I didn’t get back to the warehouse until almost 9:30. Greeting Gretchen on the fly, I ran upstairs to my office to change into my uniform. I, like everyone else on staff and all temporary workers, had to adhere to a dress code on auction and tag-sale days. We wore maroon collared T-shirts with the words Prescott Antiques printed in small white letters on the pocket and black slacks and shoes.
Only Tom McLaughlin, the auctioneer in for the day from upstate, was allowed to wear whatever he wanted. The first time he’d driven down to work for me, about eighteen months earlier, I’d asked him if he wanted to wear a Prescott T-shirt. His sour look had been answer enough.
Tucking in my shirt as I hurried down the stairs, I went directly to the auction site, where the final preview hours were about to begin. Sasha seemed to have everything under control.
“Ready?” I asked, entering through the back.
“As ready as I’m going to be,” she answered, trying for a smile. Responsibility was new to her, and she took to it awkwardly, but with a quiet determination to succeed.
“You’ll do fine,” I said, responding to her underlying message, not her words.
“Thanks,” she said with a quick smile.
“Anything I need to know about?”
“I don’t think so. We’re ready to open up on schedule. Katrina’s outside signing in the early birds.”
I nodded. “Good.” Katrina, a part-time worker with a year’s experience, would be with Sasha all day helping her register bidders, pass out catalogues, record winning bids, and run errands.
“Tom is here,” she said, pointing toward the front.
I spotted him near the podium, scowling at the catalogue. Today, as always, he wore a rumpled brown suit and a glum demeanor. I didn’t care that he was routinely surly before and after the auction. With a gavel in his hand, he was transformed. He worked the crowd with seemingly effortless ease, exuding goodwill and confidence, and creating eager bidders. With a nod to Sasha, I headed toward the stage, calling to him as I approached. He turned and frowned at me.
“Do you have everything you need?” I asked.
He snorted. “Not unless you have a check for a million dollars in your pocket.”
I smiled politely. “I wish. You have the catalogue, I see.”
“Did you do the research?”
“No. Sasha did it. And wrote the descriptions.”
“It’s good.” Words of high praise from a man who knew.
I smiled my thanks. “She and Katrina will be here all day if you need anything.”
He nodded and waved me away. I told Sasha I’d be back in a while, and left. I stuck my head into the office, and called, “Gretchen? I’m going to dash over to the tag sale to be sure we’re ready to open. Anything for me first?”
“Yes,” she said, standing up and turning to face me. She wore her Prescott T-shirt with flair, looking as stylish as always. “Mrs. Cabot is here to see you.”
Mrs. Cabot, Mr. Grant’s daughter? In a dazzling flash of hope, I imagined that she’d selected me to handle her father’s estate. I caught myself beginning to hyperventilate at the thought and quelled my impulse to hoot and holler and kick my heels in the air. Stop, Josie, I admonished myself. Stop, breathe, and think. Forcing myself to slow down and think, I took a deep breath. And another. Okay. I was ready.
I stepped inside. Mrs. Cabot sat in an upholstered guest chair near the front, her feet firmly on the ground, gripping her handbag tightly.
“Mrs. Cabot,” I said, smiling as I walked forward. “I didn’t see you.”
As I got closer I could see that her eyes were moist and reddened. I knew the look; she’d been crying.
“Hello,” she said quietly, pushing herself upright. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“You’re not disturbing me. Not at all. You met Gretchen?” I asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Cabot said with a nod and half smile.
“Absolutely,” Gretchen responded. Turning to Mrs. Cabot, she asked, “Would you reconsider about coffee?”
“No, thank you, though.”
“Are you sure?” I asked Mrs. Cabot.
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
“What can I do for you?”
She cleared her throat. “I was hoping… do you have a few minutes to talk?”
“Sure.” Her look of relief piqued my curiosity.
As I was about to invite her to sit down again, her eyes flitted toward Gretchen, and I read the unspoken request. “Come up to my office. We’ll be more comfortable up there. It’s private.”
“Thank you.”
I gestured that Mrs. Cabot should walk ahead. “Gretchen,” I said, “will you go find Eric at the tag sale and make certain he’s okay?”
