Beauty to Die For and Other Mystery Shorts Page 7

  “Oh, my!” Archie uttered when Gnarly halted behind the woman who suddenly stopped to stare at a white gown encrusted with diamonds. They all stopped so fast that she and Mac collided and almost knocked over the mannequin.

  His eye on the bird, Gnarly barked at the woman in the hat.

  Annoyed by the barking dog, several of the patrons glared at the couple trying to shush the dog.

  The gowns on three mannequins was causing as much of a ruckus as the barking dog. One gown was red, the other was blue, and the middle was white mixed with other brilliant sparkling colors. The lights around the mannequins caught and sparked off of the jewels that did not appear to have a uniform size or shape.

  All three gowns were more than beaded. Each of the gowns was ornamented in jewels. The red in what appeared to be rubies. The blue one in sapphires, the white gown in the center was done up in diamonds, emeralds, topaz, and a variety of other jewel colors. The sign in front of the white gown described it as the showcase costume worn by Celeste Taylor during her run on Broadway in the mid-sixties. She had kept the gown, which was designed personally for her by a top designer.

  “Gorgeous,” Archie said in awe.

  Every guest passing by stopped to gaze upon the gowns with awe while the dog at his master’s feet whined and simpered at Mac while casting longing looks at the bird lady as if to say, “I want that bird. Can you get it for me please?”

  “Gnarly, quiet,” Mac ordered the dog while shooting embarrassed grins at the gathering crowd of shoppers.

  “Your dog has good taste,” said an elderly lady who was making no pretense of admiring the red gown.

  “Yes, they are beautiful,” a young woman with her hair done up in a twist and a serious expression on her face said. “Unfortunately, the gems on these gowns are very good imitations. They are worthless. However, they are valuable in that Celeste wore them on Broadway in her play Sparkle for several years.”

  “Can you imagine how valuable these gowns would be if the jewels were real diamonds?” Archie asked Mac.

  “They do look very real,” the business woman explained. “But I assure you, they’re fake, as is most of Celeste Taylor’s jewelry and artwork, I’m afraid.” She offered her hand to Mac. “Brenda Collins. I’m the appraiser hired by the estate to assess Ms. Taylor’s assets.” She glanced down at Gnarly who was crying loudly. “Is something wrong with your dog?”

  “Yes,” Mac answered.

  “Mac, can’t you make him stop?” Archie begged.

  “He listens to you more than he does me.” Mac snapped, “Gnarly, shut up. Can’t you see it’s a fake bird?”

  As if to beg for his master to get the bird for him, the German shepherd gazed first at the bird, and then at Mac and then back at the bird lady a few feet away. He uttered a whimper from the pit of his stomach that seemed to go on forever.

  “I’m not getting that bird for you,” Mac said. “So just forget it.”

  Gnarly hung his head.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Archie suggested. “Maybe if we get out of the bird’s sight it will get out of his mind.”

  They dragged Gnarly into the living room where they found Catherine and Ben. She rushed up to them with two paddles that had numbers painted on the flat surfaces. “Okay, we’re all registered.” She thrust one of the paddles into Mac’s free hand. Seeing an apprehensive expression cross his face, she asked, “Have you ever bid at an auction before?”

  “No.”

  “It’s easy,” Ben explained. “If you see something you want, you hold up the paddle so the auctioneer can see your number and accept the bid. You don’t even have to say anything. Just hold up the paddle.”

  “I don’t see anything I want to bid on.” Mac saw that his paddle was number 702.

  “Gnarly does.” Archie pointed at the dog staring at the blue bird dancing on top of the head of its owner going into the room where the auction was being held.

  The living room of the mansion had been cleared out and rows of chairs set up in front of a desk and riser for the auctioneer and other people running the auction. At a small desk by the edge of the stage, a dark haired man with silver at his temples was on a phone.

  The two couples found four seats together toward the back of the room in order to keep Gnarly down and quiet.

  Ben explained about the man on the phone. “They’re accepting phone-in bids. The buyer is on the phone until his item comes up. He casts his bid via the phone operator.”

