Consigned to Death (29 page)

I laughed, and said, “You’re so sweet, Shelly. Thank you. But, no, I’m staying put up here in New Hampshire. You have to come up and see my operation sometime.”

“Yeah, right. When the cows come home.”

“Don’t be such a snob. New Hampshire’s beautiful.”

“Next time you’re in town, bring pictures.”

We chatted about personnel changes at Frisco’s and Shelly’s new apartment, my company and her boyfriend, vacation plans, and old friends’ whereabouts. Finally, I explained why I was calling, and asked her how she would interpret the data.

All business, she asked prodding questions about which painting I was pricing, which I deflected, and finally, gave me the name of a London dealer, Ian Cummings, who was, she said, the leading expert in the field.

Hanging up, I was surprised to feel stabbing homesickness. I lowered my head and waited for the wave of isolation and loss to pass.
Get over it
, I told myself,
move on. stop thinking
. After a moment, I sat up and shook off the despondency that threatened to pull me down. I was rebuilding my life, I reminded myself, and doing so rather nicely. I looked at the clock. It was too late to call London, so I made a note for first thing in the morning.

Instead of calling the dealer, I called Mrs. Cabot at the Sheraton, and got her. She sounded tired. “We’re making good progress with the appraisal,” I told her.

“Thank you, Josie.” After a short pause, she added, “Has Andi spoken to you again?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking,” I said, hating that I needed to tell her of her daughter’s perfidy. “Apparently Andi has hired Mr. Troudeaux to help her.”

“Help her do what?”

I cleared my throat and, with my elbow on the desk, rested my forehead on my hand. “From what he said, I gathered that Andi intends to challenge your father’s will.”

The silence that greeted my revelation lasted so long that I began to wonder if she’d ended the call, quietly cradling the receiver, and if she had, what I should do in response.

“Thank you for informing me,” she said, finally.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“I’ll be leaving in the morning, as scheduled. Will you call me in a day or two and give me a progress report?”

“Certainly.”

“And my instructions stand. I’ll call Chief Alverez in the morning before I leave. Andi may not enter my father’s house or interfere with your work in any way.”

We ended by thanking each other, and when the call was over, all I wanted was a martini. I turned off my computer and went downstairs.

Roy, the picker with the great books who had been MIA on Saturday, was standing by Gretchen’s desk while Sasha sorted through the boxes. Fred sat at the computer, absorbed by whatever he was reading on the monitor.

Roy was an old man, grizzled and uncouth. His clothes were streaked with grime, and he was agitated, bouncing from one foot to another as he spoke. “He tol’ me he’s paying top dollar. I’m old, I tol’ him, but I ain’t no fool. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, I tol’ him. I tol’ him twice. No cash, no books. I ain’t no fool.”

“Hi, Roy,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“You want the books, you pay me cash.”

“Sure. Just like always.”

“Yeah, that’s what Barney tol’ me, but he don’t have the cash. I ain’t no fool.”

Sasha was stacking the volumes on the desk. They were all leather bound, and I spotted a gold-tooled set of Shakespeare; a two-volume folio-sized Johnson’s dictionary, certainly not a first edition, but an early copy, lovingly maintained; and what looked like a collection of a dozen or so medical reference books from the early nineteenth century. I met Sasha’s eyes and they conveyed fiery excitement.

Leather-bound books sell to two separate markets: decorators who seek “bindings,” as they’re known in the industry, and collectors who care about the book itself as much as its cover, or who buy certain categories of books as investments. Bindings often sell by the yard, and the market is strong, but distinguished volumes fetch more when sold to a book lover or investor.

“How much?” Roy asked, turning from me to Sasha, then looking back again. “How much you give me? How much?”

“I need to look a little more,” Sasha said.

“I gotta go. I gotta go. You want ’em?”

“Absolutely,” Sasha said.

We had a standing policy of offering any picker a minimum of five dollars a volume for decent leather-bound books, more when we knew the particular item was special. These all looked good. Sasha seemed hesitant so I approached her and whispered, “Offer him eight dollars a volume, and go up to ten.”

