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

by Jane K. Cleland

  Wes stood off to the side of the building, partially hidden by a hedge, out of sight of the front door and large side windows, waiting and watching, his coat collar turned up, his ears and cheeks mottled red, chapped. Scott opened the car door for Leigh Ann, and she stepped out and walked beside him toward the station like an automaton. Her eyes were unfocused. No emotion showed on her face. It was as if she were sleepwalking. Scott’s eyes never left her face, his hand hovering just above her elbow. I thought again how lucky she was to have him near. Scott held the door for her, then nodded at me, silently inviting me to precede him.

  “Thanks,” I said from ten feet away. I picked up my pace so he wouldn’t have to stand there letting the cold stream into the building.

  “Wait a sec, Josie,” Wes called.

  I glanced at Wes, then back at Scott. “I’ll be right in,” I told Scott.

  Scott shot Wes a glance. “You need me,” Scott said, “you shout, okay?”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  Scott let the door swing shut and gave Wes a parting don’t-mess-with-her glare. I waited until the door closed behind him, then joined Wes.

  “That was nice of you,” I said. “Not to bother them with questions.”

  “One look and you can tell he’s a shoe breaker.”

  A shoe breaker, I repeated silently, wondering, not for the first time, where Wes got his colorful vocabulary. As near as I could tell, if he didn’t know a word or term, he made one up.

  “I’ll get more info by waiting until Leigh Ann is on her own,” he added, slapping his gloved hands together in a futile effort to gain some warmth. “Any news?”

  “No,” I said, thinking that it was just like me to assign a positive motive to Wes’s action, and just like him to unabashedly tell the truth, even though doing so showcased his motive as practical and self-serving, not kind.

  “Do you know if Henri was an American citizen?” he asked.

  “Yes. He’s not. He’s French. Why?”

  “Maybe there’s an international angle.”

  “He’s here legally, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You never know,” Wes said. “I’ll contact the French consul and ask what’s what. Can’t do any harm. What did you see in the storage unit?”

  I looked through the now steadily falling snow toward the snow-covered beach. “I saw blood,” I whispered. “There was broken porcelain, some demolished wood. It was horrible, Wes. Unspeakable.” I took in a deep breath. “I’ve got to go inside—they’re expecting me.”

  “Why do they want to talk to you?”

  “They think I might be able to help with antiques info. Also, I was with him the night before he died. We went to the Blue Dolphin … we had a great time … his last dinner.”

  “Did anything happen at the restaurant that gives you a hint about why he got killed?”

  “No,” I said, thinking of the phone call Henri had taken, the one he’d asked me to keep to myself, knowing I was splitting hairs about the timing.

  “Why do you think he was killed?” Wes asked.

  I listened to the waves for a moment, unseen behind the high dunes, the sound thunderous. Why are people killed? Lots of reasons, including money.

  An image of the Dubois showroom came to me, filled to the rafters with high-end furnishings and accessories. I hadn’t thought of their circumstances one way or the other, but considering the issue now, I realized the origin of their seed money was a mystery. Presumably it hadn’t come from Leigh Ann. She’d told me that when she and Henri met, she’d been working a standard-issue retail job, which meant she earned barely enough to survive in New York City. My guess was that it hadn’t come from Henri either, not on a midlevel salesman’s salary, even though he’d worked for a company that manufactured high-end bed linens, the kind that sold for thousands of dollars. Maybe one of them had family money, I thought, then shook my head. Leigh Ann made no secret of her working-class roots. Henri had never mentioned his childhood, but Leigh Ann had.

  Henri had been reared with cold formality by a distant cousin after his mother had been killed in a car accident when he was only seven. His father, Pierre, a doctor, couldn’t keep Henri with him and continue his overseas work with Médecins sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders. For the next ten years, Pierre came home only occasionally, and then only for short periods. Before Henri got into the rhythm of seeing his father, of having him near, Pierre was gone again, heading off to the next distant, desperate corner of the world.

