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The Objects of Her Affection

Page 26

by Sonya Cobb


  Sophie shook her head. She needed to steel herself, control her thoughts. She needed to do what was best for everyone. Think about someone else’s happiness for a change.

  Grief welled in her throat. It was ironic, really. Maeve hadn’t been responsible for Randall’s death, no matter how much she blamed herself. It was a structural flaw, a maintenance issue, something unconnected to her design. Sophie, on the other hand, had brought Brian crashing to the ground through genuine stupidity. If anyone deserved the full luxury of guilt, it was Sophie. She deserved to be exiled…and clearly, Brian didn’t want her back. She’d waited for him to make a move in her direction, to make some sign of warming or thawing…but there was none. He had set her free—or rather, she remained as free as she had always been.

  Sophie stood and walked into Carly’s building, giving the doorman an apologetic smile. Upstairs she got into bed and pulled the silky pillow over her head. Here, there were no small voices to listen for, no demands on her consciousness. Here, she could sleep for as long as she wanted. If only sleep would come.

  Nineteen

  Minimum two bedrooms, maximum three. Washer/Dryer. Air-conditioning. Philadelphia. Radius—twenty miles? Fifty? One hundred? Sophie clicked “100.” The rental site delivered several pages of results, but she didn’t look at them. She erased “Philadelphia” and entered “San Francisco.” She didn’t look at those results, either. She closed the browser. Reopened it. She read some headlines, checked her RSS feed, scrolled through some blogs. She felt time slipping comfortably down the Internet funnel.

  She latched on to a passing thought the way a drowning person grabs a branch: how was Brian filling his time, now that he couldn’t go in to the office or access his museum email? Was he looking for another job? Could he write articles from home, separated from his filing cabinets and books? Sophie had fully cooperated with the head of security, telling him everything (or almost everything) about the few times she’d had access to the objects. She’d assured him that Brian’s only real crime had been trusting his wife. She’d pleaded with the museum to let Brian keep his job, but his fate still hung in the balance. The Board of Trustees had to meet for a vote, and the FBI was still trying to recover the objects. That’s what people seemed to care about most—the objects.

  Sophie slumped in her chair, staring at the computer screen. Then she sat up and went to Yahoo’s home page.

  Hacking into Harry’s email turned out to be surprisingly easy. Resetting his password was a simple matter of finding his birth date and the name of his primary school. Both were available in public records, for a small fee. She was surprised to find that his account was still up and running, then figured the FBI must be monitoring his incoming mail. In any case, his inbox was a mess, which was good in a way: he’d kept every message ever sent to him. But he only had a few folders set up, and had neglected to sort most of his emails. Sophie idly clicked through them, scanning notices about antiques fairs, auctions, exhibitions. Mixed in with his business messages were hundreds of personal emails: notes about dinner plans, travel itineraries, terse conversations with his brother about Christmas. There were even a few messages from Sophie, from the early days of their friendship, before she’d decided to limit their communications to the prepaid phone. She opened a thread she’d started on the train home after their first lunch together:

  From: sophie@codemonkey.com

  Date: June 28, 2005

  To: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Subject: the spins

  Thanks again for lunch. And drinks. I caught my train; slightly worried I won’t get off at the right stop. Where do I live again?

  From: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Date: June 28, 2005

  To: sophie@codemonkey.com

  Subject: re: the spins

  I believe it’s called Philadelphia. Don’t worry; you’ll smell it.

  From: sophie@codemonkey.com

  Date: June 28, 2005

  To: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Subject: re: re: the spins

  Hey now.

  From: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Date: June 28, 2005

  To: sophie@codemonkey.com

  Subject: re: re: re: the spins

  Sorry! Kidding. Hope you make it home in one piece.

  From: sophie@codemonkey.com

  Date: June 28, 2005

  To: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Subject: re: re: re: re: the spins

  Thanks Harry. I love you. That’s the martini talking. My martini loves you.

  From: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Date: June 28, 2005

  To: sophie@codemonkey.com

  Subject: re: re: re: re: re: the spins

  My martini loves you too.

  Sophie sighed and went back to her search. There was a folder called “Clients,” with a few hundred messages in it. She typed “tazza” into the search box, but this yielded nothing. “Snuff” brought up twelve results, all unrelated to the box she’d brought to Harry. She tried “Jamnitzer.” This brought up one exchange, with a curator at the Met. Harry had asked for a photograph of the master’s mark, which the curator had provided. Sophie opened the attachment and saw a slightly blurry photograph of a lion’s head in a shield crowned by a W.

  She went into his Sent folder and scanned messages sent around the date Harry had made the Jamnitzer inquiry. There was a flurry of giddy exchanges with Jeffrey about their plans to move in together; a weekslong correspondence about a collection of spoons; a rather nasty note to a Dutch curator who had apparently asked him to bid on something at auction, then failed to come up with the funds to pay for it. There was also an apologetic email to someone named Mrs. Hathaway, thanking her for bringing her “very interesting” Coach watch to his attention, and informing her that due to extensive part replacements and regrettable problems with the condition, he would be unable to offer more than eight hundred dollars for the piece.

