The Price of Inheritance

by Karin Tanabe

  Hook actually waited for people to drink, singing part of a drinking song that involved a pirate, a girl named Sue, and another girl named Sue, which sounded very perverted. Then he was off.

  “Who’s got five dollars for me?” He scanned the crowd and pointed his finger at a woman with short red curly hair and purple glasses sitting in the front row.

  “Crazy Annie! You’ve always got a fiver for me. How about it?”

  Crazy Annie? And he was telling her to bid? Insisting that she bid? I was obsessed with this place. There were plenty of Christie’s customers I would have loved to tell Olivier to call Crazy Annie.

  Crazy Annie started the bidding at five dollars.

  Middle Eastern art history was my weakest field, and there was nothing noticeably ornate about the bowl, but it was uncharacteristically attractive for a piece that didn’t have an original shape or any gilding so I bid on it, too. I wanted to let Crazy Annie off the hook and I was hoping the bowl might be a hidden five-figure gem like the wooden eagle. For a few bucks, it was worth a gamble.

  “New girl, give me more money,” said Hook, pointing at me. “You got twenty for me?”

  “Sure, why not,” I said raising my paddle.

  No one bid me up, and like that, I had my first purchase of the day. I finished the auction with ten Italian coins, the bowl from the Middle East, a Japanese stoneware drinking vessel, a stained-glass lamp, a Windsor chair, a colonial era American flag, and a vintage Dior evening gown. I was definitely going to have to ask William for more money.

  When I was walking down the bleachers to leave, Hook stopped me and commented on my purchases.

  “You’re buying all over the map. I like that. And you’ve been here two weeks in a row. I like that, too.”

  “Yes, I have,” I said, reaching my hand out to introduce myself. “I’m working for William Miller for a little while.”

  Hook scowled and then barked like a dog. He actually barked like he’d eaten a St. Bernard for lunch. “You’re working for that crook? Well then, I’m going to start demanding more money from you.”

  “He’s not a crook at all,” I said, a little peeved. No one was allowed to insult William except for me. And that was only when he bought things because he thought they would be lonely without a good home.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, lighten up,” said Hook. “How about a drink?”

  I declined his homemade chuck and he lowered his eyes until he was looking at me through his squinted eyelids.

  “Are you boring or something? What’s your story?”

  “Yes. I probably am boring. I’m not in the habit of drinking at auctions. Though I have been drinking a lot in the morning lately.”

  “Good! I knew it. You’re not boring. You’re very pretty. Pretty women are never boring. In my opinion anyway,” he said grinning. “You single?”

  “Um, no. I’m not. I’m dating a convicted felon. He also makes poison in his spare time.”

  “You are not. You’re a liar!” Hook brought his hands up like he was going to punch me in the face. He was terrifying.

  “Fine, I’m not,” I said, taking a step back. “I’m in a complicated relationship with my ex-boyfriend from St. George’s.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. You look like you spent a lot more time in prep school than prison.”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice in the prep school matter. The boyfriend, well, I’m pretty good at making bad choices.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Hook, raising his mason jar full of wine. “Please make many poor choices while you’re inside these walls.”

  “Maybe I’ll drink next time,” I offered. “If you can tell me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where did you get this?” I lifted the bowl I had just bought. It was very heavy for being only a foot across. “I’m pretty good at provenance, but I’m not knowledgeable when it comes to pottery, especially from the Middle East.”

  “Wonderful, I’ll try to sell you more things from that region since you refuse to drink the Merlot. I’ve got a perfume bottle from Yemen for next week. You gonna buy it?”

  “Do you really know if this stuff is from Yemen?” I asked.

  “Not really. A friend told me that. He’s from Yemen. I guess that might make him a little biased.”

  I refrained from telling him that he couldn’t legally call his backyard hooch Merlot. The French wouldn’t like it. And that he couldn’t make up provenances, even in an unsanctioned auction.

  “What was it you asked me? Where did I get that bowl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Some of my regulars won’t buy that stuff, you know. Middle Eastern art with that Arabic writing, bad connotations.”

  “That seems pretty ridiculous.”

  “Well, some of my customers are ridiculous. But they love to buy. I mean, this may be the smallest state but there’s plenty of cash here. Especially right where you’re from. Are you a billionaire?”

  “I work for William. You think I’m a billionaire?”

  “Nah, I don’t,” he said, eyeing me again. “You’re too serious. Billionaires are more laid-back. Know any billionaires?”

  “I know the Dalbys. They’re right up there.”

  “I know them, too. I’m in love with Jane Dalby.”

  “So is everyone. About that bowl?”

  “You know,” he said, pausing just to piss me off a little bit, “I can tell you, but if you don’t like the story, you’re not getting your money back. Agreed?”

  “Sure, agreed.”

  “Well, I’m a bit of a picker when it comes to the stuff I sell,” said Hook with pride. “I’m trying to get my own show. I have a real face for television.”

  I didn’t argue with him.

  “You were saying about the bowl?”

