“How much are they asking for the typewriter?” Tav asked.
The young man righted the typewriter and checked a sticker. “Twenty-five dollars.”
“I’ll give you forty,” Tav said. Tammy nosed at his hand until he stroked her head.
“Done.” The man handed me the Smith Corona while Tav pulled two twenties out of his wallet.
“Thanks.” I tossed the word to Tav and the young man as I beelined for the cashier’s desk before anything else could happen. The way the morning had been going, I expected Turner to pop up and rip the typewriter out of my hands, telling me it wasn’t for sale, or for a sinkhole to open up and swallow the machine.
“I see you found it.” The woman we’d talked to earlier smiled when I reached the front of the line.
“You know,” I said, clunking the typewriter and my shoes down on the folding table, “I really only need the cartridge, and I think that man”-I pointed to the man with his poodle, still talking to Tav-“would like to buy the typewriter.” Popping the cartridge out, I wished I’d thought of it before we’d paid Poodle Guy the forty dollars.
“Two bucks.”
Handing her a fiver, I turned to look for Tav, waving the cartridge triumphantly.
Tav and the poodle guy were inspecting a display of framed movie posters, some of which looked like they were from the 1940s and 1950s, and I started toward them, tucking the cartridge and my shoes into my purse. Before I had taken two steps, though, I caught sight of a tall, skeletally thin man clad in a trench coat skulking at the edge of the property, half-hidden by a spiky-leafed hedge. Hamish MacLeod! What was he doing here? On impulse, I headed toward him, pretending to glance at the tables of knickknacks and pieces of furniture on the way. When I got to within hailing distance, I looked up-artistically, I thought-and pretended to spot him for the first time.
“Why, aren’t you Hamish MacLeod?” I said, heading toward him with a big smile. “I saw you at the will reading. You were husband number four, right? I work with Maurice, who was husband two.” I beamed at him.
He shrank back, practically wedging himself into the hedge, and his eyes darted from side to side. I got the distinct impression he wasn’t happy to see me. Too bad. “It’s sad, isn’t it,” I babbled on, gesturing to the crowds of people trampling the grass and making off with Corinne’s treasures. “Sad to see it all go.”
“It’s sacrilegious,” he muttered, his Scottish accent blurring the words. If I’d closed my eyes, I could have been listening to Scotty from Star Trek. “It’s like desecrating a saint’s resting place.”
I didn’t quite see the parallels: Corinne was no saint, and this wasn’t her resting place.
“These ghouls don’t appreciate who Corinne was,” he said, a bit louder. He inched out of the hedge with a rattle of branches and glared down his beaky nose at me. He must have been sweltering in the trench coat, because sweat beaded his forehead and slid down his temple.
“Were you here to get a memento?” I asked.
“Why would you ask that?” he shot at me, one hand sliding into his coat pocket. Only then did I notice the way the pockets bulged.
Hm. Perhaps the Reverend MacLeod was helping himself to mementos without paying for them. I said soothingly, “I’m sure it must be hard to see the things that were special to you and Corinne sold off like… like…” I couldn’t think of a comparison.
“They have no right! That vase there.” He pointed to a huge cut-crystal vase a heavyset woman was carrying in both hands. “That held the first offering of tulips I ever made to my gorgeous Corinne. It was the night after we met. She had told me tulips were her favorite flower, and I rounded up every one I could find in the city and gave them to her in that vase.” He turned away, as if the sight of the vase being sold was too much for him.
“Very romantic.” Clearly, the man had been gaga over Corinne. Completely unbalanced about the woman, in my humble opinion. If he had felt slighted by her, if she’d told him she was going to write something that dissed their relationship, how would he have reacted? Of course, I reminded myself, she’d divorced him and married twice more, and slights didn’t get much more “in your face” than that. The divorce hadn’t prompted him to harm her, so why would he poison her now? He hadn’t had the opportunity, either, as far as I knew.
“When did you last see Corinne?” I asked.
“I went to every competition and exhibition she participated in.” He straightened and threw his shoulders back, clearly waiting for me to applaud his devotion.
Uh-oh. Stalker city. “Don’t you have a job?” I asked.
He frowned at me. “I’m retired from the ministry. My time is my own.” I imagined he used that exact voice in the pulpit when he wished to emphasize a scriptural point. The effect was diminished somewhat when a small, faceted perfume bottle tumbled from beneath his coat and landed in the grass. We both ignored it.
“I guess you spend time with Randolph, too.”
He froze momentarily, then leaned toward me. Hunched over like that, with his long, skinny neck and beaky nose, he reminded me way too much of a vulture. “Why would you say that?”
“I was chatting with Randolph this weekend and someone mentioned you’d stopped by,” I said, forcing myself not to back away. What could he do to me on this grassy lawn with hundreds of bargain hunters nearby?
Some emotion flitted across his eyes; it looked like fear. “What I do and where I go is no business of yours, young lady.”
“I’m just trying to keep Maurice from being convicted of Corinne’s murder.”
“Whoever killed my beloved Corinne should be burned at the stake. It was an evil thing to do. Evil!”
He said it with an intensity that made me wonder whether he had all his marbles. “I think you have an ulterior motive for being here today,” I said, stooping to retrieve the perfume bottle. I held it on the flat of my palm, the way you feed a horse so you don’t get bitten, and he snatched it.
“As do you, young lady!”
His accusation startled me, and I gripped my purse tighter. Could he know about the typewriter cartridge? Was he here for more than the odd memento? Was he looking to retrieve the manuscript, too?
His next words dispelled that fear. “You’re here, like they are”-he gestured to the crowd-“out of vulgar curiosity. You’re here to feed on the beauty, the gentleness, the incandescent light that was Corinne. Scavengers, all of you! Ghouls!” He threw one arm up dramatically, and a foot-tall bronze figure of a dancer en pointe clink-clanked to the turf. Without another word, he bent, picked it up, thrust it into an interior pocket of his coat, and left. He strode rapidly across the lawn, trench coat flapping about his legs. I stared after him for a moment, not sure I’d accomplished anything by confronting him, then trotted toward where Tav and Poodle Guy were chatting by a pile of coffee-table art books.
Tav broke away from his conversation, joining me with a grin. I grabbed his arm and pointed to Hamish MacLeod as he disappeared down the driveway. “That’s Hamish MacLeod,” I said, “Corinne’s fourth husband.” I relayed our conversation and my conviction that the man was stealing easily portable items.
Tav looked after Hamish with interest. “Corinne certainly had eclectic taste in husbands,” he said.
I hadn’t expected him to go tearing after MacLeod and accuse him of theft, but his comment seemed anticlimactic. “Why do you suppose he was visiting Randolph at Hopeful Morning?”
Shrugging, he looked down at me quizzically. “Probably not for any nefarious reason. Perhaps you are so caught up in keeping Maurice out of prison that you are seeing suspicious behavior in very ordinary activities?”
His words stung a bit. “Well, I don’t call thieving ‘ordinary’ activity,” I said huffily.