Free 4 - Stranger Room: Ike Schwartz Mystery 4 by Frederick Ramsay Page A

setting up housekeeping soon and knowing, as I do, how you live, I expect you’d need a house full of furniture. I doubt Dr. Harris would put up with the Goodwill rejects you have in your apartment.”
    “Goodwill rejects? I happen to think retro décor is very with it. I may be a trend setter, even.”
    “Really? You think? Well then, I have a friend who has an ’85 Yugo for sale. I’ll have him give you a call.”
    “Thanks, but no thanks. I have enough trouble being inconspicuous in a police car.”
    “No furniture?”
    “No. I need a different key for the clock. This one doesn’t fit.”
    She opened the case and tried the key, with the same results Ike had the previous night. She retrieved a box from under the counter and rummaged through a pound of clock keys.
    Ike’s eyebrows raised a bit, “Where’d you get all those?” he asked.
    “I’ve been collecting old hardware for years. Even before I had this shop, I had a little business matching keys, locks, hinges and so forth. I made some money at that.”
    “I’ll tell Jonathan Lydell. He’s restoring that old place of his and could use some help in that department, I imagine.”
    “No need, but thank you, anyway. Jonathan is a regular.”
    “He buys clock keys?”
    “Clock, door, all kinds. You name it. The last time he came in, he wanted a key for an old travel trunk he had in his basement or attic, I don’t remember which. And I wouldn’t call Bellmore ‘that old place,’ at least not within his hearing. It’s an historic building, and in the register as such, and he insists everyone know that.”
    “I read the plaque on the wall, sorry, you’re right, but relics of the past, animate or inanimate, are not a passion of mine.”
    “What do you call all those old movies you collect, if not relics of the past?”
    “They are classics. Bogart, Cagney, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamar are not relics, they are treasures.”
    “Right-oh, and if you plan to stick with your lady love, you may have to change your tune about houses and history. She is an historian, after all. Here…” Betsy fitted a device into the clock and gave it a series of turns.
    “That doesn’t look like a key.”
    “It’s a winder.” She held up the crank-like device. “See, it has a square hole in the end that fits over the winding stem. It’s like a key that way, only with this little crank handle you can wind it more quickly, and with less strain on your fingers when it gets tight.”
    “I’ve seen one of those before…speak of the devil…Lydell had one like that mixed up in a box of rusty keys in his basement. Only it was bigger.”
    “Probably used to wind a cabinet clock, a grandfather clock. He owns at least three. Did I tell you, he wanted me to furnish some of the rooms in Bellmore?”
    “That would be a nice sale.”
    “Oh, no, he wasn’t planning on paying for the furniture. He wanted me to place pieces in the rooms, as advertising. He said I could leave my business card on the pieces and if anyone wanted to buy it, they could contact me.”
    “Very generous of him. I’m guessing here, but I bet he wanted a piece of the sale, too.”
    “You guess right. Okay, your clock is wound and I’ve set the striker. If you need to reset it, you see this wire thingy in back of the works? Well, you push it up and count out the strikes to match the hour you have set.”
    “I got it.”
    “Good. My best to the lovely Ms. Harris. When are the two of you coming to dinner?”
    “You need to talk to her. She’s the one with the unmanageable schedule and time problems.”
    “You know, when most of this furniture was made, people lived at a more leisurely pace, and still had time to hold balls, give parties, and fight a bloody civil war.”
    “You’re planning on throwing a ball, or starting a war?”
    “It’s an idea. Not the war part. We could do a costume thing. Women in hoop skirts, men in antebellum dress suits. All Gone With the Wind , or