Antiques to Die For (3 page)

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?”

“Yes.”

“Was there any conversation about it? With Una, maybe?”

I thought back. “I can’t remember exactly, but I got the impression that the deliveries had been going on for a while.”

“What gave you that impression?”

“Well, one thing was that Rosalie told me she’d thrown away
all
the cards.”

“Did the flowers always come to Heyer’s?”

I shook my head. “No. Rosalie mentioned that she’d given the last bouquet to a student at Hitchens. And there was no way she’d transport them anywhere, even to the trash. She wanted nothing whatsoever to do with them.”

“This is pretty incredible. How did she react?”

“She felt as if she were being stalked, and it really freaked her out. Over drinks one night, she quoted some statistics—that something like twenty-five percent of stalkers end up killing their victims.”

Officer Brownley leaned back in her chair and then shook her head. “Why didn’t she call the police?”

“I asked her that. She said, ‘And what, report that I’ve been getting flowers?’ ”

Officer Brownley fixed her eyes on mine. “What about you? Why didn’t you tell me about this right away?”

I looked down, embarrassed. “She asked me not to tell anyone. I promised.”

“Why would she ask you to promise about something like this?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Except I think maybe she did know who was sending them. Rosalie was plenty scared. That part is true. But I remember wondering at the time if she knew but couldn’t get him to stop.”

“Why did you think that?”

“I don’t know. A combination of factors, I guess. Her refusal to go to the police. The way she groaned when Una brought them in, as if it were a familiar irritant.” I shrugged. “I wish I could be more specific, but I can’t. It’s just a sense I had.”

She nodded. “Thank you for telling me. It’s helpful.” She wrote in her notebook for a while.

“What else aren’t you telling me about?” she asked, smiling.

Her friendly demeanor made her comment inoffensive.

I looked at her straight on and shook my head.
Suspicion isn’t knowledge,
I rationalized. And secrets must be kept.

Under the table, out of sight of her penetrating gaze, I crossed my fingers, just in case. In as casual a tone as I could muster, I said, “Nothing.”

Officer Brownley cocked her head, maybe assessing whether I was lying, dense, or whether I truly didn’t know anything else. “You sure?”

I met Officer Brownley’s eyes. “Yes,” I said firmly. “I’m sure.”

As Officer Brownley led me back to the vestibule, I allowed myself to relax a notch or two. It felt as if I’d dodged a bullet. Having been involved in two murder investigations in two years, I was relieved that, so far at least, I’d managed to escape the stigma of possessing guilty knowledge this time around.

CHAPTER THREE

O

fficer Brownley asked me to wait and left me alone.

There was no sign of Gerry, and I wondered if he’d finished before me. I stood by the front counter and waited for Cathy, a civilian admin who was busy typing something into her computer, to look up. I figured I’d ask her whether someone had driven him back to his office, but before she glanced in my direction, Ty appeared from an inside door, saw me, and smiled.

I smiled back, suddenly breathless, and my pulse quickened as it always did in his presence. He was just so damn attractive. He was tall and broad, with dark hair, craggy features, and weathered skin, and he exuded confidence and trustworthiness.

“Hey,” he said, lifting the counter panel to join me.

“Hey,” I responded.

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

“What about Gerry?” I asked. “Mr. Fine. He was in with Griff. I drove him here.”

Ty nodded. “We’ll see he gets a ride.”

We walked silently toward my car. My engineer boots clacked against the frozen asphalt. It was growing colder, and I noted that the sun was partially gone. Thick gray clouds were rolling in, and there was a smell of snow in the air.

“Let’s walk to the beach,” Ty said, directing me away from my car.

“Okay,” I replied.

We crossed Ocean Avenue, clambered up the dunes, and skittleran down the other side to the beach. The sand was stone hard and snow free. The ocean was turbulent.

Rosalie and I had walked along this very stretch of sand only last autumn. It had been a sunny, crisp October Sunday. Paige and one of her friends whose name escaped me had run ahead poking around for sand glass and unchipped clam shells. I recalled glancing at Rosalie’s grave demeanor and thinking that she seemed unnaturally pensive.

“You okay?” I’d asked after a pause.

She’d shrugged. “Man trouble. What else, right?” she’d replied, exhaling loudly with a self-deprecating, frustrated puff of air.

“Paul?”

“Yeah.”

“Paul ‘Give Me Air’ Greeley,” she’d called him when she’d first told me about him. “He’s getting possessive,” she’d said that day on the beach.

“Really?” I’d queried, surprised.

During the several times I’d met him, I’d never spotted any jealousy. On the contrary, he’d flirted openly with every woman in sight, me included. He was drop-dead gorgeous and possessed the gift of charm—an intoxicating combination.

When did I first meet him?
I asked myself, thinking back.
Sometime in the fall.
Rosalie had invited me to join her and a few of her university colleagues for a department get-together. One glimpse at Paul and I understood Rosalie’s light-hearted nomenclature—“Give Me Air,” indeed. Paul Greeley was tall and lean, with a hint of a smile on his face and the promise of passion in his eyes. Everything about his appearance, from his thick blond hair to his well-fitting blue jeans, appealed to me. “Whew,” I’d whispered to Rosalie as I sipped my glass of wine. “He’s a knockout.”

