The Wrong Stuff (17 page)

“Is this where you investigators solve your cases?” asked Claire Oh. “Because if not, and you can do it on dry land, perhaps I could have a turn here in the famous detective school. I could really use a bath.”

“I think she's fabulous,” whispered Tim, handing Jane a belt so she could cinch up his linen pants. He rolled up the cuffs for her and stood back. “You look pretty cute in a thirties/forties Hollywood musical my-dad's-got-a-barn-let's-put-on-a-show-after-I-plow-the-field kind of way.

“Pretty haughty, if you ask me,” Jane whispered back. “We're out here risking our necks for her, and she just waltzes in…”

Claire Oh walked into the main room of Jane's cabin, wrapped in Tim's bathrobe, Jane's spare towel wrapped around her wet hair. Jane realized that no one looked that haughty when they were all wet, and Claire, without her heels, looked almost approachable.

“You must be starved,” Jane said. “Maybe we can get some leftover tea sandwiches…they said dinner wouldn't be until nine tonight.” Jane turned to Tim, “Did they have tea today?”

“I don't know. I was rescuing you, remember?”

Jane remembered. She asked Tim if he could go and charm a plate of food out of the kitchen since they had over an hour until the dinner gong would ring. She also whispered to him to give Bruce Oh a heads-up that Claire had surfaced. Oh's meeting with Blake was certainly going on long. Tim promised to do his best, saluted, and went off to forage.

Jane watched Claire comb out her wet hair. Jane tried to think of a way to open the conversation without just launching into the twenty or so questions she wanted to fire at her, but Claire beat her to the punch.

“You must have a million questions,” Claire said. “I'm ready for them, but I might not have very good answers.”

Claire was definitely deflated, certainly approachable. It made sense that she would be relieved to know she was no longer a suspect in Cutler's murder. Would it last? Jane tried to compartmentalize quickly. She wanted to ask all of her questions while Claire was still wet. Who knew what would happen after she was dressed and her hair blown-dry. Jane, in her former career, had watched enough actors and models transform themselves through makeup, hair styling, and costuming; she knew it was important to strike while the iron was hot or, in this case, while the heels were off.

“Is that why you raced up here last night? To find out your own answers about what happened to the Westman chest?”

“Not only the chest. Look, I knew Rick Moore hadn't choked on chemicals. He's been working around these solvents and finishes for years. He might have lost a few brain cells, but he had enough left to remember to wear a mask and keep those windows open. Besides, it was too much of a coincidence. He was the one I talked to when I called up here that night, after Horace came down on me. And he worked on the restoration of the piece, I know he did. He's the only one Blake would have trusted with it,” said Claire.

“Is Blake the one you met with when you brought it up here?” Jane asked.

“He wasn't here. I talked it out with Glen, who knew all about Westman, too, of course, and he agreed that it just might be the real deal. He said he'd go over it with Blake, and they'd call and keep me posted. They didn't call back right away, so I called them. I talked to Rick then, and he was thrilled. He said he'd seen it in the barn and had already done tons of research on the wood and carving style. Couldn't locate information about it through the Westman files though, no record of a third chest.

“Rick said he'd called the house sale people and they'd told him the chest had never come up with the owner, although he had left listings and descriptions of other valuable pieces in the house. The person in charge of the sale told both me and Rick that she hadn't even noticed it. It was only after boxes of sale stuff got removed from the top of it that it came into sight at all,” Claire said, sighing. She thought it must have been an old built-in. “I was just in the right place at the right time, I guess.”

Claire smiled hopefully at Jane. Jane really wanted to ask her why she had put on such an act when they had first met, but, once again, Claire beat her to the question with an answer.

“I'm sorry I was such a…so unfriendly when you came to the house. I was…I don't know…embarrassed? I mean, here I was, such an expert, an art historian as I always remind Bruce, not a junk picker.” Claire stopped, then smiled at Jane. “I love junk and I don't mean anything by that, it's just that Bruce is so…spare, you know? So I tried to make my work match up, measure up…then getting fooled like that, it just made me furious and I become a snobby bitch when I get mad. Does that make any sense to you at all?”

