Chuckles and guffaws rippled through the field. The sun was out, but it was chilly, and I was glad of my heavy denim barn jacket with the big patch pockets, where I’d stashed a couple of granola bars and my checkbook and billfold.
“Due to the nature of this auction, and by request of the estate’s family,” he continued, “we’re operating on a strictly cash-and-carry basis. What that means is, what you buy today, you take away today. And we will not be accepting checks or credit cards.”
“No!” I gasped. BeBe glanced over in alarm.
“They always take checks,” I said. “And the flyer didn’t say anything about cash only. Well…shit.”
“Also,” Bob said, “nothing except coffee and sodas are to be consumed on our premises today because I don’t want the sheriff on my tail.”
He reached out to one of the helpers who were busily surrounding him with a growing hill of cardboard wine cartons and took a slender green bottle that he held up to the light.
“Let’s start with this little beauty right here. It’s a…” He frowned, pushed his glasses to the end of his nose, and squinted at the label.
“Ah, hell,” he said finally. “It’s bottle number one, lot one, listed right there on your catalog.”
BeBe rolled her eyes and grimaced. “Liebfraumilch. And a strictly mediocre one, at that. It’s a good thing the guy who bought this stuff died before he had to start living off his wine investments.”
“We got three cases of this stuff here,” Bob said smoothly. “And I’ll take one money for all three. Let’s see. That’s twelve bottles a case, thirty-six bottles, let’s say thirty bucks a bottle.”
“Let’s don’t,” BeBe said.
“Round it to a thousand bucks for the lot,” Bob said. “Come on. One money, thirty-six bottles of pure drinking pleasure. Who’ll give me a K?”
The field was quiet.
“Twenty a bottle?” Bob asked. “Seven eighty. Gimme seven eighty.”
Trader Bob cupped his hand to his ear. “Mighy quiet out there. Are y’all awake, or sleepin’ one off?”
He exchanged a questioning look with Leuveda.
“Don’t ask me,” she drawled. “You know I drink Cold Duck, my ownself.”
“Gimme ten,” Bob urged. “Ya can’t hardly buy nothin’ for that these days. And think of all the Christmas joy you could be spreading.”
The crowd’s reaction was a deafening indifference. In fact, the only thing I heard, aside from BeBe’s snort of derision, was the steady, hypnotic clicking of Kitty the knitter’s needles.
“Five?” Bob clutched his hand to his chest, as though a knife were being thrust through it, but still no bid paddles were extended.
“All right,” he said finally, a beaten man. “We got a lot of wine to move this morning. Let’s get this thing rolling. Somebody gimme an offer.”
“Five bucks a case, Bob,” called a gnomish man standing off to the right. He wore a set of green camouflage coveralls and a bright orange Elmer Fudd cap with fur earflaps.
“Fifteen bucks for all that delicious fruit of the vine?”
Elmer Fudd nodded and held up his paddle to officially register the bid.
“All right. We got fifteen. Gimme sixteen,” Bob chanted. Paddles went up. Bob’s chant accelerated until he’d gaveled the first lot down for an underwhelming thirty-six dollars, or as Bob put it, “a pitiful buck a bottle.”
BeBe nodded her approval.
The next few lots of wine didn’t fare much better. The top individual bottle sold for sixty bucks, and to get that, Trader Bob, wheedled, cajoled, and once threatened to walk off his podium, “And call the whole damned thing off.”
Through it all, BeBe alternated glances between her well-thumbed copy of Wine Spectator and the catalog, noting each winning bid in the catalog with her slender silver Mont Blanc pen.
“This is looking good,” she said after the tenth lot had sold. “That last case of chenin blanc should have brought at least thirty bucks a bottle.”
“But the whole case only went for two hundred dollars,” I pointed out. “So I should get my bottle cheap, right?”
“Hopefully. Of course, that chenin blanc is sort of a sleeper. Not a lot of people have heard of the winery it came from. Unfortunately, the wine we want is quite well known and sought after. It’s one of the classiest ones they’re selling off today. So it could be that everybody’s just holding out, waiting for the good stuff to come up.”
