PW02 - Bidding on Death Read online

  “So I’m told. And she’s going to the estate sales and selling on-line, so if she can do it, surely I can.”

  “Go get ‘em, tiger,” Jack said.

  After dinner, Jack settled into the living room with a book, while I headed to the office and my computer. EBuy was easy to find, and the front web page boasted of thousands of listings. I skimmed the Getting Started page, how to register, how to buy, how to sell. But that couldn’t hold my attention for long, I wanted to look at the Stuff!

  I did a search on vintage tablecloths. Wow, there were pages and pages! I clicked onto some of the listings. Huh. Some people must think ‘vintage’ is a synonym for ‘used’. I tightened my search, to vintage 50s tablecloths. Okay, that was more like it. Here were a lot of listings like my mom’s tablecloths. And hey, Amy was right – they were going for decent money. I scrolled through the listings. The most popular seemed to be the brightly colored prints that screamed 50s. I guess it’s true; hang around long enough and you come back into fashion. This would make a nice little windfall.

  Then I remembered those ugly glasses and vases that Amy was so excited about. What did she call them? I fished my ubiquitous notebook out of my purse and looked it up. Ruba Rombic. What does that even mean? I did an eBuy search on the term. There were only a few listings, but good grief, look at those prices! Now I could see why Amy was so thrilled. And beating out her rival must be icing on the cake. I looked at the pictures and then chuckled to realize – now that I knew how much these were worth, they were starting to look more attractive.

  I looked up a few more things to check current values; what a great resource this was! Then I checked my e-mail, looked at my groups, followed a few hyperlinks…

  And the next thing I knew, it was midnight. You remember those old legends about the mortal who wanders into Fairyland, spends a pleasant several days, only to return home and discover that a century had passed? The internet is sort of like that; you fall in and lose all track of time.

  Jack had already gone upstairs. I turned out the downstairs lights and went up to join him. I was going to tell him about my valuable tablecloths and all the money I was going to make from them, but a snore from the bed reminded me he’d been out harvesting all day.

  The next day, it was back to the harvest. After my defection for the auction, I was back in the thick of it. Yes, it was Sunday, but there are no days of rest when the grapes are ripe.

  Jack spent the day out in the vineyard, harvesting and assisting his enthusiastic crew of teenaged harvesters. Grapes are picked by hand, so the process is labor-intensive while it’s in progress. Craig was running the grape press. He worked best on his own and by now Jack trusted him with the pressing operation. And I was everywhere, driving our mini-tractor hauling the trailer back and forth, taking grapes back to the winery, iced tea out to the vineyard, and just generally lending a hand.

  In the evening we all ate like field hands, because that’s what we were, and then collapsed. I didn’t even check my e-mail.

  By Monday, the harvest (that part of it anyway, the Cabernet) was winding down and I could get back to my office. Today’s task was proof-reading. Never an exciting endeavor, but after a day of manual labor, I was able to appreciate the sort of work that involves lounging in a recliner with a cat on your lap. The document I was proofing was my own, the manual for the next installment of the long-running and still wildly popular fantasy adventure game series Kingdom Of Qu’aot. “The Enemy Within” was the latest installment, and the beta testers had proclaimed it even better than “The Archbishop’s Revenge”.

  In addition to writing software manuals, I had recently branched out into contract writing of travel guides. My Tour Rhode Island opus was already in tourism bureaus around New England and I was making plans for Tour New Hampshire. It’s fortunate that I found another writing outlet; not only was it nice to have assignments that involved actually going places, but I could see the writing on the wall, and software manuals were a dying breed.

  The weather had turned brisker, so I lit a small fire in the wood stove in my office. Once one of the dual parlors in this old farmhouse, it had windows on three walls, a built-in desk and work surface which housed my addictive computer, and bookcases everywhere else. It also had a wood stove, and a beat up old recliner, too disreputable for the more public areas of the house, and a sofa whose disgraceful condition was gently masked by an abundance of afghans. Polly, the multi-hued mixed breed love sponge, was sprawled on the sofa with her feet in the air.

