Killer Keepsakes (8 page)

“Nothing,” I said. “I wish I had news to share.”

He nodded. “Talk soon,” he said and slid down the dune.

After Wes left, I sat for a while longer. That Gretchen was in the witness protection program was possible, I supposed, but it seemed so darned implausible. Still, I was aware of a niggling fear that something larger and more dangerous than I could even imagine was happening just out of my range of vision.

There was too much I didn’t know. For instance, if Gretchen
was
in the witness protection program—why? What unseen and unknown factors were at work? Had someone she’d testified against hunted her down? Had the killer found her there with the man and shot him, on purpose or by mistake? Or had the murderer brought him there to die—perhaps as a warning to Gretchen?

“Gretchen is no criminal,” I whispered aloud, but even as I spoke the words, I knew that my avowal expressed more prayer than conviction.
Someone,
I thought,
must have answers.
Then I thought again of Lina.

As I began the drive back to my office, I realized that I didn’t even know her last name. Deciding not to waste another minute, I pulled off to the side of the road next to a tangle of spiky grasses and called the Bow Street Emporium.

“Lina,” I said, when I reached her, “this is Josie Prescott. I was thinking—may I buy you a drink or a cup of coffee after work?”

There was a pause, and I wondered what she was debating.

“Sure,” she said. “I get off at six today.”

_____

As soon as I walked into Prescott’s, Cara asked about my meeting with Wes.

I chose my words carefully, wanting to tell the truth while protecting Gretchen’s privacy. “Wes did a background check and reported what I already knew from our insurance company’s security review—Gretchen has no criminal record.” I flipped up my hand. “Much ado about nothing. Where’s Fred?”

“In the tag sale room,” Cara said. “He wanted to look at some of the half-dolls to make sure they shouldn’t be saved for the auction.”

“Good deal. I’ll be in the ware house. Eric needs some high-end items.”

I didn’t want to break up a collection just to seed the tag sale, which eliminated snow globes, American Arts and Crafts pottery, tinplate toys, beaded silk dresses, Mission furniture, writing implements, and eighteenth-century fine bindings.

Nothing grabbed me except two stoppered perfume bottles, a Bischoff yellow and a Viking purple, both from about 1960. The three-tiered, rounded Bischoff was worth somewhere around three hundred dollars; the bell-shaped one from Viking, formerly known as the New Martinsville Glass Company, would sell at auction for about six hundred dollars. If I priced them 20 percent lower than their auction estimates, they’d be real finds for a collector or a fan. They’d be perfect, except they were too fragile and rare to be good candidates for the tag sale.

I stepped into the walk-in vault to scan the shelves where miscellaneous valuable objects were stored.

Almost immediately, my eye lit on two high-quality, expertly framed bird prints from John James Audubon’s
Birds of America,
a whooping crane and a rose-breasted grosbeak. We’d been hopeful they were originals, which is why they were in the safe, but they weren’t. They were first-rate copies, though; the color reproduction was extraordinarily detailed and exact, and their condition was excellent.

I nodded and reached for them. At auction, I knew each would sell for about four hundred dollars. I’d have Eric price them at $319 each. With any luck, the buyers wouldn’t be able to stop talking about the great finds they discovered at Prescott’s tag sale.

As I was swinging the door closed, I saw a small padded envelope that I’d never noticed before. There was only one word on it, written in block letters: GRETCHEN. The envelope rested on its side between a Plexiglas display case housing some fine jewelry that was scheduled to be appraised by a visiting gemologist and a box of ephemera that had come from the estate of a former Miss Vermont who went on to place third in the Miss America pageant.

Gretchen must have put it in here before she went on vacation,
I thought.
How could I have missed it? Since she’s been gone, I’ve popped in and out a gazillion times.
Apparently I’d been so preoccupied I hadn’t noticed.

I reached for it, then stopped. I knew better. I backed out and spun the wheel to lock the safe, carried the bird prints into the front office, and called Detective Brownley on her cell phone.

“I found something,” I told her. “An envelope with Gretchen’s name on it, in our safe.”

“Don’t touch it. I’m on my way.”

“I won’t. I haven’t,” I assured her, but she’d already hung up.

I paced, too keyed up to do anything else. I could barely stop myself from running back to the vault and ripping into the envelope to discover the secrets it contained.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

D

etective Brownley stepped into the office ten minutes later. The concrete ware house was cold, and sounds echoed.

“Do you know anything about the envelope?” she asked, her voice reverberating. How it got there? Or who might have touched it?”

“I called you as soon as I saw it, and I haven’t asked anyone anything about it. As for me, I have never seen it before, and I didn’t touch it.”

Detective Brownley stood off to the side as I unlocked the steel door and swung it wide.

“There,” I said, pointing.

