The Persian Helmet Read online

Chapter 2: Trash Heads

  In a week, the basement and the elevator were cleaned up, but still needed paint, and she needed counters and shelves. She wanted a sign for it to show it was separate. Maybe she could ask Jackson. He was still as maddeningly remote as ever, yet she thought — or did she imagine? — she detected glimmers of warmth ever since he’d appeared at Aunt Del’s funeral. And though he was as dependable as the sun about delivering the Sears goods, they’d never discussed the business as such. But it would be a good excuse to engage him more in conversation.

  On his next delivery, Clare got some of her younger staff to help him unload the truck.

  “Let me show you something new, Jackson,” Clare said, delicately placing a hand on his elbow to steer him toward the elevator. “I’m opening a new room for real old stuff, not the Sears things. Some stock from my old flea market business that I’m having brought down from Akron. Or maybe I’ll go get it myself, and visit my parents. And then I figure the local people might want to sell some of their things.”

  The elevator slowly carried them to the basement.

  Jackson looked at the clean but empty room.

  “You need some counters,” he observed. “And brighter lights.”

  “Did … does Sears sell store shelves and counters? Whoa, I almost couldn’t say that,” Clare joked. Jackson had never evinced a sense of humor, but he twitched an eyebrow at her tongue twister.

  “Look for display cases,” he said shortly. “This is a good idea,” he added, turning to go back to the elevator. Clare signed the delivery papers and with a sigh watched him go out to his truck, this time a 1949 model.

  That evening, over her glass of wine and canned ravioli, she made some notes about the new adjunct shop.

  Have to be careful about stolen goods, she thought, and made a note. Maybe I should talk to Sheriff Matheson. She had met him when he arrested her for killing Aunt Del, but they’d been friendly since she was acquitted. There was no point in being sensitive about it. After all, burying Del in the garden did look bad.

  Anyway, obviously Clench’s little bottle was freshly dug up. Who would steal a tiny old bottle? When she worked the flea market, she bought things from yard sales and estate sales and so on, where stolen goods were not really an issue, and seldom did anyone try to sell her anything. But this shop would be different from the flea market. A magnet.

  Maybe Roxy would be willing to drive a rental truck down and back. Maybe I should buy a pickup, Clare thought. And the next day she did, at the closest dealer. It was wonderful how money made it possible to put thought into action so rapidly. And now she wouldn’t have to put unnecessary wear and tear on the ’64 Valiant.

  Roxy was willing to help load the truck, and as usual, the deal was that she would get expenses plus a story for the magazine she worked for in Akron, Adventuress.

  “Of course,” Clare said on the phone. “But there’s not much of a story. I mean, The Rag and Bone Shop was a story, the Sears merch was and is a story, but you’ve already done that one. Opening a junque shop is not news.” Clare pronounced it jun-kway so Roxy would know she was being tongue in cheek, as when they called Target Tar-zhay or WalMart ValMar.

  “Maybe so, but you have a way of attracting news. Look what happened when you thought you’d just spend a couple of quiet weeks in the country with your old aunt.”

  “Yeah, but I’d been down here lots of times before and nothing happened.”

  “I think that part of your life is over. Because Jackson is still happening. Anyway, you want to come up a visit your folks for a couple of days and hang out?”

  “Yeah, of course. Want anything from the store?”

  “Ooh, probably. How about some of that ladies’ tonic? You still have it in the back room?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’ll bring you a bottle. But just one. How about if I come up Memorial Day weekend?”

  “That would be good. But you want to close the store that weekend?”

  “Maybe I should come up the weekend before. There will be lots of people making road trips on the long weekend, so lots of business.”

  “Right.”

  “And Greenline is having some kind of festivities, a parade and picnic in the park. I should be there.”

