Avery laughed. “That’s not why I asked. We brought down those boxes yesterday, full of information about the cases Mom and Dad worked on. I thought you might help me start going through them.”
“Sure. For a while, anyway. Eve and I are going to the movies later.”
Avery moved to the kitchen for the raspberry cheesecake ice cream she knew was in the freezer, and Tilly followed her. She set two antique Russel Wright Iroquois bowls on the cherry hardwood counter top and ran the scoop under hot water. The kitchen had been their father’s favorite room in the house; he’d chosen the unique, gleaming counter top material, the white Shaker cabinets, and the bronze-pendant light fixtures himself a few years ago when they’d renovated. It was money and effort well spent at the time, as he was the chef of the family. “What movie are you seeing?”
“It’s a choice between that animated teddy bear movie and the newest Batman. So we’re seeing Batman.”
“Good choice.” The Lilac Cinema had only two screens. They were probably lucky they even had a movie theater in their little town. She handed Tilly a heaping bowl of ice cream. “Did I tell you they’re filming some superhero movie at the museum?”
Tilly grabbed the chocolate syrup and poured a generous serving over the top of her dish. “No way. What movie?”
“I’ll find out. I should have thought to ask.”
“I bet it’s the second Firefly movie.” She passed the chocolate syrup to Avery and pulled out her phone. “I think I read something about it filming in Manhattan. Oh my God, I love Solana Davis so much. Have you seen her? Can you get me an autograph?” She glanced up from furiously tapping her screen. “A. You have to get me in to meet her. I’m the hugest Firefly fan.”
Avery laughed. “You must think I have a whole lot more power than I do. I don’t even know who you’re talking about. I’m not big on superheroes.”
“It is the Firefly sequel! Look! Ugh, you’re so lucky!” Tilly turned her phone screen, and Avery glimpsed a pretty blond actress at an awards show.
“I did meet an actor the other day on the elevator. I almost knocked him down,” she said. “I can’t remember his name, but he was so cute. Tyler something. Micah might remember.”
Tilly frowned. “A Tyler who was cute? There are a bunch of those. Tyler Wade, maybe? I’ll look up the cast and figure it out. See, so if you’ve already met one, you’ll meet more. You have to at least try to get me in to meet Solana. Promise,” she demanded.
“Okay, okay. I’ll try. I’ll talk to Goldie.” Avery led the way to the office at the back of the house. She set her ice cream on the blotter on her father’s desk—her desk now. Though it would always be her father’s desk to her. She stood between his desk and her mother’s desk, staring down at the boxes she and Aunt Midge had set on the large, oval, russet-brown rug in the center of the room yesterday. Where to begin? “I guess we need to start by finding either paperwork directly related to the medallion, or at least files they were working on in the months before the accident. What do you think?”
Tilly was somehow balancing her bowl of ice cream in the crook of her elbow and spooning it into her mouth while also stopping to tap her phone screen every so often. She stood between the two boxes, oblivious to Avery’s question.
Avery sat on the plush rug, took the lid off the box labeled Lilac Grove office archive, and lightly smacked a preoccupied Tilly’s leg with it. “Hello?”
“What? Chill for a sec. I forgot to show you what I found last night.” She sat cross-legged on the floor next to her sister. “Your collector guy, Oliver Renell? He’s on social media.”
“Really? Let me see.”
“He has a Twitter account, and he’s also on Network’d. That’s all I can find on him. Twitter is kind of a super-crowded, fast-paced Facebook, but with shorter posts and fewer pictures—”
Avery nodded, cocking an eyebrow at her sister. “Um, yeah, I know what Twitter is. I made a Twitter account for Antiquities and Artifacts Appraised last year—@AveryAyers_AAA. You should check it out sometime. Sir Robert and I run it.”
“Really? Huh. Okay, so here’s your guy’s Twitter profile.”
Avery took the phone from Tilly. “There’s no photo of him. It’s just the placeholder thing.” On the screen next to Oliver Renell’s name was the gray-and-white outline of a person where a photo was normally uploaded. The self-created bio was equally bland and uninformative: Collector, Antiquities Expert; London, New York, Amsterdam. “Is it weird that he hasn’t added a photo?”
