Her pulse beat a quick tattoo. She glanced at the painting again, expecting the sensation to return, but the painting remained what it was—an image of ink lines and watercolor in a wooden frame. Strange. She pushed the pouch’s contents around with a finger and shook her head. Just for a moment there, it’d seemed that she’d really been someplace else. Maybe she was coming down with the flu.
At that moment the tiny bell above the front door jingled and the real world intruded on her speculations in the unmistakable shape of Geraldine Hathaway. She stood in the doorway with her back to Sara, shaking out her umbrella, then closing it up with a snap. Sara stifled a groan.
“Well, Ms. Kendell,” Miss Hathaway said. Her glasses clouded up with condensation and she took them off, rummaged in her purse for a handkerchief, and wiped them before continuing. “How is business today?”
“Quiet,” Sara said. Or at least it had been.
“Ah, well. The weather, you know.” The glasses returned to her nose and the handkerchief to its purse. “I see,” she added, studying the litter on the countertop, “that you have some new stock. Anything that might be of interest to me?”
“Hard to say,” Sara replied. “It’s mostly junk.”
“Well, you know what they say. What’s junk to some . . .” Her voice trailed off as she neared the counter.
Sara stifled another groan. She’d yet to figure out what made Geraldine Hathaway tick. The only time she ever seemed to want to purchase something was when it was being held for someone else. Then she’d wave her checkbook about and argue until Sara felt like wringing her neck.
“Oh, I say. What’s this?” Miss Hathaway picked up the gold ring that had come from the medicine bag. “How much is this?”
“Its not for sale,” Sara said and braced herself for the worst.
“Nonsense. Everything is for sale in an establishment such as this. There’s no need to play coy with me. I’ll give you a good price for it. Say fifteen dollars?”
I’m not angry, Sara told herself, and I won’t get angry. The customer’s always’ right. It pays to be polite. God, what rubbish! If she never saw Miss Hathaway again it’d be too soon.
“Well?” Miss Hathaway demanded. “Don’t grit your teeth, girl. It’s an irritating habit. Have you got a box for it?”
“I’m afraid it’s not for sale,” Sara replied evenly. “First off, it’s solid gold—”
“Why so it is! Twenty dollars then, and not a penny more.”
“And secondly, it’s mine, and I don’t want to sell it.”
“That’s hardly a very businesslike attitude.”
One, two, three. Deep breath. “Look,” Sara tried. “I don’t want to sell it.”
“Well then, you shouldn’t have it on display in your store.”
“It wasn’t on display. I was sitting at the counter here while I was—” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I was doing with it. I’m not selling it and that’s final.”
Miss Hathaway glared at her. “Well, that’s a fine way to talk. I’ve got a good mind to report you to the Better Business Bureau. First you have merchandise offered for sale and you refuse to sell it. Then—”
“That’s my right!” Sara cried, her voice rising with her temper. “If I don’t want to sell something, I don’t have to. I don’t care if you go to Parliament Hill and get a bill passed saying I’ve got to sell it. You still won’t get it.”
“And then,” Miss Hathaway continued, “you’re extremely rude in the bargain.”
“Rude? Me?”
Sara put a sudden clamp on her temper. She breathed slowly to steady herself and began again.
“Miss Hathaway,” she said as politely as she could, “I’m not going to sell this ring and there’s no point in arguing about it.” She pried the ring from the woman’s hands. “Thank you. And now in future, perhaps you’d care to do your shopping someplace else? I really don’t need this sort of aggravation.”
“Aggravation? Why!” For one blessed second Miss Hathaway was speechless. Then: “I demand to see the manager.”
“I am the manager.”
“The owner then.”
“I’m the owner as well,” Sara lied.
She could just imagine Jamie being confronted with an enraged Geraldine Hathaway. He wouldn’t speak to her for a week.
“Then . . . then . . .”
Sara came around from behind the counter and, taking the woman by the arm, steered her towards the door.
