“Figured it would,” he said sagely.
“So which is your real job?” I asked.
“Oh, this here’s just temporary,” he confided to me as we waited. “Normally, see, I take vacation days to work the Market, but the guy who was supposed to be working your courtroom today—Sam Dow? He had to take some personal leave ’cause a water pipe in his camper van sprang a leak and he had to wait in for the plumber, so I took Sam’s place till he could get back.”
“He lives in a camper van?” Heather asked.
“Oh, no, Sam’s bunking in with a bunch of us Market bachelors for the week, but he didn’t just rent out his house this year, he’s rented out his camper, too.”
Since the elevators seemed to be taking their own sweet time, I said, “Market bachelors?”
“Yeah. There’s six of us with houses over near Oak Hollow. Three or four bedrooms from when our kids were growing up. During Market, we can rent ’em to the buyers for three thousand apiece. Our wives go to the beach or go visit relatives and five of us guys squeeze in with whoever’s turn it is to put us all up. Normally, see, Sam sleeps in his camper, but this year, what with him renting it, too, there’s seven of us bunched up at Marvin’s. That many makes it a little hard.”
“Crowded bathrooms?” I asked sympathetically.
“Oh, that don’t bother guys. No, ma’am, it’s the poker. See, poker’s best with five guys. Six is stretching it, and seven? Takes too long to go around the table with bets and if you try anything fancier than five-card stud, you run out of cards. Okey-dokey, here’s your elevator.”
While the car emptied out, I asked Tomlinson to hang around the area for a while. “The little girl’s name is Lynnette and I’m supposed to be baby-sitting. If she comes down before we do, would you hold on to her for me?”
“What about her grandmother?”
“That’s not her grandmother.”
“But yes, please hold on to her, too,” Heather said as we entered the elevator.
Amiably, Tomlinson promised that he’d do what he could.
The car stopped at each floor but for every two that got off, three more wanted on and we were still quite crowded when we finally reached five.
Century Furniture Industries seemed to take up most of the fifth floor.
“I’m sorry,” said a company employee at the entrance when confronted by this new deluge of potential customers, most of whom seemed to be decorators and interior designers, “but there’s a half-hour wait for a representative if you wish to view our galleries.”
While others drifted over to hear the mini-lecture on how Century’s state-of-the-art robotics could turn out a perfect copy of a fifteenth-century refectory table from a Spanish monastery, I asked the employee if he’d noticed a small girl and an eccentrically dressed woman.
The man shook his head with a rueful smile. “We’ve been so swamped today I might not have noticed an ostrich in a tutu if it was wearing a buyer’s badge.”
But he took pity on my obvious anxiety and waved me in.
I left Heather by the entrance to keep an eye out for them.
“Take your time,” she said, scribbling on her notepad. ”This is really sort of neat. They buy an antique table for five thousand, use a robot to reproduce every wormhole, scratch, or gouge mark and then sell the reproductions for eighteen hundred a pop. You know something? I may actually get a real article here after all.”
I cautioned her not to get so caught up in robotically reproduced wormholes that she would miss Lynnette and Savannah.
Despite my admonition to Heather McKenzie, the Century collection was so stunning that I was in danger of forgetting why I was there myself. There was dignity with touches of whimsy, there was an impeccable attention to detail that shrieked quality, and there were so many people in the long galleries that it was easier to look at furniture than scan for Savannah—especially since a lot of the upholstery was in muted spring neutrals that would camouflage her layers of pastel chiffon.
I found myself coveting a massive couch, a solid cherry serpentine sideboard, a bombe-based armoire, an eight-foot-tall highboy.
And then it hit me: these pieces were proportioned for ten-foot ceilings and rooms with twenty-foot-long walls.
Everything was too upscale and too scaled up for me. Even if I could afford to buy a few pieces, they’d look squashed in any house of mine.
A few feet away, as if to underline how hopelessly I was out of it, a high-powered blonde dressed in brown linen and shiny gold cuff bracelets imperiously waved away the fabric swatches that a Century representative was trying to show her.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a voice which held no regret, “but as far as
The representative immediately laid those swatches aside and reached for another set, and for a silly moment I pictured flocks of amorphous little puffy chenilles keeling over in mortification before the interior decorator’s scornful pronouncement.
With my furniture envy now in check, I skimmed through the galleries that, altogether, must have covered several thousand square feet. I turned a corner and there ahead of me was a head of blonde hair pulled back in a French braid. I quickened my pace till I was sure it was Drew Patterson, then called her name.
She glanced around and seemed surprised to see me. “Hey, Deborah. Enjoying the Market? Where’s Lynnette?”
“I was hoping maybe you’d seen her,” I said and quickly explained how I’d lost her. “I just don’t understand how she even knows Savannah well enough to go running after her like that. Dixie sounded as if last night was the