Jane thought about the many times she had snapped when poor Charley had simply looked sideways at the boxes she'd brought in from a sale. Charley, with his scientific names for everything and his special containers and his labels and his graduate students and his damn credibility. She reflected on her own defenses, her elaborate explanations of the psychology of print aprons from the fifties or souvenir salt and pepper shakers, her crafting of stories that went with her auction purchases that rivaled any university anthropological text.

“Yes,” Jane said, nodding and inwardly wincing at how pretentious she must sound when she justified buying a box of advertising combs. “I think I can understand.”

Jane asked Claire if she had any paperwork at all that mentioned the chest, and Claire looked up and blinked.

“What kind of paperwork? A bill of sale?”

“Yes,” said Jane, “that or something that says the name of the people who owned the house. Do you have the address and all? Because if that chest had been there for a while, maybe through a couple of owners, perhaps we'll find a plausible explanation for a Westman chest being there.”

Claire stopped fussing with the towel and her hair for a moment and looked straight at Jane. “I didn't even think about that,” she said. “That's the strangest part of this whole thing.”

“What?” asked Jane.

“No one here asked me for that kind of paperwork. No one asked where the chest came from—except Rick. He called me to get the name of the estate sale company so he could follow up a bit. Didn't even make it a big deal. In fact, he said it was just so he could go through the basement and look for old hardware since he had found a few interesting nails and knobs in one of the chest drawers. No one else asked for a bill of sale,” said Claire.

“They know you, right? They wouldn't think you were bringing them stolen goods, so maybe…”

“They always asked a million questions. For the same reasons you asked…not because they were worried about me stealing it, but because they wanted to establish some kind of plausible provenance. That's why you bring something to Campbell and LaSalle—because once they sign off on it, it's established. They're like museum curators. But this happened so fast. I already had a buyer. Horace snapped at it when I called. I was so excited, did lots of research myself on Westman and how he worked, but I never realized that they weren't asking me anything.”

Jane remembered the envelope she had taken from Rick Moore's truck. Maybe that had some research in it that would shed some light. He had marked it important. Jane drew it from her bag and looked at it. It was just a few pages listing a lot of Web sites. The first page, though, had an elaborate drawing of a large wooden armchair on it. Printed underneath was a capital B.

“What the hell does this mean?” Jane asked aloud, turning when she heard the door open. It was Tim, playing the victorious hunter, carrying a plate of sandwiches, some sodas, and bottled water.

“Let's write everything down,” said Jane. “It'll be a start. You bought the chest at the…?”

“McDougal estate sale. It was run by the blondes, you know?”

Jane knew. They were ruthless. They often left things unpriced just so they could see how badly you wanted it when you brought it to them. They'd charge their own mothers to buy back their wedding silver. How could they be the ones to give Claire Oh the chest for free?

“They didn't want to,” said Claire, when Jane asked. “They called the owner, just to make sure it could be sold; they had some strict orders about some of the stuff apparently. The owner insisted they not charge. I was standing right there and heard the guy's voice over the cell phone. Believe me, if I hadn't heard and mentioned that I'd heard, they would have put some price on it. That's what was so sweet about this whole deal.”

“Who was the guy they talked to? McDougal?” Tim asked, reaching for his third sandwich.

“No, it was a real estate sale. McDougal was dead. No wife, no kids. He had been a gentleman scholar of all kinds of subjects. By the looks of his house and possessions, I'd say he was old money with lots of good taste, but everything had grown old and shabby around him. He had a magnificent library that was swooped down on by the book guys and a great basement with lots of old paper. Theater and opera programs, torn tickets, old college notebooks…,” said Claire. “Junk, but smart junk, you know?”

Jane knew. She was salivating. How had she missed this sale?

“I think the man on the phone was the heir. A nephew or something. He was strong-willed, to say the least, with a loud voice. He said that under no circumstances should they sell that old chest but just have it hauled away. And he said to remind the customer that it would be at her own risk in case it falls apart on her when she's taking it out. I remember him yelling it into the phone,” said Claire. “In fact, I asked about him, and Blondie number one said she had never met him, had done everything by mail and phone, and she never wanted to meet him. Said he sounded like a bastard. And that's something coming from such a bi—Hello, Bruce,” said Claire, standing.

