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Curiosities, Oddities and Antiques -- Formerly Things Reborn -- Monday

All right, if she could leave her hotel room to have pizza and watch terrible movies about killer fences, she certainly ought to be able to do her actual real job, and get down to the shop to look for new and interesting shipments. Of which there was one: a small paperback-sized box crammed full of diamonds.

Well. Definitely hot, then. This package was going right in her safe, until she got instructions on where these were headed.

And maybe she'd take them out now and then when no one was even in the store and let a few of them play in the light. Look, she was only human.

The sign in the store window still read:

CURIOSITIES, ODDITIES AND ANTIQUES
Specializing in Hard-to-Find Items
We Buy Your Rarities - Inquire Within

with the ever-present NOW HIRING sign beneath.

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Ask the supervillainess about the strange items in her store.

Avoid the supervillainess and pick out some junk yourself.

Sorry for the lurky, guys. N&I went on vacation for our anniversary and then OH YEAH, I SPENT MOST OF IT IN THE HOSPITAL WITH PNEUMONIA.

I am an expert at ruining vacations but this is impressive even for me.

Flick hadn't been able to steal a lot of things while he'd been recovering over the past week. But, he'd built up a nice stash of stuff while in Italy and hadn't gotten a chance to sell those.

He'd been on his way to the mainland to find a fence when the sign in the shop window caught his eyes. Might as well give it a try. He didn't have to sell anything if he gauged the place too public.

So, he went inside, still limping, with a duffel bag over his shoulder.

DUDE. I hate pneumonia! Have had it twice. It blows. *Gives you lots of drugs, popsicles, pillows, and tissues*

This was my second time -- first was when I was four. It seems to be mostly over but I'm still exhausted and raspy and wheezy, which they said is going to take a while.

*takes the pillows and tissues zomg and builds herself a naptime fort*

"Welcome to Curiosities, Oddities, and Antiques," she said, slamming the safe shut before she straightened up to look at her new customer. Good thing she hadn't been actually playing with the diamonds when he came in. She should be more careful.

"How can I -- are you limping?"

Flick was going to be glad when he wasn't limping anymore. As it was, he just nodded and stopped a few feet away from the counter. He didn't even question the voice. Yet.

"Fell down some stairs," Flick said, using the excuse that Emma had given him awhile ago. "Texting and walking isn't a good combination. That'll learn me."

He shrugged and didn't care how obvious of a lie that was.

Falling down the stairs ranked up there with tripping and hitting a doorknob, but really, she didn't need to press the matter. It wasn't her business, which was presumably his point.

"I get so clumsy myself at times," she agreed, waving it off. "Welcome to the store. We have all sorts of rarities and oddities. Is there anything in particular you're looking for, today?"

Considering the duffel bag, he might be here to sell, but she didn't want to ask the wrong question if he was just a student lugging around a bookbag.

"This a new place?" Flick asked, trying to gauge if he was that unobservant when it came to town or if it had popped up overnight and he just hadn't been in town since then. "I don't remember seeing it before."

"I only bought it like a month ago," Dr. Girlfriend explained. "It was an antiques store before that, I don't even know how long, but I changed the name and cleaned the place up a little. I don't have many employees so it's really hit-and-miss when I'm in here."

She ought to give out business cards or something, with her cell on it. In case someone had something hot that needed to be shipped out ASAP.

"Interesting."

So, he wasn't completely oblivious to things happening around him. That was good. He wouldn't have wanted to lose that talent.

"I never visited the previous place but this looks like a change for the better. Antiques only would just be a boring profession. Too much old stuff."

In his opinion. "Your sign says you sell stuff too? Like a pawn shop?" Flick was keeping his tone casual and curious.

"I was happier about 'Oddities' before I knew they were bizarre medical things," Sheila said with a decided shudder. "Like embalmed fetuses and stuffed animals. I'm thinking of having the sign changed."

Or at least calling up Bowie and yelling about all the embalmed fetuses. Because those were gross.

He definitely had her attention with that last sentence. She gave him a light smile and allowed her eyes to flick over to his duffel bag before returning to his.

"Very much like a pawn shop," she agreed. "People bring me ... rare items they've found, that they feel might be valuable, and I purchase them for resale."

She especially liked the 'pawn shop' explanation, because pawn shops weren't all that concerned about where you got the items you were unloading. And neither was she.

"Should you ever find yourself with something of that nature, I'm always interested in making an offer," she said. And look, everything she'd said was aboveboard and legal. She could argue that she knew people who scoured garage sales for passed-over treasures.

Flick was feeling a little more comfortable with the fact that maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to unload things that weren't necessarily his on the island. It'd save a lot of time.

"What if the items aren't that rare?" he asked, crossing his arms and wincing slightly when that pulled at the ache he still had in his arm. Oh well. "I find things pretty often. Right place, right time."

Right talent, unobservant people, sticky fingers, that sort of thing.

Oh, good, they were on the same page. She folded her arms and did her best to still seem like a professional.

"I'm always interested in seeing what people have uncovered," she said smoothly. "The nice thing about antiques is that sometimes, things are more valuable than you might expect. And even if it's not technically an antique, it still might be something that would sell. If I think I can turn a profit on something that someone happens to bring me, it's just good business to make an offer on it."