“You bet,” she answered.
My priorities had shifted in an instant. At that moment, nothing was more important to me than talking to Mrs. Cabot.
Mrs. Cabot, wearing a royal blue suit, sat on a bright yellow love seat. I took a chair across from her and waited for her to speak.
“It’s hard for me to be here,” she said softly.
“I can see that you’re upset,” I said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea? Or some water? Something?”
She shook her head and cleared her throat. “I’m here to ask you to help me. I have no reason to think you will, and I’ll certainly understand if you say no. But I thought… it occurred to me…” She glanced down and twirled her gold wedding band. A widow who still wore her wedding ring. A sign, I assumed, of a happy marriage.
“Please…” she continued, “I hope that you… I mean I am asking that you… I’m here because I don’t know whom else to ask.” She finished in a rush, as if she wanted to get the words out before she changed her mind.
“Help you do what?” I asked, wary.
“First, I must tell you that I’m not going to offer you the sale of my father’s estate. I’ve decided to bring in a New York firm, Dobson’s.”
I felt a stab of such great disappointment that I had to look away. I took a deep breath, my father’s warning against letting people see my emotional reactions to business frustrations resonating in my mind, stiffening my spine, and enabling me, after a moment, to look back and smile.
“I understand. There’s a lot of research to be done. Dobson’s is top drawer.”
She nodded. “Your role will be key. And your fee will be more than fair.”
I stared at her for a moment. “My fee for what?”
“For helping me.”
“Helping you do what?” I repeated, uncertain of my ground. On the face of it, it sounded as if Mrs. Cabot was trying to bribe me. And I figured that the longer she took to get to the point, the more troubling her proposal would be.
“It’s important that you understand why I chose you. I understand you moved from New York not long ago. I checked you out. You have an excellent reputation.”
“Thank you,” I said. Definitely a bribe, I thought. I couldn’t imagine what she wanted me to do, nor could I think of anything I possessed that she might want to buy.
“I’m paying not just for your knowledge but for your integrity. What you did to help the police during that price-fixing trial, you know, coming forward and testifying, well, I was impressed.”
Maybe what she said was true, and she wasn’t offering a bribe after all. If she was speaking the truth, and not setting me up somehow, it would be a huge relief. I found myself wanting to believe her and to smile. I was surprised at how pleased I felt that she knew about my past. It occurred to me that perhaps I’d discovered a reasonable litmus test of trust-be aware of my involvernent in the Frisco price-fixing scandal and think well of me because of it. Still, I didn’t know how to respond, so I stayed quiet.
After a long pause, she continued, “Chief Alverez has told me that he expects the technicians to be done by tomorrow.”
“Which technicians?”
“The ones investigating my father’s cause of death. And the scientists who’ve been working at the crime scene.”
“So they can release the body?”
“Yes.”
“And you can hold the funeral.”
“That’s right. It will be on Monday.”
I shook my head a little, the way people do to show empathy.
“Chief Alverez said the scientists have finished investigating the murder scene.”
“So that you can enter the house?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Everyone is very impatient.”
I paused for a moment, thinking what to say. “Are you referring to your daughter?”
She nodded, a small movement, then half smiled. “I hate being hurried. Sometimes my daughter thinks I’m indecisive, but it’s not that.”
I nodded, understanding, I thought, what she was trying to express. “You just like to think things through before you act.”
“How nice of you to put it that way,” she said with more of a smile. “It’s true, though. I’m methodical, not impulsive. I never have been.”
I wondered about her sudden departure forty years ago. Wasn’t that an impulsive act? Maybe not. Maybe she’d planned to leave all along, and the shattering scene Wes had described was coincidental. I wanted to ask her about it, but the timing was wrong.
“Well, no matter,” she said, refocusing her attention. “I need to tell you about my mother’s lists.”
I waited for her to continue.
“I don’t know if my father showed you her ledgers? The inventories?”
“No, he didn’t.”
She nodded. “He showed them to Mr. Troudeaux.”
I shrugged.
