Four-Patch of Trouble (15 page)

 Alyse had taken out her silver cigarette case and was tapping it on her palm. "Well?"

"I'm sorry, but it's a reproduction."

"Then Randall made a mistake," Alyse said. "That's all."

"Mistakes do happen," I agreed. I didn't want to upset her so much she kicked me out of the shop before I'd seen more of the quilts. While I folded the Irish chain quilt, I said, "Tell me more about your partner. I didn't get the chance to really get to know him."

"He could be difficult." She tucked her cigarette case away and pulled down another quilt. "Even his sister didn't understand him. They lost their parents when they were young. She was old enough to be his guardian but probably too young for that much responsibility. They were estranged by the time he was an adult. It's sad. Everyone needs family, whether we're born into it or we create it. He never really had one."

"It sounds like you cared for him."

"I did." Alyse spread a nine-patch with a black background on the chair. "Not romantically, of course. My wife wouldn't approve of that. But I've known him for years. I was thrilled when he came to me a couple of years ago with a business plan."

I covered my surprise at hearing that Alyse had a wife by studying the quilt on the chair. I'd assumed she and Tremain had a personal relationship, despite Wolfe dismissing the possibility, or perhaps
because of
Wolfe dismissing the possibility.

I didn't actually need to do more than glance at the quilt to know it was a modern riff on Amish quilts, using the typical solid black background and contrasting jewel-toned printed fabrics. It could have been made at any point in the last thirty or so years, but it was of little commercial value, regardless of the value it had held for the quiltmaker. Even after I'd adjusted my impression of Alyse's relationship with Tremain, I continued to make a show of inspecting the quilt so she would continue talking about her business-only partner.

"He was an excellent businessman," she said. "Had all our capital lined up so that I didn't have to contribute any cash. With a niche shop like this, I was expecting it would take at least a year before we started to see any profit, but we were in the black within six months. Probably won't be for much longer. Randall was much better with the big-money customers than I am."

I couldn't help wondering why, if Tremain was such a good businessman, he'd been willing to take all the financial risks for the shop without getting any seed money from Alyse. What had Tremain gotten out of the deal?

I would have asked, but the way Alyse was tapping her cigarette case on her palm suggested she couldn't handle any pointed questions right now. "I can keep working on my own if you'd like to go have a smoke."

"Oh, thank you." Alyse clutched her cigarette case with white-knuckled fingers and raced to the exit.

It only took a few minutes to finish checking the stack of quilts in the cupboard. None of them was quite what the labels claimed, sometimes with respect to the date it was made, sometimes with respect to the design, but absolutely always with respect to the exaggerated market value.

I'd put away all the quilts from the cupboard and moved on to checking a quilt that was being used as a tablecloth before Wolfe arrived.

"How long is this going to take?" he said as he walked through the front door. "I've got a meeting back at my office in half an hour."

"A thorough appraisal can take several hours, but I'm not doing that kind of in-depth work here. I've already looked at most of the less valuable quilts, and they're all either reproductions or vastly overpriced originals."

"Are you sure Tremain didn't make a simple mistake or two, buying things he thought were older than they were? It's just a bunch of stupid blankets, after all, and art is pretty subjective. Maybe Tremain didn't know they were fakes."

"He knew." Anyone who'd been around old quilts on a regular basis would have known, at least at an instinctive level, that Tremain's quilts weren't what he claimed they were. Wolfe didn't have those instincts, and I doubted he'd be interested in the historical evidence I could provide, so I didn't go into detail. "Some of the quilts are close calls, but the Depression Era quilt in the cupboard is obviously made with reproduction fabrics. No one with Tremain's purported expertise would have been fooled."

"Definitely fraud, then."

I nodded. "There's a definite pattern to it. Absolutely nothing is quite what he was making it out to be. If it was just a mistake, I'd have expected at least one or two of the quilts not to raise any red flags."

"That doesn't sound like enough evidence for a jury to send a guy to jail for fraud, though," Wolfe said. "I was right to decline to prosecute him."

