Stalking Throckmorton

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4Wilbur Woodside was dusting a display case in the old grocery store Monday afternoon when he saw Throckmorton walk by and head toward the Coffee Cup Café. Kind of late for lunch. That made it seem mighty odd. So was the display case—it’d been a freezer, but it hadn’t worked in decades. It didn’t need to, not since he’d turned the place into an antique store. It hadn’t been much of a grocery store. He’d seen 7-Elevens with more floor space.

He rubbed his chin as Throckmorton entered the café. Everybody in town knew Gert would be settling down for her afternoon nap. Locals with any sense didn’t interrupt her beauty sleep just to chit-chat.

Throckmorton was carrying an envelope. His hands had been empty when he’d crossed the street with Al. Put it all together, and Wilbur had a little mystery.

A short, bald, high-school dropout, Wilbur had a talent for turning little mysteries into tidy profits. It was especially gratifying when he extracted those profits from the hides of men who thought themselves his betters. Toward that end, he always wore dusty green work pants and worn work shoes. Together with his customary bland expression, it gave people the impression they were talking to a friendly dullard, someone easily fleeced.

Although he sold anything from cattle and farms to antiques, the natives called him a horse trader. In rural-speak, that meant he could’ve been a used car salesman if he ever turned honest. No one held their breath.

A dollar was a dollar, so locals scoured garages, attics, and abandoned barns for anything covered by cobwebs, dust, and bird crap. They’d haul in whatever they found for Wilbur’s inspection. He’d attach a price tag and an antique, collectible, or objet d’art was born. The locals gathered that objet d’art was French for junk.

A bell jingled, the door closed, and Marty Schmidt, a tall, skinny guy with a weathered face leaned on the display case. He wore patched jeans, a short-sleeved shirt that had seen better days, and had a long stem of bromegrass in his mouth. “Mornin’, Wilbur. I got a load of antiques in my pickup out front.”

Wilbur followed him out the door. They stopped at a beat-up 1989 Dodge Ram parked in front of the store.

Hands on his hips, Wilbur frowned and shook his head. He hoped Marty hadn’t noticed that he’d glanced at the truck but inspected its cargo. “I don’t buy old trucks. Park this piece of junk somewhere else. It’ll give my store a bad name.”

“The truck’s cherry, but I’m selling what’s in the back.”

Wilbur stepped closer to the back of the truck. If Marty could call this rolling piece of crap cherry, it’d be interesting to see what he’d call an antique. He pretended to ignore the white porcelain crown and an empty wooden crate next to it in the pickup’s bed. “12 4oz Lith Tins, Standard Oil of New Jersey” was stamped on the crate. The crown was an ornament from a Standard Oil gas pump of the 1930s. A phone call would get him three hundred for the crown and the old crate. Four harness hames sat buried under other stuff. Hames were curved wooden and brass parts of a harness that buckled onto the collar. The wood was weathered, and the brass balls tarnished to a blue green. Probably came from old show harnesses. Slap “antique” and “verdigris” on the tags, and he’d get fifty a pair. He looked up verdigris on the internet the first time he heard the term. It struck him as a damned fancy word for brass that needed polishing.

The rest of the stuff in the truck should bring a hundred dollars. Two hundred if he called it objet d’art. Some fools would buy anything if it had a name that sounded French.

He turned to Marty, shook his head, and tried to look disappointed. “Marty, Marty, everything with cobwebs on it ain’t an antique. A layer ’a dust don’t mean somethin’s valuable, and I’m not gonna buy everything you bring me that’s covered with bird s**t, even if ya squeezed it out of your pet rooster yourself. Now move your truck.”

“Okay. Whatever you want,” Marty said with a shrug and acted as though he was searching the front pockets of his jeans for the truck’s keys.

Damn, Marty, Wilbur cursed to himself. Marty was getting too good at this. Wilbur had seen the key in the truck’s ignition switch. “Ya don’t deserve it, but I’ll take the whole load off your hands for fifty bucks if you move the truck pronto.”

“Seven hundred.”

Wilbur pretended to stagger backwards. “Good God Almighty! Do I look like I was born yesterday?” Wilbur looked up and down the block. The sidewalks were empty, but what the hell. “People are lookin’ at your truck. I want it outta here. I’ll give you two-fifty if you move it quick.”

“Five-fifty.”

They settled on $450 for the load.

“Bring the stuff in,” said Wilbur. “I ain’t cartin’ it in myself for that price.” He stalked into his store, trying to look angry. Best guess? He’d profit $350 to $400 on the deal. Not bad for five minutes of work, plus another hour on the phone later.

With Marty’s load tucked in his storeroom, Wilbur got back to Throckmorton. Why the devil was he dropping in on Gert in the afternoon? Throckmorton opened his office in Rockburg two years ago. That made him a newcomer by Rockburg standards. Maybe he didn’t know Gert’s habits, but he’d been in there quite a while.

He’d never done business with Throckmorton; in fact, he was sure Throckmorton avoided him. That wasn’t unusual. Some people acted as though they’d soil their precious reputations if they got near him.

The way the locals responded to the guy’s name amused Wilbur. Most of the town called him Throckmorton, not Chris. It was a point of civic pride. Every town had a Chris, maybe three or four, but damned if anybody knew of another town around here with a Throckmorton. Rockburg had little going for it, so the natives clung to anything unique about the town. That pretty much limited them to the abandoned brewery, that blasted whistle, and Throckmorton.

Wilbur had been in a bar in Westland when a local blowhard went on a rant about its wonderful new high school. Had a swimming pool and room for four hundred students. When the jerk called Rockburg High a dilapidated antique with room for only two hundred, Art Schroeder, a guy from Rockburg sitting next to the braggart, took offense. He stood straight, raised his eyebrows, and jabbed a finger in the bastard’s chest. “Yeah, every two-bit town has a school, but Rockburg’s got a Throckmorton. Ya got one of those in this pissant burg?”

Art had finished his beer in a gulp, slammed the empty glass onto the bar, and stomped out of the tavern before anybody could ask him what in hell a Throckmorton was. Wilbur stayed put on his stool and nursed his beer while the Westland locals bickered over who’d won the argument. He had made a point to remember the incident because he’d have to be careful if he ever traded horses with Art.

He scratched the stubble on his chin. Good chance he could make a profit keeping an eye on Throckmorton. He’d talked to Al, picked up an envelope, and hustled down to the Coffee Cup where he spent quite a while with Gert before driving off in his car. Whatever they talked about was important. Gert wouldn’t have put up with anything else during her nap hour. He’d done it once and the old buzzard had ordered him out, cussing like a marine.