by Nora Roberts
With a satisfied grunt, Dora straightened, shook her chin-length sweep of hair away from her face and nodded. “I think I’ve seen enough for now.”
When she checked her watch, she realized it was curtain time for the matinee performance back home. Well, she mused, there was show business, and there was show business. She all but rubbed her hands together in anticipation of the auction opening.
“We’d better get some seats before they—oh wait!” Her brown eyes brightened. “Look at that.”
Even as Lea turned, Dora was scurrying across the concrete floor.
It was the painting that had caught her attention. It wasn’t large, perhaps eighteen by twenty-four inches with a simple, streamlined ebony frame. The canvas itself was a wash of color, streaks and streams of crimson and sapphire, a dollop of citrine, a bold dash of emerald. What Dora saw was energy and verve, as irresistible to her as a red-tag special.
Dora smiled at the boy who was propping the painting against the wall. “You’ve got it upside down.”
“Huh?” The stock boy turned and flushed. He was seventeen, and the sight of Dora smiling at him reduced him to a puddle of hormones. “Ah, no, ma’am.” His Adam’s apple bobbed frantically as he turned the canvas around to show Dora the hook at the back.
“Mmm.” When she owned it—and she certainly would by the end of the afternoon—she would fix that.
“This, ah, shipment just came in.”
“I see.” She stepped closer. “Some interesting pieces,” she said, and picked up a statue of a sad-eyed basset hound curled up in a resting pose. It was heavier than she’d expected, and pursing her lips, she turned it over and over for a closer inspection. No craftsman’s mark or date, she mused. But still, the workmanship was excellent.
“Frivolous enough for you?” Lea asked.
“Just. Make a terrific doorstop.” After setting it down she reached for a tall figurine of a man and woman in antebellum dress caught in the swirl of a waltz. Dora’s hand closed over thick, gnarled fingers. “Sorry.” She glanced up at an elderly, bespeckled man who gave her a creaky bow.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” he asked her. “My wife had one just like it. Got busted when the kids were wrestling in the parlor.” He grinned, showing teeth too white and straight to be God-given. He wore a red bow tie and smelled like a peppermint stick. Dora smiled back.
“Do you collect?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He set the figurine down and his old, shrewd eyes swept the display, pricing, cataloguing, dismissing. “I’m Tom Ashworth. Got a shop here in Front Royal.” He took a business card from his breast pocket and offered it to Dora. “Accumulated so much stuff over the years, it was open a shop or buy a bigger house.”
“I know what you mean. I’m Dora Conroy.” She held out a hand and had it enveloped in a brief arthritic grip. “I have a shop in Philadelphia.”
“Thought you were a pro.” Pleased, he winked. “Noticed you right off. Don’t believe I’ve seen you at one of Porter’s auctions before.”
“No, I’ve never been able to make it. Actually, this trip was an impulse. I dragged my sister along. Lea, Tom Ashworth.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“My pleasure.” Ashworth patted Lea’s chilled hand. “Never does warm up in here this time of year. Guess Porter figures the bidding’ll heat things up some.”
“I hope he’s right.” Lea’s toes felt frozen inside her suede boots. “Have you been in business long, Mr. Ashworth?”
“Nigh onto forty years. The wife got us started, crocheting doilies and scarves and what-all and selling them. Added some trinkets and worked out of the garage.” He took a corncob pipe from his pocket and clamped it between his teeth. “Nineteen sixty-three we had more stock than we could handle and rented us a shop in town. Worked side by side till she passed on in the spring of eighty-six. Now I got me a grandson working with me. Got a lot of fancy ideas, but he’s a good boy.”
“Family businesses are the best,” Dora said. “Lea’s just started working part-time at the shop.”
“Lord knows why.” Lea dipped her chilly hands into her coat pockets. “I don’t know anything about antiques or collectibles.”
“You just have to figure out what people want,” Ashworth told her, and flicked a thumbnail over a wooden match to light it. “And how much they’ll pay for it,” he added before he puffed the pipe into life.
“Exactly.” Delighted with him, Dora hooked a hand through his arm. “It looks like we’re getting started. Why don’t we go find some seats?”
Ashworth offered Lea his other arm and, feeling like the cock of the walk, escorted the women to chairs near the front row.
Dora pulled out her notebook and prepared to play her favorite role.
The bidding was low, but certainly energetic. Voices bounced off the high ceiling as the lots were announced. But it was the murmuring crowd that fired Dora’s blood. There were bargains to be had here, and she was determined to grab her share.
She outbid a thin, waiflike woman with a pinched mouth for the cherrywood vanity, snapped up the lot that included the creamer/slipper for a song and competed briskly with Ashworth for a set of crystal saltcellars.
“Got me,” he said when Dora topped his bid yet again. “You’re liable to get a bit more for them up north.”
“I’ve got a customer who collects,” Dora told him. And who would pay double the purchase price, she thought.
“That so?” Ashworth leaned closer as the bidding began on the next lot. “I’ve got a set of six at the shop. Cobalt and silver.”
