The Body in Bodega Bay (4 page)

Then I called Morgan's Auctions Galleries. When I said the magic words, “helping the sheriff's office,” I was put through to a Mr. Harry Spears, who had been the auctioneer for the sale. He agreed to see me at 11:30 the next morning, a good start. My third call was to Alvin Miller, who taught medieval and religious art at Berkeley and who was one of my favorite professors in graduate school. What little I know about religious art I learned from him; he would be an excellent resource. Al considers me a colleague now and insists on a first-name basis. He was free on Tuesday afternoon and suggested a meeting at his house. “Sure, bring Toby along, it'll be nice to see him again,” was his reply to my next question. Toby would be pleased. Tomorrow he'd be tied up filing a robbery report and getting his lock repaired, but on Tuesday we could both go to see Al at his home in the Berkeley Hills. Toby wouldn't mind closing his shop if it meant he could participate in the investigation.

The next morning I woke up worried about the drive to San Francisco. In principle, if you take the freeway, it's only an hour and a quarter to the Golden Gate Bridge, but taking into account weekday-morning traffic, I figured on a good two hours to the city. Traffic was worse than I thought. As I waited for an accident to clear ahead, I listened to Michael Krasny's talk show on KQED and hoped that the auctioneer wouldn't be peeved by my late arrival. Finally, traffic started to move again, and I made decent time the rest of the way in.

Morgan's Auctions sits at the foot of Sutter Street in a quiet neighborhood of furniture showrooms and galleries. The building is yellow brick but otherwise nondescript, and the décor is a tad shabby. The message conveyed is: “Look how low our overhead is.” Morgan's is a far cry from Sotheby's. I identified myself at the information desk and was directed to an office on the second floor.

The elevator wasn't working that morning, so I climbed the uncarpeted cement stairs, went through a fire door, and made my way down a dim corridor to Harry Spears's office. He was sitting in a swivel chair at a banged-up metal desk, pushing closed its top drawer. Spears greeted me without enthusiasm and without bothering to rise. He was slovenly and heavy set, bearded, dressed in pants that needed cleaning and a blazer that was too tight around his paunch. His tie was wide as a barn, left over from the days of flower power.

I told him who I was and why I was there. I handed him my Sonoma College business card, which labeled me an associate professor of art history, and Dan's card, which identified him as a deputy sheriff on the Santa Rosa force. He laid them on his desk, unimpressed.

“So what can I do for you?” Spears asked. His words were more welcoming than his tone.

“I'm looking into a Russian icon that came up in your Discovery Auction last week, on March 2. The man who bought it has been killed and now it's missing, so it could be part of a murder investigation.” I gave him the lot number and showed him the photo in his catalog. “Do you remember the lot?”

“Yeah. It didn't bring much, as I recall.” His nose was running. He blew it and tossed the tissue into a wastebasket.

“Eight hundred dollars, according to the bill of sale.”

He checked his records. “That's right.”

“I'm wondering if it could be worth a lot more.”

“If it is, nobody else thought so. There was only the one bid, and since it met the reserve, I had to sell it.”

“So the only bid came from Mr. Halloran?”

“If that's his name. I opened asking for a thousand, couldn't get a bid, so I went down to eight hundred, and he raised his paddle. It was a thin house that day, not too many bidders. I was glad to sell it.”

“Can you tell me who set the estimate on that lot?”

“I did. I do all the lots.”

“And are you an expert on Russian icons?”

He bristled. “Listen, lady. I know something about auction prices. I didn't think it would bring more than a grand, and it didn't.”

I allowed a polite smile. “May I ask what you based your estimate on?”

“I ran the database. Looked for comparables in our recent sales and didn't find any. To tell you the truth, we don't sell a lot of icons. There's no market for them here. People go for landscapes, still lifes, marine paintings, pretty stuff. Give me a landscape with a sunny sky and a river in it, and I can run up the bidding. Religious paintings, forget it. Now, this icon looked old, which gave it a certain cachet, if you know what I mean, and the subject, being an angel, gave it a boost. But it wasn't in top condition. If anything, the estimate was optimistic. Maybe at another auction house that specialized in icons or religious objects it could have brought more.”

