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

by Jane K. Cleland

  * * *

  I watched Ellis stride across the parking lot, then turned and surveyed the office. Cara and Gretchen were on the phone. Sasha was reading from her computer monitor. Fred was flipping through a stack of papers on his desk. A printout of Mysterious Lady was on top.

  “Any early news?” I asked Fred, pointing to the photo.

  “Nothing surprising. So far I’ve been researching past auction records. The news about sales of Madalenas is uniformly good, and since his popularity is growing, our timing is excellent. For provenance purposes, we need to demonstrate how the poster got into that storage unit, though. There’s no record of any extant posters other than those included in the Katten collection.”

  “How about if you look into the materials of the Madalena? I’m trying to nail down how all the posters got into the locker, including that Madalena, and there’s no point in our duplicating work.”

  “Sounds good,” Fred said.

  I turned and asked Sasha if she had any news about the Verdura wrapped heart.

  Sasha started and blinked a few times, switching gears from her focused reading to me.

  “I spoke to Adèle,” she said. “The heart arrived intact. She’ll let us know as soon as she has any information.”

  “Excellent.” Hank mewed loudly and rubbed his jowl against my calf. I scooped him up. “Do you want to help me do some research, Hank?”

  Upstairs, I got Hank settled on my lap, but he lost interest once I started tapping into my computer and stopped petting him. After mewing a few times, he jumped down.

  “I’ll play with you later, Hank, all right?”

  He loped out the door without replying, and I turned my attention to my monitor.

  Because Markham was less well known than Madalena, there were fewer sources of information available. He’d never had a museum or gallery exhibition; he hadn’t taught at a university; and he hadn’t been favored by a rich patron or a famous collector. From what Marshall had told me, he was a working commercial artist, a man who earned most of his living by producing art on demand. Just for the heck of it, I checked whether the name used by the owner of the storage unit, Gael Patrick, had a listing on any of the Web sites we used for research, but he didn’t. There was nothing left to check.

  Deciding to take a break from research, I called Leigh Ann and got her.

  “I just wanted to let you know I was thinking of you,” I said.

  “I’m glad you did,” she said. She sounded weak, as if she were just out of bed after a bad case of flu. “I’ve been so overwhelmed that I haven’t thanked you for all your help … looking through that locker … talking to the police … everything. Thank you.”

  “Please, Leigh Ann, don’t even think about it. I wish I could do more. Can I do anything for you now? I could stop at a grocery store and bring you some supplies.”

  “That’s nice of you to offer, Josie, but I’m fine. Scott is out shopping now.”

  “How’s he doing? I heard he had a night of it.”

  “Oh, Josie! The police kept him half the night. As if anyone could think that Scott was involved in anything criminal … why, it’s just absurd.”

  “What crime?” I asked, holding my breath.

  “We don’t know! The police wouldn’t tell him. Something about his being out during the blizzard, which, of course, he wasn’t. I’m telling you it’s ridiculous! I mean, even if he was driving around that night, driving isn’t a crime!”

  “I wonder what they’re thinking. On the face of it, it makes no sense.”

  “Nothing about this nightmare makes sense, Josie. Nothing.”

  “I’m so sorry that you’re having to deal with all of this, Leigh Ann. Are you certain there’s nothing I can do?”

  “Not at this point. Thank you, Josie. For everything. You’re a true friend.”

  She agreed to let me know if there was anything else I could do, and I told her I’d check in with her again soon.

  I leaned back, closed my eyes, and after a minute of wishing I could do more to help, I turned my attention to research options. How could I learn more about Markham? Since I was stymied going backward from the locker, it made sense to try going forward from the artist. Markham was dead, but he had two children, both of whom might still be alive.

  If Markham’s daughter, Katrina, was living, she’d be eighty-three. Lester, his son, would be eighty-one. There was no phone listing for either of them in any New England state, but that didn’t mean they didn’t live in the area. Lots of people had gotten rid of their landlines, using a cell phone as their only phone. If that’s what Lester did, I was out of luck. There was a chance, however, that I hadn’t located Katrina’s number because she had changed her name when she’d married, as most women of her generation had.

