Consigned to Death

by Jane K. Cleland

  “Why?”

  “The flu.”

  “Oh, boy. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

  “I’ve already called Peter at Temp Pros.”

  “Thanks, Gretchen. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  She looked embarrassed. “It’s nothing,” she said. “So. What’s the latest news?”

  “Well,” I said, trying for light and frothy, “let me put it this way… it’s pretty clear that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  She nodded with a sympathetic grimace, but before she could comment, the phone rang.

  “Where are Eric and Sasha now?” I asked as she reached for the unit.

  “Helping with the auction setup. Along with the temp guys. They’ve been at it since about noon.”

  “Good. I’ll go there now. Anything else I should know?”

  She shook her head as she picked up the phone and answered with her usual upbeat “Prescott’s. May I help you?”

  It was another inquiry about attending the auction. Under normal circumstances, I’d be thrilled at such a stellar response. But the circumstances were anything but normal. Instead of pride and pleasure, I felt edgy discomfort. Some of the people coming to the auction preview tomorrow would be there not to buy but to judge me, and maybe even to intrude. I could picture ambitious young television reporters, with their earnest crews wielding spotlights, pushing microphones in my face. It made me feel anxious, vulnerable, and cranky.

  I walked across my warehouse to an area on the left, passing the sliding dividers that, with a push of a button, would segregate the far corner from the rest of the space. When the partitions were in place, it became an elegant, spacious room, not a concrete cavern. The design and layout were my own, and I thought it was a clever way to transform an oversized industrial space into an attractive and utilitarian venue on an as-needed basis. Clever, but expensive.

  I stepped onto the maroon industrial carpeting that covered the concrete floor and served to subdue the sounds that echoed through the rest of the warehouse. I made my way to the low platform at the front, skirted in black polyester. A podium faced the seating area. The outside concrete walls, to my right and ahead of me, were whitewashed. Acres of burgundy brocade hung from big black wrought-iron rings dangling from two-inch pipes I’d had painted black and that stretched from the stage to the far back wall and along the back wall from the far corner to the divider. Tomorrow, we’d slide the dividing walls into place, converting this section of the warehouse into an antique haven, suitably decorated and appropriately quiet. Everything looked fine, except that we’d need to add more seats.

  I spotted Sasha directing Eric and three temporary helpers as they positioned the Wilson goods into numbered, roped-off areas against what would be, once the dividers were in place tomorrow, the inside wall of the room. Looking at it now, the placement seemed arbitrary, a fifteen-foot-deep channel filled with antiques, positioned some fifty feet in from the outside wall.

  “Over here.” Sasha directed two of the men, pointing to a space labeled 12. They carried a heavy, Russian-made, nineteenth-century cedar hope chest fitted with brass hardware into the area. Sasha consulted a three-ring binder containing, I knew, a copy of the Wilson listing, confirming that the hope chest’s placement in area 12 matched its catalogue entry as lot 12.

  Waving hello, she closed the binder and joined me in an empty aisle as Eric ensured that the chest was plumb to the line where the wall would be. “We’re making good progress,” she said.

  “I can see you are,” I said with a smile.

  Eric took a lighthouse quilt from the chest, a remarkable work dating from the eighteenth century, probably crafted by a local teenager, and draped it over a black metal free-standing rod. Sasha went over and smoothed it out so the bits and pieces of cotton resolved themselves into a landscape of accurate perspective and awe-inspiring detail. Tiny seagulls, created from peanut-sized white and gray scraps of cloth and sewn with nearly invisible stitches, seemed to flutter across the pale blue sky. It made a dramatic backdrop for the hope chest.

  My mother would have loved it. She admired excellence in craftsmanship in all things. I learned business from my father, but I gauged quality with my mother’s eyes. Well could I remember the hours we spent at museums.

  I could picture us as we stood together in the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, gazing, speechless, at the glass flower collection. At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, we whispered about the odd, eclectic mixture of treasures on display. And when I was eleven, we traveled to New York to visit museums. We spent the first two days at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I stared, awed and thrilled, at one after another masterpiece.

  I recall pointing, excited, to the cat in George Caleb Bingham’s 1845 painting Fur Traders Descending the Missouri; remarking on the vivid yellows and reds on the earliest-known Nepalese painting on cloth, dating from around 1100; and wondering how a statue created almost five thousand years ago could still exist. Every moment was filled with wonder, but it was on the third day that my life was changed forever.

  With a wintry wind blowing from the east, we kept our heads down and hurried along the Midtown streets until we reached the Museum of Modern Art.

  “Oh, Josie,” my mother had said, staring through moist eyes at Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, “wouldn’t it be wonderful to spend your life surrounded by such magnificence?”

  “Yes,” I answered, and then and there, I silently vowed that I would find a way to work with items of great beauty.

  Looking again at the quilt, I felt a spurt of pride. If only my mother could see me now, I thought, and smiled.

  “Hey, Josie,” Eric called, and walked toward me. “Doesn’t it look great?”

  “More than great,” I said. “You guys are incredible! How much more do you have to do?”

  “Four more lots,” Eric said, dragging his arm along his forehead, catching dripping sweat. “Not bad.”