“Really?”
“You got time, you drop on by after this and take a look.”
“I might just do that. Lea, you bid on the Depression glass.”
“Me?” Horror in her eyes, Lea gaped at her sister.
“Sure. Get your feet wet.” Grinning, Dora tilted her head toward Ashworth’s. “Watch this.”
As Dora expected, Lea started out with hesitant bids that barely carried to the auctioneer. Then she began to inch forward in her seat. Her eyes glazed over. By the time the lot was sold, she was snapping out her bid like a drill sergeant commanding recruits.
“Isn’t she great?” All pride, Dora swung an arm over Lea’s shoulders to squeeze. “She was always a quick study. It’s the Conroy blood.”
“I bought all of it.” Lea pressed a hand to her speeding heart. “Oh God, I bought all of it. Why didn’t you stop me?”
“When you were having such a good time?”
“But—but—” As the adrenaline drained, Lea slumped in her chair. “That was hundreds of dollars. Hundreds.”
“Well spent, too. Now, here we go.” Spotting the abstract painting, Dora rubbed her hands together. “Mine,” she said softly.
By three o’clock Dora was adding half a dozen cobalt saltcellars to the treasures in her van. The wind had kicked up, stinging color into her cheeks and sneaking down the collar of her coat.
“Smells like snow,” Ashworth commented. He stood on the curb in front of his shop and, with his pipe clenched in his hand, sniffed the air. “Could be you’ll run into some before you get home.”
“I hope so.” Pushing back her flying hair, she smiled at him. “What’s Christmas without it? It was great meeting you, Mr. Ashworth.” She offered her hand again. “If you get up to Philadelphia, I’ll expect you to drop by.”
“You can count on it.” He patted his pocket where he’d slipped her business card. “You two ladies take care of yourselves. Drive safely.”
“We will. Merry Christmas.”
“Same to you,” Ashworth added as Dora climbed in the van.
With a last wave she started the van and pulled away from the curb. Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror and she smiled as she saw Ashworth standing on the sidewalk with his pipe in his teeth and his hand lifted in a farewell salute. “What a sweetheart. I’m glad he got that figurine.”
Lea shivered and waited impatiently for the va
n to heat. “I hope he didn’t overcharge you for those saltcellars.”
“Mmm. He made a profit, I’ll make a profit and Mrs. O’Malley will add to her collection. Everybody gets what they want.”
“I guess. I still can’t believe you bought that hideous painting. You’ll never be able to sell it.”
“Oh, eventually.”
“At least you only paid fifty dollars for it.”
“Fifty-two seventy-five,” Dora corrected.
“Right.” Twisting in her seat, Lea looked at the boxes packed into the rear of the van. “You know, of course, that you don’t have room for all this junk.”
“I’ll make room. Don’t you think Missy would like that carousel?”
Lea imagined the outsize mechanical toy in her daughter’s pink-and-white bedroom and shuddered. “Please, no.”
“Okay.” Dora shrugged. Once she’d cleaned up the carousel, she might let it spin in her own living room for a while. “But I think she’d go for it. You want to call John and tell him we’re on our way back?”
“In a little while.” With a sigh, Lea settled back. “This time tomorrow, I’ll be baking cookies and rolling out pie dough.”
“You asked for it,” Dora reminded her. “You had to get married, have kids, buy a house. Where else is the family going to have Christmas dinner?”
“I wouldn’t mind if Mom didn’t insist on helping me cook it. I mean, the woman never cooked a real meal in her life, right?”
“Not that I remember.”
“And there she is, every Christmas, underfoot in my kitchen and waving around some recipe for alfalfa and chestnut dressing.”
“That one was bad,” Dora recalled. “But it was better than her curried potatoes and succotash casserole.”
“Don’t remind me. And Dad’s no help, wearing his Santa hat and hitting the eggnog before noon.”
“Maybe Will can distract her. Is he coming alone or with one of his sweeties?” Dora asked, referring to their brother’s list of glamorous dates.
“Alone, last I heard. Dora, watch that truck, will you?”
“I am.” In the spirit of competition, Dora gunned the engine and passed the sixteen-wheeler with inches to spare. “So when’s Will getting in?”
“He’s taking a late train out of New York on Christmas Eve.”
“Late enough to make a grand entrance,” Dora predicted. “Look, if he gets in your hair, I can always—oh, hell.”
“What?” Lea’s eyes sprang open.
“I just remembered, that new tenant Dad signed up is moving in across the hall today.”
“So?”
“I hope Dad remembers to be there with the keys. He was great about showing the apartment the last couple of weeks while I was tied up in the shop, but you know how absentminded he is when he’s in the middle of a production.”
“I know exactly how he is, which is why I can’t understand how you could let him interview a tenant for your building.”
“I didn’t have time,” Dora muttered, trying to calculate if she’d have an opportunity to call her father between performances. “Besides, Dad wanted to.”
“Just don’t be surprised if you end up across the hall from a psychopath, or a woman with three kids and a string of tattooed boyfriends.”