  “Oh right, that white and green bowl. Like I said, I’m a picker. And one place I always go is . . . well . . . you promise you’re not going to go screaming for your money back?”

  “Yes, I promise. And you promise you’re not going to lie to me?”

  “Why should I lie to you, girlie? I’ll tell you exactly where I bought that bowl. I bought it at a Goodwill.”

  “Did you really? You bought this from Goodwill?” I eyed the bowl again and turned it over in my hands to look for some sort of marker or stamp. The bottom was slightly ridged with some sort of pattern, but there was no other identifier.

  “Yeah, I did, for a dollar seventy-five. What did you just pay?”

  “Twenty.”

  “I guess it was a pretty good day for me, then.” He looked at me with a content smile. He definitely seemed like a man who loved the buying and selling of objects more than he actually liked the objects themselves. And if you liked your men sort of overbearing, hairy, and rude, then he did have a good face for TV.

  “Do you remember when the Salvador Dali etching was found at the Goodwill in Tacoma, Washington?” I asked.

  “I do,” he said grinning. “I might not look like it, but I read some of that art crap. When was that now, last year?”

  “No, it was two years ago. And it ended up selling for just shy of twelve thousand dollars. Is that what has you heading to Goodwill?”

  “Nah. I was doing that long before that dead Spaniard squirmed his way in there. Just, after the Dali was found, I started going a little more often. But there’s only one in Rhode Island. It’s in North Kingstown. If I’m on the road picking then I’ll stop by the Goodwills in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut, too. ’Cause for every five-figure painting found, there has to be one that was missed, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been inside a Goodwill. I hate to say it. It sounds pretty snobby, doesn’t it?”

  “Not really. Why would you go t
o Goodwill? You’re a Newport girl. You go to cocktail parties and debutante balls and cruise on yachts.”

  “Girls don’t really have debutante balls anymore. They’re a little sexist and archaic, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think nothing about nothing like that. Just don’t know what all you rich people do with your time if you’re not getting all dressed up for something or other.”

  “As I said, I’m not that rich.”

  “You look rich. That’s enough for me.”

  I tried not to sigh with frustration right in his face.

  “Well it’s probably time I go. To Goodwill.”

  “Fine then. Go. Like I said, North Kingstown. Just don’t go buying all the good stuff. I need to dupe women like you to make a living.”

  “Women like me?”

  “Yeah, the cute naïve ones. My favorite kind.”

  I very rarely bought something that I couldn’t pin down to a time period of a hundred years, especially if it wasn’t furniture, and with the bowl, I couldn’t peg it to a period of five hundred years. Still, it was only twenty dollars. It was in extremely good shape, which made me think it wasn’t very old, and it was made of ceramic, but looked inspired by Chinese porcelain. The first layer was glazed white and there were two tones of very detailed green vegetal motifs along with a calligraphic design in the center in the darker tone. The color alone made it really stand out among the Arabic pottery I had been in contact with but it was the detail of the patterns that made it so striking. There were no date markings or signatures and no expensive ornamentation, but it still felt like something. I needed to find someone who read Arabic, but my guess was that the writing inside was religious. Besides just being attracted to the look of it, I was at a loss. I was a little better with Asian ceramics, which is why I bought the Japanese stoneware bottle. I knew Christie’s in London had recently sold a similar one from the nineteenth century for eight hundred dollars. I had paid two hundred seventy-five. It had a band of phoenix in flight, which was what made me think of the Meiji era. Or at least I hoped. That was the thing with these backyard auctions: they were a guessing game.

  When I got back to William’s store I told him all about the drunks at the auction and how Hook had called him a crook and then barked like a dog.

  “He’s a little eccentric,” said William, looking at everything I bought and taking notes in his brown leather Moleskine notebook with his sterling silver pen.

  “And this,” he said, lifting the bowl. He turned it around in his palm and inspected the glaze.

  “Honestly, that one was a bit of a guess. I paid twenty bucks for it and then Hook admitted that he bought it at the Goodwill in North Kingstown for a dollar seventy-five so I felt a little duped. But I don’t know, I still think it’s very striking. Look at the detail. That vegetal pattern, I’ve never seen a motif that small and intricate on pottery from the Middle East. It’s very heavy, though, so probably not that old. I bet we can get a couple hundred for it, just because it’s pretty and in good condition.”

  “I think we can get more than that. This could be another wooden eagle. Maybe you can turn this into five figures with your Carolyn Everett magic. That design is too unique to just be something quickly fired in the neighborhood kiln in Kabul. It sure would help if we knew something about it, though,” he said turning it around in his hands. “A thousand maybe, without any provenance. This is not my forte, I’m afraid. Any idea what the writing says?”

  “I didn’t learn Arabic in my spare time. But I can ask someone.”

  William took the bowl in his hand and turned it around slowly. “Look at the slant of the calligraphy, how it bends so far right. I’ve never seen that before.”

  “Me neither,” I said, peering inside the bowl. “Do you really think it’s worth over a thousand?”

