Antiques to Die For (18 page)

“Not much of anything. My wife found it in her aunt’s attic about a month ago. We had to clean it out after she died. We never saw it before.”

“How about her husband?”

“She was a maiden lady.”

I nodded. “Give me a minute,” I said, and turned to the computer.

I brought up a browser and logged on to one of the many proprietary sites we used to keep current with prices. I knew that folk art was popular right now, and in our region, maritime artifacts were always popular, but I didn’t know the name Josiah Drake, nor did I know whether cabin cruisers held any special allure. The sites I consulted gave me significant information, but of a general nature, and I had a hunch that this object was special and worth more research.

Mr. Isaacson waited patiently as I searched three separate sites and IM’d Shelly, a former colleague from my Frisco days. Shelly had remained neutral during the meltdown that followed the whistle-blowing debacle, a far kinder reaction than that showed by most of my so-called friends. While Shelly and I were no longer close, she called on me periodically for tips on how to approach off-the-wall appraisals and was always accessible when I needed specific information likely to be in her head or at her fingertips. Since I knew that Shelly was more likely to go somewhere without her purse than without her BlackBerry, I figured there was a good chance that I could reach her immediately. I crossed my fingers that she was online.

She was.

Condition?
she IM’d back in response to my succinct description of the boat.

Near mint. Crude carving. Signed.

Crude, folk art crude? Or crude crude?

I smiled. I could hear Shelly’s diction in the question.
Folk art crude,
I replied.
Let me send you a photo.

Cool.

Mr. Isaacson happily agreed to the taking and e-mailing of photos, and within a minute I’d sent four shots off via e-mail; in another minute, Shelly was back with a reaction.
Nothing on Drake. Great-looking boat. Your thoughts as good as mine.

I signed off. “It’s a beautiful piece,” I started, “but Josiah Drake isn’t known as a folk artist.”

He snorted. “So you got to be famous to be of value?”

“No, but I don’t want to mislead you. It helps.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“With a fabulous example of craftsmanship, probably American made.”

“How much is it worth?” he asked, eyes narrowed, ready to argue.

“About two thousand dollars.”

“Really? That’s not nothing.” A slow grin transformed his face. “You think a museum might want it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Which one?”

We discussed his options and he shook my hand, satisfied and eager to discuss with his wife donating the boat to a Maine maritime museum in her aunt’s name.

“If you’re thinking of donating it, probably you want to get a formal appraisal. For tax purposes.”

“Makes sense.”

As Mr. Isaacson made his way out of the booth, I glanced around.

Fred was showing off the davenport repro to a young mother, her baby asleep on her shoulder. Paige was helping Gretchen wrap a pair of glass candlesticks in bubble wrap.

As a young man stepped into the booth ready for his turn, Sasha approached.

“It’s Ty,” she whispered. “He’s on the phone and he says it’s urgent that he talk to you.”

I met her worried eyes. “Can you sit in for me?” I asked, then said, “Excuse me,” to the young man before heading to my office at a full trot.

“Officer Brownley had me listen to your message,” Ty said.

“I felt kind of stupid leaving it,” I confessed, still breathless from my run across the warehouse and up the spiral stairs to my office. “I really had nothing to say.”

“No, you did the right thing. You didn’t recognize the driver?”

“No.”

“Tell me about it in as much detail as you can remember.”

I described the cat-and-mouse chase I’d had with the other car.

“Was it a BMW?” he asked when I was finished.

“Could be. You know I’m pretty lame when it comes to cars. All I can tell you is that it was a kind of boxy sedan and definitely dark in color.”

“Did you think to look for the name of the car? You know what I mean—sometimes there are chrome numbers or letters.”

“I tried, but I couldn’t see anything,” I said, then added, “Can I ask you something, Ty?”

“Sure. What?”

“Who do
you
think is following me?” My throat constricted as I spoke and I ended up choking and coughing. “Sorry,” I managed, and took a sip of water from the bottle I keep on my desk.
Fear,
I thought.
Fear’ll kill ya.

“It’s too early to say. We have to keep looking for something that points to someone in particular. Everyone involved seems to drive a dark sedan, for instance, so your description doesn’t help us narrow the field—or expand it either.”

“Figures, huh.” I brushed hair out of my eyes. “Ty?”

“What?”

“I’m kind of scared. What should I do?”

He was quiet for a moment.
Why?
I asked myself.
What does he know that he doesn’t want to reveal?

“I’ve arranged for extra patrols,” he said, his tone subdued. “And you know to call at the least sign of anything. Don’t wait, don’t hesitate, don’t delay. Let us help you.”

