Lethal Treasure: A Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery (Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries)

by Jane K. Cleland

“You know, Hank … this is very odd … don’t you think so?”

  He mewed again, this time with added urgency, and flipped the mouse toward me with his paw. I picked it up and shook it back and forth. He pranced forward a few steps, his eyes riveted on the mouse. I lobbed it as far as I could toward the back of the warehouse, and Hank tore down the aisle like a racehorse in the stretch.

  I compared the placement of the three cat faces and noted certain commonalities. All three were hidden in folds of fabric, and all were roughly the size of my thumbnail.

  I hurried across the cold expanse of warehouse to reach the spiral staircase leading to my office, considering the implications.

  Upstairs, I brought up one of the proprietary Web sites we subscribed to, the one with the largest database and most sophisticated search capabilities. Under the page devoted to artists’ signatures, I typed “cat” in the search window. With my finger poised over the ENTER button on my keyboard, I told the monitor, “Talk to me.” I tapped it and within half a second received a list of eighty-six artists whose signatures included the letters Cat. Three used Cat as their first name, all women. The others had the syllable in their last names. There was a Cathern, a Catursky, and the like. I went to the FAQ page to see if they addressed visual signatures, but they didn’t.

  I called their customer service number, punched through their interactive menu to get a human being, and asked if there was any way to search their database to identify an artist who used a cat face as his or her signature. The woman I spoke to was intrigued but unhelpful. They didn’t have any listing like that because, she said, it was rare that an artist would use a symbol in lieu of his name. She’d never heard of one who used a cat, explaining that she was a Dutch-master-era gal and knew nothing about silent movie posters. She put me on hold to ask around the office, then came back to report that no one on staff could help.

  “Darn,” I said after I was off the line.

  We had three books on authenticating artists’ signatures and related identification tactics in our in-house library, but none listed any information about an artist who used a cat’s face in lieu of a signature. I Googled every term I could think of, in every combination I could imagine, and came up empty.

  “Dead end after dead end,” I told the air.

  I brought up the four photographs I’d just taken on a split-screen view and frowned at them, aware of my ignorance. Even assuming they were original to the period, I didn’t know whether the movie studios created them, how many of each style were produced, which artists did what kind of work, or anything. In order to appraise them, I needed to do more than identify the artists and verify they were originals; I needed to get up to speed on how the silent movie advertising industry had worked.

  I had just opened our photo-manipulation software, preparing to isolate the cat images, when Hank came bounding up the stairs. He didn’t have the mouse.

  “Oh, no … couldn’t you find it, Hank?”

  He sat down and gave me a dirty look, implying that it was my fault for throwing his mouse improperly. He meowed loudly.

  “When I go downstairs, I’ll look for it, okay? It probably skittered under a shelving unit.”

  He meowed again, wanting me to go now. Right now.

  “I’m sorry, Hank, I can’t. I’ve got to do some work.”

  He mewed, hitting a sour note, expressing displeasure, and waited for several seconds, expecting me to change my mind. When I didn’t, he gave a little “oh, well” mew and jumped onto the love seat. He curled into a tight ball and closed his eyes, ready for a nap.

  I zoomed in on the three areas hiding the cat’s face, creating a separate image for each, then laid them over one another. Like any signature, they were the same, but different. In one, the whiskers were a touch longer; in another, the eyes were slightly more slanted; and in the third, the face was a bit wider, yet they were unmistakably drawn by the same hand.

  I consulted another of the proprietary services we subscribed to. This one’s focus was on ephemera, items designed to be useful or important for a limited time, like newspapers, pamphlets, and playbills—and movie posters. They had an entire section devoted to movie posters, but only about fifty of their examples dated from the silent film era, which, I learned, ran from 1894 to 1929. According to their database, The Mysterious Lady dated from 1928; Way Down East came out in 1920; The Clansman, later renamed Birth of a Nation, was first shown in 1915; and The Gold Rush dated from 1925. Only the Mysterious Lady poster was featured on the site.

