The Orkney Scroll (7 page)

The third was that I had this little epiphany, somewhere around 3 AM. Even though I didn’t want to, I was replaying the business about the writing cabinet, a rather unpleasant habit I’d developed. I suppose it was better than dreaming about Trevor’s head, but it was exhausting nonetheless. I tried to picture the cabinet, going back over in my mind the examination, one I thought I had been careful about the first time I saw it in Trevor’s store. I imagined myself opening the doors, looking at the leaded glass and then the wood, the dovetailing, the finish, and then the lock. I was sure the lock was fine.

I then went back over my conversation with the elusive Percy, or Arthur, or whatever he was called. When I’d told him the cabinet was a fake, we’d got into one of those “Is, too; Is not” conversations. Clearly he had been convinced of the authenticity of his grandmother’s writing cabinet. But the piece of it I’d foolishly and painfully crawled through a hedge to get, said it wasn’t. Wrong lock, no doubt about it.

Then I went over in my mind the documentation I’d searched for on behalf of Anna Chan. There had been one lacquered mahogany cupboard, valued at $15,000, in the big shipment from Scotland, purchased from an antique dealer on George Square in Glasgow by the name of John A. Macdonald & Sons. There had been a second shipment with only one object, a black cabinet valued at $10,000 from somewhere called St. Margaret’s Hope. Who could forget a name like that? So there were two black cabinets, and I’d had a difficult time deciding which would have been the one I’d seen in Trevor’s store. What if the cabinet Trevor had shown to Blair and me that fateful day had been a real Mackintosh? What if there was a second cabinet, a forgery? What if Blair had paid for the real one, but received the fake? I knew that was unlikely. Forging furniture is very difficult to do. Still, I had to wonder.

I called the police station expecting to leave a voice mail for Singh, but got the man himself. He sounded tired, but jubilant. He told me that Blair had been charged and that he appreciated my assistance. I told him I thought there were two cabinets.

“Isn’t that a little unlikely?” he asked. “I’ve been reading up on your man Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Never heard of him until now, but I see he’s famous. It sounds like a lot of work to forge a second desk thing.”

“Not if you can sell it twice,” I said.

“Interesting,” he said. “Bait and switch. But it doesn’t make any difference, does it? Wylie may have shown you and Baldwin the real deal, but he delivered the fake. That’s still a motive for murder. It may say something about Trevor’s ethics, but it doesn’t change the fact Baldwin took an axe to Trevor’s head. It doesn’t make any difference to the case.”

“It makes a difference to me,” I said.

“I can see that. Your credibility as an antique dealer is on the line, so it would be better for you if the one you saw was authentic.”

“Surely it does show that something else was going on here,” I said.

“I’ll tell you exactly what was going on, because it will be public information in the morning. Trevor Wylie had a gambling problem, by which I mean he couldn’t stop, and he owed almost eight hundred thousand to someone, who, when he couldn’t collect, sold the debt for fifty cents on the dollar to a guy who likes to intimidate his prey by showing up with his Doberman. That, you see, was why I was interested in your comment about the man with the dog. We’ll be having a little chat with this guy, whose name is Douglas Sykes, better known as Dog, as soon as we can find him, and I’m willing to bet Trevor paid him in cash, which is the only thing he accepts, just before he died. You understand how it works, right? Man with Doberman pays the original lender half, in other words four hundred grand, and then sets out to collect the full amount, which is how he makes his money. Wylie was about to get himself very badly hurt if he didn’t come up with the money, so he concocted this scheme to sell a fake Mackintosh to Baldwin, for cash, and presto, he’s out of trouble.”

“Maybe the man with the Doberman killed Trevor.”

“Not good for business. You rough them up to scare them, but you keep them alive so they can pay up and then rack up more debts.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But you don’t know this for a fact.”

“Guess nothing. Safe money says that’s the way it is. Thanks for calling me, though. Hold on a sec.”

I waited. He had put his hand over the mouthpiece, so all I could hear was a muffled conversation. “McClintoch and Swain in Yorkville,” he said finally. “That’s you, right?”

“Right.”