  Henri, Leigh Ann had confided, was as big a disappointment to his father as she was to her mother. Their parents had expected them to follow in their families’ traditions, Henri becoming a doctor and Leigh Ann getting married and settling down in Thibodaux. Henri had entered medical school, then dropped out after one semester, explaining to his father that it simply wasn’t for him, that his interest lay in art and artifacts. His father didn’t talk to him for a year. Leigh Ann came to New York with visions of footlights shining in her head. Mostly, she waited tables. Her mother didn’t speak to her for three years.

  After leaving medical school, Henri tried to find a Paris-based interior design job, only to learn that the industry, while large, was well established and resistant to newcomers. He found the interior design world in New York City equally impenetrable. It wasn’t until he moved to Rocky Point that he discovered his ideal environment—in Rocky Point, he was the biggest fish in a right-sized pond.

  I shivered in the bitter air. When I turned back to face Wes, I found him observing me closely, waiting, expecting information.

  “It takes a lot of money to start a business,” I said, “especially a business containing high-end furniture, like a showroom. I never really thought about it before … but how did they finance it all?”

  Wes nodded. “Good question, Josie. I’ll see what I can find out. What else?”

  “Did Henri leave a will?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “No.” I sighed. “I’m sad, Wes. Really sad. I liked Henri. I like Leigh Ann. This is unfathomable, crushing, horrific.”

  He patted my arm, and I recalled why I liked him so much. Wes was aggressive and single-minded, but beneath his harsh exterior he was capable of great empathy.

  After a moment, he asked, “Who was that guy with Leigh Ann just now?”

  “A friend from New York. Scott Richey.”

  “Anything there?” he asked, nearly salivating at the thought.

  “Wes! Of course not. He’s a friend.”

  “Oh, paleeeze. Even you can’t be that gullible.”

  “He was introduced to me as a friend,” I said firmly, “and I have no reason to think anything else.”

  “What does he do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was he Henri’s friend? Or Leigh Ann’s?”

  “I think Leigh Ann’s, but I’m not positive.”

  “What’s he like?” Wes asked.

  “I have no idea. I just met him.”

  “I’ll check him out.” He slapped his arms again. “Anything else?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  He opened the heavy door for me. “Talk soon,” he said.

  I stepped inside. Neither Scott nor Leigh Ann was in sight.

  “Hi, Josie,” Cathy, the civilian admin manning the counter, said. She was tall and heavyset, with golden hair and blue eyes. “Chief Hunter said you’d be coming in. You can have a seat. It won’t be long.”

  “Thanks, Cathy.”

  I was too restless to sit, so I walked to the bulletin board and started reading notices; MOST WANTED posters were pinned next to announcements of church suppers and community board meetings. I was scanning a flyer advertising Rocky Point’s upcoming ice carving competition, an all-invited contest cum skating party, when Detective Brownley called my name.

  Her black hair was shorter than the last time I’d seen her, a little shaggy, with bangs. It suited her round face. Her eyes were as blue as ever, midnig
ht blue. She led the way down a long hallway to a small room with a gold-tone numeral one on the door. I knew it well. A rectangular wooden table sat in the center surrounded by six ladder-back chairs. A human-sized cage was positioned in the corner. I’d never heard of anyone having to be placed inside it, and I hoped I never would. I sat with my back to it, facing one of two wall-mounted video cameras. A one-way glass panel, mirrored on my side, took up half the left wall. There was no window.

  “Chief Hunter just called. He’ll be here in a few minutes. He asked me to get you settled in, see if you’d like some coffee or anything.”

  I didn’t know what I wanted. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  She left, and to keep my mind off Henri, I checked my e-mail. Nothing.

  Five minutes later, Ellis entered the room. He greeted me, turned on the video recorders, and stated our names, the date, and time and that he was conducting an interview with a potential witness.

