Blood Rubies

by Jane K. Cleland

“How can I identify that person?”

  I laughed. “The irony of that question appeals to my sense of humor.”

  “I’m serious. I know that’s what we’ve been trying to learn this whole time, but that doesn’t make the question not worth asking again.”

  “Fair enough, but I still don’t know the answer.” I added sugar and a thimbleful of milk to the teapot and stirred. “What about the appraisal itself? Surely the client is named.”

  “Julie tells me they no longer keep hard copies of appraisal records. Everything is electronic.”

  “Makes sense. We do the same.”

  “What happens if your computer is stolen or lost?”

  “We’re networked, and everything is stored on an offsite server. In addition, everything is backed up once a day.”

  “At Marlborough Antiques, they’re just talking about going to a cloud system. You know how that works, right? You think you’re working on a computer, but you’re not—your files and everything are stored somewhere on the Internet, not on a physical computer. Right now, though, each person is responsible for backing up his or her own work.”

  “That’s crazy! I could never do that. People forget things. Computers crash. They get viruses. I’d never sleep, I’d be so worried.” I looked back toward the river. The bird was gone. The water was dark, more blue than green, and running fast. “Do they use a file-sharing site of some sort? Graphics files—like appraisals because they always include a bunch of photographs—are huge, too big for e-mail. We upload ours to a site, then give each client a unique password so he or she can access it.”

  “I’ll ask. What else?”

  I poured tea, watching the mahogany brew swirl around the cup. I felt a memory tickling the edge of my consciousness. I knew something that would help, but I couldn’t think of what it was. I looked around. The older woman was laughing, pressing her fingers into her cheeks, an expression of joyful shock on her face. Her companion was chuckling, looking pleased with himself, like he’d done a good job telling a joke. The two men had left. Jimmy was polishing wineglasses with a white cloth.

  “Any chance he used an old-style appointment book?” I asked, thinking that was a good question but not what I’d been trying to recall.

  “Yes. I have it with me. I’m hoping you’ll look at it.”

  “Of course. Does anything stick out?”

  “Not to me, but what do I know. What else?”

  I looked out the window again. Wispy dark clouds were blowing in from the east. “Can you tell if he called someone right after I left his office?”

  “We’re getting the phone logs now. The shop owner is cooperating, so we don’t need a subpoena. I should have them by the time I get back to Rocky Point.”

  “What about the stuff he was carrying in his pockets or in the car?” I knew Ellis wouldn’t tell me what they’d recovered unless I could help with it. He never gossiped.

  “We’re still cataloguing his personal effects.”

  “Oh, my God!” The memory I’d been trying to recapture landed with a thud. “Ellis, I just remembered something. Drake Milner backed everything up onto a flash drive. Did you find it?”

  “One. In a kitchen drawer. Nothing in his office. We checked it. It’s loaded. Forms, docs, photos, everything nicely labeled, but all dates are three months ago, or earlier.”

  “When I was with him, he saved a document, removed the flash drive, and dropped it in his shirt pocket.”

  Ellis paused. I could hear him breathing. “Thanks, Josie.” Another pause. “Any chance I can run this calendar by you as soon as I get back?”

  * * *

  Just before six, Zoë came running into the lounge. Ellis walked at a more leisurely pace, taking in the scene with cop’s eyes, assessing the faces and attitudes. He carried a tawny brown leather briefcase.

  Zoë swooped in and hugged me, then plunked down on the window seat. “Hey, cutie!” She swept aside her long black hair and patted my arm.

  Ellis greeted me and sat next to Zoë, across from me. Under the dim amber lighting, I could barely see his scar.

  Jimmy came over, and Zoë and I ordered watermelon martinis. Ellis opted for a Dewar’s on the rocks with a twist. I asked about Zoë’s kids and how her kitchen renovation was progressing. She asked about being on Ana’s TV pilot and Fabergé eggs and Hank. When Jimmy delivered the drinks, Ellis reached for his briefcase.

