighter.

“Natural causes?” Angelo asked.

He must have known otherwise, what with all of the hoopla going on out on the street, although in a small town, without a lot of crime, almost any event created hoopla.

“I don't think so. But I don't know for sure.” Even without Pellner's admonishment not to discuss the circumstances of the death, I knew better than to give away any details that could possibly undermine the investigation, even to two people I trusted.

“Are you okay?” Rosalie asked.

I pulled the shawl tighter around me before answering. “I'm okay.” I'm pretty sure no one believed that, but they didn't press me.

Rosalie stood and patted my shoulder. “We have to get ready to open. But you sit as long as you want.”

I huddled into the chair, sipping my coffee until I could face going back to my empty apartment.

CHAPTER 6

After a long shower and another cup of coffee, I headed over to Stella's other aunt's house for an appointment. Gennie Elder was a cage fighter, as Stella called her, or a professional mixed martial arts fighter, as most of the world called the sport. Her professional name was Gennie the Jawbreaker. I'd met her only once, but she'd hired me to do a garage sale for her. She owned a large colonial north of Great Road and was thinking about downsizing. I rang her bell and heard a deep gong resonate inside the house.

Gennie opened the door dressed in workout clothes, a tank top, and gym shorts. A white towel hung around her neck. Gennie took one end and swiped it across her brow. She stood about five-seven, so met me almost eye to eye. Even though she was Stella's aunt, they were about the same age. Stella had told me Gennie had grown up knowing she was the “mistake.”

“Come on in.” Her body was firm and so muscled it would make nails seem pliable, quite a contrast to my curvy, somewhat-in-shape figure. Her hair hung down her back in a thick braid.

“I pin my hair up so no one can grab it in the cage,” she said when she saw me studying it. We stood in the foyer of a typical colonial house: a center staircase was placed within a long hall with several rooms off of it to the left and a room with the door closed to the right. If every room was as sparsely furnished and lacking in décor as the entrance, it would be one small garage sale.

“You still fight?” I asked. She must be in her early forties. I'd looked up mixed martial arts on the Internet, and most of the women fighters looked young.

“I only do a couple of fights a year now. Let me show you around,” Gennie said. She flung open the door on the right, and we entered a room that shattered any notion of what a cage fighter's decorating style would be. I'd been expecting sleek leather and modern abstract paintings. But this room was filled with delicate Victorian settees, lace-draped chairs, and bric-a-brac appropriate for the period.

“I love collecting things. Each room reflects a different era,” Gennie explained. I followed her around the first floor, exploring rooms that ranged in style from Art Deco to midcentury modern. Each room was filled to the brim with pristine examples of the furniture and decorative touches from a particular era.

“This is the last of it,” Gennie said as we stood in the midcentury modern room.

“Why stop with the fifties?” I asked, still stunned by all I'd seen.

“I couldn't stand doing a sixties room with beads, lava lamps, and beanbag chairs. The whole country, shabby chic thing never appealed to me, either. After the fifties, it seems like everyone just started taking elements from some other era and putting them together in a different way. Nothing new or original about that.”

I'm not sure I agreed with her, but she was the client, and the customer is always right. “Any thoughts on when you want to have the sale?” I hoped she wouldn't say next weekend.

“I'm not in a huge rush.”

“I'll have to take a lot of pictures and research the value of a lot of the items. I might even need to reach out to a few experts for some of the pieces. This isn't a typical garage sale. You might want to contact some estate sale experts instead of using me.” I didn't like to turn away business, but this was a significant undertaking. “I could recommend someone.”

“I want you to do it. Nancy called me last night, raving about what a great job you did yesterday. Come on into the kitchen. Let's get something to drink while we talk terms.”

I stopped in the center of a room that by the looks of the crystal chandelier was supposed to be a dining room but instead was a trophy room. A black-and-white photograph took up most of the far wall. The only color was the red blood trickling from the nose and mouth of a young, knocked-out Gennie.

