Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 06 - Behind the Walls (19 page)

“But your daughters kept them?” I asked.
“Did they suspect Mr. Fitzgerald of any thefts?”

“They say no, that it just seemed someone should go through the files before they were tossed, and they kept meaning to do it.”
She gave a smile of pride. “My girls are so responsible.”

“Thank goodness for busy lives,” I murmured, thinking.
A light finally lit in my distracted brain. “So Peter and Fiona, and maybe Patricia and her boyfriend are going to go through the files? Maybe I could help.”

She laughed and then grimaced with her chronic back pain.
“I knew you’d say that. Have a peek at a few of the files that are on the stack on my dresser. That will show you what we’re dealing with.”

She pointed to a room on the right, and I walked into it.
“Yikes.” The stack of brown accordion folders, the kind that could hold several manila folders, was almost one foot high. I looked at a few tabs, most of which were names of individuals who’d had property auctioned. A couple were businesses, and I spotted the name of a small drug store that had gone out of business when two chains had opened large pharmacies in the area.

I took two files from the top of the pile and settled in across from Mrs. Murphy.
The first item in each folder was an inventory sheet. It listed the items and assigned them individual inventory numbers, gave the suggested opening bid, and then listed the actual selling price. The final column listed the bid number of the person who bought the item.

Next in the folder was a list of people who signed up to bid. They had to show ID, so there was an address next to each name.
Each person had a unique bidder number, and a look at the inventory list showed me that some people bought a number of items. The final piece of paperwork was the original contract to conduct the auction. It was almost amusingly short. I supposed that Francis Murphy and Norman Fitzgerald generally dealt with people they knew.
Plus, a lot of them were dead.

The reason each auction had its own accordion folder was because there were also receipt books.
Each was about six by three inches, and they contained a carbon of every receipt from the auction. I glanced at one. Each of the receipts had a name and the person’s auction number, and then the inventory item numbers for what they bought. You could not tell what they paid for each item, just the total paid.
That would take forever to cross reference.

A few items on the inventory list were crossed off.
“Does the line through an item on the inventory sheet mean it didn’t sell?” I asked.

“It means the item was removed from the auction,” Mrs. Murphy said.

“Was that common?”

She put a hand in front of her, palm down and at about heart height, and wiggled it.
“Maybe yes, maybe no. The person who contracted for the auction got to see the list of inventoried items before the sale, and they signed off agreeing that that’s what was to be sold. If it was their parents’ house, they might not have realized what all was in it. Occasionally they would see something they didn’t want to sell.”

She took a drink from the small glass of iced tea I had poured for her.
“There are some auctioneers who say once you turn a batch of items over to them to inventory you can’t remove something without some kind of fee, but Francis and Norman never did that.”

I thought for a moment.
“How would you know if something never made it to the inventory list?”

“It could have happened anytime.
We didn’t have two people work together at all times. Of course, we knew the employees well. We never saw missing items as an issue until Francis spotted that the Cartier watch hadn’t been specifically mentioned on inventory list.”

“And there would have been no way to go back to see what else had been stolen before it was inventoried.”

“Not really,” she said. “Only if an owner or an estate lawyer spotted that something in the house wasn’t on the list, or perhaps a close friend hoped to bid on a particular item and couldn’t find it at the auction. That would have been unusual.”

I walked back into the room that had the stack of folders and this time looked at all the names on the folders.
I was astounded to see a folder marked Gordon Richards. Aunt Madge had never mentioned that any of Uncle Gordon’s belongings had been auctioned. I pulled the folder and sat across from Mrs. Murphy.

“I asked Peter to see if his file was still there.” She nodded to herself.
“Madge had his things as part of a larger auction, but of course each person’s goods were inventoried separately. Madge might take a look at that.”

I looked at the inventory list.
I had been only five when Uncle Gordon died and had few memories of any of his things except his pocket watch. Most of my childhood memories were at the Cozy Corner, after Aunt Madge sold their bungalow and opened the B&B.

I understood why she had participated in an auction as I reviewed the list. There were several hunting rifles and bows, a lot of fishing equipment, a fertilizer spreader, baseball bats, a pipe holder, oars—in short, things Aunt Madge would not use.
I glanced at the total amount she had earned—eight hundred forty dollars. That would have been a meaningful amount. At prices of the time, she could have bought an entire room of B&B furniture at another auction.

