Deadly Appraisal (20 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

I

took Ocean Avenue for the view. Dune grasses lay almost flat, blown sideways by the strong easterly wind. Fast-moving gray clouds streaked by, leaving the sky dark and foreboding, and whitecaps dotted the midnight blue ocean waters. From the look of it, we’d have more rain before noon.

I pulled into my usual parking space and made my way across the leaf-strewn lot to the door. As I entered, the phone rang. According to the clock on Gretchen’s desk, it was eight twenty-five. I started speaking the routine Prescott’s greeting, when the caller interrupted.

“You suddenly remember that Epps could have poisoned the wine and you decide to keep it to yourself?” Detective Rowcliff barked.

“No,” I sputtered, “not at all. I mean that I told Max as soon as I remembered and I’m—” I stopped and took a deep breath.
Don’t defend reasonable behavior
, I told myself.

“Well, what did you remember?” he asked sarcastically.

I took another deep breath. “Let’s talk later. Right now, I’m hanging up and calling Max.” And I did.

At ten o’clock, Max and I sat across from a still-wrathful Rowcliff. We were upstairs in my office. I was behind my desk. Max and the detective sat in yellow guest chairs angled to half-face each other and half-face me. Together, our chairs formed a comfortable conversation triangle, but there was little comfort in the room.

“I’ve read Officer Shirl’s report,” Rowcliff said, his tone icy. “And I’ve spoken to her. So I’m up-to-date. Unless you’ve remembered some other detail about the theft that you neglected to tell her?”

“No,” I said, doing a good job of ignoring his sarcasm, “nothing.”

“Are you in the habit of leaving twenty-thousand-dollar antiques out in public?”

“No, of course not. The tureen wasn’t in public. My auction venue is secure.”

“Except that it wasn’t. It was wide open.”

“Right. It was an oversight—the doors should have been locked.”

“But you let people in unsupervised all the time,” he said combatively.

“Only people we know and trust.”

He snorted derisively, and I felt stupid in the face of his contempt. Worse, I knew that he was right. It was inexcusable that the outside doors had been left open, and it was probably unwise to let people in unsupervised—even people I knew well, like Eddie, or employees of companies that were bonded, like Macon Cleaners. Worse still, and I hoped I’d never have to tell him, we had a vault that we rarely used, since it was inconvenient to access. I knew better, too. At Frisco’s, neglecting to place an object in the vault was a fireable offense.

He took a pencil from an inside pocket and began tapping on his thigh. “Tell me what you remembered about Britt Epps.”

I glanced at Max for support, and he nodded encouragingly. “My memory is hazy, but I do remember his reaching across the table.” With halting words, I explained what I’d seen.

Rowcliff stopped tapping and listened. “Tell me how the theft and the murder are connected,” he said.

“I have no idea.”

I met his eyes, waiting. I was telling the truth, but under his uncompromising gaze, I began to feel guilty, as if I were withholding information or lying.

“Do you recognize any of these names?” he asked, pulling a sheaf of papers from an inside pocket.

I accepted the packet and smoothed the fold lines. “Are these the owners of Mitsubishis?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He turned to Max. “Still no reports of stolen vehicles or bodywork.”

“Max?” I asked, waving the papers.

Max nodded. “It’s okay. Take a look.”

“What am I looking for?” I asked Max.

“Detective?” Max asked.

Rowcliff looked as if he’d rather drink beer laced with horseradish than solicit my help, but he did so. “First, see if you recognize any names. The car might be owned by someone who lives with someone you know, so, second, see if any address looks familiar. Third, see if any of the tags—the license plates—mean anything to you. Maybe there’s a clue in a vanity plate. You know, SNO BUN means ‘snow bunny’ and GRT CHF means ‘great chef.’ ” He shrugged. “Keep an open mind and see what strikes you.”

I nodded and looked down, flipping pages. “How many names are there?”

“A hundred and forty that fit our profile.”

“Including all of New England?” I asked.

“Mostly New Hampshire. Other places, too.” Rowcliff shrugged.

There were five pages, twenty-eight names to a page. I began to read. Rowcliff shifted position so he could tap his pencil on my desk.

In my first scan through the names, I recognized nothing. Karl Abington was first on the list. He lived on Greene Street in Hanover, and he had an all-number license plate. Marcus Wiggins of Main Street in Manchester, who also had a numbers-only plate, was last.

