Antiques to Die For

by Jane K. Cleland

  I was sorry I asked.

  Still following Griff, I pulled into the Rocky Point police station lot and parked. The station house was designed to match the prevailing style in the affluent New Hampshire seacoast town. It looked more like a cottage than a police station with shingles weathered to a soft dove gray and the trim painted Colonial blue.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Sure.”

  I nodded, speculating that his dismissive tone reflected a combination of wishful thinking and denial, murmured something empathetic, and watched as he stepped out of the car.

  Officer Griffin approached, and told me, “You, too. If you don’t mind.”

  “Me?” I asked, surprised.

  “You knew her, right? Rosalie Chaffee?”

  “Yes.”

  Griff nodded. “Come on, then.”

  Tendrils of anxiety rippled up my back, then down again. I knew nothing about Rosalie’s death, but I knew things that I didn’t want to talk about, including secrets she’d shared in private conversations. My experiences with the police didn’t inspire optimism. Interviews were routinely more intrusive than expected and invariably led to an unwarranted veneer of suspicion.

  Feeling powerless and fussy, like a child being sent to the principal’s office for an infraction she didn’t commit, I followed the two men inside.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  wondered if Ty would question me himself. Ty Alverez was Rocky Point’s police chief and my boyfriend. At least he was the police chief for now.

  He’d had an interview ten days ago for a new job, a big one—running the terrorism alert system for northern New England. Homeland Security was setting up a system of early alerts and first responders, and in our area he’d be top dog. I thought there was a good chance that he’d get the offer, and if he did, I thought he’d take it. I didn’t know how I felt about that. The job would take him away a lot, to D.C. and to various spots in the three states he’d oversee: New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.

  I wondered where Ty was now. His car—his vehicle, I corrected myself with a small, private smile, remembering a shared joke about what I was to call his jumbo SUV—wasn’t in the lot.

  “Follow me,” Griff said to Gerry. To me he added, “Have a seat. Someone will be with you in a minute.”

  “I’ll see you later,” I called to Gerry as Griff led him down the corridor.

  I could guess where Griff was taking him. Room Two, a dismal interrogation room with a cage in the corner for, as Ty put it, unruly guests, was down that hallway. I knew the room—in the past, I’d been the one interviewed there.

  I didn’t feel like sitting, so I wandered over to the bulletin board and began scanning the notices and warnings. A few minutes later, a female officer I’d met briefly at the annual Rocky Point Police Christmas party, Officer Claire Brownley, came into the vestibule from the other side of the building and greeted me.

  “Josie Prescott, right?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’m Officer Brownley. We met last December. Thanks for coming in. Follow me, please.”

  She led the way to a small, windowless room. There was a shiny gold numeral one on the door. Inside, I spotted a human-sized cage, similar to the one in Room Two, a large wooden table in the center, and six metal chairs.

  Officer Brownley gestured that I should sit, and I chose a chair at the far end with the cage out of sight in back of me. She sat on my left and placed a flip-up notebook on the table, squared up its bottom edge, and smiled at me.

  “This shouldn’t take long. I understand you knew Ms. Chaffee.”

  Officer Brownley was about my age and looked Irish with cornflower blue eyes, black hair, and skin so white it looked bleached.

  “That’s right,” I acknowledged.

  “Did you know her well?”

  “Pretty well. We were friends.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Officer Brownley made a note and nodded. “We’ll come back to that. First, tell me about her.”

  “I don’t know,” I floundered. “She was nice.”

  “In what way?”

  I paused, trying to think how to describe her. “Rosalie was fun to be around. She had a bubbly, can-do personality. She worked hard, both on her Ph.D. and on writing Mr. Fine’s biography. Plus, she was raising her kid sister on her own, yet she always seemed to have something upbeat to say.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “Through work. Gerry Fine,” I explained, nodding toward the distant Room Two where I’d assumed Griff had taken him, “and his wife, Edie, bought several antiques from me. Gerry asked me to help install the paintings and place the decorative items.” I shrugged. “I’ve been in the Heyer’s offices several times over the last year or so. Rosalie was in and out a lot—never for long, half an hour here, twenty minutes there, that sort of thing. We hit it off right away.” I closed my eyes for a moment, as a jolt of sadness jabbed at me.

  “Let me get the picture right. When you were at Heyer’s, you were in Rosalie’s office working?”

  “She doesn’t—didn’t—have a real office,” I replied, correcting myself. I paused and swallowed to control my tears. I was determined not to cry. “She had a desk in an old storage closet off of Tricia’s little office. Tricia is Gerry’s assistant.”

  “And you were there installing paintings in Mr. Fine’s office?”

  “Yes, and in Ned’s office.”

  Officer Brownley made a note. “Who’s Ned?”

  “Ned Anderson, the CFO. Chief financial officer.”

  She nodded. “Back to Ms. Chaffee. You got to know her at Heyer’s?”

  “We’d chat while I worked, if she was there. She’s really sweet.” I felt a catch in my throat as I realized what I’d said. “Was. She was sweet.”

  Officer Brownley nodded again and wrote something down. “Did you know any of her other friends or colleagues?”

