Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The Mercer yard sale was still going strong at noon. The tables were picked over but far from empty. A steady stream of browsers were working their way down the driveway with the focused energy of people who knew the good stuff was still out there if you looked hard enough.
Ida stopped at the first table they passed.
“Oh.” She picked up a ceramic rooster the size of a small child. “Look at this.”
“Put it down,” Ruth said.
“It’s magnificent.”
“It’s enormous.”
“That’s what makes it magnificent.” Ida turned it around. The rooster stared back at her with an expression of profound self-satisfaction. “Where would you even put something like this?”
“Nowhere,” Ruth said. “That’s the correct answer.”
Ida set it down with visible reluctance and moved to the next table, where she immediately picked up a set of salt shakers shaped like outhouses. “Oh, these are fun.”
“Ida,” Nans said, without breaking stride toward the front of the sale.
Ida put the outhouses down and trotted after them, though she looked back twice.
June was in the middle of haggling with a woman over a bread maker when they arrived, and she drove a harder bargain than anyone expected for something she’d been trying to get rid of since nine a.m.
“Seven-fifty,” June said.
“Five.”
“Seven.”
“Five-fifty.”
“Done.” June took the money, handed over the bread maker, and turned to find Nans and the ladies. Her face broke into a genuine smile. “Well, this is a nice surprise, I haven’t seen you ladies in a long time.”
“June.” Nans stepped forward warmly. “We heard about Everett and the cat. Terrible business. We just wanted to check in.” A small pause. “Did anyone else show any interest in the cat this morning? Anyone asking about it before Everett got to it?”
“You think he was killed because of the cat he bought here?” June looked perplexed.
“It was missing from his bag,” Ida said.
“Oh dear.” June’s hand went to her throat.
“It sat on that table all morning without a second glance. Everett was the only one who picked it up. It came out of the attic. There is so much old stuff collecting dust up there from when my great-grandparents lived here. I had no idea it was worth anything. I feel terrible it ended up connected to all this.”
“Anyone else act strange or ask about it?” Ruth asked.
June shook her head. "No. Well — my cousin Darlene was acting a little odd. But that's not unusual for her."
“Darlene Harrington? How do you mean?" Nans asked.
"This house has been in the family since my great-grandparents. We all tend to gather here whenever there is a family thing.” June shrugged.
"Darlene's always been a bit of a snooper.
I've caught her going through drawers, poking around closets.
Found her in the basement once and she couldn't give me a straight answer about why.
" She sighed with the fond exasperation of someone who had long since stopped trying to explain Darlene.
"So when she came to the sale this morning and seemed a little distracted — I didn't think much of it. Just Darlene being Darlene."
“What about Tina Kowalski?” Ruth asked. “I saw on my iPad that she was doing one of her live videos at your sale earlier.”
“You mean Trash to Cash Tina?” June thought about it. “She was, yes. But that was after Everett had already bought the cat and left. She was filming what was still on the table.”
“So anyone watching her stream would have seen the cat was already gone,” Nans said.
“I suppose so.” June looked uncertain. “Do you think—“
The side door banged and Kyle Mercer, June’s brother, came around the corner already annoyed.
He was mid-fifties, broad through the shoulders, with the restless energy of someone who had been working himself up to something all morning. He looked at the group of women standing with his aunt and his jaw set.
Kyle looked at his sister. “I told you. Before you put a single thing on those tables you should have gone through it with me. All of it.” He crossed his arms. “You know I’ve been trying to get things sorted. I would have looked into what that cat was worth.”
“Would you?” June said, mildly.
“I would have found out.”
“You didn’t even see the cat,” Lexy said. “Did you?”
Kyle’s eyes moved to her. “I was hauling boxes from downstairs and the porch all morning. Not poking around in old attic corners.” He said it the way people said things they’d decided to say in advance. “But if I had seen it, I’d have dealt with it differently. That’s the difference.”
He said it to June, who received it with the patience of a woman who had been receiving things from Kyle for years. She handed a set of mixing bowls to a passing browser and made change without looking up.
The front gate swung open and Margo Haskell came up the walk, a bakery box in one hand and a tote bag in the other, the universal look of someone who’d had a productive morning. She handed the box to June. “Cinnamon buns.”
“Did you hear about Everett Pike?” Nans asked.
Margo’s expression sobered. “Terrible. Just terrible. I heard he was killed over a valuable antique — is that true?”
“One he got here,” June said. “From my yard sale.”
Margo’s hand went to her mouth. “June.”
Lexy chose her moment. “Margo — when you saw Everett leaving the bakery this morning, I thought you might have noticed the cat he had in his hand? I know you called them.”
Margo looked taken aback. “Not sure what you mean. I didn’t see any cat.”
“You and June have been friends a long time,” Ida said, with the tone of someone opening a door to see what walked through.
“Forty-some years,” Margo said.
“That’s the kind of friendship where you’d do just about anything for each other,” Nans said.
Margo looked at Nans with the measured expression of a woman who understood exactly what was being suggested and had decided to be gracious about it.
“If you’re asking whether I killed a man over a yard sale cat, the answer is no.” She folded her hands in her lap. “And honestly, if it had turned out to be worth real money I’d have simply made him give June half. That’s what a reasonable person does.”
“Besides,” June said, with loyal firmness, “the whole idea is preposterous.”
“No sense digging up the past over any of this either,” Margo added, in a tone that closed a door quietly but firmly.
She smoothed her jacket. “The real question isn’t about old friendships.
The real question is who knew that cat was valuable.
” She paused. “Which makes me think about Beatrice Sloan.”
Kyle looked up from the doorway.
“What about her?” Nans asked.
“Well she was in the bakery, maybe she saw the cat. Wouldn’t put it past her to clobber Everett to get it if it’s valuable.”