by Marc Strange
“Sprained. It’ll be okay. Would anyone like a menu?”
“Anyone hungry?” I ask.
“Not for bar food,” Moira says.
“It’s the same menu as the Palm Court,” I say, defending the Lord Douglas’s grub.
“I’ve eaten at the Palm Court. Your chef is far too fond of cumin.”
“No menu, thanks, Kyra,” I say. “Like your hair like that.”
“Most men do,” she says.
“Of course men like it,” Moira says. “It’s a hackamore.”
“What’s that?” Kyra asks.
“A bridle, reins, a harness. You’re wearing your own restraining device. Provides a good grip for dragging you back to the den.”
“We don’t have a den,” Kyra says.
Kyra retreats, Larry reseats, Moira has a taste of her gin and appears to approve of that at least.
“So, Moira,” Larry says, “tell Joe about the auction.”
“Make a note of this name,” she says. “Graydon Goulding. He’s an appraiser and auctioneer at Tuffleton’s Auction Gallery. You’ll want to talk to him.”
“About what?”
“About Moorcroft teapots and Jensen silver and walnut tables.”
“I don’t know much about antiques.”
“Of course you don’t, dear,” Moira says, “but Graydon Goulding does, and that’s why you should speak to him. He’s sold quite a few interesting pieces over the past few months — rare books, prints, Japanese and Chinese porcelain.”
“I take it those things are worth money.”
“Some of them are extremely valuable. I myself would have happily committed a small murder for a certain imperial jade necklace that went for over eighty thousand dollars. There was a Tiffany lamp that sold for thirty-two thousand. A very small Fragonard that brought a hundred and twenty thousand.”
“So far that’s over two hundred thousand dollars,” I say, proving that sometimes I can add more than two and two.
“Much more,” she says. “How about a million dollars or more in the past three months?”
“All that from the same source?”
“Bingo, big guy,” Larry says. “Take a guess. You being a detective and all.”
“Shaughnessy. Heritage House. There was a van picking up some paintings. She said they were going into storage.”
“Maybe till Thursday. Tuffleton’s is having another auction.”
“The preservation society is selling off their collection?”
“Not they, dear heart,” Moira says. “She. The chatelaine of the manor, the keeper of the keys, the mistress of the hoard.”
“The Ice Maiden,” Larry adds.
Moira waggles her empty glass at Kyra.
“Okay,” I say, “Grace Ingraham has been selling valuable antiques. They’re her personal items, right?”
“Well, now,” Moira says, “here we enter a muzzy area, don’t we, sweetie? What’s hers? What’s theirs? Who gets the money?”
“You think she’s stealing from the society?”
Larry finishes his beer just as Kyra arrives with Moira’s gin and tonic and a refill for my coffee.
“Put it all on my tab,” I say.
“Okay, Kyra?”
“The whole thing?” she says.
“Since they walked in the door.”
“In that case, make the next one a double Black Bush, straight up, water back,” Larry says.
Kyra’s look to me is just a flicker. My nod to her is just as fleeting. She goes to get the Irish whiskey.
“You’ve met the woman?” Moira asks.
“Yes, I have,” I say. “I didn’t charm her.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you? You’re much too, ah, rough-hewn, shall we say?”
“You didn’t drive up in a Bentley,” Larry says.
“There was only one man good enough for her,” Moira says. She gives her voice a melodramatic cadence. “The dear, dead, departed Parker Simon Prescott. The man whom she loved beyond all reason, the man to whom she has devoted the past twenty years of her life.”
“The man she killed her husband for,” Larry says.
“She what?” I say.
“I’m sure that’s just a scurrilous rumour,” Moira says, “but those are the best kind, aren’t they? The accepted version is, she left her husband, and he had the exquisite good manners to kill himself.”
Kyra unobtrusively slides a whiskey in front of Larry. He stares at it for a long moment. “Remember when this was the Press Club, Joe?” he says. “Before your time, mostly.”
