Lethal Treasure: A Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery (Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries) Read online

  “I’ll call him right away,” she said.

  I left Sasha with the jewelry and went to the far side of the warehouse, where Hank, Prescott’s Maine Coon cat, was curled up in his basket. He mewed in his sleep as I approached, and his paws twitched. I smiled, thinking he was dreaming of chasing a mouse, or maybe a bird.

  “Hi, Hank,” I said softly. I didn’t want to wake him. “There may be a storm this weekend, so we’ll get you all set up with extra food and water, okay?”

  His paws twitched again.

  “Good boy,” I said, leaning in for a kiss. I pecked the top of his head. “I love you, Hank.”

  I was halfway up the spiral stairs that led to my private office when Cara’s voice crackled over the PA system. “Josie, come to the front, please.”

  I paused at the heavy door that led from the warehouse to the front office with my hand on the push bar to peek through the security window I’d had installed at my insurance company’s behest. The one-way glass was bulletproof, like the steel-reinforced door. It allowed us to see who was in the unsecured office before leaving the fortresslike warehouse, but no one standing or hiding in the office could see in.

  Maybe it was a trick of light, but from where I stood, it looked as if Henri’s eyes were boring into mine, as if he were somehow able to see through the mirrored glass, a disconcerting feeling. He was laughing at something Fred said, and I felt myself smile in response, as if I were sharing in the joke even though I couldn’t hear a word.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I stepped into the front office in time to hear Henri finishing a comment.

  “… such weather. I am lucky, non, that I prefer cold to hot. In Paris, we have winter, certainly, but not like this. So cold for so many days in a row, and so much snow, it is not typical. Paris weather is more like New York, although my time in New York was not long, so I should not generalize.”

  “It’s not really typical here, either,” Fred said. “New Hampshire weather is always harsher than New York’s, though.”

  Fred was a transplant from New York City, having joined my team about a year after I’d opened the business, and he looked the part. He wore Italian-made suits and skinny ties and cool-kid square-framed glasses that were always slipping down his nose. I’d been worried that Fred would have a rough time adjusting to small-town living, but he had taken to it as quickly and easily as Hank had taken to living at Prescott’s, which is to say in no time at all.

  “You, too, prefer the cold?” Henri asked him.

  “Personally,” Fred said with a crooked grin, “I prefer Bermuda.”

  Henri laughed, and Fred pushed up his glasses.

  “Hey, Henri!” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you again today. Are you here to brag on your unit?”

  “Non,” Henri said, smiling. “I come to you for help. Look what I found in my locker.” Henri opened an old scrapbook he’d placed on the guest table and pointed to two vintage restaurant menus tucked behind plastic sleeves on facing pages. One was from the venerable Four Seasons, the other from the equally famous Delmonico’s. “Voilà!”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “You will appraise them for me, oui? At your usual rate?”

  “Thank you, Henri. We’d be pleased to. Is there anything else in the album we should look at?”

  “You tell me. I saw only ticket stubs and playbills for Broadway shows, newspaper clippings of show openings, that sort of thing. Maybe they have value. I rely on you, mon ami.” He smiled again, this one conveying devilish delight. “That is not all I found.”

  He opened a triangular post office poster mailer he’d leaned against a wall, and turned it upside down. A round poster tube fell out. He thumbed off the plastic lid and shook out a cylinder covered in brown wrapping paper, secured in three places with small bits of masking tape. The ends of all three sections of tape had been folded over, leaving nonsticky handles about an inch long, an easy way of ensuring you could remove the tape gently. Someone had packed whatever was about to be revealed with care. Henri peeled the tape back, then unfurled a thin stack of colorful posters. He moved the album to a chair so he could stretch the posters out across the guest table. Placing the triangular poster pack across the top and two Minnie Mouse paperweights I commandeered from Gretchen’s desk on the bottom made the posters lie flat.