She smiled saucily and licked her lips. “Yeah. What do you expect? He’s a firefighter. Haven’t you ever noticed? They’re
all
gorgeous.”

I had observed that phenomenon and we talked about it, comparing notes. “You mean Paul used to be a fireman?”

“No. Current—he’s a volunteer. In fact, I think he’s some mucky-muck like a deputy chief or something.”

“Impressive,” I said, gazing at him—he was sizzling.

I’d had a way different reaction to Cooper Bennington. The assistant department chair was obnoxious and easy to dislike. Not only did he think he was better than everyone else, he didn’t try to pretend otherwise.

“Well, hello,” Paul had said to me that night, his tone a caress.

I recalled the interaction well. He’d looked at me, and I’d felt stripped naked, yet oddly I wasn’t upset—I was flattered. Paul exuded charisma.

“Hi,” I greeted him, smiling despite myself.

“Rosalie tells me you’re an antiques appraiser. So I guess that means that you’re as interested in history as we Ph.D. types.”

Cooper snorted. “Real historians deal in facts. Antiques appraisers are self-serving and overly reliant on subjectivity.”

“Present company excluded, of course,” I joked, assuming he was trying to be funny, not rude. I was wrong. He was just a supercilious prig.

“Perhaps,” he replied meanly.

Rosalie had nailed it, I thought, when she’d called him an arrogant jerk. I’d met a lot of people like Cooper Bennington when I worked at Frisco’s. Most of them came from old money. I tried to remember what I knew about the Bennington family. If I recalled right, their fortune derived from bootlegging. His attitude made me wonder what he’d had appraised that had been valued lower than he’d expected or thought fair.

“Don’t mind Cooper,” Paul said in response, extinguishing the fireworks with deft kindness. “He can’t stand the thought that anyone knows things that he doesn’t know. And antiques appraisers know containerloads more things than he does. Makes him cranky.”

I’d smiled at Paul then, appreciating his effort to render Cooper’s nasty comment benign and irrelevant, and now, my eyes still focused on the surf, I shook my head to dispel the memory. Rosalie was dead. I’d lost a dear friend.

Waves crashed, casting seaweed onto the shore, and the wind was picking up, dotting the ocean surface with frothy whitecaps. A storm was coming. “It looks like snow,” I said.

Ty scanned the cloud-shrouded horizon. “Yeah,” he agreed, then turned toward me. “I need you to tell me what you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Officer Brownley tells me you fibbed.”

I looked out over the near-black ocean. A gull, gliding low, spiked and dove, then flew away. “I didn’t fib.”

“What do you know, Josie?” Ty asked as if I hadn’t spoken, watching me with professional intensity.

“Nothing.”

“Come on.”

“Why do you think there’s more?”

“Josie,” he directed, “now.”

“I’m serious—why would you think that?”

“Why do you ask? So you can lie better next time?”

I stayed quiet, a little hurt by his comeback. It wasn’t that I wanted to lie, but I certainly wanted to master the art of discretion. Being circumspect is crucial in any business that involves divorcing couples and family members swarming like killer bees during an estate distribution. Also, as I’d learned when striving to avoid the press during the price-fixing scandal in New York, discretion offered the best chance at preserving my privacy. Yet despite years of experience, it seemed that I’d make a lousy poker player. Finally I looked up at him, and said, “I don’t lie. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know.” He cleared his throat, a half-cough. “Still, we think you know something else.”

I didn’t know what to do. I felt half an inch tall even thinking of betraying a friend’s trust. I looked out toward the place where gray sky merged with the black-green ocean.

“Josie?” he prodded.

I met his eyes, and knew I had to tell.
I’m sorry, Rosalie. Forgive me,
I thought. I took a deep breath and spoke. “She confided in me that she’d just sold her first book. She was so excited she said she could burst.”

“I don’t understand. Why would that have to be a secret?”

“The atmosphere at Hitchens was pretty intense. She wanted to get her dissertation approved and pass her orals before anyone in the department knew of her success. If people found out about the book deal, she was afraid she might be sabotaged.”

Ty nodded. “What was the book about?”

“Something about communication during exploration. She didn’t want to tell me the particulars, but she couldn’t resist sharing the book deal itself.”

“Can you remember what she said?”

I nodded. I pictured Rosalie sipping her iced tea, eyeing me with an impish gleam. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell?” she’d asked, her tone tantalizing.

“Who would I tell?” I’d teased.

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

An instinct of danger had made me stop joking. I’d tilted my head, considering my options. “Are you sure you want to tell me?” I’d asked softly.

“If I don’t tell someone, I’m going to burst!”

I’d smiled then, and said, “Okay. I promise.”

And then she’d told me how a big New York publisher was offering her a fat advance to write a book and how the deal was going to change Paige’s and her lives in a major way.