  “How do they know what’s here?” Mac wanted to know.

  Catherine answered, “Everything was photographed and listed online. It had the catalog number and starting bid.” Shushing them, she noted that the seats were filling up and the audience was becoming quiet as the auctioneer approached the stage.

  Noticing that she clutched the second paddle and not Ben, Mac wondered if she had seen something listed online that she had her eye on.

  On the other side of the stage set-up, a woman dressed in a pant suit with her red hair twisted up in a bun was eyeing the crowd while conferring with a man clutching a clipboard. Noticing a resemblance between her and Celeste Taylor, Mac wondered if she was the unfortunate heir. He considered his suspicion confirmed when he noticed her chewing on a thumbnail while looking anxiously at the crowd taking their seats.

  Mac imagined how many family heirlooms to which she had formed an emotional attachment had been put up for auction in order to settle the estate.

  For a man who doesn’t like shopping, Mac found the auction more enjoyable than a shopping trip. Instead of trudging among merchandise, items were brought to the front of the stage, with a couple of minutes for potential buyers to inspect each treasure before returning to their seat in order to allow the bidding to start.

  As Mac had guessed, Catherine did have her eye on a set of Wedgewood Christmas herringbone china with gold trim that had once belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. While his wife bid over a thousand dollars against a young woman at the front of the audience, Ben was more interested in a man in a suit up toward the front studying the catalog and the man on the phone at the desk.

  Mac didn’t think he could be so laid-back about writing a check for over a thousand dollars for a bunch of old plates, even if they were trimmed in real gold and had once belonged to a former first lady.

  Plates are plates. You eat off them. At over a hundred years old, they’re old plates to boot. Who in their right mind pays over a thousand dollars for used plates?

  Archie was oohing and ahhing over each item as it went pass. But, when Mac asked if she wanted him to bid on something for her, she would decline. Such was Archie. While she enjoyed the finer things in life, he had found that she was not a big shopper, which was one of the things he liked about her.

  Appearing to be bored with the affair, Gnarly fell asleep on top of Mac’s feet at the end of the row next to the aisle … until the bird lady entered the room.

  As the bird lady passed the sleeping dog, he awoke with a start and sat up.

  At this time, the mannequin donning the diamond rhinestones was brought up to the stage.

  The auctioneer announced into the mike, “We now have Celeste Taylor’s diamond gown worn onstage in the wedding scene in Sparkle when she appeared on Broadway.” He went on to read the catalog number which was drowned out by Gnarly’s barking at the blue bird in the chair in front of him.

  The man on the phone covered one ear while listening with the other.

  The man in the suit in the front row was sitting at attention. While shooting a glance back at them to settle the dog threatening to jump up to snag the fake feathered fowl, he thrust his paddle up in the air.

  “We have a bid of five thousand dollars,” the auctioneer announced. “Do we have fifty-five hundred?”

  “Gnarly, quiet,” Mac hissed while jerking on the leash.

  Crying, Gnarly laid down with his eyes on the hat up above him.

  When the man on the phone raised the bid to fifty-five hu
ndred, the man in the front seat countered with six thousand, to which the call in bidder upped it to seven thousand.

  Ben suddenly found things interesting.

  Gnarly refused to be thwarted in his capture of the bird. With his eyes on the prey, he continued to cry. His ribs quivered in his frustration at it being so close while he was unable to touch it. It danced in front of him every time the woman turned her head to make him even more anxious.

  Thinking that Gnarly’s anxiety would be eased if he was unable to see it, Mac lifted the paddle to block the dog’s view of it.

  “We have a bid of twelve thousand from number seven-oh-two.”

  Instead of quieting down, Gnarly stepped over to look around the paddle to continue gazing up at the bird. Letting out a long painful whine, he pawed at the back of the Bird Woman’s chair.

  The woman turned her head to cast a perturbed glance at the dog.

  While Catherine tried to pretend not to be with the party with the crying dog, Archie and Ben glanced around to see who had joined in the bidding.

  Casting an angry glance at the new bidder behind him, the man in the front row raised the bid another thousand, to which the phone in bidder raised it to fifteen thousand.