Gennie gestured at the photograph. “My first professional fight. I lost badly. That picture appeared in the paper the next day. I kept it tucked in my wallet at first. Then I printed an eight-by-ten and kept it on the nightstand of every hotel room I stayed in. When I bought this place, I had that made.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Reminds me of what losing felt like. I never wanted to feel like I felt that night again.” Her eyes looked teary, but she blinked them back.

“You must be pretty good. I hear your nickname is ‘the Jawbreaker.'”

That brought a smile back to Gennie's face. “I got beat again but never knocked out. And it's a lesson for the kids I teach who think they're invincible or think I'm invincible.”

The rest of the room was filled with belts with giant buckles, gleaming trophies, and signed photos of Gennie with lots of men and women fighters.

I pointed at one of the photos. “Wasn't that guy on
Dancing with the Stars
?”

“Yes. That's Chuck Liddell. Next to him is Tito Ortiz. He was on
Celebrity Apprentice
.” She stopped in front of another photo. “Randy Couture is an actor now. He's in the
Expendables
movies.”

We went into the kitchen and sat at a gleaming granite-topped island. Light reflected off the stainless-steel appliances and glass-fronted cabinets. Gennie set out two glasses of iced tea and a bowl of lemon slices. “Need sugar?”

I shook my head and sipped the tea. I hated discussing how I charged people for my service, but it had to be done. “The way my business works is I take a percentage of what you earn at the sale.”

“So if I don't make anything, you don't?”

“That's right. It's a powerful incentive to make sure I price things correctly and negotiate a good price.”

“You'll have to spend a lot of time pricing,” Gennie said.

“With any business there's a lot of work that goes on in the background.”

Gennie nodded. “Okay. It works for me.”

“Why are you downsizing?”

“I haven't told Nancy or Stella this yet, but I bought an old office building in Dorchestah.”

She meant Dorchester. I found it charming how people from this area used the ‘r' sound, dropping and adding it to their words. Gennie's accent seemed particularly strong.

“They won't like my idear, but I'm opening a studio there. I plan to live above it, to be a part of that community. I figure if I can motivate some of those kids, I'll have done something important—beyond beating the crap out of people for the past twenty years.”

Dorchester wasn't the Boston area's best neighborhood, but I admired Gennie's philosophy. Although if she didn't like beating the crap out of people, why did she want to teach others to? As I turned to her, I knocked over a pile of mail that was stacked next to my left elbow.

“Whoops.”

“Hand that to me, and I'll get it out of the way.”

I scooped up the mail, but stopped handing it to her when the stack was in midair. The return-address label of the top envelope said “Jackson Financial Planning.”

“What?” Gennie asked.

“Jackson Financial Planning. Do you use this company?”

Gennie had a funny expression on her face. Oops, sometimes I'd forgot I was dealing with reserved New Englanders instead of more open Californians. Even though before I'd moved here, I'd always heard about the Yankee reserve, I didn't usually notice it. I think my openness made others more open to me. But every once in a while, it was a conversation stopper.

“I didn't mean to pry,” I said. “I know Bubbles, Dave Jackson.”

“It's okay. Dave knocked on my door a couple of months ago. Friendly, sharp guy. I like to support our troops, so I invested some money with him. So far I've been getting great returns.”

“Oh, good.” I gulped down the rest of my tea. “I need to come back with my good camera to take some pictures. I'll develop a timeline for when I think I can get everything priced, and then we can have the sale.”

“Sounds good,” Gennie said.

 

 

I went home for a quick fluffernutter sandwich. I might be the only adult in the commonwealth to eat this delicious combination of Marshmallow Fluff and peanut butter. I'd never heard of it until I moved to Massachusetts, home of the fluffernutter. There'd been a contentious debate in the state house several years ago when some legislator introduced a bill suggesting that fluffernutters weren't nutritionally sound and should be banished from school lunches. I'm all for kids eating healthy, but banning the flutter-nutter would be like banning cheese in Wisconsin, potatoes in Idaho, or corn in Iowa.

