Body in the Bookcase ff-9

by Katherine Hall Page

  “Odd places.” He grimaced slightly. “One always feels so uneasy with those surveillance cameras. And they’re so superfluous. A show really for the poor unsuspecting public. Locking things up makes them seem more valuable, but the vast majority of the booths are filled with little flea-market turds.” He flung open a door dramatically, then caught it before it could hit the Queen Anne highboy on the other side. “Now, here, my dear, is your table.”

  It was also the table for Stephanie’s rehearsal dinner, Faith realized. She’d seen it when she’d come here to check out the premises. If Patsy bought it, Courtney would be—she consciously echoed Julian’s slight crudeness, calculated to shock and amuse—bullshit. But Julian would get another in time. Twenty people couldn’t eat from TV trays.

  Patsy was slowly circling the long, gleaming Federal mahogany dining table. She and Will entertained frequently. At last, they could have large sit-down dinners and forget balancing plates from a buffet. Conversations were so much better around a table. She crouched down to peer underneath and then stood up. “Faith?”

  “It’s beautiful.” She’d start out slowly, waiting to take her cue from Patsy. It was, in fact, the perfect table for the Averys’ dining room, and Faith had already envisioned a runner covered with gourds, squash, beeswax candles, and fruit stretched down the center next Thanksgiving.

  Patsy could spray them gold for Christmas.

  Julian had effectively blended into the woodwork, effacing himself. Not an easy task in a room crammed with furniture. The whole house was like this. It seemed like someone’s home, but someone who delighted in multiples.

  “Damn straight it’s beautiful. All right, Julian, I’ll take it. Let’s start playing that game where you name a ridiculous price and I say you’re crazy for a while.” Patsy was gleeful.

  He materialized immediately. “Over tea? Or a glass of wine?”

  They opted for tea and followed him out to the kitchen.

  Boiling water was about all Julian could do, and the kitchen itself was not up to much more.

  As Faith remembered, it looked marvelous. There was a Hoosier kitchen in mint condition and shining copper pots—all completely useless—hung from the rafters. But there was almost no counter space, the dishwasher dated from the fifties, and the oven was tiny, sporting the patina of years of spattered fats. She’d seen, and worked, in worse, but not many. Julian had made no apologies during her earlier visit, merely observing succinctly,

  “I do very little cooking myself.” There must have been a cook—at least when Stephanie was growing up. Faith could not envision Courtney in an apron, whipping up meals for her family. The cook would have served up the plain, slightly monotonous fare that sustained this segment of the New England population: baked scrod, watery peas, lumpy mashed potatoes.

  Julian had struck Faith as charming before, maintaining a slightly sardonic but amused manner with his ex-wife and daughter. Now, with a sale in sight, the charm had been turned up a notch. He carried the tea tray, loaded with objects of desire and all for sale, into the library.

  “Tell me more about your quest,” he said to Faith after murmuring he’d “be mother,” pouring them each a cup of strong Darjeeling tea.

  Knowing it was scripted as part of his sales campaign, Faith was nevertheless glad to have the opportunity to get some information.

  “All the items have turned up in cases that belong to a dealer named George Stackpole. Do you know anything about him?”

  “George Stackpole . . .” Julian popped a Pepperidge Farm Milano cookie into his mouth. “Met him once or twice. Know him slightly. He’s what’s called a ‘picker.’ Rather far down in the food chain, but you can make a decent living.” His smug glance around the room made the words nothing like me unnecessary.

  “What’s a picker?” Faith asked.

  Julian lifted the gleaming silver teapot with a questioning air. Both women extended their cups.

  After pouring himself one, he drank half and put the cup down. He was in an expansive mood. He liked Patsy Avery and he liked his table. While he viewed the furnishings of his house as stock, he was not without prejudice when it came to part-ing with favorite items. The Averys had the mak-ings of discerning collectors, and collectors were his bread and butter.

  “Pickers go around and knock on people’s doors, ask if they have any old junk for sale—that sort of thing. If you picture my business as a kind of pyramid, the pickers are at the base. Above them are runners. They don’t knock on doors, but they buy from the pickers and move good pieces on up. This is not to denigrate anyone, because at each level, you can’t make it in this business if you don’t have a good eye. A feel for things. A kind of visceral response to an object.”