  “Would you look at that,” I said. Greta Garbo gazed at me from under blue-tinted lids, meeting my eyes and holding them. Her expression was knowing and brazen and dangerous. I glanced at Sasha and Fred, both staring at their computer monitors. “Fred? Sasha? Come here a sec and take a look at this. It’s a poster for the movie The Mysterious Lady. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s no wonder she was the biggest star of her day,” Fred said as he approached.

  “It’s in wonderful condition,” Sasha added. “So good, it makes me wonder if it might be a repro.”

  “There’s more.” Henri deftly moved the Garbo poster to the back of the stack, revealing Lillian Gish dressed in bridal white in Way Down East. From the pout of her ruby lips to the sensual gaze of her limpid brown eyes, her expression defined ingenuous.

  “Now, that’s hot,” Fred said.

  “She’s dressed like a bride,” Sasha said. “I think she looks virginal, not hot.”

  Fred laughed. “Virginal is hot.”

  “Oh,” she said, casting him a sideways glance.

  I was always amazed how well Sasha and Fred got along, when on the face of it, they had so little in common. Sasha was a small-town girl, local to Rocky Point. She didn’t like cities and didn’t really understand how anyone could. Fred liked Rocky Point just fine but spent many of his days off in New York or Boston. Sasha was reserved. Fred was gregarious. Sasha dressed for comfort. Fred dressed for style. While they were as dissimilar in demeanor as any two people could be, the qualities they shared transcended their differences. They treasured the artifacts we appraised not only for their beauty but for their history, and they were both analytical truth seekers. Their disagreements, which to the uninitiated might smack of bickering, were never personal.

  The third poster featured a Ku Klux Klansman riding a rearing horse, both horse and man clad in white, including head coverings. The man held a burning cross high above his head. The background swirled in fiery yellow-green. Oblongs of red-flecked gold dappled the man’s thigh and arm and head. Evidently, the fire, though out of the frame, had just been ignited. The image was bone-chillingly fearsome, more so for what couldn’t be seen. The text read “D.W. Griffith’s The Clansman.”

  “That’s terrifying,” Sasha said, twirling a strand of hair, a sign of anxiety.

  “Completely,” I agreed. “The coloration is incredible, though. That green makes no sense, but it works. And that coppery gold from the flames … it’s spectacular.”

  “Very distinctive,” Fred said.

  “The posters aren’t all drawn by the same hand,” I noted. “This style is much more dramatic than the others. The one with Lillian Gish is downright delicate.”

  “The color penetration is different, too,” Sasha said, “and the palettes.”

  “Do either of you recognize any of the artists?” I asked.

  Sasha shook her head. Fred said no.

  “Here’s the last one,” Henri said, showing us a poster advertising Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush.

  The image showed Chaplin shivering inside a rustic wood shack. The composition and coloration told the tale: Chaplin’s feet were off the ground, his shoulders and hat covered in snow, his nose red. It wasn’t the red of a drinking man; it was the red of a man frozen and frostbit. Chaplin’s expression was fearful yet determined.

  I searched the margins for copyright or printing information but saw none.

  “These colors were more muted than the others,” Sasha noted.

  “Let’s turn the posters over,” I said.

  Printing attribution or ordering information was absent on the backs, too, encouraging me to think
they weren’t modern reproductions.

  “They are valuable, non?” Henri asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, smiling. “You know appraisals take time!”

  “I’m an impatient man.”

  “We’ll be as quick as we can.” I turned to Gretchen. “Please give Henri a receipt for everything.”

  Henri and I watched as Sasha helped Gretchen take photos for the receipt; then Fred helped gather the scrapbook and posters together.

  “Are these your packing materials, or did you find the posters wrapped this way?” Fred asked.

  “The posters came that way. Why?”

  Fred nodded and added the tubes and wrapping paper to the pile.

  “You never know what might give up clues to ownership or value,” Fred said.

  Sasha and Fred said good-bye and, laden with Henri’s objects, disappeared into the warehouse.

