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

by Jane K. Cleland

  With the remaining time, I called Ty, hoping to get lucky and reach him, but the call went to voice mail immediately. I didn’t leave a message beyond saying I loved him. I couldn’t think of any quick way to tell him all that had transpired. I wanted to fill him in completely, or not at all.

  From my position high above the beach, I had a clear view of the gold flecks twinkling on the midnight blue ocean surface. Ellis would ask Leigh Ann about the love letter, maybe reserving where he’d found it, maybe not. She’d conclude the husband she adored had been cheating on her. I could almost feel her heart breaking. There was nothing I could do to reassure her, to comfort her, to let her know that as far as I knew, Henri had cherished her and no one else.

  I sighed, then turned my gaze back to my phone and called work again. Cara told me Sasha had astonishing news from Adèle Bové at Verdura.

  “I’ll transfer you, but what would you like me to tell her about the number you’re calling from?” Cara whispered.

  I could picture my entire staff turning toward Cara like synchronized dancers, wondering why she was whispering.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Don’t mention it.”

  Sasha reported that Ms. Bové had found the sales record of the gold-wrapped heart. It had originally been sold in 1945 to an oil tycoon as a gift for his wife. Her children sold it back to Verdura after her death in 1985.

  “Later that year,” Sasha said, her voice rippling with barely contained enthusiasm, “Averell Harriman bought it for his wife, Pamela Harriman, who later became the American ambassador to France. It was sold to an anonymous buyer at auction in 1994. Apparently Ms. Harriman needed cash to settle a family lawsuit.”

  “And then?” I asked, rapt.

  “And then, nothing until it appeared in our storage room locker.”

  “Which auction house sold it?”

  “Are you sitting down?” Sasha asked. “Frisco’s.”

  I smiled. “I’ll make the call,” I said. “This is really something, Sasha.”

  “I know. It’s quite a story. Do you know about Pamela Harriman? I’ve always admired her. I’m so shy…” Sasha said, her voice trailing off for a moment. “When I think of all that she experienced, well, I guess that’s what an outgoing personality gets you. Life, you know?”

  “Some people would credit her success more to her ambition than her personality, but I always thought those comments came more from jealousy or chauvinism. Very successful women get some people’s goat.”

  “Not mine,” Sasha said.

  “Or mine.” I laughed. “I can already hear my friend Shelley telling me they can’t release anonymous bidders’ names. I’ll ask her to contact the buyer on our behalf.”

  After we were done, she put Fred on.

  “I’ve gone through Henri’s scrapbook. There’s nothing worth anything. Even those two menus have no value to speak of.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “Still, the appraisal had to be done.”

  Those silent movie posters offer the best hope of value, I thought as I dialed Shelley’s number.

  Shelley was her usual peppy self until I explained what I wanted.

  “Josie, Josie, Josie,” she said. “You want the keys to Fort Knox next? You know I can’t give you that name.”

  “Of course,” I said, laughing. “I was wondering if you’d contact the winning bidder on my behalf. Ask him or her whether he’d be willing to talk to me. All I want to know is what happened to the wrapped heart. Did he sell it? Give it away? Lose it? You know the questions I need to ask. If he doesn’t want to talk to me, maybe he’ll talk to you.”

  Intrigued, she agreed to try. “You’re always full of sass, Josie. Of course, my boss won’t mind my doing research for a competitor. No prob.”

  “You scratch my back, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “You’re so cute. Frisco’s would love the idea that your sweet little company has something we need or want.”

  “Ha, ha. One of the top five small antiques auction houses, according to Antiques Insights magazine, baby. Your bosses are just jealous of our explosive growth.”

  “Speaking of which, I heard a rumor you’re working on a music-themed auction. We have an antique violin we might be interested in consigning to you.”

