Out front stood a FedEx box. So you could see everything from here, if you knew what to look for. Hmm. I jumped back in the van and hightailed it to the mall.
The Stamp Fox was a tiny, gold-wallpapered shop that resembled a fifties-era jewelry store. Electrified candles from an oversize fixture reflected in the brass-lined glass cases. Inside each case, handwritten envelopes with gloriously colored stamps - covers with frankings, to the connoisseurs - begged to be studied. Maybe stamp- collecting was like riding a bike; you never forgot how. I sighed, and wondered what had happened to my painstakingly collected box of glassine-enveloped stamps. I’d left it behind at home when I’d gone off to boarding school. Probably been eaten by mice in the attic.
The shop owner was out, according to his overweight, pale assistant, whose name tag informed me he was Steve Byron, Philatelist. This Byron, whose only romantic inclination had to do with postal history, had a round face to match his round body. He was about twenty-two, and had neatly waved short brown hair and small, colorless eyes behind glasses as thick as bottle-bottoms. The Michelin Man as Stamp Guy. Byron finished locking a glass case, parted his thick lips in a hopeful smile, and waddled toward me.
“Collector?” he asked cheerfully. “Looking for something in particular? We’ve got a brand-new estate sale just in. You’re the first. Top-flight stuff.”
I blurted out, “I’m Francesca Chastain, and I’m a thematic collector,” before I had a chance to think. I was careful not to touch my purse, as I’d heard that showed a subconscious desire not to spend money. Instead, I put a voracious gleam in my eye and tried to think of a nonexistent theme for my obsolete hobby. “I’m the first to see a new set of covers?” I asked greedily. “Do you take Visa?”
Steve Byron gurgled with happiness. “Oh, yes. Your collecting theme is … ?”
I gulped. I was looking for news of the Mauritius Queen Victoria stamp theft, and some indication that Sara Beth O’Malley had come back from Vietnam with an agenda that included more than fixing her teeth. Still, I did not want to appear to be the snoop I actually was. I swallowed and tried to think how to mask my intentions while weaseling information out of Byron.
“A picture of any place or person beginning with the letter V.” To Byron’s look of puzzlement, I waved a hand in the air, a la Eliot. “Uh … Vatican City. Venezuela. Venice. Frankings with pictures of … Queen Victoria.” Steve Byron’s fleshy mouth fell open. “And don’t ask me if I have a Penny Black. I don’t. I’ll buy one from you, though.” Almost as an afterthought, I added, “Stamps from Vietnam.”
“I didn’t catch your name,” stammered Byron. “Francesca Chastain. Do you have any pieces to I show me?”
He licked his lips. “We don’t have anything with Victoria. We did, but they’re gone.” He hesitated. “I do have a couple of covers showing Venice, from a time when there was an international effort to save the city from sinking. And I’ve got one from Vietnam. I’ll show them to you.”
The first case he led me to displayed a cover from Tunisia depicting a mosaic from Venice’s Saint Mark’s Cathedral. I pretended to show interest. The second cover, though, stunned me. The label indicated that it was from 1973. It depicted a stylized lion, symbol of Saint Mark and, by extension, Venice. The printed words on the stamp were in French: Pour Venise UNESCO. This cover was not from France, however, much less Italy. It was from Cambodia, or, as stated below the lion: Republique Khmcre.
“Where’d you get this one?” I demanded, too sharply. He was taken aback. “From the same collector who sold us the one from Vietnam. An American serviceman was stationed over there in the seventies and collected stamps. He came home, became an alcoholic, and was in pretty bad shape when he stumbled into our showroom last fall. He sold his collection to help pay his deductible for thirty days of treatment at a facility.” Byron moved to another case. “The Vietnam stamp he sold us is here. It’s from ‘72, from what was then still called South Vietnam. Shows reconstruction after the Tet Offensive. Would you like to see either one of them?”
“Could I talk to the veteran who sold you these covers?” It was a long shot, but maybe he knew something about a local woman who’d turned up dead … if indeed the “veteran” story was true.