Her little sister shrugged. “I mean, kind of, but I don’t think he does much with this account. He only has a handful of followers. It shows right here that the account was created less than a year ago, and he’s only tweeted a few times.” She took the phone back for a moment before handing it over to Avery again. “This is his Network’d profile. Network’d is more for business connections.”
“Networking,” Avery said. “I get it. I’ve heard of this platform, but I don’t use it.” She frowned down at the screen. “No photo again. He doesn’t seem very active here either. I’d think a collector like Renell would get a lot of use out of these sites. But Sir Robert will probably know more, with his connections . . . I’ll see what he thinks Monday. And maybe Renell will have answered my email by then.”
Tilly took the lid off the other box, labeled Manhattan office archive. “Oof. Wow. This is a lot. So what exactly are we looking for?”
“Anything pertaining to the Emperor’s Twins medallion.” Avery groaned inwardly as she looked at the jumble of files and papers in her own box; this would truly be a needle-in-a-haystack search. “Separate anything you see about the MOA, the Xiang dynasty, a dragon, a ruby eye, even a Bismark link gold chain. Oh, or dates. We know Dad and Mom were working on the medallion sometime in the early part of last year.”
“Um.” Tilly paused in her perusal. “MOA is mentioned in like every other job in these.”
Avery sighed. “I was afraid of that. All right, then just look for notes or documents with any of those other key words that catch your eye.”
Halston wandered in and stretched out on the cool hardwood floor beside the rug as they worked. Among the files of organized papers, copies of provenances, and printed records were other odds and ends strewn in the bottom of the boxes: business cards for various contacts, paper clips and receipts, a few ring-sized boxes in floral print that were Anne’s trademark for storing and organizing small items, scattered bits of colorful scrap paper with handwritten notes. Anne had an entire drawer in her desk and another in the kitchen just for the squares of paper she cut up to be used for notes, whether to jot down a few grocery items, send a note to William reminding him she’d be out with friends for dinner, or record bits of information about an artifact. And she’d collected little floral boxes for as long as Avery could remember; her desk here and her dresser upstairs were neatly lined with sets of them.
“Ha!” Tilly exclaimed, startling Avery.
“What’d you find?”
Tilly extracted a manila file folder from the center of her box and handed it to Avery with a flourish. XIANG ERA MEDALLION was printed in William’s block lettering on the tab. “Jackpot, right?”
Avery smiled at her sister’s triumphant expression. “Yes! There’s more in mine too.” She produced a pink scrap of paper with the words Dragon medallion lost by Emperor, track locations via silk road? scrawled across it. Underneath that, she grabbed a photocopy from a pile of pages and held it up for Tilly to see.
“ ‘Factors in Differentiating Eighteenth-Century Rubies and Spinels,’ ” Tilly read aloud. “What’s a spinel?”
“Spinels are similar in appearance to rubies and sapphires but have different chemical makeups. A spinel isn’t quite as hard as a ruby, and it’s also singly refractive, which means when you view it from different angles, the color remains consistent, whereas a ruby shows changes in color from different angles. Spinels were first discovered in the eighteenth century, as they were oft
en passed off as rubies. There are a few really famous pieces that were originally thought to be set with extremely large rubies that turned out to be spinels.”
“Really? So a spinel is kind of a fake?”
“Kind of. It depends,” Avery hedged. “Spinels are recognized for their own value now, as they offer more affordable options and can still be quite stunning. But yes, especially centuries ago, they were considered great impostors.”
“Oh! So, the dragon’s ruby eye, right? What does that mean—were Mom and Dad thinking the dragon’s eye was a spinel?”
“Maybe at first. I mean, they certified and appraised it, it’s on display at MOA, so it must be real. But that’s always a primary task when looking at gems. Micah and I have to verify our new red stone is an actual ruby, too, before we even get to the point where we can compare it to the existing dragon’s eye.”
