Read PW02 - Bidding on Death for Free Online Page A

and then joined me at the table. The kitchen phone has an extra long cord for just these types of occasions.
    “Amy? It’s Julia,” she told the phone. “We just heard about the break-in! Hon, what happened?”
    She paused to listen, while I wished she had a speaker phone. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. When? Uh-huh. Where were you? I see…”
    I joggled her elbow. “Ask her about the Ruba Rombic.”
    “Oh, that was Cissy,” Julia told the phone. “Yeah, she’s right here. She wants to know if they got the Ruba Rombic. Uh-huh. Well, that’s good.”
    After a few more minutes of a conversation that I could only hear half of, Julia ended the conversation and turned back to me. “Amy says her place was broken into, but she’s not sure when. She went home from your place and just had time to shower, dr ess, and do her face before Jordan came to take her out to dinner at Washington House. She just got home this morning. She kind of danced around that; I guess she thinks we’re too old to know that adults often spend the night together these days. So far she hasn’t found anything missing. It’s weird, isn’t it?”
    “Weird, I’ll say. I wonder how many more homes will get hit?”
    But in the next few days, it became clear that the crime wave was over. No one else reported a break-in, so it was just the two. And nothing seemed to be missing at either location.
    Wednesday, Amy came over to my place with Julia. We were going to scout around the attic and storage for more of what Amy called ‘eBuyables’.
    The search was fruitful. My old Barbies and the plastic horses I played with as a child made the cut. “How much are they worth?” I asked Amy.
    “I can’t really say,” Amy admitted. “Both Bar bie and Breyer horses are real specialty fields. Some of them are worth almost nothing, and some are worth a whole heck of a lot. I’d suggest you list them all, start low, and see what happens. Trust me, the collectors will find the valuable ones.”
    We found a children’s tea set that must have belonged to Jack’s parents. Amy went into raptures over it. “Akro Agate, in the original box!” she exclaimed. I’d learned by now that the original box always increased the value of an item. Reverently, she opened the box to inspect the contents. “And it’s lemonade and oxblood!”
    “That’s good?” I asked, just to be sure.
    “That’s great!” she assured me.
    I picked up a tiny tea pot , which was opaque pale yellow streaked with dark red . “Hey, this is glass!”
    “Sure. Akro Agate was a glass company,” Amy explained. “They started out making marbles, then branched out into flower pots and vases. Back in the 30s, children’s toy dishe s were almost all Japan ese ceramic , but World War II put an end to imports from Japan for the duration, and Akro Agate started making toy dishes in glass. They’re highly collectible now. And es pecially in this color – lemonade and oxblood. ”
    I removed a cup and saucer from their slots and put them together.  Amy looked over the set. “You’ve got everything here,” she said. “The complete set. Look over each piece for chips or cracks – if you don’t find anything, you can list this little gem as Mint In Box.”
    “Ooh,” Julia squealed, “look at the darling little creamer!” She took it out and mimed pouring cream into the tiny cup.
    We played with the tea set for a while and then hauled our finds down to the kitchen. Over coffee, we chatted about local news. “Nothing new on the break - ins?” I asked.
    “No,” said Julia with a disgruntled frown. “It sounds like Luther is at a dead end.”
    “Same here,” said Amy.
    “It’s weird,” I mused. “Why you two? Amy, you don’t live anywhere near here do you? Seems like if it was random, the fellow would just hit a bunch of places in a row.”
    “I’m on the other side of the county,” Amy said. “And none of my neighbors reported break - ins.”
    “So let’s think about this,” I