“That isn’t a compliment to him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, how could you.” She sighed and shifted her position slightly. “I knew the ledgers existed. All my life, I knew. I’d see my mother update them every evening.” She shook her head. “She tracked everything. It was a kind of obsession with her.” She opened her purse and extracted a sheaf of papers, stapled and folded in thirds. “These pages were copied from the ledger that detailed household goods. As you’ll see, most of what’s listed are antiques.”
She handed the document to me. I reached across and accepted the pages. Flipping through, I saw a list of furniture, artwork, and decorative items detailed in a fine up-and-down hand. The first entry was dated April 3, 1943; the last on the 15th of March, a year ago.
I looked up. “What do you want me to do?” I asked quietly.
“Confirm that everything is there, and as described.”
“In other words, you want a detailed appraisal?”
“Yes. What I want you to do is make certain that everything my mother listed is there, intact, and genuine-that her list was accurate and is complete. And I want to know how much you think I can expect to receive when the items are sold.”
“I can provide you with a range of values.”
“That will be fine,” she said.
“What will you do with the information?” I asked.
“Ensure that Dobson’s does a proper job.”
I considered whether she was telling me the truth. This approach, sending the auction house an independently authenticated listing, was smart. It helped keep everyone honest. But given the situation, I couldn’t help wondering if that was her only motivation. “Why did you say that your father showing the list to Mr. Troudeaux isn’t a compliment to him?”
She paused and looked away. “I can’t be certain, but I’m concerned that my father was… perhaps he thought he could…” She seemed to shake off her uncertainty. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Perhaps he was talking to Mr. Troudeaux about a private sale so he could avoid paying taxes. I’m not sure, of course, but knowing my father, it’s certainly possible. I don’t know Mr. Troudeaux, so I hesitate to imply that he might be involved with something unethical. But I did know my father, and I must confess that he had been known to skirt rules more than once or twice.”
“Oh, my.”
She nodded. “Yes. A bit dispiriting.”
She’d referred to Andi, her daughter, as impatient, when she was, in fact, a termagant. Now she was describing her father’s dishonesty as “dispiriting.” Another masterful example of understatement. I glanced at the papers wondering what to do about the missing Cezanne and Matisse. I knew the paintings hadn’t yet been found, but I didn’t know whether she was aware of it or not. Surely, I thought, the police had told her. Taking a deep breath for courage, I asked the question that was foremost in my mind. “What if something’s missing?”
Looking at me dead-on, her eyes clear and her focus intense, she answered, “I trust that you’ll find it.”
I wondered what she thought I could do that the police hadn’t done. I tilted my head, watching her watch me think it through. I had a startling thought. I wondered if she thought the paintings were hidden somewhere in the house, somewhere an antique dealer would know about, but that the police might not discover.
“Did the police tell you that I helped them look for the Renoir?”
“No. What did you do?”
“I remembered having seen a partners desk. And I knew that it was pretty common for the old English partners desks to have hidden cabinets.” I shrugged. “I found the secret cabinet, but not the painting.”
Speaking slowly, as if she were carefully choosing her words, she said, “There may well be other places you will discover.”
I nodded. We continued to look at each other, and I was struck by her composure. I stood up and stretched, then walked to my desk for a bottle of water. I looked out of the window. A big old maple sat right outside, and it looked fine. Last summer, a huge branch fell in a thunderstorm, and I had worried that the tree would die.
“Does Andi know that you’re hiring me? And Dobson’s?” I asked, my back to her.
“No. I thought it best… that is… I’ll explain after… no.”
I didn’t know what to say. I would have bet big money that even if she knew where the paintings were hidden, she didn’t want to tell me. If she found the missing paintings on her own, Andi would try to bulldoze her into selling them privately. If she helped me find them, Andi would go ballistic. But if I located them, no matter how many fits Andi threw, there’d be no choice but to return them to their rightful owners. My best guess was that Mrs. Cabot wanted to bring me in to help her do the right thing in the face of nearly overwhelming familial pressure.
“Thank you for explaining the situation,” I said, turning to her.
I could see the relief on her face. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I’ll give your name to Dobson’s. And no matter what,” she said, clearing her throat and looking down, “I won’t let Andi disturb you.”