  “Not bad at all. Good job, guys.” I added the instruction about the chairs, gave Eric a thumbs-up, promised Sasha I’d sign off on the catalogue ASAP, and left.

  As I approached the spiral staircase that led to my private office, an area once used to monitor manufacturing processes, Gretchen paged me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I walked into her office.

  “Max Bixby wants you on line two,” she said.

  I picked up the phone, and said, “This is Josie.”

  “What’s your fax number?” Max asked without even saying hello.

  I told him, adding, “What’s the big deal? Gretchen could have told you the number.”

  “Epps faxed something over to me and I want you to see it right away. For your eyes only.”

  “Okay,” I responded, attentive and worried. I heard the fax machine kick on. “Do you want me to call you back after I’ve looked at it?” I asked.

  “No,” Max said. “I’ll hold.”

  The phone rang in back of me and Gretchen answered it as usual. It was another inquiry, but I barely registered the interchange. I stood silent and intent, watching the fax machine drop a one-page document into the receiving tray.

  I was holding a copy of a letter, dated Friday of last week, the day after I’d shared Bundt cake with Mr. Grant. It was signed by Britt Epps, written on his law firm’s letterhead, and my heart skipped more than a beat as I read the text introducing Barney Troudeaux to Nathaniel Grant.

  “I’ve read it,” I said.

  “Do you know Barney Troudeaux?” Max asked.

  “Yes,” I answered. “Of course.”

  “He’s an antique dealer based in Exeter, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  I forced myself to ignore my personal feelings about good ol’ Barney and his bitch-queen wife. Instead I reported the truth as perceived by the vast majority in the industry. “Barney is very well respected. I mean, he’s the head of the N
HAAS.”

  “That’s that industry association you mentioned?” Max asked.

  “Right,” I said, and shrugged. “It’s pretty prestigious.”

  “So Epps recommending him wouldn’t be out of line?”

  “Hell, no. It would be an obvious choice. Not a good one, necessarily, but certainly it would be low risk.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, between you, me, and the gate post, Barney is lazy. His research is cursory, so he misses a lot of opportunities to maximize his clients’ profits.”

  “So he’s reputable but incompetent?” Max asked.

  “I wouldn’t say he’s incompetent. He’s knowledgeable and a terrific negotiator. The problem is he’s lazy. He delegates research to other people, usually his wife, who knows nothing but acts as if she knows everything, and he never checks or corrects her work.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because on two separate occasions I’ve bought items he’s sold, not because they were sort of a bargain and I knew I could mark them up and make a decent profit but because they were inaccurately described in his catalogues, and I got killer deals. I sure wouldn’t want to be a client of his, but I doubt you’d find a client who’d say so, or even one who discovered the truth. He’s great with people. His clients love him. But from where I sit, it’s as if he doesn’t care as much about the value of the items he’s entrusted with as he does about getting the deal.”

  “Why would Epps recommend him?”

  I made a noise involuntarily, a small snort of contempt. “Because he’s low risk. Don’t you see? He’s the prez of a major industry association. He’s personable. Forgive my cynicism, but from a lawyer like Epps’s point of view, it doesn’t matter how good a job an appraiser does. All that matters is that his client never comes back with a complaint. But I got to ask you, Max, what does all of this have to do with the price of eggs in China?”

  “Well,” he said after a pause, “here’s the thing, Josie. Epps told me that Grant asked him to recommend a reliable dealer. This letter shows that Troudeaux’s the dealer he selected. It might imply that, in fact, you’d lost the deal-or that you were about to.”

  “In other words, you’re saying that, on paper at least, Alverez might think I had a motive for killing Mr. Grant.”

  “Yeah, but actually, I think it may be even worse than that. Epps told me that the letter was just a matter of form, that he’d given Mr. Grant Troudeaux’s name on the phone when he first called and asked.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, shocked.

  “He said Mr. Grant was very appreciative for the referral.”

  “When was this?”

  “According to Epps, it was two weeks ago.”

  I did a quick mental calculation. That was just about when Mr. Grant and I began to talk. I felt sick. I closed my eyes and leaned against the desk.

  “I can’t believe it,” I murmured. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t it be good business for Mr. Grant to have consulted more than one appraiser?”

  “You’re right, of course,” I answered. “I just had no idea, and from the way he acted, it seems so unlikely.” I sat up and opened my eyes, startled by a thought. “Wait!” I said. “That means I’m not the only suspect.”

  “Except that you were at Grant’s the morning he was killed. And Epps said that he was certain that Barney had pretty much locked in the deal.”

  “How can he be so sure?” I asked, sounding calmer than I felt.

  “Well,” Max said, and hesitated for a moment. “Troudeaux told Epps how excited he was about the Renoir, and said that Mr. Grant had agreed to sell it to him privately.”

  “The Renoir?”

  “I have the title here somewhere…” I heard the rustle of papers being shifted. “Here it is. It’s called Three Girls and a Cat. Epps explained that Troudeaux wanted to buy it for his wife for her birthday.”

  The world seemed to reel, and I held on to the desk. Gretchen finished her call, and I heard her get up and open a file drawer. I forced myself to ignore her presence and focus instead on Max.