He just couldn't let it go, could he? That meant I had to be the adult.

"We'll see." I led him over to the quilt on the back wall. "There's one more quilt on display, and it's the one with the most potential for a ridiculous profit if it's a reproduction."

"I don't understand why he'd do something like this," Wolfe said. "Everyone's been telling me what a great guy Tremain was. My boss took some business classes when he was in law school and met Tremain then. Apparently even then Tremain knew everyone who was anyone. I don't know why he didn't go into politics himself, instead of—"

"Instead of selling blankets," I finished for him. At least this time, he'd seemed to realize he was being dismissive and stopped before actually saying it.

"Yeah. I mean, he's been active behind the scenes in the campaigns of half the members of the state legislature, from what I've heard."

"You can't seriously be suggesting that hanging out with elected officials is any sort of evidence of a man's high moral character."

"I guess not." Wolfe reached for the price tag hanging from the quilt on the wall and then dropped it as quickly as if it were on fire. "Holy cow. Five figures for this thing. And it's not even in very good condition."

"For an antique textile, it's actually in quite good condition." In fact, if it was an antique, it must have been stored under ideal conditions and not used since the day it was finished. "What does the tag say about the date it was created and where?"

Wolfe reached for the tag more gingerly this time. "1910 to 1920, in Indiana."

I took a few steps back to get an overall impression of the quilt. This one was a four-patch like Stefan's. It was smaller, though, with a more limited palette, mostly assorted shades of blue with some purple, green, and black thrown in, but without any of the red, yellow, and orange that gave Stefan's quilt its flair. Nothing was obviously inconsistent with the claimed date. The block design was right, the overall design layout of the quilt was right, and the fabric colors and prints were right. I'd need to do more research to be absolutely sure, but if it was a fake, I couldn't blame Tremain for getting this one wrong.

I turned to Wolfe. "It's the real thing."

Alyse spoke from behind him. "Of course it is. I told you Randall was too good to be taken in by a fake, and he certainly wouldn't display one on purpose. That quilt was Tremain's favorite. I don't think he really wanted to sell it. It's been on the wall since the shop opened two years ago. He had some potential buyers, but he wasn't willing to negotiate on the price."

That caught Wolfe's attention. "He really expected to get his asking price?"

"Oh, yes," Alyse said. "He sold quite a few others in the same price range. He knew a lot of people who were always looking to add to their collections. Those quilts were snapped up as soon as he returned from a buying trip and never even made it out on display."

I had to wonder how many of the expensive quilts had actually been acquired legitimately and how many of them had actually been reproductions of Stefan's quilts. If they'd been fakes, their buyers might well have been angry enough to confront Tremain and possibly kill him. The police should definitely be considering them suspects. "Do you know who those major clients are?"

"Randall kept their information in his desk." Alyse started tapping her cigarette case again. "I suppose I should contact them, let them know what happened." 

"When you find the client list, I'm sure Mr. Wolfe would appreciate a copy of it," I said. At his puzzled look, I explained, "If one of the buyers felt he'd been overcharged, he might have come back here to demand a refund."

"Ah, and there was a scuffle over the quilt, and Tremain fell and hit his head," Wolfe said. "It's a pretty far-fetched theory, if you ask me."

"But it would explain how the quilt ended up on top of Tremain's body." My glance fell on the tag hanging from the quilt on the wall. "It couldn't have been a quilt he owned, since it didn't have a tag on it, and he always tagged them right away. Whoever killed Tremain must have brought the quilt with him, possibly returning it when he realized it was a fake."

"Unless Tremain had bought the quilt recently," Wolfe said, "and just hadn't had time to do the tag."

I turned to Alyse. "Do you know anything about where the quilt in his office came from?"