  I paused, recognizing that our friendly banter had just morphed into a serious business negotiation. Someone at Frisco’s had noticed that we were buying up stellar music-related objects and called on Shelley to ensure they could get in on the action. I was beyond flattered. For an auction house of Frisco’s stature to want to ally with us was tantamount to an endorsement spelled out in flashing neon on a billboard in Times Square.

  “When were you planning on asking me?” I kept my tone casual.

  “Later today.”

  “Very cool, Shelley. We’d love to include your violin. I’ll tell Fred to contact you. It might require your in-person participation, though.”

  She chuckled. “You drive a hard bargain, my friend, but let’s work to keep the terms realistic, okay?”

  I laughed, and we chatted for a minute longer. Shelley promised to contact the anonymous bidder on my behalf ASAP.

  I was still smiling as I dialed Brock Wood’s number yet again.

  This time, Mr. Wood answered with a chipper “Hi-ho!”

  I introduced myself, explained how I got his number, then asked, “Hal Greeley said that you helped his Uncle Les, Lester Markham, relocate to Rocky Point. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right. That was five years ago—how time flies.”

  “Did Mr. Markham rent a storage locker in New Hampshire?”

  “That was our first stop,” he said, “but he’d hate you calling him mister. Call him Les. Call me Brock. Les told me he wanted to know where his stuff was, and that it was safe and sound and ready to go.”

  “Do you remember the name of the storage facility?”

  “Cambridge, maybe? Coleford?”

  “Crawford?” I prompted, my fingers crossed.

  “That’s it!” He laughed, a rolling low rumble. “I knew it would come to me.”

  I smiled. Buck’s memory would serve as testimony that Uncle Les had rented the storage room. I decided to dig a little deeper. “Do you know the name he used to rent it?”

  “The name? His own, I guess. Didn’t he?”

  “Were you in the office with him while he rented it?” I asked, skipping answering his question.

  “No. I stayed with the U-Haul. Les had called to book the room and arrange for some movers. What with his bum hip and my bad back, we couldn’t do it ourselves. What name did he use?”

  “Gael Patrick.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “His nephew Hal thought it might be to keep it a secret from him. Hal was pushing him to sell everything.”

  “Young whippersnapper. Les talked about that. Resented it, too.”

  “Do you know anything about Les’s silent movie posters?”

  “I know he had some from his dad, is that what you mean?”

  “That, and another. A Batiste Madalena.”

  “That would be the one he bought from that girl, right?”

  “I don’t know. What girl?”

  “It was years ago. One of his students … what was her name?” He paused, thinking. “She was a beauty, that I can tell you. It’ll come to me … I can’t remember squat about what happened this morning, but I’m sharp as a razor about things that happened thirty years ago, which is about when he would have bought that poster. She wanted to study in Italy but didn’t have the money. Les had mentioned his father’s silent movie posters in a class, so she consulted him about selling a Batiste Madalena silent movie poster she owned. I haven’t thought about that poster is yesamany years … let me think, now … her name will come, see if it doesn’t.”

  “How did she happen to own it, do you know?”

  “Her great-grandfather had been a maintenance man at the Eastman Theater in Rochester, New York. When the theater sold
, the new owners said to get rid of all the old stuff, posters included. He kept one of his favorites, Mysterious Lady it was. Wait! Hilary Reise! That was her name. I knew I’d remember. Les liked the poster and he liked the girl. He got the poster appraised for her, then bought it for full price.”

  “That was awfully nice of him, wasn’t it?”

  “That was Les, one helluva nice guy. He was my best friend for more than fifty years.”

  “It must be so hard, losing him.”

  “You’ve got that right, young lady. It was bad when he moved away. It was worse hearing he died.”

  I asked some follow-up questions, but I’d reached the end of Brock’s knowledge. He had no current information about Hilary Reise, but we didn’t need it. I’d just received reliable, disinterested testimony explaining how the poster got from the Rochester Theater into Les Markham’s possession. I’d just confirmed provenance. Now all we needed to do was assess value.

