“Of course,” BeBe said in a mocking voice. “And where does Annie’s Secret Santa leave her goodie bags?”
“You’re making fun of me,” I said.
“Absolutely,” she agreed. “Best friend’s prerogative. Where do you leave the stuff?”
“In the truck,” I said. “Late at night. And it’s always gone the next morning.”
“Oh, there’s a surprise,” BeBe said. “You live in the historic district, which is headquarters for every homeless man in Savannah, and amazingly enough, when you leave stuff in your unlocked truck, it’s gone the next day.”
“I always put the presents in the glove box,” I said. “Nobody but Annie would know to look there.”
“Except for the army of homeless people who camp out in Colonial Cemetery, which is what? A block from your place? Anybody could be watching while you do your little Secret Santa thing.”
“But they’re not,” I said stubbornly. “Annie is the only one who knows. Anyway, who else would leave presents for me?”
For once, BeBe was speechless. But only for a moment.
“A homeless woman leaves you gifts?”
“Wonderful gifts,” I said. “Yesterday she left me a huge hotel key. From the old DeSoto Hotel.”
“They tore that place down more than thirty-five years ago,” BeBe said.
“I know. And she must know how I love anything from old Savannah,” I said smugly.
“She probably stole it years ago,” BeBe said flatly. “She was probably a hotel thief before she became a homeless thief. What else has she given you?”
“One morning, there was a huge pinecone. From a ponderosa pine, I think. It was the biggest pinecone I’d ever seen. Another time, it was the tiniest, most perfect little baby conch shell. No bigger than my thumbnail. But today’s present was the best of all.”
“I can’t wait to hear,” BeBe said in a perfect deadpan.
Ignoring her sarcasm, I reached back into my purse and brought out Apple Annie’s gift.
“A bottle,” BeBe said. “That’s appropriate. For an old alkie.”
“Not just any bottle,” I said, turning the deep blue container over to show her the marking on the bottom. “This is a John Ryan soda bottle.” With my fingertip I stroked the bottle, its finish worn to velvet.
“And?”
“Look at the date here,” I instructed.
She scrunched up her eyes and examined the bottle’s bottom.
“Eighteen sixty-seven. Is this thing really that old?”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “You know I don’t deal in old bottles. That’s really more of a guy thing. But there are lots of bottle diggers and dealers around town. I know just enough about old bottles to know that I don’t know enough. So I mostly leave them to the boys. Still…”
“This bottle is worth more than a million bucks,” BeBe said. “And a homeless woman gave it to you. Just like that.”
I gave her an annoyed look.
“I knew that John Ryan bottles were highly collectible,” I said finally. “This one was filled with soda right here in Savannah. And yes, in 1867. So I did some research. It’s not worth a million bucks. But the cobalt color is really desirable. This one, unfortunately, is missing the wire bail that would originally have been around the neck, to cap it. And there are some chips around the lip, and a hairline crack. I found a similar bottle on the Internet, that one was perfect. And it sold for ten thousand dollars.”
“For an old soda bottle.”
“I don’t make the prices,” I said. “I’m just telling you what the market is. Anyway, this bottle is nowhere near perfect. Not for a collector. But for me, I wouldn’t take any money for it.”
She sighed, picked up her wineglass, and drained it.
“You don’t get it, I know,” I said. “But Annie knows me. She knows I love anything that was made here in Savannah. Where I was made. And she knows blue is my favorite color. I think she must have found this somewhere. Maybe dug it up herself, somewhere around town, although that is totally illegal. But I don’t care. It’s the perfect Christmas gift.”
“And it came from a wino,” BeBe said.
“That’s it!” I said, jumping up. I reached down, grabbed her hand, yanked her to a standing position, and gave her a huge hug.
“What?”
