The Big Steal (22 page)

That was just the beginning of the surprises the night would hold.

Dear Antiques Expert: I've become very interested in early American antiques. When I read about them, the region or even a specific place where they were made often is given great importance. Why is this
?

Early American craftsmen had to use the materials at hand. Though furniture makers in cities with good seaports could buy imported mahogany, craftsmen further inland mostly relied on wood cut from nearby forests. Location also influenced a region's lifestyle. Thus in sophisticated Philadelphia, furniture makers carved mahogany piecrust tables, so called because of their fancy ruffled or crimped edge. But in the Shenandoah Valley, craftsmen made simpler, more utilitarian cherry dropleaf tables for their clients. Since many collectors prefer locally made pieces, scholars and dealers try to identify a piece's origin based on its woods, style, design, and techniques used.

O
N FIRST GLANCE
, like its exterior, Terena's interior was deceptively simple. Structurally, it was what is called a two-by-two, or a four-over-four house. Off the front section of center hallway, there was one room to the left, one to the right.
Behind those, also opening off the hallway were two more rooms. Midway down the hall, a staircase led to the second floor. Upstairs, four more rooms were arranged in the same unpretentious pattern.

But to call the walnut paneled entrance a hall hardly did it justice. It was large enough to hold a coach and four, and its arched doorways leading into the rooms off of it were flanked by impressive reeded columns. Around the ceilings, the carved molding depicted trailing vines so lifelike you wanted to reach up and touch them. The chair rail in the dining room was a deeply carved Greek key banding. And the marble mantels depicting different scenes from Greek mythology were so detailed you could see each gracefully poised goddess's fingernails. Yet nothing about the house was overdone or flashy. It was simply grand.

And the furniture: four acanthus-carved Chippendale chairs surrounded the New York gaming table, a rare Boston chinoiserie Queen Anne chair was drawn up to a shell-carved Connecticut slant front desk, and between a pair of Baltimore Pembroke tables inlaid with bellflower drops was a camelback sofa upholstered in bright crimson damask. But the piece that grabbed my attention was the Philadelphia mahogany piecrust tea table with ball-and-claw feet—the sort that could soar to a million dollars
plus
at auction.

I made no attempt to hide my astonishment. “Wow.”

“I like it,” Tracy said casually.

“I guess you
do
. And, to tell you the truth, it's quite refreshing after Wynderly. It's not that Wynderly is in bad taste. It has its own charm,” I quickly added, fearing I'd spoken too
frankly and hastily. “But
this
is what a truly grand
Virginia
estate is supposed to look like.”

Tracy laughed. “Don't worry. I know what you mean about Wynderly. I couldn't live there. When I come home, I need order and stability, not glitz and glitter.” She heaved a deep sigh. “I know some people would call Terena stuffy. I call it calming. I grew up here. To me it's home. But let's have a glass of wine. I'll take you on a tour upstairs later. You've had a long day and getting here is no small feat till you know the roads. I've had Yves prepare something light for us to eat. He and his family live in the gatehouse you passed when you turned in, but I don't want to keep him here too late. I told him we'd eat early and visit over supper. Is that OK?”

“Sounds wonderful,” I said. “Where would you like for me to sit?” I half expected there to be neatly folded, white “Do Not Sit” cards on the museum-quality chairs and sofa.

“Oh, just anywhere. Make yourself comfortable.”

While I stood debating between the sofa and the circa 1780 Philadelphia wingback chair, Tracy disappeared into the hallway.

She returned with two glasses, not the cut Waterford, fine Steuben, or Baccarat crystal people of her status usually have, but simple etched eighteenth-century wineglasses. The chilled bottle of white wine was resting in a wooden-bottomed old Sheffield silver wine coaster, its copper base showing through.

“Hope you don't mind, but I couldn't resist.” Tracy turned the bottle of Sterling Vineyards chardonnay so I could see the label and laughed. “Now. Tell me about
you
, Sterling Glass,” Tracy said, handing me the glass she had just poured.

“Oh, there's not much to tell. You know why I'm here. Babson and Michael wanted to get the values of the Wynderly pieces resolved before they paid the claim.”

