Read Unspoken for Free Online Page B

people too.” She set a Carson City Morgan dollar on top of a box with a casualness that had him reaching for gloves to properly pick it up and set it on the display tray.
    She took the time to pull on white cotton gloves. “Okay?”
    “Thank you.”
    She nodded and picked up another bubble-wrapped ball.
    “You said you’ve got other storefronts besides this one.”
    “Three. The furniture deal is similar to yours. I set up shop next to an expert and let them sell the antiques for a share of the profits. The other two are my employees, selling odds and ends, at the stores and online. One is in St. Paul, the other in Cincinnati.”
    “How long have you been doing this?”
    “He died in May of 2011. I’m just now getting up to volume with what needs to be sold. Probably another year, but that’s being optimistic. I don’t like estate auctions. I think items go for a fraction of what they should, and I’m not one to leave money on the table.”
    “You’re doing that with me.”
    “Bishop, these are chum.”
    “Chum.”
    “A fishing term. When you put bait in the water to draw in larger fish.”
    “You’re selling me coins below market price because you want me interested?”
    “Basically.”
    “Interested in what?”
    “I’ve got a lot of coins to sell.” She held out a shotgun roll. “You might like to buy these.”
    He took the paper-wrapped roll of Wheat pennies, glanced at the date and mint, and nearly dropped them. He sat down hard on the floor beside her. “Don’t do this to me, Charlotte. I’m too young to die of a heart attack.”
    “He had it in one of the cigar boxes. I think it’s an old forgery rather than the real thing.”
    He gingerly turned the roll in his hand. It was paper-stamped as Mint issued, and those were 1909-S vdb Wheat pennies showing at the ends of the roll, still a brilliant copper red. “A forgery?”
    “He had it in a cigar box on his desk, not in the vault.”
    He studied the paper. “It’s hundred-year-old paper.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “I handle a lot of it. How much do you want for this? Side deal, unrelated to our bigger deal.”
    She unwrapped another ball. “A hundred twenty-five thousand.”
    “A single 1909-S vdb grading MS-66 sold last year at auction for seventy-eight thousand.”
    “I know. I looked it up. But what are the odds that really is a Mint-issue roll? My grandfather certainly didn’t treat it as priceless. And most 1909-S vdb’s in solid grades will sell around three thousand. It’s rare to get a truly exceptional coin even in a fresh roll.”
    “You could open the roll and know.”
    “I could, but no. I’ll sell the roll unopened. It’s the potential of it that makes the price interesting. Is it an old forgery, or the real thing? Is there a spectacular coin among the fifty, or simply several solid-grade coins? Open it and we both know. I’m a gambler by nature. Besides, the market can only absorb so many at that high a grade. If it’s real you’ll have to hold the coins for several years and sell them slowly to get their true value.”
    “One twenty-five, against the potential of five hundred . . . or a substantial loss.”
    “Yes.”
    Bishop studied the roll of coins. Maybe he was a bit of a gambler by nature too, but experience told him this was the real thing. He shook his head. “You should ask for more, Charlotte.”
    “One twenty-five is tangible—reasonable enough that if you find the inside of that roll is full of nineteen twenty-eights, I won’t feel so awful I’m tempted to give you the money back.”
    He smiled. “Will you take a check?”
    “Sure.”
    “You’ve got a deal on this one tonight.”
    She offered the coin she had unwrapped. “This one is more certain.”
    It was a Carson City Morgan in excellent condition and easily worth seventeen thousand.
    “The unopened pennies are more interesting.” He wanted to open the roll and know but forced himself to leave it for later. He tucked the