“We’re just closing,” she said.
“It’s only two o’clock!”
“For lunch. Goodbye, Miss Hathaway.”
They got as far as the door before the woman made her final stand.
“I demand to be treated with some respect!” she cried.
Sara couldn’t hold back any longer. “Out, out, out!” she shouted, opening the door and almost bodily shoving Miss Hathaway through it.
On the sidewalk, Miss Hathaway opened her umbrella with an angry snap and glared at Sara. “You won’t see me in here again,” she said loudly, hoping to attract the attention of a passerby. Unfortunately, the drizzle was keeping most people off the streets and the sidewalk was empty.
“Well, thank God for that,” Sara replied and slammed the door shut.
She locked it, turned the “Open” sign around so that it read “Closed” from outside and stomped back to her stool. She sat there fuming for long moments until the whole scene had repeated itself in her mind. Then she began to giggle. Well! She never thought she’d have the nerve to do that. Wait’ll she told Jamie.
She opened her hand and looked down at the ring that had caused the whole fuss. It was hers, she decided. That was one of the nice things about operating The Merry Dancers. Her rooms at home were as cluttered as the store, filled with odd things that’d caught her fancy. The painting and the pouch’s contents would be right at home there. She ran a finger along the frame of the painting. Who had the artist been? She looked at the side of the box once more.
“Dr. Aled Evans,” she murmured, and decided to give Jamie a call to see if he remembered where he’d gotten the box or if he knew who Dr. Evans had been.
She remembered Jamie saying something this morning about having to get that damned article for International Wildlife finished, so he’d probably be at his desk in the Postman’s Room. She dug the phone out from the shelf it shared with her coffee thermos and a stack of old historicals that she’d meant to give away ages ago, but never quite got around to. Setting the phone down on the countertop, she dialed the number and started to put the pouch’s contents back as she waited for Jamie to answer.
“Mmm?” he said, seven rings later.
“Hi, Jamie. Finished that article yet?”
“Oh, hello, Sairey. Almost. I’m having trouble summing up. How the hell do you sum up mushrooms?”
“You have them for dinner.”
“Fun-nee.”
“Guess who I threw out of the store today.”
Jamie laughed. “David Lindsay, the well-known Australian explorer?”
“Nope. Geraldine Hathaway.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Good for you!” he said.
“And I’ve been working hard all afternoon—cleaning out the store rooms.”
“For this you interrupt a genius at his labor?”
“A genius would know how to sum up an article on mushrooms.”
“Keep it up and we’ll have you for dinner, you little wretch.”
Sara laughed. She rolled the ring back and forth in the palm of her hand and, checking the side of the box to make sure she had the name right, asked:
“Jamie, do you know a Dr. Aled Evans? That’s A-L-E-D.”
“I knew a Dr. Evans. He was a history professor at Carleton who died a few years ago. In ’76. Why do you ask?”
“Well, one of the boxes that I’m going through has ‘From the Estate of Dr. Aled Evans’ written on its
side. Was he Welsh?”
“Born in Wales, but he grew up in Toronto. He moved up here when the university offered him a position in ’63.”
“How come we’ve got a box of his effects in the back of the store?”
“Ah, well. I got to know Aled quite well, as it happens. When he died he left me everything he had. He didn’t have any close family, except for some distant cousins in Wales, and he didn’t want to leave a lifetime’s treasures with total strangers. Most of it—the furniture and books and the like—are scattered through the House, but there were a few boxes of junk that I just stored in the back of the shop.
“I’d planned to sell them, but I didn’t have the heart to go through them. I’d forgotten they were even there. I haven’t thought of Aled in a long time. Funny you should mention him. He used to love mush rooms.”
“Would you rather I just left all this stuff in the back, then?”
“No. There’s no real point in keeping it around. I’m sure Aled wouldn’t have wanted me to hang onto that stuff. It was the books and artifacts that he was most concerned about. There can’t be much of interest in those boxes anyway.”
