She grasped the socks in her hand. Still wet. She sighed and continued. It was the story of the past couple of days, always wet and nothing to do about it.
But second was William. His presence was enough to put her back up, and this early-morning errand felt deceptive and wrong. She felt a certain disloyalty though, oddly enough, not as much toward her father as to Marcus, who had let her out the door with a certain amount of trust, even though she was right now being betrayed. And for her money, she owed a hell of a lot more loyalty to Marcus than some guy who Luke barely acknowledged as his father.
“It’s wrong,” she said half under her breath, knowing full well how badly sound carried at night. Or dawn, as the case may be.
“You’d have felt better his going alone?”
There was no arguing that. Resigned to the mission she picked up her pace, not wanting to let him out of her sight for a minute. Besides, he was already opposite the church.
William, surprisingly, walked all the way down to the end of the street. Now that she was paying attention, Dani’s senses were alert for his men, or any men for that matter, but she couldn’t see any signs of not being alone. Just two men and a barefoot woman walking down a sidewalk in the pre-dawn light. What could be suspicious about that?
The church was in deep shadow, but the rising sun highlighted the vines and the stained glass. As the sun rose higher, the glass seemed to explode in a kaleidoscope of color and light, the forms of long-dead saints and deeds getting lost in the splendor of the individual pieces.
The warming sun felt good on her back and the socks had dried to a slight dampness, so she sat on the steps leading into the church and pulled them on. The boots tied up tight, leaving her a slightly unpleasant wetness to her feet, but that would dry soon enough.
If not, she’d just find a new place for her foot. Buried in William’s ass had an appealing sound to it.
“So, what, are we just supposed to wait here for a magic spell?” she asked, hopping to her feet. She turned, studying the doors. The light of the rising sun reflected off the glass, making it nearly impossible to see inside the building. She had no idea if the lights were on inside, or if that was just a reflection of dawn’s early light. “Abracadabra!”
The doors opened, and a balding, round-faced man appeared in the doorway.
She about jumped out of her boots, wet socks and all. “You were just standing there waiting for that, weren’t you?!”
“Thank you, Reverend,” William said smoothly, stepping forward to shake the man’s hand genially. There may or may not have been a large bill that slid from one palm to the other. “If you don’t mind, we’ll take a look inside and be out of your hair... that is, out of your way as soon as possible.”
Dani opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Let the poor man take a donation.
The pastor propped the door open and led the way to the Fellowship Hall. There they walked into the most eclectic hodge-podge of second-hand items Dani had ever seen. A mixture of expensive crap no one wanted jostled for position on overcrowded tables with cheap crap no one wanted. It was as though a Goodwill truck had exploded in Tiffany’s. The range of materials and items was stunning.
They walked through rows and rows of appliances still in boxes, real pearls (clearly marked REAL PEARLS in marker pen on the adjacent card) alongside costume jewelry that could have come from a vending machine.
After an hour they’d found no statues of birds, little or otherwise. There were plenty of angels. A handful of reproductions of famous artworks. Enough big-eyed cherubic children that Dani was fairly convinced she’d be having nightmares about them for years to come. But not a single bird.
“Are you sure this is everything?” William asked the pastor for the fifth time as Dani picked through clothes dissolutely, having given up on what they’d been searching for, and instead looking for a t-shirt that wasn’t torn. So far she’d come up with nothing in her size, unless you counted the ones that had slogans that made even her blush. And yet they were selling them in a church.
“There’s nothing in the trash pile? Nothing in the grab one, free pile?”
He shook his head slowly, for the fifth time. “My boy, I don’t know what to...”
“You’re here awful early, Pastor!” a woman called from the front, her voice so shrill that Dani dropped the shirt she was holding to dive for cover. She could have sworn she’d heard an air raid siren. “I saw the doors open and had to make sure. I didn’t think we were going to start selling things until nine, or was that eight? Still, it’s not even seven yet, so either way it’s very early to start, don’t you think?”
“These people are looking for something that was donated to us,” the reverend informed her, pulling himself up with a sort of wounded dignity. The only hair around his head bristled around his ears like a terrier spotting a pigeon. “It was a small—” he glanced over at William for confirmation, who nodded. “...uh, inexpensive bird statue...”
“Oh, that!” She waved it off, “I’m sorry, but that was sold.”
“Sold?”
The woman stood aghast, backing up a step as the word burst from four throats at once.
“Well, of course it was sold!”
“Mrs. Pinal, we haven’t even opened yet, not officially, so who could have bought such a thing?”
“Well, I did!” Mrs. Pinal crossed her thick arms under heavy breasts, and her double chin began to vibrate with outrage. “I have a right, same as anyone else. And my money is good. Same as anyone else! If I buy something I like, I have that right. Same as anyone else! So long as the money goes to the church, what difference does it matter? I paid five dollars for that! More than it was worth, I warrant!”
Dani and Luke exchanged long glances. Dani shook her head. She wasn’t sure what he was trying to communicate with his eyes, but she was sure it went against some code of ethics or law or something, the way his eyes had narrowed.
“My dear... Mrs. Pinal, is it?” William smiled, and spread his arms in a half-bow. “I would like to make an offer on that particular piece—I would be willing to raise the purchase price to ten times your cost. Could I offer you $100.00 for the piece?”
Mrs. Pinal’s eyes bulged behind her glasses, giving them an oddly magnified look that reminded Dani of a bug. “$100.00? For that? You can probably find another for a quarter.”
“It’s not that cheap!” Luke fumed beside her, throwing up his hands and stomping away to a chair by the door, where he sat down to pout.
“I only bought it because it matched the other one my daughter had,” Mrs. Pinal said, looking at William as though he were crazed. Dani thought maybe they all were, and only Mrs. Pinal had any sense at all.
“Well, then, I will be happy to buy them both....”
“She needed them, you see?”
“Can I ask her if she would be interested in...”