Rock Bottom Treasure (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 7)

by S. W. Hubbard

  “You think this is big?” Ty asks.

  “It could be. It definitely could be. Let’s go talk to Cordy.” I pause on the way out of the room. “But don’t tell her what we think it is. Let her tell us.”

  All three of us clatter downstairs with the scrap of paper, the tambourine, and the Jethro Tull poster. Cordy is sitting at the kitchen table talking on her cell phone. “What a time that was,” she gushes. “I’m so glad I caught you. I’ve totally lost track of Frank, so thanks for the email. I’ll get in touch with him. Yeah. Right. Ciao, baby.”

  She glances at us. “You all look like kids who just saw Santa.”

  I decide to lead with the Jethro Tull poster. I unroll it in front of her and before I can say a word, Cordy offers, “What a great concert—The Wall, live! Look, Ian Anderson signed the poster for me. Fabulous musician, Ian. He can do it all—sing, play flute, keyboards. Why, I’ve even heard him play the balalaika. I should give him a call.” Cordy scratches a reminder on a notebook in front of her.

  Ty purses his lips, but Donna hangs on every word.

  Cordy may be exaggerating how well she knows the lead singer of Jethro Tull, but the signature should be easy enough to authenticate, given that Anderson is still alive. “This could have some value to a collector. Would you be willing to sell it?” I ask.

  “Sure.” Cordy wrinkles her brow and taps her chest. “But I’m the one with the memory. I don’t see why someone who never even met Ian would want it.”

  I can’t explain the passion some people feel for the items they collect. But Ty is correct—there’s a lot more money in catering to people’s emotional cravings than to their practical needs. “Great—I think I’ll be able to find a buyer. I’ll research prices.” Next I pull out the tambourine.

  “Oh, look—Stevie’s tambourine. I forgot I even had that. She left it behind on the tour bus we were both riding between shows. So busy chasing Lindsey Buckingham she couldn’t keep track of her own nose. I picked it up intending to return it to her, but then our paths never crossed again. I suppose she doesn’t need it anymore. She’s stopped performing, you know.”

  Donna’s eyes light up. “So it did belong to someone famous! Stevie Nicks—wow!”

  “Is there any way to prove it?” I ask Cordy.

  She straightens up and fixes me with a fierce squint. “Why would I lie?”

  “I’m not accusing you of lying,” I backpedal. “It’s just that for collectibles to have value, you have to prove they’re authentic. The seller’s word is not enough.”

  Cordy snorts. “Maybe your handsome husband could dust it for fingerprints.”

  Hmmm. So Cordy knows Sean’s profession. She seems to have been doing a little research on me, just as I did research on her. Maybe she’s not as flaky as she lets on.

  I suspect this particular tambourine is no more valuable than the ones in the elementary school music room. “If we can’t prove the provenance, we won’t get much. Let’s move on.”

  I sit down across from Cordy and slide the paper across the table. “Cordy, I found this stuffed in a book. Can you remember who wrote it?”

  Her faded blue eyes squint and she holds the paper at arm’s length, too vain to put on reading glasses. But as she studies the paper, her face softens. “Huh! It’s a note from John Freeman. What a love he was!” She passes the note back to me. “Read that aloud to me. I can’t make out his handwriting.”

  So I read the message from John and the lyrics below.

  Cordy’s face lights up. “Yes, I remember that night! John and Five Free Men played a gig at CBGB.” She turns to Donna and Ty. “You kids wouldn’t know this, but the club was right around the corner from my apartment. John came back there with me after the show.” Cordy winks. “We sat up all night talking and drinking and making love. I finally passed out at dawn. When I woke up around dinnertime, I found this note on my pillow. John wanted my opinion of his lyrics.”

  “Wow, Donna says. “So you’re the lady with wavy hair in the song?”

  Cordy gives a modest shrug. “Maybe me, maybe some other girl. All I know is we spent the night talking about life and love and the impossibility of tying anyone down if you love them. And after I fell asleep, John wrote this. And nine months later, when the album was released, he thanked me in the liner notes.”