I nodded, wondering how she could stop Andi from disturbing me. Probably, I thought, Mrs. Cabot held the purse strings, and used the threat of withholding money to keep Andi under control. I bet she hated her role as enforcer. And heaven only knew what havoc Andi would wreak once she got her hands on her share of her grandfather’s fortune. Poor Mrs. Cabot. I shook my head, feeling sad for her and powerless.
For some reason I thought of Eric, maybe because he needed money, too. I recalled the day that I’d driven by his house en route to a buy. His mother was sweeping the walkway and I’d waved as I went past. She’d glared at me, perhaps not recognizing me, but still, her glower was uncalled for and odd. When I got back to the warehouse, I mentioned that I’d driven by and had seen his mom outside. I was immediately sorry that I’d spoken.
He was embarrassed, explaining inarticulately, “Mom works so hard taking care of the place. I plan to fix it up, but, you know, everything costs so much.”
“I hadn’t noticed that anything needed fixing,” I said politely. “All I noticed was how big and beautiful the house is. And those apple trees! I can taste the pie now!”
“Yeah,” he responded. “My mom makes a great apple pie, that’s for sure.”
I got the sense at the time that he was grateful that I ignored his dilapidated house and crabby mother. But now it made me wonder what he would do if he inherited a fortune. Would he fix up the house and buy mom luxuries? Or, like many nineteen-year-olds, would he flee, deserting both the run-down structure and the fractious woman who held him close?
My father once told me that money didn’t buy happiness, it bought freedom. The trick is to decide what sets you free. I didn’t know with Eric. I sometimes thought that there was a lot I didn’t know about him, hidden layers of his personality. Mostly though, I thought he was just what he appeared to be-a devoted son, a nice guy who was good with his hands and loved his dogs, an able worker who lacked ambition.
I realized that Mrs. Cabot was waiting for me to comment. “I’ll plan on getting started on Monday,” I said.
“About your fee… what would be reasonable, do you think?”
“The identification of items is easy. The verification is tough. Assessing value is time-consuming and detail oriented, and requires a lot of judgment. Finding missing items, if there are any, might be impossible.”
She nodded, and paused. “How’s twenty-five thousand dollars as a retainer?”
I swallowed. That was more than my company grossed in a month during most of the year. “That will get us started,” I said. “And the final fee? How should we set it?”
“You’ll know how hard you worked, and what was involved. At the end, you’ll bill me, and I’ll pay it.”
“I’ll be fair,” I assured her.
“I know you will. Remember,” she said, smiling again, “I checked you out.”
While she wrote a check, I printed out my standard letter of agreement. She read it carefully and signed it without comment. She also gave me a key to the Grant house and a note authorizing me and my staff to enter at will.
We stood just outside the front door in the parking lot. The sun was steady now, and bright. I noticed two dozen or so cars, a good omen since it was barely ten and both the preview and the tag sale had just opened.
“I’ll call you Monday evening. Is that all right?” I asked.
“Yes, thank you. I won’t be leaving until Tuesday.”
“And then you’ll be back in Boston?”
“Chestnut Hill, yes,” she answered, naming an affluent suburb just west of the city.
A black Lincoln pulled up, and a small Asian man got out, leaving the engine running. He nodded at me and opened the back door for her.
“Does your daughter live in Boston, too?”
“No,” she said. “New York. Why?”
“Just curious. One more thing,” I said, changing the subject. “I was just thinking that I might stop by the house tomorrow, if it’s all right.”
“I don’t know. You’ll need to check with the police.”
“May I call them directly?”
“Yes, certainly. In this endeavor, you’re my representative.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. Cabot. I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t.”
“What’s your room number at the Sheraton?”
“Room three-nineteen.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
She turned to step into the car, then paused. As she swung her feet inside, I noticed that they were average sized, and at a guess, her shoes were about a seven.
“How long do you think it will take you?” she asked.
I wondered which task she was referring to-generating an independent inventory, verifying authenticity, assessing value, or finding the missing paintings.
“If I can find everything, and if it’s all as described, no more than a couple of days for the inventory itself. For the verification, a week to ten days. For the appraisal, another two to three weeks.” I shrugged and made a Murphy’s Law joking grimace. “If this, if that. If it rained in the Sahara, it wouldn’t be a desert. You know how that goes.”