  “Max,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Mr. Grant didn’t have a Renoir.”

  After a long pause, Max said, “Maybe he’d already sold it to Troudeaux.”

  “Or maybe Barney’s lying.”

  “Maybe,” Max acknowledged.

  “Oh, jeez,” I said, startled by a new thought. “I think I might have the answer.”

  “What?”

  “If there was a Renoir it had to have been hidden somewhere because I never saw it.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.”

  “So, what we need to do is find the hiding place.”

  “Maybe he had a safe,” Max suggested.

  “Not a conventional one. I would have spotted it.”

  “We could explain our thinking to Alverez and ask him to search the house.”

  “We don’t need to,” I said confidently. “I know how to find out.”

  “How?”

  “The video. Don’t you remember, Max? I videotaped every inch of that place!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As I hung up the phone, Eric came into the office, grime streaked on his face and T-shirt, looking tired clear through.

  Forcing a smile, I said in as light a tone as I could muster, “Man, if I didn’t know better, I’d guess you’ve been working.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, grinning, “just a little. Anything else right now?”

  “Are all of the lots in place and approved by Sasha?”

  “Yup. I let the temp guys go.”

  I nodded. “Good job.” Turning to my assistant, I asked, “Gretchen? Anything for Eric?”

  She shook her head. “No. We’re set, I think.”

  “You heard the woman. You’re free to go.”

  Eric left with a wave, saying he’d be in by eight the next morning. I watched from the window as he made his way across the parking lot to his old truck and signaled his turn from the lot even though there was no one behind him or on the road in either direction. I smiled. A man who follows rules, even in private. I bet he was heading home to Dover, a small town about twelve miles northwest of the warehouse. I’d driven past his house once, an old Victorian in depressing disrepair. He lived there with his widowed mother and two much-loved dogs, a black Lab named Jet and a German shorthaired pointer named Ruby. I spoke to his mom once when she’d called to remind him to pick up some potatoes on his way home. She’d sounded uninterested in speaking to her son’s boss, irritable, and tired.

  I picked up the catalogue pages Gretchen had set aside for me. “You should leave soon, too,” I told her. “Tomorrow’s going to be a killer day.”

  “In a little while,” she said. “I want to finish updating the roster for the Wilson preview and I have some calls to return about tag-sale stuff.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in my office,” I said, and left her transferring names from her handwritten notes onto a spreadsheet.

  Before going to my office, I crossed the span to the auction-site corner, shivering a bit as I made my way across the cold concrete floor. It was always dim inside the huge space, even with fluorescent overhead lighting, and somehow the darkness made it seem colder than it really was. Eerie shadows shifted as I walked. I was glad to reach the smaller, more homey-looking zone, and I flipped the light switches illuminating hanging chandeliers and wall sconces. Between the soft, incandescent lighting and the thick burgundy carpet, the smaller space was a world apart from the warehouse proper, more welcoming than utilitarian. Plus, it felt warmer.

  I walked the aisles looking carefully at each roped area. The lot numbers were in place. All items were positioned well, dust free, and labeled with small typed cards. Scanning the center area, I noted that Eric had added rows of chairs and lined them up properly. A sign reading Prescott’s hung from the podium. Skirted registration tables stood near the side door through which the register
ed bidders would pass tomorrow. I felt pride and accomplishment as I stood alone near the stage. We were ready. I turned off the lights as I left and headed for the spiral stairs that led to my office.

  I had a television/VCR combo set up in a bamboo armoire in a corner, and looking at it made me want to skip proofing Sasha’s typed catalogue pages. I was eager to get to the Grant tape, but duty called. With a sigh, I forced myself to read carefully and stay alert for typos, inconsistent formatting, and information gaps.

  Just before six, as I finished proofing the catalogue, Sasha poked her head into my office, and said, “Gretchen asked me to tell you that she left for the day.”

  “Okay.”

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  I felt an unaccountable urge to confide in her. I had no one to talk to and it would be a relief to bounce ideas off someone. With my dad gone, and my friends in New York a world away, I felt alone. Since arriving in New Hampshire, I’d focused on building my business. Fleetingly, I wondered what it would be like to be married, to have an ally waiting at home, eager to share confidences.

  Sasha was brilliant, with the instincts of a collector. Confiding in her might be foolhardy, though. Without doubt, she was smart and educated, but she was also a scared mouse of a woman, eager for approval, yet continually braced for censure. Only when discussing art or related subjects was she confident and well-spoken. Otherwise, her anxiety was apparent in everything she did, from the way she twirled her limp brown shoulder-length hair to her inability to meet people’s eyes. I couldn’t risk trusting her. Challenged by a stronger being, she’d probably fold, trading my confidences for goodwill.

  Pushing aside my lonely need, I answered, “Thanks for asking. Everything’s fine.”

  Better to lie than reveal a vulnerability. I wondered what my father would think about that decision.

  She gestured toward the catalogue pages. “How does it look?” she asked.

  “It looks great,” I said.

  “Th-th-thanks,” she whispered, embarrassed. She blushed and looked down, her standard response to praise.