“Hap Reynolds brought me in here a few times,” I say.
“Hap!” Moira says. “We had such a thing for a week and a half.”
“Grace Ingraham,” I say, hoping to keep the conversation on the main road, “she and Park Prescott had a thing?”
“Theirs was monumental, dear heart,” Moira says. “Hap and I had a fling, those two had a scandal. It was delicious. Older man, self-made, wealthy, quite presentable, a bit rough around the edges as attractive men often are —” she twinkles again “— but he knew how to use a fork, and best of all, he was available, a recent, very recent widower, fresh on the market.” She pauses to refresh herself. “She, considerably younger, married, unfortunately, but beautiful, if one likes willowy blondes with good bones and trim ankles. Personally, I can’t abide them, but no denying it, she was a Thoroughbred. Married to a CBC producer named Greg Ingraham, maker of earnest documentaries about totem poles and sockeye salmon.”
“Poor schnook never saw it coming,” Larry says. He still hasn’t touched the glass of whiskey.
“He was her starter husband,” Moira says. “He got her into show business circles, which she parlayed into the theatre set, the dress circle at the symphony, and invitations to gallery openings. Along the way she established herself on committees, fundraisers, benefit concerts. Didn’t take her long. She looked good, spoke well. She wasn’t born into money, but she carried herself like an aristo. And somewhere along the way, some black-tie affair to which she neglected to drag along hubby, she met Park Prescott and glimpsed the promised land.”
Larry picks up the whiskey glass and catches some light streaming in from the street-level window, a reflection from the glass-fronted building across the street refracted in the cut-glass base, dancing on the amber surface.
“He was doing a picture about a ghost town in the Cariboo,” Larry says. “Ingraham was. He got a prize for it. He told me.”
“She got the big prize,” Moira says. “Park was smitten with ‘Hello.’”
“He never did another thing after that,” Larry says. Then he nods, as if to the memory of his friend, and knocks back the Irish.
“Hanged himself,” Moira says. “A particularly elaborate gibbet, wasn’t it?”
“I’ve got to hit the head,” Larry says. He stands carefully and walks, too steadily, in the direction of the john.
“He has wife problems at home,” Moira says.
“He didn’t mention.”
“Not a divorce. Nothing like that. They just can’t stand each other. Have you ever been married, Mr. Grundy?”
“No, Ms. Eddowes. I’m what’s known as a confirmed bachelor.”
“Call me Moira, please.”
“Prescott and Ingraham were together for twenty years, you said?”
“They were together for fourteen years. And then, as you’ve probably learned by now, Park Prescott removed himself from society and went off to die alone in the woods. She maintained the facade that they were still a couple, but it was purely an act. By all accounts she never saw him again.”
“Odd thing for a man like that to do, isn’t it? Leave his entire operation in other people’s hands and become a hermit. You’d think he’d at least want those he loved by his side.”
“Who knows how people will react when they get the word that their time is up? Anyway, he didn’t think he was going to live that long. The doctors told him he had six months. He
got his affairs in order, said goodbye to the people he cared about, including the Ice Maiden, I’m sure, and went off to live in a cabin — a very nice cabin, I understand — to face the end looking at water and mountains. Then along comes this hippie with a bedroll and a guitar and asks if he can sleep on the beach for the night. Five years later Park’s still alive, doing yoga, eating roots and berries, learning bluegrass banjo. Whatever else that young man was, he was a true healer.”
“And Mrs. Ingraham? He continued to support her?”
“She was well taken care of. She had the directorship of the preservation society, she had a position in society — not the one she wanted, of course, but not bad.”
“She wanted to be Mrs. Parker Prescott?”
“Of course she did,” Larry says, slipping into his seat, “but she was still married, wasn’t she?” The front of his shirt is wet. “Could you get your friend with the hair to bring me a coffee? I just threw up twenty dollars’ worth of booze, sorry.”
“You need some food.”
“Not yet. My stomach’s fucked.”