“Of course. I understand. Obviously time is of the essence. I know you’ll work as quickly as you can.”
I nodded. “Realistically, I expect it will take a month to six weeks, soup to nuts. I’ll do my best to speed the process along.” Wes had told me that the police had made an inventory. I wondered if she was aware of it. “One thing that might save time,” I added, pleased at my boldness, “is if we can work off an existing list. For instance, do you know if the police made an inventory?”
“Ask Chief Alverez. As I said, in this matter, you’re my representative.”
She reached out her hand and we shook. Her entire attitude conveyed something more than the confirmation of a business deal with a new partner. There was that, but there was also a melancholy resignation, as if she was proceeding along the best path she’d found, but that while it might be the best, it was none too good. I had the sudden realization that, to her, anything I discovered was likely to be bad news. If I found the paintings, Andi would be furious. If I didn’t, Andi would go crazy, perhaps accusing me or others of stealing them. An ugly scene was almost guaranteed, regardless of the outcome.
I stood for a moment and watched as the car drove away. Walking inside, I wondered if Mrs. Cabot had already planned how she’d handle Andi’s explosion when it came.
“Good news?” Gretchen asked when I stepped inside.
I grinned. “Well, we didn’t get the estate sale, but we get to appraise everything.”
“Yowzi! That’s great!”
“And it’s interesting work, too. Sasha’s going to love it.”
“Congratulations.”
“It’s a tribute to us all.” I waved it away. “Tell me both the preview and tag sale are open.”
“Yup. On time, and looking good.”
“Great. I’m going to the tag sale. Would you go ask Tom if he’d like a cup of coffee?”
“Okay,” she said, whining, stretching out the last syllable for effect. “Only for you.”
“He’s not that bad,” I argued.
“Yes, he is,” she responded, laughing. “He’s a jerk! But he’s our jerk, right?”
“He’s talented,” I said, wanting to quash her open expression of dislike and remind her of his value. I shrugged. “I don’t care about his personality. He does a great job for us.”
“I know, I know. I wouldn’t say anything to anyone else, even joking. For your ears only.”
Not for the first time, I was struck by her loyalty. “Okay, then,” I said with a smile, and added in a whisper, “Just between us, he’s a huge jerk.”
She laughed again, and I smiled back, grateful that her breezy, sunny spirit lightened my load.
I headed to the tag sale to make sure Eric was okay. He served as on-site manager, and that was a lot of responsibility for a relatively young man. I trusted him, but thought it made sense to keep in fairly constant touch.
My father always encouraged giving responsibility to young people. When I’d got the job at Frisco’s and expressed wonder that they’d entrust both valuable antiques and clients to me, an untested and unknown twenty-one-year-old, he’d remarked that we, as a nation, entrusted our security to eighteen-year-olds with guns, and that that strategy had worked out pretty well for us so far.
As I pushed open the door from the warehouse into the tag-sale section, the first thing I saw and heard was Martha Troudeaux making herself obnoxious.
“But it’s mislabeled,” she said, her voice shrill.
“Hi Martha,” I said calmly, approaching with a smile.
“Ah, Josie. I’m glad you’re here. There’s a major problem with your pricing.”
“Really? I’m surprised. We try so hard to get it right. What’s the problem?”
“This stool. It’s not from the Empire! Why is it priced as if it were?” She sneered, her self-righteous tone of outrage making me long to slap her face.
I looked at the small bamboo stool. The tag, tied onto a leg, stated that it was a reproduction. The price was twelve dollars. If it were genuine, dating from around 1890, a stool of this size and quality would fetch more than ten times twelve dollars. Rude and ignorant. What Barney saw in her mystified me. It occurred to me that maybe she was neither rude nor ignorant; maybe she was trying to create a scene, to make me look bad.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Barney stood not far away, his back to us, near the boxes of art prints. He seemed absorbed in a conversation with Paula, the blond part-timer who preferred T-shirts with messages to the Prescott one, but wore it as instructed. Barney was probably trying to weasel the name of my art source out of her, but she couldn’t tell what she didn’t know, so that was no worry.
