Deadly Appraisal Read online

  The phone rang as I poured a cup of coffee. It was Detective Rowcliff, and he was brusque.

  “I need to talk to you. When can you get here?”

  “What about?”

  “About Maisy Gaylor’s death,” he replied impatiently. I could almost hear him saying to himself, What do you think I want to talk to you about? Duh.

  There was menace in Rowcliff’s voice, and something else, too, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Some kind of energy—maybe excitement, maybe zeal. Was he on to something? We agreed to meet at my building in half an hour.

  I hung up and dialed Max Bixby, my lawyer, my hand shaking uncontrollably. Last night’s message hadn’t conveyed the urgency I now felt. I got him at home and he agreed to meet me right away.

  There was bad news awaitin’. I didn’t know what, but I didn’t doubt whether.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I

  ran upstairs, threw on jeans and a sweater, laced up my work boots, grabbed my purse and jacket, and was out the door in nothing flat.

  While I waited for the engine to warm up, a pleasant memory came to me. I was standing close to Ty. It was last spring, shortly after we met. I felt sparks between us and had sensed, from the warmth in his eyes, that he felt them, too. I grumbled that his car was too high to get into easily, and he told me that the police-issued SUV was more properly called a vehicle than a car, and that the problem wasn’t that the vehicle was too tall, but that I was too short. It was a silly exchange, nothing special, really, just pleasant banter, the kind of innocuous conversation on which relationships are built.

  Ty is a morning person, so even though it was still early in Los Angeles, I thought maybe I could catch him before he got busy with Aunt Trina and her doctors.

  I dug my phone out of my purse and dialed his cell phone. After four rings, I heard the click that meant I was going to get his voice mail. “This is Chief Ty Alverez of the Rocky Point Police. Please leave a message.”

  He had a great voice, deep and strong. At the prompt, I said, “Ty, it’s Josie. I got your message. Please give my best to your aunt, and know I’m thinking of you. Call when you can.”

  Not my best effort, but enough to touch base and acknowledge his message. He’d call when he was able. Never mind that I was consumed with worry and fear. It was important to me that I convey sensitivity to his situation with his aunt and that I not appear needy. Perception transcends reality.

  As I approached my building, I could see that the parking lot was thickly quilted with vibrant gold and vivid vermillion leaves. Winter would soon be here, and the spectacular foliage scene would evolve into a setting seemingly devoid of life, tinted in brown and white. Nothing had ever looked as desolate to me as the New Hampshire coast in winter until I realized that beneath the veneer of barrenness, the land teemed with life, winter gardens and empty beaches revealing their own kind of beauty, spectacular in its way, once I took the time to look.

  But today under the warming early-autumn sun, colors flickered opalescently as leaves fluttered in the light breeze. Lying on the ground, they appeared lush and supple, neither dry nor dead, but I knew that their good looks were deceptive; one good rain, and they’d become as dangerous as an unseen ice slick. I made a mental note to have them blown clear before next Saturday’s tag sale.

  I parked next to Sasha’s car and noted that Fred was here, too, parked almost at the end of the lot, over by the tag-sale entrance. I bet it was our recent acquisition of a Picasso sketch that drew my two researchers into work on a Sunday morning.

  Most of our acquisitions came from word-of-mouth referrals and responses to ads, plus, occasionally, walk-ins during our tag sales. Lately, as testimony to our growing reputation, we’d also attracted clients from other states.

  Yesterday, a middle-aged woman, who’d introduced herself as Helen Finn, had arrived at our door without an appointment and with the Picasso drawing in hand. She’d explained that she was up from Arkansas on a leaf-peeping weekend, and after reading about us on the Internet, she’d decided to bring it with her, hoping we’d be interested in buying it. The sketch had been her mother’s, she’d said, and now that her mother had died, she wanted to sell it.