  I brought up the photo I’d just taken of The Mysterious Lady and lined it up side by side with the one posted on the Web site. For all intents and purposes, the colors were identical, but the color placement differed slightly, implying that I was looking at two hand-painted versions of the same design, a likely occurrence, if, for instance, the company commissioned more than one poster from the same artist.

  Both posters featured a solid dark orange border with a thin white line delineating the inside area, but the thickness of the white line differed, not much, but enough to notice. Inside the border, the paint on both appeared textured as if a light orange squiggly pattern had been randomly stenciled or painted over a darker shade of orange. In both, the pattern was more stippled than lacy, but the overall pattern in Henri’s poster was darker. Also in both, wavy violet lines dissected the entire background, as if bands of sunlight radiated from a source emanating from somewhere unseen in back of Greta Garbo. I read the description on the Web site. It seemed the poster we were appraising was a Batiste Madalena original. I clicked the link to bring up his profile.

  From 1924 to 1928, Batiste Madalena had designed and painted nearly 1,500 movie posters for the Eastman Theater in Rochester, New York, using tempera on illustrator board. When the Eastman Theater changed hands, the new owners trashed all the old posters, literally putting them out on the curb. Luckily, Madalena saw what was happening in time to rescue a few hundred of them. What’s unknown is how many, if any, of the remainder are extant. I looked over at Hank. He’d rolled onto his back, and was dead asleep.

  “What do you think, Hank?” I asked. “Did the new marketing team take one or two or fifty for their records? How about the former boss’s secretary? Did she take any? How about the trash pickup guys?”

  Hank snuffled and flipped onto his side, wedging his back paws under a cushion.

  I brought up another proprietary site, this one listing art and artifact auction prices worldwide. Because of Madalena’s prestige—his work had been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 2008, for example—and the scarcity of his posters, one in very good condition, like Henri’s, if authenticated, might be worth as much as $100,000.

  “Oh, Hank!” I said aloud, watching him sleep. “Timing isn’t all, but it’s a lot. Here Henri confides he’s having business troubles, and what happens? Boom … the very next day, he finds silent film memorabilia worth a small fortune. Keep your paws crossed that the posters are genuine, my friend. Keep those gorgeous little paws of yours crossed.”

  I didn’t want to get Henri’s hopes up, but neither did I want to withhold news of a potential windfall of this size. For all I knew he might be about to implement some unpleasant cuts, and this news could enable him to delay the belt tightening. I glanced at the time display at the bottom of my monitor. It was nearly two. Time had zipped by. I dialed Henri’s cell phone, and after six rings, it went to voice mail.

  “Henri,” I said to the machine, “it’s too early in the appraisal process to give you any definitive news, but I wanted to give you a quick update on what I’ve learned thus far. Give me a call when you get a chance. And keep your fingers crossed that what I think might be true is!”

  I turned back to the cat symbol, looking again at the three faces side by side. I stood up and starting pacing, thinking about what I should do next. Hank opened an eye as I passed him, then, when I didn’t stop to pet him, closed it. I walked from the bookshelf to the cabinet that housed my rooster coll
ection, then back again.

  From what I’d learned on the Web sites, if a company decided to create movie posters, they hired commercial artists, men and women, although mostly men, who were used to providing work for hire. The artists did the job and took the pay and that was that. They didn’t sign their names or receive public credit in any way. Some went on to enjoy fame designing or painting in other media, and their past work was therefore known, but most did not, their accomplishments lost in time.

  Nothing came to me, no insights, no strategy, no ideas about new research options. With my stomach growling, I gave up. I couldn’t even get a hint of who the other artist might be, and what I’d learned did not encourage me to think that any additional research on my part would bring me any closer to finding answers. I’d reached a locked door and needed an expert with a key. Luckily, I knew where to find one. To prepare, I uploaded all seven photos, the four showing the overall posters and the three showing close-ups of the cats, to our FTP site, then cut-and-pasted the log-in info into an e-mail I sent myself.

  I called my old New York City pal, Shelley.