  “The lab hasn’t worked on the calendar yet,” Ellis explained, extracting a black leather day planner encased in a plastic evidence bag. “You can look all you want, but don’t touch. I’ll turn the pages for you. Zoë, would you move our drinks to that table? I don’t want to risk an accident.”

  Zoë transferred the drinks one at a time, then sat back to watch.

  “Why do you think he stayed with an old-fashioned calendar?” Ellis asked. “Everyone else at Marlborough uses an electronic one.”

  “Maybe to buy time to think. If your calendar is on your phone, people expect you to schedule appointments on the spot. If you use a paper diary of some sort, you can say you’ll need to check it and get back to them. I’ve been tempted to go back to the old way for just that reason.”

  “Why don’t you?” Zoë asked.

  I smiled. “I decided the benefits of the technology outweigh the disadvantages—and I’ve learned to be more assertive. If I’m not ready to schedule an appointment or if I don’t want to, I say so. Politely, tactfully, and directly.”

  “I’m impressed,” Zoë said.

  “Thanks. I only have so much time. I have to use it wisely.”

  Ellis took a brown leather pouch from his jacket pocket. He turned it upside down and jiggled it. Long-handled silver-colored tweezers fell onto the table. He snapped on plastic gloves, pulled the day planner from the evidence bag, and laid it on top of the plastic.

  “It goes month by month,” he said. “Where do you want to start? February? March?”

  “March. Milner told me he worked on the appraisal the week before I saw him.”

  Ellis turned the pages one at a time until he reached March. I leaned forward and began at the beginning of the month. Milner’s handwriting was as easy to read as print. He had two phone calls but no in-person appraisal appointments scheduled during the first week of the month. The phone calls listed a name, a phone number, and an object. The first object was a “kovsh b.” The second one was a “boar’s head c.”

  “I bet b stands for bowl and c for cup.”

  “Why?” Ellis asked. “Could it be, I don’t know, ‘box’ and ‘cabinet’?”

  “‘Kovsh’ is a boat-shaped vessel for serving punch or mead or the like. So ‘bowl’ is logical. A boar’s head could decorate anything, including a cabinet, I suppose. Or a set of china.” I grinned. “If we find his computer, we can check.” I continued reading. “Look.” I pointed to an entry on the Tuesday of the third week. It read: “F. e & d.” I raised my eyes. “That’s it. He appraised a Fabergé egg and dome.”

  “No name or phone number by that one,” Ellis said.

  “Someone wanted it very hush-hush.”

  “He had to have written the name somewhere.”

  “Maybe on the appraisal report.”

  Ellis sighed. “Which we don’t have.” He tapped the page with his tweezers. “We’ll need to call all these folks and ask why they were in touch with Milner.”

  “Some of them will lie because they want to keep the appraisal a secret.”

  “And others will lie because they don’t want to get involved in a police investigation. Still, we’ve got to make the calls.”

  “Want me to do it? I can call as an antiques expert asking if they have any additional questions about their objects, getting them to fill me in.”

  Ellis paused, thinking. “Let me run it by the DA, make sure it wouldn’t screw up evidence. Personally, I like the idea.”

  He slid the tweezers into their pouch, sealed the planner in a new evidence bag, and placed both items in his
briefcase. As soon as the table was clear, Zoë brought our drinks back.

  Ten minutes later, Ty walked in, and my heart skipped a beat as it always did when I saw him. He smiled at me, and I smiled back, warmed by his presence. He took my hand as he sat and leaned in toward me. He brushed his lips against mine, a kiss and a promise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I was en route to work the next morning, Saturday, tag sale day, when my phone vibrated. Wes had texted, “Urgent. Call me. Now.”

  I pulled off to the side, set my blinkers, and called.

  “All hell is breaking loose,” he said, skipping a greeting, like always.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The cops have crushed Stefan’s alibi!”

  “No way!”