Turning back to Martha, I spotted Alverez half-hidden by a post near the mechanical toys section. I bristled. Alverez’s presence was more troubling than Barney’s. I glanced around, considering whether customers knew who he was and thought less of me because of his presence. I also wondered whether I should call Max and report his unexpected arrival.
Focusing instead on Martha’s nasty aspersions, I forced myself to smile. “Perhaps you didn’t see the word reproduction,’ ” I said politely.
“The price is too high!” she complained.
I tilted my head to really look at her. She was a pretty woman, tall and thin. Her very short, almost black hair was layered and suited her. It was unfortunate that her eyes were calculating, with no hint of warmth, and that her tone was always strident, never pleasant. She was eminently unlikable.
“Then don’t buy it,” I said, smiling a little, trying to convert her attack into a semipleasant interaction.
She was having none of it. “It’s not worth more than five dollars, and I wouldn’t buy it even at that price because it’s in terrible condition. And one more thing…”
I listened to her for a moment longer, my attention drifting to Alverez who seemed to be watching me while pretending not to, and to Barney, still talking with Paula. I scanned the venue. There were about fifty customers, par for a nonholiday weekend at this time of day. I noted that Alverez had moved on to housewares and appeared to be interested in a stainless-steel bar set from the ’50s.
“Excuse me, Martha. Someone’s calling me,” I fibbed. I headed straight to Alverez.
“Hey,” I said, approaching him.
“Josie,” he answered. “Things look great.”
I felt the familiar tug of connection, the inexplicable chemistry we shared, but ignored it. “Interested in barware?”
“Not really,” he answered, grinning.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, not smiling.
“Isn’t this open to the public?” he asked, gesturing broadly.
“Yes, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
He paused. “That’s the only answer I have to give you right now.”
“Should I call Max?” I asked.
“Why? Because I came to a tag sale?”
“Don’t play with me. I’m upset.”
“I can tell you are, but I’m not sure why.”
“Oh, never mind. I have work to do.”
I glanced back over my shoulder as I walked away. He stood watching me.
“Hey, Eric,” I said, joining him at the cash register. Only Eric and Gretchen were authorized to haggle or accept money. And me, of course. Our standing policy was that dealers who were known to us or who had proper bonafides got a 10 percent professional courtesy discount, but that we didn’t offer discounts to consumers. As closing time approached, however, we’d been known to bend that rule, especially if we had the opportunity to move hard-to-sell inventory, like mismatched china or undistinguished volumes of old books.
A part-timer was wrapping each piece of a six-part set of Sandwich glass in old newspaper and I noted with mingled pleasure and pride that there was a line waiting to pay.
“I can help you here,” I called to the next person in line. As I wrote up the sale and scanned the bar code on the 1970s silver-plated tray, a real bargain at four dollars, I looked back toward the furnishings area, and was pleased to see that Martha was gone. Paula was helping a customer, so I guessed that Barney had left with Martha. I noted that Alverez was nowhere to be seen either. Confirming that all three were gone made me feel good, empowered somehow, as if I’d succeeded in chasing them away.
With both the tag sale and auction preview under control, I went back to the office to talk to Gretchen. She was on the phone when I arrived, and eavesdropping, I was pleased to hear her tell Roy, one of our best pickers, that he should come on by now.
“Roy?” I asked, when she was off the phone.
“Yeah. He says he has some interesting books.”
“Good,” I said. “Have you made a copy of the Grant tape yet?” I asked. As policy, all tapes are to be copied immediately-just in case.
“Yeah. All done.”
“Make a copy for Sasha, okay?”
“You got it.”
“And these,” I said, pointing to the ledger-page copies that Mrs. Cabot had left with me. “Make a copy for each of us, and keep this with the file.”
“Okay.”
“Also, keep an eye on Eric,” I said. “He had a little queue a minute ago at the checkout line. If it gets busy, you may need to help him.”
“Sure thing.”
“I’m going up to my office,” I told her. “Buzz me at one if I’m not down by then, okay?”
“Should I bring you a sandwich?”