“And that’s where the chemistry and all that comes in, right?”
Avery nodded. “The composition and other factors. So much of what we’re looking at isn’t even visible to the eye.”
Tilly groaned. “No way. Not for me. Too much math, for one thing.”
“I’m excited for you to see the medallion,” Avery said. “Did Aunt Midge say which day might work?”
“She’s not sure yet. You’ve seen her calendar—it’s always full!”
“True,” Avery said, smiling. “She likes it that way. I wonder,” she mused. “Maybe Micah would want to show Noah the exhibit too. We could all go next Sunday.”
“Noah? We’re going to the museum with Noah?”
She nodded. “If Micah thinks it sounds like a good plan. I told him we’d go shopping with them Sunday. They’ll be happy to see you.” Micah Abbott and his wife and son had been in their lives since before Tilly was born. He’d gone to school with William and was the girls’ godfather. “Noah needs a little help with his wardrobe—he got an internship with a Fortune 500 company. Micah and I thought you might come along and help him find a couple nice suits—if you don’t mind?”
Tilly’s eyes widened. “Are you for real? Do I mind? Will I go with Noah Abbott and watch him model different outfits while I decide what looks good?” She leaned back on her palms, grinning. “I will do that any day he wants. For as long as he wants.”
“Perfect.” Avery laughed. “And you can’t just tell him everything looks good, you know.”
“I know. It’s cool. I’ll help him. I think it’ll be fun. A . . .”
Avery was thumbing through the documents in the box again. “Yeah?”
“Does he have a girlfriend at college? Do you know? He’s been away a whole year—maybe he does.”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t think to ask—Oh my God,” Avery said. Her breath caught in her throat as she reread the print on the yellow carbon copy she’d just pulled from the box. And then read it a third time. She wasn’t seeing things.
“What is that?” Tilly leaned forward, reading upside down. “ ‘Certificate of authenticity and approximate value.’ What does that mean? Is that for the dragon medallion?”
“Yes, it is. It’s a summary, the final form that’s submitted to a client—or in this case, the Museum of Antiquities—to confirm a piece is genuine. It can sometimes stand in for a missing provenance. It’s done in triplicate; this is the second page, under the original. This form always marks the end of an assignment.” She turned it around so Tilly could read it more easily. “It’s faint, but look at the date of Mom’s signature.”
The color drained from Tilly’s rosy complexion. “June sixth.”
“The day they died.”
Chapter Five
“I’m going for a run.” Avery stood.
“What?” Tilly nearly shrieked the word. She jumped to her feet, facing her older sister. “Now? What is wrong with you?” She snatched the packet from her older sister’s fingers, reading it herself.
Avery grabbed the file folder Tilly had found, labeled XIANG ERA MEDALLION. She flipped it open, spreading the pages out on William’s desk. There must have been twenty or thirty papers: originals, copies, printed emails . . . She riffled through quickly; she’d need to sit down with all of it later and compile her own notes. The file held the intake form for the assignment; initial notes on the location of the medallion and the collector; the acquisition confirmation, signed by Nate Brennan; the MOA purchase offer, notarized by Francesca Giolitti; messages to William and Anne from Goldie; a transcript of a meeting among the collector, Sir Robert, and William; a third-party valuation from a gemologist; a certification from a government official in Persia dated 1932, when, it seemed, the medallion had resurfaced; Paris newspaper clippings from 1934; emails back and forth among Micah, Anne, and William speculating on the medallion’s whereabouts after that . . . this was an in-depth assignment. In all of this, where was her parents’ full appraisal and verification report? That always accompanied the original of the authenticity certificate and was typically three or four pages long, detailing defining marks, micrometer measurements, chemical composition, a history of the object, and several other factors.
She straightened up, sweeping everything back into the folder. She took the yellow form from Tilly.
Her younger sister faced her, hands on her hips. “This doesn’t make sense. Mom wasn’t working that Saturday. Remember? We were in the city all day. You met us in Manhattan for lunch after Mom took me and Eve to get our hair and nails done for the choir concert that night. We barely made it home in time, and we went straight from the concert to dinner.”
