PW02 - Bidding on Death (10 page)

After we went to bed, Paco started up again. Jack sighed heavily. “Maybe I should move to Washington House,” he grumbled. “I don’t think I can take another night in the barn.”

“Just wait a bit,” I counseled. “He might wind down sooner than last night.”

The whining continued. After a few minutes, Polly heaved to her feet from her rug at the foot of the bed and padded down the stairs. A few minutes after that, the whining stopped.

“Bless that dog,” I said. “She was keeping him company when I got up this morning.”

So we were able to get a decent night’s sleep.

Friday evening was the Rescue Squad’s Spaghetti Supper. You spend ten bucks a head to sit in a large vehicle bay and eat something you could make at home for a couple dollars. There was always a huge turnout. It’s a social thing.
The desserts are donated and always good.

Jack and I went, like we always do.
At the serving line, Buddy Haines was manning the spaghetti tongs and his son Buster was in charge of the sauce ladle. Both believed in generous portions. Unlike Buddy, Buster was whippet-thin, perhaps due to his position as the star of the Queen Anne High School track team.

“Hey, Mrs. Ray,” Buster greeted me. “I hear you’re finding bodies again. How do you do that? It’s pretty neat.”

I groaned. “Neatness had nothing to do with it. It’s not as if I’m trying to find them.”

Buddy elbowed Buster roughly. “Show some respect. Mrs. Jackson was an important member of this community.”

“She was also a royal pain in
the ass,” Buster said unrepenta
ntly. “You remember the grief she gave the high school over the new track field. I thought Coach Jansen was going to have a stroke, she got him so riled. He had to file about a million documents, get some certification that the plan wouldn’t impact any wetlands, when the high school is on the highest point in the county. Had to come up with some noise abatement plan, plant some trees, all sorta happy horseshit.”

Buddy thumped the back of his head. “You kiss your mother with that mouth? Watch your language, young man.”

Buddy
looked up at us and shrugged, the non-verbal gesture all parents recognize – it said ‘these kids today’.
Buster rolled his eyes, saying wordlessly, ‘parents’.

We nodded and passed down the line, getting garlic bread from Janie the librarian, sweet tea from the giant urns, and utensils at a rolling cart. Then we found a table and dug in.

I was surprised not to see the
Barstows;
I was sure Julia said she’d see us there. But now coming through the line was Luther. He leaned over the serving tables to get a kiss from Janie, who was his girlfriend. (And when are those two going to get married, anyway?) And then to my surprise, he brought his tray over to our table and joined us.

“Evening, folks,” he said placidly.

“Hi, Luther,” I said cautiously. “How’s everything?” That didn’t sound too pushy, did it?

“Fine,” he said. “Things coming along. The Jackson viewing is tomorrow and the funeral is on Sunday. Well, when I say viewing, I mean a bunch of people visiting and a closed casket. There wasn’t much Gracci could do, as much time as had passed.” Gracci was the local funeral home.

“Is the brother here yet?” Jack asked. He was obviously looking forward to losing custody of Paco.

“Yep, checked in at Washington House, will be with the lawyer tomorrow afternoon and at the viewing in the evening.” He looked at me. “I’d say the viewing would be the best time to talk to him about the dog.”

I nodded. “I think he’ll like Paco. I’ve been training him a little and turns out he’s really smart. Rose must have just let him run wild, but he’s perfectly trainable, I’d say even eager to learn.”

Luther nodded, chewing on garlic bread. After a few moments of concentrated eating, he leaned back. “Well, tell you what, I told the sheriff your theory.”

“MY theory?” I asked blankly.

“Yeah, you know, that the break-in at Rose Jackson’s is connected to the other two break-ins. And all three break-ins are somehow connected to the estate auction.”

“What did he think of it?”

“He thought it sounded very plausible,” Luther said.

I felt a moment of triumph; someone was listening to me! But something else was going on. Luther obviously wasn’t through. I gave him a curious look.

“Yep, he thought it was so plausible that I’m off the case,” he finished.

“Luther, no! But – why?”

“
Because the motive for the murder appears to have something
to do with the auction and it’
s my granny’s estate, that’s why
.
”

“Don’t tell me you’re a suspect!”

“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” he admitted. “Conflict of interest is what the Sheriff said. There’s an investigator coming in from VBI and I’ll turn all my notes and reports over to him. From here on out, I’m just a witness.”

“A witness?” Jack asked.

“I was at the auction, too,” Luther pointed out.

“That’s right, you were,” I said.

“I wish I’d been paying more attention,” Luther grumbled. “They want me to go to Rose’s house tomorrow, tell them if anything from the auction is missing. I keep telling them that I wasn’t really watching who bought what, but they say I have to try.”

I thought for a long moment, then suggested, “I could come along. I was mostly there as a spectator.”

He looked interested. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“No,” I amended. “Here’s a better idea. We need Amy.”

“Amy?”

“Amy Withers. She’s an eBuyer, like Rose. She and Rose were rivals at all the auctions in the area, competing for stuff to sell on eBuy. I’m sure she’d have a better idea of what Rose got than anyone else, because she was after a lot of the same stuff.”

There was a long, considering silence. Then Luther said, “Not a bad idea. Could you set it up?”

Well, to say I was gob-smacked was an understatement. Wasn’t what I was doing meddling? And wasn’t Luther supposed to be against that? “Who are you, and what have you done with Luther?” I asked.

Luther smiled, very briefly. “Not my case anymore,” he said. “I’ll let the man from Richmond try to keep you out of his hair and tell him good luck with that.”

“Okay, I’ll call Amy,” I promised.

Luther was making shushing noises, and I turned to see what he was looking at. The Barstows were coming through the serving line. I looked back at Luther inquiringly. “I don’t want a cast of thousands at this trip to Rose’s,” he said. “You and Amy and that’s stretching it enough.”

