Ornaments of Death (14 page)

“You're still anxious.”

“I don't know about anxious, but I'm clearly wound up like a spring.”

“Take a bubble bath. That always relaxes you.”

“I will, but it won't.”

“Wake me if you need me.”

“There's nothing you can do.”

“True, but sometimes having someone who loves you keep you company while doing nothing is just what the doctor ordered.”

“You're a wonderful man, Ty.”

“You're a wonderful woman, Josie.”

After Ty headed up for the night, I sat for a long time thinking about fathers and daughters. For some girls, their relationship with their father was fraught with difficulties or worse. Becca and I, it seemed, were among the lucky ones. Our fathers adored us, supported our dreams, encouraged us, were proud of us, and enjoyed our company. What a gift to give a girl.

I walked slowly upstairs to take a hot bath and then, I hoped, to sleep.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Thursday morning, I awoke in a swelter of restive apprehension after a night filled with tumultuous dreams where I found myself in empty, dark, labyrinthine alleys running from I didn't know what. It was exhausting, and I got out of bed more tired than when I'd lain down.

Ty had made coffee, a good thing, since I didn't know if I'd have the strength to do so. He'd also left a note.
I might have time for lunch today if you do. XO.

I poured myself a cup of coffee, sat at my kitchen table, and texted him:
Thanks. I don't know about lunch. I'm all befuddled. XO.

Moving slowly, I made my way into work. Hank was asleep in his basket, and he didn't wiggle as I moved around changing his water and pouring fresh crunchy bits into his food bowl.

“I'm glad one of us is able to sleep soundly,” I told him, but he didn't hear me.

I sat at my desk staring out over bare trees watching an occasional snowflake drift past my window. The meteorologist said a minor squall would be passing through from now until midafternoon, with no accumulation to speak of.

Questions popped into my mind, but no answers followed. I had no idea why Ian had been killed, if it was indeed murder. I didn't know where Becca was or why she'd disappeared. I didn't understand Lia's crass indifference. I didn't know whether Ethan's jocund sprightliness was genuine, or whether his jealousy of Becca's success ran deeper than he was willing to publicly acknowledge. Sarcasm was amusing, but sometimes the speaker's efforts to camouflage a vulnerability only served to highlight it. I didn't understand why Becca's room at the institute had been burglarized. From the damage, the attack seemed personal. Ian came into my mind again, and I replayed our conversations, seeking out incongruities or clues. All I got out of it was a whole lot of nothing.

I watched a few fine flakes dance around my window some more. I read some catalogue copy. I scanned through e-mails. I brought up the
Seacoast Star
's Web site to see if anything was new. It wasn't. Finally, around eleven, frustrated with the situation and myself, I went downstairs and cuddled Hank.

“How are you, sweet boy?” I asked as I scooped him up.

He opened sleepy eyes and mewed.

“Good. I'm glad to hear it.”

I heard the patter of Gretchen's high heels. She appeared around the corner of a storage unit and smiled.

“Aren't you lucky,” she said, “to be getting some kitty love.”

“So lucky.” I make a smacking sound against Hank's cheek. “And he's so delicious.”

Her smile broadened. “I know. He really is.” She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “I wanted to let you know that I've booked the Blue Dolphin and Academy Brass for our luncheon two weeks from today, the twenty-second. Suzanne was ecstatic that you wanted to use their services and swears she won't say a word to Fred. I've blocked out noon to two on everyone's calendar. I labeled it a mandatory staff meeting—an end-of-the-year review and planning session.” She giggled. “I put down that you'll be providing pizza.”

“Very clever! I'll actually be holding a meeting like that the week after, so they'll be ahead of the game in preparing. I thought after we eat we could come in here and watch Hank open his gifts.”

She tickled under his chin. “He's been such a good boy this year, Santa was very good to him!”

“Josie, line one, please,” Cara said, her voice crackling over the loudspeaker. “It's about a possible appraisal. Celeste Gastron.”

“He has,” I said, kissing him again. I placed Hank in his basket. He mewed in protest, wanting another hug. “Maybe later, baby.”

