He put the carving back into the case, closed the cover, and handed the container to his valet, who carried it from the room. Ruskin lowered his athletic body into the swivel chair, leaned his elbows on the desktop and tented his fingers.
“The ad was placed by something called Elmer’s Workshop. No email address. Orders went through PayPal. The ad listed a post office box in the town of Harwich, Massachusetts where, coincidentally, Crowell lived and worked.”
“Any idea who rents the P.O. Box?”
“No. It’s since been closed.”
“Any chance the reproduction was made before the fire?”
“The records at the New York and Chinese operations show that the reproduction was made after the fire, indicating that the original survived the blaze.”
“What would you like me to do, Mr. Ruskin?”
“I believe finding the source of the fake will lead you to my property. You may have some contacts locally. Having city detectives poking around would attract unwanted attention. You understand the need to be discreet, of course.”
The job seemed like an uncomplicated one, except for the Orloff angle. The charming old bandit had left suicides, divorces, and bankruptcies in the wake of his stealing spree. And his greedy fingers were still reaching from the grave. Ruskin was unsavory, but he wouldn’t be the first client of dubious character that I’d worked for. Any doubts I might have entertained went up in smoke when Bridget handed me a check made out in an amount triple what I would have charged.
I rubbed the check lightly between my thumb and forefinger. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good,” Ruskin said. “Let me know as soon as you hear something.”
He rose from his chair and, without another word, headed for the door.
Hiring interview was over.
Seconds after Ruskin left the room, the old gray man showed up and pushed the wall button. As the unicorn tapestry slid across the window, he handed me a cardboard box.
“Mr. Ruskin thought this might assist you in your work,” he said. “He wants it returned when you are through. It is not to be taken from its protective container.”
He led us back the way we came. We stepped onto the porch and the door clicked shut behind us.
“Was that for real?” I asked, taking a breath of fresh air. “That stuff with the allergies?”
“Mr. Ruskin could be a hypochondriac, I suppose, but he’s gone through a lot of unnecessary trouble and expense modifying this house if he’s simply imagining his allergies. All his food is prepared in accordance with his allergy issues. The butler is a bit of a gossip. He told me Ruskin is allergic to everything you can think of.”
“Does he ever leave the house?”
“Not very often, the butler says; only for urgent matters, and when he does he wears a hazmat suit. He usually goes out only at night.”
I set the cardboard box down on the porch and peeled off the sealing tape. Then I lifted out the transparent plastic container that held the reproduction decoy Ruskin had shown me. The lid was secured with a padlock.
I jiggled the lock. “Ruskin is very protective of his property.”
“Mr. Ruskin is deathly afraid of contaminated things or people coming into the main house. When it comes back this box will go through a clean room where it will be wiped down and sterilized. Anyone coming into the living quarters from the outside has to wear a throw-away suit.”
“Like the valet?”
“Yes. His name is Dudley. That’s all I know.”
I put the bird container into the cardboard box and Bridget gave me a ride back to the marina.
There wasn’t much small talk. I was thinking about Ruskin’s strange request. She was probably mind-counting her retainer. She dropped me off in the parking lot. When I got out of the car, she handed me a brown, eight-by-ten envelope.
“This report was prepared by our staff investigators. I’ll call you at some point to see how things are going. Mr. Ruskin’s phone number is inside. He has asked that you contact him directly as the investigation moves along. I’ll be in touch.”
She put the car into gear and left me standing at about the same spot she stopped my trek to Trader Ed’s. This time I made it all the way to a bar stool. My personal alcohol meter was on empty, but I decided to stay sober. Sipping on a club soda with cranberry juice and lime, I went through the papers inside the envelope Bridget had given me.
I skimmed a history of the Crowell decoys and read that his workshop was still standing. It had been moved from the original site to the property of the Harwich Historical Society at Brooks Academy, which was a short drive from where I was sitting.
Seemed like a logical place to start. I tucked the papers back into the envelope, slid off the bar stool and headed for my pickup truck with the cardboard box tucked under my arm.
If you looked at a map of Cape Cod you’d see that the town of Harwich is near where the elbow would be on the peninsula, which curls out into the Atlantic like a bent arm. Harwich is an old seafaring town with Nantucket Sound at its doorstep, so it’s no surprise that it once had a school of navigation.
The school was housed in a graceful, 19th century Greek-revival building named Brooks Academy that had been turned into a museum run by the Harwich Historical Society. I parked behind the academy and walked across the parking lot to a low shingled building.
Hanging over a sliding barn door was a black quarter board with the words “A. E. Crowell, Bird Carvings” in white letters. On a shelf above the door to the shop was a carving of a Canada goose. The workshop was closed, but a pleasant, middle-aged woman working in the museum opened it up for me. She accidentally set off an alarm and had to shut it off. I stepped through the entrance to the workshop and into a room with wall displays that told about Crowell and his work.
I tossed a couple of bills into the donation box and said I carved birds for a hobby. I jokingly asked if the Canada goose was a Crowell. She laughed. “It wouldn’t be out there if it were.”