I made a lip-locking motion, and here came Julia and Bob, setting their trays down at our table. “Sorry we’re late, folks,” Julia said. “I thought I’d never get this guy away from his new toys.”

Bob just beamed; he was obviously having fun.

“And he’s talking about taking the business in a whole new direction,” Julia complained.

“Come on,
hon, it’s a great idea,” he told her.

“What’s a great idea?” I asked.

“Furniture,” Bob said. “Now that I have some larger scale equipment, seems a shame to waste it on wooden toys. No, reproduction
Arts and Crafts furniture. That will be my new challenge.”

I looked at Julia. She sighed. “I can’t stop you,” she said. “And it’s not like we
have a desperate
need
for
the money. But keep the toy production going at least through the holidays; I’ve already got us signed up for all the holiday craft fairs. Then if you want to go all high end, well, you figure out how to market thousand dollar chairs.”

“You just watch,” Bob said. “These babies will sell themselves.”

The last seats are our table were taken by Emily Davidson and
Gene
Abernathy. “The County Supervisors are out in force,” I noted. Emily was a real estate agent, noted for her
shirtwaist dresses and stiletto
shoes and invariable string of pearls.
Emily never has a hair out of place. I don’t think her hair is capable of being out of place; I’m not sure what she uses on it, but it looks well-nigh bulletproof.
She represented the northern district, and has been a mover and shaker in Queen Anne for over two decades. She always attended these sort
s
of community events, rarely with her husband. Dr. Davidson worked the emergency room at our regional hospital, and seldom had the energy for schmoozing in his rare leisure hours.

After a murmur of greetings, the newcomers dug in, to the spaghetti feast and the conversation.

“Terrible about Rose,” Emily offered.

“Terrible!” Gene
agreed. “I was talking with her just the other day.”

“At the auction,” I remembered. “I saw you there. She really seemed to be giving you an earful.”

“I’ll say,” Gene
chuckled and then remembered and looked somber. “She was going to come look at the county road budget, she was telling me, and find out why Washington Avenue missed being resurfaced again this year.”

Emily clucked. “Everyone thinks their road is the worst in the county. We have to prioritize! Ah well, nil nisi bonum. And I must say, Rose always kept us on the straight and narrow in her day. I don’t think there was a state regulation or county ordinance she didn’t know, some that probably hadn’t been thought of once since they were passed. That sort of institutional memory is hard to replace.”

Jack had been eating and listening silently. Now he weighed in, saying carefully, “Institutional memory is fine, but it works best if it’s combined with, ah – people skills.”

Bob made the peculiar sound that people make when they start to laugh and try to disguise it as a cough. He hastily gulped his coffee.

Gene
nodded gravely. “Well, people skills. Can’t say that was ever Rose’s strong suit.”

Which se
emed to be the unofficial epitap
h of Rose Jackson.

The next day, I picked up Amy on the way to Rose’s house. I’d called her the night before and she signed on to the expedition with enthusiasm. Now she bounced into the car carrying a notebook. With her hair in pigtails, she looked about twelve. She was wearing blue jeans and a sweat shirt, much like her auction wear of last week. “I’m a crime scene consultant!” she said with a grin.

“Unofficial,” I reminded her.

“Sure, I didn’t even tell Jordan
. Makes it even better – I’m a clandestine crime scene consultant!”

“That’s the spirit. You can be their on-call eBuy expert.”

Luther was waiting for us at Rose’s house. He got out of his car when we pulled in, and waited for us at the back door. “I’m not sure what the sheriff would say about this,” he said worriedly, unlocking the
sheriff’s department padlock on the
door.

“He doesn’t need to know until he needs to know,” I pointed out.

“I guess,” he said, but he still seemed troubled and faintly guilty.

“Let me tell you something, Luther,” I told him. “Years ago, I went to hear Admiral Grace Hopper give a speech.” At his puzzled look, I elaborated, “She was a pioneer in computer technology, a real legend in the field. Anyway, Admiral Hopper said something that I’ve always remembered and have found useful in practice over the years. She said, ‘it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission’.”

Luther nodded thoughtfully. “So you adopted that motto, eh? That explains a lot.”

I just chuckled. I wasn’t going to get into it with Luther today, not when he was allowing me into the house that was the crime scene. “Anyway, Luther, here’s Amy, she’s our eBuy expert.”

Amy shook his hand vigorously and then whipped open her notebook. “After Cissy called me last night, I printed out all of Rose’s Sunday auctions.” She showed us the list. Some of the listings were lined through in pen. “Those are relists,” Amy explained. “So that’s stuff she already had before the Beaumont auction. But all these listings further down, those are items she got at the auction.”

Luther and I looked over the list, while Amy pulled out another piece of paper. “Obviously, she didn’t have time to catalog, photograph, and write up an auction listing for everything she got at the auction. From past experience, I’d say that
auction gave her enough inventory
for two or three weeks
’
worth of listings. So I made up a list from memory of the things she bought at the auction that seemed significant to me. I’m not saying it’s inclusive, obviously I could have missed something or forgotten something, but this will be a guide for us to go on.”

Luther looked at the second list. “Northwood Peacock at the Fountain?” he read aloud. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“You don’t have to know,” Amy assured him kindly. “I know.”

“That’s why we brought in the expert,” I reminded him.

“Okay,” Amy said brightly. “Point me toward the merchandise.”

We went into the dining room/eBuy Central. “Ooh, what a nice set-up!” Amy said. “And look, Northwood. Peacock at the Fountain.” She pointed at a carnival glass pitcher on the To Be Listed shelf. I gave it a closer look. Sure enough, a peacock, and a fountain. “I think Rose paid $90 for that,” Amy added.  Luther whistled.