“I agree,” I said. “But that’s the price.”
“Can’t you reduce it to fifty cents?” she said. “Since it’s the end of the day and all?”
I thought of explaining that it might be the end of the day, but the yard sale would probably be continuing next weekend. But that would probably start a long discussion.
“Okay, on one condition,” I said.
She snapped to attention.
“You can have it for fifty cents if you go out and find something else on sale for a dollar that’s just as large and hideous,” I said. “If you can do that, I’ll give you both things, two for fifty cents. Otherwise it stays a dollar.”
She frowned for a second. Then she picked up the vase or statue or whatever it was and raced back out into the yard sale.
“But it has to be something really hideous, remember,” I called after her. “And I get to decide if it’s hideous enough!”
The next customer stepped up and plunked two large cardboard boxes on the table. But instead of efficiently emptying her boxes so I could add things up, she handed me a plate. A rather ordinary china plate.
“How much for this?” she asked.
I turned the plate over. Yes, it had a price tag.
“Fifty cents,” I said.
“Can you do twenty-five for it?”
I looked at her two large boxes. And then at the long line of people waiting to check out. Waiting and watching.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But I tell you what—”
I broke the plate over my knee and handed her the larger half.
“I can do twenty-five for this,” I said.
Apparently she wasn’t in the mood for bargaining. She ignored the proffered plate, unloaded her two boxes without attempting to dicker, and paid the total in silence.
I left the two halves of the plate at my elbow, just to keep people motivated.
A long afternoon.
“Hello, dear.”
I glanced up to see that my next customer was Mother, carrying the hideous lamp shade, its garish colors glowing in the afternoon sunlight like some strange tropical fungus.
“Where were you planning to use that?” I asked, pointing to the lamp. And then I braced myself, hoping that the answer wouldn’t be “In your living room, dear.”
“Good heavens,” Mother exclaimed. “You really didn’t think I’d use that on a lamp!”
“Isn’t that usually what one does with lamp shades?”
“But not one this vile,” Mother said, recoiling from the lamp shade, as if the possibility of using it for interior decoration was a new and profoundly disturbing notion.
“Then why are you buying it?”
“For my costume, dear,” she said. She placed the lamp shade on her head and struck a pose. The lamp shade was so huge that it dwarfed her slender figure. She really did look like a tall floor lamp afflicted with the ugliest of all possible shades.
“Oh, I see,” I said, trying to sound merely enthusiastic rather than profoundly relieved. “Is Dad going as a lamp, too?”
“We didn’t think it quite suited,” she said. “He’s wearing Eric’s old warped skis and going as a rocking chair.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “You always think of the most unusual costumes.”
Mother beamed at that. And it wasn’t a lie, either. How nice to have reached the age where I found my parents’ enthusiasm for wearing outlandish costumes endearing; as a child, of course, it had been only one of many reasons I’d found them mortally embarrassing.
“How’s it going?” Michael asked, appearing in front of me instead of a customer. I glanced over and saw that Mrs. Fenniman and Rob were helping the next customer drag a small mountain of boxes over to my table. I took a deep breath.
“We’re getting there,” I said, nodding at the large pile of sales receipt carbons on the table.
“How about the sleuthing?” he asked, in an undertone.
“Well, it obviously hasn’t been going anywhere for the last several hours.”
“If you needed to get away from the sale, you should have told me,” he exclaimed.
“There’s nothing more I can do before sundown anyway,” I said. “But if you’d care to help me with a surveillance this evening.”
“I would be delighted,” he said, with a bow. “Who are we tailing?”
“Carol McCoy,” I said.
“The grieving widow?”
“She’s not grieving,” I said. “She’s probably celebrating Gordon’s demise, and she may have caused it.”
“Then I dislike her on principle.”
“Because she might be a murderer?”