“Wine!” I said. “That’s what I’ll give Daniel. I got a flyer in the mail today. From Trader Bob. He never sends out flyers. But when he was up in the North Carolina mountains, he bought out this old guy’s wine cellar. And he’s selling all the wine bottles. Tomorrow morning! You know what a wine snob Daniel is. I’ll run over there first thing tomorrow and buy him the best bottle of wine I can find.”
“You don’t know diddly about wine,” BeBe said.
“No,” I said, hugging her again. “But you do.”
CHAPTER 14
I picked BeBe up at her place at eight the next morning. It had rained a little the night before, but this morning was sunny and colder than it had been earlier in the week. It really was beginning to feel like Christmas.
She walked unsteadily to the truck, and wobbled a little as she slid into the front seat, clutching a huge mug of coffee in one hand and a rolled-up magazine in the other.
“Not feeling well?” I asked, pulling away from the curb.
She shot me the look. “Do you know how much wine we put away last night?”
“A lot?”
“Three bottles. And I think I took care of more than my share.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Not as sorry as me.” She shuddered. “I don’t think I can stand to look at another bottle of wine again. Ever.”
“Well, you’re going to,” I said brightly. “Leuveda, she’s Trader Bob’s sister? There was a message from her on my answering machine when I got home last night. She says there are, like, two thousand bottles being auctioned off this morning.”
BeBe closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “You are the only person in the world who could get me to go to a wine auction the way I’m feeling today.”
I glanced over at the rolled-up magazine in her lap.
“Uh, BeBe? I don’t think you’re gonna have time to catch up on your reading at the auction. Trader Bob really moves these things along. And since I don’t know a thing about wine—”
“Relax,” she said, unrolling the magazine without opening her eyes. “This is Wine Spectator. Their annual price guide. It’s research, sweetie.”
“Oh. Good.” I took a sip of my own coffee. “So. I’ve given it some thought, and here’s what I’ve come up with. If the prices are decent, I’d like to buy two really good bottles of wine. A bottle of red—you know how much Daniel likes red wine—and a bottle of really good champagne.”
“Champagne!” She moaned. “Oh, God. The only thing worse than a wine hangover is a champagne hangover.”
“Forget hangover. Concentrate on helping me find Daniel a great Christmas present.”
She opened one eye. “Red. Is that the best you can do? I mean, can you be a little more specific? Does he like bordeaux, burgundy, what?”
“Just red,” I said. “You know me. I’ll drink any old thing. Daniel, on the other hand, likes the good stuff. So we’re looking for something spectacular. Also the one thing I do know is the vintage.”
“Yes?”
“Nineteen seventy,” I said. “It’s got to be a bottle from 1970.”
“Impossible,” she said flatly.
“Why?”
“There is no spectacular red wine from 1970,” she said. “Pick another year, please.”
“But I can’t. That’s the year he was born. It’s the year I was born. It’s got to be a 1970 vintage. Surely not everything from that year is awful?”
She yawned. “Well, it’s certainly not 1961—the birth year of the most fabulously drinkable Château Latour—and the amazing Harry Sorrentino.”
“What? Everything made that year sucks?”
She opened her eyes. “I didn’t say they all suck. What I mean is, it wasn’t a truly spectacular year, for the most part. Don’t get your panties in a wad. I’m sure we’ll find something drinkable at your little auction.”
“Don’t forget the champagne. I want a really nice bottle of champagne.”
“Cristal’s nice.”
I made a face. “Isn’t that what all the rappers and rock stars drink? I want something Daniel couldn’t just pick up at Johnny Ganem’s liquor store. Something for when we have something to celebrate.”
“Hmm.” Her eyes were closed again. “We’ll see.”
“I’m running out of time here,” I reminded her. “Christmas is the day after tomorrow. And the whole family’s coming over tomorrow night, and then I’m going to midnight mass.”
Her eyes popped open again.
“Mass? Family?”
“I know,” I said. “The mass thing is a Christmas gift for Mama. She’s been saying novenas that I’ll find my way back to the fold. So everybody, Jonathan and James and Miss Sudie, Mama and Daddy, is coming over to my house for supper on Christmas Eve. That’s my gift to Daddy.”
