Page 37 of A December to Remember
“Come on, then, let’s crack on. We might even find the strongbox before Maggie is finished with Joe.”
“Do you have to be quite so cheery?” Simone asked, wincing. “Your voice is like knitting needles being poked into my ears.”
Star was unperturbed by her sister’s mood. “Ooh, speaking of knitting needles, I left the key to the shop in the hanging basket for Duncan. He’s so nice, isn’t he? And so clever! Imagine knowing so much about antiques; it’s such a broad subject. He must have a brain like an encyclopedia. Not like me, scatterbrained and clueless.”
“You are neither of those things, you simply choose not to apply yourself. He does seem very nice. Will the juggler be jealous of you making gooey eyes at the appraiser?”
“The juggler? Oh, you mean Florin. No, he’s back with the circus; we decided to just be friends. I didn’t want a long-distance relationship, and he’s got an on-off thing going with a unicyclist.”
“I am baffled by your life.”
“Thanks.”
“I need fried food and lots of it. I’m heading to Betty’s. You coming?”
“No thanks, I already had a green smoothie.”
“That sounds disgusting.”
“It was.”
They parted ways, and Simone followed the scent of bacon down the street like a woman possessed.
Star pushed thedoor open, calling, “Hello! Duncan, are you here?”
“Good morning!” came a deep voice from the back of the shop.
“It’s only me, Star. So, apparently the strongbox, which is somewhere on the property, holds your ledger and the answers to all our questions.”
She heard Duncan laugh softly. “Like an oracle?”
“Yes, though it only answers questions in relation to the winter solstice.”
“Shame,” came Duncan’s disembodied voice. “A box that contains the answers toallquestions would be worth a lot of money.”
She found him sitting in the same cracked leather armchair that she had been slouched in last night. He was turning a rather pretty glass vase carefully in his hands. A pair of reading glasses balanced low on his nose. His suit was neatly pressed, jacket buttons undone to reveal a crisp white shirt and a tie so tightly knotted, it made Star pull at the neck of her knitted rainbow sweater. Duncan was the studious type. He probably called his mother regularly and took flowers whenever he visited his nan. He would likely never have lived in a squat or taken drugs or been cautioned by the police for chaining himself to a tree. One thing she knew for sure: he was out of her league.
“This is Lalique,” he said, continuing to admire the vase, as though this should mean something to her.
“Is that good?”
His lips twitched as though he wanted to smile. She could feel him taking the measure of her. “It is good,” he replied. “Lalique glassware is very sought-after, especially antique pieces like this.”
“Cool.” She wanted to ask how much it was worth but didn’t want to seem crass. Luckily, Duncan was pleased enough with his find that he volunteered the information.
“This piece would probably fetch around six hundred pounds at auction, more if you had the right collectors on the day.”
She swallowed hard and tried to look casual and wondered if they had any more Lalique glass hiding in plain sight. Her mind rewound to the old glasses they’d used to throw back whisky shots last night and she hurried into the kitchenette to rinse them out.
“Is there anything you’d like me to do to help?” she called as she sloshed soapy water around the sticky remnants of last night’s frivolity.
“Um, well, I suppose you could gather together any pieces you know to be collectors’ items.”
That rather stymied her offer since she really had no idea what was worth collecting; it all looked old and a bit grubby to her.
“I don’t think I’d be much help in that department,” she admitted as she dried the glasses. “But I am excellent at cleaning silver. My dad used to get us to do it when we were kids. It’s surprisingly satisfying.”
“That would be helpful. I’ll need to photograph everything for my records, and it would be better if things were clean.”