The museum had a few Crowell decoys in its collection, she said, but nothing like the carvings that were bringing a million dollars.
The shop contained a workbench, wood-working tools, a pot-bellied stove, and what looked like an antique sander and band saw. A half-dozen miniature bird models with minimalist details sat on a shelf.
A carving on a work bench caught my eye. It looked identical to the fake bird sitting in the box on the front seat of my truck. I asked where it came from.
“A bird carver named Mike Murphy donated the reproduction. We had it in the museum where it would be more secure, but since it’s only a reproduction someone suggested we put it out here. As you may have noticed, we have a burglar alarm in the barn, but there’s nothing in the workshop that’s really valuable. Even the tools are borrowed.”
I thanked her, put another couple of bills in the donation box and walked back to my truck. I leafed through the folder Bridget had given me and re-read the investigation report where they interviewed someone named Mike Murphy.
A guy with the same name had been the caretaker of the Orloff mansion. He told the investigators he had seen the merganser in Orloff’s study. The bird was there when the marshals sealed the place. He assumed it had been burned in the fire. He couldn’t say for sure because he got to the fire after the house had burned down. Someone at the fire department had called him.
The investigators left it at that. I might have done the same thing, except for Murphy’s donation to the historical society. It suggested that he had more than a casual interest in the preening merganser, fake or not. And I wanted to know why.
Murphy lived in a one-story ranch house in a working-class neighborhood that was probably never fashionable, nor ever would be. I parked in the driveway behind a beige Toyota Camry and knocked on the front door. The stocky man who answered the door stared at me with inquisitive blue eyes.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“My name is Socarides.” I pointed to the Th
alassa logo on my blue polo shirt. “I run a charter boat out of Hyannis. I’m also an ex-Boston cop and I pick up a few bucks on the side as a private investigator for insurance companies. I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about Viktor Orloff.”
He gave a weary shake of his head. “Orloff is the gift that keeps on giving. Wish I never heard of the guy.”
“From what I know of Orloff, you have a lot of company.”
Murphy grinned. He had a wide jaw cradling a mouth filled with white even teeth.
“Come on in,” he said with a sigh.
Before I accepted his invitation I went to the truck and got the cardboard box. He gave the carton a curious glance, then ushered me into a living room paneled in knotty pine. He shooed away a long gray-haired cat from a wood-framed chair and told me to take a seat.
He sat on a sofa, picked the cat up and stroked its head.
“This is Gus,” he said. “Gotta keep him inside because coyotes come through the yard once in a while, but he doesn’t seem to mind being a house cat.”
Gus looked as if he didn’t mind anything. I glanced around the living room. There was art on every wall, most of it prints of waterfowl. Wooden decoys were scattered on shelves and tables around the room.
“Quite the collection,” I said.
“Thanks,” Murphy said. Then he crossed his arms and gazed at me. “How can I help you?”
“My client is a rich guy named Ruskin. He bought a Crowell decoy called the preening merganser from Orloff, and paid a lot of money for it, but the law took your former boss off to the clink before he could make good. Then Orloff died in prison and his house burned down, along with the decoy.”
Murphy nodded. “I already talked to the cops. What does your client want to know that isn’t in the record?”
“He thinks maybe the merganser didn’t burn up.”
Murphy scoffed. “That’s because he didn’t see the fire.”
“You did?” I remembered from the file that Murphy told the interviewer he lost his job when Orloff was arrested and hadn’t been back to the house since it was sealed.
“I didn’t see the actual fire,” he said, catching himself. “I saw the TV stuff and came by the house later. It went up quick, like it had been set.”
“The investigation didn’t say anything about arson.”
“A guy like Orloff would know people who could do a smart job. Everything had been reduced to cinders. Everything. I don’t know where Ruskin would get the idea that the bird wasn’t burned up.”
“From this.” I opened the carton, extracted the plastic case, and set it on the coffee table. “Made in China. Ruskin saw an ad in a magazine and ordered this Crowell reproduction.”
“Chinese are pretty clever at copying stuff,” he said.
“Ruskin says a copy this good could only have been made from the original. Which means the authentic Crowell didn’t burn up.”
“Orloff could have had the fake made before the real bird got burned.”
“That’s not what the record shows. The repro was made after the house fire.”
He shrugged. “Can I take a look?”
I handed him the encased bird model. He ran his fingers over the plastic surface of the box.
“Where did you get this?”
“Probably the same place you got the one you gave to the museum.”
“You stopped by the museum?”
I pointed to a photo of the Crowell workshop that hung over the fireplace mantle.
“They moved the decoy to the woodworking barn,” I said.
His hand stopped stroking the box. “No kidding. Why did they do that?” He sounded almost startled.
“Thought it would add to the workshop’s authenticity. The lady at the museum said you were a bird carver.”
“I carved most of the birds in the house, but I’m no Elmer Crowell. I’ve taken a few courses and have the tools.”
“That makes you an expert compared to me. How does the mail order repro stack up against the original?”
“Technically, it’s very good, but it doesn’t have the soul you’d see in a Crowell. I figured I’d never own a real one, so I bought the reproduction. I must have seen the same ad as Ruskin. I ordered one just to see what they’d done.”
