Antique Blues

by Jane K. Cleland

  “Definitely.” She raised her hand, a miniwave good-bye. “Nice chatting.”

  We stood at the railing and watched them return to the party. As soon as they were out of earshot, Ty began laughing.

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “I hate him.”

  “I know. I think it’s funny.”

  “Poor Lydia.”

  “She seems to like him.”

  Lowering my voice even further, I repeated what I’d overheard, that Trish and Frank thought Cal hit her, that he had escalated from generalized nastiness to physical abuse. “I don’t understand staying with a man who hits you.”

  “Maybe she thinks she deserved it.”

  “Ick.”

  “Ick?”

  “A technical term for dismay.” I leaned my head against Ty’s shoulder. “I love you.”

  Ty raised my chin with his index finger, leaned down, and kissed me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Gretchen, Prescott’s office manager, had hung wind chimes on the inside of our front door years earlier, and they jangled merrily as Mo stepped inside. She held a large red leather portfolio.

  After she said hello to everyone, she unzipped the portfolio and lifted out the woodblock print. I placed it on an easel we keep in a corner next to the bank of file cabinets.

  Sasha, my chief antiques appraiser, walked toward it slowly, her concentration absolute. “I never thought I’d see a Hiroshige close up.”

  Fred, my other antiques appraiser, joined her. “Look at the color saturation.”

  Mo stood nearby beaming like a new mother listening to people coo over her baby.

  Following Prescott’s protocol, I videotaped the print, front and back, describing it carefully, including its measurements, then uploaded the file to our cloud storage. Gretchen printed a receipt and logged the print into our computer database.

  “Do you have time for coffee?” I asked Mo.

  She glanced at the clock mounted near the ceiling, a Chessman original. It read 4:35.

  “A quick one. My mom’s book club meets at the house tomorrow, and I told her I’d make my irresistible chocolate swirl cupcakes before dinner tonight.”

  “What makes them irresistible?” Cara, our grandmotherly receptionist, asked.

  “Sanding sugar. It adds a sweet crunch.”

  A gleam of interest lit up Cara’s eyes. “I’ve used pearl sugar, but never sanding.”

  “Pearl is good, too. Sanding is coarser.”

  “I’m going to try it.” Cara looked at me and smiled. “I’ll bring up coffee.”

  I thanked her and pushed open the heavy door to the warehouse.

  Mo paused ten steps in, taking in the rows of shelves. A walk-in safe in the corner held our most valuable objects, but our inventory of vintage goods and collectibles was organized by type and stored on open shelving.

  “This is incredible, Josie. As long as we’ve been friends … I had no idea.”

  “Thanks. We sell a lot, so we need to stock a lot.”

  Hank, Prescott’s Maine Coon cat, dashed over and mewed imperatively. He wanted to know where I’d been. “This handsome fellow is Hank.” I scooped him up for a cuddle. “Have you been a good boy, Hank?” Angela, the newest addition to our feline family, scampered in our direction. “And this beauty is Angela.” She followed us up the stairs. “She’s my little angel.”

  Upstairs, I took one of the yellow brocade Queen Anne wing chairs, and Hank curled up on my lap. I stroked his tummy, activating his purring machine. Mo sat across from me on the matching love seat. She extracted an envelope from her bag and handed it over. I unfolded the documents, the receipt, and Cal’s statement of authenticity, which required that I stop petting Hank. Annoyed, he jumped down.

  Cal had paid $25,500 to the Rheingold Gallery in Boston for the print, a bargain but not a steal. Stapled to the receipt was a copy of Mo’s check to Cal for $28,050, giving him a 10 percent finder’s fee, a fair reward for locating the print and negotiating its price.

  “Have you purchased anything else through Cal?”

  “No. I had no plans to buy anything, but I just fell in love with this print. Besides, between the way Cal found it, you know, just out of the blue, and my godmother leaving me some money, it felt like it was meant to be.”

  “I know just what you mean. Serendipity. I’m sorry to hear about your godmother, though.”

