“That doesn’t narrow it down much,” Ted said.
Jasper shushed him.
“I’m just saying that two men have died here in the last short while. Who knows how many more fell down those old steep steps to the cellar? This is a house where every ghost must have taken a tumble,” he said.
“What a fascinating perspective,” Mary said. Her voice was super sweet.
“Yeah, really fascinating, Ted,” Jasper said.
“I’ve got my own falling down the steps story,” Ted said with some pride. “One time my dog Bear tripped me up – or down I guess you could say – when I was carrying a pile of dirty jeans to the washing machine. Damn dog. I thought he loved me like I loved him.”
Jasper and Cookie exchanged a look.
Mary Clippert wiped away a fresh wash of tears. “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” Her eyes took on the look of dried mud balls, inhuman and unseeing. “He did not love me the way I loved him.”
“Jimmy?” Jasper asked.
“Your dad?” Cookie asked.
“My mad dad.” Mary began to laugh in a way that would’ve been part of the background sounds in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. A loon, a frightened cub, a child tossed into a newly unfrozen lake. She tore the heavy beaded bracelet off her left wrist and threw it into the kitchen sink. “Women never did understand me,” she said between bursts of laughter. She switched on the garbage disposal and it sounded like a wood chipper.
“Wait now,” Jasper said. She took a step toward Mary.
Cookie grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “Let her be,” she said in an even voice.
“That’s what my mother said. ‘Let things be. You can’t do anything to change them, so why even try?’
“Men need action,” Mary yelled over the noise of the disposal which had lowered to a continual growl. “Oh, hell.” She flipped the wall switch down. She turned to Ted, “You get me, don’t you?”
“Well, little lady.”
“I’m nobody’s little lady!’ Mary shouted. She moved fast. Without warning, she slammed her hip against Jasper. Jasper sprawled sideways.
Cookie stooped down to help her sister. “Let’s everybody take a break here.”
“I don’t want a break! I want to get this over with once and for all,” Mary said. She clumped toward Ted and grabbed him in a chokehold.
“What the hell?” he sputtered.
Mary roared like a field coyote caught in a trap or a lonely cat screaming for attention. Her eyes were wild. She released Ted’s neck and her nails raked down his arm. She jumped up on his back, surprisingly deft for such a large woman. Ted staggered toward the stairs.
“Get away from me, woman!” he yelled. But Mary, clinging now to the back of his belt, kept him off balance. The rotten old basement door stood open. Ted stumbled closer to the stairs.
With Cookie’s help, Jasper regained her footing. She rushed after Mary and Ted.
“Sis! What’re you doing?” Cookie shouted.
“I don’t know,” Jasper said. She crouched and dove for whatever leg she could grasp. She ducked closer to the floor to avoid a kick in the head. She clenched her eyes shut. She grabbed for fabric. She didn’t know whose pant leg she clutched. Without pausing to think, Jasper jerked the fabric as hard as she could. A boot stomped her direction. Jasper rolled clear. She forced herself to open her eyes. She focused on Mary’s dark slacks. Jasper reached again, higher this time. She jammed the heel of her hand against the back of Mary’s knee.
“Dammit, that hurt!” Mary said, releasing Ted. He stumbled backwards and fell through the open basement door. Some sickening clunks sounded. His moans carried upward. “Call 911!” he yelled. “I think I broke my arm.”
“You meddling better-than-thou bitch,” Mary said. “You think you’re something special because you got to work alongside your father.” This time she landed a kick to Jasper’s side.
Cookie started toward them. “Stay back!” Jasper yelled. She struggled to her feet and wrestled Mary back from the door. The larger woman tumbled over her. Jasper made herself as long as possible so she could wedge herself against the doorway. She didn’t know where her power was coming from, but she had it. Mary backed across the room, then reversed direction and charged toward Jasper.
Cookie screamed. With a mighty effort, Jasper jackknifed herself and flew clear. Mary Clippert kept going straight through the doorway. Her head struck against the wooden overhang with a loud clunk. Then she went rolling down the steps. Ted yelled, “Get me an ambulance. I think she just broke my other arm!”
Cookie hurried over to Jasper who was huddled on the floor, one hand on her injured side, the other holding out her cell phone. Jasper spoke calmly, “We need an ambulance. We need the police. Will you please tell Detective Relerford that it’s me, Jasper Biggs calling?” She gave the address.
Cookie knelt beside her. “Are you okay, Sis? Are you okay?”
Jasper gasped for air. “I’m fine,” she said just before she passed out.