Since we provided food for the staff during public events, and Gretchen would be coordinating distribution, bringing me a sandwich would serve two purposes-her delivery would alert me to the time, and I’d be certain to get something to eat. Gretchen, my caretaker, at work.
“Good idea,” I said.
As soon as I got upstairs I called Max and got him on his cell phone. I could hear street noises in the background, a horn blaring, and, in the distance, a siren. I wondered if he was out and about running errands with his children.
“Max,” I said, “a couple of things.”
“Okay. I’m ready.”
“Mrs. Cabot has hired me to appraise Mr. Grant’s estate before sending the goods to auction in New York.”
“What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s a great opportunity.”
“Good, then.”
“She thinks I can get into the house tomorrow. Can you check for me? Or should I call?”
After a pause, Max said. “I’ll do it. I’ll call Alverez.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. What else?”
“Could you ask him if they inventoried Mr. Grant’s possessions, and if so, how it compared to Mrs. Grant’s ledger? In other words, is anything missing?”
“I’m making a note. Okay. Anything else?”
“Well, it was kind of funny, but… Chief Alverez was here just now.”
“Where?”
“Here. At the tag sale. Looking at stuff.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He acted like he just was at the tag sale for the tag sale. But I didn’t believe him.”
“I’ll ask him about it when I call him.”
“Thank you, Max. One more thing. Did you ever ask Epps about who inherited from Mr. Grant?”
“Yes, the daughter and granddaughter-a fifty-fifty split. Didn’t I tell you?”
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter. I was just curious.”
“Well, anyway. Yes, I asked him, and yes, they split it all.” Confirmation. I allowed myself to relax a notch, relieved to learn that Wes had told me the truth. And it occurred to me that maybe, if one thing he reported was true, so too was everything else.
I turned on my computer, and when it had booted up, I went directly to the Web site where I’d learned that Mr. Grant’s Renoir was stolen. My heart pounding with anticipation, I entered “Apples in a Blue Bowl with Grapes” and “Cezanne” in the Web site’s search engine, and felt no surprise when, within seconds, the listing appeared.
I leaned back in the chair and read the brief description. According to the site, the painting had been the property of the Viennese collector and businessman Klaus Weiner and his wife, Eva, who were forced to sell it in 1939 to pay the “Jew tax” imposed by the Nazis after the Anschluss of 1938. The site asked that anyone with knowledge contact a man named Jonathan Matthews, a trust officer with the Imperial Bankers Trust, a private bank in Dallas, and promised a no-questions-asked $1 million reward for the painting’s safe return.
I opened a bottle of water, thinking about the ethics of offering a reward for the return of stolen goods. Wouldn’t that simply encourage more theft? I shrugged and dismissed the thought as irrelevant. Rewards had been offered and accepted for the return of lost or missing items forever. “I’ll cross that bridge if and when,” I said aloud, then added, “Not my issue. At least, not right now.”
I turned back to the computer and typed in “Matisse” and “Notre-Dazzze in the Morning.” Another hit. According to the site, it had been owned by the Rosen family, who had lent it to a small museum in Collioure, a French village on the Mediterranean, in 1937. In February of 1941, the curator reported it stolen along with seventeen other works. No explanation of the museum theft was given. The contact was listed as Michelle Rosen. The address was in the sixth arrondissement in Paris.
Three paintings, three stories of loss. And starting tomorrow, I’d have free rein to search for the two that were still missing. I couldn’t wait. I felt an exhilarating excitement and wished I could head over to the Grant place now. But I couldn’t. I took a deep breath and forced myself to think instead of act.
One decision I had to make was what to tell Sasha-and when. Another decision was to create a protocol for our work. Just as cleaning a house required an answer to the question When is it clean enough? so too did research demand an answer to the question When do you know enozcgh? Sometimes I consulted a specific number of sources. Sometimes I aimed to achieve a certain depth of information. Other times I insisted on answering particular questions. No one approach was best for all circumstances. I needed to determine what was best in this situation. And I needed to figure it out before we began or we’d waste time and energy.
I was eager to get under way, yet I felt anxious, too, fearful of what I might learn as I examined the Grant antiques for clues about the missing paintings, convinced that if I found the art, I might also discover a secret that had led to Mr. Grant’s murder.