The Harbor Barn door hinges sing in a key the lake loves. Café lights buzz above aisles of anchor lamps and high school pennants, and the place smells like wet rope, lemon oil, and a rumor. I carry the locket in a felt pouch against my palm, the metal warming where my skin presses it. The seiche is up; every time the lake shoves the docks, a slack chain on a ceiling hook whispers a warning down the rafters. I tell myself I’m here to shop, the way people say they’re “just looking” while planning a heist with nothing but their questions.
“No returns, no digging,” Shep calls from the counter without looking up. He wears a ball cap older than my diploma and a sweatshirt that says Harbor Barn: Where the Past Pays Rent. He slides a stack of consignment slips into neat purgatory. “You’re the podcast girl who made the medal wrong,” he adds, which is not what happened and what everybody remembers anyway.
“I’m the one who corrected it on air and apologized twice,” I say, and I put a small bouquet of cinnamon rolls in the no-food zone like a peace offering disguised as contraband. “I’m also your free marketing if you help me find a paper trail.”
He snorts. “Marketing is when people buy things. Paper trails are when people stop by with a lawyer.”
“Paper trails keep you honest,” I say, and I keep my voice friendly enough to be unarmed. “I bought a locket here three weeks ago. Brass heart. Hand-engraved initials. I need to confirm how it came in.”
He finally looks at me. His eyes are the color of pier wood: trustworthy if you don’t make them carry a yacht. “I don’t give out consignor names,” he says. “I don’t even give out consignor shapes.”
“I’m not asking for names,” I say, and I let my hand hover over the recorder in my pocket like a swimmer reaching for a ladder and deciding to stay. “I’m asking for chain of custody, generic. Category, source type. You can redact. I’ll blur. I’ll trade you a thirty-second Barn shoutout and a link in my episode notes. That’s tourists from three states, Shep. They love a barn.”
He eyes the rolls. He eyes my notepad. He eyes the ceiling chain that tings when the wind jumps. “Free promo,” he says. “You sink me and I’ll staple a retraction to your forehead.”
“Fair,” I say. “Also, I’ll come back on Saturday and help you audit tags. You know those swap group moms will crucify a mispriced Pyrex if you forget the butterfly.”
“Those moms keep me fed,” he says, but his mouth softens because we both belong to this economy of curated junk and weaponized nostalgia. He sets a bell from a lobster trap down on the counter and taps it with his nail. The sound rings short and rude. “Backroom,” he says. “Ten minutes. If you post pictures of my filing system, I’ll deny knowing you at church.”
“I already make Father Mikhail nervous,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “He charges for parking at funerals in summer.”
He parts the bead curtain. The backroom is a page avalanche paused mid-fall. Banker’s boxes line a shelf wall, labeled with thick marker: LIGHTING, GLASS, JEWELRY LOTS, WHO GAVE THIS. A space heater tics in protest against a draft. The coffee back here makes a smell like penitence; the pot’s been on since a season when we still said “content” like a prayer. Diesel threads the air from a truck idling out front, the exhaust sneaking in under the dock door.
“Ground rules,” Shep says. “You don’t touch ledger A. You can touch ledger B. No pictures of phone numbers, no pictures of my electric bill, and you don’t take a pen near anything that predates my second wife.”
“Copy,” I say, and I scrub my hands with a shop wipe because I know better than to smear lives with studio oil. He drags a crate marked JEWELRY LOTS to the table and flips the lid.
Inside is a top layer of Ziplocs: vintage clip-ons, charm bracelets like arguments, a handful of saint medals that have already done their miracles. Beneath them waits ledger B—spiral bound, bruised at the corners, its first page decorated with the doodled anchor every bored person draws when pretending to be nautical.
“Date and source,” he says, tapping the column with a knuckle. “That’s all you get.”
I pull the receipt from my wallet, the one I saved because I save all of it now. The stock number reads JB-1047, which I’d mistaken for a price code the day I bought the locket, thinking the Barn had learned invisibility math.
“JB-1047,” I say.
“Huh,” he says, pretending he doesn’t already know where the line is. He flips fast, then slower, the way a person does when the thing they’re hunting might bite.
“There,” I say together with him, and we both stop on 1047. DESCRIPTION: Jewelry Lot—mixed—no stones. SOURCE: Church sale. NOTES: misc. brass hearts, chains; box donated; inspect hinges.
My pulse taps time with the space heater. “Church sale,” I repeat. “Which church?”
He squints, then nods toward a stapled slip tucked behind the entry. “We staple proofs,” he says. “Makes auditors happy. Makes me mad.”
I ease the staple with my nail and slide out the slip. The header says ST. BRIGID’S ANNUAL RUMMAGE, and a blank where a volunteer hand wrote LOT #22—JEWELRY BOX. A volunteer number stamp smudges the bottom corner: SB-V/CH-3. Someone had initialed next to PICKUP—Crane House, a note I’d have missed if the ink hadn’t bled into the pulp.
Micro-hook: The letters CH sit there like a wave that forgot how to be polite.
“Pickup from Crane House,” I say, trying to keep air in it so it doesn’t sound like accusation. “You run pickups there often?”
He cocks his cap. “I run pickups where the donations are. People die tidy or people die surprised. Estates call when the kids can’t agree who wants Grandma’s ashtrays.”
“Did the estate call you or the church call you?” I ask.
He taps the box label on the slip. “Church put it out with the others. House had a cleanout. Volunteers help move, we load. That lot went straight to me because St. Brigid’s doesn’t sell metals in bulk; they prefer unit price so Mrs. Donovan can say she raised X for the roof. I take the leftovers, consign, and kick back ten percent. Everybody feels holy.”