***
She came awake in an emergency room bed, with Cookie sitting alongside her.
“You have some bruised ribs, Sis. But nothing’s broken,” Cookie told Jasper.
“How’s Ted?”
“He’ll be all right. He broke his left arm in the fall. Then when Mary landed on him, he broke the other one. He’s not going to be doing much auctioneering for a while.”
“What about Mary?”
“She’s all bruised up. But she didn’t break anything. Ted cushioned her fall.”
Jasper started to laugh but it hurt too much.
The curtains at the foot of her ER bed parted, and Glenn Relerford entered. “You’re lucky,” he said. “You met up with one crazy lady. Have you told her?” he asked Cookie.
She shook her head.
“What’s going on?” Jasper asked. She struggled to sit up higher.
“It’s Mary Clippert,” Cookie said. “She said that she pushed her father down the basement steps.” Cookie placed a protective hand atop Jasper’s. “She said she tried to push you into the river.”
Jasper shivered. “And Jimmy?”
Glenn Relerford stepped closer. “It may be hard to hear but we think she did him the same way. Right now she’s denying it.”
“She did it all right,” Cookie said. “Jimmy told me.”
“He won’t make much of a witness, but we’re looking into it,” Glenn said.
“I feel kind of sorry for her,” Jasper said. “She doesn’t really like people.”
“Especially men,” Cookie said.
“And some women,” Jasper added. She took a shallow breath. It hurt to inhale.
“She’s started to tell us about all that,” Glenn said. “She had a pretty rough childhood with that father of hers. From what she’s said so far, her mother knew all about how he was abusing her and never stepped in to help.” Glenn stayed just long enough to take statements from Jasper and Cookie and make sure that Jasper was feeling well enough to go home. He said he would talk to her soon. If that was okay. Jasper said it was. “Oh, I almost forgot,” Glenn said. He set down an envelope on the hospital bed.
Later, in Jimmy’s old apartment at the back of the auction house, Jasper and Cookie talked quietly over cups of tea that Cookie had brewed. Proxy curled up in Jasper’s lap and would not leave her. Jasper ran her hand gently over the little cat’s fur. Without saying a word, each of the twins handed the other a check.
"$201?" Jasper asked.
"$201?" Cookie echoed.
They shared a laugh, a hug and a long, deep sigh. "At this rate we'll never get that $401 Jimmy left behind divided up," Jasper said. “What are we gonna do about that extra dollar anyway?”
"Don’t think we can ever really split it up.”
“Nope.” She tore up the check from Cookie. Her sister did the same with Jasper’s.
“Guess we’ll just have to keep up this twin sisterly togetherness thing. Maybe we could take a littl
e trip together. Maybe to Galena," Cookie said.
"Or just stay home and use it up on lattes and exotic tea at the Forester," Jasper said. “We can tip wildly.”
"The world is ours.”
“Or, give it to the animal shelter.” Jasper stroked Proxy’s head. "Poor Mary Clippert. When you get mad at one man, you can end up mad at all men,” she said. “Sometimes it lasts a lifetime.”
“We’re lucky, Sis.” Cookie took Jasper’s hand.
“You said it.” The sisters sat side by side holding hands for a good long while without needing any more words. Proxy purred away louder than ever.
Epilogue
“So who’ll give me fifty-dollah bid and start it right off?” Jasper called from up on the back table where she stood among the well sorted displays of iron doorstops, old postcards, and power tools. “I’ll take 25 right there!” she pointed. The auction was off and running.
The auction bidders crowded around the table. Noisy bunch. Esteban and Tony handed up the next item for Jasper to sell. The bids came fast and furiously with Kelly wielding cards for absentee bidders. Jasper sold a flat of doorknobs for $35, then a stack of old Look magazines for $20. Not bad for a run-of-the-mill auction. And it was a full house. In addition to the 50 or so people crowded around the back table, jostling in closer when items they were interested in came up for bid, the folding chairs on her left between the back table and the auction block where the action would be focused after this first table full was sold, held an additional bunch of auction-goers. She knew from looking around before things got underway that most of the empty chairs had bidder numbers taped to their backs to reserve them for people who would take their seats later.
“What do you have, Estie?” Jasper asked her helper.
“It’s a clock,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Mantel clock!” Jasper refined the description of the small brass and cherry wood clock that the ringman held above his head. “It’s a winner, folks! What-am-I-bid?” It was a back table item, so the seasoned bidders knew that it probably didn’t work, and the metal might have a ding or two. But sometimes people didn’t care and auction fever swept them up no matter what.