Byron shook his head. “He died. He got out of treatment, got plastered, and drove his car the wrong way on I-seventy. A tractor-trailer obliterated him.”
“What was his name?”
“Trier. Marcus Trier. His family went to our church, but they moved to Florida. Why do you ask? Did you know Marcus?”
“Just … wondering if we have a mutual friend. I cursed silently and tried to think what to do next. I was till set to visit the stamp agent in Golden, to check out .the long possibility that the stolen Queen Victoria stamps had been fenced there. For that expedition, though, I needed something in particular. “Do you have a current catalog of your items for sale? With prices and pictures?”
“Not quite current, but I’ll get you what we have.”
Byron trundled off. After a moment, he returned with a pamphlet-size catalog. “Only some of our inventory is pictured. The reproductions are in color, though.” He lipped through the pages. “Prices are from three months ago. Only a few would have changed. Oops, here’s some of the Victoria stuff.” He picked up a black marker. “I’ll just cross it out, since we don’t have it anymore.”
“No!” I shouted. Startled, the poor boy almost dropped his pen. “I want prices for everything.” To his look If surprise, I gushed apologetically, “I’m really a passionate collector.?
“Guess so.” He handed me the catalog, unhappy not to be making a sale. “We can take your Visa over the phone, once you decide what you want.”
I thanked him and backed out of the store. I had ninety minutes before I was due at the auction agent’s house in Golden, and in that interval I had to pick up a few things, find Fox Meadows Elementary, and try to get some information out of Connie Oliver. Worse yet, my stomach was growling on a day that held no lunchbreak. The last emergency truffle in my purse was not going to do the trick.
On the other hand, just ten steps away was that Italian ice cream store… .
Ten minutes later, I was clutching a bag with newly bought school paste, scissors, and blank paper, and diving into a sugar cone with a triple scoop of dark chocolate gelato. Fox Meadows Elementary, the gelato-scooper had informed me, was a mere fifteen minutes away. The creamy chocolate melted in my mouth as I balanced the cone in my left hand and piloted the van with my right - no easy task. I finally came to the turnoff of a new, winding road that led to the elementary school. I crammed the rest of the cone into my mouth - ecstasy! - and hopped out of the van.
Connie Oliver had just finished testing the vision of the fourth-graders. At least, that was what she said when I introduced myself as Francesca Chastain, my nom de jour. Nurse Oliver was of medium height, with makeup covering remnants of freckles in a plain face. I judged her to be about fifty. She greeted me and then self- consciously touched her stiff, frosted-to-cover-the-gray hair. I said I was doing a newspaper piece on how Vietnam had affected graduating classes from high schools, colleges, and nursing schools.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said flatly, as she led the way out of the stuffy, cabbage-smelling cafeteria to a bench overlooking the playground. The air was cold, but our seat in the sun was warm enough. The children, happy to be out of their classrooms, shrieked and chased each other through the swings. Connie Oliver put on her sunglasses and fixed her eyes on the playground. “We’ve never had a reunion,” she said finally. “It would be too sad. Our class was small, fifteen in all. Right after graduation, two died on a helicopter mission into the foothills, freak snowstorm kind of thing. Later that year, another died in a car crash, and one more died in Vietnam. The rest of us didn’t want to get together. It would have been too sad.”
“Who died in Vietnam?”
“Aren’t you going to take notes?”
“If I need to remember something.”
Connie shrugged. She kept her mouth closed for a long time, and I feared she’d changed her mind about talking to me. Finally she said, “Her name was Sara Beth O’Malley. She was with a MASH unit in a valley. It was right before the end of the war. Her unit was overrun and she died … “
I said, “I’m sorry.”
Connie looked at me, then returned her gaze to the playground. I knew I hadn’t sounded sincere, so I waited a few moments before continuing.
“Did you all get together for… the funeral service when they shipped Miss O’Malley’s body back? To commemorate her belonging to your class?”
Connie Oliver tugged her coat tightly around her and shook her head. “The Army wasn’t able to retrieve her