Gretchen waved good-bye and headed back to the office.

I picked up the closest phone. “This is Josie.”

“Hi. I'm Celeste Gastron. I have a collection of Amberina glass I want to sell. As a first step, I need a formal appraisal, so I'm asking a few dealers to submit proposals. Would you be interested?”

“You bet! I love Amberina glass.”

Celeste Gastron was as eager to get the process rolling as I was to get out of my office, so we made an immediate appointment. After telling Cara where I was going, I headed east, toward the coast.

“Call me Celeste,” she said, welcoming me into her beachfront condo with a big smile.

She looked like a latter-day hippie. I put her at about fifty. Her waist-long braid was fastened at the bottom with a seashell clip. Her hair was medium brown, flecked with gray. She wore faded low-cut jeans, a white turtleneck, and lots of orange and blue beads. Her complexion was olive. As far as I could tell, she wore no makeup.

“My mother collected the Amberina,” she explained, leading the way to a glass-fronted display cabinet. “I'm taking early retirement—I'm an art teacher—and moving to St. Thomas, so it's time for it to go.”

“St. Thomas! What fun.”

“Thanks,” she replied as if I'd complimented her on something, which I guess I had, her choice in retirement locales.

“It's beautiful,” I said, my eyes on the golden-orange pieces.

Amberina glass was patented in the late nineteenth century by Joseph Locke. The techniques he used—integrating real gold into the molten mix and reheating certain parts of the glass—created coloration patterns that faded from pale amber to ruby red, like a sunset. Most of the pieces featured the darker, richer colors on top. When the object was reheated at the base, the red tones appeared at the bottom. This coloration pattern was known as a reverse.

Celeste's collection, which included what looked to be a spooner—an extremely rare and scarce example of the American-made art glass—was, from my initial glance, in perfect condition. Spooners, also called spoon holders, were a status symbol of the late nineteenth century. Designed to keep sterling silver spoons readily available, spooners demonstrated more than easy hospitality; they allowed members of the burgeoning middle class to show off their newfound affluence—they could afford the spoons to put in them. By 1930 or so, when the middle class was well established, interest in fragile glass spooners had all but vanished. It was only in the last few years that they'd emerged as a collectible. American-made art glass spooners ticked all the boxes: They were old, rare, scarce, beautiful, and popular.

“There are eight pieces,” Celeste said, “all different.”

I took out my video camera and asked her to bring out each piece, one at a time, so I could create an annotated recording of the lot. In addition to the spooner, the collection included a ruffled vase; a lily vase with an etched manufacturer's mark reading
LIBBEY
; a whisky tumbler; a bulbous water pitcher; a cruet with an amber stopper; a reverse-colored small water jug; and a diamond-cut egg-shaped bowl with three feet.

“Do you have any receipts?” I asked.

“Three.” She handed me a sheet of paper. All three receipts, which had been issued from small New Hampshire shops in the mid-1980s, had been photocopied onto one page. “The others were bought at tag sales or flea markets for cash.”

“We'll do some preliminary research to figure out how long we think a full appraisal will take and prepare a proposal for your review within a few days.”

“Perfect,” she said, shaking hands.

I thanked her again for giving us the opportunity, then left.

Sitting in my idling car, listening to the waves thunder in to shore, I realized I was still in no frame of mind to work. I had very little memory of my interaction with Celeste. I'd been on autopilot, half my brain in the room with her, the other half gone, lost in a tangle of half-formed thoughts and roiling emotions. I uploaded the video, e-mailed it to Sasha, and asked her to prepare the proposal. I turned off the engine and got out of my car.

I walked a ways along the shoreline, kicking snow-pocked ribbons of slick seaweed, clambered through brittle grass and twisted vines to the top of a dune, and watched the tide charge in. Gazing west, I could see the sun trying to peek through the clouds. To the east, though, the cloud cover was thick, a yellowish gray, and the ocean's surface was still turbid, a cauldron of bubbling dark danger. I felt myself relax, just a little. Whether the tide was gently rolling in or attacking the shore with the devil's own fury, the water's rhythmic ebb and flow always calmed me. When enough cold had leached through my boots to make standing on the frozen sand a punishment, I headed back to work.