“I got 10!” Kelly yelled with enthusiasm, waving one of her absentee bidder cards.
“And I’ll take 10!” Jasper said, honoring the other woman’s hard work by accepting the low starting bid. She and Kelly had made peace with one another and had become the next best thing to friends. “Now 15, 15, who’ll go 15, now 20! 25, 25, now 30 and 35!” The bids came in enthusiastic rhythm and Jasper kept pace with her chanting. She tried to jump the increments from 5 to 10 dollars. “We’re at $50, now $60. Who’ll go $60? You know it’s gonna get there!” But the crowd fought back with fingers drawn straight across throats to signal they wanted to cut the bid. Jasper said good-naturedly, “You wanna do it the hard way? I can keep going all night! I have $55, now $60 and $65…” At last the bidding slowed down just shy of $100. Jasper pushed hard to see if she could break that marker. “We’re at 90 dollars now, folks. S’great ol’ clock.” Half words dropped away in the slur of the auctioneer’s rush. “Who’ll give me a hunnert dollars? One-one-one hundred dollar bid now, hundred dollar bid?” She kept chanting. She glanced skyward. “This is for you, Jimmy!” she said to the ceiling.
Cookie, out in the audience, clapped her hands with excitement. She pumped the air with her fist. Tony pointed over to her, but Jasper didn’t take Cookie’s enthusiasm as a bid.
“Man, she’s got her daddy up there helping her along!” said one gruff but good-natured man in the crowd. “I’ll give you $100, girly,” he said.
Jasper grinned.
A bright light flashed in her face. Sean Solberg was there, snapping away with one of his old 35 mm cameras. “You’re beautiful, babe!” he yelled
Jasper kept her chant going steadily. Soon she reached $200, then $250. The bidding finally topped out at 300 even. “Sold! To the lady in the green hat!” she called. “Number 133.”
“Atta girl,” Ted said from where he stood back in the office area. Weeks after his fall down the stairs at the Clippert house, his arms were still healing. Molly cuddled their baby, bringing her up to kiss her Daddy Ted’s cheek now and then, for indeed, the baby had been born vanilla and after a paternity test confirmed Ted’s fatherhood, he had, surprisingly, become a real Dad to the little girl. He and Molly continued to call her Baby even six weeks after her birth. “All we know is her name ain’t Mary,” Ted would say.
Mary Clippert was in jail awaiting trial for the manslaughter death of her father. She recanted her original confession of outright killing him, now claiming that he had stumbled during an argument they had.
Jasper and Cookie held a little ceremony in which they officially forgave Mary for whatever part she had played in Jimmy’s fall down the bungalow steps. Jimmy made no more appearances so as far as the twins knew, his spirit was at rest.
Jasper continued to visit Sean Solberg whom she still found attractive albeit somewhat cheap. Glenn Relerford and she took in an occasional movie together. Both men seemed to like her new style: Cookie had given her a makeover head to toe, adding highlights to her dark hair, helping her find the right rosy-toned makeup and learning how to use it, and choosing inexpensive but fashionable skirts, jeans and tops along with shoes that fit. Jasper’s marriage to Tim Rowe still haunted her dreams. She hadn’t yet filed for divorce. Mostly she didn’t think about him. But she was in no hurry to commit to a new relationship.
She stayed on with Proxy in the apartment at the back of the auction house. Her nice neighbor from Hickory Lane, Ginny Gardner, had invited her and Proxy to move in with her and Alice but Jasper was busy looking around for a new more private home for herself and the cat who had become the love of her life. Her “like new” life. It wasn’t perfect but it was all hers, and Jasper was looking forward to whatever it would bring.
The End
Acknowledgements
I owe a lot to a lot of people – everyone from my partner Davey and my twin sis the psychic medium Karen Richards to all the other friends, mentors, heroes and helpers along the way. These include writers Nancy Christiansen, Erle Stanley Gardner, Joanne Lenz-Mandt, Carolyn Lieberg, and Gertrude Stein; retired detective Steve Zandler; the Beloit and Milton, Wisconsin police departments; and the Rock County Sheriff’s Department.
Any mistakes are my own. Except for those made by some very determined characters. Okay, alright, Jasper, we will drop the matter. Time to get ready for your next adventure in The Case of the Belligerent Bidder, the second book in the Auction House Mystery Series.
The Case of the Angry Auctioneer (Auction House Mystery Series Book 1) Page 23