  “Maybe. Maybe way over. Why don’t you go to the Goodwill and ask them if they know where they got this?”

  “There’s just one more thing,” I said, turning it around and getting a magnifying glass from William’s desk. “Do you see that on the bottom there? There’s some sort of very faint pattern. It almost looks like—”

  “Like Hebrew,” said William, looking closely. He held it under a desk light and looked at it again.

  “Hebrew? Is it?”

  “I really think it’s Hebrew. But it’s so faint.”

  “Why would there be Hebrew letters on the bottom of a bowl with Arabic writing inside?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Could be some very good copy. Like those designer clothes they rip off but accidentally print both Prada and Gucci on them.”

  “So now you think it’s a knockoff? Something really worth a buck seventy-five?”

  “My gut says no, even after seeing the writing. I think it’s something important. It’s a beautiful piece. Look at these windswept palmettes. The motif is so detailed. And the white glaze mimicking Chinese porcelain, that was popular during the Abbasid dynasty.”

  “Abbasid dynasty? The eighth to the thirteenth century? It can’t be that old. Look at it, it barely shows any age. And that style was used much later, too.”

  “True,” said William. “But I can see why you reacted to it, and I’m sure others would, too.” He took his magnifying glass and looked at the Hebrew writing again.

  “Honestly, Carolyn, I have no idea.”

  “I’m going to send a few pictures to Max Sebastian,” I said to William, grabbing his Canon camera from the back, where we photographed items for the Web. Max, whom I had glimpsed during my forty-five minutes of hell at the Vollinger Gallery in New York, was unarguably the premier expert on Middle Eastern art and he was with Sotheby’s in London, not Christie’s, so I stood a chance of hearing back from him. He was the son of a British diplomat and had spent much of his life in the Middle East. He’d studied Middle Eastern art and history at Cambridge and had been at Sotheby’s for twenty-five years. He spoke and was literate in Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic and was pretty much the be-all and end-all when it came to appraising Middle Eastern stoneware and pottery.

  “You’re just going to email Max Sebastian?” said William.

  “Why not? What do I have to lose? My reputation? I’ll spin it that we have a seller that has a much larger collection and wants to sell with Sotheby’s but we’re just not sure about this one thing. Plus, he has no idea I’m in Newport. He could think I’m a dealer in New York now.”

  “And what if this bowl is worth twenty-seven cents and he laughs you all the way to the Piggly Wiggly?”

  “Well then, he can just join the rest of my hecklers.”

  I sent Max a quick email from my personal account along with pictures of every angle of the bowl.

  “You should forget Max,” said William. “He only gets back to billionaires and archaeologists. You should just go straight to the source and then walk backwards. I can finish up here today. I don’t think we’ll have many customers pounding down the door this afternoon; it looks like it’s going to snow again. Why don’t you drive to North Kingstown and ask around. I bet you’ve never even been to a Goodwill before.”

  I took William’s four-wheel drive, as he said he didn’t trust my “electric sled” in the snow. I drove past the towering mansions on Bellevue, and headed toward the highway just as the first snowflakes started to fall from the dark gray sky. The drive to North Kingstown was only about twenty minutes but halfway there the flurries turned into real snow. Not the kind of snow that makes everything look clean and wintery; this was in-your-face, it’s-almost-impossible-to-drive snow. March was only a week away, but in Newport, winter was making itself comfortable.

  Goodwill was a one-story brick building in a strip mall. When I ran in, pulled off my hat, and opened the glass door, three bells tied to the handle chimed and the two people working as cashiers in the front of the room looked up at me and smiled. They were both over se
venty and probably volunteers. I wanted to walk the aisles and look for the next Salvador Dali Goodwill find, but William had ordered me to find out about the bowl. I brought it to the counter and smiled.

  “Hello!” I said far too enthusiastically. “I was wondering if you could help me with something,” I asked the man who was right in front of the register. He had thinning silver hair slicked back with pomade and deep wrinkles on his small hands. One of his nails was bruised and another was yellowing and cracked.

  I held the bowl up and handed it to him.

  “This was purchased a few weeks ago from this store and I was just wondering if you had any information about it. Like how long it was in the store, or even if you knew who dropped it off.”

  “Well, now let me see, what is this. A bowl?” he asked, looking inside of it with interest.

  “Um, yes, it’s a bowl. I think it’s from the Middle East.”

  “What a nice bowl. That’s one of the nicest I’ve ever seen. Now why do you want to know who donated this bowl? Is it your bowl?”

  “It is now. I bought it. But I’d like to know more about it, because I won’t be able to sell it if I don’t know anything about it. So I’m hoping that I can find the person who donated it to you and they can tell me about it.”

  “You’re a bowl salesman!”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You’re a soup maker?”

  “Not at all.”

  This nice man was trying to help me and it would be wrong to slam my head against the counter in frustration while screaming obscenities about pureed vegetables.

  “Yes, I guess in a way I am a bowl salesman,” I said calmly. “I work in an antique store in Newport and I would like to sell this bowl.”