“I see. Would you mind telling me who the seller was? It might be useful if I could talk to him or her.”

“That's private information. We don't give it out.”

I slid Dan's card toward him across his desk. “You can call Deputy Ellis at that number if you don't want to talk to me. I'm trying to save him from having to come down himself.”

He hesitated.

“This is a murder investigation, Mr. Spears. Deputy Ellis has his hands full. He's short staffed. He's asked for my assistance. If he has to make a separate trip because an informant won't cooperate, he'll do it but he won't be pleased.” I added, “So far you've been very helpful.”

Spears shot me a glance that said, “Don't take me for an idiot.” I sat straight-faced, hands folded in my lap. My glance said, “No? Then help me out.” We waited a few seconds, and then he snorted and reached for a record book. The consignor was a woman named Rose Cassini who lived in Cazadero, which isn't far from Duncans Mills. I copied down the address and phone number.

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” he said grudgingly. “Now I'll tell you and the sheriff something else, so you won't have any reason to complain. You aren't the only ones who've been asking about this lot.”

“Oh?”

“The bidder—Halloran, is that his name?—also wanted to know the name of the consignor. Called me up the day after the sale and wanted to get in touch with her to ask if she had any more items like it that she might want to sell.”

“Did you give him the information?”

“I told you, that's against our policy. But I called her and gave her the buyer's number and relayed the message. Said that if she wanted to contact him, that was up to her.”

“And did she?”

“You'll have to ask her. I don't know. But that's not all. The next day I get another call from a guy with a heavy accent who wants to know who the buyer was on the lot. Said he was a collector from Russia who had missed the auction and might be interested in making the buyer an offer. Well, I handled that the same way. I called the buyer and delivered the message and gave him the guy's number. And that's all I know.”

Dan would be interested in that piece of news. “Do you still have the number?”

“No, I jotted it down somewhere but didn't keep it. Look, we're talking about an eight-hundred-dollar sale. How was I to know it would cause so much trouble?”

How, indeed? “Do you remember anything else about the call?”

He shook his head in the negative.

“What about the voice? Did the man with the accent sound young, old?”

“It was a deep voice. Not too young, not too old.” He shrugged.

“Anything else?”

“No, that's it. I've told you everything I know.” He reached for another tissue and blew his nose again. This time he balled up the tissue and clenched it.

“All right, Mr. Spears. Thank you for your help. If you think of anything else, please call Deputy Ellis at the number on his card.”

“Is that it for now?”

“That's it.” I rose to go. Spears withdrew a half-eaten cheese sandwich from the top drawer of his desk and waved me out. The cheese was pretty ripe. I could smell it.

I left a message for Dan, fed the parking meter to give me time for lunch across the street, then headed back across the city to the Golden Gate and 101 north. Toby and I had arranged to meet back at his shop. The fastest way up to Duncans Mills from the city is to take the freeway as far as Cotati and then cut over to 116 going west. The afternoon traffic wasn't half-bad.

“How'd it go?” Toby asked when I got back to the gallery.

I gave him an account of what I'd learned at Morgan's.

Toby grew more alert with each detail. “I wonder if Charlie got in touch with the consignor, or if he ever called this Russian guy.”

I wondered too, and hoped that the consignor of the icon would be willing to talk to us. If not, she'd have to talk to Dan. Meanwhile, I asked Toby how things had gone up here.

“No big news. I filed the robbery report, waited for the locksmith, talked to the other shop owners. Nobody else had a break-in. No one heard or saw anything suspicious. Obviously, whoever broke in and stole the icon did it late Friday or Saturday night. This place is a ghost town after the restaurants shut down. I've also been going through Charlie's desk but haven't come up with anything. I'm ready for a break.”

“Coffee?”

“Good idea.” In his half of the gallery, Toby had a nook set aside for his office, where there was a little refrigerator and a coffee machine. We were sitting on a divan, sipping and collecting our thoughts, when the door opened and in walked Tom Keogh, Charlie's ex-partner. “This could be trouble,” Toby grunted under his breath. Toby got up and walked over to offer Tom a handshake. Tom wasn't reciprocating. I decided to sit this one out. I had a ringside view.