  Meanwhile, Gnarly retaliated to Mac’s lack of action in getting the bird for him by trying to climb into his lap. In the struggle, Mac raised up his hand holding the paddle.

  “Seventeen thousand!” the auctioneer declared. “Seven-oh-two has bid seventeen thousand.”

  The phone in bidder raised the price to eighteen-thousand.

  The bidder in the front row raised it to nineteen-thousand.

  While Gnarly cried out insistently at the blue bird mocking him by showing no intimidation, the two bidders battled it out until the price went up to twenty-five thousand.

  “Since when did you become a fashion critic?” Mac hissed at the dog. Now the bird hat was annoying him as much as it did Gnarly.

  At twenty-nine thousand dollars, the bidder in the front seat dropped out.

  While the auctioneer waited, it went once, it went twice, and Mac raised his paddle to flip the hat off the woman’s head onto the floor in the aisle in front of Gnarly, who pounced on the bird that had been torturing him.

  “We have thirty thousand from number seven-oh-two!”

  Ben and Archie followed the tip of the auctioneer’s fingertip to Mac.

  She grabbed the paddle out of his hand and checked the number painted on it. “You’re number seven-oh-two.”

  But Mac had other matters to contend to.

  With the blue bird in his grasp, Gnarly ripped it from the hat and was trying to eat it.

  With the bird lady screaming bloody murder, Mac grabbed Gnarly in a head lock and extracted the mangled Styrofoam and feathered creature from his jaws to hand them back to its owner. “I’m sorry about your hat. Maybe you can fix it with some glue.”

  “Peasants!” She grabbed her hat and bird and stormed out.

  “Do we have thirty-one thousand for Celeste Taylor’s wedding gown worn in Sparkle?” the auctioneer was asking.

  “You just bid thirty thousand for that dress!” Ben laughed. “’You’ve been bidding on it and you didn’t even know it.”

  “Going twice!”

  Mac felt the blood drain from his face. He froze like a statue in his seat. “Don’t anybody move,” he whispered. “Don’t even breath.”

  Holding his breath, he prayed that one of the other two bidders would cough up another thousand, hundred, ten dollars, dime to make it all go away so that he could have a good laugh about his blunder on the way home.

  Judging by the expression of the bidder eyeing him from the front row, it wasn’t going to happen.

  Mac’s only hope was the phone-in bidder. Desperate, he turned to the man on the phone. Frederick was handing a coffee mug to the operator. With a glance in Mac’s direction, he hung up the phone before taking a sip of his coffee.

  “Going thrice!” The auctioneer announced in a loud voice while pointing across the room at Mac. “Sold to the man with the bird dog!”

  “I saw that you didn’t really mean to bid,” Millicent Taylor, the woman in the pant suit who had been conferring with her lawyer told Mac as he wrote out the check for thirty thousand dollars to complete his purchase of the rhinestone gown.

  “I’m a man, I can take it.” Mac handed her the check.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. “If there was anything—” She turned to the man who she had been conferring with while watching the bidding. “Maybe—” She turned back to Mac. “This is my mother’s attorney, Reginald Patterson.” She turned back to her lawyer. “Everyone saw that it was a mistake …”

  “Millicent, if you take back items then you aren’t going to make enough money to get the estate out of the red.” He flashed his bright white teeth at Mac. “I’m sure, being a businessman, Mr. Faraday, you understand.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Mac didn’t want to admit that he felt sorrier for her selling her belongings. “Maybe my daughter will wear it when she meets some nice man, he passes a background check, and I allow him to get close enough to my daughter for them to get married.”

  “Maybe,” Reginald interjected before Mac could turn away. “Privately, I could take that gown off your hands. Of course, you won’t make back all of your money. I knew Celeste for years and am sorry to say that it was business for us so much that I neglected to get anything to remember her by.”

  “You want her dress?” Mac looked him up and down.

  “Those gowns belong in a museum,” he said. “The Smithsonian. They’re a part of Americana.”

  “If we didn’t need the money so bad to pay Mom’s debts, that’s where I would send them,” Millicent said with teary eyes.