I taste percolated coffee on the back of my tongue and remember Lydia’s living room, where holiness is careful hands and closed mouths. “Who labeled the box?” I say.
“Volunteers,” he says. “Retirees with label-makers, teenagers with Sharpies, and the kind of moms who can sort a century in an afternoon. They bring rulers to price lace like it’s contraband.”
“Do you know which volunteer number is CH-3?” I ask, already knowing I’ll end up at the bulletin board in St. Brigid’s hall where sign-up sheets pretend to be community and actually are ledgers of favors.
“You think I keep a roster of church volunteers?” he says, affronted and amused. “I keep a roster of people who pay for brass ducks.”
I lift the tote under the ledger. It rattles with old price tags and estate stickers peeled and saved because paper is history and also scratch paper. A manila tag winks up at me from the bottom like a fish scale. I pinch it free. The string is cut; the card is stamped ESTATE—CRANE HOUSE CLEANOUT in the same ink that bruised the rummage slip. In pencil, someone has scribbled jewel. lot / attic / gift closet. A smaller stamp bleeds at the edge: VOL—CH-3.
The air in the backroom gets a little thinner, like the space heater decided to share.
“I need a photo,” I say.
“No names,” he says again, softer now because he knows we crossed from gossip into evidence. “Blur the code.”
“Not blurring,” I say, then see his face and adjust. “Blurring personal contact info. Codes stay.”
He weighs this and nods once. “One shot,” he says.
I set the tag on the ledger next to 1047 and the St. Brigid’s slip, then frame the page so no phone numbers creep in. The shutter clacks. The chain on the ceiling gives a small laugh. Outside, a truck reverses; its beep ticks into the room like a lazy metronome.
“That attic note,” I say. “Gift closet.”
“Rich houses have those,” he says. “People who give never run out of things to give. They stock a closet with candles and blank cards and little presents for other people who never run out. Then somebody dies and the closet gets real generous.”
“This was never a blank card,” I say, touching the outline of the locket through the pouch. “This was made and kept.”
He leans his hip on the table. “You’re marrying your story to that,” he says, not unkind. “You better be right.”
“I’ll be careful,” I say. “Church sale to Barn I can prove. From Crane House to church sale I can imply, strongly. From whoever put it in the gift closet to wherever it was before—that’s the door I need you to open.”
“I don’t open Crane doors,” he says, and the sentence has the weight of years. “I sell their golf trophies back to them every ten years, and I let Mrs. Crane argue me down on prices like she invented money.”
“Everett Crane is raising money for safety initiatives,” I say, letting my tone skim polite. “He likes paper he can wave around. I like paper I can read. You see the overlap.”
“I see my lease,” he says, and he taps the corner of the ledger with a finger that has seen too many cash drawers. Then he sighs, which is a way of paying a tax his town collects in breath. “All right. I can tell you something that isn’t a name. Crane House volunteers use the club board to recruit. They put initials on their tags—CH for Crane House, then a number. CH-3 is a person who likes to alpha order costume jewelry by manufacturer but calls me to ask how to spell trifari every damn time.”
“I can find her without a name,” I say. “She’s in photos. She’s in Facebook swap groups policing who deserves milk glass.”
“Don’t start a fight in the swaps,” he says, suddenly stern. “Those women carry receipts like sacraments. They will crucify a microphone.”
“I’ll offer a promo,” I say, and I mean it, because I’m not here to torch—I’m here to trace. “And I’ll come on Saturday to help you audit tags.”
“You’ll be here at eight,” he says. “You’ll bring coffee that doesn’t taste like confession.”
“Done,” I say.
He closes the ledger gently, smoothing the paper like a shirt before a photograph. “You’re sure you don’t want a return policy?” he says.
“I want a reckoning policy,” I say, and I tuck the phone away so I don’t hold it like a weapon. “One more question. The day you picked up from Crane House—was Everett there?”
“Everett is always there,” he says. “He’s there when he isn’t. He sends people who say his name like an invoice. I dealt with a volunteer in a navy sweater who said the word estate like a toast.”
“CH-3,” I say, and he shrugs because he’s done talking for free.
I step back into the sales floor, where a box of church votive holders has learned to glow without candles. The café lights hum. A child bangs a brass bell and laughs, because nobody taught him yet which sounds are for winning and which ones are warnings. The lake slaps the dock hard; the chain overhead flirts with pitch. The Barn’s cash register spits a receipt, and the little serrated sound is more satisfying than a hymn.
“You’ll send me the promo copy,” Shep calls. “No sappy music. I want your honest voice that sounds like you got away with something.”
“That’s just my face,” I say, and I get a half smile from the man who doesn’t smile for free.
At the door, I pause. The bell over it is brass gone dull in the right places. The locket in my palm answers with a small confidence: weight where weight belongs. I picture St. Brigid’s hall with folding tables and bins of Christmas detritus; I picture a volunteer with CH-3 stamped on her tags, sorting a life into piles that make the town comfortable. I picture the gift closet and the attic and hands that called this heart a trinket because it was easier than calling it a history.
Micro-hook: I text Ruth a photo of the tag and the slip and type, Church sale—Crane House pickup—volunteer code CH-3. Before I hit send, I add, Gift closet. The typing dots appear, then disappear, then appear again like somebody standing just behind a door.
The wind grabs the door from me and shows me the lake. A diesel boat coughs near the breakwater. Across the water, the slate roof of St. Brigid’s looks like a decision. Regatta photos in the Barn’s front case grin under their varnish, legacy boys and legacy bells. My hand warms the locket through the felt. I want to run straight to the church basement and start flipping clipboards.
I don’t know yet which Crane volunteer is CH-3.
I do know she wrote on my locket’s tag with a steady hand—and I plan to ask her what else she filed away.