  Shelley and I had worked together at Frisco’s, a top-drawer antiques auction house. When the fraud mess hit the fan—I was the whistle-blower in a price-fixing scheme—Shelley was one of the few people who hadn’t acted like I had a dread disease and was contagious. Pretty much everyone else had ostracized me. I was the one doing the right thing, yet I’d been penalized as if the conspiracy I’d brought to light had been my fault, proving the truth of the old maxim that metaphorically, at least, messengers are the ones who get shot. I still cringe recalling my naïveté. I’d been completely blindsided when the weenie acting-CEO told me that because I wasn’t a team player, I had to go. When I’d been called into his office, I’d anticipated a hero’s welcome, a thank-you for helping vanquish a scourge that threatened the integrity of the company, and thus its very survival. Instead, security was standing by to escort me out of the building then and there, parading me past colleagues’ cubicles in an effort, I was certain, to humiliate me while presenting everyone else with a cautionary tale. Despite widespread anti-Josie sentiment and the consequent near-universal shunning, Shelley had stayed friendly, and we were still friends today.

  “Josie!” Shelley said. “It’s so great to hear from you! Are you all right? I heard on the news that New Hampshire has broken every weather record this winter. Have you frozen to death? Are you ready to come back to civilization?”

  “I know you think I’m crazy,” I said, swiveling to face my window, “but I love it up here—even in winter.” Four-foot-high banks of snow encircled the parking lot, a testament to the plow driver’s evenhanded work. Every tree and bush, from ancient hardwoods to the four-foot rhododendrons Eric had planted last spring, was covered in a thin layer of brittle snow glittering with a prismlike sheen under the midday sun. It truly was a winter wonderland. I grabbed my smart phone, took a photo of the maples and oaks so Shelley could see the majesty for herself, and e-mailed it to her.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I do think you’re crazy.”

  I laughed. “I just sent you a photo of the view from my office window. When you see it, you’re going to be on the first plane north, it’s that spectacular.”

  “You are such a card, Josie. Always good for a laugh. So what can I do you for?”

  “I’m trying to appraise four silent movie posters. They’re painted, not printed. There’s no type anywhere indicating they’re repros. I’ve done no materials analysis, so I’m going on my gut when I tell you I think they’re genuine. One seems to be a Batiste Madalena. The others all have a cat face hidden in a fold of fabric, which makes me think they were all painted by the same artist, but the styles are profoundly different from one another. I have no idea where to look for information about this cat thing or how to identify the artist. Is Lottie still in charge of film ephemera?”

  “God, no. She left last summer for Hollywood. She’s running her own shop out there, and doing very well, by all I hear. We have a new guy, very good—intuitive, you know? His name is Marshall. You got pics?”

  “Yup. I’ve already placed them into an FTP site. I’ll zip off the log-in info now.” I tapped the keys and forwarded the e-mail. “All righty, you should have it any sec. Thanks, Shelley.”

  “No prob. I’m always glad to help, and Marshall will positively pant with pleasure. You’ll see what I mean. He pants over things like silent movie posters. Hold on while I confirm receipt.” She paused. “Got it … let me see if I can log in. Yesseree … one, two … all righty, all seven photos are accounted for. That cat’s a sweetie, isn’t she?”

  “Very. I can’t thank you enough, Shelley.”

  “You’re welcome. Oh! Look what else is here … another e-mail, this one with an all-white photo attached. You must have misfired with that camera of yours, Josie—oh … wait … it’s not all white. I see a couple of brown lines … oh, I get it! Those are tree trunks. That is so cute, Josie! And that’s the view from your office. I don’t know how you stand the excitement.”

  I laughed again. “You’re missing a big chunk of the world, my friend. You need to get out and about more, Shelley.”

  “You’re right, I do. Which is why a bunch of us are going line dancing tonight at that new place I told you about in SoHo. Want to come?”

  “I’d love to, but I think you should come up here and give my favorite country dance place a whirl. Think about it, Shelley. There are lots of tall, handsome men in jeans and flannel shirts and they all know how to two-step.”

