Antiques to Die For (23 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

O

fficer Brownley came inside my house with me. “I’d like to take a quick look around.”

“Sure,” I said, immediately fretful. “But how come?”

“An excess of caution.”

Her tone betrayed her concern. “Do you have any information that I don’t have?”

“No.” She helped carry groceries inside, and then said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I had just placed the package of English muffins near the stove when she entered the kitchen. “All clear,” she said.

“Thanks.” I met her deep blue eyes, which sent a reassuring message of calm. She didn’t look worried, and her confidence transferred itself to me. “Want a cup of coffee or something?”

“No, I’m going to take off. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“When do you want to leave tomorrow?”

“About seven-thirty. I want to get in early.”

“You have outside appointments?”

“Yes.”

“Chief Alverez asked me to have someone accompany you when you went somewhere.”

They didn’t know if I was in danger, but they obviously thought I might be. “Okay,” I said, hiding my anxiety as best I could.

“Anything happens,” she stressed, “you call me right away.”

“You’re on my speed dial.”

She smiled then and left.

______

“Jake knows a lot about trucks,” Paige told me. “And Emma’s very good at tumbling.”

Paige sat at the kitchen table as I thumbed through the leather-bound, handwritten cookbook my mother had given me shortly before her death, when she was only forty. I found the entry labeled
Jerry’s Chicken.

“Sounds like you had a good time. Or at least a time that helped counteract the onus of Sundays.”

She nodded. “It helps to think about other people.”

Out of the mouths of babes,
I thought. “Yeah.”

Jerry’s Chicken had been created by my grandfather, my mother’s father, Jerry Keas, who was an onion guy. He loved growing them and he loved eating them. He also loved cooking with them and he invented this recipe.

It’s not easy to make,
my mother had written all those years ago.
Don’t try it unless you have the time.
With Paige by my side, I was looking forward to taking the time. Cooking was, to me, a major stress reducer, and by sharing the recipe, and the experience, with Paige, maybe she’d take away a memory that would offer a respite from tension in the dark days sure to come.

I set aside the book. “You ready to cook?” I asked.

“I guess. I don’t know much.”

“I sure hope you know how to make pizza!”

She smiled shyly. “That’s easy.”

“What do we do first? Toast the muffins?”

“No. First you preheat the oven. Plus, you don’t toast the muffins, you bake them.”

“Got ya.”

“We always covered the cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Helps with cleanup.”

“Good idea.”

We lined the sheet and preheated the oven. While I watched, she spooned ready-made pizza sauce onto the muffin halves in a pretty spiral pattern.

“Do you spread it out?” I asked.

“No. It’ll spread on its own when you cook it. You don’t want to use too much or the muffins get mushy.”

I nodded. “Now what?”

“The cheese.”

“I thought we’d grate fresh parmesan instead of using the stuff in the can.”

I showed her how to hold the grater.

“Have a nibble,” I told her.

“Yum.”

“Is it better?”

“Way better,” she said, smiling.

I watched as she sprinkled the part-skim mozzarella and dribbled the parmesan.

“I love cheese,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“Do you want to use fresh basil? I got some at the store.”

“First the tomato.”

“I got these.” I handed her a tub of grape tomatoes. “The others just looked awful.”

“Tomatoes in January in New Hampshire,” she acknowledged. “Hopeless. That’s something I miss about California. The fruit and vegetables are better.” She examined the grape tomatoes I’d handed her. “These will work fine. We can slice them in thirds, the long way.”

After the tomatoes were in place, she tore the basil into strips and crisscrossed the surface. “That’s it,” she said as she slid the cookie sheet into the oven.

“Want some ginger ale?” I asked.

“Sure.”

As I poured, I told her, “I found Rosalie’s desk.”

“Really? Where?”

“In a storage unit near Hitchens.”

“Wow! Is it the treasure Rosalie told me about?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’m sorry, Paige. It’s a fine piece of furniture. But it’s not hugely valuable, I don’t think.”

She sighed and looked down. After a moment, she asked, “What else was in the storage room?”