  “As soon as we’re finished, I’m going to interview Leigh Ann,” Ellis said, sitting across from me. “I wish I could wait to talk to her, to give her time to recover from the shock, but I can’t. Since Leigh Ann says she has no idea why someone would want to kill Henri, I need to look for motives, and time truly is of the essence.” He paused. “In a homicide, we always focus on questions of why now, why here, so I want to begin with what you know about his activities over the last couple of days. When did you last see Henri Dubois?”

  Working backward, he took me through Henri’s last forty-eight hours. I’d seen Henri three times on Thursday, at the auction in the morning, at his store in the afternoon, and at dinner in the evening. On Friday, I’d seen him twice, at the Crawford auction and when he’d brought the ephemera to my company around noon.

  Ellis asked other questions, too, and my ignorance was patent. I didn’t know of any animosity he’d felt toward anyone, nor any that someone might have felt toward him. He wasn’t a fighter, a gambler, a drug user, or a thief. I’d never seen him drunk. He’d never made a pass at me or anyone I knew. He seemed devoted to his wife, engaged with his business, and as far as I could tell, he didn’t want to live anywhere but Rocky Point.

  “Let’s talk antiques,” Ellis said. “What did he find in that locker?”

  “Some silent movie posters and a scrapbook. He brought them to my place so we could appraise them,” I said. “He didn’t mention anything else, which he probably would have if he’d found anything remarkable. After he went back to the unit … who knows what happened? Because you buy the units blind, there’s no way to know what might be missing.” I paused. “When I heard that Henri had disappeared, it crossed my mind that he might have found something valuable and easy to sell and just driven away.”

  “I thought you said he was content with his life in Rocky Point.”

  I looked at my hands resting on the table. I knew I needed to tell Ellis about Henri’s difficult phone call and how he’d asked me to keep it quiet, but I didn’t want to. I believed that confidences entrusted to a friend should survive the grave, but I couldn’t convince myself that the call was definitely unrelated to his death. Warring values, I thought. I looked at Ellis, patiently waiting for me to speak.

  “I promised Henri I wouldn’t tell,” I said.

  “He’d release you from that promise if he could.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Murder victims want their killers caught.”

  I knew he was right, so with a sigh of resignation, I told him what I’d observed when Henri took the call and afterward, when he’d asked me not to mention it to Leigh Ann.

  “Leigh Ann is my friend. It was bad enough that Henri asked me to keep the call secret from her. Now she’s going to find out what I did and never speak to me again.”

  Ellis nodded thoughtfully. “I think we can keep it under our hats. His phone is missing, but we’ll get his incoming-call log from the company. We’ve already applied for an emergency subpoena. As soon as we get the records, we’ll find that call. Unless there’s a good reason to do otherwise, I can let her think that’s how we got the information.”

  “You’re a good guy, Ellis.”

  “I try to be reasonable about things, but you do understand I can’t promise anything, right?”

  “Yes. That’s fair.” I sighed, bummed I’d had to tell, but also relieved that the burden of silence had been lifted off my shoulders. “I hate keeping secrets.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Do you think everyone has secrets?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Even you?”

  “Especially me. I interview people about their darkest, most desperate thoughts and deeds for a living.” He leaned back in his chair, tilting his head for a different perspective. “I’m not going to ask whether you have secrets, because it’s none of my business, but I bet you do. Everyone does.”

  “Not all secrets are guilty secrets.”

  “Was Henri’s?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. The way he talked about it, it didn’t sound like much of anything important. You bid on work, and sometimes you don’t win the job. It happens to us all.”

  “Makes sense. On a different subject … I spoke briefly with Detective Brownley on my way in. Leigh Ann has asked that you sit in during her interview.”

  “Me?” I asked, surprised. “Why?”

  “She’s having a little trouble focusing, and Scott is still talking to us.”