I shut my eyes for a moment, disappointed, and began again.

Britt, I knew, lived and worked in Portsmouth, and I spotted three cars with in-town addresses.
Surely
, I thought,
if his address is on the list, Rowcliff would have flagged it
. “Did you check if any of the Portsmouth names have anything to do with Britt Epps?”

“Not just the Portsmouth listings. We looked at Epps, your staff, and Trevor Woodleigh.”

“How about Eddie?” I asked.

“Sure. All your vendors. And you.”

“Me?” I asked, startled.

He leaned back, smirking. “You never know.”

“Josie,” Max said quietly, “continue looking. See what you notice.”

I nodded, pushing my outrage aside. I knew that Max was right: The quickest way to get rid of Rowcliff was to do as he wanted. Righteous arguing or fussing in any way would only delay the inevitable. I took a breath, looked down, and started at the top.

I decided to focus on local names first. Someone named Vivian Bodier from Grove Court in Exeter had license plates reading LDY N WHT. I wondered what it meant.
Lady in white? Lindy and Whitey?

Also from Exeter were Saul Panzer on Summer Street and Fred Durkin on Haven Lane, both of whom had numbered plates. Henry Avery on Old Locke Road and Sam Rhodes on Sea Road were both from Rye Beach and had numbered plates. Marlie Blanders lived on Wallis Road in a nearby neighborhood known as Wallis Sands. Her license plate read MFB LV DS, and it made me wonder the name of the person she loved. Edward Roland of Pine Road in North Hampton owned one with numbered plates, as did Brooke Stadler, who lived in Newington. Nothing rang a bell.

I took one last look, name by name, and finally gave up. “I’m sorry,” I said, putting the pages on my desk, and looked up, trying to hide my disappointment. “Nothing.”

Half an hour later, Rowcliff was still at it. I was becoming increasingly irritated and achy, and after a while, I dug the bottle of painkillers out of my purse, shook one into my hand, and swallowed it with water.

“So,” Rowcliff said, “I’ve checked out your staff’s backgrounds and cars. No one has any history of arrest, and no one, including your part-timers, drives a Mitsubishi. What do you think of them? Do you like them? Can you imagine any of them involved in any way in any aspect of the murder, the theft, or the attack on you?”

I answered truthfully. “No, I can’t. It’s incredible to even think about. I’ve known everyone for years, except Fred, and he came to us with recommendations from a highly respected employment agency that specializes in placing art and antiques professionals.”

“How long ago?”

“Six months,” I responded.

“Do you know any of them outside of work?”

“Not really. We don’t socialize, if that’s what you mean.”

“Why do you think Eddie is in Oklahoma?” he asked, shifting gears.

“Because he told me he’d accepted a job in Tulsa.”

“Have you any new thoughts about why someone would attack you?”

“No. I wish I did.”

Rowcliff paused, marking the time with a steady rapping of his pencil.

“Can I ask you something?” Max asked, looking at Rowcliff.

“Sure.” The detective narrowed his eyes.

“Does anyone have an alibi for Monday evening when the attack on Josie occurred? Has anyone been eliminated?”

“Just her old boss from New York, Trevor Woodleigh,” Rowcliff replied. Max seemed surprised, and I stayed quiet. “We checked out whether anyone rented a car for him last Saturday, and no one did that we can find. But that’s pretty much beside the point, since we discovered that he was front and center at some charity event on Monday—the evening you were attacked.” He shrugged. “So he’s out of it.”

“How about Eddie? Have you reached him yet?” Max asked.

Rowcliff twisted his lips, apparently irritated by the question. He leaned forward, aiming his eyes in my direction but speaking to Max. “No. That’s why I asked Josie why she thought he went to Oklahoma. We have him in Arizona.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “I don’t understand.”

Rowcliff turned his laser focus in my direction. “What don’t you understand?”

“What it means. Do you think he lied?” I asked.

“We’re looking into it,” Rowcliff replied sharply.

Max caught my eye just as I was about to ask a follow-up question, and shook his head a little, signaling that I should back off:
Short answers, Josie. Don’t volunteer information
. How often had he repeated those words to me? I was champing at the bit to get details about what seemed, potentially, a huge break in the case, but I was prepared to obey Max’s unspoken instructions, so I simply nodded instead.