“Nothing. Except for a note from your mom to Rosalie when she gave her the desk and an inkstand for an old-fashioned quill pen. Those were on the desk.”

She nodded. “Now what?”

“We’ll appraise the desk starting tomorrow—and the inkstand, although I don’t think it has much value either. And I keep looking.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure. We’ll go to the office first thing.”

The timer rang. She slid the pizza muffins onto a cooling rack.

“Am I right in assuming you don’t want to go to school until after the funeral?” I asked.

She nodded. “If it’s all right.”

“Of course. Is there anything else you want to do tomorrow?”

“Sometimes I go to ballet on Mondays. There’s an open class for advanced students at five.”

“Would you like to go tomorrow?”

She nodded.

“I’ll see you get there. And to the Reillys afterwards.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice so small I could barely hear her.

“Or you can continue to stay here. I love having you.”

She smiled tremulously. “I hate being trouble.”

“You’re no trouble, Paige.” I reached out and patted her hand. “You’re a delight.”

She teared up and winked the wetness away.

“We can decide tomorrow,” I said.

“Okay.”

We ate the gooey-delicious pizza and chatted, and as the sun sank low on the horizon, we agreed that half a muffin was just enough to carry us through until dinner.

Ty called as Paige was peeling the aluminum foil from the cookie sheet, and I stepped into the living room for a semblance of privacy.

“I’m here,” he said. “It’s a nice place. In Georgetown.”

“I like Georgetown.”

“Come on down.”

I laughed. “What time do you start tomorrow?”

“Eight.”

“That’s about when I’d get there.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s about right.” He paused. “I just spoke to Officer Brownley.”

“So you know about the desk.”

“Yeah. You think it’s anything?”

“No. I mean, it’s a great desk, but it’s not museum quality, not by a long shot.”

“So you keep hunting.”

“Exactly. And since we’re talking business, there’s something else I’d like to ask you about. I know it’s not your jurisdiction, but I’m not sure what to do about a possible attempt at fraud.” I filled him in about Whistler’s palette.

“And this Lesha Moore wrote the letter?”

“Not clear. I think it’s more likely that Evan wrote it before he died,” I replied, and explained my thinking.

“And the palette?”

“That had to be her. Evan would never have placed the paints in that order. But he might have bought an old palette intending to pass it off as Whistler’s without telling her the palette
wasn’t
the real one.”

“But she’s the one who actually submitted the phony palette for appraisal and possible sale, right?”

“Yes, but she might have thought the palette was genuine. Evan might have been the brains behind the scheme and died before he could execute it. My guess is that
he
faked the letter
and
acquired the palette.”

“Where’s the real palette?”

“Probably boxed up in his uncle’s house.”

“Why wouldn’t he have used the actual Whistler’s palette?”

“ ’Cause Evan was a junkie but he also was an artist, and even if he wasn’t painting for a while, he would have protected it. It was, to him, priceless.”

“If it was the real deal, how much would Whistler’s palette sell for?” he asked.

“Lots.”

“Hundreds, lots,” he asked, “or thousands, lots?”

“I don’t know. Probably hundreds of thousands,” I replied, “maybe more. One of his palettes is in the Smithsonian.”

He whistled. “Attempted grand larceny for sure, then. Okay, since your business is located in Portsmouth, this is their call. I’ll fill them in and let you know how they want to proceed. In the meantime, keep everything intact. Don’t return anything to Lesha.”

After we said good-bye, I stood at the front window for a moment staring out into the night. The moon had risen early and streaks of silver light illuminated the empty world.
To silver light in the dark of night,
my father often toasted. He died before I could ask him where the toast came from.
Maybe he coined it during a moonlit night like this,
I thought.

I returned to the kitchen and asked Paige whether she was ready to start cooking dinner.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling a little. “It’s fun with you. Rosalie and I mostly tried to do it quickly.”

I swallowed hard to keep from crying. Her compliment meant more to me than she could know. I could almost hear my mother telling me I’d done well.

“Excellent. First, we’ll caramelize the onions.”

“They’re big,” she said, watching as I hefted two onions.

“Vidalias,” I explained. “They were my grandfather’s favorite.”