  “You make it sound very sexy,” Patsy commented.

  Julian looked at her and took another cookie from the plate. “Every item can tell a story. A story of the past. Sometimes we know the tales, sometimes not. Your grandmother gives you something that was her mother’s and tells you about it. She’s connecting you to the past and leaving a bit of herself for the future.” Faith knew this. When she was robbed, the thieves had, in effect, taken scissors and cut some of these threads forever. She pictured her cameo ring on another finger, the wearer oblivious to stories about Great-Aunt Phoebe so often repeated to Faith—her musical ability, her love of poetry. Julian had warmed to his subject. “Someone like Stackpole doesn’t have the connections to sell a really expensive item. He doesn’t deal with museums and the major collectors. The further you go up the chain, the smaller the number of people involved—buyers and sellers.” It was fascinating.

  “Of course, the deal is off if Will doesn’t like it,” Patsy said as she and Julian shook hands after arriving at a price.

  “That goes without saying.”

  “When can you get it to us?” Patsy asked. She knew full well her husband would adore the table—and would have ended up paying too much for it.

  “As soon as you like. Today? Tomorrow?” While they were talking, Faith wandered out into the hallway. There were no price tags, but she knew the small oil painting of a rolling meadow in the last long light of the day, which looked like it had been done by a member of the Hudson River School, probably had been. And equally probable was the possibility that it was high up there on top of the pyramid, far out of her reach.

  So, too, was the beautiful sideboard standing beneath it. It was elegant, graceful. She ran her hand across the surface. The wood was as smooth as butter. Much nicer than the sideboard they had, bequeathed by an aunt of Tom’s when she moved to a retirement community. It hadn’t been in the Fairchild family. Just something they picked up to fill the space, she’d told them. Tom and Faith had been happy to get it. This piece of Julian Bullock’s was in a whole different league.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Julian said. “A fake, but a very good fake. One hopes the intent was not fraudu-lent. Hepplewhites have always been very popular in this country and there have never been enough to go around. It was probably made at the turn of the century. I can give you a good price on it if you’re interested.”

  “I am.” Tom had demanded and received another insurance adjuster. He’d turned up on Monday night, an elderly Irishman who won their hearts with his first sentence. “I treat every burglary as if it were my own house that was broken into. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to experience.” When he left, he told them to start replacing what they could. Faith hoped the fact that they’d been finding things wasn’t going to throw a monkey wrench in the works. But there was no question about the sideboard. They weren’t going to find the drawer in any of George Stackpole’s booths.

  “I’d like to bring my husband by. We might be able to come on Saturday.”

  “Just give me a call to make sure I’m here and come anytime you wish.” He made it sound as if they would be doing him a great favor. “I’ll also arrange to appraise your piece if you like. I can have a drawer made and keep it from being a total loss. We could apply th
e amount to the price of my little faux Hepplewhite—depending on how your insurance company handles things.” Faith liked the idea. She didn’t want to have a drawer made herself. She’d always know it wasn’t the original, yet she hated the thought of the whole piece being junked. Plus, now that she’d seen this sideboard, she would never be satisfied with the old one, intact or not.

  “And a good time was had by all,” Patsy declared, waving good-bye to Julian.

  On the way back to Aleford, Faith felt better than she had for days, weeks. The possibility of getting rid of the sideboard with its gaping reminder of the break-in filled her with optimism.

  “What a roller coaster this is,” she told her friend. “You can’t believe some of the things I’ve been doing. I’ve only just stopped telling perfect strangers all about the robbery. It was beginning to get embarrassing. Even Ben noticed. I suppose it was a little weird when I told the clerk while I was picking up milk at the 7-Eleven last weekend.”

  “I don’t think it’s weird at all. I’d be shouting it from the rooftops, only I know you all don’t do that kind of thing in Aleford. I’d be saying, ‘Somebody ripped me off! Ask me how I’ve suffered!’ ”

  “It’s so pathetic, though. I should have carried a placard with feel sorry for me on it. This is what it’s all about, I suppose.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Patsy was quick to reply. “Pretend you’re on one of those talk shows—you have a right to your pain!” They both burst out laughing.