She snapped on plastic gloves, took a pencil from her pocket, and used the eraser end to ease the envelope out. When it was an inch or so beyond the shelf’s edge, she toppled it into a plastic evidence bag. She probed with the eraser, fussing the unglued top flap open. She aimed the opening toward the light and looked inside. “There are some papers, but it’s too dim to see well. Let’s go to the office, where the light’s better.”

We stepped into the front office. Fred was back at his computer. Eric was pouring himself a cup of coffee. Sasha was reading.

I greeted them and told Eric about the bird prints.

Detective Brownley held the bag up and asked, “Have any of you seen this envelope?” Fred, Sasha, and Eric shook their heads. The detective nodded, then went to the round table by the windows.

She squeezed the plastic bag, forcing open the envelope, and tried to see inside, then turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing fell out. Whatever was in there was stuck. Using her pencil eraser, she gentled out the contents, one piece at a time. There was a typed note, a greeting card, and two Polaroid photos.

The typed note read:

A Meissen baluster vase of Chinese design.
––  crossed sword mark, left blade off center and thin at tip
––  “AR” in underglaze blue I inherited the vase from my mother, Lynne White. My mother said she bought it in 1949 at Faring Auctions in Cheyenne for $1,685, but there’s no receipt.

The greeting card was a beauty. The illustration on the outside showed a lush garden scene. Inside, the preprinted message read:

For a Special Young Woman
a Special Birthday Wish

Just below that, someone had added a handwritten message:

I turned my attention to the Polaroids. One photo showed a vase of traditional Chinese design—a bird and garden scene—in shades of ethereal blue. The other showed the marks that the writer described in the typed note. Both the ornate, interwoven “AR” and the rapier-thin crossed swords appeared hand-drawn and stylized. Above the swords were three letters: “JGH.”

Detective Brownley looked up. “Do you know where it is?”

“No.” I stared at the photo of the vase. “It’s a beauty, isn’t it?”

“Is it old?”

“Probably.”

“How old?”

“I don’t know. From the marks, assuming
these
marks are on
this
vase, it’s likely that we can date it.” I looked up. “Remember the pedestal in Gretchen’s apartment? I’ll bet this vase is what used to sit on it. Do you want us to see what we can find out about it?”

Detective Brownley looked at me, down at the photo, the card, and the receipt, then back at me. “These have to go to the lab.”

“How about if I record them? We can work from the video. If it ever comes to authenticating the documents themselves, we can figure that out then.”

“Great. Thank you, Josie.”

I got one of our video recorders and carefully shot the note, the card, and both photos, front and back, having her flip each one over with her pencil. All the reverse sides were empty, except the greeting card, and the only text there identified the artist and production company.

As soon as she packed up the documents and left, I turned to Sasha. “Did you follow that? Here,” I said, handing her the camera. “You take a look. Fred, you, too.”

Fred leaned over her shoulder, absorbing the details. He pushed his glasses up as he stood and returned to his seat.

Sasha’s brown eyes were steady and focused. “It’s a lovely piece,” she said, looking up.

“The marks are Meissen, right?” I asked.

“Right,” she said, “but you know how many replicas there are out there. Just by looking, I don’t know if this is original or not. Do you?”

“No. How about you, Fred?”

“No, I’m not familiar enough with the marks. Listening to you, my first thought was to go back to Faring Auctions in Cheyenne. If they’re still running, they might have records. Sixteen hundred eighty-five dollars back then . . .” He paused to tap something into his computer, then finished his thought. “It’s more than fourteen thousand in today’s dollars. Lots of places would have a record of something in that price range—even after all these years.”

“Have either of you heard of Faring?” I asked. “I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean anything. As we know, there are scores of small auction houses around the country.”

They shook their heads; then Sasha said, “The auction house is definitely worth checking, but we should educate ourselves about the marks first.”

“Calling Faring is almost sure to be a shortcut,” Fred countered. “They’ll either know something useful or they won’t, which will help us set the appraisal pa ram e ters right off the bat.”

“Well, I’ll leave you two to figure it out,” I interjected, “but keep in mind that it’s your top priority. One thing, though, Fred, before you get going. Did you learn anything about the mark on the buckle?”

“Yup. Good news.”

He reported that the belt buckle’s primary mark, the large
H
enclosed in a double-edged circle, had been used by the Indianapolis-based Harrison Metal Works since 1894 and was still in use today.

“That’s great!” I said. “Fast work. I’ll try calling them.”

I took the buckle upstairs to my office. I easily located Harrison Metal Works’ phone number and followed the automated instructions to finally reach a human being. “Hi. My name is Josie Prescott, and I have a question about a belt buckle.”

Three transfers later, I reached April, an account executive in the custom promotions department. April understood what I wanted before I finished my explanation.

“Gotcha,” she chimed in. “You’re in luck, I think. We’ve just finished computerizing the seventies, and I’m betting the number ‘79’ refers to the year. You can’t imagine the nightmare this job has been—but we’re making progress! Okey dokey, let’s see what we’ve got here. Tell me the marks again?”