“Sorry to have to tell you you’ve had a break-in,” he said. “You might want to go over there now.” There was a pause. “You’re kidding,” he said. “Shit!”

“What?”

“Sorry,” he said. “It seems the perps hitting antique stores are at it again. Wylie’s shop has been broken into as well. Okay, I’m on my way.”

My partner Rob, who lives right next door and who spends a lot of time working nights, was pulling into his parking spot as I came out. When I told him what had happened, he very generously insisted on coming with me, even though he looked as if he could use some sleep.

The shop was in some disarray this time, rather different from the time before when it was left in perfect order except for the missing candlesticks. It hadn’t been trashed, though, I’ll say that. It’s just that every drawer, credenza, chest and cabinet in the place had been opened and left that way. The office had fared worse than that, with every drawer having been emptied.

Singh showed up as I was surveying the place. “What’s missing?” he said.

“I’m not sure. I don’t see anything. We’ll have to do an inventory tomorrow.”

“We’ll dust for prints,” he sighed. “Here and at Wylie’s. If it makes you feel any better, his place looks worse. Fortunately, Anna Chan took the files with her when she left yesterday. I suppose you’re going to tell me that it was Percy looking for his grandmother’s chest.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think he’d be looking in an armoire for a writing cabinet. But somebody was certainly looking for something.”

“Money,” he said. “Did they get any?”

“I don’t think it was money. There’s only the petty cash, and the box hasn’t even been opened. The lock wouldn’t hold up to much prying, either.”

I saw Rob looking around. “Someone was looking for something very specific,” he said. “How did they get in?”

“No visible signs of entry,” Singh replied.

“So someone with a key?” I said. “I don’t think so. There’s just Clive, Alex, Ben, our student, and me. I’d vouch for all of us. In any event, anyone with a key would know the combination to the security system.”

“How fast did the security company respond?”

“We were here in about six minutes,” Singh said. “I don’t know how long they waited to call us.”

“A lot of activity here for six minutes,” Rob said.

“What are you saying?” I said.

“Either you could use a new security company or someone was hiding in the store when it closed.”

“You mean the alarm went off when they left?”

“Maybe. Let’s go home,” Rob said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”

“I’d better call Clive and warn him,” I said.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d cast your eyes over Wylie’s place later, let me know if you think anything’s missing,” Singh said. “Say ten o’clock, so I can go home and have a shower.

“Sure,” I said.

The sun was just coming up when we got home, so I made breakfast for Rob. It was the least I could do. I told him my thoughts on the writing cabinet. He was very nice about it, but I knew he thought it completely unlikely. He told me I should forget the whole business and just get on with my life.

“Does Blair’s arrest not look a little too pat to you?” I asked Rob. “I mean, Blair uses an axe in front of dozens of people, including the chief of police, and then uses the same axe on Trevor? Did he think no one would remember the axe business? He’s smarter than that.”

“You’re assuming it was premeditated,” Rob said. “Maybe he went to the store to get his money back, and Trevor refused to give it to him.”

“He went to the store with an axe?” I said.

“I guess that’s why he’s charged with murder,” he said. “Maybe he just intended to scare him, and Trevor was his usual cocky self.”

“Blair’s a lawyer,” I said. “He’s gotten some pretty sleazy people off.”

“You can say that again,” Rob said. “Some of them were guilty as sin.”

“Maybe one of these sleazy types had a grudge against him and framed him for it.”

“Or maybe one of the sleazy people did the job for him,” Rob replied. “Some of them at least must feel they owe him big time.”

“The police can’t find any record of a check or credit card transaction,” I said. “I mean they can’t even prove that Blair paid for the thing. There’s that business about Trevor owing eight hundred thousand dollars to his bookie, of course. I get the impression the police think Trevor rook cash and paid off the debt.”

“Eight hundred thousand in cash?” Rob said. “Then Blair has more problems than a murder charge.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nice law-abiding people like you and me don’t have that much cash around,” he said.

“But he’s very rich.”

“If he came into your store and offered you, say, a hundred grand for something, would you accept payment in cash?”