  I feel my heart rate quickening. All this can be verified, and Freeman’s handwriting can be authenticated. The original hand-written draft of an iconic song has got to be worth a tidy sum.

  Ever the romantic, Donna props her head in her hand and leans toward Cordy. “And did you keep seeing John?”

  Cordy makes a grand gesture with her right hand. “Oh, we managed to spend another night or two together, but we were both always on the road, doing what we loved. He was touring with Five Free Men, and I sure wasn’t going to give up my writing career to follow him around like some lovesick groupie.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “I remember the awful night I got the news he’d been killed in that motorcycle crash.” Cordy bites her bottom lip and shakes her head, too overcome to continue. Donna reaches out and squeezes her hand. Ty observes from across the room, his arms folded over his chest.

  After a moment, Cordy continues. “John knew how to have fun, but he wasn’t reckless. It shocked me that he died in a crash. But as Billy always said, only the good die young.”

  “Billy?” Donna probes.

  “Joel.” Cordy tosses her long, red braid. “He was never a rocker, but he’s one hell of a piano player. Some of his songs are a little sappy, but I always liked “New York State of Mind.”

  I bring her attention back to the faded page of paper on the table. “Are you willing to sell this, Cordy? It would go a long way toward paying your tax bill.” I know what Peter and Noreen would say, but I want Cordy’s freely given consent.

  Cordy flings herself back in her chair, a dramatic gesture that leaves a scrape on the kitchen’s purple-painted wall. “Is this what my life has come to? I have to sell off a precious love letter to keep a roof over my head?”

  “Ten minutes ago you didn’t even remember you had it,” Ty mutters under his breath. I shoot him a warning glare, but luckily, Cordy doesn’t seem to have heard. She picks up John Freeman’s note and studies it mournfully even though she’s admitted she can’t make out the words.

  Then Cordy makes a shooing gesture. “Well, go ahead. John was such a gentle soul. He’d want to help me if he could, even from beyond the grave.”

  Chapter 6

  “I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU have to be so mean,” Donna huffs at Ty when we’re back upstairs after eating a quick lunch out on Cordy’s cat-inhabited front porch..

  “I’m not mean. I just think she’s blowin’ a lotta wind, is all.” Ty shoves some boxes into a corner. “Billy this and Ian that, and Stevie the other thing. I bet she didn’t know none of ‘em.”

  “Why are you so suspicious?” Donna plants her hands on her hips. “Cordy had an exciting life when she was young. I wish I would have had the courage to launch a career like that when I was in my twenties.”

  “Career? Seems to me she just went to a lot of concerts and picked up the trash those rockers left behind,” Ty answers.

  “She was a journalist! She interviewed them and wrote articles about them!” Donna squeaks in outrage.

  “Whatever.” Ty turns his back, unwilling to continue the debate.

  I’m intrigued by Ty’s reaction because he has a pretty good track record of BS detection. If Ty suspects Cordy is a fraud, he might be on to something. Nevertheless, I know that Cordy did make a living as a reporter for Bass Line for many years even if Ty doesn’t consider that a “real” job. I let Ty and Donna continue the search through the boxes while I do some research on the poster and the note from John Freeman.

  It’s easy to find a comparable sale for the poster. There are several dealers who specialize in these items, and the prices are determined by rarity and the condition of the piece. Cordy’s Jethro Tull poster
isn’t extremely rare and it’s in fairly good, but not perfect, condition—a little faded with some bent corners. A similar poster sold for two hundred dollars recently. But the addition of Ian Anderson’s autograph increases the value. I switch over to a dealer I know who specializes in autographs and “ephemera”—notes and letters of the famous. As long as the signature is genuine, the signed poster ought to bring in more than a thousand bucks. Not life-changing money, but not bad for a morning’s work.

  The fragment of lyrics from John Freeman is a one-of-a-kind item, so it’s not so easy to appraise. I take a picture of it and write an email to the ephemera dealer in New York explaining the background.

  Within minutes, my phone rings. “I need to see this in person. When can you bring it in?” the dealer says without bothering with “hello.”