  “Oh! You got me with that one, Josie. Now I’m actually going to have to think about it.”

  “I hope you will. I miss you, Shelley.”

  “I miss you, too, Josie. But I gotta tell you … that photo of snow and brown sticks … that’s no way to get a New Yorker to come for a visit.”

  I was still chuckling as I scooped up Hank and headed downstairs.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “What’s the latest on the storm?” I asked as I walked into the front office, cradling Hank like a baby.

  “Let me check,” Cara said, tapping into her computer.

  Hank snuggled his head under my chin and wrapped his paw around my neck, hugging me. He was purring loudly.

  “Scattered flurries starting tomorrow afternoon,” Cara read, “becoming steadier and heavier, with increasing winds by nightfall. They’re calling for eight inches to … oh, my … two feet or even more, saying the range is so wide because there are unpredictable winds at the upper levels of the atmosphere. The storm might blow out to sea early on or it might get stuck in place, in which case we’re in for a nor’easter.” She looked up and blinked. “I had no idea.”

  “It looks like CiCi’s Uncle Willy was right,” I said, repeating his prediction. “Has Sasha gone to meet Nate?”

  “Yes,” Cara said. “She expects to be back by three thirty or so.” She glanced at her monitor. “About half an hour from now.” She smiled. “She was very excited about the jewelry. And Gretchen is overseeing the tag sale setup until Eric gets back.”

  “That should be soon, too,” I said. I turned to Fred. “Any early news on the two menus?”

  “They look like the real deal,” Fred said, “probably from the seventies, based on relative pricing. Since I have the prices from when the Four Seasons opened in 1959, and I know they’ve been at the top of the restaurant scene ever since, I can calculate the current dollar value of the prices and get a decent guess about when this menu was written. I’m waiting for a call back from someone at the restaurant and someone else at the New York Public Library to confirm it.” He pushed his glasses up. “Did you know the library has one of the world’s great menu collections? Tens of thousands of menus. The historical and scholarship value can’t be overstated.” He double knuckle-tapped the plastic-shrouded Four Seasons menu. “You had to be a real sport to afford this place. From what I can see, you’re looking at about ninety-five dollars a couple for
dinner and wine back when this menu was current.”

  “What’s that in today’s dollars?” I asked.

  “If I’m right about the timing, about three hundred eighty. A little more.”

  I nodded. “About two hundred dollars a person. New York City prices for sure.”

  “How does anyone afford to live there?” Cara asked, looking up from her typing, her blue eyes round with astonishment.

  “You don’t eat at the Four Seasons every night,” I said.

  “You don’t eat at the Four Seasons ever,” Fred said.

  Cara and I both laughed.

  “Do you think the menu has any value?” I asked Fred.

  “I don’t know. Most menus don’t unless there’s something unusual about it or there’s a nifty association.”

  Over the years, we’d learned that association, the connection between an object and someone of historical or popular importance, was one of the primary determinants of value.

  Fred grinned and pushed up his glasses. “President Kennedy celebrated his forty-fifth birthday dinner at the Four Seasons. That was the day Marilyn Monroe sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him at Madison Square Garden. Now that menu, maybe signed by the president and Marilyn Monroe even though she wasn’t at the dinner, that would be worth something.”

  I grinned appreciatively. “Can you imagine?”

  “Yes,” he said, with a beatific look on his face. “I can indeed imagine.”

  I laughed again. “What about the other one? Delmonico’s?”

  “The restaurant is famous on a lot of fronts,” Fred said. “They’ve been around since 1827, and in the same location since 1837. They were the first dining establishment to call themselves by the French word ‘restaurant.’ That’s funny to think about, isn’t it? Of their many firsts, my personal favorite is that they invented Eggs Benedict. Although the fact that they named Baked Alaska is pretty cool, too.”

  “That menu is also from the seventies?”

  “That’s my best guess. The prices are comparable. Delmonico’s was the first place, by the way, to have written menus—period.”