“Okay,” I said quietly. “But it sounds like there’s not much you, or I, can do.”

“We’re looking into lots of different things, Josie.”

Suddenly I was having trouble breathing. “Do I need to hire Chi again?” I asked, referring to the bodyguard I’d employed last year.

“I have no reason to think so. Tonight, I’ll take a look around and touch base with the night duty officer.”

“Okay, then,” I replied, trusting the system, trusting Ty.

“See you around six-thirty?”

“Perfect.”

After we hung up, I sat at my desk for a while, feeling weak. I felt lucky and grateful to have Ty in my life. I took a deep breath and picked up the phone to call Zoë and tell her that Ty would be at dinner.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

P

aige sat cross-legged on the love seat, leaning over her backpack, rustling around for something. I was at my desk, a stack of photographs in front of me.

“Paige?” I asked.

“Yes?” she replied, looking up.

“I wanted to let you know that Ty, Chief Alverez, is coming with us to Zoë’s tonight.”

“He is?” she asked, immediately wary. “Why?”

“He’s a friend of mine,” I replied, leaving the explanation simple. “You’ve met him, right?”

She nodded. “Twice.”

“About Rosalie?”

She nodded again and looked down at the carpet. “He told me what happened to her. Then he talked to me about her later.”

Suddenly my eyes welled and until I blinked the tears away, I couldn’t speak. After a moment’s silence, I said, “I’m going to do some work. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Is there any way I could check e-mail?”

“Sure. You can use my computer. I’ll switch places with you.”

Ten minutes later, I interrupted Paige again. “I hate to bother you, but I could use some help.”

“Sure.”

“Come here for a sec.”

She came and sat next to me on the love seat.

“These are images of your sister’s scrapbook. I know it might be painful for you to look at them, but do you think you could? You might recognize something that could provide information about places she hung out, people she knew, that sort of thing.”

She nodded, her eyes big and somber.

“The video captured every two-page spread. Gretchen printed them out.”

With trembling fingers, she accepted the stack of photographs. She bit her lip as she turned the photos over, one at a time.

“I remember when she went to this movie,” she commented, tapping the ticket stub.

“Who did she go with?” I asked.

“I don’t remember. Maybe I never knew.”

“It’s okay,” I said, nodding encouragingly.

“Who’s Chief?” she asked.

“Good question. I don’t know.”

“Maybe Paul,” she said. “I don’t really remember, but I think maybe Rosalie used to call him Chief.”

“That’s right—he’s a volunteer firefighter, right?”
Deputy chief.
I hadn’t made the connection, and now my heart began to pound at the thought.
I need to tell the police.

She nodded and resumed her review. “I remember this,” she said, pointing at a postcard from a North Conway ski lodge. “I stayed with the Reillys when she went away for the weekend. That was last November.”

“Who’d she go with? Did she tell you?”

“A ‘hot date,’ she said,” Paige repeated, unembarrassed at the quote.

She turned to the next photo. “Oh!”

“What is it?” I asked.

She pointed to an image of a frilly coaster with the initials TMH monogrammed in the center, and said, “That’s from Rosalie’s favorite restaurant. She took me there once.”

“Do you remember its name?”

“The Miller House. It was nice, but Rosalie said it wasn’t a sister sort of place. It was a dating place.” Paige rolled her eyes. “She went there a lot.”

“Who with?” I asked.

“Everyone. I mean, everyone she dated. This was the place she liked best for dinner.”

I nodded, and said, “Keep looking.”

She began turning sheets again. “Oh, look!” Paige said, and gulped. She began to cry.

“What is it?” I asked, handing her a tissue.

She wiped the wetness, swallowed hard, and patted her eyes. “This bit of ribbon. It was from my Christmas gift to her last year.”

“What did you give her?”

“Some note cards with artichokes on them. Rosalie liked to send handwritten notes.”

I nodded. “Me, too.”

When Paige was done, with no additional revelations to offer, I thanked her. She said she was done with e-mail and dug out her iPod, her expression glum.

I returned to my desk and swiveled to look out my window and cast my eyes north. The Miller House, where Gerry had eaten the night Rosalie was murdered, was located in Maine.
Just like those disposable cell phones, the ones that were used to call me.
I glanced at the time—it was after two, the tail end of lunch, a slow time for a restaurant. Within a minute, I had a plan.

