Shattered Silk, page 12
"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."
"Really? I couldn't help noticing that book on your bedside table…"
At first Karen couldn't imagine what Cheryl was talking about. "Oh, the Georgetown legends book," she exclaimed. "Julie foisted that off on me the other day; either she hoped it would give me nightmares, or she expected the story about Mrs. MacDougal would upset me."
"Swell friend," Cheryl said. "Don't tell me Mrs. MacDougal has a ghost. But I guess if there was such a thing, it would hang out in a house like hers."
"It wasn't a ghost story, it was an old scandal," Karen said distastefully. "Fifty years old. According to the book, some idiot shot himself in Mrs. Mac's billiard room -killed himself for love of her."
Cheryl grinned and quickly sobered. "I'm sorry! But it sounds so silly when you put it that way."
"It sounds pretty silly any way you put it," Karen agreed. "But you're right about the deadening effect of time; it's impossible to get emotionally involved in something that happened so long ago."
"You wouldn't say that if you could hear Tony and Mark arguing about that King Richard," Cheryl said darkly.
The storm had passed by the time they left the restaurant. There was little traffic on the quiet country road, and they drove in companionable silence for a while as stars blossomed in the darkening west. Then Cheryl, who had been stroking the soft silk of the old wedding dress, said dreamily, "I know you must get sick of hearing me say it, but I really do admire you, Karen."
"I'll be older than Mrs. Mac before I get tired of hearing that. But if you're referring to my business plans, such as they are, I haven't done anything worthy of admiration; it was pure good luck and the good will of friends that got me started."
"But it's such a fascinating business. The old dresses and underwear-excuse me, lingerie-it's as if they were alive, you know? They have histories just the way people do."
"To me they're just merchandise," Karen said, touching the brake as a pair of bright circles reflected her headlights. The rabbit prudently withdrew into the brush at the side of the road.
"Watch out for-oh, good, you saw him. You can't mean that; you have lots of imagination. Like this wedding dress. Can't you picture that poor girl, barely seventeen, standing there in front of the minister-cold as ice, because she was marrying a man she feared and hated…"
"What a romantic you are," Karen said amiably. "Just because the lucky lady didn't perspire-"
"She hated him," Cheryl insisted. "I know she did."
Karen was silent. Cheryl nudged her. "You're thinking about something. I can practically hear you thinking. What?"
"I was remembering something that happened last week," Karen admitted. "A girl came in and wanted to try on the flapper dress I had in the window. Light-pink chiffon with sequins and crystal beads. It fit her well-she was one of those skinny little things, practically anorexic- but she barely had it over her head before she began trying to tear it off. I could have killed her; you can't be rough with clothes like that, they're too old and fragile. I said something rude-well, not really screaming rude, cold and nasty. She stared at me with big, pale-blue eyes, just like a dead fish, and said, 'Can't you feel the vibes? Something awful happened to the woman who wore that dress! I wouldn't have it if you gave it to me.'"
"Geez," said Cheryl, impressed.
"I thought she was just being dramatic. And," Karen added firmly, "I still think so."
"Oh, right. I wasn't trying to suggest there was anything spooky about it. Like Tony says, everything has a rational explanation. The way I feel about this dress comes from meeting Mrs. Grossmuller and hearing her talk about-about her husband. But the clothes themselves can give you clues about the people they belonged to, can't they? Suppose the seams are all pulled and stretched; you figure the woman was either too poor to buy a new dress after she gained weight or too vain to admit she needed a bigger size."
"Clothes are historical artifacts, like pottery and tools," Karen agreed. "I suppose they have an additional mystique because they actually touched and were shaped by the people who wore them. A historian can learn a great deal about a culture from costume-not only the bare facts of fashion, but the social and political attitudes of the period. The clothing women wore in the late nineteenth century directly reflects their status; tight corsets and heavy, cumbersome fabrics and long skirts prevented the wearers from engaging in any useful activity whatever."
"You sure know a lot of fancy words," Cheryl said.
Her voice was noncommittal, and in the darkness Karen could not see her face. "I didn't mean," she began.
"Oh, hey, I like it." After a moment Cheryl added, "You don't talk down to me. I appreciate that."
Karen decided to park on the street that night rather than carry their purchases all the way from the garage.
She had to drive around the block several times before she found a legal parking space. Except for streaks of sullen crimson low in the west, the skies were dark; the streetlights sent shimmering reflection across the wet pavement.
Karen had not expected they would be so late, and she had neglected to leave any lights burning. As they felt their way carefully along the short stretch of sidewalk between the gate and the steps, the carton Cheryl carried slipped from her arms, spilling the contents onto the ground.
