We’d hit it off because I wasn’t afraid to ask questions. For years, I’d made the rounds of yard sales and junk stores, picking up promising bits and pieces and then taking them to Lester, either to find out about them or to sell them to make back my investment.
“You’ve got a good eye,” Lester told me one day, after I’d tried to sell him a plastic bag full of coin-silver spoons I’d dug out of a kitchen drawer at an estate sale on Wilmington Island. “You can get better prices other places, though. Take that silver over to old lady Dreyer. She likes that snooty-hooty stuff. They’re worth fifty apiece.”
Before I knew it, my Saturday-morning hobby had grown into a business.
“You know who Moses Weed was, right?” Lester chewed his cigar out the right side of his mouth. His hands were busy polishing a small brass barometer.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“He was a slave,” Lester said. “Born at Ashton Place, right outside Charleston. Ashton Place was a huge spread. Moses Weed learned carpentry from an itinerant Philadelphia cabinetmaker named Thomas Elphas. Folks who owned Ashton hired Elphas to come down and make all the furniture for their library, dining room, and parlor. And they put little Moses to work in the shop as an assistant to Elphas. Later on, Weed was sold off the plantation. Brought a lot of money because he was so skilled at carpentry.”
“Sold to the Mullinaxes?” I asked. “Beaulieu?”
“He would have been in his early twenties in 1860,” Lester said. “He only made a few pieces at Beaulieu before the war started. Nobody really knows exactly when he left there, or where he went. Maybe a dozen pieces are attributed to him. Utilitarian stuff, mostly—some benches, kitchen tables, a huntboard, a pair of armchairs. There’s a cradle, carved cherry, attributed to Moses Weed. I’ve seen pictures of it. It’s in a museum in Philadelphia where they have a small collection of Elphas’s stuff.”
“And a cupboard? Like the one I saw at Beaulieu?”
Lester nodded and jabbed my drawing with his stubby forefinger. “Miss Anna Ruby loaned it out to the High Museum in Atlanta for their ‘Neat Pieces’ exhibit of Southern-made nineteenth-century furniture back in the 1970s. Me and Ginger went up and saw it. Beautiful thing. That wood fairly glowed. They called it the Moses Weed cupboard.”
“It’s gotta be the same one,” I told him. “How much? How much is a piece like that worth today?”
He sucked on his cigar and thought about it. “You’d have to have the provenance to sell it to a serious collector. According to Miss Anna Ruby, it was made from elm trees off the property out at Beaulieu. Ain’t no elm trees anywhere around here anymore. That piece was made right there in the plantation carpentry shop. Hand-forged hinges. Moses Weed couldn’t read or write, but they did teach him how to make his mark. Should be on the piece somewhere. But now, if you can’t prove it came directly out of Beaulieu, you can’t prove it’s the Moses Weed.”
“How much?” I repeated.
“Ballpark? Maybe two hundred thousand dollars. More if you sold to one of them museums rolling in dough. But remember—that’s only if you can prove it’s a Moses Weed.”
I closed the sketchbook and put it back in my purse. “It’s a long shot. Maybe there won’t be a sale. Maybe they’ll sell it off before the sale. To Hargreaves maybe. I probably couldn’t afford it anyway.”
Lester looked down at the barometer. The tarnish was gone and it shone with a soft gold luster. “That’s a lot of maybes.”
Chapter 11
Within a month it was in all the papers, the Atlanta ones too, about how Coastal Paper Products had announced plans to build this truly humongous paper mill in Savannah. But by the time the press got hold of the story, the plant’s estimated cost had ballooned to $750 million.
“Nine Hundred New Jobs!” the Morning News trumpeted.
“State-of-the-Art Environmental Controls!” the local chamber of commerce bragged.
They were showing the ground-breaking ceremony on WSAV-TV news on Friday morning. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, waiting for the weather report. Tomorrow was the sale. Let it rain, I prayed. Keep away the tire kickers.
When the camera showed Caroline helping Phipps Mayhew lift the first shovel of dirt, I flipped quickly to the next channel.
“I saw that,” BeBe said. She was sitting on a bar stool at my kitchen counter, separating eggs for the pound cake I was making.
