Killer Keepsakes (10 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I

got to Ty’s house just after seven thirty. “Hello!” I called, entering with my key through the front door. “Anyone home!”

“In the kitchen!”

His place was bigger than mine, a contemporary with two fire-places, one in the master bedroom, and huge picture windows that framed sweeping vistas of maple, oak, apple, elm, chestnut, poplar, and birch. Last autumn, when the leaves had turned the colors of fire, molten red melding into iridescent orange and flame-hot yellow, I’d sat staring into the woods, thinking that I was in the presence of God.

Tonight, Ty had a fire going in the living room. As I walked past, I heard a soft hissing sound, then crackling. I found him in the kitchen, making pizza from a box.

“We’re having pizza, I see.”

“And salad.”

I sat in a club chair he kept in a corner of the kitchen, my legs curled under me, and watched as he chopped vegetables, his motions confident and quick. I filled him in about my call to the Sidlawn Fencing Company about the belt buckle, our find in my vault about Gretchen’s vase, and my conversation with Lina.

“Your lip curls when you mention Vince. How come?” Ty asked.

“When I think of him, I just feel . . . I don’t know . . . yuk.”

“Yuk,” Ty repeated. “That’s a technical term, is it?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Can you be more specific?”

“Well, Gretchen set the scene by telling me that in her view, Vince wasn’t good for Mandy. Keeping in mind I’ve never even met the guy, I have the impression that Grtechen was right, that he seems to influence Mandy in ways that are bad for her—but subtly bad. I mean, it’s not like he hits her or tells her to obey him or anything. It’s not overt like that.” I floundered, trying to find a way to explain. “Here’s an example: Mandy told me that Vince said that painting flowers in her kitchen was stupid. It’s not that he’s merely
not
supportive—it’s worse than that—he’s denigrating.” I shrugged. “In other words—yuk.”

Ty looked up from his chopping. “How do you know he hasn’t hit her?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it never occurred to me.”

“Have you seen any marks or bruises on her? Maybe she said she’d fallen down or tripped or something, so you didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

“No.” I looked out into the night. It was still raining and, I knew, cold.

“Did you mention him to Detective Brownley?”

“No. I had no reason to.”

“You should. It can’t do any harm.” He placed a stalk of celery on the cutting board.

I nodded. “Is it important enough for me to call her now?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It isn’t like you’re gossiping with a girlfriend, Josie. It’s a murder investigation. The more she knows, the better.”

“Okay.”

I went into the living room, where I’d left my tote bag. The half-burned apple log spit sparks toward the screen, then popped as sap ignited. I selected a medium-sized log and laid it crosswise on the smoldering cinders.

“So Ty thought I ought to mention that I have a negative reaction to Mandy’s boyfriend, Vince Collins,” I said after exchanging greetings with Detective Brownley. “Even though I’ve never met him. I have no reason to think Vince is involved or a particular threat, but he thought I ought to call, so I did.”

“Thank you, Josie,” she said. “You did the right thing.”

I reported my observations, recounting what Gretchen and Mandy said to me. She thanked me again and hung up. I had an idea, and as I considered its merits, I watched the pepper-red flames turn gold, then white, then red again, and then I called Wes.

I got his voice mail and left a brief message. “Can you check out a man named Vince Collins?” I asked. “I have no evidence, but my gut tells me that there’s a teeny tiny chance he’s involved in whatever is going on.”

Knowing Wes as I did, I was confident that I’d get a full report by morning.

“Good tip, Josie. This Vince Collins guy—he’s got a record,” Wes said when he called at ten the next morning.

I took the call on the tag sale room phone. “What kind of record?” I asked, turning my back to the crowd and lowering my voice.

“Assault. Two counts. He did jail time.”

I gulped. “Tell me about the assaults.”

“One was a bar fight the night of his twenty-first birthday. He broke a beer bottle over some guy’s head, put him in the hospital. He pleaded out and served thirty days. Three years ago, when he was twenty-nine, he beat another guy pretty much to a pulp. They said it was a road rage thing. He wasn’t drunk, which when you think about it makes the whole thing worse, you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” I said, and I began to breathe again. Vince was, it seemed, a man for whom violence came easily. “Did he go to jail that time?”

“Yup. He refused to plead to a lesser charge, insisting that the other guy attacked him and it was self-defense. No one believed him, including the jury, and he served more than two years of a three-year sentence for assault. He was found not guilty on the other charge—attempted murder. He’s been out for about eight months.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s in construction.”

