Consigned to Death (12 page)

The weekly tag sales were my bread and butter, and it pleased me to see that the booths were well stocked. Since most items were relatively inexpensive, profitability depended on volume. I’d modified my father’s often-repeated admonition to buy cheap and sell high—I bought cheap and sold just a little higher. Tag sales were close to the bottom of the antiques-business food chain, and it was important to remember that fact when setting prices. About a month ago, I’d witnessed a middle-aged woman showing off a Sandwich glass salt cellar she’d just purchased for $21. She’d whispered to her friend, “I can’t believe the deal I just got! There must have been a mistake in the pricing.” With that one sale, a loyal customer was born.

About halfway down the back row I saw Paula Turner, a regular part-timer, carefully sorting boxes of art prints. Paula, a sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, had worked for me for two years on the tag sales. She was wearing low-cut jeans and a cropped white T-shirt that read There Are No Devils Left in Hell ... They’re All in Rwanda. She was a serious young woman, earnest and hardworking. She wore no makeup; her ash blond hair hung straight to her shoulders; and she had surprisingly small feet. No way they were size nine narrow.

“Hey, Paula,” I said as I approached the table where she was working.

“Hey, Josie,” she said.

“How’s it going?”

“Pretty well.”

“Have you seen Eric around?”

“Yeah,” Paula said. She turned toward the parking lot. “There he is,” she said, pointing.

Spotting him standing just outside the wire mesh gate, smoking a cigarette, chatting to Wes Smith, I felt a flutter of anxiety. I was beginning to feel stalked.

“See you, Paula,” I said. I turned and walked at what I hoped appeared to be a casual pace.

“Hey, Eric,” I said as I approached. “Hey, Wes,” I added with a fake smile, “long time no see. Whatcha doing?”

“Eric and I were just getting acquainted,” he said.

“You got a sec, Eric?” I asked.

“Sure.” He stamped out his cigarette and picked up the extinguished butt, as promised. He could smoke on my property, I’d agreed, but only outside, and only if no trace remained.

We walked by two young women I didn’t recognize who were discussing how to position Chinese vases on a table. New temp workers.

“What did Wes want?” I asked without preamble.

He tossed his extinguished butt into a box half filled with trash. “I don’t know. He’d just introduced himself when you got there.”

I nodded. “I can’t tell you not to talk to him, or any reporter, for that matter. Do what you want. But I would ask that if you do talk to them, tell them the truth and tell me what you told them. Okay?”

“Sure. But I don’t want to talk to that guy—or any reporter.”

“Well, don’t, then.”

“It’s hard,” he said, seeming embarrassed. “I’ve seen them work. They keep asking things.”

His question made me realize how young he was, and how inexperienced. I nodded, and said, “Yeah. Persistence is part of a reporter’s job description. Say ‘No comment.’ Just repeat it over and over. Eventually they’ll go away. You don’t owe them cooperation.”

“Okay,” he said. “I guess I can do that.”

“And if you want, you can always tell them they need to talk to me.”

“Yeah, that’s good.”

“So how’s it going?” I asked, gesturing widely toward the entire area.

“Good. We still have a lot to do.”

“Okay. I’ll let you get back to it. If you want a break, there’s some pizza in Gretchen’s office.”

“In a little while, I might just.” I watched him head toward Paula.

Wes was still standing by the gate talking on his cell phone. There was a chance he could help, if he would, and if I could trust him. I stood and thought for a moment, looking for flaws in my thinking.
Hell
, I concluded,
why not
? I walked back and joined him at the fence.

He looked up as I approached, and smiled, pocketing his phone.

“I knew you’d see the light. Are you ready to talk?” he asked.

“May I ask you something?” I responded, all business.

“Sure. Shoot.”

“What does ‘off the record’ mean?”

“Why?”

I grinned. “Answering a question with a question, huh?”