“Saw what?” But it was no good. BeBe never misses a trick. That’s why she owns half a dozen successful businesses, drives a Jaguar convertible, and has a full-time live-in maid.
BeBe cracked the last of the ten eggs, plopping them into the big stainless-steel mixing bowl on my KitchenAid mixer.
She picked up the remote control and turned it back to WSAV. It was a slow news day. They were still going on and on about what a good thing it was—to tear down a historic landmark and put up yet another stench-spewing wart on Savannah’s landscape.
“Lookie, lookie,” she said. “It’s Miss Wonderful.” BeBe studied the television screen critically. “You see that dress Caroline is wearing? That’s a Briaggi.”
“So?” I was watching the beaters whirl through the cake batter, keeping my eyes off the television and Caroline. After our last run-in, when she called the dogcatcher and reported Jethro for being outside without a leash, I’d backed off our mutual war.
“That dress cost three thousand dollars,” BeBe said authoritatively. “They don’t even sell it in Georgia. I saw it in the new issue of Vogue. There’s a boutique in Palm Beach. Martha’s. Only place you can buy it besides New York.”
I added a teaspoon each of vanilla and lemon extract to the cake batter.
“You know what I could do with three thousand dollars?” I didn’t bother to keep the bitterness out of my voice, since it was just BeBe.
“I could open my own shop. I mean it, BeBe. All the stuff I’ve got stored in my parents’ garage? And at Uncle James’s? Three thousand dollars. Rent a little place, fix it up…. Maybe live above the store. Have you ever been to Baltimore?”
My voice trailed off. It was not the first time we’d had this discussion lately. BeBe thought I was nuts to want to leave Savannah.
She frowned. “Listen, sweetie, you know I don’t like to ask personal questions, but I can’t understand why you’re so broke. I mean, you did get some money in the divorce settlement—right?”
“Some,” I admitted. “But James made me use a lot of the cash for an annuity—for my retirement, since I didn’t get any of Tal’s pension benefits. And the rest of the money’s tied up in inventory. It’s worth a good bit—but I have to sell the stuff before I can make the money. And without a shop, I’m still selling at wholesale prices.”
“Open a shop right here,” BeBe said. “There’s a darling little place over on East Congress. That old lounge—remember? By the Lucas Theater?”
I wrinkled my nose. “The Lamplighter? The place that smelled like a toilet? Where every wino in town used to pass out right there on the sidewalk? No thank you very much.”
“The old City Market is hot, hot, hot,” BeBe singsonged. She stuck a finger in the batter, smacked her lips appreciatively. “Yummy. Speaking of…they came in the restaurant together last night, you know.”
“Who?” I was fiddling with the oven thermostat.
“Give me a break. You know damn well who I mean. Tal and Caroline. You should see the ring she’s wearing. Five carats, minimum.”
I looked down at my own engagement ring. When I was nineteen, it had looked like the Hope diamond. Now it looked like the half carat Tal’s mother had given him to give me.
“Is it a square-cut baguette? Two hunking sapphires on either side? White gold band?”
BeBe’s big blue eyes widened. She’d tied a bandana through her frosted blond curls and her only makeup was lip gloss. She looked like a grown-up Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
“Shit,” she said.
“Great-grandmother Evans’s ring,” I e
xplained. “Tal’s mother kept it in a safe-deposit box. She always said it was too ‘showy’ for an itty-bitty thing like me.”
“It’s gaudy,” BeBe said, a little too eagerly. “Caroline doesn’t have the presence to carry it off. Everybody knows brunettes should wear yellow gold.”
“Thanks, Babe,” I said, recognizing the tactful lie for what it was.
“She hangs all over him,” BeBe said. “It’s nauseating. I wanted to ask her to leave last night because she was ruining my customers’ appetites. I swear, Weez, she had her hand down his pants at the table. Everybody saw it.”
The KitchenAid’s heavy-duty motor hummed, and BeBe was quiet.
I oiled and floured the cake pans, then opened the oven door and slid out the twelve-inch cheesecake I’d already baked. Mocha swirl.
“You don’t have to do all this, you know,” BeBe said. “Just let me give you the money. I’ll be, like, an investor. In your new shop.”