  “Some.”

  “Who?”

  I told her about Rosalie’s ex-boyfriend, Paul Greeley, and a snob named Cooper Bennington. Paul was Rosalie’s office mate at Hitchens College, the small, elite private college where Rosalie had almost completed the requirements to earn her Ph.D., and where Cooper was the assistant chair of the department.

  When Officer Brownley prodded me for other names, I mentioned a couple of other people that I’d met in passing. I closed my eyes for a moment, wishing the memories of fun times weren’t quite so vivid.

  Paige. At her age, how can she possibly cope with such a loss? I wondered, agonized at the thought. “Do you know where Paige, Rosalie’s sister, is?” I asked, opening my eyes.

  “No, why?”

  “She’s just a kid, you know?”

  Officer Brownley nodded. “I don’t know exactly where she is, but I know she’s with some family friends.”

  I nodded, but didn’t speak.

  Officer Brownley cleared her throat. “So . . . you said Rosalie and Paul had dated?”

  “Yeah. They broke up a few months ago.”

  “When?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. Fall sometime.”

  “Why?”

  Something my lawyer, Max, told me just before my first formal interview with the police in a murder case a couple of years back came to me. “Don’t volunteer information,” Max had directed. Plus, I hated the thought of stating something as fact that I didn’t 100 percent know to be true. Rosalie had confided that Paul had become possessive, but she never told me that his jealousy was why she broke up with him. Recalling his flirtatious nature, it was easy to imagine alternative reasons—maybe he’d been two-timing her and she caught him. Maybe he’d broken up with her and to save face, she’d lied and said that it was she who’d ended their relationship.

  “Josie?”

  I met Officer Brownley’s curious eyes with bland insouciance. “I don’t know.”

  “Some memory came to you
just then. What was it?” she pressed.

  I shook my head. “Just recalling some of the good times. Nothing relevant.”

  “How’d Paul take it? The breakup, I mean.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Really? Rosalie never said?”

  “No.”

  She paused for a moment, her head tilted, maybe considering whether she believed me or not. “Was she dating anyone else? Cooper Bennington, for instance?”

  “No,” I replied disdainfully. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever, under any circumstances, no matter how rich he might be, dating

  Cooper Bennington. Privately, I thought of him as Cooper the Condescending.

  “Did he ask and she refused?”

  “Not that she ever told me.”

  “You don’t like him,” she remarked.

  I shrugged. “Cooper—well, Cooper’s one of a kind.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s a little full of himself, that’s all.”

  Officer Brownley nodded and wrote a note in her book and turned the page. “What did Rosalie think of him?”

  Don’t volunteer information, I reminded myself. But maybe it’s relevant. “She didn’t like him.”

  “Why?”

  “Professional jealousy.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know much about it, but from what Rosalie told me, her research was generating a lot of interest. She’d been invited to present a paper at some conference this winter, and Cooper was pretty resentful about it.”

  “How do you know?”

  I shrugged. “Anyone within a mile or so would have known,” I said, remembering the scene.

  Cooper was about my age and he wore his dark hair moussed back in a smooth, carefully coiffed wave. His brown eyes were set far back under heavy brows, and he always looked like he needed a shave.

  Rosalie had invited me to join her and a few colleagues one Friday in October at Connolly’s Pub. “It’s good for us to have civilians around,” she said, laughing. “Otherwise we take ourselves too seriously.”

  “When is your presentation slot?” Paul had asked midway through the evening, his eyes drawing Rosalie in.

  “Where are you going?” Cooper demanded, obviously annoyed that he didn’t know that Rosalie had plans to be absent.

  “I’ve been asked to deliver a paper at February’s symposium.”

  Cooper’s eyes narrowed. “On what?”

  “My usual. Historical communications.”

  “We all specialize in historical communications. What’s the title?”

  “ ‘How Communication Affects Community Relations During Exploration,’ ” she stated, then smiled at him with specious interest. “You submitted a proposal, too, didn’t you, Cooper? What was your title?”

  Cooper finished his beer and smacked his mug on the table. “Derivative topics work well in small symposia—it allows the organizers to develop a coherent theme,” he said as he slid out of the booth. “See ya all on Monday.”

  Officer Brownley nodded, acknowledging the point of the story. “Do you have any other examples?”

  “Same sort of interaction over and over again. It was almost as if they took pleasure in needling one another.” I smiled. “Cooper once told her she needed approval for something or other, I don’t recall what, saying, ‘After all, I am the assistant chair of the department.’ When he was out of earshot, she snorted and mocked him. ‘You need my approval, because I’m the chief cook and bottle washer,’ ” I mimicked, talking through my nose as Rosalie had done.

  She nodded and wrote something in her notebook. “What do you know about her family life?” she asked, changing the subject.

  I winced and looked away. Every time I thought of Paige’s loss, some small part deep inside of me cringed. So many bits of me had shrunk and curled and died after my mother’s death. I’d only been about a year older than Paige was now when I lost my mother to a ghastly cancer death and my life changed forever. Remembering the loss hurt like a bad sunburn, except inside out. I was afraid for Paige. “She lived with her kid sister, Paige,” I said. “She’s in middle school.”