Aunt Madge bought most of the furniture at the B&B after Uncle Gordon died.
They had a two-bedroom bungalow, and the B&B has eight guest rooms, even though she rarely rents all of them. In fact, one is now a den for Harry.

“If I know Aunt Madge, she has a list of everything she gave them to auction.”

“More than twenty years ago?” Mrs. Murphy asked.

“If it pertained to Uncle Gordon, she’s got it.
Hunting and sports stuff aside.”

“OH MY. I’D FORGOTTEN about most of this. Wait a sec.” Aunt Madge walked back into the bedroom she and Harry now share and came out with one of those small photo albums you used to get when pictures were actually developed at the drug store.

“I don’t remember that album.”

“It’s new. Harry and I each did one about our late spouses, kind of a life story. I especially wanted to learn about his Agnes, since his children and grandchildren talk about her a lot.”

As she flipped back a couple of pages all I could think of was how…grounded she and Harry were.
I could barely imagine such a secure relationship.

“Here it is.” We both sat on the love seat and she handed me the album.

I started to laugh. Uncle Gordon had a very large bow and a quiver with maybe a dozen arrows. He had posed for the photo next to a large target that sat on a bale of hay. On the ground next to him, reaching for the bow, was a two-year old who was definitely me.

“Your father and Gordon thought that was so funny.
Your mother and Renée were shopping for her Easter dress. When she saw the picture, your mother didn’t see the humor.”

“Yeah, well.”
No surprise there.
“Can I look at more?”

She handed it to me and I flipped through slowly.
“Oh, here’s one with his bootlegger boat.”

“Rum runner.
Remember the difference?”

I did, and nodded.
A bootlegger made the illicit liquor during Prohibition, a rum runner merely delivered it. Uncle Gordon was a lot older than Aunt Madge, and he would help his uncle bring in booze delivered to the beach, at night. It was for a local speakeasy.

I handed her back the album.
“Very nice to have these in one place.”

“Yes, they’re kind of biographies of the people we most loved.”
She had a matter-of-fact tone as she put the album on the coffee table and picked up the inventory list. “I didn’t look at this much at the time. I needed the money to start to furnish this place, and it was hard to part with some of his things.”

“Couldn’t my parents…?” I began.

“Your father said ask anytime if I needed money, but I knew I could make it work. And now this place almost runs itself. Hmmm.” She flipped through the three-page list quickly.

“Hmmm what?” I asked.

“He had an antique rifle that belonged to his grandfather. The story was that he brought it home from the Civil War, but Gordon didn’t think it was that old.” She ran her finger down each page of the list. “I know I gave it to Norman.”

We looked at each other.
“That was almost twenty-five years ago.”

“No wonder he had so much money,” Aunt Madge said, frowning.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

FIONA’S BOYFRIEND BEAT me to the proverbial punch by calling on Thursday to suggest we get together, and said we could use his insurance office.
He had a small conference room and there were three piles of folders on the conference table. Each pile was about twelve inches high.

“Sorry you’re here?” he asked as I surveyed the folders.

“No, just…overwhelmed, maybe,” I replied.

“Me, too, and I know the girls are having a hard time with all this.
Mrs. Murphy said you might have some good ideas, and we could use the help going through these files.”

Within a few minutes we had developed a system.
We would make notes of any items that appeared to have been removed from the inventory list. That was the easy part. If we could find a family member we could learn whether they removed the item from the inventory or if they thought the item had been sold.

The hard part was to go through the items that were sold to see if there were some items that stayed on the inventory list but were not in the receipt book. That could indicate that an item didn’t sell.
But, supposedly everything sold unless an owner said that a specific item couldn’t go for less than a specific amount. That should have been noted, so those things should be easy to spot.

After about twenty minutes there was the sound of a buzz as someone had apparently come in the front door.
Peter excused himself. I stood and stretched and walked around the conference room looking at various insurance licenses and membership certificates that were on the walls. It occurred to me that he had accomplished a lot for a guy in his mid-thirties, and that Fiona would be lucky if she married him.

He stuck his head back in the room.
“I have to develop some quotes. You mind being in here alone?”

“Not at all.”
He went back to the main part of the office and I sat down and pulled the stack of folders to me. I had just realized that it made sense to try to first find an auction for which there were still family members in the area. Maybe someone else would be like Aunt Madge and remember something that seemed not to have been sold.

I vaguely recognized a couple of names and was almost sorry to see Rebecca Washington Estate as the title of one folder.
Probably Elmira’s mother. I opened the folder and saw that the contract to conduct the auction had been signed by Elmira. I put it aside. Surely there would be someone else.