“How about a glass of milk?” I suggest.
“Yeah, maybe.”
I get up and walk to the bar. “Glass of milk, Kyra.
I’ll take it.”
“He okay? He looked white when he walked by.”
“I don’t think he’s eaten today.”
“She’s right, you know.” Kyra hands me the milk. “That woman? About the sycamore?”
“Hackamore.”
“Whatever. Joyce loves to yank on this hair.”
I carry the milk back to the table. Larry is weeping. “Drink this,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he says, snuffling and slurping like a little boy.
I turn my shoulder to give him some privacy and face Moira, who doesn’t appear at all sympathetic. She pulls a wad of Kleenex from her beaded bag and tosses it in front of Larry. “Wipe your snot. Man your age should have learned how to drink.”
Larry wipes his nose and sips his milk.
“After Mrs. Ingraham’s husband died,” I say, “Prescott could have married her then.”
“It began as a grand affair,” Moira says. “Hard to sustain that kind of magic. They ran away to Paris. They ran away to Florence. They ran away to a private beach in the Bahamas. For a year and a half they flaunted and flouted and flew first class to all the very best bedrooms the world has to offer.”
“And Greg had to eat shit every day,” Larry says. He has a milk moustache. “Sitting in his shit-hole cubicle at the CBC while his wife rubbed his nose in it. One thing having your wife play around discreetly — fuck, at least you can look the other way. It’s something else when everybody in the fucking world knows you’re a cuckold. It finished Greg. He couldn’t stand it. He took himself out of the picture.”
“And so Grace and Park’s grand passionate affair ended on a sourish note,” Moira says. “There was an investigation. There was a period of mourning.”
“The bitch wore black for six months,” Larry mutters.
“And after a suitable stretch as a merry widow,” Moira says, “she expected to become Mrs. Park Prescott.”
“But she couldn’t drag the old boy to the altar,” Larry says. “Somewhere along the line he got wise.”
“And now she needs money,” I say. “She wasn’t provided for in the will.”
Larry grins. “He cut her out! Better late than never. He found out what she was.”
“What was she?” I ask.
“Conniving, opportunistic, cold-hearted, emasculating, gold-digging, social-climbing, back-stabbing…”
“Don’t leave out thieving,” Moira says.
chapter twenty-three
It’s viewing day at Tuffleton’s Auction Gallery. Five wide rooms of furniture, paintings, and collectibles, open for inspection to roving bands of bargain hunters, dealers, decorators, and collectors, all of them stalking the rooms with open catalogues, murmuring and making notes in the margins. In the cavernous backroom, the loading doors are open wide and a cube van is being relieved of a grand piano wrapped in protective blankets. The man dancing around the periphery of the operation fits Moira Eddowes’s description of Graydon Goulding: “He’s a wisp, but a pretty one.” A perfectly knotted half-Windsor matches the foulard puffing from his breast pocket. He wears a yellow waistcoat.
“Mr. Goulding?”
“Yes?”
“My name’s Joe Grundy. I believe Moira Eddowes called you?”
“Yes. Hello.”
“I don’t want to take you away from your duties. It looks busy today.”
“It’s always like this. Things are supposed to be in place for viewing day, but there are always last-minute arrivals, and space is at a premium.”
“I’m interested in some items that might have come from —”
“Shh,” he says, raising a manicured finger to his pursed lips, “let’s not mention any names out loud, shall we?” He leads me on a serpentine tour through roped-off neighbourhoods of gilt and veneer and ormolu and marquetry. The walls are occupied by portraits, landscapes, saints, and pagans, all in frames. He speaks in the cagey pitch of conspiracy.
“First, Mr. Grundy, I must assure you that Tuffleton’s is scrupulous about ownership, provenance, legitimacy. In fifty-four years we have had only a very few, inadvertent — and before my time, I might add — instances where we’ve received and/or sold goods whose ownership was called into question.”
“I’m not investigating the auction house, Mr. Goulding.”
