by Linda Johns
That was all reassuring, but it sure would be a lot more fun if I exposed Louise and her crime today.
Still, I went along with Mom and hoped I’d convinced her that I was being mellow about all this. We wandered around for another ninety minutes, waiting for Lily’s brooch to be appraised. We eavesdropped on other people’s appraisals and even talked to people about their treasures.
“Let’s look in here. I love Art Nouveau,” Mom said.
Georgia was standing behind a table. There were two objects on the table. One was a red glass bowl. The other was a blue vase.
Libby’s blue vase.
“That’s …” I started to say to Mom, but a guy with a headset on called out, “Quiet on the set.” The lights came up, focused on Georgia. “Five, four,” the guy with the headset was counting down, “three, two, one …”
“You have two quite distinct items here, so I’ve asked my colleague to join me,” a man in a bow tie said. “Let’s start with this vase. What can you tell us about this vase?”
“I don’t actually know that much. My grandfather gave it to me. He died before I was born. He left it, along with a note, with my mother to give to me,” she said. Hey, wait a minute! That’s my story. Had she seen my segment and decided to use my story as her own? That would make sense, since she couldn’t have her own story because the vase wasn’t hers.
“You have no idea of the age or its origins?” bow-tie man asked.
“No …” she stammered. Origins? I’ll tell you the origins! I scrawled a note to Mom: LIBBY’S VASE!!!!
Mom scrawled, “Sure?”
“Absolutely,” I wrote, and underlined it three times.
Bow-tie man was talking about Art Nouveau something or other. Mom motioned that she was going to go make a phone call. I hoped she was calling the police.
“It’s value is $3,200,” bow-tie man finished. “But what we really want to talk with you about today is this magnificent iridescent piece of Louis Comfort Tiffany glass.”
There was a gasp behind me. The camera guy and the sound woman glared at me. Hey, it wasn’t me! I turned around to face Louise. Her eyes were huge, her eyebrows raised, and her hand clasped over her mouth as if to keep herself from screaming.
Ah-ha! You are the culprit! I wanted to say it out loud, but I knew I couldn’t. I mean, I could say it out loud, but I didn’t want to get in trouble with those TV folks. I just didn’t have the guts to do it. If only Lily was here. She’d seize this opportunity to be on national television and catch a culprit.
Clearly, Louise and Georgia had been working together. Clearly, Louise had no idea that Georgia was going to come on Antiques Caravan with items the two had stolen in their feng shui scam. I wasn’t sure who owned that Tiffany glass piece, but it was undoubtedly someone on Millionaire’s Row.
“Tiffany? Really?” Georgia said.
“You seem surprised. What can you tell us about this bowl?”
“It’s … it’s also from my grandfather. It’s quite old,” Georgia said.
“I’d say this is from about 1910. Our culture today often hears about Tiffany glass lamps. Reproductions of the jewel-toned lamps are everywhere,” the man said. “In fact, the reproductions can be rather inexpensive.”
Georgia nodded.
“An authentic Tiffany lamp could be several thousand dollars,” he said. “Excuse me, I meant to say a Louis Tiffany lamp could be worth several hundred thousand dollars. A Magnolia floor lamp has been valued at $1.5 million.”
“Really?” Georgia stammered with excitement.
“Indeed.” He held the bowl up to the light. “This is Favrile, a type of glass process patented by Tiffany in 1880. Different colors of glass are mixed together while hot. Vases and bowls may not be as valuable as the lamps …” The man paused.
“Really?” Georgia said again, the disappointment clear in her voice.
“A vase could range from $60,000 or more … ,” he began, but Georgia interrupted him.
“Really!”
“Yes, as I was saying, ranging from $60,000 to $80,000 on the high end, and a couple of thousand dollars on the low end.”
I waited for Georgia to say “really” again. She said nothing. She looked like she was holding her breath, waiting for the verdict.
“Many of these pieces are unmarked. Tiffany pieces have been handed down in families, and people haven’t even realized what they had. Did your family know?”