  Sophie frowned and went back to the Clients folder. Hadn’t she just seen something with the words “Coach watch” in the subject line? She located the message, which had been sent to Harry a week after his note to Mrs. Hathaway:

  From: hbergman@foxrothschild.com

  Date: September 8, 2005

  To: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Subject: Louis XIV Coach Watch

  Harry,

  Thanks again for bringing the watch by my office. It’s a magnificent piece. Per our conversation, I’m having my secretary courier a check to you today in the amount of $14K. Please return receipt by same courier. I’d also appreciate a copy of your dossier on the piece, for my insurance agent.

  Yours truly,

  Howard

  Harry. The scoundrel. Sophie quickly looked up Howard Bergman on the Fox Rothschild website; he was a partner specializing in mergers and acquisitions. There was nothing remotely nefarious about him; and anyway, the FBI had probably already paid him a visit.

  Sophie rubbed her eyes. This exercise wasn’t giving her much she could use. But the hospital website job had been put on hold for a few weeks, so there wasn’t anything to keep her from wandering as far down this rabbit hole as she could go, other than the nagging feeling that she shouldn’t be snooping in Harry’s private messages. Then again, Harry had broken into her house. Fair was fair.

  Sophie logged in to her calendar and searched for “NYC.” She wrote down the dates when she had delivered the snuffbox and the Irish setter, as well as the date Harry had driven to Philadelphia to pick up the tazza—just before her FBI interview. Then she returned to Harry’s Sent folder and started reading through all the emails he’d written after receiving the objects. The more she read, the more she began to understand about Harry’s business model.

  From: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Date: November 22, 2005

  To: annahoff
man@hotmail.com

  Subject: Water Pitcher

  Dear Ms. Hoffman,

  It was a great pleasure to meet you earlier this week. Thank you for sharing your family’s unusual water pitcher with me. While it is a fine tribute to late-nineteenth-century hammered silverwork, I’m afraid it is not an authentic Tiffany & Co. piece. My research shows several similar examples of pitchers created in the latter half of the twentieth century with fake Tiffany marks. This pitcher, unfortunately, shares many characteristics with those forgeries. My best guess is that it was made in China.

  I understand what a disappointment this must be for you; I encourage you to seek a second opinion to confirm my conclusions. In the meantime, I am acquainted with a decorator who happens to be looking for this type of silver for a project she’s working on. I would be happy to buy it from you, on her behalf, for $300.

  Thank you again for sharing your piece with me; I’m terribly sorry I didn’t have more felicitous news.

  Warm regards,

  Harry McGeorge II

  McGeorge & Fils, Antique Silver

  A quick search for “Water Pitcher” turned this up:

  From: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Date: November 22, 2005

  To: jjgorham@mcneil.com

  Subject: call me

  Screening your calls, darling? Call me back. I’ve turned up a Tiffany hammered water pitcher for you. Beautiful condition.

  H.

  He really was incorrigible. Sophie mulled over the paltry sums Harry had paid for her treasures, then quickly tamped those thoughts down. This was not the kind of revelation she was searching for.

  She clicked through email after email, scanning the text for anything remotely related to her pieces. She skipped ahead to the date in January when Harry had come to Philadelphia to pick up the tazza. There was one brief exchange:

  From: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Date: January 9, 2006

  To: sergei@secondsight.com

  Subject: meeting

  I’ve finally got my hands on something; I think he’ll be pleased. Any chance I can talk to him tomorrow or the day after?

  Harry

  From: sergei@secondsight.com

  Date: January 9, 2006

  To: harry_mcgeorge@yahoo.com

  Subject: re: meeting

  Tomorrow. 2 pm.

  S.

  Sophie squinted at the screen, then rechecked her calendar. The emails had been sent an hour and a half after Harry picked up the tazza in Philadelphia. What else could he possibly be talking about? She did a Whois search on the email address and came up with someone named Sergei Kumarin, living on the Upper East Side. She clicked over to Amtrak.com and bought a ticket to New York.

  Twenty

  Sergei Kumarin lived in the kind of building where a doorman had to announce you. “He doesn’t know me,” Sophie said, half hoping she’d be turned away. “We have a mutual friend.” But after a quick call the doorman gestured toward the elevator, and in a moment Sophie was standing outside of apartment 7B.

  “Hello?” she said, tapping lightly on the door, which stood slightly ajar. Inside, the living room was darkened by thick drapes and a cloud of cigarette smoke. A television flickered, the sound muted.

  “Yeah.” A large man entered the room, pulling an undershirt over his head, just clearing the cigarette in his mouth. A few long strands of hair lay across his mottled scalp, and his belly surged over the front of his pants. He was wearing slippers.

  “Sorry for barging in,” Sophie said, disoriented by the contrast between the apartment’s address and its occupant. “I’m Marianne.” She’d spent the whole morning trying to come up with a name that didn’t sound fake. Hearing it out loud, she decided she’d failed.