My mother had adored her father, a grandfather I’d never met. “He encouraged me to read,” she’d explained to me. “I was only eight when he started me on Mickey Spillane.” I repeated the story to Paige as I supervised her cutting the onions into paper-thin slices.

“Who’s Mickey Spillane?” she asked.

“A mystery writer. The book covers were kind of racy, so her mom, my grandmother, didn’t approve.”

“What happened?”

I smiled, recalling my mother’s face as she told me the story. “My grandfather gave my mom a flashlight so she could read under the covers at night and her mom would never know.”

“I love that!”

“
And
he kept her in batteries.”

What a guy,
I thought, wishing for the thousandth time that I’d known him. An only child of parents who were only children of older parents, I’d never met a relative, and as far as I knew, I had no family at all.

Eric called around seven, to say that the pickup was complete. “And,” he added, “I remembered to set the alarm.”

“You’re the best!” I told him, meaning it. “Thank you.”

I turned my attention back to the recipe. We whipped up a nutmeg-laden white sauce, layered Fontina cheese and the onion slices in a lacy pattern on butterflied chicken breasts, sautéed them, and served them over a bed of rice pilaf with a spinach and avocado salad with dried cranberries dressed in a tarragon white wine vinaigrette.

“The secret to salad,” I said, drizzling salad dressing, “is to dress less and toss more.”

“I’ve never had anything like this,” Paige said. She looked utterly unimpressed.

“You don’t have to eat anything you don’t like. There’s plenty of English muffins so you can always make more pizza.”

“I’ll try it.” She paused, then added, “Rosalie would eat anything, like my dad, but I’ve always been kind of picky, more like my mom.”

“Well, there’s no pressure here,” I assured her. “You eat what you want.”

“Thanks.”

She didn’t much like the salad, but she did like the chicken and rice, and more to the point, she tried everything, which I told her was pretty darn impressive for a twelve-year-old.

After dinner, she asked to check e-mail and while she was busy at the computer, I found myself unable to settle down. I paced. Cooking with Paige had succeeded in distracting me, but the diversion was over, and my amorphous fears had returned.

Is my secret admirer out there tonight?
I asked myself, trying to see into the shadows. I shook my head, confused and troubled. I couldn’t stop thinking about Rosalie.

If Rosalie did in fact have drinks with Gerry the night she died, where did she go afterward? Since her car was in her driveway, covered with snow, she must have driven herself home and then gone out again. According to Wes, Gerry’s driver reported that Edie’s car wasn’t visible when he drove Gerry home. Could Gerry have followed Rosalie to her place and then driven her somewhere else, trusting his limo driver to keep her presence secret?

I scrolled through my phone’s stored numbers until I found Wes’s cell phone number, and pushed the recall button. It went to his voice mail immediately.

“Wes,” I said, “it’s me, Josie. I have a question—you know that Gerry had drinks with Rosalie, right? The night she died, they were at The Miller House. Here’s my question. She drove herself to the restaurant and home again. I know because Paige said Rosalie went out, yet the next day we found her car snowed in. So she must have gone out again later, with someone else doing the driving. Do you know who that someone else could be? Call me, okay? ’Bye.”

I flipped the phone closed and looked out toward the hedge, half expecting to see a boxy, dark-colored car. I stood up and stretched, ready to head upstairs when my cell phone rang.
Wes,
I thought,
returning my call
.

It wasn’t. The display showed a 207 area code.

“Oh, no,” I whispered.

I was unwilling to answer it, yet unable to put it down. The ringing stopped, and still I stared at it. In less than a minute, the envelope icon appeared. There was a message.

“Josie,” a voice said as if the speaker were breathlessly exhaling and barely enunciating words. “You need to stop. Stop, Josie.” The voice changed and became icy cold and stone hard. “Or you’ll be sorry.” The words were indistinct, but the underlying emotion was palpable and terrifying. I played it again.

What am I to stop?
I wondered.
How can anyone know what I’m doing?
I walked closer to the window and stood in dappled moonlight. I forced myself to breathe deeply, trying to subdue my electrified anxiety. Then, after a moment, I called Officer Brownley.