“How long have he and Mandy been dating?”

“About six months. According to my source, they’re pretty serious.”

“What else does your source say?” I asked.

“Pretty strong stuff, actually.” Wes paused to maximize the effect of his next words. “One person I talked to said he thought he was a ticking time bomb ready to explode.”

“What sets him off?”

“By all reports, he’s jealous and controlling—and arrogant.”

Had Gretchen warned Mandy to get away from him? I wondered. “Is there any connection between Vince and the dead guy?” I asked.

“Who knows? We still don’t know who the dead guy is. But there’s more,” he said enticingly.

I braced myself. “What?” I asked.

“An APB has been issued for Gretchen—and her car. Which means they think she’s involved,” he said, sounding thrilled at the prospect.

Wes’s enthusiasm shocked me. “Wes, it’s not an action movie, for goodness sake! Something horrible is going on, but Gretchen’s not the criminal here. If anything, she’s a victim.”

“What do you know?” he asked, pouncing on my innocent remark.

“I don’t know anything about where she is or why she’s missing,” I said sternly, “nor, may I add, do you.”

Disappointed that I had no secrets or speculation to share, but resilient as ever, he ended the call with an energetic “Talk later!”

I pressed the phone into my ribs and stared unseeingly into the tag sale crowd, seriously shaken by both of Wes’s revelations. I took deep breaths as I tried to think what I should do—or what I could do.

Ideas came to me, only to be immediately dismissed. I couldn’t do anything about the belt buckle until I heard from Serena, hopefully on Monday. I couldn’t do anything about Vince at all. I could continue trying to find Faring Auctions; maybe they were bought out like Sidlawn Fencing Company. I wished I could locate the vase itself. All at once, my mouth fell open.

I was willing to bet that I knew exactly where to find Gretchen’s vase.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I

spun the heavy vault lock and stepped inside. The largest boxes were positioned on the bottom two shelves. I squatted and reviewed each box’s index card, one by one, starting in the near left corner.

The first box contained rare books—a twelve-volume set of gold-tooled, burled-leather-bound Shakespeare, dating from 1784, in beautiful condition, last examined by Fred a month ago. The second box was empty. The third box contained carefully packaged early Baccarat glassware, last viewed by Sasha last week. The fourth box’s index card read GRETCHEN. PERSONAL.

I fell back on my heels and stared at the index card for a long time. Then I scampered up and called Detective Brownley.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think to look before,” I said after I explained my find. “I didn’t open the box, but I’m willing to bet money the vase is inside.”

“You don’t maintain an inventory of what’s in your safe?” she asked.

“We will, starting now,” I replied.

She told me she’d be there in ten minutes.

The vase was magnificent. The imagery was evocative of natural beauty and simple pleasures, and while the painting appeared effortless, a closer examination revealed complex layering and delicate, softly shaded brush strokes. I hated to see the vase disappear into the trunk of Detective Brownley’s vehicle, but I accepted her assurance that I’d get to examine it as soon as the lab completed its work.

The intercom buzzed.

It was Cara, and she sounded agitated. “Come to the tag sale,” she whispered. “Hurry.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“A man is looking for Gretchen. Hurry!” she repeated and hung up.

I ran across the ware house, then stopped short at the door that opened into the rear of the tag sale to peer through the peephole. He was easy to spot. He was tall, maybe six feet, with a barrel chest and skinny legs, somewhere around thirty. His hair was an unnatural shade of yellow, cut short, and curly. I could see a faint hint of black near the roots. He wore a long-sleeved, collared black T-shirt, jeans, hiking boots, and a beige anorak.

Cara was standing near the cash register, her back to the wall. She held an auction cata logue opened wide, high enough up to block her face. She was doing a pretty good job, I thought, of pretending she wasn’t watching a man by the entryway. If I hadn’t received her frantic phone call, I might have fallen for the subterfuge myself.

He stood off to the side, scanning the room in a grid pattern. His eyes were moving from sector to sector on a three-second swing. Nine sectors, I counted, like a sniper hunting quarry or a private pilot on the lookout for other aircraft. It was as if he were looking at nine slices of half a pie, one at a time. His focus was absolute.

I entered the room and walked slowly toward the front, watching him. When I got closer I could see that he’d pinned a tiny silver airplane to his lapel. I planted a welcoming smile on my face as I approached him.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Josie Prescott. Can I help you find something?”