  Wes chuckled. “Stefan only had a receipt for one hotel, a Holiday Inn in Binghamton, New York. He said he lost the other one. Yeah, right! Here’s the thing. He left Detroit on Sunday in a rental car at eight in the morning. He checked into the Holiday Inn at nine that night. That’s thirteen hours, give or take a few minutes. It’s an eight-and-a-half hour drive. Add a couple of hours for pit stops—call it eleven hours, max. The police have been asking him to account for the other two hours, but he refuses, saying that he got off the highway and wandered for a while on back roads.” Wes chucked again. “Wandered. Pa-leeze.”

  “Why are you laughing, Wes? On long drives, I sometimes take back roads. Highways can be boring.”

  “Do you really? I don’t. I’m a get-to-where-I’m-going-as-quickly-as-I-can sort of guy. Regardless, if you were being investigated about a murder, don’t you think you’d tell the cops where you went? Stefan says he doesn’t remember exactly where he ‘wandered’”—Wes spoke the word with an exaggerated wink-wink in his voice—“and he’s not going to try, since his wandering can’t possibly be related to Jason’s murder. What I want to know is why he’d stay in a hotel Monday night in the first place. He checked out of the Holiday Inn at nine Monday morning. It’s only a five-and-a-half-hour drive from Binghamton to Rocky Point. Why wouldn’t he just drive it on Monday? He’s not answering that question either.”

  “Can’t the police learn which hotel he stayed at by checking his credit card receipts?”

  “He said he paid cash. Yeah, right. He used a credit card at the Holiday Inn on Monday, so it’s logical to think he’d pay by credit card on Tuesday, right? Whatever … let’s say he paid by cash for some reason. Every hotel makes you give them a credit or debit card when you check in, even if you pay cash in advance. None of his cards shows any activity. Which means Stefan told a wonker. The police are trying to figure out why. That’s why I’m calling you. I know you’ve been working with the police. Any ideas?”

  “He did something en route he doesn’t want to talk about.”

  “Yeah, but what?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, wondering if Stefan could have stopped en route to have the egg replicated. I shook my head. Something like that took time and careful planning. There was some other reason why Stefan went off the grid.

  “If you figure it out, call me. Okay?”

  “I will. You, too.”

  “You got it. Catch ya later!”

  I eased back into traffic and drove slowly to work. As I headed east, the sun was blindingly bright, a good omen, I thought, that the day would be warm and smell of spring.

  * * *

  I placed the no-name glass decanter I was appraising on the table in front of me. The woman sitting on the other side was in her twenties with shoulder-length dirty blond hair and brown eyes.

  I was taking a stint in the free instant appraisal booth we ran each tag sale, and I was about to do one of the hardest things in the antiques appraisal business—burst someone’s bubble.

  “It’s not valuable, I’m afraid.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s been in my grandmother’s china cabinet my entire life.”

  “That makes it special to you, which is the most important thing of all.”

  “No, it’s not. Grandma said to sell it. That’s why I’m here.”

  She’d said her name was Donna, and she was sounding a little whiny. I felt bad for her, and for her grandmother. Lots of people thought their objects had way more value than they did, and hearing otherwise, some of them got whiny.

  “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this would only retail for about ten dollars.”

  “How come? It’s beautiful!”

  “First, the stopper is loose and features a pleated design. The decanter has a floral pattern. Put those facts together and you can tell the stopper isn’t the original.” I laid the decanter on its side. “Second, look at this seam. That tells us the decanter was produced from a mold.”

  “What a gyp.” She grabbed it by its neck, setting the stopper rattling, and stormed out.

  I wondered who she was mad at. Me? Or her grandmother?

  I was greeting an older man with a long white beard when Ellis entered the venue. I glanced at my phone. It read 10:12. He met my eyes and jerked his head sideways, toward the parking lot. I held up a finger. Give me a minute.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the man.

  “Take your time, young lady,” he said. “Everyone’s in a hurry these days but me.”

  “Thanks.” I stood and searched for Sasha. She was chatting with a customer near the art prints.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told him.

  “I’ll be here.”

  I thanked him, walked quickly toward Sasha. I caught her eye and beckoned her with waggling fingers. She said something to the customer and hurried in my direction, her brow wrinkled with worry.