  Me? I was in the recliner, with pages of manual on a clipboard and Tough Stuff on my lap. The venerable Macavity had departed (for the Rainbow Bridge, my vet assured me) over a year ago. He’d been a seasoned lap cat, but Tough Stuff needed practice. Only two years old, he fancied himself a jungle beast, a mighty hunter, and hadn’t yet achieved the boneless sprawl of lazy abandon. But he was working on it.

  By early afternoon, though, I was reaching the MEGO stage. (MEGO – My Eyes Glaze Over). You’ve got to be careful proofing your own writing; often the same mental tic that caused a typo can cause you to miss it in the proof. The coffee had stopped working.

  So when the phone rang, I didn’t let the machine answer. Instead I did the twist and reach from the recliner to pick up the phone. A seasoned lap cat would have ridden it out, but Tough Stuff vanished, to rematerialize on a high shelf, leaving a drop of blood on my thigh as a memento.

  Torn between answering “Rayburn residence” and “Passatonnack Winery”, I settled on, “Hello?”

  “Hey, Cissy, what are you doing?”

  It was Julia.

  “Proof-reading,” I said, unenthusiastically.

  “Are you up for an eBuy tutorial?” she asked. “Amy’s over here and I’ve just registered. They have a McCoy clown in the barrel cookie jar listed! I bid, but it will probably go way over what I want to pay.”

  One of the great things about teleworking is that you can set your own hours. Telling myself that I needed a break to prevent careless error, I put the clipboard aside. “Sounds great. Want me to come over now?”

  “How about we come over there? Amy wants to see your tablecloths.”

  I ran a skeptical eye over the state of the office and tried to remember what the kitchen looked like. Oh well, Julia’s seen it worse, and if Amy is joining the crowd, the sooner she’s disillusioned about my housekeeping skills the better. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll put on a fresh pot.”

  The coffee was brewing and I’d stashed away a few items of clutter by the time George S., I mean Julia, drove into the back yard. Julia and Amy came into the kitchen bringing with them an air of Girls Outing that was downright invigorating.

  Polly, whose motto is ‘a stranger is a friend I haven’t met yet’, came in from the hall, eyed the scene and bunched herself for a launch on Amy. I snapped, “Polly, down!” and she dropped to the floor in sphinx position.

  “Nice!” Julia said approvingly.

  “We’ve been working on it,” I admitted. I turned back to Polly, who was eying me for further instructions. “Okay,” I told her and she sat up, watching my raised finger that meant Pay Attention To Momma. “Nicely!” I told her.

  You won’t find the ‘nicely’ command in any book on dog obedience, but I’ve found it quite useful and clever Polly knows exactly what it means. She approached Amy like a good civilized dog, all four feet on the floor, and presented herself for pats.

  “Good dog!” Amy said, ruffling Polly’s ears. “I’ve never been much of a pet person,” she told the humans in the room. “But Beau is making me rethink, and now this good girl.”

  “Hear that, Pol?” I told the dog. “You’re a credit to your breed – whatever that might be.”

  “Okay,” said Amy, clapping her hands in a businesslike manner. “Let’s see these tablecloths.”

  We stopped by the linen closet, where I pulled out the box of tablecloths. I was about to shut the door, but Amy hauled out some old chenille bedspreads that had bee
n behind the box. “What about these?” she asked.

  “Those are no good,” I told her. “They’ve got tears in them. I don’t know why I haven’t pitched them.”

  “We’ll take a look,” said Amy, tucking the bedspreads under her arm and following me to the office.

  There we started pulling out tablecloths, draping them over the sofa, the recliner, and on the floor. Amy nodded happily. “Nice. Good condition, great graphics, very true to the era. These ought to do well. So – you want to sell them?”

  “Sure, if it’s not too complicated,” I said.

  “No problem,” Amy assured me. “We’ll have you eBuying in no time. Now. Got a digital camera?”

  Ooh, I’d been wanting one of those for a while now! “No,” I told her regretfully.

  “So we’ll use mine.” Amy rooted around in her oversized shoulderbag. “Mine if I install my camera driver on your computer? You can always uninstall it later. Or just leave it if you get the same kind of camera.”

