"It's a magic brooch." He pronounced the word as if it rhymed with pooch.
Or mooch.
I sighed and didn't touch the thing. "Right. But what kind of magic? What does it do?"
He shifted his gaze, so he wasn't meeting my eyes anymore, which was never a good sign in the pawnshop business.
"Um. It's a mmphhlm," he mumbled.
"A what?"
"Are you going to buy it or what?" he demanded, poking his balding head forward on his scrawny neck exactly the waychickens peck for seed. The image of a chicken dressed in orange shorts and a yellow shirt flashed through my mind, and it took all my skills to keep a straight face.
A high-pitched voice rang through the shop, saving me. "Elmer! Did you sell that hideous thing? My mother swore she wouldn’t come to visit anymore until it's gone."
The man's hand tightened on the brooch. "So, it would be a win-win," he muttered. But then he gave me a wide-eyed look, as if afraid I'd rat him out to the woman, who must be his wife.
I couldn't help the grin that escaped. "I heard nothing."
He grinned back at me, transforming his face from old and grumpy to surprisingly handsome. I could see that Elmer must have been quite the catch back in his day. When the woman marched up to join us, I instantly clocked her as a former prom queen or head cheerleader at the very least. She had thick waves of white-blonde hair, dark brown eyes, and warm brown skin, and her cheekbones were gorgeous.
But her mouth was set in a firm line, and she crossed her arms beneath her considerable chest and glared at Elmer. "Well?"
When he shrugged, she turned to me. "Well?"
When I was younger, Mrs. Elmer would have intimidated me, but I'd been through a lot lately. So, I flashed a big smile, which caught her off guard, and pulled a square of black velvet out from beneath the counter.
"Please place the brooch here," I said, pointing. I considered pronouncing it like he had, so as not to embarrass him, but I couldn't bring myself to saybrooch. "I need to examine it. And while I do that, perhaps one of you could tell me exactly what magic it has?"
Elmer pointed at his wife. "Mabel, you tell her. Nobody ever believes me when I say it."
Mabel bit her lip. "Well. I … um …"
Fascinated despite myself, I leaned on the counter and smiled encouragingly. "Yes?"
"It makes the person who wears it tell the truth—the absolute truth—for as long as they wear it!" Elmer blurted out, evidently tired of his wife's hesitation.
I'd been reaching for the piece, but when he said this, I yanked my hand back and reached for gloves. "They have to wear it, or is touching it enough?"
"Seems like they have to wear it," Mabel said, joining in freely now that the secret was out. "You can touch it all day long with no effect."
I nodded and pulled out my jeweler's loupe. The tiny magnifying glass allowed me to inspect jewelry for qualities like inclusion, clarity, and craftsmanship. Jeremiah had taught me about jewelry early in my apprenticeship at the shop.
Not that I'd known at the time that it was an apprenticeship and not just an after-school part-time job. I'd still had dreams of leaving home to go to college back then, before my talent had manifested and the fear of knowing how everyone around me was going to die had changed my path.
"It's not especially … trendy," I said, careful not to say anything rude about the ugly piece. "But I can see how collectors of this type of item might really go for it. Are you sure you don't want to try the online auction sites? They can pay more than I can, certainly."
They moved away to confer, and I rang up several sales. Maud called out to the group to be on the bus in five minutes, and everyone headed towards the door. I expected Elmer and Mabel to leave, too, but they walked back to me.
"Thank you for your honesty about the online sites, but please just tell us what you can offer for it," Mabel said. "We want it out of the house. It has caused enough problems already."
Elmer's grimace made me desperately curious to know what horrible truths had been revealed, but that was just my innate Dead End gossip gene trying to break free. "Okay. How about this?"
I offered them a price. They haggled a little, and I wound up going about twenty-five percent higher than my first offer, which made both of us happy enough. A good compromise was the best result possible in my business, so both sides could feel like they came out on top.
I wrote up the sale, paid them, and carefully wrapped the brooch in cloth to put in the vault until after I could research it a little and warn Eleanor. I couldn't imagine the damage absolute honesty would do to our friendship if she tried on the brooch and started telling me all about what Bill was like in private. Or in the bedroom.
I shuddered.