  “Thanks. Edith Winslow. She was a dear, one of my mom’s golf instructors, and the person who convinced her to go pro. She died about six months ago and left me twenty-five thousand dollars. Wasn’t that incredibly generous of her?”

  “I bet every time you look at the print, you think of her.”

  Mo smiled. “Exactly.”

  I heard the click-clack of Gretchen’s heels crossing the concrete and mounting the stairs. Gretchen was the only one among us who wore stilettos every day. She came into the office and lowered the silver tray onto the mahogany butler’s table.

  “Cara’s on the phone, so I deputized myself.”

  I thanked her and poured from the silver pot into Minton cups.

  Mo added a thimbleful of cream to her coffee and stirred. She waited until the sound of Gretchen’s heels faded away, then said, “Lydia thinks paying for an appraisal is a waste of money.”

  “Your insurance company won’t issue the rider without it.”

  “She said that I don’t need insurance, that the print isn’t valuable enough to worry about. That since I live at home—that’s a nice way for her to get in a dig about my divorce—and the house is secured six ways to Sunday, I shouldn’t bother. What do you think? If you were me, would you get the appraisal?”

  “Yes. Forget the insurance implications. It’s the only way to know what an object is truly worth.”

  “Lydia’s smart and sensible, but she doesn’t always consider the whole picture. That example she gave yesterday, about what a new compound might be worth to a pharmaceutical company … When you rely so heavily on data and expert opinions, you risk forgetting about the people who are sick.”

  I felt uncomfortable. If I didn’t tread carefully, I’d find myself enmeshed in someone else’s family feud.

  “You know what I like best about teaching first grade?” Mo continued. “It means something. I teach kids to read. I teach them to empathize. I make good citizens. All Lydia makes is money.”

  “She does help bring new medications to market. Anyway, it’s not a competition.” I smiled. “Anyone who teaches with as much passion as you do is a hero in my book. So is anyone who volunteers as much as you do.”

  “Thank you, Josie. I don’t know why I let Lydia get under my skin. I’m a grown woman. It’s about time I start acting like it.”

  “You’re doing great, Mo!”

  Mo sipped her coffee. “I had brunch with Steve yesterday.”

  I leaned back. “Really? That’s a surprise.”

  I liked Mo a lot. She hadn’t confided in me about why she and Steve had split up, but from the scuttlebutt that had made its way around New Hampshire Children First!, I gathered that Steve had a roving eye, and Mo got tired of being lied to.

  “I know,” Mo said. “I called him about a month ago. I don’t know where I found the courage. We’ve gone out a few times since then. Do you think I’m weak?”

  “No! Why would you ask that?”

  She placed her cup on the tray. “I’m thinking of getting back with him.”

  “You must love him very much.”

  “Everyone will laugh at me.”

  “I’m not laughing. I think it’s romantic. Besides, who cares what other people think? It’s your life.”

  “Not everyone is as nonjudgmental as you are.”

  “I don’t know about that—but thank you. Good luck, Mo. I’ll be rooting for you both.”

  “Thanks.” She reached for her coffee cup. “Do you know Nora Burke?”

  “No. Who is she?”

  “A book club friend I saw yesterday.” She set h
er cup down without drinking. “After I left Steve, three people told me they’d seen him with another woman, at a candlelit dinner, all lovey-dovey in the park, that sort of thing. They thought they were doing the right thing.”

  “What did you think?”

  “That they enjoyed it a bit too much.”

  “That’s awful. Why do you ask? Is Steve seeing Nora?”

  “What? No. Sorry … I was thinking of something else. I don’t know who he was seeing—or even if the accusations were true. He denied it then, and he still does. We broke up because of money.” She waved it aside. “Never mind. I need to go.” She took one last sip and stood. “This is some of the best coffee ever. What’s your secret?”

  “Arabica beans, freshly ground. Cara tells me it’s the single most important factor.”

  I walked Mo out.

