Beauty to Die For and Other Mystery Shorts by Lauren Carr

from the pit of his stomach that seemed to go on forever.
    “I’m not getting that bird for you,” Mac said. “So just forget it.”
    Gnarly hung his head.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Archie suggested. “Maybe if we get out of the bird’s sight it will get out of his mind.”
    They dragged Gnarly into the living room where they found Catherine and Ben. She rushed up to them with two paddles that had numbers painted on the flat surfaces. “Okay, we’re all registered.” She thrust one of the paddles into Mac’s free hand. Seeing an apprehensive expression cross his face, she asked, “Have you ever bid at an auction before?”
    “No.”
    “It’s easy,” Ben explained. “If you see something you want, you hold up the paddle so the auctioneer can see your number and accept the bid. You don’t even have to say anything. Just hold up the paddle.”
    “I don’t see anything I want to bid on.” Mac saw that his paddle was number 702.
    “Gnarly does.” Archie pointed at the dog staring at the blue bird dancing on top of the head of its owner going into the room where the auction was being held.
    The living room of the mansion had been cleared out and rows of chairs set up in front of a desk and riser for the auctioneer and other people running the auction. At a small desk by the edge of the stage, a dark haired man with silver at his temples was on a phone.
    The two couples found four seats together toward the back of the room in order to keep Gnarly down and quiet.
    Ben explained about the man on the phone. “They’re accepting phone-in bids. The buyer is on the phone until his item comes up. He casts his bid via the phone operator.”
    “How do they know what’s here?” Mac wanted to know.
    Catherine answered, “Everything was photographed and listed online. It had the catalog number and starting bid.” Shushing them, she noted that the seats were filling up and the audience was becoming quiet as the auctioneer approached the stage.
    Noticing that she clutched the second paddle and not Ben, Mac wondered if she had seen something listed online that she had her eye on.
    On the other side of the stage set-up, a woman dressed in a pant suit with her red hair twisted up in a bun was eyeing the crowd while conferring with a man clutching a clipboard. Noticing a resemblance between her and Celeste Taylor, Mac wondered if she was the unfortunate heir. He considered his suspicion confirmed when he noticed her chewing on a thumbnail while looking anxiously at the crowd taking their seats.
    Mac imagined how many family heirlooms to which she had formed an emotional attachment had been put up for auction in order to settle the estate.
    For a man who doesn’t like shopping, Mac found the auction more enjoyable than a shopping trip. Instead of trudging among merchandise, items were brought to the front of the stage, with a couple of minutes for potential buyers to inspect each treasure before returning to their seat in order to allow the bidding to start.
    As Mac had guessed, Catherine did have her eye on a set of Wedgewood Christmas herringbone china with gold trim that had once belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. While his wife bid over a thousand dollars against a young woman at the front of the audience, Ben was more interested in a man in a suit up toward the front studying the catalog and the man on the phone at the desk.
    Mac didn’t think he could be so laid-back about writing a check for over a thousand dollars for a bunch of old plates, even if they were trimmed in real gold and had once belonged to a former first lady.
    Plates are plates. You eat off them. At over a hundred years old, they’re old plates to boot. Who in their right mind pays over a thousand dollars for used plates?
    Archie was oohing and ahhing over each item as it went pass. But, when Mac asked if she wanted him to bid on something for her, she would decline. Such was Archie. While she enjoyed the finer things in life, he had