“All right, then. Let me ask you this. Are you certain that you don’t know the origin of the fake tureen?” Rowcliff asked out of the blue.

“That’s correct—I don’t.”

“Yet you recognized it as a reproduction right away. How?”

“I’m an antiques appraiser. Part of what I do is recognize fakes.”

“Just because she recognized the tureen as a fake doesn’t imply she knows where it comes from,” Max said sternly.

Rowcliff tapped his foot for a long beat, then said, “We tracked down the importer, and from them, the distributor. Seems they have a policy of limited distribution. They sell only to specialty shops and interior-design studios—no mail order or Internet sales, although there may be some secondary sales on-line. Turns out there are two design firms and six specialty stores within a hundred miles that stock those tureens. Do you know any interior designers?”

“Sure.”

“Who?”

“Several—we sell them things.”

“What kind of things?”

I swept my arm wide. “All sorts of things. Period antiques and bindings, mostly.”

“Bindings?”

“Leather-bound books. Collectors care about the book. Designers care about the binding. Will it look pretty on the shelf? We sell them by the yard.”

Rowcliff’s lip curled and he shook his head.

“When do you expect to have information about where it was purchased?” Max asked.

“I have two people making calls tracking sales. We’ll know where we stand by the end of the day, tomorrow at the latest.”

A hundred miles—the distance Eddie could realistically have traveled in the hours between when gift stores likely would open on a Monday morning—10:00 A.M.—and his return that afternoon around 1:30 P.M.
Would someone remember selling the tureen to Eddie?
I wondered.

Rowcliff shifted position again, leaned back in his chair, and gave another quick trill of tapping. “Back to the Mitsubishi. Do you maintain customer records?”

“What kind of records?” I asked, bewildered by his question.

“Some kind of database? For mailings, that sort of thing?” he asked impatiently.

“Yes, we do.”

“Let me have it. I want to compare names and addresses,” he said, reaching for the listing. From his tone, I could tell he thought I was dimmer than a twenty-watt bulb.

“That’s a great idea,” Max said, jumping in, deflecting Rowcliff’s annoyance. “Can you e-mail the file to Josie? Maybe she can do an electronic comparison of some sort.”

“Sure.” He whipped a cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, pushed a quick-dial button, and barked instructions to someone named Feldman. He picked up one of my cards from the little holder on my desk and read off the e-mail address. Sliding the phone back into his side pocket, he added, “It’ll be here pronto.”

“We’ll get right on it,” I assured him.

“Good. We’ll need yours, too.”

“Why?”

“So we can compare them as well.”

Max leaned forward and asked in a semiwhisper why I was hesitating. I whispered, “My customer list is valuable to us. I don’t want it out of my control.”

“Josie is concerned about confidentiality,” Max said.

“What is she—a priest? Whoever heard of a customer list being protected?”

Before I could respond, Max raised a hand to quiet me and said to Rowcliff, “We’re talking about competitive protection here. She wouldn’t want the list to get into the hands of a competitor.”

Rowcliff shook his head. “We promise not to hand your list over to another antiques store.”

“I don’t have a store,” I said coldly.

“Whatever.”

“With that assurance, Josie will be glad to send her list over. Where do you want it sent?”

Rowcliff took a business card from a leather case and told me to send it to that e-mail address. I passed the instruction on to Gretchen on the intercom.

“Next subject. Officer Shirl tells me that except for yours, there were no clear fingerprints on the Plexiglas display case that contained the tureen. Only smudges. I figure that either it was wiped in a hurry or cleaned badly. So, when was it last cleaned?”

“Gretchen would know for sure, but I think it was Monday. We called Macon, my cleaning service, after you gave the all clear.”

He nodded and looked at me. After a moment, he said, “Want to give her a call and ask?” His attitude implied that I was either stupid or uncooperative not to have done it already.

“Sure,” I said, and picked up the phone, hating him. When Gretchen answered, I asked, “Has Macon cleaned the auction room yet?”

“No,” she replied. “They’re coming tomorrow.”

“Wow. Why so long?”

“No reason. I didn’t think there was any hurry, and Macon was busy. Is there a problem?”