“So, tell me, what
are
you finding over there?”

I found myself squirming. I should've been better prepared for Tracy's inevitable questions about Wynderly. But since I wasn't, I tried skirting the issue. “Speaking of Wynderly, I cannot thank you enough for coming to my rescue this afternoon.”

“That Freddy. Give a man a little power and watch your back. ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.' Thing is, Freddy
is
the trust department,” she said. “Therein lies his power. Trust department? That's a joke. I wouldn't
trust
that bunch of jokers at the bank as far as I can spit.”

For a second I wondered why Tracy was being so forthcoming with me, whom she hardly knew. Then again, speaking her mind was Tracy's way. But Tracy's comment about the bank? I took a lesson in boldness from my hostess's book and spoke right up. “I thought you'd gone to the bank looking for Mr. Graham, or at least that was the impression I got back at Wynderly,” I said. “If you don't trus—”

“Look. I'm not going to totally alienate myself around here. I keep enough money in the bank so they
have
to be nice to me. There are times when I need favors too. As long as the bank guys have the local yokels in their pockets, I
have
to be nice to them so
they
will be nice to
me
.”

“Then I'm not speaking out of school in assuming one of those yokels the bank has in its pocket is Alfred Houseman?”

“You've got it.”

“And you do know that Alfred Houseman as much as told
the board that you were going to step in and save Wynderly,” I said. “Now I'm here in your home, I'm wondering why he said that. Wynderly is so totally different from what you have here at Terena. Would you, I mean,
are
you
really
interested in—”

“That's the impression Alfred would give. Am I interested in saving the place?” She frowned. “You put it well earlier. Wynderly doesn't fit in around here. Montpelier's the big tourist draw, yet I've been told there are days in the dead of winter when it's almost empty. The same is true at Monticello, according to some of the guides. Thinking that tourists will flock to Wynderly is a pipe dream. But I
do
hate to see the place turned into … who knows what? A resort golf club? The grounds would be suited to that, but it would destroy the gardens. A bed and breakfast? We've got enough of those. Anyway, between the house and the acreage, Wynderly's far too big for one family to keep up without having a whole staff the way the Wyndfields had. And as far as all that stuff in it? Why, half of it is—“She stopped in mid-sentence. “Well, you tell me. You're the appraiser.”

I dropped my eyes and fiddled with the stem of my now empty wineglass. What should I say? I would appear ignorant if I
didn't
acknowledge the fakes and reproductions in the house, especially after the suggestive hint she'd just dropped. But if I
did
acknowledge them, I would be betraying my client's confidentiality. I sat, hoping that she'd say something. All the while, the silence, as they say, hung.

“Good girl!” Tracy suddenly blurted with such gusto that she startled me. “Your silence tells me what I've figured for years. It's all a sham. Just like Hoyt himself.”

“I … I …”

“My daddy never
did
trust that man. It wasn't like you could put your finger on anything wrong he was doing, so everybody just looked the other way and whispered under their breath.” She stopped as abruptly as she had begun.

“I'm a fine one to talk,” she said. “That harangue I delivered at the board meeting glorifying Hoyt?” She shook her head. “I didn't believe a word of it … the part about Hoyt, that is. But with Peggy Powers and Miss Mary Sophie and others perpetuating Hoyt Wyndfield's name and reputation, the only way I can get their attention is to play along with them. Wynderly's worth saving, of that I'm sure. And you can't just sweep a romantic family story aside. That's why tourists visit old homes, to see how other people lived, especially rich people. But we
can
stop
glorifying
Hoyt. The house will be the same. The architecture, the objects—even the spurious ones—have their own stories to tell.”

I was expecting Tracy to launch into one such story. Instead she said, “Yes, Hoyt's ways really bothered Daddy. The whole thing … the house, some of the people who visited there—it was a real mystery. But what's a mystery without a dead body? It takes a corpse to get the action started, to get to the truth, or, if not a corpse, a scandal. And we didn't have either one at Wynderly. At least not one we'd make public in this tight-lipped society where ‘Thou shalt not tell thy neighbors' secrets' is the eleventh commandment. Daddy wasn't the only one who felt something was amiss, but without anything to pin on Hoyt, everybody rolled over and played possum.” She laughed.