When I'd finished my sandwich, I grabbed my laptop. The name I'd overheard in Carol's shop, Terry McQueen, had been rolling around in my head all morning. I opened my computer and typed in “Terry McQueen.” An article from the
Fitch Times
, the local base newspaper, popped up, along with a photo. The man in the picture bore some resemblance to the body in Carol's shop—lean build, same sandy hair. But unlike the dead man on the floor, the man in the picture wore a suit and a big smile. I studied the photo. It was hard to tell if it was the same man, but I bet it was.

According to the article, McQueen had recently won a Civilian Category II of the Quarter award, which meant he wasn't in the air force but worked on the base. It also meant his boss liked him enough to take the time to write up a nomination for the award and submit it. I wondered what Terry did on base; that wasn't mentioned in the article.

I called my friend Laura Nicklas. She lived on Fitch Air Force Base, and since her husband, Mike, was the wing commander, she was plugged into what was going on there. After a brief conversation, I arranged to meet her at four at the base thrift shop, where she volunteered.

 

 

I napped until three-thirty and fixed myself another fluffernutter sandwich. Full of fluff and peanut butter, I drove over to Fitch. Since the divorce, I no longer had a military-dependent ID, so Laura had to sponsor me on base. I stopped at the visitors center, where I had to show my driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance. The security guard handed me a piece of paper that had to be displayed on the dashboard. It said where I'd be and for approximately how long.

I drove around the large iron barriers that reminded me of giant jacks. They were in place to make it difficult to run the gate. I pulled up to the security shack and guard. My face was eye level with the gun on his hip. It was intimidating, but I guess that was the point. I knew some of the guards, but not this guy. He took my pass and driver's license, and studied the photo and then me. Finally, he stepped back so I could continue on.

Military bases are set up to be self-sufficient, like small towns. As I headed to the thrift shop, I passed the base chapel, a white clapboard building with a tall spire topped by a cross. The chapel held services for many different faiths, including Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Islam. CJ and I had attended a lovely wedding there last fall when we were still happy. He'd held my hand as the couple recited their vows.

I came to a T intersection. The gym, tennis courts, and baseball fields were straight ahead. I'd spent time at each—at the baseball games purely as a spectator. I turned left and then right onto Travis, the main street of the base. I headed up a hill, passing the gas station, library, and outdoor rec, where you could rent equipment for outdoor activities or sign up for an event at Tickets and Tours. It was a beautiful day, but the base was fairly empty. During the week, lots of people who worked on the base were out taking walks. In New England, people didn't waste good weather by staying inside. So probably half of the base residents were out leaf peeping or exploring one of the many charming towns in the area.

Laura was standing behind the register, checking out a customer, when I arrived. The thrift shop took donations but also let people associated with the base consign things. It was a popular shop and benefited from all the moving to and from assignments.

Laura was a slightly taller version of Halle Berry, and her smile, along with her deep brown eyes and long, curly, god-given lashes, always dazzled me.

“Give me a minute,” Laura said as she typed codes from tags into the register. While I waited, I roamed around, chatting with the volunteers I knew as they reminded the remaining customers it was closing time. The shop had moved to this building last April after a murder had occurred at the old facility. This space was lighter and centrally located. From everyone's demeanor, I realized that no one knew that someone who might have been associated with the base had been found dead that morning.

“I'm done, and we're closed,” Laura said as she bagged the last of the stuff and handed it to the woman at the register. She locked the door behind the woman and took off a blue apron. All the volunteers wore them. Women called good-byes to Laura and me as they headed out.

I followed Laura to a scarred leather couch that was for sale. She plopped onto it, and I sat on the other end.

“I haven't seen you around much lately,” Laura said.

Even though CJ and I'd divorced and I had no official standing on the base, I'd continued to volunteer at the thrift shop. They raised money for scholarships for military kids and for other good, base-related causes.

“I've been so busy with the community yard sale in Ellington, I haven't had a lot of spare time.”

“I went. It was wonderful. If you do it again, the thrift shop should have a table.”

“I left a message about it, saying you could have a space for free. But whoever called back said it wasn't worth it to take stuff into town when it sold well here.”

Laura frowned. “That's ridiculous. It must have been Beverly, our new manager. We hired her a couple of months ago to try to give the shop some continuity rather than being managed by people who'd have to move when the military saw fit.”