“Tell me about it,” I said, remembering how I’d had to rush to stay with her earlier in the evening.
“I saw her go through a door at the far end of the corridor and I didn’t think to see if I could get out again until it latched tight. But I could hear her rushing on down the steps as if she were late for an appointment and I figured she must know a shortcut out. It was like Alice following the White Rabbit. I don’t know how far down I went, but I think I must have wound up in a sub-sub-basement—really dark and creepy. I called, but she never answered and I started thinking maybe it was pretty dumb to go wandering around the bowels of a deserted building. Except that I knew it wasn’t deserted. That’s what’s so weird about this place. Parts of it are jammed to the gills while other parts are like this.”
I reached the landing, pushed open the door, and we were back in civilization again. Around the corner, a cluster of laughing and chattering sales reps were waiting for a Down elevator. I mashed the Up button and was almost immediately rewarded with an empty car.
“Hey, great idea!” said one of the men. “If we ride up, we can then ride down.”
So many of them piled in with us that we were separated and when I got off at the sixth floor, I expected that she would continue on up. Instead, she pushed her way through and looked at me like a happy, long-haired puppy.
“You know, we didn’t actually get introduced before. I’m Heather McKenzie.”
“Deborah Knott,” I said, as I studied Dixie’s diagram.
Her office wasn’t hard to find. Straight down the hall past Vittorio E’s, Dixie had said.
Vittorio E’s was a large showroom filled with what, for lack of a better term, I would call Italian Provincial. The pieces would have been right at home in the first Victor Emmanuel’s palace. All the rococo couches and tables and chairs had bent—cabriole?—legs and all the exposed wood was either painted an antique ivory or ornately encrusted in gleaming gilt.
What stopped me in my tracks though was a lamp that sat atop a bow-fronted ivory-and-gold chest: the base was a three-foot-long porcelain piece cast in the image and likeness of an eighteenth-century open carriage pulled by four white horses with pink plumes on their heads. The carriage held four porcelain Barbie types in period bouffant wigs and colorful, low-cut dresses. The whole improbable contrivance was topped by a pink silk lampshade shaped like Aunt Zell’s oval roasting pan if you turned it upside down and put a pink fringe around the bottom.
Heather McKenzie giggled. “How would you like to have something like that in your living room?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think there’s a single house in North Carolina that could live up to that lamp, but I’ve got a sister-in-law who would just love it to death.”
On the corner beyond Vittorio E’s was an open gallery that featured what I was learning to call motion furniture, i.e., anything that rocked, reclined, swiveled, tilted, popped up or swung. As we approached, several people seemed to be rocking and swinging, but as we got closer, I saw that Dixie Babcock and another woman were the only real people. The rest of the figures were stuffed dummies that looked like large Cabbage Patch dolls.
“There you are,” said Dixie. She stood up and smoothed the wrinkles from her chic green linen dress. “I was beginning to wonder if I needed to send out a Saint Bernard.”
The other woman stood up, too, and began carrying the dummies inside a lockable area of the gallery.
“Aw, they looked comfortable,” said Heather.
The woman laughed. “We left one of them out last year and somebody carted him off to a party at the Longhorn.”
“No one steals the chairs?” I asked.
She pointed to inconspicuous bolts and chains. “Not yet.”
She held out her hand. “Kelly Crisco.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Dixie and hastily introduced me as an old friend and Market first-timer.
“And this is Heather McKenzie from
“Oh, yes,” said Dixie. “You were with Jay Patterson.”
She leaned forward to look at Heather’s badge more closely. “Are you new to the paper?”
“Actually, I’m a freelancer from the Massachusetts office,” she said, which explained the accent. “They asked me to do some profiles on some of the legends of the Market, and Savannah’s my first choice. They say she originated so many design concepts that have become standard practice. Do you know her?”
“I thought I did, but tonight’s the first time I’ve seen her in ages and I barely recognized her.” Dixie glanced at her watch. “Sorry to break this up, but I’ve got a rough day to-morrow. Pell said he’d be glad to put you up as long as you need, Deborah. Where’re you parked?”
“That’s going to be a bit of a problem,” I said and explained about the mix-up with the totes. “I’ve got Savannah’s fried chicken and she has my purse, car keys, checkbook, cell phone—hey! Wait a minute. You don’t suppose—?”
Dixie grinned. “Worth a try. Wasn’t there a guy last year who had his car stolen and he called up his car phone—”
“Yeah,” said Heather. “And he talked the thief into bringing it back for what the insurance company would have paid him.”
We said goodnight to Ms. Crisco and walked down to Dixie’s phone in the Southern Retail Furnishings Alliance office where I dialed my cell phone.
It took two tries and eight rings before a husky Lauren Bacall voice said, “Hello?”
6