  I called the Manchester city vital records clerk and spoke to a woman named Lara.

  “I need to find out if a woman got married,” I said, “and if so, to whom. I only know her maiden name. This probably would have occurred, if it happened at all, in the late 1950s. Is that info online?”

  “No,” Lara said. “Our marriage records weren’t computerized until 1995, but we can look things up manually. It’ll take a while, that’s all.”

  “Thank you,” I said and gave her Katrina’s name and year of birth.

  Lara promised to call me as soon as she had news. In the meantime, I decided to do some manual checking of my own. The Manchester Union Leader’s online archives only went back to 1989, but a quick call to the Rocky Point library confirmed that they had copies on microfiche dating back to the early 1900s.

  I told Cara where I was going, said I’d be back in a couple of hours, and headed out.

  * * *

  The Rocky Point library sits on a large hill across from South Mill Pond. It was an idyllic location with lush landscaping and a clear view of the pond.

  The microfiche machines looked as unexpected as dinosaurs, artifacts from a bygone age. The librarian, a tall woman with short brown hair, named Phyllis Straw, got me set up at the workstation, and I began the laborious task of checking the marriage notices in each Sunday’s newspaper, starting in 1950, when Katrina would have been eighteen. Nearly an hour later, I found the notice, dated September 6, 1952. Katrina Mayhew Markham had married Edwin Mark Greeley in Manchester. In another ten minutes, I’d located Mrs. Greeley’s phone number and called her from my car.

  “You want to talk about Dad,” she said after I explained that I was calling for information about his silent movie posters. “How nice! Would you like to come for coffee? I make a mean scone.”

  I accepted with pleasure, got her address, called Lara at the Manchester records bureau to cancel my request, and headed south, smiling.

  * * *

  Ty called as I was driving to Mrs. Greeley’s house in Rye to tell me he had to go to D.C. for an early-morning strategy meeting.

  I slipped in my earpiece and asked, “Anything juicy?”

  He chuckled. “Dry, not juicy. The analytics are in. Good news—I can now confirm that training works, so we need to talk about next steps.”

  “Umm … wouldn’t that be obvious … schedule more training?”

  “Don’t be sassy. Not all training is equal. We need to see which programs are working and roll them out and which aren’t and retool them.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” he said. “Why don’t you stay at my place tonight? Make a fire and curl up with a good book.”

  “I think I will,” I said, sighing. “At this point, I’m not keen on staying at my house alone. The thought of it gives me creepy jeepies, and that makes me mad enough to spit. I hate feeling all wiggly squiggly.”

  “Wiggly squiggly?”

  “You know—it’s the flip side of nervous and jerky.”

  “Oh, of course. That clears it right up.”

  “When do you leave?” I asked.

  “Now. I’m en route home to pack. I should be able to make the
5:35 train out of South Station. How about you? Besides the wiggly squiggly thing, how’s your day going?”

  “I’m making good progress on the appraisal,” I told him. I recounted what I’d been doing and what I’d learned, adding, “I sure hope the artist’s daughter can give me a lead. Otherwise, I’m out of ideas.”

  “Nah. You’ll just go on to plan C or D or whatever letter you’re up to. I’ve never seen anyone as persistent and thorough as you. It’s what makes you such a good appraiser. It’s what makes you such a good businesswoman.”

  “Thanks,” I said, pleased at the tribute. Curiosity was a fact of my life. Not knowing things was like an itch I couldn’t scratch, a pebble in my shoe. “Wish me luck with Mrs. Greeley.”

  “You don’t need luck … but good luck.”

  We agreed to talk before bed, and I smiled the whole drive to Rye, thinking about Ty.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Katrina Greeley lived in a bungalow overlooking the ocean in Rye. I parked on the shoulder and climbed a snow-covered dune. Watching the ebb and flow of the ocean always helped me relax, my pulse slowing to match the rhythm of the tide.