  “Do you have a moment?” Henri asked in a near-whisper. “To talk privately?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Come upstairs.”

  As I led the way across the cold concrete to the spiral staircase, Fred and Sasha’s voices drifted across the echoing span.

  “Let’s start with an analysis of the movies’ production dates and locations,” Fred said.

  “No. I think we should examine the materials first,” Sasha replied.

  Their voices faded as we climbed the steps to the mezzanine level.

  Back when the building housed a manufacturer of canvas products, the mezzanine had allowed managers to observe the production process. When I’d renovated the space, I’d converted it into a private office. What had been the factory floor was now the warehouse.

  Henri sat in one of the two yellow brocade Queen Anne wing chairs positioned at one end of the room. I sat across from him on the matching love seat and waited for him to speak. Henri stared at his clasped hands for several seconds. When he looked up, his eyes conveyed sorrow.

  “I have not told Leigh Ann about the call,” he said. “I decided not to tell her ever. She has no need to know we lost a contract. I don’t want to worry her.”

  He paused, perhaps hoping I’d say something comforting, maybe even that I’d say something like I understood or I admired his protective spirit.

  “May I ask…” he continued, then paused to clear his throat. “I know I have no right to ask you to keep this from Leigh Ann…”

  I felt my hackles raise. “I can’t promise that, Henri. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not asking you to lie, Josie, just not to volunteer information.”

  “I guess I can do that,” I said, thinking that sins of omission didn’t seem as bad as sins of commission.

  “Thank you, Josie. I am in your debt.”

  “No, you’re not,” I said, standing, wanting this conversation over. “I’m very uncomfortable with this situation, Henri.”

  He nodded. “It is bad in every way.”

  Back in the front office, Henri signed where Gretchen told him, slid his copy of the receipt into his inside pocket, then turned to face me.

  “Merci, Josie. Merci.”

  I nodded but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  * * *

  I stood by the frost-edged front window watching Henri walk slowly to his van. Puffs of pale gray exhaust colored the air as Henri let the engine warm up. He backed out of the space and left the lot, turning right, toward the ocean.

  Bad news in business was always discouraging, even if the loss was merely an extra contract you weren’t counting on, even if you didn’t need the money to put food on the table or pay the electric bill, but between yesterday’s apparent despondency and today’s request for my continuing silence, I wondered if the situation was worse than Henri was letting on. If he hadn’t brought it up again, I wouldn’t have thought anything about it. His motivation to keep the truth from Leigh Ann must be strong indeed to outweigh his desire to keep his business affairs private. I hoped I was wrong. I liked Leigh Ann and Henri enormously, and I admired their work. They were a wonderful addition to Rocky Point, and it would be a shame if their business failed and they had to leave.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “What did you decide was the best approach?” I asked Sasha.

  She and Fred were standing at one of the worktables that ranged along the warehouse walls. Small, weighted glass cylinders held each of the four silent movie posters flat.

  “We’re still debating,” Sasha told me. “I really think we need to authenticate them before we spend any time on valuation. They could be midcentury or even current repros, in which case, what’s the point of identifying the artist and so on?”

  “And I think we should find out what they’re worth in a best-case scenario. If we find out that they’re only worth two dollars each, who cares what material was used? Let’s cut to the chase.”

  “There are loads of good tactics,” I said, not so much to smooth over their differences as to avoid getting drawn into their debate. “Since you’re working on the jewelry, Sasha, how about if Fred and I take on the menus and the posters? Fred, are you okay with taking a crack at the scrapbook? Maybe start with the menus while I see what I can find out about the posters, then we can decide on next steps?”

  “Sure,” Fred said, turning his laserlike focus toward the scrapbook.

  I turned to Sasha. “Where are you with the jewelry?”

  “I’m meeting Nate at two to drop it off,” Sasha said, lifting the antique watch she wore on a gold chain for a peek, “so I need to get going on inventorying everything.”