  The trees that ringed the parking lot were dressed in their autumn best. Some leaves glowed like topaz. Others glistened like opals. I took in a deep breath of warm, clean air. September in New Hampshire is perfect, with temperatures in the seventies most days. Everywhere you look, you’re surrounded by a mural painted in iridescent pinks, incandescent reds, radiant oranges, and glittering golds, as showy as a peacock. October is perfect, too, a little cooler, with the autumn foliage fading but still teeming with color. Then winter sets in.

  Mo leaned against her car, an old Saab. She stared off into the woods for a moment, past the white steeple of the Congregational church next door, toward the ocean.

  “Are you going to this year’s volunteer appreciation luncheon?” I asked.

  Mo turned toward me, shielding her eyes from the sun with the side of her hand. “Sure. How about you?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  That’s where Mo and I first met. About a year after I moved to New Hampshire, a dozen years ago, I’d joined the fund-raising committee of New Hampshire Children First! Mo had been wrangling horses in the charity’s therapeutic horse-riding program for a few years, starting when she was eighteen. That first year, we sat next to one another at the charity’s annual volunteer appreciation luncheon. I’d been stunned to receive the Fund-raiser of the Year award. Mo had received the charity’s highest honor, Volunteer of the Year.

  Mo opened the driver’s side door. “Those kids … those horses … they’ve gotten me through more than one dark day.”

  “You’ve gotten those kids through some dark days, too.”

  She gave me a quick hug. I stood and watched until she turned left out of the lot, toward the interstate.

  * * *

  Rheingold Gallery was located on Newbury Street in the tony Back Bay section of Boston. I only knew of it from one mention in an industry publication, Antiques Insights. Each issue of the magazine included a column called “Small Victories.” The snippet, which I recalled seeing in one of last spring’s issues, had compared traditional Japanese art with the hot new Superflat movement. Rheingold had recently acquired some important contemporary works, and the “Small Victories” author had been impressed with Rheingold’s catalogue copy, referencing it as an example of how to shrewdly adapt antiques insights to modern-era art. I parked in the garage under Boston Common and walked the few blocks to the address.

  Through the plate-glass window, I saw an attractive woman in her forties leaning against a teak desk chatting with a tall man some years younger. She wore a teal-and-beige Chanel tweed suit. Her sandy blond hair was pinned up in a French twist. He wore jeans and an off-white linen shirt, untucked. His hair was long.

  The paintings perched on easels in the window were abstracts, some geometric and symmetrical, others comprised of seemingly random slashes of color. I recognized a dramatic Jun Inoue painting, a combination of graffiti and shodo, traditional Japanese calligraphy.

  I entered the gallery. The woman smiled, then turned her attention back to the man.

  A younger woman with waist-long dirty-blond hair and big brown eyes approached me and asked if she could show me anything in particular.

  I didn’t reply for a few seconds, taking in the gallery’s minimalist style, noting the bold colors and the simplicity. “Thanks. I’m interested in learning about a Japanese woodblock print you sold last week.”

  “Oh, sorry. We only deal in midcentury modern and contemporary art.”

  “This was part of an estate you bought.”

  She looked confounded. “That’s not possible. I’d know if we bought an entire estate.”

  “The Barnes estate.”

  “I’m afraid there’s some mistake.”

  I pulled the receipt from my bag and held it so she could see it.

  “This isn’t … This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Is the owner around? Or a manager?”

  She glanced at the older woman. “Sylvia owns the gallery. Sylvia Rheingold. And you are…?”

  “Josie Prescott. I’m an antiques appraiser from New Hampshire.”

  Sylvia patted the man on his upper arm, said something to him, and leaned in for an air kiss. He grinned and left.

  “This is Josie Prescott,” the young woman said. “She has a receipt … You need to look at it.”

  I held it up.

  “Thank you, Heidi, that’s all.” Sylvia waited until Heidi disappeared behind a partition. “Where did you get this?”

  “From a friend who hired me to appraise it.”

  Her brow creased, and she met my eyes straight on. “This isn’t our receipt. It’s our logo, but not our format.”