“We’ve already been through all that,” I said, setting the cheesecake on a wire cooling rack. “I’ve got no assets, other than the carriage house. Even if I move, I won’t sell it. It’s mine. And you know I’ve got no track record. I’m a horrible credit risk. I won’t take your money, BeBe.”
I put a finger to the cheesecake’s glossy top and pressed down. The cake looked perfect; not too soggy, not too dry.
“Just let me do this. Bake desserts for Guale. I’m good at it. What do you think? Twenty-five for the cheesecake, maybe thirty for the pound cake?”
Guale was BeBe’s latest business venture. A tiny bistro in what had always been a shoe-shine stand on Abercorn, at St. Julian. A year ago, drug dealers had conducted an open-air stop-and-cop in front of the stand. Now people lined up on the street, waiting to get in to try the trendy “coastal cuisine.”
It had been BeBe’s idea to have me bake desserts.
“All the eggs and cream cheese in these things? They’re so rich, we’ll have to slice them really, really thin. We can get twenty slices out of each one, charge five dollars a slice. That’s a hundred dollars per cake. Your take is fifty dollars.”
“For pound cake? How do you get away with that kind of thing? You can get a whole strawberry pie at Shoney’s for eight bucks.”
“But it’s Shoney’s,” BeBe said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “A lot of rednecks eating cheeseburgers and fried clams. This is Guale. People want to pay through the nose. They want something they think they can’t get anyplace else.”
“You’re a criminal, BeBe Loudermilk,” I said, shaking my head.
“A capitalist,” BeBe corrected me.
“And speaking of which, wait until you set eyes on the new chef I’ve hired.” BeBe licked her lips dramatically. “Talk about yummy. Dark hair falling over one eye. Big, soulful blue eyes. He’s kind of skinny, but he’s got the cutest ass you’ve ever seen. I’m thinking of opening up the wall between the main dining room and the kitchen, just so everybody can watch him at work.”
BeBe hired and fired chefs every other week. They were always geniuses their first month. And by the second month they were deranged psychotics. The most recent one had chased BeBe down the lane with a copper saucier full of flaming bananas Foster after she’d dared to criticize the freshness of his baked sea bass.
“He’s single,” she said, taunting me. “And straight.”
“How do you know he’s straight?” I asked, eyeing the egg whites critically.
“Trust me,” she said. “I can tell.”
“How?” I said, challenging her.
“Daniel’s into bass fishing,” she said. “He’s got a Bassmaster sticker on his truck. A Dodge Ram.”
“Gay men drive trucks,” I pointed out.
“Toyotas,” she said dismissively. “Toy trucks. Besides, he was in the Marines. That’s where he learned to cook so divinely.”
I put the pan in the oven and closed the door.
“Just what I need in my life,” I said. “A redneck who can julienne green beans. Forget it, BeBe. I’m done with men.”
“Wait until you see him,” BeBe said, fanning herself with one hand. “Lawsy me, I’m getting hot and bothered just thinking about him.”
“That’s the oven, not your hormones,” I said.
“Speak for yourself,” BeBe shot back.
It was time to change the subject. “A hundred bucks for the cheesecakes,” I said, sitting down on the other stool. “And I’ve got another eight hundred bucks saved up. It’s not enough. Were you serious—before? About the money? It would just be an advance, for the desserts. I could bake a lot more if I did it in the kitchen at the restaurant with that commercial oven of yours.”
“You’ll take the money?” BeBe looked confused. “I thought it was against your principles.”
“There’s a piece,” I said slowly. “At Beaulieu. The estate sale starts Saturday morning. If I could get it at a decent price, I know I could sell it, twenty thousand dollars rock bottom.”
I’d been thinking about that burled-elm cupboard. The one Lewis Hargreaves had been salivating over. The Moses Weed cupboard.
BeBe got up and poured herself a cup of coffee. “So you’ll let me bankroll you? How much?”
I winced. Usually when I’m picking I stay away from the really fine stuff, mostly because it requires a bigger outlay of cash and thus a bigger gamble. I generally deal in what people in the business call “smalls,” things like paper ephemera, glass, china, silver, linens, paintings, and accessories. When I have picked up a big piece, like a pine armoire or a dining-room set, it’s always been because it was too good a steal to resist, and I knew I could turn it around quickly.