My eyes fell on the name Gerald Stenner, and I eagerly opened that folder.
Then I realized it was Jennifer’s grandfather’s estate of twenty-eight years ago. Jennifer’s father died when she and I were in college. If Jennifer’s dad were alive he would have been familiar with her grandfather’s things. It wasn’t likely Jennifer would know as much. It was also a huge auction, meaning there would be a lot more paperwork to go through.

I sighed and pulled
Elmira’s mother’s folder to me. I scanned it and saw that there was only one set of candlesticks. Having a starting point made the process easier.

The brass candlesticks were on the inventory and were never crossed off as having been removed from the sale.
I went through the book that had carbons of receipts for items sold. The inventory number assigned to the candlesticks did not appear on any receipt. Since there were only about one-hundred receipts I went through again, this time more slowly. Still no record of a candlestick sale.

Should I check every one of Mrs.
Washington’s inventory items?

With a sigh I began going through the individual sales.
For each inventory item on a receipt I put a check mark next to the item on the original inventory list. Peter came back in and worked for ten minutes before having to help another client. Apparently his business was not profitable enough for a full-time receptionist or secretary.

Finally, I had gone through every one of the receipts for
Elmira’s mother’s auction. There was one other item that appeared not to have sold. An amethyst bracelet. That was smart. It wasn’t too valuable, so no one would look to see what it sold for as they might for a sapphire and diamond bracelet. The results of the auction of her mother’s possessions netted Elmira a tidy sum. She probably didn’t look at what each item was sold for, so hadn’t noticed the candlesticks were not sold until she saw them in the pawn shop.

I decided there was no reason to discuss this with
Elmira. If we came up with a pattern of thefts it seemed that talking to her would be Sergeant Morehouse’s duty. I smiled, envisioning a so-called blue flu that had the entire police force calling in sick to avoid having to talk with Elmira.

At three-forty five, I was almost cross-eyed, and glanced at Peter, who had been working steadily across from me for twenty minutes.
“So far, only one folder appears to have had items not auctioned, two items total in it.”

“You think this is worth doing?” he asked.

I thought for a moment. “We aren’t trying to document everything, just find a pattern. I mean, all you really want is for Mrs. Murphy to be able to show she and her husband were cheated, right?”

He nodded.

“We do have Aunt Madge, who thinks Uncle Gordon’s antique gun never made it to an inventory list.
Let’s give it a bit longer. I can come by again.”

As I pulled my purse toward me, he said, “Uh, Jolie.
Could we talk about what you found already?”

“Sure.”
I should have expected this. “What would you like to know?”

“Do you think it’s worth a lot?
Can you tell whose it was?”

“The first I’m not sure.
Sergeant Morehouse asked that jeweler, Mark Foster, to look at it, and Mark thought a couple items could net a nice amount. Second, not at all. And I’m not trying to keep it,” I said hastily.

“You’re not?”
Peter looked surprised, and definitely happy.

“It makes sense to me to see if owners can be found.
If they can’t then I guess it’s mine. I’ll have to think about how to divvy it up.”

He hesitated, and then said, “I’m not sure that Mr. Fitzgerald’s heirs would have any right to it.”

“I agree. I’ll have to get it back and…”

“You don’t have it?” he asked.

“Nope. The jeweler is keeping it in his safe.” I realized that I was glad to tell Peter that I didn’t have the stuff. He didn’t seem like someone who would come after it, but how could I be sure of anything?

I DROVE BY Norman Fitzgerald’s house a couple of times. I had a street map on the front seat of my Toyota. If anyone from the Police Department spotted me driving up and down his street, I planned to say I wanted to get to know some of the smaller streets better.

And Mr. Fitzgerald certainly lived on one of those.
I had not thought there were any streets I did not know in Ocean Alley, but his had only three houses and behind it was a concrete creek that carried excess rain water into a small filtration plant. The plant cleaned it and dumped it in the ocean. I used to think that was ridiculous, but Ramona had explained that the rain runoff often had fertilizer and stuff in it, which was bad for marine life.
Who knew?

I parked in front of the house next to Mr. Fitzgerald’s and stared at the late auctioneer’s home.
I had half expected there to be police tape, since two people who lived or stayed there had been murdered. Apparently the police had gotten what they wanted from the house, because there was no tape and the house had a forlorn look about it.