“I shouldn’t have told you, but it’s so fabulous that if I didn’t tell anyone, I was just gonna scream!”

“I’m the only one who knows?” I’d asked, pleased to be singled out.

She’d said I was, and I’d felt honored.

I looked up after recounting the conversation and Ty nodded again, stared at me for a five count, then said, “What else?”

I stared at him, undecided. I didn’t want to tell Rosalie’s other secret. And, I reminded myself, unlike the book deal, I didn’t
really
know anything. “I just
hate
to gossip, Ty. And really, I don’t
know
anything.”

“Understood. You don’t
know
anything. That said, tell me what you
think.
Don’t quibble.”

“I’m not!” I protested. “There’s a world of difference between gossip and fact.”

He nodded. “Agreed. I promise never to quote you as reporting as fact anything that’s gossip.”

I gave in to his logic and persistence.
Maybe he is right,
I thought.
After all, it sounds as if this is a murder investigation.
“I think Rosalie and Gerry were having an affair.”

Ty nodded as if he wasn’t at all surprised.

“Is it true?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I just needed to know what you
didn’t
tell Officer Brownley. What makes you think they were having an affair?

“Lots of small things. Giggles when they were alone in his office that stopped abruptly once they realized I was around. Ditto phone calls she received when we were out where she chatted for a while, then didn’t say who it was while looking like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Once I heard her say ‘Geeer-ry!’ in that tone, you know, real flirtatious, stretching out the first syllable. ‘Geeer-ry!’ And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Someone at work said something.”

“Who?”

“Ned Anderson,” I answered, hating it that I was telling tales. “The chief financial officer.”

“What did he say?”

“I hate this, Ty.”

“I know you do. It’s important, Josie, or I wouldn’t ask.”

“Was Rosalie murdered?” I whispered, looking north along the deserted beach.

“Josie?” Ty commanded. “What did Ned Anderson say?”

“About what?” I asked, continuing to look into the far distance. I noted that we were exchanging questions, a tactic which, according to Wes Smith, a local reporter, was a tried-and-true method to avoid revealing things you wanted to keep private.

“It’s too early to be certain about the circumstances of her death,” Ty said, “but I need you to answer my question as if she had been murdered. What did this Anderson guy say?”

I sighed. “Part of my hesitation is a ‘consider the source’ thing. Ned seems to have an attitude about Gerry.”

“In what way?”

“Ned is pretty sarcastic in general, and after a particularly obnoxious moment, Rosalie confided that Ned had applied for the CEO position that Gerry got. Evidently, Ned has worked for the company for something like seven years, and he was pretty ticked off that he didn’t get the job.” I shrugged and looked up at Ty. “I’ll tell you, but his comments may represent nothing more than a small-minded, mean-spirited man’s attempt at humor.”

“Got it. I can tell that you like him a lot.”

I smiled a little. “But that’s only because you’re so insightful.”

He smiled back and waited for me to continue.

I took a deep breath, and shivered. The sun was almost completely blocked, and it was frigid. “It was about a week ago. I was in Gerry’s office, hurrying to finish mounting a bracket, when Ned came in.”

Ned Anderson was around forty, tall and too skinny, with an Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down when he spoke, and a receding chin. He was a mass of affectations. He wore a leather duster and cowboy hat, and often, he carried a hand-carved walking stick. I suspected that in his heart of hearts, he thought of himself as the Marlboro man. On this day, he’d tittered unattractively as he stepped into Gerry’s office.

“Anyone here?” he asked sarcastically.

“Just us arty types,” I kidded.

“Where’s my fearless leader?” he asked, his tone offensive, not wry.

“I don’t know.”

“How about his faithful minion?”

“Tricia? She’s at lunch.”

“And his sycophant scribe?”

“Rosalie?”

“Yes-s-s-s,” he answered as if he was stating the obvious to someone incredibly dumb.

“Haven’t seen her,” I replied.

“Oooooh,” he mocked. “He told me Rosalie was due into the office today for one of their tête-à-têtes and now they’re both gone, are they? Together, I wonder?”

Feeling uncomfortable, as if I’d aided and abetted them in playing hooky, I didn’t respond. Instead, I turned back to my work.

Ned stood watching me for several seconds, then said, “Well, if you see them, tell them that I completely understand—and would appreciate it if Gerry would call me when he can squeeze a little business into his busy day.”

I cleared my throat and met Ty’s eyes. “That’s it,” I told him, and he nodded.

“What else makes you think they were having an affair?”

I hesitated again. “It was the way they looked at each other. I can’t explain.” I smiled at him. “Like we do. Like they were lovers.”

Ty didn’t smile back, but his hard, all-business demeanor softened, just a little. He raised his hand to touch my cheek, drawing his index finger slowly along the side of my face, starting just below my ear, following the angle of my jaw, sweeping along my neck until my parka stopped his progress. I leaned into the motion to give him access, closing my eyes. He took his hand away and I looked at him, an electric current racing through my veins. He smiled, and said, “Later.”