“Hi,” he said, smiling back. “I’m Chip Davidson, a friend of Gretchen Brock’s.”

When he smiled, his whole demeanor shifted from intense to warm.

“She’ll be sorry she missed you—but she’s not here.”

“No wonder I can’t find her!” he kidded. “Darn! When do you expect her?”

Maybe this was the fellow Gretchen met in Hawaii, the chemist from Maine.
“Sorry,” I said, “but we never talk about employee schedules. I can have her call you, if you’d like.”

“No way! Don’t you dare tell her I was here!” he said, laughing. “I want to see her face when she spots me. Can you at least give me a rough idea of when I could hook up with her? Will she be here later today? Monday?”

I shook my head and smiled. “Sorry. Company policy.”

“Rules are made to be broken,” he said, his eyes glittering with fun and promise and trustworthiness.

“I haven’t heard that since high school!”

“I’m betting it didn’t work then, either, am I right?”

I laughed. “You are! I’ve got to get back to work, Chip. Are you sure you don’t want to leave a message?”

“No—thanks, though.”

He extended his hand, and we shook.

“I hope to see you again,” I said.

“You will!” he assured me, and with a last quick, charming grin and a cheery wave, he was gone.

As soon as he was out the door, Cara came up to me, her eyes big with curiosity.

“A friend of Gretchen’s,” I reported, smiling. “He seemed nice, actually.”

“What a relief!” Cara said.

“You did the right thing to call me.”

“Thanks,” she said, smiling a little.

As I made my way back to my office, I thought about Chip. I had no reason to think he represented any threat or possessed any relevant knowledge, but I decided to call Detective Brownley on Ty’s principle that the more information she had, the better.

_____

I couldn’t reach her, but left a detailed message on her cell phone describing Chip’s appearance and behavior.

Curious, I Googled “Chip Davidson” and got too many hits to be useful. I added “chemist” and got one hit—a university professor working in Dubai who appeared closer to eighty than seventy, obviously not the right man. Knowing that Chip is often a nickname for Charles, I tried “Charles Davidson” and got tens of thousands of hits. Adding “chemist” and “Maine” still left me with too many options to pursue.

Now what?
I asked myself. Suddenly I had another thought.

Vince was in construction, and when Wes told me that the police were checking whether the murder victim had a job that might result in his hands getting cut a lot, I’d thought of a carpenter. Could they know one another? Could Sal Briscoe have worked with Vince?

The New England Regional Council of Carpenters stated that they represented twenty-four thousand carpenters, pile drivers, shop-and millmen, and floor coverers. I found the union membership directory but then was stymied. Neither Vince Collins nor Sal Briscoe was listed. There were no photos. It would be an overwhelmingly laborious process, I thought, to seek out each worker listed, one by one, and vet him. To say nothing of all the nonunion laborers.
Leave it to the police,
I thought, and wondered if they were making any progress.

I stood up, frustrated, then almost immediately sat down.
The vase,
I admonished myself.
I can do more with the vase.
The vase was a direct link to Gretchen. If we learned where Gretchen got it, we might be able to learn enough about her to find her.

In a traditional appraisal, the challenge would be to verify ownership from the time the vase left the Meissen factory to the present. I could either trace the vase backward from the Wyoming auction house to the factory or forward from the factory to the auction house. Backward is sometimes easier—but not when the last known transaction occurred sixty years earlier from a seller who’d gone out of business.

With the “AR” mark in mind, I decided to search for textual references to royal purchases of Meissen vases starting in 1723, the first year the mark was used. There was no one definitive source to consult; according to the Meissen company, which was still in existence, there are no sales records that go back that far. By following linked references from an auction cata logue to a scholarly article, I found a reference to a Ph.D. candidate’s inventory of decorative items at St. James’s Palace, the royal residence.

The inventory wasn’t posted online.

The student’s name was Percy Oliver Johns. He’d been a student at the University of Southern California back in 1969. I couldn’t find any current record of him at all, and couldn’t think of anything else to look up.

Instead, I returned to the tag sale room to take my turn in the Prescott’s Instant Appraisal booth. Every Saturday, Sasha, Fred, and I each did hour-long stints. Anyone could walk into the tag sale with an object or a photo and get an on-the-spot, quick-and-dirty assessment. It was good fun, and it was good business. Between the three of us, we appraised between thirty and forty objects each week, first come, first served.

