Shadows at the Fair Read Online Free Page A

checked her watch. Almost four-thirty. An hour and a half to go before the show opened.
    Susan and Harry Findley were still not in their booth. Maggie peeked in. Susan and Harry had diversified this year. In addition to the Art Deco glass and furnishings they usually featured, the Findleys had added some late-nineteenth-century American furniture, and some Japanese and Chinese carvings and prints of the same period. They also had a Chinese temple lion—chimera, she corrected herself—that looked very much like the one she’d seen on Vince’s desk earlier. The booth fit together nicely: late-nineteenth-century Americans had been fascinated with Asia after Commodore Perry’s trips to Japan and his negotiation of the first American-Japanese treaty in 1854. The art brought back from Asia during that period had a heavy influence on early-twentieth-century furnishings.
    Across from the Findleys’ booth the new dealer from Buffalo was unpacking dollies loaded with Colonial kitchen and fireplace equipment. All six feet of him, including his full beard, was dripping.
    It must still be raining.
    “Got lost. Just arrived.” He waved as he noticed Maggie looking his way and raced back toward his van. There was always at least one dealer tucking a final carton under the table covers two minutes before the show opened. This year it looked as though that dealer would be Will Brewer.
    The Wyndhams had put sheets over their cases and a BOOTH CLOSED sign on the chair blocking the entrance. With two of them to set up, they had probably already finished and gone to clean up. Maggie, too, had a change of clothing in her van for tonight. Travel and setups for a show this large took most of the day; there was seldom time to go to a motel and change.
    “Hey, Gussie,” she called. Ben had returned with coffee at least one more time, she was sure. Peeking around the wall, she realized that, despite frequent trips for coffee, two people worked faster than one. Aunt Augusta’s Attic was totally set up. Hand-carved wooden and black-haired china and Door of Hope Mission dolls stood and sat in cases on the back wall out of reach of eager hands, miniatures were in a case to the left, and all manner of tin and iron cars, trucks, banks, and games were on the right table. Gussie had a couple of prints, she noted, and checked them out. Good—only some Kate Greenaways. Nothing that competed with her booth: she had those prints (at lower prices, because they weren’t framed) and more.
    Gussie and Ben had obviously taken off. Maggie decided to get a drink of water and change, then have a real drink. They say you shouldn’t drink alone, so she’d give it another thirty minutes before she broke the rule.
    The fairgrounds rest rooms were large and relatively clean, but far from new. They were in a separate building, on the east side of the parking lot, close to the four exhibit halls. During the show they’d be full of customers. Today the ladies’ room was quiet. Maggie exchanged pleasantries with a dealer she’d never met before (Connecticut—art and Depression glass) who was also changing from jeans into a long skirt.
    The antiques dealers’ uniform, Maggie thought, as she folded her jeans and sweatshirt and straightened the panty hose she’d put on under them in the morning. Like gym class—all the girls getting freshened up after working out. But no showers here.
    She put on a blue square-necked blouse to match her long dark-red-and-blue-patterned India cotton skirt and added some brass Victorian earrings. No necklace; she’d have to wear her dealer’s identification badge anyway. But she pinned one brass M to her waistband for luck. Probably once part of a turn-of-the-century sign, it went with the earrings and was different. You never knew what a customer might want to talk about.
    A little lipstick and blush, and Maggie unbraided her hair, which fell in full waves almost to her waist. I’ll never cut it, she vowed. She shook her head