“We had no idea,” Georgia said. “We always took special care of it, but that’s just because it seemed fragile. And beautiful. It’s obviously beautifully crafted.”
“Indeed. Beautifully crafted. Many bowls like this were crafted around 1902, but few survived, possibly because people didn’t realize they were Tiffany. I’d value this piece at $22,000 to $24,000.”
“Oh, my!” Georgia said, her face flushing. “My grandmother, I mean grandfather, would be so excited!”
“So would my aunt,” Louise practically hissed from behind us. “Although Aunt Betty always knew that bowl was Tiffany.”
“You mean it’s yours?” I asked incredulously.
Louise nodded. “Absolutely. That little thieving … thief!”
“But aren’t … aren’t you … ?” Now I was the one faltering.
“The feng shui culprit? Yes. The thief? No.”
And I believed her.
CHAPTER 24
“WILL YOU ENTERTAIN offers for this exquisite Tiffany Studios bowl, or do you intend to keep it in the family?” the appraiser asked.
Georgia was beaming. “I’m definitely open to any offers.”
I’ll just bet she is.
“Quick! Your phone!” I said to Mom, holding out my hand. Only my mom wasn’t back.
Louise handed me hers. Excellent. It was a camera phone. I maneuvered my way through the crowd so I could get photographs of Libby’s vase and Louise’s bowl. I was too far away to photograph it really well, but I gave it a shot anyway.
“Come on!” I motioned to Louise. She stood in the back of the crowd, frozen. As I turned back to Georgia, two security guards came and escorted her away. People in black polo shirts with the Antiques Caravan logo whisked in to protect the fragile—and valuable—items.
“Louise, let’s follow them,” I urged her.
“I wonder if I should just let it go,” she said softly. “It’s all my fault after all.”
“It’s not your fault if she stole something from you. Did you see that blue vase she had? I’m sure that was Libby’s vase. And I bet Mark and Tom’s Chihuly bowl is in that box of hers somewhere, if not on her dining room table,” I said. Louise looked years older and inches smaller to me. She looked sad to the core.
“Louise, I should apologize to you. I thought you were the feng shui thief. I was sure it was you breaking into houses and trying to make the energy flow better through feng shui,” I said.
“I thought I was helping them,” she said softly. “I had no idea people would see it as an intrusion. I thought they’d welcome the improvements in their living spaces and what that can bring to their lives. Georgia was studying with me. I thought she was helping me. But …”
Mom came back just then.
“What did the police say?” I asked Mom. “Do we need to stall Georgia? Tail her?”
“I didn’t call the police. I would have sounded like a crackpot. I called Libby, hoping she would call the police with the case number. But I didn’t reach her.”
“Maybe we should bring Louise and go backstage to see if we can confront Georgia now,” I said.
“Louise? Is she still here?” Mom asked.
I looked around and realized that she wasn’t.
She had probably taken off when she heard the word police.
CHAPTER 25
MOM AND I looked around for Louise. We didn’t see her. Georgia and her entourage of Antiques Caravan staff people had disappeared, too. The security guards probably thought they were keeping the bowl safe from thieves. That wa
s kind of a twisted joke.
“We made it on TV!” Lily squealed, coming up behind us. “I wish you could have seen it. We were magnificent.”
“Lily, we don’t have absolute confirmation that they’re using us,” her mom said. She was beaming, too. There was so much energy buzzing around this whole Antiques Caravan setup. It would be impossible not to get caught up in it. And who doesn’t love the idea of being on television?
“Who are you looking for?” Lily asked. “Hoping for another shot of fame today?”
But I didn’t have time to explain. “Excuse me,” I said to an official-looking person with a clipboard and the standard black Antiques Caravan T-shirt. “Do you know where we could find Ms. Smith? She was the one who was just here with that glass bowl,” I asked the member of the crew.
“I believe she went back to our office area to entertain offers on her Tiffany piece, or, as you say, that glass bowl,” he replied.