  I waved her toward the computer. “Feel free.”

  Amy sat down in my chair and briskly got to work. I chuckled. “I can remember a time when installing a device driver was something ‘the IT guy’ did, much too esoteric for mere mortals.”

  “Huh,” said young Amy absently.

  Julia knew me too well. “Now, don’t start, Cissy,” she admonished me. “We don’t need to get into card decks and mag tapes.”

  “Do you even know what card decks and mag tapes are?” I asked her.

  “No, and I don’t want to,” she said stoutly. “I just know they’re your equivalent of walking to school three miles through the snow, uphill both ways.”

  I couldn’t deny it. “These kids today,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Done,” said Amy. “Let’s take some pictures!”

  Well, I immediately fell in love with the digital camera. The little screen that shows you your pictures! No more taking your film out to be developed, only to get them back and discover you had your thumb over the lens, or you’d chopped off the top of people’s heads, or that the target item was out of focus. “I must have one!” I declared.

  This was going to be wildly useful. Not just for listing things on eBuy, but to create the winery website I’d been saying I was going to make since the dawn of the world wide web.

  First, of course, I had to take pictures of Tough Stuff (who was scowling down on us from his perch on the high shelf) and Polly. Then we got down to business. We spread out and took photos of tablecloths, with Amy dictating appetizing auction copy for each one.

  Then, incredibly, she raved about the bedspreads. “But look at that big hole!” I protested.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Amy said knowledgably. “Oh, you’d get more if they were pristine, but these will sell, trust me. Put the word ‘cutter’ in the listing title. Start them at ten bucks apiece and I’ll eat them if they don’t sell; I’d bet they’ll finish higher than that.”

  “What’s a cutter?” Julia asked.

  “That’s a fabric item that’s not usable for its original purpose, but still have value for crafters. Someone will buy these bedspreads for the great designs on them and repurpose them as pillows or other craft items.” Amy held up the chenille bedspread. “Look at this great central medallion, and the damage is on the edges. Someone could cut out the center and turn it into the cover of a crib quilt.”

  “Golly, if torn bedspreads are saleable, I’ll bet I’ve got a lot of things around here worth something!” I exclaimed.

  Amy nodded. “You’d be surprised. Seriously, ladies, don’t throw things out without checking on eBuy. That’s the most important lesson to take away today.”

  We returned to the computer. Julia showed me the cookie jar she was bidding on. Amy showed me her eBuy listings. She already had several of those pieces of Ruba Rombic listed, and they already had bids that flabbergasted me. “Oh, they’ll go much higher,” Amy said positively. “The real bidding happens right before the auction ends. It’s fun to watch.”

  Then we got me registered; registering required me to pick out a user name, a recurring fact of modern life that inevitably induces paralysis in me. It’s like the card that circulates around an office when someone is retiring or relocating; when those things would land on my desk, I’d freeze, wanting to dash off a few heartfelt words that would be witty, pertinent to the departee, and characteristic of my own style, whatever that was. I’d dither around trying to come up with words that would fit all those criteria while the card-circulator waited impatiently for me to stop being a road block and get the card moving again. Eventually, I’d give up and pin some lame thing about best wishes in your future endeavors, and promise myself I’d do better next time.

  So – a user name. Huh.

  “I’m ‘qannegurl’,” Amy offered helpfully. “For Queen Anne girl, but gurl with a u. Rose is ‘pacosmama’. Lots of people incorporate pet names.”

  But if I used a pet name, I’d have to slight either Polly or Tough Stuff. They wouldn’t know it, but I would. And ‘Pollyanna’ (Polly’s full name) sounded too sweet, and ‘Tough Stuff’ sounded like a biker chick. Eventually, I fell back on my old Usenet moniker and went with ‘serpentcecil’. At Amy’s puzzled look, I said, “Long story. Old cartoon.”

  I listed a couple tablecloths and a bedspread. Now I had another Must Visit page on the internet. Eventually, they were going to have to just hook me up to the computer and leave me here.