“No,” I said. “I know that significant sums of money like that have to be reported.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“But Trevor needed cash to pay his gambling debts. Maybe he gave Blair the deal of a lifetime, at least what would have qualified as that if the cabinet had been genuine Mackintosh. It’s worth a lot more than eight hundred thousand. Blair would think it was a really great deal and pay the cash.”

“Think this through, Lara. Honest people do not keep that kind of cash around. Have you ever thought how much space that kind of money takes up? Let’s say it’s in fifties, hundreds being hard to spend sometimes. So each bundle of one hundred bills is five thousand dollars. You’d need one hundred and sixty bundles of fifties. Four hundred if it’s in twenties, which most people want. You don’t just throw that in a shopping bag and take it to your favorite antique dealer, now do you? Good deal or not, Blair had money he shouldn’t have.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying he must have had a reason to have so much cash on hand, and it would tend to be an illegal one.” Rob should know, of course. Right at this moment he was running a restaurant. He knows nothing about the restaurant business. He does know about money laundering, however, and that was what he was doing, hoping, of course, to catch some bad guys doing it. He tells me he is making pots of money by laundering illicit cash, but that he still hasn’t nailed down what he calls the substantive offense, the crime, in other words, that resulted in all this money that needs to be laundered. He was given this assignment because he’s of Ukrainian descent, and apparently there were some Ukrainians in town who were interested in doing business of this sort. What do I know? I was just not entirely happy he had to consort with people like this, who in my opinion probably would kill you if you looked at them wrong. Still I was not prepared to concede the point.

“He’s a lawyer,” I said.

“And your point is?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he has an aversion to paying income tax. Singh seems to think I’d accept cash so I wouldn’t have to declare it. Maybe Blair does that. I just think it’s all too pat. Blair has a temper, certainly, but I just don’t see him as a murderer.”

“That may be because you don’t want to.”

“Isn’t it time you got some sleep?” I said.

“Sorry, I’m coming down hard on you, aren’t I? Baldwin was the defense lawyer in a case that I worked on. I know the guy was guilty, and Blair got him off, and believe me, our streets are more dangerous as a result. I’m accusing you of bias, and I should be pointing the finger at myself.”

“I’m just in a bad mood because I missed the lock,” I said. “And for sure I’m sympathetic about how you feel about all the slime Blair got off. But you know somebody has to defend them. That’s the way our system works, even if it’s galling from time to time. Furthermore, Blair told me once about how he grew up poor, and when he wanted to go to university his grandfather took a bundle of cash out from under the mattress and gave it to him. Don’t roll your eyes! I know rags to riches is a cliche. His grandfather’s wad of cash paid for his first year of university and he was able to take it from there. His grandfather believed in cash, and maybe Blair does, too. Okay, so he has more cash than other people. I understand what you’re saying, but just having it does not make you a criminal. Surely it’s what you do with it that counts.”

“Where I come from it’s ”not only what you do with it, but where you got it in the first place,“ he said. ”But I take your point. I can’t assume because he gets slugs off he’s a slug himself. Nor can I assume that because he has cash, he was doing something illegal, or that he sank an axe into Trevor’s head. I stand corrected, or at least moderately chastised.“

“Thank you. I appreciate that concession. Now, you get some sleep, and I’ll go to the shop, and maybe we’ll have an early dinner before you head out to catch bad guys.”

“Great idea. Promise we won’t discuss Baldwin, Wylie or locks, okay?” he said.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I still think there were two writing cabinets, though.”

“Call Ben and ask him if there was a chance someone hid out in the shop,” he said. “That idea I’m sticking to.” So I did. Ben told me that he had been in the office just before closing when he heard the bell that rings when someone enters or exits, but when he went out there was no one there. He said he looked in both showrooms but saw no one, and assumed that someone had looked in and then left right away. He was devastated to think he might have missed a thief, but I told him it could have happened to any of us. I told him I didn’t think anything much had been taken, and that was to prove correct.

Singh was right about Trevor’s shop. It really was a mess. Furniture had been overturned, drawers pulled out of everything. The place essentially had been trashed. Singh and I just stood in the middle of the chaos and looked around.