Dora’s lips curved. “I specifically told Dad no psychopaths or tattoos. I’m hoping it’s someone who cooks, and hopes to suck up to the landlord by bringing me baked goods on a regular basis. Speaking of which, do you want to eat?”
“Yeah. I might as well get in one last meal where I don’t have to cut up anyone’s food but my own.”
Dora swung toward the exit ramp, cutting off a Chevy. She ignored the angry blast of horns. There was a smile on her face as she imagined unpacking her new possessions. The very first thing she would do, she promised herself, was find the perfect spot for the painting.
High in the glittery tower of a silver building overlooking the cramped streets of LA, Edmund Finley enjoyed his weekly manicure. The wall directly across from his massive rosewood desk flickered with a dozen television screens. CNN, Headline News and one of the home-shopping networks all flashed silently across the wall. Other screens were tuned in to various offices in his organization so that he could observe his employees.
But unless he chose to listen in, the only sounds in the vast sweep of his office were the strains of a Mozart opera and the steady scrape of the manicurist’s nail file.
Finley liked to watch.
He’d chosen the top floor of this building so that his office would overlook the panorama of Los Angeles. It gave him the feeling of power, of omnipotence, and he would often stand for an hour at the wide window behind his desk and simply study the comings and goings of strangers far below.
In his home far up in the hills above the city, there were television screens and monitors in every room. And windows, again windows where he could look down on the lights of the LA basin. Every evening he would stand on the balcony outside his bedroom and imagine owning everything, everyone, for as far as his eye could see.
He was a man with an appetite for possessions. His office reflected his taste for the fine and the exclusive. Both walls and carpet were white, pure white to serve as a virgin backdrop for his treasures. A Ming vase graced a marble pedestal. Sculptures by Rodin and Denaecheau filled niches carved into the walls. A Renoir hung in a gold frame above a Louis Quatorze commode. A velvet settee reputed to have been Marie Antoinette’s was flanked by gleaming mahogany tables from Victorian England.
Two high glass cabinets held a stunning and esoteric display of objets d’art: carved snuff bottles of lapis and aquamarine, ivory netsukes, Dresden figurines, Limoges ring boxes, a fifteenth-century dagger with a jeweled handle, African masks.
Edmund Finley acquired. And once he acquired, he hoarded.
His import-export business was enormously successful. His smuggling sideline more so. After all, smuggling was more of a challenge. It required a certain finesse, a ruthless ingenuity and impeccable taste.
Finley, a tall, spare, distinguished-looking man in his early fifties, had begun to “acquire” merchandise as a youth working the docks in San Francisco. It had been a simple matter to misplace a crate, to open a trunk and to sell what he took. By his thirtieth year he had amassed enough capital to start his own company, enough savvy to play heavily on the dark side and win and enough contacts to ensure a steady flow of merchandise.
Now he was a wealthy man who preferred Italian suits, French women and Swiss francs. He could, after decades of transactions, afford to keep what appealed most to him. What appealed most was the old, the priceless.
“You’re all done, Mr. Finley.” The manicurist placed Finley’s hand gently on the spotless blotter on his desk. She knew he would check her work carefully while she packed up her tools and lotions. Once he had raged at her for ten minutes for missing a minute speck of cuticle on his thumb. But this time, when she dared to glance up, he was smiling down at his buffed nails.
“Excellent work.” Pleased, he rubbed his thumbs and fingertips together. Taking a gold money clip from his pocket, Finley peeled off a fifty. Then with one of his rare and disarming smiles, he added another hundred. “Merry Christmas, dear.”
“Oh—thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Finley. Merry Christmas to you, too.”
Still smiling, he dismissed her with a wave of his buffed fingertips. His sporadic generosity came as naturally as his constant greed. He relished both. Before the door had closed behind her, he had swiveled in his chair, folded his hands over his silk vest. Through the stream of sunlight he studied his view of Los Angeles.
Christmas, he thought. What a lovely time of year. One of goodwill toward men, ringing bells and colored lights. Of course, it was also the time of desperate loneliness, despair and suicide. But those small human tragedies didn’t touch or concern him. Money had catapulted him above those fragile needs for companionship and family. He could buy companionship. He had chos
en one of the richest cities in the world, where anything could be bought, sold, possessed. Here youth, wealth and power were admired above all else. During this brightest of holiday seasons, he had wealth, and he had power. As for youth, money could buy the illusion.
Finley scanned the buildings and sun-glinted windows with his bright green eyes. He realized with a vague sense of surprise that he was happy.
The knock on his office door made him turn as he called out, “Enter.”
“Sir.” Abel Winesap, a small, stoop-shouldered man with the heavy title of “Executive Assistant to the President,” cleared his throat. “Mr. Finley.”
“Do you know the true meaning of Christmas, Abel?” Finley’s voice was warm, like mulled brandy poured over cream.
“Ah . . .” Winesap fiddled with the knot of his tie. “Sir?”