  Gold sun-tipped flecks of light danced along the bottle green ocean surface. The ocean was calm. The sun was blinding. A cargo ship, far out to sea, steamed north. The snow was pristine here, unmarked by animal or bird tracks, unsullied by soot. To the north, the bungalow next to Mrs. Greeley’s was boarded up for winter. To the south, smoke streamed from one of the house’s three chimneys. The breeze was cold, and I raised my coat’s collar. The water rolled farther toward me—the tide was coming in. I watched a while longer, then slid-walked down the dune, stomped my feet to rid my boots of clumps of snow, brushed stray flakes from my slacks, and walked the twenty paces to Mrs. Greeley’s shoveled path.

  Mrs. Greeley’s bungalow was expansive, a one-story sprawling home with a wraparound porch designed to capture the view. I rang the bell and waited. The woman who answered the door looked like more like a latter-day hippie than the grandmotherly type I’d expected, and I wondered if she was a friend or hired companion.

  “Mrs. Greeley?” I asked.

  “That’s me,” she said, grinning, “but please call me Trina. Everyone does. Come on in! I was just lighting the fire. I love chatting in front of a fire, don’t you? I think it must evoke my primitive self, back when my foremothers were done with their day’s work and knew they were safe for the night.” She pointed to a cushy red velvet couch positioned to face a fieldstone fireplace large enough to hold six-foot logs. “Have a seat. I’ll just get this started.”

  I’d assumed that Mrs. Greeley would look her age. I’d expected that her face would be lined with wrinkles and dotted with dark sun spots, that her hair would be white and crimped in an old-lady style, and that she’d wear warm, but shapeless, clothing. Instead Trina looked about seventy. Her creamy white skin was smooth, with only a few crinkly lines near her needle-sharp eyes and full lips. Her gray hair hung to her waist in a loose braid. She wore a stylish, belted, hip-length burnt orange sweater over a to-the-ankle India-print paisley skirt and henna Birkenstock shoes. Bead-and-feather earrings dangled from her ears.

  “That’s a beautiful fireplace,” I said as she struck a long match and held the yellow flame to the kindling. “Don’t tell me you lifted that log yourself?”

  “Not even when I was your age!” she said, laughing. “I have a young man who comes in to help. He does all the shoveling and heavy lifting and so on.” She stood watching the fire until she confirmed that it was spreading nicely. “I have a tray ready. I’ll be right back.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  She laughed again. “No, thanks.”

  She pushed through a swinging door, leaving me alone in the living room. The decor matched her appearance, from the red and purple psychedelic prints to an orange lava lamp sitting on a corner table. The furniture was an eclectic mix of oak and mahogany covered in red velvet and purple corduroy. Nothing matched, but everything seemed to mesh perfectly. Pepper red flames licked at splinters of bark as the fire caught and grew. The door swung wide and she was back, a gleaming silver tray in hand. She placed it on the mosaic coffee table and sat on a purple chair.

  “So,” she said, pouring coffee from an ornate silver pot, “have a scone and fire away. What can I tell you about my dad?”

  I smiled as I settled in. Most of my research required me to crawl under furniture in dank cellars or stuffy attics, sort through reams of useless papers in the hopes of finding one pertinent document, and bother busy, uninterested people. Sitting in Trina’s cozy living room, sipping strong coffee, and nibbling the scone she had every right to be proud of baking felt a little bit like I was playing hooky.

  “As I explained on the phone,” I said, “a film memorabilia expert is confident that the silent movie posters I’m trying to appraise were designed and painted by your father, A. P. Markham. I have several questions, and I can’t thank you enough for taking this time to talk to me. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to start with the artwork itself.” I reached into my tote bag and extracted a miniportfolio I’d put together showing printouts of the four posters.

  Trina placed her mug on the coffee table and picked up the portfolio. Her eyes brightened and her smile broadened as she flipped through the pages.

  “Will you look at these. I didn’t know anyone outside the family had any of them.” She raised her eyes to my face. “Where did you get them?”