He laughed, and said, “Mea culpa. ‘Off the record’ means I don’t quote you and don’t act on what you tell me until you tell me—if you ever do—that something is on the record. Why do you ask?”

“Are we off the record?”

He tilted his head to look into my eyes, squinting a little in the sun. It felt good to stand in the bright light. It was too early in the season for the sun to produce actual heat, but it created the illusion of warmth.

“Okay. I’ll bite,” he said. “Off the record.”

“I don’t know how to investigate something and I’m betting that you do. If you agree to help me—off the record—I’ll promise you an exclusive interview about the entire Grant situation after it’s all cleared up.”

“From what I hear, it’ll be cleared up with your arrest.”

I shook my head and paused, trying to judge if he was baiting me. I couldn’t tell, so I decided to play it straight. “No. I didn’t do it. But regardless, I’ll keep my word. An exclusive.”

“Who decides when it’s all cleared up?”

“We do. I’m not trying to split hairs. We’ll know when it’s cleared up.”

He thought about it for a long minute, his eyes fixed on mine. “What do you want to research?”

“Off the record?”

“You don’t have to keep asking. Everything we’re discussing is off the record until and unless you tell me otherwise, or unless I ask if something can be back on the record and you agree. Okay?”

“Promise?”

He look up, casting his eyes heavenward. “Yes. Jeez. What are you onto? Did Grant steal the Hope diamond?”

“Okay, then,” I said, ignoring his question, which, if he only knew, might be a whole lot closer to the truth than he’d believe possible. “Mr. and Mrs. Grant. I need to know everything about them. Where they were born. How they met. Schooling. Friends. Children. Everything. Starting way back when and continuing to now.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have time to explain now. I will later. There’s more.”

“Go ahead.”

“Can you access phone records?”

“Whose?”

“Mr. Grant’s.”

He made a whistlelike noise. “Maybe you’d better fill me in now after all.”

“Later. Can you? Do you have a contact who can get us the records?”

“Local or long distance?”

“Both.”

He didn’t answer but stayed still, looking at me, gauging I don’t know what.

“Can you do it?” I prodded.

“Maybe. I’ll try.”

I smiled, relieved. “That’s great. When will you have the information ?”

“Hell, I don’t even know that I can get it at all, let alone when.”

“Let me know as soon as you have a sense of when you’ll get it,” I told him, ignoring the “if in his sentence.

“Josie,” Eric called from the far doorway.

I turned and shielded my eyes from the sun. “Yeah?” I shouted.

“Gretchen needs you in the office.”

“Tell her I’m coming,” I answered. I pointed to Wes, and repeated, “Call me.”

 

 

Gretchen stood with her arms crossed and her lips tightly sealed, a picture of righteous outrage. “Look at this,” she said, handing me a blue-covered folder. I nodded a greeting to Alverez, leaning against the front door, unsmiling.

I opened the papers, and started to read. The documents used legalese to tell me that a judge had authorized a search for stolen goods.

“Call Max for me, will you?” I asked her.

She marched to her desk to make the call, and I turned to Alverez, and asked, “How would you like to proceed?”

“Do you have an inventory listing?”

“Yes,” I answered, “mostly. It’s not a hundred percent accurate.” I shrugged. “We do our best.” I turned to Gretchen, and added, “When you’re done calling Max, please print out all of the inventory listings for Chief Alverez.”

“We’ll need to look throughout the facility as well,” he said.

“Help yourself,” I responded, hating everything about the situation. “We have an auction preview going on, so if you can try to stay out of the way of our doing business, I’d appreciate it.”

“We’ll try,” he answered, and turned to confer with the three police officers who stood nearby.

Gretchen handed me the phone and began punching keys at her computer.

Max said, “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Does the warrant read home and business?”

I opened the folded document and reread the neatly typed words. “Yes. And vehicle.”

“I’ll talk to Alverez in a minute and remind him to make certain they leave everything as they found it. And I’ll ask him if he wants you to accompany them to your house. Okay?”

I swallowed “Okay.”