  “Just the two of them?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “What’s she like? Paige?” Officer Brownley asked, recalling me to the present.

  “Funny. Smart. She listens a lot. She’s a good athlete. She likes ballet.” I shrugged.

  She nodded. “You said you saw Ms. Chaffee yesterday?”

  I shifted in my chair and brushed back some hair. “That’s right. We went to lunch.” I shrugged. “We had a good time.”

  “When and where did you go?

  “About one. Murray’s.”

  “In Portsmouth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When was lunch over?”

  I thought back. “About two-thirty.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing special.”

  “Like what?”

  “We talked about her sister’s dancing and how she’s pretty serious about it. How Rosalie liked her job but couldn’t wait to finish her dissertation and get her Ph.D. How Portsmouth is different from New York City—I used to live there and she’s never been. We talked about antiques—how I appraise them and she collects artichokes.” I shrugged again. “Like I said, nothing special.”

  “Artichokes?” Officer Brownley asked, uncertain she’d heard me right.

  I smiled. “Artichokes are actually a pretty popular collectible.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “People collect all sorts of things for all sorts of different reasons. But there’s a longstanding tradition of integrating vegetables and fruit into designs—textiles, architecture, paintings, sculpture, and so on.”

  “Still . . . artichokes?” She raised a brow, which I took as a sign of good-natured incredulity.

  I smiled again and nodded. “In ancient Greece, they were considered to be an aphrodisiac.”

  She shook her head, part amazed and part intrigued. “An aphrodisiac,” she repeated. “What else is popular?”

  “Well, there are trends, of course,” I replied, enjoying her reaction. “But it’s safe to say that pineapples are pretty consistently in vogue. They were an expensive delicacy in Colonial times, so any hostess who served them to her guests, well, to put it simply, she was putting on the dog. You see pineapples all over—there are renditions in pottery and porcelain, pineapple-shaped door knockers, fence and molding ornamentation, everything. Corn’s big too—it indicates a bountiful harvest. And grapes—grapes represent friendship and conviviality.”

  “Amazing,” Officer Brownley said, shaking her head “So, back to your lunch with Ms. Chaffee . . . What else did you talk about?”

  I thought back. “We talked about what we were going to do over the weekend. She was taking Paige to Boston to go to the Museum of Fine Arts. She asked if I wanted to join them, maybe stay for dinner afterward.”

  “What did you say to that?”

  “I told her I’d love to—but couldn’t. My company runs tag sales on Saturdays. Pretty much, I’ve got to be on site.”

  Officer Brownley nodded again and wrote a couple of words in her notebook. She flipped the page and looked up, her guileless blue eyes meeting mine. “Until we know more,” she said, “we’re treating her death as suspicious. So, do you know if she had any arguments with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “How about business issues?”

  “Like what?”

  “Does she owe anyone money?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” She wrote a few words, and as she did, I asked, “You’re saying that she was murdered, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. These questions are just routine.” She paused to look at me. “Any situations at all you’re aware of that could have got her in trouble?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Never gossip, my father warned me long ago, when I was about Paige’s age and had come home with a t
ale of seventh-grade deception and betrayal. Don’t spread it and don’t listen to it, either, he said. Gossip will always come back at you sideways and bite you in the butt. My mother added, There’s another reason to stay quiet, Josie—gossip hurts. I took a deep breath, acutely aware that Officer Brownley was waiting for my response. But I still couldn’t decide what to do.

  When I worked for Frisco’s, the famous auction house in New York City, after I’d blown the whistle on my boss’s price-fixing scheme, some of my so-called friends had used gossip in its most diabolical form as a weapon against me. They combined innuendo with shunning, and I’d found it nearly impossible to bear. To this day I used my father’s final admonition on the subject as my guiding principle: When in doubt, stay quiet.

  “Josie?” Officer Brownley prompted, wiggling her fingers to encourage me to speak.

  She didn’t look angry, and I felt relieved.

  “She had a secret admirer,” I said, looking down.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone was sending her flowers and stuff, signing the cards ‘Secret Admirer.’ ”

  “How do you know?”

  “She got a bouquet last week at Heyer’s, fabulous red roses. I was there. She threw the card away.”

  “Were the flowers delivered directly?”

  “No. Una, the receptionist, signed for them, I think. At least she brought them in to Rosalie.”

  “Why were they sent to her at Heyer’s?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She wasn’t there much, was she?”

  “No. She spent most of her time at Hitchens. She only came to Heyer’s to interview Gerry or to go through business documents that needed to be kept in the building.”

  “She was writing a book for Heyer’s?”

  I tried to keep from smirking. “She was ghostwriting Gerry’s autobiography.”

  “He’s only about forty, right? Isn’t it unusual for someone that age to write an autobiography?”

  I shrugged. “I suspect that Gerry thinks people who aspire to business success would enjoy reading about the path he took.”

  “Would they?”

  “God, no.”

  Officer Brownley smiled appreciatively, but didn’t comment. “Back to the flowers,” she said. “You’re a hundred percent sure that neither Rosalie nor Una gave you any hint about who sent them?”