  I called Sasha back to pass on the two bits of good news, about Frisco’s violin and Brock’s confirmation, and asked her to tell Fred abut the violin and take charge of the appraisal of the silent movie posters. I’d just hung up when Zach came out of Belle Mer. According to the dash clock, it was 4:16. I watched him get settled behind the wheel of a dark red old Honda. He came to a full stop at the exit, then turned south.

  There was almost no traffic, and I kept far back. Once we hit Route 101, though, we picked up plenty of company, and I had to work to keep him in sight. He was a fast driver, and I didn’t want to get too close. I nearly lost him when he passed a slow-moving truck, and I was trapped behind it for two miles, but I saw him, far ahead, still in the passing lane, still driving fast. He finally slowed down once he turned south on Brown Avenue. Three miles down, he turned left onto a small unmarked road. As I sailed on by I saw the street was a dead end, a cul-de-sac. I passed a convenience store and a fried chicken drive-through and dashed into a body shop’s parking lot and turned around. I drove back slowly, pulled off to the side at the entrance to the dead-end street, and turned on my flashers. The rearview mirror told me the road was wide enough for cars to give me a pass-by without a problem; then I looked for Zach’s car.

  The Honda was parked in a driveway three houses down on the right. Zach stood by the porch steps talking to someone out of sight around the side of the house.

  I couldn’t hear any words, but I could see his mouth and head move. No, he said, then no again, then okay. He shrugged and nodded, climbed the porch stairs, and used a key to enter.

  I eased forward, prepared to drive closer. I could picture the next five minutes. I’d park. I’d knock on the door. I’d say, “Hey, Zach. Got a minute?” Before I could frame Zach’s imaginary reply, a man laden with firewood came onto the porch from the back, and I gasped. I bounced backward, knocking my head against the headrest, causing the car to jerk forward. I slammed my foot on the brake.

  “Oh, my God!” I whispered, mesmerized.

  The man wore a blue parka and a Red Sox baseball cap, and his expression was fully as surly as it had been that day at Crawford’s. He lowered his arms, and the logs rolled into a messy pile near the front door. He retraced his steps. I sat in a haze of stupefaction, unable to believe my eyes, unable to deny what I was seeing. I’d just found Andrew Bruen.

  He reappeared with another armful of logs.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  My first instinct, which lasted about a second and a half, was to call Ellis. Ellis, I thought, fuming, who at this moment is probably rummaging through my underwear looking for evidence he knows full well doesn’t exist.

  Andrew left again, no doubt off for a third load. Two minutes later, he reappeared, huffing a little, the wood stacked higher this time, and I wondered why Zach wasn’t helping, when all at once, Zach came around the corner carrying a few logs, two per hand, an inefficient approach. Zach had wanted to wash up after work, to change his clothes before helping carry wood. Four minutes and two more loads later, I realized that I needed guidance.

  Talking to Zach was no longer an option.

  Talking to Andrew Bruen wasn’t even a possibility.

  I couldn’t sit on a busy thoroughfare indefinitely.

  I had to act, but I still didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always did when a situation arose with legal and moral implications too complex for me to sort through on my own: I called Max.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “I’ll call Ellis,” Max said after he heard me out, “and tell him that as part of appraising the silent movie posters, you planned to talk to Zach Moore. As soon as you saw him talking to the mystery bidder, Andrew Bruen, you asked me to contact him. I’ll call you back as soon as I reach him.”

  “Thanks, Max,” I said, relieved to transfer the responsibility of calling in the news. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to Ellis.

  “Are you still in that neighborhood?” Max asked.

  “Yes, down the block. I’m watching them cart loads of firewood from somewhere in the back onto the front porch.”

  “You should leave,” Max said.

  “I want to see what happens.”

  “The police are going to come and talk to both men. Probably they’ll go inside. There will be nothing for you to see.”

  “Maybe Andrew will run,” I said. My throat closed for a moment. “Maybe he’s the killer.”