This time would be different. “Five thousand,” I said, the words paining me. “Cash. Sometimes you get a better deal if it’s a cash transaction. But it’s just this one time. And remember, it’s an advance. I’ll probably be baking these damn cheesecakes when I’m a hundred and two.”
She picked up her purse and skipped to the door. “Let’s go to the bank,” she called over her shoulder. “But remember, I get first shot at the good stuff.”
“Like you have any room in your house for anything else,” I said. Jethro looked up from his place by the kitchen door. “Not this time, buddy,” I said, patting his head. “But Friday night, it’s you and me. You and me all the way.”
Chapter 12
The doors at Beaulieu were supposed to open at 8 A.M. Saturday.
At 6 P.M. Friday, I loaded my equipment in the truck. The cooler, with sandwiches, diet Cokes, and a thermos of coffee, went first. Next came my sleeping bag, pillow, bug spray, a flashlight, my two biggest canvas L.L. Bean tote bags and my Kovels’ price guides. Jethro hopped in the front seat as soon as he saw the cooler. He loves to play camp-out the night before the sale.
One good thing about being divorced was that Tal wasn’t around to ridicule me for taking the hunt so seriously.
When we were married and I’d get up at dawn to stand in line for a sale that didn’t start until 9 A.M., Tal told me I was crazy. And he hated the idea of my going from dealer to dealer “peddling my wares” as he called it.
Now, it was nobody’s business but my own. I was throwing a lawn chair into the back of the truck when BeBe zoomed up. She got out of her red Miata with a sleeping bag in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.
“What’s up?” I asked warily.
“I’m going with you,” she announced. “I can help you at the sale. We’ll make it a party. You know I’ve never been inside Beaulieu either.”
She locked the Miata, tossed her stuff in the bed of the truck, and opened the passenger-side door. But Jethro wouldn’t budge.
“Sorry, pal,” I told him, giving him a gentle shove. “The banker gets to ride up front.”
“Turn here,” BeBe said when we got to the corner of Charlton and Habersham.
“Why?”
“I need to run by the restaurant for a minute.”
“Guale? What for?”<
br />
“The new chef’s upset about the shrimp that was delivered this morning. He says they’re too small. Now he’s threatening to take the shrimp-and-grits cake off the menu tonight.”
“So let him,” I said. “What’s the big deal?”
“It’s our signature dish,” BeBe said. “People drive down from Atlanta and Hilton Head for our grits and shrimp. It would be a disaster.”
I shook my head, exasperated. “Can’t you just call him? I wanted to get out to Beaulieu to claim a prime camping spot close to the house.”
“We’ll get there,” BeBe said airily. She leaned over and gave me a critical look. “Don’t you ever wear lipstick?”
“To camp out in ninety-eight-degree heat and a hundred percent humidity? No. Why should I?”
Instead of answering, she dug in her purse and brought out a lipstick, which she aimed toward my face.
I rounded the street onto Lafayette Square and pulled up to the curb in front of the cathedral.
BeBe frowned. “Now what?”
People were hurrying into the magnificent French Gothic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist for 6 P.M. Mass. I saw a couple of my mother’s friends and waved. When Sister Perpetua, my eighth-grade homeroom teacher, scuttled past, I sank down in the truck’s seat so she couldn’t spot me and give me the nun evil eye.
“What’s going on here?” I asked. “Why are you insisting we stop at the restaurant? And why is it so important that I wear lipstick? What are you up to, Babe?”
“Nothing,” she protested. “Really, Weezie.” She reached over and fluffed the top of my hair with her fingertips. “Much better.” She handed me the lipstick. “Keep it. I can’t wear that shade. Makes me look like Joan Crawford.”
I peeked in the mirror on the back of my sun visor. Maybe she was right. A little color couldn’t hurt. I slicked on the lipstick and tried to flatten the hair she’d pouffed up, but BeBe slapped my hand away. “Leave it alone,” she protested. “Big hair is back this year. Don’t you read?”
Savannah Blues Page 7
