Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared
to find a way to explain without making Cherelle self-conscious about her own lack of education. “Remember in school when we were studying England?”
“Baby-chick, I never studied nothing. That was for the dumbs.”
“How about Stonehenge? That ring a bell?”
“That big ol’ stone circle where people dress up in sheets and dance around pretending to be witches or wizards?”
Risa laughed. “Close enough.” The fact that Stonehenge had been built long, long before Druids came on the scene didn’t matter. It was enough that Cherelle had some point of reference, however vague. “After the original builders of Stonehenge vanished, a people we know as Celts arrived. They started in Europe a long time before Christ was born and spread in all directions until they reached the British Isles about three thousand years ago.”
“Yeah?” Cherelle rummaged in her ragged purse/backpack for some gum. She had a taste in her mouth that would gag a maggot. The Cosmopolitan she’d ordered would go a long way toward cutting the scum, but the drink wasn’t here right now and the taste sure as hell was.
“Mmm,” Risa agreed as the elevator began to slow. “The Celts were master metalworkers. In fact, some scholars believe that the Celts taught the Greeks how to work gold. Others, of course, shriek at the mere suggestion that anyone could have taught the Greeks anything. We live in a very Eurocentric culture.”
Cherelle unwrapped some gum.
“Sorry, mama-chick,” Risa said. “I forget that not everyone loves the same stuff I do.”
And talking about it deepened rather than built a bridge over the chasm separating her from her childhood friend.
The elevator stopped. The door opened onto a hallway that was as quiet as the other had been, but not as plain. There was wood paneling on one side, framed art of various kinds on the other, and a dense, colorful carpet underfoot.
“This way.” Risa gestured to the left. “My office is next to the ‘museum.’ “
“Museum.” Cherelle’s tone of voice said she would sooner have her toenails pulled out one by one.
“Not really,” Risa assured her. “I just call it that because we have a lot of things scattered around while we try to figure out what would go best in the show.”
“Gold?” Cherelle asked, focusing on Risa.
“Gold.”
“That’s more like it, baby-chick.”
Laughing, Risa gave Cherelle a one-armed hug. Her friend’s cheerful greed was refreshing after spending hours on the phone with auction-house representatives who sounded as though they would choke if someone asked what an item was worth. This was culture, after all.
It was also commerce, as anyone in the business knew. The more the auctioneers flogged culture, the higher the price went.
“So show me something,” Cherelle said, looking around.
“Jewelry?”
“Oh, yeah. Big ol’ hunks of gold.”
“Right this way.”
Cherelle followed Risa eagerly toward a long, glass-topped case. Risa gestured at the articles within.
“These are some of the things Shane has collected in preparation for the Druid Gold show that will open New Year’s Eve.”
The thought of time slipping away made Risa’s stomach knot. The only good news was that none of Shane’s other searchers had done any better than she had.
So far anyway.
Cherelle bent so close to the case that her breath fogged the glass. With a muttered word she retreated a few inches and stared intently. This stuff was more like what she had than the pictures in the pamphlet. Except that a lot of these pieces looked beaten up, as though they had been hauled around in backpacks and dumped on cement floors.
Silently she counted. Eighteen pieces. One more than she had locked in the trunk of her car.
“What do you call those?” Cherelle asked.
Risa looked beyond the pointing finger. “Those are torcs. Like bracelets for your neck.”
“Solid gold?”
“Some torcs are. These aren’t. They’re hollow, but their history is very . . .” Risa stopped talking for the simple reason that Cherelle had stopped listening.
“And those?” Cherelle asked.
“Armbands.”
“Solid?”
“Thick gold foil over iron. The design is simple but exquisitely done.”
Cherelle wasn’t interested in design of any kind. “Those?” she asked, pointing again.
“Fibulae. Like fancy safety pins for fastening clothes,” she added quickly. “They didn’t have zippers or buttons in those days.”
“Those pins are solid
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