“We’d like to make an offer,” my mom said. Yay, Mom! The man looked her up and down, as if deciding she had expensive enough shoes to be able to make an offer to Ms. Smith. Mom purposefully moved the lamp to a different position. She’d been lugging that thing around all day and now it was finally paying off. She held it confidently, as if she’d just purchased it from someone. If you can buy a $4,000 lamp—an ugly $4,000 lamp—on the spur of the moment, maybe you can buy something ten times that much, too.
“Yes, then, come with me.” We all started following him. He stopped abruptly and turned. “Just two of you, please.”
Obviously that would be Mom and me. Lily stepped forward, but I elbowed her back. “I’ll go, Mom. I’ll help carry my new bedside lamp,” I said, trying to sound like a sweet but spoiled rich kid.
The office area was nothing fancy. Not at all. There were card tables and stacks of paper, boxes of files, computers with a zillion wires tangled together.
“Please write your offer on this form,” the man said. “Ms. Smith will evaluate all offers in a few minutes. We’ll be taping her again as she looks at the offers. It’s a new segment for the show.”
I grabbed the form from Mom.
“Manners, Hannah!” she scolded.
“My apologies. I assure you I can take care of this for you, Ms. West,” I said formally.
Instead of writing a dollar amount, I wrote, “Hi, Georgia! Did you know my neighbor Libby has a vase exactly like that blue one? Only thing is, hers was stolen. So was Louise’s red Tiffany bowl.” I signed it, “Love, Hannah,” which I thought was a nice friendly touch.
The camera crew came in. A makeup person powdered Georgia’s nose and put a microphone on the collar of her shirt. Georgia smoothed her hair and quickly put on lipstick. They positioned both the vase and the bowl next to her.
“Now, as you examine the offers, please feel free to tell us as much or as little as you’d like,” Marcia Wellstone coached Georgia.
Georgia began opening envelopes and pulling out each form. She looked extremely serious as she read the first one, then smiled and said, “This is a very good offer.” She smoothed the form and put it to her right. She opened the second one and, again, looked at it intently. “A good offer, but a bit lower.” She put it to the left. Envelope three brought “Another very good offer” and earned a place in the pile on the right. Envelope four went to the left; envelope five to the right. She spent more time on the form in envelope six. No smiles this time. She looked around anxiously until she spotted me. I waved. It was a friendly wave. After all, I’d signed the note “Love, Hannah.”
Our envelope didn’t make it into either pile. Georgia tossed it aside and in one swift move she scooped up Libby’s blue vase and Louise’s Tiffany bowl. No time for bubble wrap to protect the items. No time to comment on the contents of our note. Georgia bolted out of the makeshift office and into the halls of the Convention Center.
Mom and I followed her out, winding our way through a maze of office chairs and boxes.
“There!” I said, pointing to Georgia once we were out on the Convention Center floor.
“Watch it! Please!” a man snapped at us. Just in time, too. I’d almost plowed into the carved wood bench he and another man were carrying.
“Sorry!” I said, dodging to the right to keep moving.
“Slow down!” a woman said. She pushed a cart with a wingback chair.
This time I dodged to the left.
“This way!” Lily said. “She came cruising right by us. Let’s go!”
We didn’t find her.
Libby’s vase was gone. Louise’s bowl was gone.
Worse, now Louise and Georgia were gone, too.
CHAPTER 26
IT WAS PRETTY anticlimactic to come home after that crazy day. No TV cameras in the kitchen waiting to interview us. No thieves in the hallways for us to track. Mom had called and left messages for Libby and for Louise. She refused to let me call the police directly until we had talked with our neighbors.
Libby didn’t have a chance to call us back until late afternoon. We told her everything and then brought our photos over to her house. She was looking for the case number to reference for when she called the police again.
“I don’t know how seriously they’ll take me,” she said. “There must be all kinds of people who claim that something they saw on Antiques Caravan is really theirs and was stolen.”