“ ‘SFC 79’ and the number three,” I repeated.

“Okay. ‘SFC’ is probably shorthand for the client, or maybe the artist. Is the design signed? In the mold, I mean? Can you see an artist’s signature on the design side?”

“No, not even with a loupe.”

“If it was there, you probably wouldn’t need a loupe. I mean, whoever heard of an artist signing his name so small you need a magnifying glass to see it!”

“Good point,” I agreed, enjoying April’s dry humor.

“Darn! ‘SFC’ isn’t there . . . hmmm . . . hold on . . . okay . . .
uh, oh . . .
Houston,” she said, lowering her voice a notch, “it looks like we’ve got another problem . . . okay . . . one sec . . .
oh, brother!
We have no search field for marks or abbreviations—can you believe it? Only for the company’s name. If you’d called and asked for a listing of the promotions ordered by XYZ Company, I could have told you in a snap, but we don’t have the capacity to search by the mark.
Duh!
I’ll alert the IT department. Meanwhile, let me think. How can we find the company you’re looking for?”

Her question was rhetorical, but I ventured to suggest an idea. “How about searching through the companies whose names begin with
S
?”

“Yeah, maybe, except that we have over seven hundred customers whose names begin with
S
.”

“Okay, then—that calls for plan B!”

“We’re up to plan C, I think. Let’s try this—let me search two parameters, the year and the first letter,
S,
and see if we can narrow it down.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Keep your fingers crossed! Here goes nothing!”

While I waited, I swiveled to look out the window. The sky was densely gray. It looked as if the rain would start any minute.
Gretchen,
I wondered,
are you nearby? Can you see the clouds?

“It worked!” April said seconds later, sounding as excited as I felt. “Okay . . . there are four companies that ordered custom belt buckles in 1979 whose names start with
S
. But there’s only one with the initials ‘SFC.’ Got a pen?”

I wrote the name as she spoke it aloud: Sidlawn Fencing Company. “April, you totally rock. What about the number three? Does your database tell us how many buckles were produced?”

“Ten total. This one must be the third in the series.”

“Great. Do you know who got it?”

“Sorry. That’s something only Sidlawn would know.”

“Can you tell me anything else about the company?”

According to April’s records, the Sidlawn Fencing Company was headquartered in Springfield, Illinois, and Harrison Metal Works’ contact at the time the order was placed was the Sidlawn Fencing Company CEO’s secretary, Laverne Matthews.

I thanked her profusely and took her direct phone number in case I had additional questions.

Springfield,
I thought. Located more than a thousand miles from Rocky Point, far enough away to relocate a witness in danger.

Sidlawn Fencing Company wasn’t listed in any phone directory I consulted. Googling the company’s name got only two hits, both for old information from a defunct Springfield newspaper. According to the archived snippets, Sidlawn Fencing Company won a government contract for chain-link fencing in 1984, and the company’s founder and CEO died suddenly of a heart attack in the late 1980s. Apparently the company was out of business.
Now what?
I asked myself.

A soft pattering on the roof told me that it had started to rain, and I glanced outside. The sky had darkened to iron gray.

I turned back to my computer and considered avenues to research, finally settling on contacting the Springfield Chamber of Commerce. Three minutes later I learned that the Sidlawn Fencing Company had changed hands in 1989 when the founder’s widow sold it to Belcher Wire, a German conglomerate.

One phone call later, I learned that Belcher Wire still maintained a small manufacturing facility in Springfield. Then I hit a dead end. Neither the receptionist nor the current CEO’s assistant, Serena Carson, had ever heard of Laverne Matthews, belt buckle promotions, or Harrison Metal Works.

I bit my lip, thinking for a moment. “Any chance that I could talk to someone who worked for the company in 1979?” I asked Serena.

“Gee, I don’t know anyone who’s worked for the company that long.”

I knew that a question from the CEO’s assistant to someone in human resources was far more likely to be answered than one from an outsider with no official standing, if I could convince Serena to make the call. When in doubt, I’d learned over the years, tell the truth. There’s nothing as persuasive as the truth, simply told.

“I hate to bother you with this, but it’s so important. May I explain a little bit about why I’m asking?”

“Okay,” Serena replied, sounding wary.

“I work for a company that appraises and sells antiques and collectibles, and sometimes we help the police. That’s what I’m doing now—helping the police try to track a collectible, the belt buckle. I’m wondering—do you think you could call human resources and ask if anyone has worked for the company since the late seventies?”

“What kind of police investigation?” she asked, breathless with curiosity.

“We’re trying to identify someone. He was wearing the belt buckle.” I took a deep breath. “What do you think, Serena?”

I could almost hear the wheels in her head turning. “I guess I could do that,” she said. “I don’t see how it could hurt anything.”

I expressed my enthusiastic gratitude and prepared to do one of my least favorite things: wait.