“Even in the desolate Arctic tundra, there are treasures to be found. . . .” Sara said with a smile.
“What?”
“I said, you’d be surprised. I’ve found the most beautiful painting—pen and ink with a watercolor wash. Was he an artist?”
“Not that I knew.”
“And there was something else—the neatest thing. It looks like an Indian medicine bag. You know. A little leather pouch with all sorts of odd things in it. A fox’s claw, some feathers and corn kernels. But the most interesting things are a bone disc with some designs carved on it and a little gold ring.”
“A gold ring?”
“Umhmm. It was inside a ball of clay. When I picked away at it, the ball fell apart and there it was.”
“Strange. Though Aled always did have a bent for curiosities—especially anything with an anthropological slant to it. He loved old things—really old things—like Aztec pottery and arrowheads and the like. That weird clay demon-gourd you’ve got in your sitting room came from his collection.”
Something clicked in Sara’s mind.
“I remember,” she said. “I just didn’t connect it till now. I think I met him—just before I went to Europe. Was he the tall, reedy sort of fellow with a big bushy moustache like Yosemite Sam’s?”
“Yosemite Sam? Such a lyrical description. For this I put you through college?”
“I never went to college, ninnyhammer.”
“Well, you can’t blame me for that.”
There was a pause in the conversation that lasted for the space of a few heartbeats.
“Well?” Sara asked. “Was it him?”
“Indeed it was,” Jamie replied. “I was just thinking about him. He used to come around the House quite a lot in the old days—to use the Library and play chess. He won fifty-three consecutive games from me.”
Sara gazed idly at the knick-knacks spread across the countertop. “Did you know that he had a plastic wind-up bear?” she asked.
“Did you know,” Jamie replied, “that I’ve still got to get this bloody article done? At the risk of seeming rude. . . .”
“Very rude. But that’s okay. Just don’t come down to the shop or I’ll toss you out on your ear like I did Miss Hathaway. I’m feeling very fierce today.”
Jamie laughed. “Will you be home for dinner? Blue’s been in the kitchen all day concocting some wild Mexican dish.”
“Without mushrooms?”
“I don’t want to look at another mushroom for at least a year.”
“Then I’ll be home. I think I might close up early again. It’s shitty outside and the only customer I’ve had all afternoon’s been dear Miss Hathaway.”
“Okay. Bring the painting with you, if you would. I’d like to have a look at it. And bring that ‘medicine bag’ or whatever it is.”
“Will do. See ya.”
“ ’Bye.”
Sara cradled the phone and regarded her find once more. She finished returning everything to the pouch except for the ring. As she went to put it away as well, she shrugged, then slipped it on her finger. For luck.
Going to the front door, she unlocked it and, after looking up and down the street to make sure Geraldine Hathaway wasn’t lurking somewhere, turned the sign around so that it read “Open.” She might as well finish the box she was working on before she went home. She put a new tape in the cassette machine and the soft tones of Pachelbel’s Canon drifted through the store. Humming along, she went back to her chore. The box, which grew progressively dustier with each subsequent layer, had no more wonders like the medicine bag in it. At one point she paused long enough to roll a cigarette, light it, take a couple of puffs, then set it aside as she plunged back into her work. Unlike a ready-made cigarette, it promptly went out.
As she was nearing the second-to-last layer, the bell above the door jingled. Sara started, then smiled when she saw that it wasn’t Geraldine Hathaway come back for round two, but Julie Simms, a waitress who worked at Kamals, a restaurant at the corner of Third and Bank.
“Are you on your break?” Sara asked, taking the opportunity to relight her cigarette.
“Mmhmm. A big fifteen minutes. God, but it’s dull today.”
Sara laughed. Julie was her best friend. When Sara’d first met her, she’d thought Julie a little cynical—mostly because she had a look in her eyes that lent a certain sardonic quality to everything she said—but Sara soon discovered that this was far from the case.