She'd pretend to be a professional and he'd pretend the things in his bag were totally purchased legally. And they'd both pull it off.

"Oh, you'd turn a profit." Flick didn't steal anything that wouldn't put money in his pocket. That'd just be wasting his time and he didn't like doing that. "I don't waste my time with things that wouldn't fetch a decent amount of money."

He shrugged one shoulder. "Then, it'd be like I was at a garage sale, buying a broken lamp and some books with pages missing. Waste of time. I've got better things to do with my time then hunt down -- " Good word choice, Flick. Very on the up and up. " -- cheap things."

"Exactly," Dr. Girlfriend agreed. "You go to garage sales and look for things that might clean up nice. Maybe that lady doesn't know how nice the vase she's selling is. It's her loss for not paying better attention."

Maybe that choice of words was too obvious, but really, she was still staying on this side of the line.

She nodded to the duffel bag. "Is there anything in there I might want to see?"

There were probably a few things but he wasn't offering it up just yet. He didn't want to be sloppy and end up exposing himself to some undercover sting either even if he thought she wasn't a cop or anything similar.

"How seamless is the process of selling?" he asked though he did swing the duffel bag off his shoulder. Progress. "Am I gonna need to sign something? Show you ID? Have my picture taken by surveillance cameras?"

Just checking.

Deet dee deeeee. Kenzi wandered in bearing an old-not-impressive jewelry box, and put it down on the counter while she wandered around. Nothin' to see here! Really!

"Hey, Doc."

He was cautious. Understandably. Which made her realize she needed to be cautious, as well. A cop was just as likely to tread carefully as someone afraid of one.

Not that she thought he was a cop. But she was having to tread murkier waters here, and go further out on a limb than she'd like.

"You don't need to show me ID, but you do have to sign the register," she said, pulling out a rather large book. "The security cameras are in both corners," she stopped to point them out, "but they're focused mostly on the door in case of breaking and entering, and the aisles in case of shoplifting. They don't seem to have such a good view of the counter, so when you fill out the register, please write down whatever it is that you brought. In detail, because my memory is downright hideous."

So if, say, he handed her a necklace and wrote down that he was selling an ugly lamp, that was his business.

"Of course this register is mine, and not to be seen by anyone else," she continued easily. "Should anyone come asking about something that's been sold, I'd be happy to look things up for them, but I can't let just people go poking around in my register. Not without a warrant."

Did she mention that she knew a very, very good lawyer? Monstroso was already on retainer for this little endeavour.

"Good afternoon, Kenzi," Sheila said smoothly. She picked up the jewelry box, turning it this way and that. "Oh, this is a simply lovely antique. Were you bringing this in to trade?"

Presumably, it had some hot jewelry in it. But Dr. Girlfriend was going to wait until she was blocking the security camera a little bit better to risk cracking it open.

That...was definitely enough to satisfy Flick's paranoia. He didn't think he was falling right into the hands of the cops and it was nice to know the bare minimum about a place he was planning on selling to. It wasn't New York but it'd do.

"I'm Flick," he said, loosening up further now. "I've got some things you might like to take a look at it. I mean, I just found all this stuff while we were in Italy and I thought about returning it but I ran out of time. Darn."

That 'darn' was said so blandly, it was laughable. "This place sounds like a reputable place to get it back out there. And it saves me the time of walking to the mainland to the place I usually go."

Dr. Girlfriend was clicking her tongue sympathetically. "Don't you just hate that?" she said. "When you buy something on vacation, and then you don't realize you want to return it until after you've come home again. It's the wrong size, or you already have one of those. And you're not about to go all the way back to Italy just to exchange for store credit."

No, he hadn't said he'd bought the items. But she was making a point of saying it now.

"Dr. Girlfriend," she said, because in a professional setting, she felt more like using her professional name. "Let's see if I can help you recoup some of that money you lost."

Flick passed her the bag. Inside, she'd find an eclectic mix of items. Flick tended to go for electronics so she'd find a few high end iPhones and smartphones and tablet or two. But, having been in Italy, he'd branched out and managed to swipe a few expensive watches, some odd looking sculptures that had looked pricey and some other pieces of jewelry (bracelets and rings, mostly).

He hadn't realized he'd racked up that much until he'd come back but he knew he needed to unload it instead of keeping it under his bed or in his closet.

"You sound like a very helpful person. I'm pretty confident I won't have to limp to the mainland in order to share these things with the general public."

My goodness, he was efficient. There was easily a few thousand dollars' worth of merchandise in this duffel bag. She turned her shoulders slightly so as to better block the camera, and tried to keep her expression neutral as she sifted through the pile.

"I'm here to help," she said. "And really, anything we can do to keep you off that leg of yours. Do you need to sit down while I sort through all your merchandise? I could fetch you a chair."

Sheila was pulling out her own iPhone in order to punch in a few estimations. And to try Googling the odd looking sculptures, to get an idea of their basic value. (And whether anyone was looking for them, which, naturally, was going to affect the price.)

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Curiosities, Oddities and Antiques -- Formerly Things Reborn -- Monday

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