“Is that all right? I think they’re worth it, but I don’t want to offer so much if you don’t think I should.”

“No, do it. It’s all right.”

I wished I could give Sasha the gift of confidence, but I couldn’t. She was, it seemed, inherently insecure.

There were fifty-seven volumes in three boxes, all in excellent condition. At a glance, I spotted no incomplete sets, no volumes with missing pages, and no broken bindings. Roy, after fifty years picking, knew the value of what he had and held fast for twelve dollars a volume, an unbelievably high price to pay a picker for miscellaneous leather volumes.

I nodded over his head to Sasha, and swallowing, she made the deal. Gretchen slipped out to go to the safe we kept in a back corner of the warehouse, and returned with the cash. Roy counted it carefully, thanked Sasha, and left, his gait awkward and his steps slow. I figured he had to be approaching seventy-five, and maybe he was even older.

I wasn’t concerned with the high price we’d just paid, since, at the least, we’d triple our expenditure. Gretchen and Sasha repacked the books in the ratty cardboard boxes Roy had hauled into our office, and set them aside to be researched and cleaned.

I told everyone good-bye, and, having forgotten my umbrella again, darted through the rain to my car. As I waited for the defroster to clear the foggy window, the windshield wipers clacking a steady beat, I decided to go to the Blue Dolphin. I still wanted a martini, and given the piercing homesickness I’d just endured, I decided that tonight was definitely not a night to drink alone.

 

 

Having wedged my car into a tiny spot on Market Street, I rushed through the drenching rain. I stood for a moment to catch my breath under the copper roof that shielded the restaurant’s entrance, and listened to the echoing, staccato beat as the rain pounded the metal overhang. I was soaked.

Two hours later, it was still raining, and I was still at the bar, finishing my second martini. I was trying to prepare a cover story for the London dealer. I could tell Shelly that my interest in Matisse was general and vague, and, because we’re friends, she’d accept that story with only a little push-back. No way would a big-time art dealer answer hypothetical questions from a stranger on a lark. I needed to have a credible reason for calling.

Home again, the unrelenting rain feeding my feelings of remoteness, I cooked the chicken I’d prepared earlier, and ate one of my favorite meals in lonely isolation.

 

 

I reached the dealer, Ian Cummings, in London as Sasha and Fred sat down to watch the video, a copy of Mrs. Grant’s ledger in hand. When I had Cummings on the line, I introduced myself, referring to Shelly, and thanked him for taking the time to talk to me.

“Right,” he said. “So which Matisse are we talking about?”

“I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid. My seller is still on the fence about whether to let it go. Of course, if she decides to do so, I’ll call you first.”

“And you want price information?”

“Yes.” I detailed the range of prices I’d discovered, and explained that I was looking for guidance.

“Well, it’s a little tricky without knowing which painting, but let’s see. Is it an oil?”

“Yes.”

“On canvas?”

“Yes.”

“Quite. What subject matter?”

“A cityscape.”

“Paris?”

“Yes.”

“Size?”

I glanced at my notes. “It’s twenty-eight by twenty-one inches.”

“Provenance?”

“Various owners, all private, no one notable.”

“When was it last on the market?”

“I don’t know. Not for at least a generation.”

“Well, I can’t tell you anything for certain. But if I had to set a price right now, I’d probably aim to goose it just a little. I’d set a range of from one-point-three to one-point-six million pounds, and hope that I could persuade my seller to be satisfied with one-point-one million.”

I did a rough conversion. “In U.S. dollars, then, you’d expect it to go for around two million.”

“Yes, with any luck, more. As much as three million dollars.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” I said. “Thank you.”

Hanging up the phone, I sat for a moment, then put in a call to Alverez. I left a message on his voice mail.

I was about to head downstairs, ready to go over the protocol with Fred, when Sasha poked her head into my office and asked if they could come in.

“Sure. What’s up?” I asked.

“I wanted to show Fred the catalogues.”

I gestured to the wall of shelves. “Go to it.”