 

 

In addition to Alverez and the three police officers in the warehouse, two more were standing by my car and two were seated in a marked cruiser nearby. Alverez and his team were working inside under Gretchen’s disapproving eyes as I left to join the two officers in the patrol car. I sat in the back, and as we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked over my shoulder and saw that one of the two standing near my car had already popped the trunk.

The two police officers, a middle-aged black man with a pot-belly and thinning hair at the wheel, and a tall, thin redhead in her thirties sitting beside him, spoke so softly that I couldn’t make out their words.

“That’s it,” I called as we approached my house. He pulled in to the gravel driveway.

Never having observed an official search before, I watched with a kind of grim curiosity. They opened closets, drawers, and chests and moved things around a little bit, looking for I don’t know what, maybe a tube containing another stolen painting. They examined the bottom of furniture, poked a long, narrow, needlelike tool into cushions, and lifted mattresses to see what was underneath.

“Any garage?” the woman asked me.

“No,” I answered.

“Toolshed? Anything else?”

I shook my head. I accompanied them outside and watched as they walked the grounds. Back inside, they surveyed the empty basement, poked their heads into the tiny attic, and then they were done.

 

 

They dropped me at the warehouse side entrance. I saw Eric talking to Paula, and the other two temps were setting up Plexiglas display shelving for the dolls and dollhouse section. Circling the fencing, I entered through the front door.

“Are the police still here?” I asked Gretchen.

“Yes,” she said, her contempt apparent.

“They’re just doing their jobs,” I remarked, and shrugged.

“I don’t care. I just hate it.”

Funny, I thought, since I was the chief suspect, and it was my property they were searching, that I was able to remain more philosophical about the process than Gretchen. On some level, she had no vested interest in the outcome. I wondered if her concern was personal, based on affection, because she liked me, or practical, based on the rational fear that if I were arrested, she’d be out of a job. Or maybe there was a simpler explanation: since Max had alerted me to the likelihood of a search, I’d had time to get used to the idea.

She handed me a note. Someone named Dana Cabot and her daughter, Miranda, were at the Sheraton in Portsmouth awaiting my return call. Gretchen had written the phone number and their room number.

“Who are they?” I asked.

She looked over her shoulder. We were alone. Still, she lowered her voice. “Mr. Grant’s daughter and granddaughter.”

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed. “What do they want?”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Cabot just said she wanted to talk to you. She said it was urgent.”

I stared at the paper, incredulous. Mr. Grant’s lawyer, Epps, had told her I was a shark. What, I wondered, with a shiver of anxiety,
could she possibly want with me
?

D
o me a favor, would you?” I handed Gretchen the note. “Call them now and ask if I can call them after the preview—about nine-thirty tonight. Okay?” Gretchen nodded and took the paper.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Nope. Sasha said everything’s AOK at the preview.”

I nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll be around.” I went into the warehouse and paused. Heading toward a rustling noise, I found Alverez standing with a uniformed officer. Following the instructions Max gave me on the phone, I kept away from them as they worked. Alverez selected an item from the shelf and read the numbers above the bar code aloud as the other man compared them to what was printed on the inventory.

I felt pulsating anxiety as I watched because even though I knew that I possessed no stolen goods, I was aware that whoever had snuck the Renoir into the crate might have left something else behind as well.

Alverez saw me and said something to the officer, who nodded in response, and turned away, toward the back of the warehouse. Alverez walked toward me.

“How you doing?” he asked as he approached.

“Okay.” I shrugged, and after a pause, added, “It’s pretty much a nightmare.”

He nodded. “We’re making good time. We’ll be gone soon.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “It’s not just the search.”

“I know.”

I looked at him and felt a fresh wave of attraction. It was more than his appearance, although I was drawn to his weathered good looks. For some unknown reason, I felt that I could trust him, that maybe we could be friends.

“May I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Did you check the schedule with Macon Cleaners?”

“Yes, I did.”