But this was different. Libby had reported it stolen before it appeared on Antiques Caravan.
“You really should call the police right away,” Calvin said. As if on cue, Rachel brought the phone to her mom.
Turns out the police saw it my way this time. Sort of. They agreed that because the vase had been reported stolen before I saw it at the TV taping, it was worth looking into. Two things I hadn’t expected: They didn’t exactly trust my claim that it was absolutely the same vase (even when I told them I had photographic evidence) and, worst of all, they wondered why a kid like me had such interest in a stolen vase in the first place.
“You seem to have quite a bit of interest in this vessel,” an officer said to me. Mom and I stayed at Libby’s house until the police came. Lily and her mom had gone home, but with a sincere offer to vouch for my astute eye for details.
“I know. It’s weird, isn’t it?” I said, hoping that agreeing with police officers made me seem like a cooperative witness, rather than a possible culprit. “I sketched it a couple of times when I was babysitting Rachel. That’s why I know it so well.”
I offered my sketchbook to the closest officer.
As she looked at it, Rachel brought me a crayon drawing she’d done of the blue vase, too.
“This is excellent,” I said, giving her a hug.
“I also have photos of the same vase at the Antiques Caravan,” I said. “Oh, wait. I don’t.” I forgot that I borrowed Louise’s camera phone to snap a couple images of Georgia with the vase and the bowl.
“Photos of the little glass doodad you mentioned would be helpful,” one of the officers said.
“Actually, it’s a bit more than a glass doodad. It’s a 1910 Louis Tiffany glass bowl,” I said.
“Once again, you seem to know quite a lot about these valuable items.”
“Yes,” I answered. What else could I say? Maybe this officer thought I was suspicious, but at least I’m always honest.
“Excuse me, I just heard a knock at our front door,” Libby said. A few seconds later she was back.
“Officers, this is our neighbor Louise Zirkowski, the owner of the missing red bowl,” Libby said as Louise came into the room.
“Are you ready to report this item as stolen?” one officer asked. She nodded. They handed her forms. She, in turn, handed them a file folder with several pieces of paper in it.
“I’ve photocopied my family’s bill of sale for the bowl. It’s dated 1903. There are also photographs of the piece as well as a description from when we had it insured,” she said. “I also want to give you this.” She handed them one more piece of paper. “T
his is the information on Georgia Smith. She was an apprentice with me, studying feng shui. We believe she has the items.”
I smiled at Louise to show my support. I was also trying to be supportive so she’d tell a little more.
“And …” I prompted. Still nothing. “And wasn’t there something more about feng shui you said you were going to tell us all?”
“Yes, I suppose there is. Thank you, Hannah, for keeping me on the right track. Officers, you may have information on another case from Fourteenth Avenue East. Some of my neighbors reported someone coming into—breaking into—their homes and … rearranging things. In some cases, things were tidied up. In other cases, items were left, such as a bowl of satsumas.” Louise looked pointedly at the bowl of satsumas on Libby’s dining room table.
The officers didn’t look too interested in this discussion. It was pretty clear that the neighbors at the Block Watch meeting had been right. The police had never taken the complaints that seriously to begin with.
“The thing is … I’m the culprit in that one,” Louise said.
I couldn’t believe she said “culprit”! All those times I’d looked at her and thought: Ah-ha! You are the culprit!
“You’re the one who broke into homes?” one officer said. She looked skeptical. Perhaps she thought Louise was covering for someone else.
“Oh, no! I didn’t break anything, or break into anything,” Louise said. “I have keys to most of the houses on the street. I often water plants and feed cats when people are away. We’re a friendly neighborhood.”
“Did the neighbors know you were going to use the key at times they hadn’t specified? I assume you have keys to check on plants while they’re on vacation, take in the mail, that sort of thing. That’s quite different from entering in the middle of the day and messing up someone’s belongings.”
“Messing up? I wasn’t messing anything up. I was just instilling some feng shui principles into their living spaces,” Louise said. She sounded humble, and even a little bit ashamed.