I turned around in my chair to appraise the competition, and was surprised to see that the crowd had grown appreciably since the auction started. All seventy or so chairs were full, and more people were milling around the trailer and standing at the back of the rows of chairs.
My heart sank when I saw a familiar Burberry plaid tam-o’-shanter.
“Shit,” I exclaimed, slapping my thigh with the rolled-up catalog.
“What?” BeBe turned and craned her neck.
“Cookie Parker is here,” I said. “And Manny. I should have guessed they’d somehow find out about this.”
“Which ones are they?” she asked, half standing to get a better scan of the crowd.
“Standing right by the trailer,” I said. “Cookie’s wearing a goofy plaid hat and a tan coat with a fur collar. And Manny’s the one in the—”
“—tightest blue jeans I have ever seen on a grown man,” BeBe exclaimed, openly staring. “Also the gaudiest cowboy shirt ever made. Sequins before noon! Who are these guys?”
“My worst nightmare,” I said gloomily. “Gay guys with money.”
“And questionable taste,” she added, standing up. “We’ll just see about this.”
“Wait,” I said. “What are you going to do? My wine is coming up pretty soon.”
“You just concentrate on buying that pomerol,” BeBe instructed. “According to the catalog, there are three bottles of it and they’ll each be sold separately.”
“How high should I bid?” I asked, suddenly unnerved by the prospect of bidding in such unfamiliar territory.
“How much cash did you bring?”
I dug in my jacket pocket and brought out a wad of bills, which I quickly counted.
“Looks like one hundred seventeen dollars,” I wailed. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.”
“I’ve got two hundred right here,” she said, patting her pocketbook. “Think of me as your own personal ATM.”
“But you said the last bottle sold for a thousand bucks.”
“At a black-tie charity auction in Sonoma Valley, California,” she said. “Whereas, we are standing in a cornfield in Hardeeville, South Carolina. Don’t spend more than three hundred dollars. There’s still a bottle of champagne, a Krug blanc de blanc Clos de Mesnil, 1985, that I’ve got my eye on. It’s on the third page, and it won’t be cheap.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, slumping down in my metal chair. “Manny and Cookie will be bidding up everything. We might as well leave right now.”
“Is there any coffee left in your thermos?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s still half full,” I said, wondering what this had to do with my current predicament. I unscrewed the cap and sniffed the steam rising from the vacuum jug.
“Gimme,” she said.
I handed over the thermos. “Leave it up to me,” BeBe said, giving me a wink. “I always get my man.”
She shrugged out of her own flannel-lined jean jacket and I shivered on her behalf. The wind had picked up a little, and the sun was suddenly playing hide-and-go-seek behind a bank of clouds. The sky was cold, and promising, if not snow, some nasty icy rain.
I watched while she sashayed across the field in the direction of the trailer and the Babalu boys. She saw me watching and jerked her head in the direction of Trader Bob, reminding me that I needed to pay attention to the ongoing auction.
Bob finished hammering down a half case of a wine I’d never heard of and was pausing to read off the description of the lot I’d been waiting for.
; “Folks,” he drawled, “this next wine is the real deal.”
Heads jerked to attention. My own hand clenched the bid paddle so tightly I felt my fingertips go numb.
“This here,” he said, holding up a bottle to the light, “is the kind of wine they tell me is one of a kind. It’s a bordeaux. That much I can pronounce. And it’s got a pedigree out the ying-yang. They say a bottle of this stuff here will sell for a thousand bucks.”
“Yeah. In your dreams, Gross,” yelled one of the hecklers standing by the trailer, his fists jammed into the front pockets of his jeans.
Bob shrugged. “All right. I figger somebody out there is an educated wine connoisseur. And that somebody will be willing to pay the price for a one-of-a-kind bottle of bordeaux. We got three bottles, and I’m selling ‘em for one money. Y’all can keep one, sell the others off, whatever you want. But I’m looking for twenty-five hundred dollars. That’s way less than the going price.”