I went to Hitchens’s Web site, navigated to Rosalie’s department’s home page, and eventually found what I was looking for, photos of each teaching assistant. That took care of Rosalie and Paul Greeley. Cooper’s photo was on the faculty page. I found Gerry’s photo on the Heyer’s home page—
no surprise since he’s such a narcissist,
I thought.

It was tougher finding a usable image of Edie. I finally located a pretty good three-quarter profile of her from their yacht club’s newsletter and, indulging a last-minute brainstorm, decided to add another attractive female, Una, into the mix. I was able to extract her image from a group photo on the Heyer’s Web site, from a page titled “Company Fun.”

Using Photoshop, I cropped them, sized them to match one another, and printed them out. Slipping my handiwork into see-through plastic sleeves, I told Paige, “I’ve got to go out for a while. I’ll be a couple of hours, probably. You can hang with Gretchen downstairs, okay?”

Gretchen was in the front office typing. “Hi,” she said, with spurious cheer.

From that one word I could sense that something was wrong. “You okay?”

She made a comical expression. “I just asked that fellow, Paul, for a date and got shot down,” she told me.

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed.

“Always the way,” she said, resigned.

“He’s nuts.”

“Thanks.”

Paul’s got to be crazy,
I thought. Why a man wouldn’t pursue an attractive, sweet young woman like Gretchen was beyond me. In fact, I didn’t understand why men didn’t
flock
to Gretchen. And if it mystified me, it must have completely baffled her.

I stepped outside and paused, looking around. Since I wasn’t stupid, foolish, or in denial, it was only prudent to check for anything amiss near and between the parked cars before I ventured off the stoop.
Nothing.

There were three dark-colored, boxy sedans amongst the dozen or so vehicles parked near the tag-sale entrance. I shook my head, surprised to realize how many cars look similar to one another—and to the one that had been following me.

None of the three was streaked with salt or covered with mud, but neither had any of them been freshly washed, and I suspected none of these was the car that had chased and frightened me.

Sitting in my car, I called Officer Brownley and left a voice mail about Paul maybe being the man Rosalie had called Chief.

A voice inside me, one that I didn’t want to listen to but couldn’t quiet, kept questioning my ability to cope. A cloud bank momentarily blocked the sun, darkening my view, and shivers ran up and down my arms and back.

Driving along the secondary routes and then onto the interstate, I kept alert for anomalies, and saw nothing untoward. I looked over my shoulder. Was someone there watching me, far enough away that I didn’t see or sense him—
or her,
I reminded myself—yet close enough to track my movements? It was a terrifying sensation, and one that I couldn’t seem to shake.

The Miller House was located in Eliot, Maine, not far from the bridge that connected New Hampshire to Maine. Walking up the flagstone pathway from the big parking lot, where I parked reassuringly close to the front door, I admired the mature landscaping and freshly painted white siding. Inside, I was greeted by the aroma of cranberries mixed with something else, cinnamon maybe.

Sensory branding,
I thought. I’d just read an article about it. Big-name retailers were using carefully crafted scents to foster brand awareness and develop customer loyalty. I’d been toying with the idea of trying it out at Prescott’s.

A smiling hostess in a dimity print shirtdress greeted me. “May I help you?”

She was probably on the shady side of forty and looked smart and sassy, like the kind of broad who’d tell an apologetic drunk that he had more excuses than a pregnant nun and to call a taxi and get on home to sleep it off.

I turned on my most disingenuous smile, a thousand-watter. “I don’t know . . . I have a kind of off-the-wall question. I hope you’ll bear with me.”

“Sure,” she said, intrigued.

“I’m an antiques appraiser, and in the course of an estate appraisal, I’ve come across something that I think comes from your restaurant. If so, and if I can connect the dots, I might be able to locate some more of the owner’s possessions. Also, it’s possible that you might be able to help me figure out who she was hanging out with. And that may lead me to more of her things as well.”

“That sounds pretty complicated.”

“Yeah,” I acknowledged. “Here’s the thing. I have two extra keys. I don’t know what they go to. If I can find
that
out, then I may discover that she has more objects for me to appraise.”

“I’m not really following you.”

“I’m not doing a good job of explaining.” I sighed. “It’s a coaster.”

“What is?” she asked, becoming impatient.

“The item that told me she’d been here. Do you still use those monogrammed doily ones?”

“Yes, certainly.”

I nodded. “That’s what I found in her scrapbook. So I know she had at least one special meal here.”

A couple walked past us on their way out, and thanked the hostess for a lovely lunch. The dining room was empty.

“Who?” she said.

“Rosalie Chaffee,” I said, and showed the hostess the photo I’d brought along.