  I nodded, understanding. Leigh Ann wanted support, a friendly face, a caring friend, and since Scott wasn’t available, I was her next-best option.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Thanks, Josie.” He stood up. “I want to check on that subpoena application, then I’ll get her. It shouldn’t take me too long.”

  “Can I wait in the lobby?” I reached for my tote bag. “This room isn’t exactly conducive to relaxation.”

  “Sure.” He smiled, a small one. “The cage get you going?”

  “I sit with my back to it,” I said, “but I never forget it’s there.”

  He brought me back to the front. Cathy was typing at her computer. Two uniformed police officers sat at nearby desks, one on the phone, the other reading from a yellow legal pad.

  I sank onto one of the wooden benches, glad to have a few minutes to reflect on what I’d just learned. Henri’s phone was missing, but not his wedding band. I didn’t know what else might have been taken. Even if it was a botched robbery, why would someone rob that particular unit? Perhaps it was simply a random act of violence. A thief driving by seeing a lone van, a solitary man. An opportunist crime. Henri resisted, and he was struck, beaten to death. It was possible.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes, willing myself to relax, wishing the steel-bandlike tension in my neck and shoulders would ease, knowing it wouldn’t, not until I was home, warm and safe. I wished Ty would be there waiting for me when I arrived. I wanted to slip into a hot bath. I wanted to cook something comforting from the leather-bound handwritten cookbook my mother had created for me in the months before she’d died, and then sit down in my cozy kitchen and eat with Ty. I opened my eyes and looked toward the windows. Tiny snowflakes whirled up and around, then floated out of sight. The snow was falling faster than before, denser. I couldn’t make out the beach through the white gossamer cloud of snow. The storm was gathering strength. I closed my eyes again and leaned my head against the unforgiving high wooden backrest. I felt somber and tearful and confused. “Don’t ever fret,” my dad used to say. “Act.” I sighed, opened my eyes again, sat forward, found my phone, and called Zoë.

  The call went to voice mail. “Hey, Zoë,” I said into the machine. “I don’t know if you heard the terrible news about Henri Dubois. If not, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. He died … oh, Zoë, he was murdered.” I took in a breath. “I’m at the police station now. I’m okay … actually, I’m really horrified. I’m so upset … anyway … Ty might not make it home tonight, what with the s
torm and all. I’m going to my place … will you be around? If so, want a French martini and dessert? Call me, okay?”

  I slipped my phone back in my tote as the front door opened with a frigid whoosh. Vicki Crawford walked in, bringing a swirl of snowflakes with her. She stamped her feet on the gray entry rug, nodded at me, and marched to the counter.

  “I got a call to come in,” she announced. “I’m Vicki Crawford of Crawford Storage.”

  Cathy smiled and stood up. “I’ll let the chief know you’re here. You can have a seat.”

  Vicki plunked down beside me.

  “Helluva thing,” she said. “I don’t know what the police think I can tell them.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s unbelievable.”

  “I never saw him except at auctions. How about you? Did you know him?”

  “Yeah … we were friends.”

  “Sorry, then.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s hard.” My throat tightened, and I focused on answering Vicki’s rhetorical question about what the police expected to learn from her, hoping that using my brain would serve to keep my emotions at bay. “I bet the police want to know about your security.”

  Vicki snorted. “Security? Each to his own, that’s my attitude. Locks are up to the renters, and I have a total of one camera. It’s in my office, aimed at the door so I can track who comes in and catch anyone who tries to break in. That’s it.”

  “I wonder if the office building next door might have any that include a view of your place.”

  She pushed out her lips, thinking. “Hard to say, but I don’t suppose it matters. Henri’s unit was on the far side of the building, so even if their cameras take in some of my place, it wouldn’t include anything on that side of the parking lot.”

  “Good point.” I thought about the property layout. I’d lived in Rocky Point for nearly a decade, yet there were whole sections of town I didn’t know. “Where does that little street go? You know the one I mean, the one on the other side of your place from the office building. It runs from Route 1 somewhere.”