  The illustration was deceptively simple. It showed a sort of lion’s head, swiftly rendered in thick sweeps of crayon on yellowing paper. Only a master could have wielded that crayon, executing his vision in one flowing movement, and also knowing what not to draw. While Fred did a quick Internet check to make certain a Mrs. Finn had, in fact, died, and that the sketch wasn’t listed as stolen, Sasha consulted the Picasso catalogue raisonné on our reference shelf and verified the sketch’s dimensions and the signature. Delighted, I closed the deal. Ms. Finn was ecstatic to receive a ten-thousand-dollar on-the-spot cash payment, and I was elated, too. Properly marketed, it should sell for more than forty thousand dollars.

  I sat for a minute, readying myself for the day ahead. The big PRESCOTT’S ANTIQUES: AUCTIONS AND APPRAISALS sign perched atop the building glinted in the sun, and looking at it, I allowed myself a private moment of pride.

  I remembered how Stella, the real estate agent who’d showed me the property more than five years ago, had wrinkled her nose as we turned into the parking lot. “You said you wanted space,” she’d said. “That’s about all this place has going for it.”

  The decaying building was a hodgepodge comprised of three unequal sections. The largest area, the central unit, had been built in the late 1800s by Millner Canvas Company as its spanking new state-of-the-art factory. Millner’s produced high-quality canvas sails, bags, and shoes until the mid-1970s, when Doug Millner moved the operation to North Carolina. Now it contained our offices and a cavernous industrial storage area.

  When I’d bought the building, the area on the left—now my auction venue—had been a retail shop—a latter-day factory-outlet store selling products manufactured on-site at a discount. I’d replaced the small door that had separated the store from the factory with custom-made sliding walls that allowed us to move big pieces of furniture easily from the warehouse into the auction hall.

  To the right of the original factory was an attached shacklike structure we used for the weekly tag sales. I had no idea what its original purpose was, and other than installing rest rooms and bringing it up to code, I hadn’t updated or redecorated it at all. Its Spartan simplicity conveyed exactly the right mood for bargain hunters.

  An hour after Stella and I had pulled into the lot, I made an offer. Stella was stunned speechless, and I understood why. When she viewed the property, she saw a run-down monolith, an unloved factory that had been abandoned thirty years earlier and ignored ever since. My perspective was different. What I saw was the perfect place in a perfect location, just off I-95 and only minutes from downtown Portsmouth. There was plenty of space for inventory, a layout that could have been tailor-made for my business model—running both auctions and tag sales—ample parking, and if the engineer’s report found that the building was structurally sound, I could be up and running within a few months. Stella saw a problem. I saw an opportunity. Perception is individual, and real.

  I stepped out of my car and saw that Officer Johnston, Detective Rowcliff’s note taker, was watching me from his post by the auction doors. I waved at him and mouthed hello, and he half-saluted and nodded in return.

  It was a beautiful day, and I wished I could assign myself the duty of clearing the leaves so I could stay outside. With a sigh of resignation, I opened the front door, and chimes tinkled. Gretchen, my assistant, had hung wind chimes from an eyehook high up on the door about a month ago. When I’d asked her why, she’d smiled sweetly and said, “Because it sounds nice.” Never overlook the obvious, I reminded myself.

  “How can you say Matisse wasn’t important?” Fred asked Sasha now, sounding shocked.

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t important. I said his importance was diluted by the number of clever fakes on the market.”

  “That’s insane. That’s eq
uivalent to saying that he was too talented for his own good.”

  “No, just that he was too popular too early on,” Sasha said confidently. When discussing art, and only then, Sasha was completely self-assured. “If no one had liked his work, no one would have copied it, and his work would be easier to authenticate. People are afraid to buy a Matisse. There are too many good fakes out there. And that holds the prices down.”

  I hung my jacket on one of the hooks by the door and said, “Hey. How are you?”

  “Okay,” Fred said. “You know. All things considered.”

  I nodded and turned to Sasha. “A little scared,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear nervously. “How about you?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been better.”