Her eyes flew to my face. “That’s the dead girl.”

“Yes.”

“I told the police everything I knew,” she said.

“Which was what?”

“Why do you want to know what I told the police?”

I looked at her intelligent eyes.
When in doubt,
my father instructed me,
tell the truth. People don’t expect it, and it sets you apart as a winner.

“I’m trying to help Rosalie’s sister, Paige. She’s only twelve. Oh, golly, I haven’t even introduced myself.” I extended a hand. “I’m Josie Prescott.”

She shook it and seemed to relax a bit.

“And you are?” I asked.

“Betty Murphy.”

“Nice to meet you, Betty. I’ve been hired by the lawyer representing the estate, and the sole beneficiary is Rosalie’s sister, Paige, who as I said, is only twelve. I have a letter here that explains my role. Let me show it to you.” I reached into my tote and extracted a business card and Mr. Bolton’s authorization letter. “Here,” I said, handing her the letter.

She read it carefully and handed it back. “I’m glad to help. Rosalie was one of my favorite customers.”

“She came here often?”

“Yes. At least once a week. Sometimes more.”

“Who’d she come with?”

“Various people.”

“She was here the night she died, right?” I asked, taking a flyer.

“Right. She came in for a drink.”

I can’t believe it!
I thought, and then I could. I’d asked the question just because, and hadn’t really expected to receive confirmation that she’d been at the restaurant. “Who with?” I asked.

“Gerry Fine of Heyer’s Modular Furniture. The police had me look up his charge receipt. He had a business dinner first—he used his company charge card.”

Rosalie was here with Gerry on the night Rosalie died
—
and the police knew it.
“Had she been here with him before?” I asked Betty, knowing the answer would be yes.

“Yes,” she said. “Very often. She and Mr. Fine often had business dinners here.”

Yeah, right,
I thought.
Business dinners, my caboose. Gerry got his company to pay for his meals with Rosalie.
Somehow that made the whole affair sleazier than ever.
What a cretin,
I thought.

“Did Rosalie ever come here with other people?”

“Sure. She was a regular guest.”

“Did she ever come with him?” I asked, showing Paul’s photo.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “But not for a while.”

“You have a good memory,” I remarked, smiling.

She blushed, pleased. “It’s part of my job to remember guests. And of course, the police have just asked the same questions.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked, holding up Paul’s photo.

“I went through the charge receipts for the police. Paul Greeley, right? The last one from him was in October.”

“How about him?” I displayed Cooper’s photo. “Do you recognize him?”

She took the plastic sleeve and looked at his photo for a long time, tilting her head, concentrating. “He doesn’t look familiar to me.”

I nodded. “How about her?” I asked, showing Edie’s picture.

She cocked her head, thinking. “I don’t think so.”

“This one?” I asked, handing her Una’s photo.

“Now, this is one the police didn’t show me . . . yes,” she said, tapping the plastic with her finger. “I’ve seen her. But not with Rosalie.”

“Who with?” I asked.

“Mr. Fine.”

Gerry had been involved with Una!
It took a heavy dose of willpower to keep my astonishment from showing on my face. “When was that?”

“Hmmm . . . a couple of times last summer, maybe? I think that’s right—I remember one night she wore a red strapless dress.” She looked at me and smiled. “It looked very good on her.”

I nodded. “Would you remember if—” I started, interrupted by a man who clomped into the anteroom.

“Hey, Betty,” he called. “Christ Jesus, it’s as cold as a witch’s tit out there.”

“Marcus,” Betty scolded, “what are you thinking of, wearing only that light jacket?”

“I was only going from the house to the car and from the car in here!”

“You’re going to catch your death of cold! Let’s get you a little something to chase the chill away.”

“Smart woman,” he said, and she laughed and escorted him into the lounge.

“I’ll be right back,” she called to me over her shoulder.

I stood there, distilling Betty’s revelations.
Gerry lied about not having seen Rosalie the night she died, and since the police questioned Betty, they knew it, too. Plus, Gerry had, apparently, been having an affair with Una until Rosalie entered the picture,
I thought, shaking my head.
And poor Edie.
I bet that Gerry stayed with her because it was cheaper than divorcing her.
What a heel.
It was one thing to fall in love with another woman and be unable to resist Cupid’s arrow. It was another to behave like an eighteenth-century rake. Gerry didn’t care about anything or anyone but Gerry. As I stood, waiting for Betty, I tried to figure out why Edie stayed.
Does she love him or does she feel trapped?
My guess was that she was as self-centered as he was and cared only about protecting her lifestyle.