He put the box down on the coffee table, which is when I noticed the blurry blue tattoo on his forearm. I could still make out the eagle, globe, and anchor of the Marine insignia. That explained the military buzz cut of his white hair.
“Semper fi,” I said, and pushed my sleeve up to show him a smaller version of the EGA on the top of my arm near the shoulder.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Where’d you serve?”
“Up by the border mostly. You?”
“I spent a lot of time around Pleiku. Got a Purple Heart. What about you?”
I shook my head. “Only wounds I got were psychological. Worst one was when a village got shelled after I told everyone they were safe. Now I think real hard before I make a promise.”
A knowing smile came to his lips. “Sometimes you don’t see the forest for the trees.”
Murphy seemed more relaxed. He told me that after the Marines he had married and gone into the postal service like a lot of vets, retired early after his wife got a bad disease that eventually killed her, and started a small company keeping an eye on summer houses when their owners weren’t around. That’s how he met Orloff, and went to work for him as a full-time caretaker until the time his boss got arrested.
“Did he cheat you?” I asked.
“He owed me a month’s salary. They say he only went after big accounts. But he stiffed little guys like me. He even cheated a fund for handicapped kids that didn’t know he was handling its money. He was like somebody’s uncle, people trusted him right to the end.”
“Speaking of the end, this looks like a dead one,” I said. I gave him my business card. “Let me know if you remember anything else.”
“I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. Come by to see me anytime. I don’t go out much and stay up late. Maybe I’ll hear something from the bird carver crowd. You never know.”
“That’s right,” I said, getting up from the couch to shake hands. “You never do.”
The investigative report said the fake decoys had been mailed from Harwich. I stopped by the post office, went up to the desk and asked the postal clerk what the cheapest rate would be for sending out a box like the one in my hands.
“Depends on weight, of course. Parcel post is the cheapest, but it’s also the slowest,” she said.
“I was talking to a friend named Mike Murphy. He’s got a P.O. Box here and sends out a lot of packages, but I don’t remember what rate he used.”
“We’ve got a few Murphys. I don’t recall anyone doing a lot of shipping.”
“I’ll talk to him and get back to you.”
I remembered that there was more than one post office in town. I got back in my truck and drove a few miles to the pint-sized West Harwich post office. I went through the same routine with the postmistress, and this time I struck gold.
“Mike uses straight parcel post to send boxes that look just like that,” she said. “Haven’t seen him for a while, though. Not since he closed his box.”
“I’ll tell Mike you miss seeing him,” I said.
Twenty minutes later I drove down the pot-holed dirt driveway that leads to the converted boathouse I call home. Chez Socarides was part of an old estate when I bought it and rebuilt it into a year-round residence. The place is still just short of ramshackle, but it’s got a million dollar water view of a big bay and distant barrier beach.
My cat Kojak ambushed me as soon as I stepped inside. I poured him some dry food, grabbed the phone, went out on the deck, and tucked the box with the fake bird under a chair. Then I dialed the number for Ruskin. He answered right away.
I told him about my talk with Mike Murphy, his connection with Orloff, and the visit to the post office.
“Do you s
uspect Murphy knows more about my decoy than what he’s saying?”
“Yes, I do, which is why I want to go back to talk to him again.”
“When you do, tell him he’d better say where it is, or else.”
“Or else what, Mr. Ruskin?”
“I’ll leave that to your imagination.”
I didn’t like what I was imagining. Ruskin was suggesting that I threaten Murphy.
“I don’t work that way, Mr. Ruskin.”
“Well, I do,” he said. “And I have found my methods extremely persuasive.”
“I can tear up your check or send it back to you, Mr. Ruskin. Your call.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, then Ruskin laughed.
“No need to do either. You don’t think I’m serious. I’ve decided to offer a reward.”
I should have been suspicious at Ruskin’s fast turnaround. But I was put off by his conciliatory change of tone.
“It’s worth a try. How much of a reward?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about ten thousand dollars?”
“That will definitely get his interest. I’ll go see Murphy tomorrow and make the offer.”
“Yes,” Ruskin said, after a pause. “That should work.”
He hung up. I went back into the house and came out onto the deck with a can of Cape Cod Red beer. I popped the top and took a slurp, thinking about my conversation with Ruskin. He said his rash suggestion to lean on Murphy was a joke, but I wasn’t so sure. I sipped my beer, letting my mind zone out as the late afternoon sun painted the bay and beach in autumn pastels.
After the beer can went dry, I went back into the house. I pulled together a Greek salad for dinner, then worked a few hours on some paperwork for the charter operation. The figures looked so good that I decided to call my family in the morning to tell them about my accounting.
My eyes were tired from looking at numbers. I had another beer, then I stretched out on the couch and fell asleep. The chirp of my phone woke me up. I groped for the phone, stuck it in my ear and came out with a groggy “hello.” I heard a wet gargle on the other end and a second later the phone went dead. The caller ID said Mike Murphy had called. I hit the redial button and got a busy signal.
Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology Page 17