"I don't recall ever seeing that one before. Now I can't stop picturing it. Picturing him." She flipped open her cigarette case and stared at the one cigarette left before snapping the case shut. "It couldn't have been a new acquisition either. Randall hadn't gone on a buying trip in a few weeks. Everything from the last trip would have been long since tagged. I'm familiar with his regular inventory, but I don't usually see the acquisitions for his preferred clients, so you could be right about someone returning a quilt. Not because there was anything wrong with it, of course. Buyer's remorse is a common occurrence with luxury items. Do you really think a client might have killed Randall?"  

"I don't know, but it's worth checking out. Could you make a list of those preferred clients for the prosecutor's office?"

"Whatever it takes to find whoever killed Randall," Alyse said before setting off down the hallway leading to Tremain's office.

"I'm not saying there's anything to your theory," Wolfe said, "but I suppose I can spare a few hours to check it out."

I took some pictures of the four-patch on the wall and then tucked the camera back into my messenger bag. My cotton gloves had gotten a workout today, so I pulled my phone out of my back pants pocket to make room for tucking the gloves where I'd remember to add them to the laundry. My phone went into the messenger bag with my reference books.

Alyse emerged from the back of the shop a few minutes later with a stack of what looked to be photocopies of phone messages, business cards, and a handwritten address book. She handed it to Wolfe. "This is all I could find for now. If I come across others, I'll let you know. He promised me when we first set up the partnership that he'd be installing a state-of-the-art inventory and contacts system, but he could never find one that met his high standards."

Or else that was his excuse. A state-of-the-art system might have made it a little too easy to establish patterns that would prove his frauds. Now wasn't the time to burden Alyse with that possibility though.

I wanted to use the ladies' room, but I needed to talk to Wolfe first, so I walked out the front doors with him. "Any chance I can get a copy of those client names?"

"On one condition," he said. "I want your word that if you find any clients who think they got cheated, you'll let me know who they are so I can check them out right away and not wait until they're offered at trial as surprise witnesses."

"That's fair."

"I'll fax you copies of what Alyse gave me when I get back to the office."

I'd sworn I wouldn't have anything stressful in my new home. I dug out a business card and crossed out the contact information for my appraisal work, scribbling in its place the fax number for my prior law firm. Lindsay would be the one following up on the names, and she could pick it up there. At least I hoped she hadn't been banned from the premises during her suspension. "Send it to my attention at this number, and I'll get it from one of the paralegals."

Wolfe took the card. "Are you sure you're retired?"

"I'm sure. All I want is a nice, quiet life studying quilts."

Wolfe continued on to his car, and I went back inside Monograms before Alyse had a chance to lock up again.

"Alyse! It's me, Keely Fairchild. I'm going to use your restroom. I'll just be a minute."

There was no answer, but I couldn't wait any longer. I hung my messenger bag on the side door so Alyse would see it if she went to lock up the shop while I was in the restroom.

I was washing my hands when I heard footsteps in the hallway. They were tentative and hushed, as if the person was trying not to be heard. That was odd. Why would anyone sneak up on a restroom instead of making enough noise to let the person inside know to hurry up?

I reached for my cell phone, but my back pocket was empty. Belatedly, I remembered tossing it into my messenger bag. I'd expected to have the bag draped across my shoulder, not left behind to signal my presence in the building.

Nausea threatened the back of my throat. In other circumstances, I would have simply waited for the person in the hallway to go away or for Alyse to come looking for me, which would scare off a casual intruder. If the nausea was a precursor to another syncope event, though, I'd be on the floor, unconscious and unable to defend myself in a couple of minutes. I couldn't take that chance, and I doubted sitting with my head between my knees and thinking calm thoughts would be enough to overcome the stress of being stalked. Better to face the danger head-on.

I hit the button on the hand dryer, using the noise to cover the sound of my search for something I could use to defend myself. Everything was bolted down or built in. Nothing aerosol to blind an attacker, nothing heavy enough to bash in a head, nothing sturdy enough to shield myself against either a knife or a bullet.

The only things that weren't nailed down were the water coming out of the faucet and the liquid soap in the wall dispenser. Not exactly lethal weapons.