  “Do you know Cal Lewis?”

  “No.”

  “Cal told me he heard through what he called the grapevine that you bought the Barnes estate, which included a Hiroshige woodblock print.”

  “I rarely buy estates. I don’t have the capacity to catalogue and sell objects that are out of my niche, which, as you can see, is rather narrow.”

  “Since you didn’t sell this print and you don’t know Cal Lewis, it seems to me I might have stumbled into a bramble patch.”

  “Who is Cal Lewis?”

  “He’s an assistant professor at Hitchens and the assistant director of their on-campus museum. He’s a fairly well known expert in Asian artifacts, mostly Japanese vases and pots.” I was tempted to add that I had no clue why he would do such a thing—or why he thought he could get away with it—but didn’t.

  “If he was going to try some kind of con job, why wouldn’t he choose a gallery that deals in Japanese art?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should I expect other appraisers to contact me to ask about sales I didn’t make?”

  “I don’t know that either. I’ll ask him and let you know what he says.”

  From her skeptical look and the derisive twist of her mouth, I could tell she was wondering if I was involved, and I bristled.

  “I’m just the messenger,” I said, “as upset as you are, maybe more so.”

  Sylvia’s scorn faded. She nodded slowly. “Can I get a copy of this document?”

  “I’ll ask the owner for permission, and if she says it’s all right, I’ll email it to you.”

  I extracted a business card from my tote bag and handed it over.

  Sylvia stared at it for a moment, then raised her eyes to mine. “Whatever is going on here … it’s not good.”

  I slipped the receipt into my bag. “I’m sorry to drop this Pandora’s box on your doorstep. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  As soon as I reached I-95 on my way back to New Hampshire, I pulled onto the shoulder and called Ellis Hunter, Rocky Point’s police chief, and my friend.

  I told him what I’d discovered at the Rheingold Gallery. “Given that Cal hits women, or, rather, given that there are allegations that Cal hits women, I’d love for you to keep me company while I talk to him.”

  “Is this an official request?”

  “No. I’m asking as your friend. I don’t know what’s going on, Ellis. It’s possible that Cal was the one who got conned, that
he’s not the con man. But he’s supposed to be an expert in Japanese objects, so that doesn’t gel. To make matters more confusing, Cal said he knew the print was a first edition because of the bokashi in the signature cartouche. That’s not how you determine authenticity.”

  Ellis asked about bokashi, and I explained how it was used in the poem-card.

  “Did you tell Mo?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I didn’t want to upset her. For all I know, he simply misspoke.”

  “Is the print a fake?”

  “Probably.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Forget that Cal lied about where he bought it and misrepresented the importance of the bokashi, the colors are surprisingly vivid, especially the blues. Without further analysis, there’s no way to tell what particular pigment was used in this work, but typically, the inks in traditional Japanese woodblock prints are among the most light-sensitive in the world. Dyes and pigments that fade quickly are called fugitive, and blue, whether indigo or Antwerp or one of the organic pigments, is among the most fugitive of all.”

  “Couldn’t the print have been kept out of the light all these years?”

  “Yes. That’s why I said probably.”

  “Let’s say it’s a fake. Would Cal have known?”

  “Most likely, although there’s a fair chance that he was merely overconfident and did a cursory job on his authentication, then lied about where and how he acquired the print to give it a loftier pedigree than it deserves. Of course, it’s also possible someone lied to him and he fell for it. If so, he got snookered good.”

  “What does your gut tell you?”

  “He seemed resentful that he earns less than Lydia. I could see him trying an end-around to pocket a little extra cash.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “What are you? A cop?”

  “And a good one. The way you tell it, he’s got ethics problems, attitude problems, and a temper. No wonder you want me there when you talk to him.”

  * * *

  Ellis and I circled the Shannons’ house to meet up with Mo and Cal in the garden. The sound of ocean waves lapping against the boulders that lined the shore lulled me, like always. Sun-tipped sequins darted across the dark blue water. Nothing relaxed me like the sight and sound of the ocean.