I listened as she explained how we organized them. “We have a lot of catalogues of local dealers. It makes sense, since we all tend to carry similar merchandise.”

“Can you rely on them?” Fred asked.
A good question
, I thought.

“Well, it depends,” Sasha answered. “Like anything else.”

As they started to leave, I asked if they were done with the video, and Sasha said, “Part of it. Fred wants to study it, so I thought I’d show him how we typically research things while we wait for you. Then he can take his time reviewing the tape.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m ready if you guys are.”

They moved chairs near my desk and I went through the steps I’d delineated as I took him through the binder. He nodded and scanned the pages.

“Is this one of the local dealers?” he asked, pointing to the Troudeaux title page.

“Yes,” I said.

“But we don’t think very highly of their research,” Sasha added, twirling her hair. “I mean we use them, but I’d want additional verification.”

“That’s true,” I acknowledged. “Martha Troudeaux does most of their research, and it’s often sketchy and sometimes just dead wrong.”

“Who’s this?” Fred asked, pointing to the editor’s name: M. Turner.

I was about to say that I didn’t know, when Sasha jumped in. “That’s Martha, too. Sometimes she uses her maiden name—Turner. I think it’s to make the company look larger, you know, not a mom-and-pop outfit with everybody in the firm sharing the same name.”

Staring at the page, my mouth fell open. In a flash of clarity, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Barney, whose wife, Martha, did most of his research. And who sometimes used her maiden name—Turner. I pictured him at the tag sale, deep in conversation with Paula. Paula Turner. I was willing to bet that Paula was Barney’s niece by marriage. That would explain the call that Wes had told me about, the one made from the Taffy Pull to Mr. Grant. No one in the family would think it was odd for Barney to stop by his wife’s family’s store and borrow the phone.

Roy, the picker, had said that Barney didn’t have the cash to buy the books. And a relatively small amount of cash it was. Less than a thousand dollars. Which must mean that Barney was broke. If Barney was broke, how could he afford the Renoir he’d intended to buy from Mr. Grant?

Maybe he hadn’t had any such intention. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted the Renoir for pride of ownership or even for the commission a sale would bring. The Renoir might have represented a second chance, a way of raising enough cash quickly to save his business, to protect all that he had built up.

I realized that Sasha and Fred were engaged in a lively discussion about verifying research, and I’d missed it all.

“I think we’re all set here,” I said. “Any questions?”

“No,” Fred said. “This is all very useful.”

“Great. Well, go and do.”

They left, still chatting. I’d never heard Sasha speak so much, or with so much enthusiasm. Maybe she’d met her match in Fred.

As their voices faded away, I thought of Mr. Grant, and sadness swept over me. In all of our interactions, he’d been jovial, gregarious, and kind. I’d liked him, and he’d liked me. An image of Barney came to mind. I could picture him towering over the older, weaker man.

I shivered, upset and dispirited.
How could he have clone such a thing
? I began to cry, and I didn’t try to stop myself. Tears rolled down my cheeks and as they fell, I concluded that I needed to speak to Alverez.

To think that Barney had killed Mr. Grant in order to steal the Renoir. I shook my head, astonished that I hadn’t realized it before, and sickened at the thought.

B
y the time Alverez called back, about an hour later, I’d remembered what Max had said about not volunteering information, and had thought better of telling him what I knew about Barney. Instead, I simply stuck with the original reason for my call and said that I was done with the research and had the pricing information he’d wanted.

“Can you meet in an hour?”

I glanced at the clock. It was only 9:30. “Sure,” I answered. “If Max can.”

“I’ll expect you here at ten-thirty then, unless I hear otherwise.”

“Okay,” I agreed, wondering whether I was imagining the urgency I perceived in his voice or whether, now that I had the information he needed, he was ready to act.

I reached Max at his office, and he told me that he could meet me at the police station at 10:30.

“Can we meet at ten-fifteen?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to you first.”

“Sure,” he said. “Our usual dune?” he asked in a joking tone of voice. “When we’re not in interrogation room two?”