“Well,” said Bruce Oh.

They stood looking at each other for a moment. Claire then apologized for running out, and Bruce nodded and said he was sure she had a good reason. Then they smiled at each other. At least Jane chose to believe that Bruce Oh was smiling. His mouth gave every indication of movement, even if it didn't exactly move. Claire was definitely smiling at her husband.

“Good tie,” she said.

Bruce nodded.

Holy Toledo, what kind of marital dispute was that? If only she and Charley could fight and make up like that. Jane and Tim exchanged glances, and Jane realized he was about to make her laugh so she looked away. Now
that
was a marriage.
How come the damned grass always looks so much greener?
Jane thought. She could answer that.
Because you're not the one who has to mow it.
Knitting a sweater, crocheting a snowflake, decluttering a closet, organizing, maintaining a healthy relationship all looked so easy when someone else was doing the purling, knotting, labeling, and listening. She really needed to call Charley.

“Before we go to dinner, maybe we ought to finish talking about what we know and where we're going with this?” said Jane.

Jane held up the notebook where she had written—chest found at McDougal estate—and underlined McDougal. “This is where it starts,” said Jane. “Claire calls Horace first?” Jane looked at Claire for confirmation and when she nodded, Jane continued. “Okay, so Horace checks it out as a possible Westman. Then Claire calls Campbell and LaSalle, makes arrangements with Rick Moore, and he's the point man on all this? You never talked to anyone besides Glen and Rick?” Jane asked Claire.

Claire had taken out a day runner from her purse and had been checking her calendar as Jane talked. “I checked the piece in with Glen, left two messages for Rick or Blake with Roxanne. When I wanted to check out stuff I had found over the Internet, like finishing details, I called her. Rick was always the one who called me back. And when I picked the chest up, I talked to Rick. He and one of the caretakers helped me load it into my truck. I brought it back and left it with Horace's assistants and didn't talk to him until that night when he stormed in at the show.”

“Did anyone here at C & L know that Horace was your buyer?” asked Tim.

“I don't remember anyone asking,” said Claire. “Rick did ask me when I picked it up if I was selling it as a Westman. I asked him what he and Blake had finally decided about it, and he shrugged and said he'd leave it to Blake. Blake was going to send me his written report on the piece,” said Claire, then she stopped and looked up from her calendar. “That was odd, too, now that I think of it. The report should have been given to me when I picked the chest up. It's supposed to describe the condition of something when it was brought in, with pictures, then they inventory everything they did for restoration.

“When Campbell and LaSalle does this, they list everything, the brushes they used and the number of strokes used to apply the finish. Every detail they can think of. I thought it unusual that it was going to come later, but I was in such a hurry to get back for the show, I let it go. Rick gave some excuse that Blake had had a family matter to tend to and was behind on paperwork.”

“So Rick was really the only person you dealt with on the pickup, and you had no signatures from anyone here verifying anything they did?” asked Jane. “What if Rick wasn't supposed to release it? Or what if he had made some kind of substitution on his own?”

“Ah, the old switcheroo theory?” said Tim. “Interesting, but why? Claire's check was made out to Campbell and LaSalle, so there was no money there to steal and…” Tim stopped. “But of course, he'd have the real Westman to sell.”

“With all the paperwork,” said Jane. “That's why he didn't give it to Claire.”

“Why did Rick kill Horace Cutler then”—asked Bruce Oh, sounding very much like he already knew the answer—“if he had the real chest and the verification?”

“To shut him up about a fake Westman chest?” offered Jane.

“But I don't think he even knew about Horace,” Claire said. “I never mentioned his name. The chest was already back at our house. No one would have spotted it at Horace Cutler's shop; he had turned it right around back to me after looking at it. Bruce received it at the house. Besides, I'm the one Rick would have had to shut up. I'd be yelling my head off if I found out a real Westman had showed up on the market through Campbell and LaSalle. He'd have to…” Claire stopped.