“I understand that. I wanted to make our position on this very clear. Every item that a certain party has consigned to us comes with full documentation.”
“I’m just trying to get an idea of how much material from that certain party may have come through this place in, I don’t know, say the past two years.”
“Conservatively, I’d say over a million dollars’ worth of quality items.”
“And the ownership? Was it one person, or was it a society?”
“Both. That is to say, each piece bore the imprint of the, ah, certain society to which you allude, but the provenance showed that the items were, in fact, the personal property of the certain individual and had been on extended loan. And this was made very clear in the documentation — on extended loan to the society in question.”
“So the society in question returned the items to the certain individual who was then free to dispose of her personal property.”
He winces at my use of the gender-specific pronoun and looks around to make certain none of the murmuring foragers has overheard. “That’s correct,” he says, leading me into another room. This one is airier and has tea sets and upholstery. “The individual has decided to liquidate some of —” he checks behind him “— her collection, a substantial portion of her collection.”
“I realize, Mr. Goulding, your personal code won’t let you be indiscreet, but maybe you could give me a little hint about why the certain individual is doing this.”
“The way I understand it, the society we’ve been talking about hasn’t been properly funded for some time. Certain creditors, mortgagers, and the like have started calling in their markers, so to speak. Perhaps the individual in question is simply trying to keep the society solvent until certain issues are resolved.”
“I don’t suppose you know what those issues are?”
“The way I understand it, Mr. Grundy, is that when a certain other person’s claim on a, shall we say, high-profile estate went to probate court, all the assets were frozen. As a result, many of the groups that relied on that source are in serious financial straits.”
“I’ve been to their offices,” I say. “They don’t look like they’re hurting.”
“I imagine certain levels of management are secure.” He sniffs. “I hear that one of the senior executives recently purchased a forty-two-foot, ocean-going, ketchrigged motorsailer.”
“Nice boat.”
I have a sudden image of
another boat. Grundy, master sleuth, has remembered something he’s been staring at for years. I even remember her name: Emily Blue.
There’s a pay phone in Tuffleton’s foyer, and it’s simpler to dig for coins than to fumble with my cell phone.
Gritch answers. “What’s up?”
I check my watch. It’s almost five o’clock. “When do the Mormons get there?”
“They’ll be here at six,” Gritch says.
“Good. Can you camp out until I get back?”
“Sure. Where are you going?”
“Arnie’s estranged wife — what’s her name? Lloyd’s sister-in-law.”
“Adele.”
“Adele. Right. You have an address there?”
“Rachel’s got everything in stacks and folders. She’s working on a system. If I touch it, she says she’ll kill me. Somewhere in Kitsilano. You’re not going there?”
“I might.”
“What for?”
“I had a thought.”
“About Arnie?”
“It’s just a thought.”
“Call Weed.”
“I will if anything starts to add up. Listen, damn, do me a favour. Call Randall Poy. I was supposed to drop off some cash and I got turned around doing this other stuff. Just tell him I’ll be in tomorrow for sure.”
“He loves that kind of talk.”
“I know, but tell him I’d appreciate it. As a personal favour.”
“I’m on it,” he says. “Call Weed.”
I don’t call Weed. By a process of convoluted reasoning and rationalization, I half convince myself that I’m merely lending a hand to an ongoing investigation by dropping in on an old acquaintance who I think might be able to point me in the right direction. I don’t bother taking it any farther than that since it will inevitably lead me back to the obvious: I should call Weed. Arnie McKellar’s estranged wife lives in Kitsilano, over the Burrard Bridge, ten minutes from downtown. She has a dog.
“He won’t bite.”
“Hi, Adele. Joe Grundy, from the hotel.”
“Of course, Mr. Grundy. Henry! Settle down.”
“Could I talk to you for a minute?”
“He’s all upset. We’ve had policemen in and out. I had to lock him up.”
I hold out my hand for Henry to sniff. He doesn’t bite it, I’ll give him that.
