Chapter 226

It was almost noon before she left. She left with the video she came to made. I didn't care. I was sexually exhausted for the first time in what seemed like months. I could have stopped her at any time I told myself, but I always let these things play out.

There was nothing the man in Miami could do to me, since I had been beaten in my run for sheriff. I realized that the timing of the Kara's visit was organized so I would go along. He knew I felt as though I had nothing to lose. He didn't get to lead a large criminal enterprise by being concerned about other people's feeling. Kara said something about him paying for the film, as if he had not been previously arranged. She probably just planned to sell it freelance. That's why I chose to let this kind of thing play out. The more you learn about the game, the closer you came to having the power shift from the enemy to you. Not that he was the enemy yet.

The little pickup I bought would never pull the trailer that Jeremy and The Brit bought but I didn't want to buy furniture, what I wanted was jewelry and guns. The kinds of things that could be stored and sold easily. Those could be carried in the small pickup. I had to find places to buy things for sure.

By nightfall on the day that Kara came to visit, I was no closer to starting the old life. I did have a list of auctions of storage lockers and estate auctions. Both of which would give me a shot at the kinds of things I wanted to buy. The storage locker I bought, I could clean out now that I had the truck. Clean outs were part of the deal. You had to leave them completely empty, or pay a large cleaning fee to the facility.

I scheduled a western half of the state auction trip for the weekend. It took me to Abbottsville as well a three other towns of more or less the same size. I would be running the whole weekend. I could sure use a partner to help with the driving, if nothing else. Kara was out of the question, so I gave Jeremy a call.

"Are you kidding, that's a wonderful Idea. We can take the SUV and trailer," he suggested.

"You have to know, I did not call you for that. I can carry everything I really want in my own little truck," I said.

"I know that, you pay for half the gas and motel bills like last time," he said.

"Okay I can do that," I said. All that expense and I wasn't even going to get laid. I began having second thoughts about the trip. Maybe I needed to learn to travel alone. It certainly wasn't fear that prevented my from going it alone. It was the thought of being totally alone for four days that did it.

Friday finally came. After my morning ride I waited for Jeremy to come for the trailer. It was still before noon, when he showed up. He and I managed to get the trailer hooked up and ready to drive away before lunch.

"Jeremy let's leave it in the yard and take my truck to eat lunch then head out," I suggested.

"Good idea," he agreed.

I drove us to the plaza, where we ate almost fresh burgers, and almost hot fries, before we headed out for out next big adventure. We got on the road before 1pm and headed to our first stop in Abbottsville. The place was a storage facility about two blocks from the campus. I didn't have high hopes for any jewelry but what the hell, I did want to look.

They bid off 4 lockers before 5 PM. Each of the lockers seemed to hold storage boxes and nothing else. I had a feeling it was all going to be books and shit like that. Just for the hell of it, I bought the first one for $525. Then we were more particular. Jeremy saw one that had a lot of picture in pretty nice frames. He said the frames were a good sign so he paid $1,000 for it. Then we stopped bidding. We both decided to save our money for the rest of the trip.

Jeremy went to his locker first. The art work was mostly nice prints but prints none the less. There were a couple of civil war prints made from the original negatives according to the printing on the mats. I thought there might be some value there. There were a couple of oil type paintings. They were signed, by no one either of was knew or could find online.

"You know I think these were in a restaurant," I said. "Maybe a country club remodel. Let's see what's in the boxes." The turned out to be a lot of fancy cloth napkins and table cloths.

"Guess we will be trashing these," he said.

"Let's not trash them. We have room in the big ole trailer. Lets take them to the Warren County Animal Shelter. We are going right by it on the to Dobson anyway. We can write off the tax bill," I said with a laugh.

"Damn Sylvia, leave it to you to get every penny out of this stuff. I'm going to keep one napkin and frame it," Jeremy said.

When we got to my locker. There were some books that were neither old, nor rare looking. There were a hell of a lot of books and some vinyl records. I knew I could make salad bowl or decorator pieces from them, but that required work. I was ready to toss them when Jeremy Intervened.

"I'll tell you what. If you are going to throw them out? I'll take them." he said.

"Suits me," I agreed.

There was a box of cheap costume jewelry, which I kept. A box of handbags and one of shoes, neither of which appealed to me. Those went into the pile headed for the landfill. It began to look like I paid five hundred bucks for a ten bucks worth of cheap jewelry. Then I found a wooden presentation box. Inside it was a very old cap and ball pistol. It was probably a civil war era piece. I doubted it would save me, but what the hell it was the best thing in the locker.