  Sasha nodded, and after a momentary silence, I said, “Well, we seem to share a coping strategy—we work.”

  “Is it all right that we came in?” Sasha asked.

  “Absolutely. It’s a good thing. So tell me, what’s today’s debate?”

  “Sasha says that Matisse’s prices are artificially low because the prints are hard to authenticate,” Fred said disdainfully.

  Fred and Sasha were an odd couple. When Fred first joined the company last spring, I thought his imperiousness would alienate Sasha. To my surprise, they became friends, and I’d come to realize that their arguments revealed intellectual compatibility, not antipathy. They both revered analytical thinking and condemned lazy research. Their challenges of each other were all about scholarship, not personality. They interacted synergistically, and as a result, their work got better.

  “You mean that if the art is easy to fake, it ends up having less value?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sasha replied. “It’s not whether the art is beautiful or worthy. It’s whether it’s easily reproducible.”

  “That’s specious reasoning and you know it!” Fred insisted.

  “No, it’s not,” Sasha responded. She turned to me. “Matisse once said that he’d produced fifteen hundred prints in his career and twenty-five hundred of them were in America.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she agreed, nodding. Fred made a derisive noise. “It’s true,” she insisted. “And the point is equally true about Picasso’s line drawings. They’re brilliant in conception and execution. That’s not the issue. The issue is that they’re easy to reproduce.”

  “And therefore easy to fake,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “And you, Fred? What don’t you agree with?”

  “Her premise is right. It’s her conclusion that’s dead wrong.” He spun his desk chair and drilled Sasha with his eyes. “Whether or not a print is easy to reproduce is irrelevant. What’s relevant is whether the piece can be authenticated with a high degree of confidence. When it comes to pricing, you know as well as I do, Sasha, how complex it is. Of course the beauty and originality of the piece figure into it. But so does its rarity, market trends, important or prestigious reviews, celebrity acceptance, and so on. But the number and quality of fakes available for sale is not one of the factors impacting price. Not when authentication is a straightforward process. Which it is in this case. At least it’s straightforward if you know what you’re looking for.”

  Uh-oh, I thought, here come the fireworks. Instead, Sasha chuckled. “You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Got it,” I said, and added, “I’ll be upstairs if you need me. Let me know when Max and Detective Rowcliff arrive, okay?” As I headed into the warehouse and up the spiral staircase to my private enclave, I heard Fred drive home his point.

  “Assuming the art looks right, first test the paper,” he said in a tone indicating that he was tired of repeating the obvious.

  “Surely you’re aware that you can buy genuine, period-specific paper with no problem,” Sasha responded.

  “I didn’t say testing the paper was the only step. I said it was the first step.”

  Sasha’s reply faded as I mounted the stairs. I crossed my fingers. Fred and Sasha were both intuitive and well-trained art historians, but neither was astute when it came to business. Assuming their conversation had something to do with the Picasso sketch we’d just bought, I hoped that their conclusion would be that we had underestimated its value, not that we’d overpaid.

  Sasha buzzed on the intercom and told me that Max had arrived.

  “Send him up,” I said.

  I walked to the door and waited for him. Max looked the same as always, although I hadn’t seen him in several months. He wore a bow tie and tweed jacket, and his smile was easy and natural. He conveyed a comfortable combination of relaxation and legal tradition.

  “Hey,” he said, reaching the top of the staircase and extending his hand. “I haven’t seen you in a ’coon’s age. How are you?”

  I shook his hand and smiled. “Boy, is it good to see you, Max! How’s things?”

  “Good, good. Our littlest one, Penny, she’s sleeping through the night now, so all is well with the world.”

  I laughed, delighted at his mild joke, aware that much of my pleasure derived from relief. The future looked less bleak with Max in the room.

  “Thank God for you, Max. You have no idea how hard it is for me to deal with this kind of chaos. With you on my side, it’s easier.”

  He smiled and patted my shoulder. “I can’t think of anyone’s side I’d rather be on.”

