A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [39]
“Oh!” exclaimed Cici. “It’s an old Victrola!”
“Doesn’t it belong in our front room,” said Lindsay, “in that corner underneath the stained glass window? Can’t you just see it there?”
“You’ve got a good eye,” said a male voice behind them. “I believe that’s right where old Mr. Blackwell used to keep it.”
They looked around at a tall, sandy-haired, impossibly skinny man in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. He had a ruddy face and friendly, faded eyes that somehow identified him immediately as the shopkeeper. It did not, of course, explain how he knew who they were.
“Nice old piece, too,” he went on. “My granddaddy used to have one just like it. I remember him and my grandma dancing to it of an evenin’, even after they got their place electrified. That’s the good thing about the Victrola, don’t you know, you can have your music even when your power’s out. Do you want to hear it play?”
Without waiting for a reply, he slid the cabinet out of its cubby on squeaky casters, and opened a side door. “See here, it comes with a couple of records. Extra needles, too. I’ve got another whole box of records in the back somewhere, if I can find them.”
Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget slanted looks toward each other that were a mixture of astonishment and uncertainty. They watched the man place a disk on the turntable and crank the handle. When the turntable was spinning, he lowered the needle arm onto the record and the slightly tinny sounds of Caruso singing La Traviata filled the store. Their eyes went wide with delight.
“Did this really come from the Blackwell house?” Bridget asked.
“Sure did. Estate auction. This is the last piece I’ve got left from it. Let you have it for, oh, seventy-five dollars.”
“Sold,” said Lindsay. She held out her hand. “I’m Lindsay Wright. These are my friends Cici and Bridget.”
“Rick Jones,” he replied, shaking Lindsay’s hand and nodding to the other two. “Folks call me Jonesie. Pleased to meet you ladies. Been wondering when you’d be in. Anything else I can get for you? You got your hands full with that old place. Need any nails, shingles, screws? If we don’t have it, we’ll get it for you.”
“Do you have water heaters?” Cici queried.
“What size you need?”
She told him.
“Gas or electric?”
Cici looked at the other two, they shrugged, and she decided, “Electric.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, now there’s three of you ladies, doing laundry, washing hair, and all. Like as not, you’ll have company now and again. If it was me, I’d get two heaters, and make ’em gas.”
Cici, who was quite accustomed to dealing with salesmen, contractors, and other commission-based workers, smiled politely just to let him know who was in charge, and repeated firmly, “One water heater. Electric.”
“Up to you,” he agreed amiably. “I’ll have it delivered for you Thursday morning. Anything else you need?”
“Actually,” Bridget said, “We could use some canning jars.”
“And some rocking chairs,” Lindsay said. And at Cici’s questioning look, she explained, “For the front porch. It’s a rocking chair porch with no rocking chairs.”
“Somebody misses the mall,” Cici murmured.
At the register, they met Mrs. Jonesie, a woman with spiked iron gray hair in a John Deere T-shirt whose name was Rita. She asked Bridget what kind of jam she was making, and when Bridget told her her face lit up.
“The Blackwell Farm strawberries were always the best in the county. It’s got to be the soil. And to think they’re still putting out with nobody taking care of them these last years. You got plenty of pectin? We carry it, on the back shelf.”
No one but her friends noticed Bridget’s slight hesitation, or the almost imperceptible note of shrillness to her laughter. “My goodness, is there anything you don’t carry?”
With two of the rocking chairs snugged against the Victrola in the cargo area, and the third securely strapped to the top of the SUV, the ladies waved good-bye to the Joneses, and Bridget put the car in gear. “Pectin,” she muttered under her breath.