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you could read was for things no one was interested in. They were garbage. And when we politely turned them down, Terrence blackballed us.

    “What about borrowing Celia’s down the alley?”

    I smiled. Celia Burns was a creepy old woman who had the building to our left, a little cottage-looking thing where she sold herbs and essential oils. In her younger years, some of those “herbs” had been of the spicier variety, hidden away in the back. I knew this because Ian and I had helped ourselves a time or two. Maybe that’s why Abby told me once that Celia threatened to hex her if she and her friends even looked like they might steal something. Like teenagers want essential oils.

    “She locks the lid down with a padlock.”

    He winced. “Seriously?”

    “Yep. Trusting like that,” I said. “And I’ve used Lester’s a couple of times, but he makes me feel so guilty about it, I swear he stands out there and waits.”

    Dad shook his head. “So how did Gracie’s appointment go?”

    “Great,” I said. I scored a date.

    “Should be the healthiest dog in town,” he said, picking up a stack of photos from the corner of my desk.

    “So I hear,” I said, letting that roll by. “Those are from the Casterly place,” I added, gesturing at the prints he was thumbing through. “Missy took those a few days ago. What do you think?”

    Missy was a “picker,” where I started out. One of the people we sent out on runs to look for choice items or respond to calls on estate sales or people wanting to get rid of something. Sometimes when things were particularly slow, she trolled the curbs on garbage day. I used to love picking. The thrill of finding a treasure. Of digging through sometimes filthy crap and uncovering a gem that people didn’t even know they had. That’s what made my heart pound.

    We had three pickers on speed dial, but Missy was the best. She had a natural eye for value. She also had a natural eye for my father, but only because he was a Capricorn.

    “Looks good,” he said. “Especially these,” he added, holding up a picture of a table full of old clocks.

    I smirked. “Yeah, I knew that would catch your attention.”

    Dad had a clock fetish. Could not walk away from one no matter the shape it might be in. His house was full of clocks of every shape and size and style, and they could be heard ticking, chiming, or whistling at any given quarter of the hour. Even more so after Mom died, as there was no one around to complain about the noise. Or maybe, as I often thought, he did that because of the noise. To feel less lonely in that house.

    “They’re downsizing quite a bit since the old man passed away,” I said. “I’ll make a phone call and try to snag some of it before Blaine swoops in.”

    Dad did a mini-shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t be adding anything new.”

    “What?” I asked. “Why? This is perfect.”

    “Just saying,” he said, slowly sliding one photo behind the other. “Have you heard about that Antique Nation place? The one that does the auctions and stuff? Maybe we should downsize, too. Hook up with a bigger fish like that to do the bigger work.”

    I leaned forward. “Are you crazy? Besides, Blaine would eat us for lunch. He’d take all our customers.”

    “Enh,” he muttered. “Not so much. Our stuff isn’t really his style.”

    Blaine Hollis was the owner of the Brass Ass on the other side of town, a renovated Victorian house with a brass donkey adorning the front lawn. He sold more high-end antiques than we did, and that was fine. There was always a market for everything. The tide was beginning to shift, however. Nothing stayed the same forever.

    “Didn’t used to be,” I said. “But lately, he’s been peddling more rustic merchandise.”

    Dad’s eyebrows pulled together. “Why’s that?”

    “Don’t know. Missy thinks it’s because he’s a Gemini.”

    He rubbed at his eyes. “Good grief. That woman