  “Have a seat, and tell me what we do now.”

  Max hitched up his pants and lowered himself onto the yellow love seat. “The first thing we do is review what you know. Start by giving me an overview.”

  “An overview,” I repeated, gathering my thoughts. “Maisy collapsed and died. At the time, I thought she had a heart attack or something, or that maybe she died from some sort of drug reaction or overdose—she was uncharacteristically euphoric before she died.”

  Max nodded and made a note on a pad of lined yellow paper balanced on his thigh.

  “The only thing is . . .” I faltered.

  “What?” he asked, looking up.

  “Well, Detective Rowcliff—he’s in charge of the investigation and he’ll be here soon—well, he said that he didn’t think she died from natural causes. He thought it was murder.”

  Max looked at me for a moment. “Why?”

  I shook my head. “He wouldn’t say.”

  “That’s interesting, isn’t it? Well, assuming he’s right, let me get one question out of the way. Did you kill Maisy Gaylor?”

  My mouth opened a bit. “Rowcliff asked me that, too.”

  “Oh, he did, did he? What did you answer?”

  “I told him the truth. I told him no.”

  “Okay, then.” He smiled reassuringly and I sank into a Queen Anne wing chair across from him. “So,” he said, “talk to me. What else do you know?”

  “Not much. Apparently, Rowcliff isn’t even sure if Maisy was the intended victim. There’s some uncertainty about whether maybe . . . well, it sounds silly when I say it out loud, but he seems to think that I might have been the target.”

  He nodded as if he’d expected that revelation. “Do you know why he thinks that?”

  “No.”

  He gestured that I was to continue. “What else?”

  I shook my head. “That’s it. Really.”

  “Okay, then. When it comes to answering questions, if I tell you to stop talking, you do so, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Keep your answers short and responsive. Don’t volunteer information.”

  “Okay, but this is so unfair. I was just trying to promote my business and do a good deed, you know, by sponsoring the Gala. I barely knew Maisy.”

  “Still, something is making him think that someone might be targeting you, not Maisy.”

  I shook my head, not wanting it to be true. “It’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  I stared at him, then shook my head again. “It’s just not pos
sible,” I repeated.

  Max leaned forward and waited until he had my full attention. “Yes, Josie,” he said softly, “it is.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  was still staring at Max, horrified, unable to think how I should respond to his terrifying comment, when Sasha called up that Detective Rowcliff had arrived. I asked her to tell him that we’d meet him in the auction room.

  “Are you all right?” Max asked, standing and slipping his pad of paper into his briefcase.

  “Not really,” I confessed. “This is just awful.”

  He squeezed my arm, and I felt a little comforted.

  “Remember . . . short answers, Josie. Okay?”

  I smiled. “I remember. My lawyer once told me that one-word answers are good.”

  He smiled back and nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Have you ever met Detective Rowcliff?” I asked.

  “No. But I gather from your tone that I ought to ask why.”

  I shrugged. “You’ll see. He’s pretty tough to take.”

  “In what way?”

  “I guess mostly it’s his sarcasm. I don’t know. He looks at me and I feel like a bug under a microscope.”

  “Intensely examined?”

  I thought for a moment before answering. “No, not exactly. More like despised and ready to be pinned.”

  “Yowzi. With that recommendation, I can hardly wait to meet him.”

  “Yeah,” I said, heading for the stairs, feeling resigned to my fate.

  “I won’t let him pin you,” Max promised.

  “Thank you, but I’m not sure that even you could stop him if he has his sights on me.”

  I heard Detective Rowcliff before I saw him, the familiar tapping of his pencil alerting me to his presence. Sasha had escorted him to the auction room, and when I entered, he was squatting beside the podium on the stage, staring into the hollow area, examining the shelf. When he saw us enter from the back, he jumped down and hurried over.

  I introduced them. Max said hello and Rowcliff nodded a sort of greeting.