His head swiveled to and fro, surveying the bidders. I turned and tried not to stare at Cookie and Manny, who had their heads together, in rapt discussion about something. BeBe stood off to the side, watching them intently.
“Two thousand?” Bob asked.
The crowd was quiet, but I heard a distinct, low-level buzz. People were interested, trying to decide when the time was right to jump in.
“I’ll give you fifty, Bob,” Kitty hollered, holding up her paddle in one hand, but not bothering to drop her knitting.
“Fifty?” Bob sounded wounded. “For that, I’ll take it home and drink it myself.”
“Ya gotta start somewhere,” Leuveda advised. “Or we’ll be here all day.”
“Sixty,” somebody in the back yelled.
“Seventy-five,” called Waldo the hippie.
The bids were coming fast and furious now, and Bob was straining to keep up.
It stalled out a little when the bidding hit $150, and for the first time I raised my paddle.
“Weezie, got you at one fifty,” Bob called, nodding his approval.
“One sixty.” I recognized Cookie’s voice instantly.
Gritting my teeth, I nodded at Bob. “One seventy.”
“One eighty.” This time it was Manny doing the bidding.
Bob cocked an eyebrow at me.
I nodded. “One ninety.”
A woman’s voice called out from the front. “Two hundred.”
Damn, now it wasn’t just the Babalu boys bidding me up.
“Two ten,” Cookie called.
“Two twenty,” the woman said coolly.
I bit my lip. “Two thirty.”
I glanced over at Manny and Cookie just in time to see BeBe sashay past in the most casual of manners. Suddenly though, she tripped on something, and I saw, as though in slow motion, the coffee thermos go flying up in the air. Now a stream of hot coffee was raining down on Cookie.
A shrill, high-pitched scream pierced the air. Heads turned.
“Two forty?” Bob asked, impervious to pain or injury or anything else that distracted from a sale. “Anybody for two forty?”
I was too stunned to do anything but watch. BeBe had picked herself up off the ground and was now busily trying to blot coffee off Cookie’s chest.
“Leave me alone!” Cookie cried. “Ohmygod. This coat is cashmere.”
“It’s ruined!” Manny chimed in.
“Two forty,” the woman in the front row called.
I glanced over at BeBe, who jerked her head in the direction of Bob.
“Two fifty,” I prompted.
“I’m so sorry,” I heard BeBe wail. She stuck a pencil and a pad in Cookie’s face. “Here. Write down your phone number. I’ll pay for the cleaning. I’ll replace the coat.”
“He’s burned!” Manny wailed, pulling Cookie’s damp shirt away from his chest. “I think we need a doctor.”
“Two sixty,” my new female nemesis called, sounding bored with the whole drama.
Bob cocked his head. “Weezie?”
“Two seventy,” I said, reminding myself that this was Daniel’s Christmas present. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Manny hustle Cookie off in the direction of the parking lot.
“Three hundred!” the woman in front called triumphantly.
I closed my eyes for a moment and gave it some deep thought. If I went any higher, there was no guarantee I’d win the bordeaux. And there was still the champagne to consider. Maybe by the time it came up, the crowd would have thinned out, and I’d get it at a bargain. Maybe.
“Weezie?” Bob asked.
I kept my eyes closed and shook my head no.
“Three hundred fifty!”
It was BeBe’s voice. I opened my eyes and saw her striding up the aisle in my direction. Her shirt was soaked with coffee, and she had that look in her eye.
“Three sixty?” Bob asked.
Silence.
“All right then,” Bob said quickly. “Three fifty once, twice, sold! To—”
BeBe grabbed my bid paddle and held it triumphantly over her head.
CHAPTER 16
The first drops of rain started falling as I counted out our hard-won cash to Leuveda, including two crumpled twenty-dollar bills that BeBe pulled from a secret compartment in her right boot.
“Don’t ask,” she said darkly, when I was about to. “Ever since my episode with poverty, I go nowhere without a couple twenties tucked in my shoe for a rainy day.”
I glanced up at the charcoal-tinged sky and flipped up the hood on my jacket. “And this definitely looks like it’s going to be one of those days.”