  “Take over for me, okay? I need to step out.”

  She smiled, relieved that she wasn’t in trouble, although I never knew why she thought she might be. Sasha was diligent, careful, honest, and kind. Sasha never got in trouble.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Ellis was waiting for me outside, leaning against the building, his eyes closed, his face turned to the sun.

  “Hey, good-looking,” I said as I approached.

  He straightened up, opening his eyes and smiling. “My great-aunt used to sing that song all the time. Hearing those words brings back memories.”

  “Good ones?”

  “The best. Aunt Bea believed everything was possible. She ran a regional theater. That’s where I met my wife, in one of her shows.”

  “And to think I was just saying hey.”

  His smile grew. He reached into an inner pocket and brought out an unsealed standard number 10 envelope, looked at it, then handed it to me.

  “Regarding your offer to make the calls from Milner’s diary, the DA says thank you. We accept. I have a tech coming to set up a recording system. The calls ought to be made from here so if anyone has phone ID, it’s your number that shows, not a police department’s. We want all the calls recorded. Detective Brownley will listen in and be available should someone want to talk to a police official. Okay?”

  “Sure.” I opened the envelope. The first sheet was a typed listing of eight names and phone numbers, the March phone call entries from Drake Milner’s calendar. The second sheet was a letter on formal letterhead from Shirley Donovan, ADA, officially thanking me for my assistance while warning me not to say I was a police officer. I could say that the police asked me to help because of my antiques expertise. A paragraph included her recommended wording regarding the recording.

  I refolded the papers and slipped them back into the envelope. “Got it.”

  * * *

  The technician, a thin young man named Barry, with a scraggly mustache, sat in one of my guest chairs monitoring the recording device. Detective Claire Brownley sat next to Barry, a steno pad balanced on her knee. Both of them wore big black headphones. Barry kept his eyes on the display built into the front of the machine. Detective Brownley kept her eyes on me.

  I felt awkward, as if I were onstage. I swiveled toward my window, so I wo
uldn’t be distracted by them while I was on the phone.

  I started with the first name on the list, Marni Gersten, from Atlanta.

  “Hi,” I said when she answered. “My name is Josie Prescott from Prescott’s Antiques and Auctions in Rocky Point, New Hampshire. I’m hoping I can talk to you a little about a conversation I think you had with a man named Drake Milner from Marlborough Antiques in Boston. I’m trying to trace an antique.”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Milner appraised my kovsh bowl.”

  “Great. If it’s all right with you, I’m going to record this call for future reference.”

  “What future reference?” Ms. Gersten asked, sounding skeptical.

  “Research, primarily.”

  “I guess so,” she said, still skeptical.

  “Thanks. Did you hire him to conduct an appraisal of the bowl?”

  “Yes, and he did a wonderful job. Very thorough.”

  “That’s great to hear. What was the outcome?”

  “He tested the silver and all the rubies. There are nine of them.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “Mr. Milner thought it would sell at auction for as much as twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “That’s great! Has Mr. Milner appraised anything else for you?”

  “No.”

  “How about Marlborough Antiques?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just checking. Thanks so much. You’ve been very helpful.” I congratulated her on the bowl’s high value, thanked her again, and went on to the next call.

  Mel Smith’s phone went to voice mail. I left a message saying I was an antiques dealer who’d heard about his Russian boar’s head object and asking him to please call me as soon as he could.

  Brian Vasquez, from Boston, was as happy to tell me about his Imperial Russian silver and enamel desk clock as Ms. Gersten had been and was even less concerned that I was recording the call.

  “It’s a fabulous piece—I’m getting ready to sell it. It’s double signed, by both Fabergé in Cyrillic and by the work master, Perchin. Mr. Milner told me that’s how he dated it. It was made somewhere from 1860 to 1903, during the years Perchin was on the job.” He chuckled. “He thought it would sell for around forty thousand dollars. Can you believe it? Forty big ones.” He chuckled louder. “I found it at a yard sale.”