  “Give me a call.” Patterson handed Mac his business card. “We’ll work something out.”

  As disgusted and embarrass as Mac was, his companions were laughing it up a few paces away. His tail high up in the air, wagging away, Gnarly seemed to be enjoying the joke as much as they were.

  The man from the front row made a “psst” noise in Mac’s ear. “Hey, buddy.” He grasped his elbow. “How much do you want for it?”

  Still reeling after paying thirty thousand dollars for a woman’s gown, Mac had to wrap his mind around being offered money to resale it.

  Wait a minute, Mac. I bought it for thirty thousand, even if by accident. That means I need to sell it for more in order to make a profit. Ask for more than thirty thousand.

  Meanwhile, the man in the suit thrust a business card in Mac’s hand. “I might be able to get my client to go up to forty thou.”

  The card read Eli Harris. The address was New York, New York. Seeing that his title was Investment Counselor, Mac took an instant dislike to him.

  This dude came all the way from New York to buy a dress?

  “Would you take forty for it?” He already had his cell phone up against his ear.

  Before Mac could say yes or no, the investment counselor was talking away, explaining that he was talking to the wealthy fan of Celeste Taylor who would give anything for the Sparkle Wedding Gown and stepped away.

  Gee, that’s a ten thousand dollar profit in less than thirty minutes. That was easy.

  Mac was calculating how many thousand it was per ten minutes when Catherine grabbed him from behind by the upper arm and hissed in his ear. “I don’t believe it! I really don’t believe it!”

  “Believe what?” Mac glanced over his shoulder at where Archie and Ben were studying the jewels sown and glued onto the bodice of the gown. They were looking in disbelief at Catherine whose face was pale. “What?”

  “Those aren’t rhinestones. They’re diamonds. Every single stinking one of those is real.”

  “Are you sure?” Mac asked.

  “The appraiser told us that they were fake,” Archie said.

  “I’ve worked with gemstones for over ten years before I got married. I know jewels,” Catherine�
��s voice rose in volume while pointing at the gown. “That gown is covered in real diamonds. It’s got to be worth at least a half a million dollars—if not a million.”

  “Stop the auction!” Millicent Taylor suddenly screamed. She threw out both of her arms while yelling at the top of her voice. “Don’t sell anything else!” She turned to the lawyer at the desk. His mouth was hanging open. “Give everyone back their money until we get another appraiser to examine everything. I knew there was something funny going on. Mom insisted that I was going to be really pleasantly surprised with the estate that she was leaving me—this is not what I expected it to be. That woman tried to rob me!”

  She looked beyond Mac and pointed her finger. “Someone grab her!”

  The doors clanged as Brenda Collins ran from the auction room.

  Mac and Gnarly gave chase through the crowd. In the hallway, Mac heard Gnarly barking while running up the stairs to the second floor of the mansion. At the top of the stairs, Mac heard a door slam. Gnarly was jumping on what appeared to be a bedroom door at the end of the hall.

  Before he could reach the dog, Mac heard a woman’s scream, followed by a chorus of screams from the guests outside as the body of the appraiser tumbled over the verandah railing to land in the courtyard below.

  He threw open the door. Gnarly raced out and jumped up to place his paws on top of the bannister. Below, they saw the body of Brenda Collins sprawled out in a flower bed.

  Archie and Ben knelt next to her body before looking up at Mac. One of the security guards was standing behind them while calling emergency on his radio.

  “What happened?” Ben called up to him.

  “It wasn’t me,” Mac said before recalling that Gnarly was scratching at the bedroom door. Behind him, he saw that the verandah door leading into the bedroom was open. The glass was broken in the window frames. Jewelry boxes and cases were scattered around the room. Doors hung open and empty drawers were pulled out.

  Gnarly sniffed the front of a jewel case and lowered his snout to the floor before trotting out into the hallway.

  Sounding the alarm, Mac ran out onto the verandah and yelled over the side down to Ben and Archie. “It’s a robbery! There’s a bunch of empty jewelry cases up here and each one is empty.”