display case containing stamp tongs and mounts. “He’ll take it apart as soon as he and Grandma get back from their trip. It just takes time.” She pulled out her keys and walked to the front door, stooping to undo the floor lock. “He’s had some of these clients for decades. You don’t break that up overnight.” Opening the door, she stepped outside to unlock the sliding steel gates that protected the little storefront. Beyond her, traffic whizzed back and forth on Clement Street in San Francisco’s Richmond district.
“Sure you do.” Joss took one side of the gates, pushing it back to the wall. “Tell ’em you’re going out of business and to find a new advisor. I’m sure Grampa could recommend a bunch of people.”
“That’s not the point. Some of these guys might just want to get out of investment stamps period if Grampa’s retiring. They trust him. He’s got a couple of accounts he’s liquidating already.” Gwen finished tucking her side of the gate back into its hidey-hole and turned to the shop door. Glancing at her slim gold watch, she frowned. “I see Jerry’s late again. Nice that he’s dependable.”
“Oh, lay off Jerry. He’s okay,” Joss countered, following her back inside.
“Jerry’s hot for you. Of course you think he’s okay.”
Joss rolled her eyes. “Please. Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”
“Of Jerry? Hardly.” The truth was, Jerry gave Gwen a faint case of the creeps for no good reason she could name. On the surface he seemed fine, and if he was maybe a little too slick, a little too accommodating, that was her own problem. His references had checked out over the phone. Coins, granted, not stamps, but at least he had experience with fine collectibles. She had a few too many degrees of separation from the dealer in Reno to get a personal verification, but there had been nothing to confirm the small stirring of uneasiness she felt about Jerry. And the truth was, if he hadn’t been on board and trained, Gwen couldn’t have gone to the estate sale in Chicago two days earlier.
She didn’t know where the restlessness had come from. Maybe from watching her grandparents leave for a three-month tour of the South Pacific. Maybe it was just the time of year. She’d had an undeniable urge to get out, stretch her wings. Vying with some of the top dealers in the world to come away with best properties did nicely. “Jerry’s just not my type.”
“Well, you don’t have to love everyone who works for you,” Joss threw back.
The original plan had been for Gwen to hire someone to help run the store during her grandparents’ long-planned trip. Then Joss had shown up broke and in need of a job. Gwen ought to have been impressed that it had taken almost two weeks before Joss was so bored she’d suggested hiring another clerk. Too bad Gwen had let herself be talked into Jerry.
“I’ve got no reason to think Jerry isn’t fine. I’m just a little uncomfortable around him,” she said irritably, punching her code into the cash register to start it booting.
“He’s noticed. I think it hurts his feelings the way you hang out in the back room and never talk with him.”
“You talk with him just fine. That was the deal, remember? You work the store, I work the investment accounts.” And avoid Jerry.
“The front of the store’s important, too,” Joss reminded her. “We made some money while you were gone. Jerry’s good at selling.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Gwen picked up her coffee mug. “Call me if you get a sudden run and need help. I’ve got to log in the new acquisitions and get them into the safe.”
GWEN STUDIED THE TEAL-BLUE stamp through the magnifying glass. Across it a stylized steam train chugged—left to right instead of the right to left as it was supposed to. She checked the perforations and used tongs to turn the stamp so she could study the back. Inspect, confirm, log. This was the part of an acquisition she relished—poking through to get a firsthand look at all the new treasures, finding the hidden surprises.
And in this collection there had been more than a few.
She rolled her shoulders to loosen the muscles, then adjusted the headset she wore to keep her hands free during phone calls. For a minute she allowed herself to just sit in the blessed quiet of the back office. She’d always loved the store, from the time she’d begun helping out her grandfather at fourteen. After college it just hadn’t seemed right to move on—working the business had engaged her mind fully, and her econ and accounting degrees had made her more valuable to her grandfather than ever.
The place didn’t feel the same without him, even though he was only on an extended vacation. “Practice retirement,” Hugh Chastain had laughingly labeled his wife’s cherished four-month trip to New Zealand, Australia and Polynesia. So what if the process of shutting down the business hadn’t proceeded on schedule? There would be time to close things down properly when they returned.
Gwen tried not to mourn it.
Even though she had a nagging sense that she ought to be out fighting her way up the corporate ladder, she didn’t regret a minute of the three years she’d spent since graduation learning the investment ropes, polishing her expertise. Stamps fascinated her—the colors, the sometimes crude art, the shocking jumps in value of some of the rarities. The clients who chose investment philately over, or in addition to, the more traditional stock market were driven by a certain streak of romanticism, she suspected. There was no beauty or history to an online stock account. You couldn’t pick up a mutual fund with tongs.
Not that they kept any of the investment accounts in the store, of course. A safe-deposit box was the place for holdings whose values could reach into the hundreds of thousands or even millions.
Or it ought to be, she thought, glancing at the wall safe with her usual twinge of discomfort.
She put her grandfather’s stubbornness out of her mind and resumed the process of inspecting and logging the new collection. The auction catalog had focused on the plums, the Columbian Exposition issues and the 1915 Pan Pacifics. She’d never expected to find a mint block of four early Cayman Islands stamps, and the profit from their sale would more than pay for the trip. She already had plans for the Argentinian and Brazilian issues.
Thoughtfully she set down her stamp tongs and reached for the Scott catalog just as the phone rang. She punched a button and a man’s voice greeted her.
“Gwen, how’ve you been? It’s Ray Halliday.”
“Hi, Ray.” It was amazing how quickly word got around about who was and wasn’t at an auction, she reflected. Suddenly people you hardly knew became your best friend.
“Did you go to the Cavanaugh sale?”
He knew the answer to that already or he wouldn’t be on the phone to her. “It seemed worth the trip.”
“How’d you make out?”
He undoubtedly knew the answer to that, too. “I’m looking it over right now.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Maybe.” She turned back a page or two and lifted a quartet of stamps from their mount to inspect them. “Don’t you have a client who specializes in Caribbean issues?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I’ve got a nice little block of four early Cayman Islands. Very
