"Shadow - 341201 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Double Chocolate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

from home before you met me at the Blue Bird?"
A frown, puzzled and uncertain, pulled Maggie's honest eyebrows out of line.
"I—1 don't just recall. There was Louie's—the butcher on the corner. No place
else, and I've known Louie since he was— Wait now! There was the curiosity
store!"
The sherry-brown eyes watching her face seemed to contract.
"The—what ?"
"That new curiosity store. You know—that place the Armenian or whatever
he is opened up on the block behind us. That Ivan—you know—"
Grace nodded. In her mind she could see the new sign, carefully lettered,
swaying above a cluttered doorway. IVAN JORGEN: Rugs, Vases, Curios.
"I know. Whatever made you stop there?"
"I was fixin' to buy you a birthday present. He had some strings of blue and
yellow beads in the window—kind of foreign appearin' and queer—so I sort of
went in and tried a couple on. But then I renumbered how you never wear
beads—"
"Did you put down your purse while you were trying on? Even for a minute?"
"Well— well, yes, now that I think of it, but—"
Grace, small nose quivering excitedly, swung back to the cashier across the
desk.
"Mr. Albertson, have you one or two of those fake bills that have been used
—the dirtier the better? And a fine-point pen? And a bottle of green ink?"
"Certainly. But I'm not sure—" Grace dipped her hand into a pocket of her jacket.
An official card slipped between her fingers. She held it out toward Albertson.
"It's quite all right. I'm Culver, from Tim Noonan's agency."

Grace paused beneath the sign, IVAN JORGEN: Rugs, Vases, Curios,
glancing into a show window filled with a hodge- podge of stuff which was,
indeed, "foreign appearin' and queer." Mr. Jorgen seemed to have a little of
everything in his shop.
A thick, stale smell issued from the darkness beyond the open doorway. In the
shadowy interior of the store, a lone dim figure was moving forward.
Under ordinary circumstances, the girl from Noonan's would have hurried
past the place after one glance at the cheap atrocities displayed there. But now
she stood her ground, admiring a particularly ugly vase in the background. A
conspicuous red leather purse-very new and shiny—dangled loosely from her
fingers.
When the heavy-set dark man had stepped suggestively to the door, she was
noticeably eager. Her gaze, as she turned toward him, took in his matted
eyebrows, his strong but sensitive hands, and the brutish jut of the jaw above his
soiled collar.
"I wonder—could you tell me, please, how much that is? That vase in the
corner ?"
The man bowed, rubbing his hands together across his stomach. Three gold
teeth glittered in his oily smile.
"But yes, Madame. Ver' cheap. Ver' good work. You maybe step inside, like
to see?"
Grace stepped inside. It was very much the sort of junk shop she had been
expecting. There was some article in that conglomerate mess in the window to
attract almost any eye—to lure the passer-by inside for further examination.