It was a two-story home that had likely had the second story added.
There was nothing special about it. In fact, the trim was in need of paint and there was no storm door on the main entry. If you judged his bank account by his house, you would have come to the wrong conclusion about Mr. Fitzgerald’s finances.

There were no cars in any of the three driveways on the street.
People were probably at work. Given that it was daylight and I had a clip board and camera, anyone who saw me would think I was working. I pulled into the driveway. No sense giving people the idea I’m up to something.

I walked around the house and took a couple of photos in the front and in the back.
I walked onto the back porch. It was about ten by five feet and had a couple of canvas chairs and a small metal table. More important, two windows faced the porch, so I wouldn’t have to stand on my toes to look in.

The window closest to the back door looked into the kitchen, the other one to a small bedroom that Mr. Fitzgerald seemed to have used as an office.
I almost drooled. The office had a couple of file cabinets and there was a pile of white storage boxes along one wall.
I bet there’re all kinds of stuff in there that good old Norman wouldn’t want me to see. Didn’t the man own a shredder?

The desk was not large.
On it were a can that held pencils, a pencil sharpener, and a phone. I doubted Mr. Fitzgerald had been that neat. Probably the police had taken any papers that had been on the desk.

The kitchen appeared to be where he had done some of his work.
The large Formica-topped table had an old adding machine and a couple of manila folders.
I’d love to get into those folders.

What interested me more was a line of hooks that were on the wall next to the refrigerator.
A couple had single keys, and others had potholders or dish towels. However, the pot holders sort of bulged, as if there were a ring of keys behind them. How could I…?

“Jolie?”

“Holy crap!” I turned and faced Dana Johnson. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. “I was, um…”

“You were snooping,” she said, and appeared to be trying to hide a smile.

“Oh, okay. I was. How did you know I was here?”

Dana walked up the two steps onto the porch and sat in one of the canvas chairs and pointed to the other.

“I don’t know who called. Someone just said there might be a prowler here. As soon as I heard the address I knew it was you.”

I sat.
“Do you have to tell on me?”

“It’s a murder investigation, not first grade,” she said, but her tone was not harsh.
“What are you looking for?”

I paused.
“It’s probably going to sound odd…”

“I’ll consider the source,” she said.

“Some of us were talking the other day, about how Mr. Fitzgerald might have had keys to a lot of houses.”

“Kind of like a real estate appraiser?” she asked, with a definite smirk.

“In a way, yes. We’d both be given a key to get into the house if the owner wasn’t going to be there, and we would both be supposed to return the key to the owner or whoever gave it to us.”

Now she looked interested.
“And maybe Fitzgerald didn’t return them?”

“Or made a copy.
There’s a bulge behind the potholders on those hooks by the fridge.”

Dana adopted a patient tone.
“Jolie, when he’s finished working at a house, it’s usually empty. Why would he want a key?”

I thought fast.
“They inventory the stuff in a house. But who’s to know if he goes by alone one day, before a sale, and helps himself to some small items? Before they’re inventoried, I mean.” I saw her skeptical expression and continued. “Or maybe he hides stuff in an attic and goes back for it. Or, get this, he sticks stuff behind the walls.”

She didn’t address my ideas, but simply said, “We didn’t have any complaints.
His reputation was for giving, not taking.”

“But where did he get all that money to give?” I asked.

She met my eyes and looked away. When she glanced back at me she gave a small sigh. “People are talking about that, but he did a lot of his business with cash. People might write a check at an auction, but he was known for selling some things directly to individuals.”

I had my business hat on. “But large cash deposits have to be reported.”
I knew this was one way Uncle Sam tried to ferret out money being laundered for the drug trade.

She shook her head.
“Only if greater than about ten thousand dollars. He made a lot of deposits for amounts under that, and then he did make some good investments.”

I looked at her.
“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I hear you and George still aren’t a couple again, so you won’t tell him.
And sometimes you have good ideas.”

I smiled. “You’ll get in trouble.”

“It’s not likely I’ll say you were here. Don’t do it again.” She stood.

“Why don’t you say you saw me in the grocery store and I asked about the key idea?”

“Because I like my job.” She saw the disappointment on my face. “I’ll think of a way to look into it.” She glanced at the window. “Behind the potholders. Where do you come up with this stuff?”

Since she wasn’t expecting an answer I didn’t offer one and we walked back to our cars without speaking.

Jennifer would be fried if I told anyone the keys were her idea.