Vultures at Twilight Read Online Free PDF

you’re OK? Not that I don’t love to hear from the girl that got away . . .’
    â€˜God,’ Ada said, ‘you still remember that?’
    â€˜And you don’t? I thought I might get you over to my team.’
    â€˜No.’ Ada smiled. ‘I think you scared me into getting married at eighteen.’
    â€˜I hope that’s a joke,’ Miriam said.
    â€˜It is . . . and don’t all jokes contain some truth?’
    â€˜Wow, this is unexpected. I don’t know how I feel about that – scared straight. Shit! When are you coming in next?’
    â€˜Probably next weekend, I’ve got the ongoing mess with my Mom.’
    â€˜You want to meet up? Maybe grab lunch, or we could have you over for supper?’
    â€˜I’d like that,’ Ada admitted, ‘but I think maybe just the two of us, if that’s OK.’
    â€˜Sure, give me a call when you know your schedule.’
    After they hung up, Ada looked around her condo. Her thoughts were troubled, and she couldn’t quite place what had her so bothered. She caught her image in a mahogany framed mirror. Her short hair still a shock, like another woman. No, you don’t look thirty-nine, but you could pass mid forties . ‘And what does that silver-haired woman in the mirror want?’ she said aloud; and to herself: is she brave enough to go for it?

THREE
    â€˜ I t’s odd,’ Ada said, cueing into my mood as we surveyed Evie’s condo and its contents.
    â€˜Almost like she never left,’ I agreed, taking in the beige wall-to-wall, the raw-silk curtains and the dark-wood furniture that gleamed from decades of butcher’s wax and lemon oil.
    We had come early to Evie’s home in the oldest part of Pilgrim’s Progress, both of us in sweatshirts and jeans, to check things over before the cavalcade of antique dealers descended.
    â€˜What about this?’ Ada balanced a fourteen-inch Chinese Export charger in the palm of her hand, like a game-show hostess displaying a potential prize. I smiled.
    â€˜What?’ she asked.
    â€˜You’re looking very Vana.’
    â€˜Please, if Vana were verging on a little person. But what do you think it’s worth?’
    â€˜Hm.’ It was one of Evie’s favorites; around its border swam a herd of fantastical sea creatures and in the center was a fully rigged whaling ship. I looked at it objectively; it had no chips, was big, and was smack in the middle of the nineteenth century. ‘Fifteen hundred to two thousand,’ I declared, offering my ballpark quote. ‘Double that in a shop, but we won’t be getting that here.’
    â€˜That much?’ Ada asked.
    â€˜I think so. What about the buttermilk blue step-back hutch in the kitchen?’
    â€˜Four grand, easy,’ Ada shot back. ‘Don’t ask me why, but those things bring a lot. Personally, and I would never have said this to Evie, I think it’s hideous.’
    â€˜It’s shabby chic. People like things with distressed finishes and chipped paint. It’s ironic, you spend all that money to have beat-up furniture.’
    â€˜It’s a look,’ Ada said, using her catch phrase for anything that veered from her gold standard of good taste: American Chippendale, preferably Philadelphia or Newport.
    Ada had asked me to keep her company today when Mr Jacobs and the other dealers arrived. This whole executrix mess had her worried, and I was glad to help and just glad to be with her. Plus, although she’d never admit it, Ada was afraid of being taken advantage of. This was a pre-game warm-up.
    As regular auction goers and visitors to the over one hundred and fifty antique shops in Grenville, we weren’t novices. We’d even thrown around the idea of going into business ourselves. We both knew how and where to buy, and while everyone gets tricked into the occasional reproduction or outright fake, we could hold our