Page 32 of Always Be My Baby

“Yeah, we have to go meet this rare money dealer.”

“Woo-hoo-who…So you’re Mr. Moneybags now?” He laughed, as did I. Because no, I wasn’t anything. This was all Lee’s deal. “Go, get out of here. Service has slowed. We got it from here.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you hanging.”

“Nah, we got this.”

I patted his arm, then took off my apron and headed for my office to change. Ten minutes later, I walked into Lee’s office, ready to go see if she was now a rich woman.

Marilee

We entered the lobby of a store called Rare Capital. We had to drive a half hour to get here, but as I told Girard earlier, the owner had come highly recommended by all the positive reviews online.

Old coins of all denominations, and even some bills, were put on display behind glass cases that I knew had to be wired for security.

Girard and I approached the counter and I introduced myself. “Hi. I’m Marilee Bell. I have an appointment with Mr. Merritt.”

The pretty young girl behind the counter smiled at me. She couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen years old and she wore her hair piled in a stylish knot on top of her head, with wisps of purposely dyed silver locks falling down in tendrils and framing her face. I never had the guts to color my hair any of these exotic colors that I saw people walking around with all the time now. But it certainly looked pretty on her.

“Ah, yes… The 1875 fifty-dollar-bill,” she said. “My dad’s been waiting for you. He’s in his office.” She pointed to a room behind the counter. “Go right in.”

Taking Girard’s hand, he and I followed the path behind the counter and I knocked on the door, going in once I heard, “Enter.”

Here, we entered the domain of Orson Merritt the Third, or so the nameplate on his desk read. He stood and held his hand out to us. “I’m Orson Merritt. We spoke on the phone today, yes?”

“Yes. I’m Marilee Bell, and this is Girard Eaton.” Both Girard and I shook his hand.

“Please—” He gestured to the seat situated in front of his desk. “Have a seat and we can get down to it.” Girard and I sat in the offered chairs, and I pulled the two most important envelopes from my purse and set them on the desk in front of me.

The first envelope I slid over to him contained the silver notes. As he carefully looked them over, I couldn’t help but notice how much this man did not look like the girl out front who was working the counter. This man had thinning, mousy brown hair that he’d worked into a combover. As compared to, well, seeing as she wore her hair silver, I didn’t exactly know what her natural color was. But her eyebrows were blonde. Not to mention, he had to be in his early fifties, which meant he’d had kids a little later in life.

“Okay,” he started. “Most of the silver certificates are worth about seven dollars apiece.” A few of them, a group of three, he moved off to a separate pile. He then laid his hand on that pile. “These ones are worth about fourteen dollars each.”

Definitely not worth ransacking somebody’s home over.

“May I see the $50 bill now?” he asked.

I slid the envelope over to him. He wore soft, white gloves when he pulled the bill from the envelope. He held it up to the light. He laid it flat on his desk. He scrutinized this bill in every way a piece of paper money could be scrutinized. When he finished, he smiled and said, “This is absolutely a genuine 1875 $50 bill.”

“And what would you call its condition?” I asked.

“Amazing. Or technically, we call this mint,” he said. That was when I started to get excited, at least on the inside. “If you’re interested in selling, I’d be willing to cut you a check for $40,000 right now.”

He carefully placed the paper currency back into the envelope and slid it across the desk to us. I carefully, because now I was afraid to actually hold the thing, slid it back into the billfold in my purse, where it would stay completely flat.

“Thank you, but I don’t know that I’m going to sell today. Now that I know that it’s real, I need to do more research.”

“I totally get that and I’ll tell you right now that that one note is worth between $40,000 and $65,000. But unless you want to try an online auction for yourself, which can be risky, most any dealer isn’t going to give you more than my offer because we still need to make a profit off the sale of the product.”

“I get that, and I will keep that in mind. But I still feel as if I need to do my research on it first. Thank you for your time tonight.” As I stood, I held my hand out to him again and he shook it. Then Mr. Merritt turned his outstretched hand to Girard and he did the same.

I felt completely drunk as we left the shop, drunk after imbibing too much information.

“Well that took a turn I didn’t exactly expect,” Girard said as his way of trying to draw me out of my head, but I didn’t have it in me to talk just then and simply gave a nod of response.

He got it. That was one of the best things about Girard, he always got it and instead of trying to force a conversation I wasn’t ready to have, he slid his hand over to mine resting on my lap lacing our fingers together. I turned my head to study his profile while he stared straight ahead as we made the half-hour drive silently back to Lake Shores.

He was going to take us home, but I worried about keeping the notes at our house, or even at the bistro locked in my desk, given the value. Before they closed—actually, they were trying to get ready to close when we arrived—we went to our bank and I opened up a deposit box. The boxes were stored in safes. Fireproof. Waterproof. Weatherproof. And typically,theft proof. Did I feel bad that the manager had to stay later than the bank’s office hours to get us taken care of? A little bit. But was I more concerned about the $50 bank note worth $40,000 to $65,000? Absolutely.

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