Part 4 (1/2)
Chapter 6.
Where were my volunteer helpers, I wondered. Scarlett backed off when I threatened to expel her from the yard sale, but I had to sit on the Gypsy for ten minutes to calm her down. And no one lifted a finger to help me. I had recruited a dozen relatives to help, but apart from my two increasingly demoralized cas.h.i.+ers, none of them were nearby. I hoped they were off taking care of other problems. We had plenty of problems to go around. In addition to squabbles between customers, I was starting to notice squabbles among the sellers, as various people suddenly noticed which priceless treasures their spouses, parents, children, or siblings had decided to unload.
”She's selling my high chair,” my forty-something cousin Dermot announced, pointing to his sweet, grayhaired mother as if he'd just spotted one of the FBI's top ten wanted criminals lurking in our backyard.
”If you want it, why don't you just buy it?” I asked.
”I'm not selling it to him,” Dermot's mother said. ”He'd only stick it back in my garage again.”
”I don't have room for it in my apartment.”
”And I don't have room for it in my garage.”
I left them to sort it out. Up and down the aisles, similar battles were being waged over rusting tricycles, battered reclining chairs, and moth-eaten sc.r.a.ps of clothing. If I'd known how traumatic yard sales were for the sellers, I'd have arranged to have a family therapist on hand.
Mother was being unusually helpful, but she couldn't be everywhere at once, and she had her hands full dealing with the shoplifters. She knew who all the family kleptomaniacs were and exactly what mix of threat and cajolery to use with each of them. And long experience with the light-fingered members of our clan had given her a second sense for spotting strangers intent on pilfering, whether for professional or psychiatric reasons.
For once in my life I wished I had more family members like Mother. I could use a dozen more of her, at least.
I'd a.s.sign one just to keep people out of the barn. I didn't quite share Dad's pa.s.sionate concern for the welfare of the nesting owls, but I had other, more practical reasons for declaring the barn off-limits. Including the fact that we weren't entirely sure parts of it were structurally sound. The last thing we needed to inaugurate our life in the house was a lawsuit from some disgruntled customer who'd wandered in where he had no business being and gotten injured by falling beams or rubble. So I'd posted a variety of threatening signs on the barn doors, everything from ”Keep out!” and ”No Trespa.s.sing!” to ”Warning! Falling debris!” and Dad had added his ”Keep out! Owls nesting!” signs, which were probably less effective but a lot more picturesque.
And yet less than an hour into the sale, I saw Gordon ducking into the barn, dragging a large cardboard box. And then he came out empty-handed. Several times. Okay, he probably wasn't attempting larceny. For one thing, both of the ground floor doors to the barn were inside the fence, and if he tried to lower stuff out of the hayloft door, which did overlook the outside world, someone would surely notice. So he was probably only doing what people had warned me the greedy and inconsiderate customers would do-dragging large quant.i.ties of stuff off to one side to sort through at their leisure before returning the unwanted items to the sale area. Not a big problem if they did their sorting and returning relatively soon, but if they waited till near the end of the sale, when you started reducing prices across the board ...
Well, Gordon might be in for a nasty shock. For one thing, we weren't reducing prices today-this was a two- day event. And for another thing, as soon as I had a moment I planned to slip into the barn, drag out everything Gordon had hidden away there, and put it back out for anyone who wanted it.
Unfortunately, every time I set out toward the barn, some new crisis intervened. A lost child. A lost purse. More scuffles between overeager Grouchos and Nixons.
I caught Eric and one of his little cousins charging admission to the portable toilets and ordered the young entrepreneurs to exercise their capitalistic instincts by helping Cousin Horace at the hamburger stand.
”You'd be amazed what you can find at yard sales,” I overheard one woman telling another. ”On Antiques Road Show, people are always bringing bits of junk they bought at yard sales and finding out they're worth thousands of dollars.”
”That's true,” the second woman said. Just then they spotted my shadow. They hunched protectively over the table in front of them and glared at me until I moved on. I fought back a smile. Would it rea.s.sure them to know that I was not a compet.i.tor? That I had no intention of buying anything at the yard sale, and particularly not from that table, which was filled with some of the worst junk I'd cleared out of Mrs. Sprocket's attic? Probably not. And I certainly didn't want to discourage them by mentioning that seventeen keen-eyed antique appraisers had already turned up their noses at the contents of that particular table. For all I know, if I'd called an eighteenth dealer he might have spotted a hidden treasure among the clutter. Perhaps the cracked chamber pot had once stood in the servants' quarters in Monticello, or perhaps Eleanor Roosevelt had crocheted the toilet paper roll covers as part of the war effort. I wished them luck.
Cousin Deirdre, the animal rights activist, had begun splas.h.i.+ng paint on every moth-eaten fur coat and taxidermied mongoose in sight. I confiscated her paint and explained to the unhappy fur owners that she only used nontoxic washable paint, but most of them didn't calm down until Mother promised to see that Deirdre reimbursed their cleaning costs.
”Meg, we're out of Spike's dog food!” Rob exclaimed, appearing at my elbow while I was trying to calm an elderly lady whose sense of decency had been violated by her discovery that one of the booths was selling back issues of Playboy.
”Get him a hamburger from Horace,” I said.
”Okay,” Rob said. ”How does he like them?”
”Ask him,” I said.
”Roger,” Rob said, turning to go.
”While you're going that way,” I called after him, ”Could you tell that man with the grandfather clock that he doesn't have to carry it around the whole time he's shopping; we'd be happy to keep it behind the checkout counter for him.”
”I've already told him that, twice,” Rob said. ”He says he doesn't mind carrying it.”
”Let me rephrase that. Tell him if he whacks one more person in the head with the clock, I'll take it away from him and kick him out of the yard sale.”
”Roger.”
I returned to my irate customer.
”I'm sorry, ma'am,” I said. ”I'm not sure we have the right to keep someone from selling his Playboy magazines, but if you can point out the booth, I'll ask him to keep them out of sight.”
”Hmph,” the woman snorted, as she turned and marched away. After a few feet, she stopped and turned back, hands on her hips.
”And don't let me catch you selling any of that trash to that worthless husband of mine!” she shouted.
I turned to the checkout counter. The white rabbit and the ballerina looked stricken. Michael, standing nearby, wore the intensely solemn look that always meant he was trying not to crack up.
”And does anyone have any idea who she is, and what her worthless husband looks like?”
”No,” Michael said. ”But I know who's selling the Playboys. Your cousin Everett.”
”Can you talk to him?”
”Sure,” Michael said. ”I'll tell him to keep his Playboys under the counter with the Penthouses and Hustlers.”
”Good grief,” I said. ”I thought all he had was forty years of National Geographic.”
Just then I heard a loud altercation nearby. Not the first of the day, by any means, but the voices sounded familiar, so I waded through the crowd to see what was going on.
”It's mine!”
”No, it's not!”
”Yes, it is!”
”I saw it first!”
”But I touched it first!”
”Liar!”
”Thief!”
”Let go!”
”Take that!”
Typical. I'd heard so many quarrels already today that I'd given up intervening unless the partic.i.p.ants came to blows, which these two seemed about to do.