  “I could bring it tomorrow, I suppose...” My voice conveys a weary hesitation because a train ride into the city is expensive and pretty much kills my day.

  “Look, if this is real, I know several collectors who’d be interested,” the dealer’s excitement pulsates through the phone. “We could have a bidding war.”

  “Assuming it’s authentic, what kind of money are we talking about?”

  “I can’t predict with something like this...seven...ten...twelve, maybe.”

  “Ten thousand dollars?” I shout.

  Donna and Ty stop what they’re doing and stare.

  “I can’t promise anything,” the dealer says. “But there are a lot of passionate John Freeman fans out there. An early draft of his biggest hit—geez, just get it in here, willya?”

  So I make a plan to meet him in his Manhattan office at ten tomorrow morning.

  “Ten thousand dollars is more than we made on the entire Obermeyer sale,” Donna says after I hang up.

  Ty scratches his head. “Guess we better work our way through all these boxes. And double-check all the books.”

  After texting the news of the discovery to Peter and Noreen, I rip open the next box in the stack. Suddenly, we’re all a lot more motivated.

  Unfortunately, the afternoon passes without another big score. Just box after box of totally random junk. Again I’m struck by the juxtaposition of items in the boxes: a grotty frying pan shares space with a fringed leather vest; a mildewed shower caddy rubs up against a rather nice framed photo of the New York City skyline. Who packs like this?

  At four-thirty, my back hurts and my throat is parched from breathing in so much dust and ambient weed fumes. “Let’s call it quits for today. You two can return tomorrow while I take this”—I hold up the envelope containing the Freeman note—“into the city. Let’s tell Cordy the plan. But don’t mention anything about ten thousand bucks. I don’t want to get her hopes up.”

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Cordy is once again on the phone. “I know, darling,” I hear her say. “Some people are surrounded by a cloud of negative energy. Don’t let it affect you.”

  Cordy shows no signs of cutting off her conversation, so I signal to her that we’re leaving. She pauses talking long enough to wave good-bye.

  “Ty and Donna will be back tomorrow,” I say.

  She nods at me while continuing to talk to her friend on the phone. “Uh-hunh. Well, you have to tune that out, honey.”

  I want to tell Cordy not to mention the discovery of the Freeman note to anyone, but she shows no sign of letting up on her discussion with the troubled friend.

  Weary, I wave and we all head back to the office.

  “AUDEEEE!”

  A little brown blur shoots across the room, tackling my knees and nearly knocking me down. “Lo!” I swing the sturdy three-year-old up into my arms. “How’s my best buddy?”

  Ty’s nephew gives me a wet kiss on the cheek, then struggles to be set back down. “Audee, have you got any toys in dose boxes?” He points to a stack of stuff that didn’t sell waiting to be transported to our charity of last resort, Sister Alice in Newark.

  “Lo!” Ty’s sister Charmaine scolds. “Don’t be begging for hand-outs.”

  Naturally, I ignore Lo’s mother. “Let’s just see what we have here.” I pull a scratched frying pan from a box. “How about this?”

  Lo’s brow furrows. “I don’t need a pan.”

  “Or this?” I pull out an old-fashioned alarm clock.

  “I know all those numbers.” Lo works his way around the dial, pointing a pudgy finger at each number and accurately calling out its name.

  “Very good!”

  “But that’s not a toy.” He stomps his light-up sneaker. “Aren’t there any toys in there?” Lo goes up on his tip-toes, although this brings him no closer to the inside of the box.

  “Hmmmm,” I reach in and pull out a well-loved dump truck with chipped paint and a patch of rust. “Could this be a toy?”

  Lo jumps up and down. “Yes, Audee! Yes! That’s one.”

  Donna, Ty and I laugh in delight as Lo starts zooming the truck around the office. Meanwhile, Charmaine shakes her head in disgust. “Y’all are spoiling him. Give him every little thing he asks for.”

  “That’s what aunts are for,” I say. “We save the discipline for you.”

  Lo looks up at me angelically. “Tank you, Audee. I love dis twuck.”

  How could I ever deny this child anything?

