The Key in the Attic by DeAnna Julie Dodson

is check.”
    The girl looked at her sharply. Then her face softened, and she gave Annie one of the many business cards paper clipped to her order book. “I’m sure he just bought it to flip it anyway.”
    Mary Beth frowned. “Flip it?”
    “Turn around and sell it again right away,” the girl explained. “It happens a lot in our business, especially if he’s planning to take it to New York, or if he already has a buyer for it.”
    There was worry in Mary Beth’s eyes. “Oh Annie, you don’t think he’s already sold it again, do you?”
    “Don’t worry now.” Annie gave her an encouraging smile. “Even if he did, we can trace it down again. Don’t worry.”
    They thanked the girl and headed back to the car.
    “Where now?” Mary Beth asked. “Is the next shop close?”
    Annie squinted at the miniature map on the back of the business card. “Not really.”
    ****
    Annie glanced at the address on the business card one last time and then pushed open the door. Frank Sanders’s Antiques and Oddities was an overcrowded little storefront on a side street far from Park Cambridge’s exclusive neighborhood. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how the merchandise was laid out, but it was fascinating all the same. A pair of men’s boots that must have been over a hundred years old were sitting in a cut-glass punch bowl. One of them was topped with a rag doll with an embroidered face and yarn hair. Judging from the faded and yellowed fabrics, it could have been made about the same time as the boots. The other boot supported a ladies’ coal-scuttle bonnet trimmed in silk ribbons that must have once been vivid crimson. It didn’t look a day over a hundred and thirty.
    The whole shop was a jumbled heap with what looked like costly pieces obscured by trinkets that had nothing to recommend them except their age.
    Mary Beth looked around warily. “I don’t see the desk.”
    “It could be anywhere in this mess.” Annie went a little further into the shop. “Hello? Anybody here?”
    She and Mary Beth waited a moment. Then Mary Beth came a little closer to Annie.
    “He shouldn’t leave all this unattended. Some of it looks really valuable.”
    “Hello?” Annie called again. “Mr. Sanders?”
    “I suppose it’s possible the owner or manager isn’t actually Mr. Sanders. This place looks like it’s been here a long time. Maybe the name’s just been passed down.” Mary Beth fingered a dish towel that had been embroidered with the word “MONDAY” and a picture of a washtub that looked like it might be from the 1930s. “I’d go crazy if my place was this disorganized. How does he even know what he has for sale? I can’t imagine what he must be like himself.”
    Annie grinned a little. She couldn’t help picturing Frank Sanders as a stooped, sixtyish little man in a snagged sweater of some indefinable color. He should have Coke-bottle glasses and Albert Einstein hair,—maybe with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and wearing one of those old-time green eyeshades. She was thinking of stereotypical pawn shop managers, but still—
    “May I help you?”
    Annie and Mary Beth both turned at the low, cultured voice.
    “We’re looking for Frank Sanders,” Mary Beth said.
    The man smiled. “I’m Frank. What can I do for you?”
    He was not very tall, likely in his mid-thirties, neatly groomed and wearing a sports coat with an open-neck shirt. He was too bland and geeky to be handsome, but he seemed pleasant enough.
    Annie returned the smile. “We just came from Park Cambridge Antiques. The young lady there said you recently bought a cherry writing desk from her. We think it was made sometime around 1850. Does that sound familiar?”
    The man nodded, his thick, sandy hair nodding with him. “Oh yeah. I remember that one very well, but it’s not for sale. I’ve been looking for a piece like that for a long time now. The 1850s and ’60s are a special interest of mine, and that one’s going home with