  Clare got a trusted employee to cover the store on a Saturday and on Friday evening made the four-hour trip in five hours, as usual, because she always stopped to eat at one of the Cracker Barrel restaurants on the way. She liked looking at the antiques hanging on the walls, and the food was plain, familiar, predictable, and good. Roxy let her in when she arrived at her old apartment; though Clare still had the key, she thought it good manners to knock.

  “You can sleep in your own bed,” Roxy said. “You don’t have to camp out on the couch.”

  “Thanks, but the couch is fine. It’s pretty comfortable. I used to fall asleep there often enough watching TV. Uh, how’s Jim?”

  Jim Rainbolt was Roxy’s boyfriend.

  “Just fine. Really, he should drive down with me and take some photos of the store for the next story. My little Android snapshots are barely adequate.”

  “Yeah, why don’t you ask him. He can be back on time for work on Monday.”

  “OK. So what do you want to do first?”

  “Get something to eat. In the morning I’ll go to the storage unit and close it out, and then visit my parents. Of course I’d love to stop in at the flea market if we have time. The storage unit isn’t far from there. We can drive down to Greenline on Sunday, if that’s OK with you.”

  “Sure, I don’t have any other plans.”

  Saturday morning they took care of business and loaded the pickup truck with boxes. The pickup had a large bed, and Clare hadn’t accumulated more than it would hold for any one day’s sale, aside from a few pieces of old furniture in the storage unit.

  “I’m so glad I don’t have to do that anymore,” Clare sighed. “What a chore, setting up those tables and packing up every day. I never got an inside booth, where I could have left things sit overnight. Wasn’t sure if I could make the rent.”

  Clare closed accounts with the storage company and suggested that they eat at the huge restaurant at the Hartville flea market, another Mennonite enterprise. The menu was similar to Cracker Barrel’s, sort of home cooking with whatever advantages and disadvantages produced by economies of scale. Maybe blander than Cracker Barrel’s. Then Clare wanted to take a look at the flea market, which she hadn’t seen since the summer previous, before the still inexplicable Sears catalogue phenomenon turned her life around.

  She said hello to a few vendors she knew, some of whom had heard of her Sears shop, but she didn’t really want to talk much.

  “Look for the next article on the shop in Adventuress magazine,” she said. “My friend Roxy Barbarino here is going to do a longer story on it, right?”

  “Oh yeah, and there will be photos,” Roxy promised.

  “Well, we better hit the road. I’ve really got to stop by my parents’,” Clare said, herding Roxy toward the parking lot. They got in the truck and headed back toward Akron.

  “Ooh, look!” Clare pointed to the miscellany of junk on the curbs in her parents’ neighborhood. “It must be large object collection day.”

  “On Saturday?”

  “Well, you know, probably Monday but everyone’s putting their stuff out all weekend. I am such a trash head.”

  She slowed down to get a better look at things, most of which was of no interest. Old playpens, broken cheap computer desks, old computers, tires, torn out plumbing and wallboard. Someone somewhere could resell or scrap it, but even trash pickers would let most of this flotsam and jetsam go to the dump.

  “Wait a minute, what’s that?”

  “What are you looking at?” Roxy said.

  “That trunk. Or foot locker. Pull over.”

  It was an ordinary black trunk with brass hardware, not especially old or interesting in design, reasonably clean and in fairly good condition. Clare got out of the truck and walked over to examine it.

  The trunk was locked with a small padlock. But something was inside. When she lifted one end by the handle, something slid around inside, something hard and solid. The trunk was light enough for her to lift but big enough to be awkward.

  “Help me with this, Roxy, I’m taking it.”

  “I guess it’s OK, considering everyone is putting out their junk today.”

  Clare looked at the house from which the trunk had presumably been ejected. An ordinary looking ranch house with ordinary shrubbery. She thought someone looked out from behind a curtain, but wasn’t sure. She hesitated briefly to see if anyone rushed out, having suddenly decided to keep the trunk and whatever was in it, but no one did, so she and Roxy lifted it into the truck and drove away.