The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror Read Online Free PDF Page B

bric-a-brac, and display cases of gold- and silverware painstakingly arranged to resemble a maiden aunt’s attic in which treasures were to be found.
    There was track lighting on the molding, and a few of the lamps were fitted with low-watted bulbs, the effect designed for a pleasant browsing atmosphere and for preventing the casual but ready shopper from seeing too much too soon, before the sale was made.
    Now, all the lights were on though it was only just past four—the maples’ persistent but noncooling shade made it feel as if it were considerably past sunset.
    The front door was open in a vain attempt to vent the heat, and on the threshold stood a young man slight and tall, whose light brown hair had already retreated around a monk’s cap at the back of his skull. He wore pressed brown slacks, a pin-striped shirt folded open at the throat, and at the moment he was crushing a cigarette beneath his loafered heel. Then he turned from his survey of the empty street and put his hands in his pockets.
    “Ollie, I have made a decision,” Bud Yardley announced to the woman he was going to marry in less than three weeks.
    “Really,” she uttered, not bothering to look up. Bud was always making decisions; it was part of his charm.
    “Yes, I have. After a great deal of careful consideration, I have decided that this weekend, and for this weekend only, we will do nothing but sell the original stuff from the Retirement Room, and none of this crap we have out here.”
    Olivia West looked up from the cash register set on a four-foot long counter just inside the door, and she frowned. “What the hell are you talking about, Charles?”
    Bud winced at the scolding and what he thought was an upper-class pronunciation of his given name, and decided that the marriage contract would somehow have to include a prohibition of its use.
    “I mean it, Ollie,” he said earnestly. “Let’s do some real selling for a change.”
    Ollie shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
    “Well, it isn’t only what I say,” he told her, wondering at her attitude. She had been distracted all day, but wouldn’t tell him why. “You are the other half of this partnership, you know.”
    A shallow crease appeared in her smooth high forehead as she counted the bills in their slots, lifted the tray, and counted the bills and checks beneath it. “Okay. Then I say you’re wrong.”
    Bud bit down on the inside of his cheek. For a moment, just for a moment, he was tempted to take hold of the thick brown braid dangling down her back to her waist; just for a moment he wanted to give it a vicious yank to pull some sense into her skull. But he knew he wouldn’t, just as he knew she would never permit him to sell the only true antiques in the shop.
    They had known each other for five years, since both were twenty-one and freshly scrubbed out of college. Both trained to be teachers, and while they had not found jobs, they found each other instead and a vast companionable interest in colonial American history—the social history that emphasized the way people lived. They were also equally fascinated by furniture—Bud made it in a small workshop in the basement, Ollie restored it, and it seemed only natural that they should open a place together.
    They also discovered it didn’t hurt that they had fallen in love.
    They pooled their money, cadged loans from each set of not-quite-approving parents, and set out to create a name to be reckoned with in the field of domestic antiquities.
    The first attempt had been a disaster, down in South Jersey where the people were too interested in making a living in the present, and where the credible buyers seldom traveled in the numbers they needed to survive. The following year they traveled north, closer to New York City, where they hoped to attract a more well-heeled clientele. That project failed too when a blossoming of urban renewal literally brought their building down around their heads.
    A fluke of driving that