“A detective’s life must be so exciting—shall we set up a time now?”
Before I could make an excuse, Alma snorted with excitement to get her sister’s attention. The sow had put her trotters up on a table that held the large crystal ball in its birdbath-sized holder. “Ooh, what a wonderful crystal ball!” Mavis found the signature of the magician artisan at the bottom of the ornate holder. She turned to the gremlin. “What’s the price?”
Alice hurried over to the table, sensing a sale. She talked at great length about the antique and magical quality of the item, while Mavis insisted that she was quite familiar with various models of crystal balls. They dickered, but closed the sale, and the witches went home, happy with their acquisition.
After a glance at an antique windup clock on one of the quick-sale tables, Alice declared it was time to start the auction.
She had hired a long-bearded wizard to conduct the process. He was well practiced in rattling off a dizzying stream of staccato syllables—a talent he had gained from years of mumbling incomprehensible spells and reading incantations backward—which made him a skilled auctioneer.
The higher-end patrons had already scoped out the large items, jotted notes, made phone calls, checked online listings, and subtly tried to guess which other customers might be their competitors for individual pieces.
The first item up for bid was a rusted iron maiden with a solid oak case; the sharpened tips supposedly still contained blood from victims of the Marquis de Sade, who was something of a folk hero in certain parts of the Quarter. The iron maiden came with a certificate of authenticity, although one of the bidders disputed the provenance (probably to diminish the bids), insisting that the style of the iron maiden firmly placed it in the period of the Spanish Inquisition, not the Marquis de Sade. A tall blond vampire, who looked more like a surfer than a bloodsucker, won the auction.
The second item was a plain-looking willow wand, said to contain great magical powers. Purportedly, the wand had been used by Merlin himself, although to me it looked like a switch that an old-fashioned schoolteacher would use for rapping the knuckles of unruly students.
The wizard auctioneer expected high opening bids, but did not get them, so he waxed poetic about the magic wand, describing in detail the numerous household uses a lucky bidder could find for it. When there were still no bids, his descriptions became more gushing, purple prose extending far into the ultraviolet. Still, no bids. In disappointment, he scratched his long gray beard and set the magic wand aside. “Very well, we shall come back to that one later.”
When he pulled out the pawnbroker’s ledger book, I shuffled closer to the front of the crowd.
“And here, we have a book . . . no spells inside, as far as I can tell. Just a list of items and numbers.” He peered through his round spectacles at the words, then straightened. “Ah, it’s the business records of the pawnshop! Hours of fascinating reading, I’m sure. A primary-source historical record for anyone who wishes to do research. Or . . .” He gave a goofy grin. “Do we have any tax auditors out there? This ledger could contain very interesting information.”
The unnaturals hissed and grumbled, and the wizard auctioneer noticed that no one had laughed at his joke. The threat of a tax audit just wasn’t funny.
“All right, then shall we start the bidding? Who’s interested in this lovely ledger book?”
I raised my hand, offered a bid serious enough to scare away casual interest. “Fifty dollars. I’ll take it.” When I got my hands on that book, I could solve two cases in less than an hour.
“Ah, we have fifty dollars,” the wizard said.
“I’ll take it for a hundred,” said another voice in the back.
I turned, as did many of the other unnaturals. I was astonished to see Missy Goodfellow’s assistant, Angela Drake. “A hundred,” she repeated.
“That doubles the bid—one hundred, from the young woman in the back.” The wizard picked up the willow wand beside his podium and pointed toward Angela. The unnaturals dove aside just in case the wand misfired . . . but it emitted not even a spark of magic.
“One fifty,” I said. Angela had discreetly gone in and out of the pawnshop during the tumult of Senator Balfour’s street protest; I wondered why in the world she would want the ledger. Possibilities occurred to me in waves.
I did not like the way Missy Goodfellow conducted business. What if the Smile Syndicate was using the pawnshop for moving stolen merchandise, or as a front for drug operations—even selling illegal souvenirs? No telling what else I could find in the ledger. It might be a gold mine. Now I wanted it even more than before.
Angela looked at me as if I were a rank amateur. She glanced at her watch. “My time is worth more than this dickering. Five hundred for the ledger book.”
The unnaturals gasped, and I let out an involuntary groan. Five hundred dollars? To solve one pro bono case and an arson case for which the ghostly client might or might not be able to pay? There must be something very important in that book. I needed to have it.
“Seven fifty,” I said. Sheyenne and Robin would both be horrified, but from the look on Angela’s face, I knew she would never let the item go.
“A thousand,” she said with barely a second’s hesitation.
I decided to let her have the ledger. I guess I’d have to solve the cases some other way—but I’m a detective; that’s what I do.
The wizard waved the useless wand again. “Sold! To the woman in back.”
Angela produced a wad of bills and paid in cash so she could take the ledger book with her immediately. I thought about offering her a hundred dollars just for a quick look at the entries, but Angela would never go for that.
She walked past me, cradling the book close to her chest, and said with a sniff, “No need to air dirty laundry outside of the family.” Now I knew the Smile Syndicate was doing something underhanded.
I tried to accept defeat with good grace, though I don’t think I managed it.
So as not to go away completely empty-handed, I used the money to purchase Sheyenne’s jewelry. That made me feel good, a gesture I had to make for her, though I doubted it would quench her anger toward her brother.
Chapter 35
Once Robin started applying pressure on behalf of the Pattersons, she became an absolute pit bull. She did not include Harvey Jekyll’s case in her remarks or filings, deciding her best strategy was to achieve a victory with the likable couple first before she muddied the swamp.