The Collector
Copyright 2012 by R.D. Byron-Smith
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“Sold! Number 116.”
The auctioneer pointed his gavel my way, nodded briskly, and called for the next lot, as my wife in the metal folding chair beside me peered my way over her eyeglasses. “Why did you bid on that?” Her face had that indignant half-frown it has taken fifty years of marriage to get used to. She didn’t have to say the rest of what she was thinking, but of course did. “We can’t get the car in the garage now.” As she said it she shook her head like a schoolmarm but, this time, didn’t wag her finger at me.
“The box was full of curiosities.” My giddy excitement didn’t stir her sympathy. “Even an old book about the real Holy Grail.”
She grunted further disapproval. “A box of old papers and books? Sheesh.”
I bobbed and weaved, getting to the nub of it, in a weak counter-punch. “It cost me all of two bucks.” I could have presented the math, that it amounted to less than tenth-of-a-percent of my monthly pension check but that would have reopened the wounds of me taking early retirement, ten years ago at sixty two.
The auctioneer started the bidding again and her arm flew straight up.
“What?” I demanded. I was as surprised as she had been indignant.
“I gotta have that big cardboard box of dishes.” Concentrating on the bidding, her voice trailed off with the word dishes, and it was said so softly that I had the sense that she really didn’t want me to hear the word. Her arm went up again, excitedly, countering a higher bid from a slight, nattily dressed man three rows in front of us in the front row.
The vision vividly hit me right away, of the guest bedroom closet packed full of boxes of old dishes, bought and never used. A groan slipped out of me, stupidly, and I felt her patented frown forming on my face. But, before I could say another word, or even moan disapproval, she said crisply: “Spode Buttercup.”
My wife of all these years knew how to shut me up, whether I was whining about sex or complaining about her dish fetish. Yes, the last time she had bought a full service of Spode Buttercup for $485 she ended up selling them to a collector for $5,000. She knew how to shut me up all right, she did.
Several more bids were made but the little man finally outbid her for the dishes, and I said, “Well, maybe he just needed them more.”
She was crestfallen as we left the county warehouse in San Bernardino, where the coroner’s auction of unwanted estate items had taken place. She poked along empty handed toward our car and I carried my box of papers and junk, and put it in the trunk. I must have been feeling particularly guilty. Either, about buying the box of junk or about her losing her dishes because I said, “There’ll be more Spode Buttercups out there, Agnes, and you’ll find them. You always do.” I hugged her and kissed her cheek.
“And Grant Woods,” she smiled at me as she got into our 2000 Subaru, her curly, gray hair as shiny as the afternoon sun. I watched her eyes wrinkle at the temples the way I loved. The Grant Wood remark had been a reference to me once buying a print at a yard sale in near Dana Point Harbor for $17.50, and later learning from the Associated American Artists that it was a real Grant Wood lithograph worth over $3,000.
I started the car and squeezed her hand before backing out of the parking space. We drove back to our desert home in Palm Springs without me telling her what I had really found in the treasure box of old papers during the pre-auction inspection.
***
It was about two weeks later that I got the box of papers out and started going through it more thoroughly. I had its contents strewn about my den when Agnes walked in, asking whether I had any more whites to be washed, holding a pair of white socks with black mud caked on them, saying, “Why can’t you remember to wear shoes outside?” She looked down at me bent-kneed on the floor. “That junk?” She kind of wiggled a hand at the cardboard box and toward the mess of papers and books scattered around it.
“Look at this.” She couldn’t see how excited my eyes were. I handed her an envelope I had taken from inside the box.
I watched her read it. “Joey’s suicide note.” She peered back at me, her face turned sourer than the muddy sock had made it. “Didn’t you have enough of this at the shop?” Her indignant frown hung there so I wouldn’t miss it. She had made a reference to my career in the Orange County, California, Office of Coroner as an investigator for nearly three decades. When I had retired she had given up being a Catholic school teacher. We were supposed to be enjoying life now that we were in our seventies, living here in Palm Springs, in our condo on East Palm Canyon Drive, a mile from Bob Hope’s turtle-shell shaped hillside mansion. I didn’t say anything and watched her open the envelope, with trepidation. I knew she couldn’t resist.
It was empty, and her eyes darted down at me. “Nice April Fool’s prank,” she said, scornfully. I pointed at the beautiful penmanship on the envelope, which looked like calligraphy.
“This was written by somebody older than us,” I guessed. “They don’t teach penmanship like this anymore.”
“Always the investigator,” said Agnes, a little huffily. “Look at this,” she changed the subject, dangling a muddy sock in my face, brushing my nose. “Do you have any more disgusting things like this to wash?”
“But, look at this.” I pushed a scrapbook that wouldn’t close properly her way, but didn’t wait for her to take it, and told her, “It’s all these newspaper stories from the old Los Angeles Herald-Examiner about a murder.”
As if one of her fifth grade pupils had blasphemed the pope, she breathed out in a whisper, “Murder. Wonderful.” She turned to leave the den.
“No, wait, look at this headline. I read it on the first yellowed page glued into the beige scrapbook: “First murder in Marineland’s history.” I started reading the newspaper story to her: “A San Bernardino man was stabbed to death near the dolphin attraction at Marineland last night in the first murder in the aquatic theme park’s storied history.” Agnes gave me that look she does when I belch loudly in restaurants. “No wait,” I implored, reading the second paragraph. “Dan Darrow, 20, of San Bernardino, bled to death after being stabbed by another man who accused Darrow of getting fresh with his girlfriend, Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies reported. The accused stabber was arrested after being found hiding in a Marineland restroom.”
Looking at her face, I felt as if I had just belched. “Willoughby,” Agnes said my name so I knew what was coming was important. “We’ve got Arabs smashing jets into buildings, kids killing teachers and you find this five-and-dime murder of who-knows-who of interest?” Agnes had a biting sarcastic streak that I had learned to leap over, but covet, when aimed at my older sister. Before I could put the “o” after the “n” to ask her to stay and listen to the rest of the news story, she walked out of the den. I read the rest of the Herald-Examiner story silently. “Mr. Darrow had been near the dolphin display with a crowd of about 75 other guests at the park, including his best friend, when he was stabbed in the chest and died, according to the sheriff, while being taken to the hospital in a Marineland van.” I re-read the last paragraph of the story with keen interest: “His eyes just rolled back in his head and he died in my arms as I held him,” said Mr. Darrow’s friend, Joey Maxwell, 20, also of San Bernardino, who rode in the back of the van to the hospital.”