Either way, at least I'd get a drink.
Chapter 6
One of the antique shops on my list was in Schoharie, down Main Street from the Park View A wooden sign in the shape of a sheep hung over the sidewalk. The proprietress, a thin, quick woman, was very nice, but as far as Eve Colgate's silver, I came up dry. I gave her the number at Antonelli's, asked her to call me if anything like what I'd described turned up, and left.
I decided to hit the farthest of the other shops first and then work my way back across the county. I U-turned in the middle of Main Street, went south where Main turns into 30 and 30 turns into a four-lane highway. Down here in the valley there was nothing dramatic about this road, but it was fast. Even where it was only two lanes, it had been widened and straightened, something they did to the old roads around here when they didn't build new ones to bypass them entirely. Now 30 cut right through some of the farms that had looked so timeless and sure from the hills. Not a few farmers had retired to Florida on what the state had paid for the fields I was driving through. Asphalt was a cash crop, up here.
I turned off 30 onto a narrow road that lead up into the hills past Breakabeen. The shop I was headed for was a few miles outside town. Town was a post office, a bar, a grocery, a Mr. Softee, and a dozen houses strung out along a crossroads.
Just beyond the point where the last of the houses disappeared behind me there was a road leading up to the right—probably a driveway masquerading as a road, like mine. Faded script letters on an arrow-shaped sign told anyone who cared to know that The Antiques Barn was a half mile up.
The first hundred yards was respectable, but after that the road was badly kept, full of potholes and mud. The Acura had good suspension—the old ones did—but I wouldn't cut a diamond in it, even on the highway. I was glad to get out of the car onto ground that wasn't moving.
The Antiques Barn was a real barn, big, with flaking red paint and double square doors wide enough to drive a combine through. Those doors weren't open. Neither was the person-sized door cut into one of them, but it gave when I turned the knob. As it opened, it rang a set of sleigh bells hung on the jamb.
I stepped over the high wooden threshold into a dusky, dank room where plates and pitchers, candlesticks and jewelry, walking canes, hats, boots, and thousands of books lay in piles on wooden furniture of every description. The piles had an air of having been undisturbed since time began. Each piece, including the furniture, bore a square ivory-colored tag with a number written on it in a spidery hand.
The room went on forever, disappearing into the dusk, and it seemed I was alone in it. "Hello!" I called into the aged air. Nothing happened. Maybe in here nothing ever happened. I called "Hello!" again, louder; then went back to the door and rattled it, ringing the sleigh bells again and again.
I stopped because I thought I heard a voice. I listened, ready to go back to my sleigh bells; but I was right. Faintly, from somewhere beyond a clutch of stuffed chairs in the center of the room, came words, and with the sound came movement, a figure shuffling toward me out of the primordial twilight.
"Yes, yes!" it muttered as it inched along, placing objects from a pile in its arms onto bureaus and bookcases like a glacier depositing rocks. "My, my!" The figure came very, very slowly to stand before me. It was the figure of a man, round for the most part. His age was unguessable, as was the actual color of his hair, now a thick dust gray.
He squinted up at me over dusty glasses that seemed to have been forgotten at the end of his nose. "You must learn to curb your impatience, young man. It will get you nowhere in life."
"I've been there already," I said. "I didn't like it."
He sniffed, "Well," he said. "Well. An impatient young man like yourself hasn't come here to browse. You're looking for some particular item. Yes; you know precisely what you want. Not for yourself; a gift most likely, for someone who"—he peered at me intently—"who assuredly would rather have you at home by the fire than running all over hell-and-gone seeking out the perfect gift. But you won't hear of it, so we'll say no more about it. What was it you wanted?"
I stared at him. "Old silver," I said. "Was that just for me, or can you do it all the time?"
"Some people," he sighed. "Some people could benefit; but they won't learn."
He turned and moved off with the speed of an acorn becoming a mighty oak. I followed. Luckily we were only going around a glass-doored breakfront to an alcove where wooden shelves were piled high with platters, plates, and carving knives, teapots and baby spoons. I don't think it took us more than an hour to get there.
"Here." He made a round, inclusive gesture. "Here is old silver. But you, of course, had a particular piece in mind. What was it?"
"A teapot. I called earlier; I may have spoken to you."
"I've spoken to no one on the telephone today, young man. Perhaps my wife . . ." He turned a full circle like the light in a lighthouse. "I don't see her now, but she's in the shop somewhere."
"It doesn't matter," I said hastily. If he went wandering off to find her it might be years before. I saw him again. "Is this all your silver?"
"You've looked at none of it yet, but you're unsatisfied?"
I didn't need to look at it. Everything was covered with a layer of dust so thick that the dust itself was probably on the National Register. Nothing had been put on these shelves in the last few days.
"Is this all your silver?" I asked again.
"Well," he sighed, reached up onto the shelf. "As to teapots, this one, for example, is particularly fine." He blew a cloud of dust off the graceful pot in his hands; it settled on my shoes like snow. He handed the pot to me. I took it, turned it, examined it. He was right; even tarnished as it was, it was beautiful. I handed it back.
"I do have something particular in mind." I described Eve Colgate's teapot, the chased floral pattern, the scroll handle. He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.
"Young man, I can't help you. If you really are going to insist on a pot of that description, good luck to you; you will waste more time searching for it than the finding of it will be worth." He looked at me sadly in the dim light.
"Well, thanks anyway," I said. "You've been a great help." I started to leave before I got any older.
"Wait," he said from behind me as I rounded the break- front and reached for the door handle. "Young man, come back and look at these. They've only just come in. There isn't a teapot, but if the one you describe is to your taste, these may be also."
I let go of the door handle, not without a pang of regret. I circumnavigated the breakfront again and found him kneeling in the dust, unwrapping newspaper from around a small silver tray. A pair of candlesticks, already unwrapped, stood on the floor beside him.
Bingo.
He smiled up at me. "You're pleased. My, my." He handed me the tray and clambered to his feet.
They were a set, the tray and the candlesticks, as extraordinary as Eve Colgate had said they were. The minutely detailed pattern of grapes and grape leaves that covered the tray was repeated on the candlesticks' shafts.
"Where did you get these?" I asked.
He frowned. "Young man." He shook his head. "If you find them beautiful, you mustn't worry about provenance They are silver, I assure you. A pedigree does not ensure that they will give you pleasure, only that someone else will be willing, someday, to give you cash." He peered again. "And you do not strike me as a man to whom that matters very much."
"Where did you get them?"
His round eyes blinked in his round face. "Some people ..." he quoted himself sadly. "A young lady brought them. She was given them by her grandmother and doesn't care for them. Though I must say she seemed a refined young lady; I was surprised at her taste, but—"
"When?" I interrupted.
"When? Saturday."
Three days ago. "Did you know her?"