  I glanced at the clock. It was 12:38.

  “Will you have time?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Gretchen offered to help with the photos … so, yes.”

  “Great!” I held up crossed fingers. “Here’s hoping!”

  Fred took the scrapbook back to his desk, and I took photos of the four posters, then examined the originals under magnification seeking artists’ signatures or makers’ marks, but found nothing to indicate who designed, drafted, or painted them, or when. Gently sweeping the surface of each poster with my fingertips, I was able to confirm that none was a printed repro—I was touching paint, not ink. Which didn’t mean they were original. Factories existed solely to churn out mass-produced painted pieces. Some of the processes were all machine driven; others were all or part hand-painted, in a paint-by-numbers sort of way. That none of these posters listed a company name or ordering information was encouraging, but not conclusive.

  I decided to examine each poster again, this time using a grid pattern, dividing the space into inch-wide columns, beginning at the top left and working my way down. I kept alert for anything that might give a clue to the artist’s identity or the poster’s origin. Some artists, I knew, signed their work in print or script so tiny as to be nearly impossible to see unless you were specifically looking for it. Others signed their work in unconventional places, sideways, for instance, or near the top. Artists employed characteristic styles, too, and once you knew the “tell,” you could identify the maker. Just as a savvy poker player learned to recognize a competitor’s curled lip or foot-tapping as a precursor to a bluff, an artist’s singular brush stroke or idiosyncratic paint-layering technique was often a dead giveaway to his or her identity.

  I started with The Clansman, the poster showing a rearing horse bearing a man carrying fire. Peering through the loupe, I worked my way down through an unbroken expanse of twilight blue sky and black border until I came to the iron gray of the horse’s hoof. I continued looking, moving from left to right, seeing nothing unexpected. The color transitions were consistently sharp, with nothing mottled or stippled; the brush strokes were consistent, too. I continued on, and there, hidden on an inside fold of the man’s cape, was what appeared to be a cat’s face.

  I lowered the loupe and blinked, certain I was seeing some weird optical illusion. A cat in a cape? In a poster advertising a somber drama?

  I eased the loupe into place and looked again. Now that I
knew what to expect, the cat’s face was evident. Woven into shadows, its eyes open, its expression cheerful, was a sweet-looking rendition of a playful cat.

  I moved to the poster on my left, Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, and began my meticulous examination, narrow column by narrow column. This poster featured a different color palette from the one used in The Clansman. Instead of blues and grays, the artist chose shades of brown, orange, and gold. The painting technique was different, too, the paint strokes broader and the application thicker, both indicators that I was dealing with two different artists, yet hidden in the folds of the blanket Chaplin grasped in his hands was the same cat’s face.

  “You’re kidding me,” I whispered.

  I dashed to the Greta Garbo poster for The Mysterious Lady. This design was simpler than the other three, yet painted with more complex brush-stroke and coloration patterns. I looked in the folds of Garbo’s veil, examining each flowery bit of the lace, without luck. I turned my attention to her hair, then her blacker-than-black outfit, thinking perhaps the artist had hidden the cat behind or in the text that ran over it. Nothing. I sighed, frustrated, then started at the beginning, the upper left, resuming my methodical approach. Fifteen minutes later, I would have sworn there was no cat.

  Way Down East, starring Lillian Gish, was the last of the posters. A cursory examination showed that the colors were more pastel than jewel hued, the composition more detailed, and the paint strokes more delicate than in the other three posters. I started, as I had in The Mysterious Lady, with the veil, and this time, I found the cat right away. The same adorable cat face was hidden amid the flowing lace near her left ear.

  I heard a rattle, then a mew. Hank dropped his favorite mouse, purple with white feathers and a long felt tail, at my feet. It was one of a set Gretchen had bought him to celebrate his two-year anniversary as Prescott’s cat.

  “Hi, Hank,” I said. “What do you think, little boy? Did the artist’s cat pose for him?”

  Hank mewed again, louder.