Fred left the booth as I arrived, and I turned to greet the first woman waiting in line. As I introduced myself, she shook my hand and smiled, and I felt myself relax a bit. She reminded me of Mrs. Horne, my junior year high school English teacher. Mrs. Horne introduced me to Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Helen MacInnes and taught me about gerunds, ellipses, and the power of selecting the correct noun. She was one of my favorite teachers.

“I’m Kathy Franzino.”

“Welcome! What did you bring me to look at today?”

“A music cabinet.” She laughed. “Don’t get worried! I didn’t bring the whole cabinet, just some snapshots. I hope they’re good enough for you to see.”

She handed me four photos, and I laid them side by side.

The music cabinet stood on Chippendale-style legs. The doors opened to reveal six drawers. The hardware was brass throughout. The cabinet appeared to be constructed of mahogany and rosewood, and there was ornate decorative detailing at the bottom and top. On the front, there were flowers painted in gilt and accented with tiny mother-of-pearl inlays. It appeared to be in excellent condition. One photo showed a small bronze plaque reading PATENTED OCTOBER 1892.

“It’s lovely,” I said. “What do you know about it?”

“It’s been in my family for as long as anyone can remember, but no one knows where it came from. I’ve always loved it. My daughter, Elizabeth, thinks it might have come from Greece.”

“Why Greece?”

Kathy laughed again. “No reason except that my mother is of Greek origin. My boys, Frank the third and Joe, they thought the style was likely to be Italian.”

“And your father’s Italian, am I right?”

“How’d you guess?” she asked, laughing so hard that her pretty eyes crinkled nearly shut.

I joined in laughing, then turned my attention back to the photos. “I think we’ll find it’s American made. Give me a minute to do a little research.”

Using one of the specialized Web sites we subscribed to, I was able to confirm my suspicion easily—the music cabinet was, in fact, made in the U.S.A.

I turned to Kathy and said, “This is a good example of an American-made late Victorian music cabinet. The detailing to the doors gives it charm, and it’s in wonderful condition. Before recorded music became widely available, many families owned musical instruments, and thus there was a demand for furniture designed to store sheet music. The fact that the company had bronze plaques cast to indicate it was a patented design tells me that these examples were made in fairly large numbers.”

“So selling it won’t let me take my family on an around-the-world cruise, is that what you’re telling me?”

I laughed again. “I’m afraid not. If you wanted to sell it, I would expect it to fetch between six and eight hundred dollars.”

“Well, I wouldn’t sell it for the world anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. I was just curious.”

“When you look at it, you think of your grandmother, right?”

“And my mother, and all the wonderful times I had as a child.”

I gathered up the photos and handed them to her. “That’s priceless.”

Next in line was a woman named Eleanor Glass Moe. She had short gray hair and a huge smile and was holding a doll.

“Here’s Shannon,” she said.

“I’m not familiar with that brand,” I replied. “What can you tell me about it?”

She laughed. “No, no. That’s the name I’ve given her. Irish proud, that’s me!”

“Got it! Let’s see what Shannon can tell me about herself.”

The doll was close to life-size, with movable joints and eyes that blinked. She had short blond hair and wore a white dress detailed with lace and a blue and white beaded necklace. She was missing a finger, and there was visible wear on her arms. The back of her head, under her hair, was marked with the numeral “99” and the word “Handwerk,” probably indicating the year of manufacture and the company—1899 and Heinrich Handwerck.

Since Fred was the lead appraiser for our upcoming doll auction, I wanted to hear his views. I IM’d him, “Heinrich Handwerck—99—finger missing, wear on arms, original lace dress w/necklace in fine cond. Price?”

While waiting for his reply, I asked, “Does Shannon have other clothes?”

“No,” Eleanor said. “The poor girl owns only one dress.”

Fred’s IM arrived. “Clothes+, condition–, prob $400–$500.”

I told her our assessment and explained our thinking and watched her easy smile reappear. We shook hands, and Eleanor thanked me again. I watched her weave her way out of the tag sale, cradling Shannon in the crook of her left arm like a baby.

Four appraisals later, my shift was over.

Sasha approached for her second turn in the instant appraisal booth. I stood and stretched and was walking toward the front just as Mandy stepped inside and spotted me. She looked petrified, as if she were losing ground in a race against the devil.