  Sergei beckoned, and she entered the apartment and stood uncertainly in front of the TV while he closed the apartment door, then turned and squinted at her. Sophie hugged her middle, wondering if the door was locked from the inside.

  “Tea?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  Sergei shuffled into a small kitchen. “Beer?” he said over his shoulder.

  “No.”

  He emerged with a can of Budweiser in his hand, then gestured toward a small table with two straight-backed chairs. Sophie sat down, and he lowered himself into the other chair with a groan and popped the top of the can open. “Oh wait,” he muttered, getting up to turn off the TV.

  “Harry McGeorge gave me your address. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Who are you looking to talk to?” Sergei sat down, lit another cigarette.

  “Um, you?”

  “Okay, but then who. I’m just the go-between.”

  Right. The go-between. The fence. Or if Harry was the fence, this was the subfence. One of what was probably a long, tangled string of unsavory characters involved in the dispersal of stolen goods. Sophie had seen Law and Order. “All right,” she began slowly. “Let’s say I have some silver. Sixteenth century, Dutch.” She paused. She had no idea how to ask this. “Can you point me toward someone who might be interested?” Sergei had lifted the beer can toward his mouth, but paused midway. “I need to talk to him. Or her. Well, I’m pretty sure it’s a him.”

  Sergei put the can down. “You mean like a former owner?”

  “No. Someone who collects. Someone who would want to buy it.”

  “In this world?”

  Sophie waved smoke away from her face. “What?”

  “Did you say Harry McGeorge sent you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seems like you should ask him.” Sergei leaned back in his chair, cigarette dangling. “That’s his line of work, ain’t it?”

  “But don’t you—don’t you work with Harry?”

  “Not like that, I don’t.”

  What had Harry’s email said? Something about good news, needing to talk to somebody about it. There hadn’t actually been any mention of the tazza. Sophie felt sheepish and disoriented, like the victim of a practical joke who hadn’t quite come up to speed. “Oh.”

  Sergei pointed his cigarette at her. “You’re here for the same reason the FBI was, ain’t ya.”

  Okay, so she wasn’t the only one who could hack into a Yahoo account.

  “I told them to get lost,” he said. “Goddamned government.”

  “I’m not from the government,” she offered.

  “I know.” Sergei drained his beer. “You’re Sophie.” He crumpled the can and got up for another. It seemed to take an eternity for him to shuffle to the kitchen, pull out a beer, and shuffle back to the table. Finally, after sitting and taking a long drink, he said, “You’re trying to figure out where Harry fenced your goods.”

  “Do you know?”

  “I told you, that ain’t my line of work. Harry came here for a different kind of service.”

  Sophie wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that was. “All right, well, sorry for wasting your time.”

  “They talked a lot about you.”

  “Who?”

  “Him and his dad.”

  “Harry’s dad? No. He died before I met Harry.”

  Sergei nodded, drank, then released a sonorous burp. “I put them in touch. I’m the go-between.”

  “You put Harry in touch…with his dead dad.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sophie thought about this a moment, then looked around the shabby, smoke-drenched apartment. No candles. No lamps draped with scarves, no crystal balls. Just a threadbare La-Z-Boy and stacks of newspapers. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I don’t exactly do it for fun. Harry Senior’s a mean son of a bitch. Makes his kid feel like shit. I keep telling Harry he should talk to some of his nicer relatives, but…” Sergei shrugged. “Fathers. Sons.”

  “Can I have one of those?�


  “Help yourself.”

  Sophie went to the refrigerator and took a Budweiser.

  “Why do you—they—talk about me?”

  “They talk business. Harry’s dad wants to make sure he’s running things right. It was his idea, grooming you. He loved the idea of a curator’s wife chiseling.”

  “Jesus.”

  Sergei was becoming more animated. “And anyway, Harry Junior really needed you. After his dad died everybody ditched him. His dad tried to teach him how to keep thieves in his pocket, but Harry was too greedy. He always underpaid. Nobody wanted to work with him.”

  “Except me.”

  Sergei took a deep drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in a beanbag-bottomed ashtray. “Except you. You were supposed to help him make things right with that collector.”

  “You know about him? The collector?”

  “Seems like Harry Senior was working for him before he died. The guy had a big appetite for stolen art. He paid up front for a job at the Cleveland museum—gave Harry Senior a shopping list. But the thieves fucked it up, didn’t get anything. The collector didn’t want his money back, though—he wanted the goods.” Sergei lit another cigarette. “He still wants the goods.”

  “So I gather.”

  “Harry Senior died right after. I guess the stress got him. He’s a very tightly wound son of a bitch. He won’t rest until Harry Junior makes things right with this collector. I guess he’s a good customer. Important to the business.”

  Sophie drank her beer, mulling it all over. What was Sergei’s angle in all this? Was he working for the collector, pushing Harry to deliver the “goods”?

  “Was it Harry Senior’s idea to blackmail me?” she asked.

 

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