  Tutorial finished, Amy expressed an interest in the winery, so we gave her the nickel tour. Jack and Craig were crushing the last of the cabernet, so there was some activity to watch. Amy expressed disappointment that the grapes weren’t being stomped with bare feet and we all chuckled politely. (Planning to tour a winery? Then be advised that just because it’s the first time you’ve made the grape stomping joke, that doesn’t mean it’s the first time we’ve heard it.)

  And thus ended our Girls’ Outing.

  After dinner, I got back on the internet to check my auctions. The bedspread already had a bid! I e-mailed the pictures of Tough Stuff and Polly to the kids, then I snuck back over to eBuy and bid on a digital camera just like Amy’s. Because why not?

  It was getting pretty late when the phone rang. Too late for telemarketers, was one of the kids in some kind of jam?

  No, it was Julia. “Cissy,” she gasped, “someone broke in!”

  THREE

  “Oh my God,” I gasped, “are you all right?! Did you call the police?”

  Julia took a deep breath, audible over the phone line. “Sorry,” she said. “Let me calm down or I’ll get you wound up. I just realized that sounded worse than it is.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I was just locking up for the night, and the front door lock has been broken. It must have happened while I was out, because neither Bob nor I heard anything this evening. When I came back from your place I went in the back, so I just now noticed.”

  A rumble in the background, and Julia added, “Bob is telling me to get off the phone. I called the sheriff’s department right before I called you, and they’ll be here soon. Bob wants us to look around, see what’s missing. I’ll call you tomorrow, unless there are big developments. So consider no news to be good news.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Keep me posted. And stay safe.”

  Julia didn’t call again that night, so after breakfast the next day, Polly and I walked over to her place. I knocked on the back door and got no answer, so I opened it, stuck my head in and hollared “Knock knock.”

  “Come on in,” Julia hollared back from the front of the house.

  I entered their great room and Polly trotted over to greet Beau. Julia was sitting at her built-in desk. The office area was even more of a disaster zone than usual. But on closer inspection, I realized that was due to a new wave of boxes, which comprised Julia’s auction haul. Julia was going through the boxes, unwrapping her purchases and setting them out in a line along the wa
ll.

  “So what’s the verdict?” I asked. “What did they get?”

  Julia waved comprehensively. “Who knows? I can’t find anything missing.”

  I pulled up a chair. “What did the police say?”

  “Luther Dawson came by last night. Took some notes but didn’t sound very hopeful. I’m supposed to make a list of missing items for the police report and insurance, but like I say, I’m not finding anything. The computer’s still here, the TV’s still over there. My jewelry box is on the dresser upstairs and it wasn’t touched. It’s all costume jewelry anyway. My cards were in my purse with me.”

  Julia unwrapped a cookie jar and admired it briefly before adding it to the row. “Luther thinks it was one of our criminal element, looking for cash or small items. He said someone, naming no names, is just out of juvie. I know who he’s talking about – Bink Tyler. I could tell Luther had already decided that Bink is the perp, but without finding goods on him, there wasn’t a lot they could do.”

  “Cash?” I asked. “Who uses cash anymore?”

  “Huh!” said Julia. “Good question. Well, I guess drug dealers and criminals. I can’t remember the last time I paid cash for anything.”

  “Then it would have been dumb of this Bink Tyler to expect to find cash at your place,” I pointed out.

  “Aren’t most criminals dumb, though?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Polly ambled over to see what we were up to, and Beau followed to sniff her butt. He was uninterested in the boxes, presumably having thoroughly sniffed them when they arrived.

  “Hey!” I asked. “What about Beau? Did he react at all?”

  “Oh, Beau,” Julia said disparagingly. “Not that he’s exactly a watch dog, but he wasn’t here. Bob went down to Buddy’s and you know how long those outings take, and he took Beau with him.”

  I knew. Buddy’s Feed and Seed was the favorite hangout of the men of a certain age in Queen Anne County. There were always a few ‘customers’ sitting in the back passing the time of day, and more often or not there was a dog in the mix. Visitors from more urban settings found the scene just too adorably quaint for words.