Flying Solo(39)

She got settled with Nick and June out back on the deck about an hour before Daisy was set to get there. When they all had drinks in their hands and the sun was low, she explained it to them in as much detail as possible: how she’d concluded that Dot might have known Kittery, but how Matt had shot her down with the appraisal that said it was some kind of dime-store piece that circulated in the aughts and was sold at the airport, which she now understood was a detail added by a skilled jackass who knew it was embarrassing to like airport stuff.

And then she recounted her call to the auction house and the series of revelations that had led her to conclude that Matt wanted the duck and knew she didn’t want to part with it, so he had faked a document that would not only convince her to give it to him but make her feel like a fool for thinking it might be important. “And,” as she said, “just as he expected me to, I got so embarrassed that I let him walk off with it.” Just saying it still pinked up her cheeks.

Nick exhaled in a low whistle. It was distractingly sexy. Of course, everything he did seemed distractingly sexy now, for which she knew he couldn’t be blamed, but on some level, it seemed like it had to be willful. How could such a thing be an accident? He had to know he was doing it. She briefly wondered if she was doing anything he found distractingly sexy, but such inquiries were very much beside the point. “So do you think this means he knows it really is worth something?”

“Well, that’s the question, right?” Laurie said. “Why would he go to all this trouble if he wasn’t pretty confident he could sell it for more than fifty bucks? That wouldn’t really make sense. So he knows something about it, or he thinks he does.” Just then, a text from Daisy rang out. I’m out front.

When Laurie opened the door, Daisy was there, still in her Captain America shirt, but beside her was a young woman with short blond hair, wearing a white tank top, camo pants, and black sneakers. “Hey, Daisy,” Laurie said with a smile. “I’m so glad you could come.”

Daisy pointed to the woman next to her. “This is Melody. Thank you for inviting her to come along so I didn’t have to come alone and trust you not to turn me into a lamp.”

Laurie smiled. “Happy to have you both. Nice to meet you, Melody. If anything, I’m trying to get rid of lamps, so you’re very safe. Follow me through here, we’re on the deck.” On the way through the kitchen, Laurie grabbed an extra chair, and something about the extra chair pleased her. The act of making room made the house seem full, like she was transitioning from having friends over to hosting something.

When they were all settled outside (with wine for Daisy, fizzy water for Melody), she took a breath. “So. Daisy, I am dying to talk to you about your boss.” Once again, she ran through the story, and Daisy not only didn’t look surprised, but nodded several times in the way you would if someone was describing a movie you’d already seen. Which, in a way, maybe Laurie was.

When she was finished, Daisy and Melody exchanged a look. “Based on what I know,” Daisy said, “this checks out. He’s one of those guys where you always have questions he can’t answer, you know? Where did this thing go, why does this angry lady keep calling, why did this person think you had an appointment when you say you didn’t?” Daisy refilled her wine from the bottle on the table. “People get mad, it happens. But with him, it’s constant. It’s the most WTF job I’ve ever had.”

“There’s stuff he doesn’t keep in the store, right?” June asked. “I feel like he wouldn’t put the really expensive stuff out if he’s not just selling it on the level.”

“Right,” Daisy said. “He’s got lots of stuff he holds back, looking for particular buyers or waiting to sell to particular places. Your duck is a good example. He wouldn’t put it on the shelf with an eighty-thousand-dollar price tag or whatever. He could go to Wesson & Truitt and auction it through them. But if it’s shady, he’ll probably go to somebody privately.”

“I just feel like he gave me such a hard sell,” Laurie said. “He came over here in his band shirts—”

Daisy and Melody both cackled. “I call him Captain Lilith Fair,” Melody said. “I bet he’s been wearing a supposedly feminist shirt every time you’ve seen him.”

“Other than The Decemberists, which he was wearing when I met him.”

Daisy nodded. “You said something that made him think the feminism was going to work on you.”

“He seemed really, really nice,” Laurie said. She pointed at her friend. “June wanted me to ask him out!”

“Hey, I didn’t know,” June said. “He was cute.”

“Well, you should be glad you didn’t ask him out, because he’s a complete jackwagon.” Daisy settled back in her chair. “The first thing he told me about himself was that he was thirty-six and he wanted to be a multimillionaire by the time he was forty. I was like, ‘By buying an antiques store?’?”

“It does seem like the long way to get there,” Nick said.

“Apparently, he’d read an article that said Maine was a hot region for tourism and had a lot of potential.” She pulled down the finger-quotes around “potential” in the way you do only when contempt is running hot in your veins. “He showed me this newsletter from some business asshole that said if you go to a distressed area—that’s what it said, a ‘distressed area’—you can buy cheap and soak both locals and tourists by getting into used stuff. The locals would sell you junk for cheap, and the tourists would buy it.”