Avery studied the yellow carbon copy more closely. It was fuzzy but legible. Everything on the certificate was complete. And Goldie had signed under Anne Ayers’s signature, verifying receipt, two days later on Monday, June eighth. “But she did sign it that day. Maybe she and Dad took care of it that morning, before you left for the city?”
Tilly was quiet, thinking. “I don’t know. I don’t remember that. We left the house pretty early. The whole day was rushed, from breakfast until we got to Bello’s for dinner after the choir concert. Besides, if she really did sign that ahead of when it was due, how is it here? Wouldn’t the triple form have gone to MOA where Goldie is? Her signature is right there under Mom’s.”
“I’m sure it did,” Avery said. “Micah brought all the archived files here to the home office last summer, when I finally started doing my share for the business. There’s no space at the office. That’s not the mystery; it makes sense to me that our yellow copy would have gotten filed away after the job was done, and now it’s in storage with everything else. But . . .”
“But the timing . . .” Tilly said, her voice quiet.
“The timing,” Avery agreed. “I have to admit it’s odd that Mom signed it the day she died. Like she knew. Of course she couldn’t have known,” she added hastily.
Tilly stared at her. “How could she have known? Why would you even say that?”
She shook her head. “Obviously she didn’t know the car was going to go off the road. It’s just weird timing, that’s all. I need a break. My eyes are crossing. We can get back into this tomorrow; I really need a run.” Avery carried the boxes over to William’s imposing desk and began stacking the file folders on the blotter.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t want all of this out in the open, not until we know what’s really going on. Could you get the keys, please?”
“Ugh!” Tilly’s features scrunched into a pout. “Why can’t we try to get through this today? Maybe it would make sense. You can get Micah to come out, and I’ll cancel my plans with Eve.” When Avery didn’t reply, she stormed over to one of the bookcases behind William’s desk. She bent and pulled The Great Gatsby from the bottom shelf and dumped a hidden key out into her palm, handing it to Avery. She then moved to the end table by the couch in front of the window on the other side of the room and lifted the lid of a small porcelain box detailed with miniature pink chrysanthemums, an arched green stem acting as a handle. Anne
had circulated her key among the small porcelain boxes in the office, much like William had alternated his hiding space among dummy models of several classic novels.
Avery and Tilly had believed their parents were secretly government spies for much of their childhood, mostly because of these hidden keys. William had been putting his desk key away one afternoon when thirteen-year-old Avery burst into the office. He’d looked up, frozen with his hand poised over the cut-out rectangle inside the pages of The Odyssey. “What happened to knocking?”
Avery had stood in the doorway, staring wide-eyed at her father. She was at his side in an instant, feeling the edges of the hollowed-out section of the book and then looking up at William. “Just like in the James Bond movies!”
Tilly came sliding into the office, never far behind Avery. Precocious and energetic even at six, she’d been tuned in to every little thing her older sister did. “What’s that?”
William snapped the book closed and moved to put it back on the shelf. “It’s just a book, Lamb.”
“That is not just a book! I saw a book like that in Scooby-Doo! Show me!”
Instead of deflecting or flat-out lying to the two of them, William had explained that he and their mother sometimes brought their work home from the Manhattan shop in the course of certifying and appraising items. As some of those items were worth a lot of money and didn’t belong to them, they needed to keep them safely locked up. Looking back, Avery saw how impactful that moment was to her and Tilly’s lives. In the next few years, Tilly had developed a deep and obsessive love for all things Sherlock Holmes. She was the resident expert—if it had happened in a Sherlock Holmes story, cartoon, or movie, she knew about it. And it was no mistake Avery had become fascinated with discovering the hidden stories and long-forgotten secrets of society’s artifacts. She was sure stumbling across her father’s cloak-and-dagger hidden-key habit had factored into her pursuit of a career similar to that of her parents; it was all so exciting and mysterious, and the scientific end of it fascinated her.
Ruby Red Herring Page 6