  “Lo needs another truck like he needs a hole in the head,” Charmaine grouses. But I can tell she’s pleased that he said thank you without being coaxed. And that he’s playing relatively quietly, so the adults can talk.

  Charmaine and Lo showed up shortly after our return from Cordy’s house. Ty and his half-sister have been getting along much better lately. Charmaine’s steady success as an administrative assistant has reduced Ty’s need to offer unsolicited (and unappreciated) advice. They’ve finally started enjoying each other’s company instead of loving each other out of obligation.

  “Lo wants you to come over for dinner tonight,” Charmaine says. “So I thought I’d stop by and see what you want to eat.”

  “Chicken nuggets!” Lo shouts as he loads paperclips into the dump truck.

  “Yeah, baby—you can have that, but Uncle Ty wants something better,” Charmaine says.

  Ty gazes up at the office ceiling as if there’s a menu posted above. “How ‘bout something Grams never makes...those hot sausage and peppers you made a while back were good.”

  “You got it.” Charmaine smiles then glances away. “I thought I might invite Daddy.”

  “No!” Ty shouts. “Have dinner with me. Have dinner with him. Can’t have both.”

  Donna and I each shuffle papers on our desks trying to look occupied while this family drama unfolds in front of us. I suspect Charmaine came here to suggest dinner with their father hoping that Ty would agree to avoid a scene. In this regard, she doesn’t understand her brother very well. Ty has never forgiven their father for abandoning both him and Charmaine and their respective mothers. He’s told me all about it, so there’s no need for him to go along with her plan just to be polite.

  Charmaine scowls, but I notice she doesn’t direct the look at Ty. She doesn’t want to reignite this long-running battle. “Fine,” she huffs. “I just thought it might be nice.”

  “Not nice for me,” Ty answers as he bangs around in the tower of junk he needs to move next week.

  Stubborn. Charmaine mouths the word at me behind her brother’s back.

  I duck my head. I’m staying out of this.

  “Okay, Lo—let’s go,” Charmaine says with exaggerated cheerfulness. “We have to stop at the supermarket to get everything we need for dinner. Then Uncle Ty will meet us at our house.”

  Lo’s face darkens. “I stay here.”

  “You go shopping without him,” Ty directs. “It’ll be easier. I’ll bring him over with me.”

  Charmaine accepts this as a peace offering and leaves. Lo pushes the truck around lost in a sweet pretend game. Donna and I work in silence.

  Finally, Ty can’t hold it in any longer. “I do
n’t know why she can’t leave him alone.”

  I glance at Lo, but he’s absorbed in his pretend world.

  Does Ty really want me to answer his question? He and I have gone around on this topic more than once. Charmaine, I’ve pointed out to him, has no extended family on her mother’s side, unlike Ty. She yearns for a connection with her father, even if he has an extensive criminal record.

  Ty continues talking. “He’s been out for a year and hasn’t gotten re-arrested. Charmaine thinks that means he’s clean. I say, it means he’s learned enough not to get caught.”

  “What you say, Uncle Ty?” Lo looks up in curiosity.

  “Nuthin’, little man. Hey, can you use your truck to load up these buttons and take them over to that flowerpot?”

  “Sure!” Lo agrees to this pointless assignment with enthusiasm.

  Ty’s lips press into a hard line as he watches his nephew play. “I’ll never let my old man hurt Lo the way he hurt me and Charmaine. Never.”

  Chapter 7

  I ALWAYS UNDERESTIMATE how much time it will take to find a parking spot at the Palmyrton train station, pay for it at the fancy new parking meter machine, buy my train ticket at the four-thousand-different-options ticket machine, and get myself onto the correct platform. I fumble anxiously with all the buttons. If I miss the 8:40 train, I’ll be stuck here for another forty-five minutes. I’m sweating under my fall jacket by the time the train roars into the station.

  Even though rush hour is almost over, there are quite a few passengers who board with me. Like all metro New York commuters, no one makes eye contact as they scramble to find a desirable seat. I find a window seat, and put the tote bag containing the precious letter on the empty seat beside me. Then, even though there are plenty of spots available for other riders, I pull the tote bag onto my lap.