“Here,” I said, shoving one of the bottles at BeBe, along with the keys to the truck. “Get the heater going. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
A few turned into twenty, and it had started to drizzle, but when I climbed into the driver’s seat, it was with a smug grin on my face and the bottle of champagne tucked inside my jacket.
“What took so long?” she grumped.
I handed her the Krug and two twenties and started to thread my way out of the lot.
“How?”
“I sold off the other two bottles of bordeaux to the woman who was bidding against me,” I said. “For two hundred bucks. I had to go eighty to get the Krug.”
She shook her head in admiration. “And you still broke even. Weezie Foley, you are a mess!”
By the time we were on the road, the rain was coming down hard and the temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees.
BeBe shivered and buttoned her jean jacket up over her bra. “What I wouldn’t give for some of that hot coffee right now,” she said through chattering teeth.
“Was Cookie really burned?” I asked, wincing at the memory of his screams.
“No way,” she assured me. “I left the top off the thermos for five minutes. It was barely lukewarm. He’s just a big ol’ baby. Gay or not, did you ever meet a man who wasn’t a big ol’ baby?”
“You’re the authority,” I agreed.
BeBe turned up the heat a notch and sat back and rubbed her hands in glee. “Anyway, we both did what we had to do. I can’t believe you got the wine and the champagne. It’s a fabulous gift. Daniel will love it.”
“He’d better,” I said. “Anyway, that’s a huge load off my mind. Now I’m done. My last Christmas gift!.”
“Speaking of gifts,” she said. “What did you get from Annie?”
“Annie?” My mind was a blank.
“Apple Annie. Your charity case.”
“Jeez,” I said. “With the excitement of the auction, I completely forgot to look. Open the glove box and see what’s in there.”
I glanced over once, but mostly kept my eyes on the road. Driving over the humpbacked Talmadge Memorial Bridge that crosses the Savannah River gives me a bad case of the heebie-jeebies on a good day, but now with the rain and the gusting winds, I was more nervous than usual.
BeBe punched the lock on the glove box and brought out a festive red plaid gift bag tied with a jaunty black vel
vet bow.
“Hey,” she said, holding it in front of me. “Look. Apple Annie’s got your gift-wrapping gene.”
I frowned. “That’s not for me. It’s from me. Look again. Is there anything else in there?”
BeBe rummaged around in the glove box and held up her findings. “Screwdriver.”
“Check.”
“Flashlight.”
“Check.”
“Hoo-hoo!” she chortled, bringing out a small cardboard box. “Condoms! Annie must know you better than I thought.”
“Give me those,” I said, snatching the box away from her and stashing it under my seat.
“I take it those are also not from Annie?” BeBe asked in a teasing singsong.
“Not another word.”
“Well, there’s nothing else in the glove box,” she concluded, shutting it.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “The truck was unlocked. Why didn’t she take her gift?”
“Maybe she was busy getting her hair and nails done for the Symphony fund-raiser,” BeBe quipped.
I shot her a dirty look, but BeBe just tossed her hair and fidgeted with the top button on her jean jacket.
“This isn’t like Annie,” I went on. “I’ve been leaving her those little presents every night for a week. And she hasn’t missed picking them up. Not once. Till now.”
“You’re worried,” BeBe said, rolling her eyes, “about a bag lady.”
I nodded agreement, my mind already filling with a variety of possibilities to explain the gift’s presence in my truck. None of them were pleasant.
“You think something bad could have happened to her,” BeBe went on.
“She lives on the streets!” I exclaimed. “Of course I’m worried. She could be hurt. Or sick…”
“Or drunk. Look, Weezie, you said it yourself. This is Apple Annie we’re talking about here. She’s a street person. Maybe she just hit the road. Anyway, you don’t know anything about her. Not really. So don’t go making yourself sick worrying and inventing all kinds of tragic scenarios about why she didn’t pick up her little care package.”
I chewed at the inside of my mouth and stared out the windshield as the wipers sliced through ribbons of rain. I drummed my fingertips on the steering wheel.
Blue Christmas Page 9