“Because?”
“That way he doesn’t have to eat Mama’s cooking for twenty-four hours. I’ve promised him a ham, and turkey, and oyster dressing and all the fixings. He’ll have leftovers for days. And no heartburn, hopefully.”
“Very Christian,” BeBe said approvingly.
“And I want you and Harry to come over too,” I said.
“Hmm.”
“Please?” I tugged on the sleeve of her sweater. “At least for supper. That way, it won’t be Daniel all alone with my bizarre family.”
“Not everybody in your family is bizarre,” she pointed out. “James is quite normal. And your daddy is a lovely man.”
“But not a brilliant conversationalist. All Daddy ever talks to Daniel about is his old mailman war stories. And cars. You know Daniel doesn’t give a rat’s ass about cars. If you come, Daniel will have somebody else to talk to besides Daddy. And Mama—who keeps pumping him about when we’re going to get married.”
“Maybe,” BeBe said. “I’ll mention it to Harry. See what he thinks. I know we’re definitely spending Christmas morning at my place. My grandparents are coming over, and I think one or more of my brothers may show up. And we’re going out to the Breeze in the afternoon for an oyster roast, if the weather stays nice.”
“Great,” I said, beaming at her. “You’ll even get a chance to meet Daniel’s family.”
“Daniel’s family?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Derek and Eric and their wives and kids,” I said. “It’ll be the first time anybody in my family has met anybody from Daniel’s.”
“Does Daniel know about this?”
“It’s a surprise,” I said. “I’ve been planning it for weeks.”
“All right,” she said finally. “We’ll come. I can’t wait to see Daniel’s family up close and personal after all these years.”
“I’m getting a little nervous about it,” I admitted. “It’ll be a big help if you come.”
“Great,” she said, paging through her Wine Spectator. “I’ll spend Christmas Eve refereeing the Foley Family Feud.”
She spent the rest of the ride over to Hardeeville reading and dog-earing her magazine, and I spent the rest of the ride listening to Christmas carols on the oldies station I keep the truck radio tuned to.
“Ho-Lee Ca-rap,” I said slowly as we pulled up to the parking lot at Trader Bob’s.
A huge tractor-trailer rig was parked in the middle of the old cornfield, and at least fifty people were milling around the field. A makeshift wooden gangplank led from the field into the interior of the truck, and people were walking in and out of the trailer.
We parked, and I made my way through the crowd to a card table set up outside the door of the auction house. Leuveda Garner sat behind the table, wearing a fur Santa Claus hat and a moth-eaten mink stole. A stainless-steel coffee urn sat on the table beside her, along with a mountain of foam coffee cups. Folding chairs were stacked on the ground beside the table.
“Hey, Weezie!” she called out. “You got my message.”
“I did,” I agreed, looking around at the crowd. “Looks like a lot of other people did too. What’s with the big rig?”
“That’s the wine we’re auctioning off,” Leuveda said. “That whole truck is loaded to the rafters. There was so much of it, we didn’t have time to unload everything. So Bob’s just gonna set up and do his thing right there in front of the truck.”
She handed both of us a thick sheaf of typed paper.
“This is the catalog,” she said. “Don’t pay any attention to my spelling. All those French words really had me flummoxed. You can walk up that ramp to the truck. We’ve got lights rigged in there, and you can take a look at the wine. Bob’s got a helper in there, he can move the crates, if there’s something in particular you want to see. “
BeBe was leafing through the catalog, running a finger down the listings. “Wow,” she said admiringly. “There’s some decent stuff here.” She looked up at Leuveda. “Is any of it drinkable?”
Leuveda shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care. What you see is what you get. We’ve never done a wine auction before. Bob only agreed to do this one as a favor to the family.”
“Two thousand bottles of wine,” I said, glancing down at my list. “And it all belonged to one guy?”