  “From a storage unit rented to a man named Gael Patrick. Gael is spelled G-A-E-L.”

  “Gael Patrick,” she whispered, her eyes reflective.

  She looked over my shoulder, out the French doors. I skewed around and followed her gaze. Past the covered porch railing, past the snow-shrouded dunes, white froth riffled across the smooth sheen of ocean surface as the water pumped toward shore. I turned back to face her. She was remembering something, a private memory, a good memory. Her smile was wistful but not sad. I waited for her to explain. A full minute passed before she spoke again.

  “It might be nothing,” she said, meeting my eyes, “just one of those strange coincidences that happen sometimes … but my mother’s full name was Rose Gail Odell, and my father’s was Albert Patrick Markham. Gael Patrick.”

  “Wow,” I said, the implications ricocheting through my brain like pinballs at a video arcade.

  “I know. It’s probably nothing … but still. I wonder if my brother might have rented it. He moved to Rocky Point a few years ago. He died last summer.”

  “It might be,” I said, thinking it had to be; it was a logical conclusion. “Let me tell you about some of the other things we found in the unit and see if anything rings a bell.”

  I rattled off a list of the unusual or distinctive objects we’d found in the unit, including the Four Seasons and Delmonico’s menus and the Batiste Madalena silent movie poster. When I was done, she shook her head and handed me the portfolio.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not a problem,” I said, smiling again. “Do you have any of your dad’s posters I could get a look at?”

  She waved toward the boldly colored abstract prints on the wall in back of her. “I loved my dad to death, but my taste runs in a different direction. A few years ago, I crated everything up and sent it to my boys. I have two sons.” She laughed a little, not loudly. “Once I turned eighty, finding good homes for my unwanted but much-loved possessions became a priority, even a preoccupation.” She looked at the coffee service. “This coffee service, for instance. It’s getting so I resent having to polish it, but I can’t stand seeing it tarnished.” She shook her head, her expression rueful. “I have the whole shebang—the coffeepot, teapot, sugar bowl, creamer, even sugar tongs that match.” She sighed. “You don’t know anyone who’d want the set, who’d love it, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  Startled, Trina’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”

  “On one level, that’s e
xactly what I do. I find loving homes for worthy antiques.”

  “I never thought of your business that way.”

  “I may be romanticizing the process a bit,” I said, smiling. “I do, after all, run a business. I don’t run a wholesale business, though—I don’t sell to dealers. I sell to end users. The only people who buy sterling silver sets as magnificent as yours are people who want them very much, who love them very much.”

  She nodded, her expression thoughtful. “I may just be in touch about that.”

  “Any time,” I said. I tucked the portfolio back into my tote bag and smiled again. “Do you think your sons might be willing to let me examine a few of your dad’s posters? By comparing materials and craftsmanship, we can often make headway on authenticating objects.”

  “I’m certain they’d be glad to help. Before you leave, I’ll give you their phone numbers. Hal is a lawyer in New York City. Bert teaches science at Andover, a private school outside of Boston.”

  “Thank you. Might either one have rented a storage unit in Rocky Point?”

  “I can’t imagine why. Growing up, whenever they wanted to store something, they put it in the spare room. Now, of course, they own their own houses and put things in their own spare rooms!”

  I smiled. “Am I correct that your father never signed his posters?”

  “In a manner of speaking he did. My dad didn’t like the name Katrina. He didn’t like Trina any better, but my mom wanted to name me after her mom, Katrina, and she won.” Trina laughed, a cheery sound, and raised her hand as if she were about to swear an oath, communicating, “whatever … no matter … not relevant,” as clearly as if she’d spoken those words. “The point is that she declared that her first daughter would be named Katrina soon after they married. He never called me anything but Kitty, and he planned it out right from the start. He painted a little cat’s face in every poster, in every painting, years before I was born, even before he and Mom married. Like the Playboy bunny. You know what I mean, don’t you? How they hide bunny ears somewhere on every cover of the magazine?”