“Now about
you
. I've read your columns and heard your name in the antiques world, but of course we know all about
heresay. If
half
the stuff written about me were true—“She muttered an exasperated “aghh.”

“Me? Well, there's not much to tell. I live in Leemont.”

“Divorced, right?”

“Three, four years. I'm not counting.”

“Good for you. So, is there a man in your life?”

“Well …”

“Listen honey, there's no ‘well' about it.”

I grimaced. Tracy DuMont was starting to sound a lot like my mother, despite the fact that Tracy was probably in her early sixties, only ten or twelve years older than I. But when someone has lived life as fully as Tracy DuMont, she should be listened to.

“There either
is
or there
isn't
,” Tracy said.

I smiled to myself. The emphatic Tracy of the board meeting couldn't stay hidden for long. Still, Tracy DuMont trouncing through my love life was not part of the bargain. In an attempt to end the conversation, I shrugged and said, “Put that way … no, there isn't.”

Little did I know I was throwing out the bait she was waiting for. “Why
not
? You're an attractive woman.”

“Thank you, but it's not like there's an eligible man my age on every street corner,” I said.

“You travel. You don't think I've met my husbands hanging around
here
do you? Who would I hook up with?” Tracy exploded with laughter. “Frank Fox? I call him Light-in-the-Loafers Fox. Can you
believe
he has a
son
? Worth Merritt?” Her attitude changed. “Now there's a real gentleman for you. If he were only about twenty, maybe twenty-five years younger—”

“But you do travel to a lot more exotic places that I do.” I held out my hands like Blind Justice holding scales. “Rome, Roanoke? Venice, Virginia Beach?”

“You'd be surprised. I met my last husband in Des Moines. So. You're telling me that every man in Leemont is either married, dead, or gay?”

I found comfort and courage in the wine she had poured. “Well, actually, there is one …”

How to describe Peter?

“I don't know how interested he is in me. One minute he's all attentive, and the next I seem to be just a good friend. Not that anything has been said, or anything … well, romantic has taken place …”

Hearing myself stumbling over my words and realizing that I couldn't define our relationship gave me pause. This was not good.

“Well, who
is
he? Divorced? Not a married man is he?” She raised her eyebrows in her worldly way.

“Oh no.” I threw up my hand and gave a protesting laugh. “He's widowed. Several years now. A retired Episcopal priest—early retirement. He's about my age. Actually, it's rather interesting. He moved to Leemont just because he liked it. He hasn't any family there. In fact he runs the Salvation Army's secondhand store and has turned it into quite an antiques shop. He has a boyish way about him.”

“So,” Tracy said with great finality. “What's holding him back? Seems you'd have a lot in common.”

I shrugged. “Wish I knew.”

The wine and Tracy's unrelenting way, plus my own unsettling feeling about Peter spurred me on.

“Well, there's also Matt Yardley, the Babson and Michael executive who hired me for this job. He's quite charming. Actually, he has a more, well, sophisticated manner than Peter.” I couldn't help telling her, “In fact, Matt said he's going to drop by tomorrow. He's in D.C. right now and since he's so close …”

“Aha. Now
that
sounds more like it,” Tracy said. “That minister fellow, Peter whoever, I'd say that dog won't hunt.”

I laughed. “We'll see what happens. Oh, but that reminds me. I've heard there's an estate sale somewhere around here this weekend. Do you know anything about it?”

“The one at Milton? That's the old Trumbull place, ten or twelve miles west of here, in Madison County. Just a stone's throw. It's been sitting empty for a good two, three years now. Family dispute. Thank God they're finally emptying it out. It's a miracle there hasn't been a fire or robbery. As a matter of fact, there's a Queen Anne dropleaf table that I'm interested in. Whether I'll get it is a different matter. I'll send Yves to bid on it for me. I have it on good authority that some New York dealers are coming down for the sale. It's got some fine pieces in it,” she added, then laughed and said, “Shame we can't interest those fellows in some of the stuff at Wynderly while they're here.”