“Oh, this isn’t even half of what he had in his basement and stashed around the house,” Leuveda said. “We brought this much because it’s all that would fit in the biggest truck we could rent. If this goes well, Bob may bring the other stuff down and auction it off after the holidays.”
“Who has this much wine lying around his house?” BeBe asked, suspicious as always.
“A nut,” Leuveda said promptly. “Wine nut, his family calls him. Of course, they had no idea he’d been collecting this much wine. He was kind of a shut-in. It wasn’t until he got sick and had to be moved to a nursing home against his will that they discovered his whole house had been turned into a walk-in wine cellar. You should have seen the place, Weezie. He had the windows all covered with black cloth, and the thermostat set real low. Most of the furniture was gone. He had a bed and a recliner, and everything else was just cases and cases of wine.”
“Sad,” I said. But I had been to hundreds of estate sales over the years, and I had seen how a collecting mania could take over a person’s life. Especially a person who was estranged from any kind of outside life or interests.
“Yeah,” Leuveda agreed. “Funny thing is, the poor guy didn’t even drink. He came from a family of real foot-washing fundamentalists. The wine was his idea of an investment plan. Of course, now he’s dead, and the foot-washing fundamentalists are mortified about having to get rid of all that sinful wine.”
BeBe laughed. “I’ll bet they’ll be willing to spend the money y’all make selling the wine though.”
“Of course,” Leuveda agreed. “Money talks, bullshit walks.”
From the other side of the field, we heard a buzz of static electricity, then the voice of Trader Bob Gross booming through the mists still rising from the field.
“All right, folks,” he called. “What was it those Gallo brothers said? We will sell no wine before its time? Well, it’s high time, folks. So let’s sell some wine.”
“I’ll get our chairs and set them up front as close as I can get,” I told BeBe. “Why don’t you run over to the trailer and take a look to see if any of it looks any good?”
“Okay,” she said, seeming dubious. “I can look, but if they won’t let us take a taste, all I’ll be going on is the appearance of the bottles and the corks.”
While BeBe sprinted toward the tractor trailer, I took two chairs and set them up in what was becoming the second row for the auction. I exchanged greetings and nods with other auction regulars I knew—Janet, the Hummel lady, who always showed up to bid on
Hummel porcelain figurines with a stack of price guides in tow; Waldo, a long-haired hippie type who usually bid on comic books, old records, or any kind of toy or board game related to sixties or seventies television shows; and, inevitably, Kitty, the knitting lady. I didn’t know any of these people’s full names of course, and I’d made up Kitty’s name, but this was as far as our auction relationship went.
I tried reading the wine listings, but none of it meant anything to me, with the exception of a Château Margaux listing, which I recognized because I’d read somewhere that Margaux Hemingway had been named for the wine her parents drank the night she was conceived.
Just as Bob was tapping his microphone for the second time to signal that he was about to start the auction, BeBe came strolling up.
“We’re good,” she said tersely, looking around to see if anybody was eavesdropping.
“You found a wine for me to bid on?”
“Mmm-hmm. Absolutely,” she said. “Now, pay attention. If they auction the wine in the order it’s listed—”
“He will. Bob always does things in order.”
“Okay. Well, this bottle is listed number twelve. So pay attention. Get that bid paddle of yours ready to rock and roll.”
“That good, huh?”
“It’s a 1970 Château Pétrus pomerol,” BeBe whispered. “Wine Spectator rates it a must buy.”
“Right year, right color,” I said, nodding approval.
“There’s just one thing I should tell you,” she added. “It’s not cheap.”
“This is Daniel’s Christmas present,” I said. “Money is no object.”
“Good,” she said. “Because the last bottle anybody bought of this particular vintage, they paid a thousand bucks for it.”
CHAPTER 15
Folks,” Trader Bob intoned, “here’s the ground rules for today’s auction. All bottles of wine are sold ‘as is’ with no guarantees on my part that any of it will taste any damn good.”
Blue Christmas Page 8