*   *   *

As I turned off I-95 toward Prescott's, Ellis called. I slipped in my earpiece.

“I'm in Boston at Becca's apartment,” he said, “and I hate to ask, but I could really use your help.”

“Of course. What's going on?”

“Becca is now officially a person of interest in Ian Bennington's death.”

“No!” I exclaimed, horrified. Ian was her father. It wasn't possible.

“Note I'm not specifying how Ian died, because the ME hasn't issued her final report. Based on her preliminary findings, however, it looks like Ian was hit by a car, receiving life-threatening wounds from the impact.”

My eyes welled up. “Did he die instantly?”

“There's no way to know. I'm sorry, Josie. The ME is working to determine whether the car hit him accidentally or purposefully, whether it's manslaughter or murder.”

“I saw the skid marks. The car sped up as it approached him, then veered right.”

“I know. Why we're here … I have two witnesses who place Becca at the scene, which makes her a material witness, at least. She has, apparently, disappeared. Put all that together with the break-in at the institute and I was able to get a court order allowing me to search for information as to her whereabouts. Airline tickets, charge card records, letters indicating a friend she might contact, and so on. I haven't found anything. Katie is looking at her work computer to see if she did electronic banking. However, I think there's a chance there are things here I can't see. There's a drawer that was obviously built into her desk as a hidden compartment. It wasn't fully closed, the kind of hair-thin gap you might leave if you grabbed something from a drawer and shoved it closed it in a hurry. The drawer was empty, but it got me wondering if there might be other secret cubbyholes in the furniture. A lot of the pieces seem to match, and if there's a secret compartment in one, it seems logical there might be others. Especially since you found that box that had a hidden drawer in it. I couldn't find anything, but I don't really know what I'm looking for. I'm hoping you'll take a look and tell me what's what. Maybe you'll see something that helps us find her, that helps find Ian's killer.”

“Of course. Now?”

“If you can.”

I glanced at my phone. It was just after one. “I should be there by three.”

“Thanks, Josie.” He cleared his throat. “One thing … don't tell Wes until you're done, okay?”

“Wes?” I asked, wondering what Ellis had up his sleeve.

“I was thinking that if Wes writes about Becca's new status as a person of interest, it might spur the community on to help us find her.”

“That makes sense,” I said, waiting for more information. None came. The silence stretched on for several seconds. Finally, I asked the obvious question. “Why don't you tell him yourself? He'd love to quote a police chief.”

“If you're his source, you build up a little credit. You might hear something from him that I never would. And if you hear something that's pertinent, you might just tell me. I'm just trying to cover all the angles.”

“You're a very clever man, Ellis.”

“I'm not feeling very clever. I'm feeling a dollar short and a day late.”

“I'll do my best to help.”

“Thanks. Don't worry about parking. There is none around here. I don't know how people cope. The Boston police are cooperating—they've left a man out front. He'll watch your car. I'll let him know you're coming.”

I called Cara to tell her I wouldn't be back and Ty to tell him I would be late, grabbed a fast-food lunch to eat en route, and got back on the interstate, this time heading south.

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The uniformed police officer standing on the stoop of Becca and Ethan's apartment building looked about fourteen. He had dark brown hair gelled to a center peak and walked with a teenager's strut. His gold-toned nameplate read
OFFICER E. O'KEEFE.
As soon as I double-parked, he took the steps two at a time, reaching me before I'd turned off the engine.

“Ms. Prescott? Chief Hunter asked me to send you right in. If you'll set your flashers and leave the key, I'll take care of your car.”

I swung my tote bag over my shoulder, thanked him as I tossed him my key ring, and hurried up the steps.

I tugged on the entryway door, expecting it to be locked, but it opened freely. Masking tape covered the locking mechanism. Becca's apartment door stood open. I stuck my head in and peeked around the corner.