  “Another good reason for you to leave. Don’t put yourself in harm’s way, Josie.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “Call me as soon as you know something, okay?”

  He said he would, and I decided to stay but find a better, less conspicuous viewing spot. I was sensibly cautious and circumspect, but I was also relentlessly curious. I would never put myself in danger—just the opposite, in fact. I thought of myself as a safety queen. In this case, I couldn’t see how my hunkering down out of sight was risky. I began scoping out options. If I wanted to keep an eye on the action without getting noticed, I needed a different, more discreet vantage spot.

  With the snow pushed into high banks on both sides of the road, there was no room to maneuver a U-turn, so I drove forward into the convenience store, then drove back to the chicken place, choosing a parking slot with a direct sightline to the no-name road, and settled in to wait.

  I didn’t have long. Max called three minutes later.

  “I reached Ellis. He thanked you for the information and has asked to see us again. They’ve found something else, Josie. Something he wants to show you. He wouldn’t say what … but from something in his tone … well, I don’t like the sound of it.”

  * * *

  Max and I were in Ellis’s private office, seated at the round ash guest table, not in an interrogation room. He’d offered coffee and shaken hands. He was smiling. Max was adept at reading moods, so something must have happened in the twenty minutes it took me to get here, but I didn’t know what.

  “First, I’m pleased to report that you are no longer a person of interest in the murder of Henri Dubois.” Ellis slid a color photograph across the table. “Take a gander at this puppy.”

  The photo showed me and Henri standing side by side, our torsos touching, an intimate position, as false as it was suggestive. I was on the left wearing a green cotton sweater, a denim skirt, and my favorite green lizard cowboy boots. Henri wore a suit, blue pinstripes, with a blue oxford shirt and a maroon tie.

  “Someone’s good with Photoshop,” I said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was pretty damning evidence against me.”

  “My thought exactly,” Ellis said. “When Detective Brownley called that they’d found it, I was, as you might imagine, concerned.” He looked at Max. “That’s when I asked you and Josie to come in.” He smiled in my direction. “When I saw the photo, well, I was no longer the least bit concerned.”

  “Why not?” Max asked.

  “This photo of me was taken New Year’s Eve at the Diamond Cowboy Bar and Grill,” I explained. “I know because it was the first ti
me I wore that sweater, and the only time I’ve worn it with those boots.” I grinned. “Ellis took this shot. He and Zoë joined Ty and me to welcome in the new year with a raucous evening of burgers and line dancing. In the original photo I was standing next to Zoë. Someone replaced her with Henri.”

  “That’s reprehensible,” Max said, appalled. “Who had access to the photo?”

  “The world. Zoë posted it on Facebook.” I looked at Ellis. “Did you compare it to the original?”

  “Yup. It’s identical.”

  “Can you imagine wearing a pinstripe suit to the Diamond Cowboy?” I asked.

  “You’d be laughed out of the place,” Ellis said. He looked at Henri’s face. “Do you have any idea where his photo was taken?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Where did you find it?” Max asked.

  “Tucked in between two pages of a notebook in the same desk drawer where we found the love note. Someone did a one-stop delivery, dropping off that note and this photo.”

  “I’m no longer mad at you,” I said.

  “You’re not off the hook yet. Your fingerprints are all over the love note. Smudged, just the way they would be if you picked it up several times, folded it, and so on. So are Henri’s. No one else’s. Just you two.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s true.”

  Max held up his hand and leaned into my ear. “You have to tell me the truth, Josie. Now. How did your prints get on that note?”

  “I have no idea. None.”

  He nodded, then spoke to Ellis. “Josie has nothing to add to her previous statements on the subject.”

  “We need to account for the fingerprints,” Ellis said.

  “Whoever is trying to frame me put them there,” I said. “How could someone get my prints on that paper?”

  Ellis rubbed the side of his nose. “There are two options. Either the note was written on paper you’d touched or someone transferred your fingerprints. Have you ever touched paper like that note—white card stock?”