“Tom, what can I say? I'm really sorry about Charlie.” To me, Toby sounded sincere and compassionate, but Tom didn't take it that way. He looked enraged.

Tom had the hawkish bearing of an aging Irishman. In fact, he reminded me of a photo I'd seen of the playwright Samuel Beckett. He was tall and lean, with a thatch of stiff hair, an aquiline nose, and piercing blue eyes. His fair complexion burned red at this moment, but I could see that in a calmer moment he would be handsome, even compelling. “Shit, Sandler,” he spat out bitterly. “Charlie's dead, and you report me to the cops as a suspect. Don't try your sympathy act on me.”

“That's not what happened, Tom. I just told Dan he should talk to you. I didn't know Charlie as well as you did. That's all I meant.”

“Well, your detective friend gave me a hell of a grilling. He knew we were together—I suppose you told him that. But he talked to me like I was the one who killed him.” He sputtered with grief and anger, “I could never hurt Charlie.” He swallowed hard, his jaw working.

Toby's eyes shifted to the floor, in embarrassment. His voice was low when he replied. “I know that. Charlie didn't talk much about himself, but he trusted you.”

“He trusted me? That's a good one, after all the shit he's pulled. Charlie wasn't exactly an expert on the subject. Trust wasn't his number one priority, was it?”

“Meaning what?” Toby asked defensively. Tom looked away. “Are you saying he did something underhanded by moving to my shop?”

Tom retorted, “Charlie was free to leave whenever he wanted. I didn't keep him locked up.”

“Then don't take it out on me.” Toby put out his hand, palm up, to ward off a reply. “You know what? We shouldn't be having this conversation now. We're both of us too upset. If you have accusations to make against Charlie, you need to make them to Dan, not me.”

“You're the one I need to talk to, Sandler. Look at you. You're sitting on Charlie's inventory—mine, really. It was my money that bought that desk you're leaning on. And that big oak table over there, for starters. When he walked away from me, Charlie owed me thirty thousand dollars. I'm telling you, I'm going to take back what's mine.” His chiseled jaw was set defiantly.

Toby looked surprised. “I don't know anything about that, but this is no time to be talking money. We can deal with that later.”

“Oh, yeah. You sound just like him. ‘We'll talk about the money later.' That was Charlie's favorite refrain. Well, ‘later' hadn't come when he moved his stuff in the dead of night from our store to your shop. Later is now.” Standing at his full height of over six feet, Tom towered over Toby as he jutted a finger into his chest. Toby rocked on his heels but didn't step back.

“Don't do that again,” Toby said in an even voice. That was all he said, but it was enough.

I walked forward and put myself between the two men. “Hold on, guys. This is the last thing Charlie would want, you two fighting over his things. We're all grieving. Let's think about that tonight.” And it was nearly night by now. The sun was getting ready to set suddenly, the way it does in late winter. I stepped round to the wall to flip on the lights.

When I turned back, Tom had pivoted away, and his shoulders were wrenching. Was he crying? I heard no sobs. I pulled up a chair for him, one of Charlie's for all I knew. And he sat there shaking for a long time. We waited it out.

Finally, Toby said, “I know you and Charlie were partners a long time. I don't know what happened between you, and it's none of my business, but he never bad-mouthed you to me. I'm not your enemy. I want to help find whoever did this to him.”

Tom rubbed his nose with his fist and repeated, “Later, later. That was all I ever heard from him. He never wanted to confront the facts. Never wanted to settle things. Well, he sure as hell left things unsettled between us.” He slumped forward in the chair, his long arms dangling between his knees.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean in every way, but never mind the other stuff. We had a business agreement that he left up in the air. When he couldn't figure out how to pay back that thirty thousand dollars, he just took off. And you gave him a place to go, Sandler. He came to you with stock that he bought with my money, the money I loaned him, over and over, just so he could take advantage of this one unique opportunity, this one super auction, this one client who would slip away tomorrow.”