Julie worked hard, dividing her time between Kamals, two morning courses at Carleton, and supporting an eight-year-old son. She had a madcap sense of humor and a willingness to give just about anything at least one try. They’d taken all sorts of artsy crafts courses together and took a perverse delight in giving each other their latest creations for Christmas and birthdays. This peaked last year when Julie gave Sara a four-by-two-foot macrame wall hanging of an owl with big polished wooden beads for eyes. Sara had yet to forgive her and was still planning her revenge.
“You look busy for a change,” Julie said, shrugging off her raincoat. “Jamie been cracking down on you?” She looked around for a place to hang it and settled on the knob of the door that led to the storerooms.
Sara shook her head. “I’m just sorting through junk.” She pushed aside her work and set two coffee mugs down on the counter. “Want some?”
“Anything. So long as I can get off my feet for a few minutes. God, I hate the day shifts. You stand around just as much, only you don’t get nearly the same tips.”
“I haven’t any cream. Forgot to pick some up on my way in this morning.”
“That’s okay.” Julie settled down in the visitor’s chair behind the counter and stretched out her legs. “Ah! I think I’ll just vegetate here for the rest of the afternoon. Mind?”
“Be my guest.” Sara poured coffee from her thermos, handed Julie a cup, and relit her cigarette for the third time. “The tips are even shittier here, though.”
“Talking about dung—I saw old Miss Hathaway stomping by the restaurant earlier. Was she in to visit you?”
“I threw her out.”
“You . . . ?” Julie broke into laughter and spilled her coffee before she could set it down on the counter. “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. She drives me crazy.”
“She drives everybody crazy.”
“This time I had to do it. It was either that or wring her neck.”
“I think I’d settle on wringing her neck. It’s so much more permanent.” She waited expectantly for a moment, then added: “Well? Aren’t you going to give me the scoop?”
Sara moved her chair conspiratorially closer and did just that.
“Serves her right!” Julie said when Sara was done. “And what a find! Can I have a look?”
Sara tugged th
e ring off and passed it over.
“It’s definitely gold,” Julie said, turning it around in her palm. “It looks old.”
“The box came from the estate of a history professor that Jamie knew.”
“But this looks really old. And look at the color. It must be eighteen karat at least.”
She held it up beside the wedding band she wore to forestall being asked out for dates while she was on the job. It had a fifty percent success rate. Beside the wedding band, Sara’s ring had a positive glow of richness to it.
“It looks kind of brassy,” Sara said.
“That’s because the gold content’s so high. Mine’s only ten karat.” Julie hefted the ring before passing it back. “It’s heavy, too. I wonder how old it is?”
“A hundred years?”
Julie shrugged. “You should get it dated. I wonder where you can get that done. At a jeweler’s, I suppose. Or the museum.”
“I’ll ask Jamie,” Sara said. “He’d know.”
Julie nodded. She picked up her coffee, then glanced at her watch. “Oh, no! Look at the time!”
She took a gulp and bustled to her feet, pulling a face as she dragged her raincoat from the doorknob.
“I don’t know if I’ll last the day,” she moaned, then brightened. “What’re you doing on Saturday?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I’ve got the night off. I thought I’d spring for a sitter for Robbie and take in a couple of sets at Faces.”
“Who’s playing?”
“Who cares? I just want to go out and have somebody get me a beer for a change. I can’t stay late though. I’m taking Robbie to my mum’s on Sunday.”
“I’ll let you know before the end of the week. Okay?”
“Sure. See ya.”
The doorbell jingled again and she was gone.
Sara stared at the clutter that was taking over the countertop and wished she’d asked Julie what the time was. She went on a quest for her clock and found it behind her typewriter. Three-thirty. She’d give it another half-hour and then go home. Flipping over the cassette to the side with Delius on it, she got back to work.