  As she got out of the car, Faith thanked Patsy.

  “This was great. You have a gorgeous table and I may have a gorgeous sideboard. And I learned a lot about the antiques world. I wouldn’t have known the Hepplewhite was fake, you know, if Julian hadn’t said so. I looked at it pretty closely and there were no metal screws or obvious give-aways.”

  “If Julian knowingly sold fakes, he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in. We are minnows in his pond, but those big fish don’t like to be fooled. He has to maintain trust or he would be eating Ring Dings before you could say ‘Going, going, gone.’ ”

  Faith didn’t think Ring Dings were all that different from the supermarket cookies Julian was presently consuming, but she got the message.

  “I’ll do your first party. My thanks for taking me out there.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. But you will be invited.” Patsy drove off before Faith could protest further.

  Julian didn’t know George Stackpole—or rather, he didn’t know him well. He hadn’t been much help there, but he had given Faith a new perspective on the world of antiques. She knew it was big business simply by following the Christie’s and Sotheby’s auctions reported in the New York Times, but she hadn’t thought about the hierarchical nature of the process. Stackpole might be a picker, but he could be picking up some very choice items to send up the ladder. Faith was convinced the man had either broken into her house or knew who did and that this was a main source of his stock, as opposed to the methods of other dealers like Julian—or, lower down, Nan Howell.

  But how to find out more about George Stackpole? The police weren’t going to investigate her hunch, even though she had what she felt was conclusive evidence. The first thing was to go to the antiques show preview tomorrow that Nan Howell had told her about and find Stackpole’s booth. It was a three-day affair, with dealers and the public paying for the privilege of first crack on Friday. She could go in the morning while the kids were at school. So long as Courtney didn’t decide to change their meeting time at the last minute—always a possibility if something in her own schedule changed—deciding to walk her dog herself, for instance.

  Tom was holed up in his study, starting Sunday’s sermon. Occasionally when someone asked him what it was like to be a minister, he replied,

  “Like always having a paper due, with no possibility of an extension.” Faith didn’t know how he did it week after week, especially the no exten-sions part. All-nighters and appeals for more time had been her modus operandi in college. She was sitting at the kitchen table, idly flipping through her recipe binders, one ear open for sounds of nocturnal activity from upstairs. Because Tom wanted to get to work, they’d eaten early, and Faith had seized the chance to get the kids into bed a little earlier, too. Ben especially had seemed tired after school and Faith hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. She’d finally reached the point where she didn’t have to wear a diaper on one shoulder as part of every ensemble and, even though she knew it was in vain, she planned on permanently avoiding any form of spit-up.

  The house was uncharacteristically quiet. She could hear the clock ticking. It was 7:30. Maybe she’d call Pix and see if she wanted a cup of tea or something. This was the dreaded homework hour, though, and Danny needed his mother’s physical presence to stay on track.

  She decided to put on the teakettle anyway.

  She’d take Tom a cup. Waiting for the pot to boil, she confronted her restlessness. This wasn’t the run-of-the-mill weltschmerz she’d been experiencing for the last two weeks. It was worse. She wanted to find out more about George Stackpole and she wanted to find out now. Like so many of her responses since Sarah’s death, the impulse was . . . well, impulsive. She was itchy. She wanted to get out of the house. She wanted to see where he lived. She wanted to see what he looked like. The little bird on the top of the kettle began to chirp. Faith looked at it with annoyance. It was so cheery. She would have to get a kettle with a plain old-fashioned whistle.

  She put some molasses spice cookies on a plate to go with the tea and went into the study.

  “Honey, I thought you’d like some sustenance.”

  “Hmmmm? What? Oh, thanks. Great.” Tom was frowning at the computer screen. “I don’t know whether technology makes it easier or harder to write. You can move things around so fast that it’s tempting to cut and paste, instead of chucking the whole thing and starting over, which is what I would have done before.” Faith had a vivid recollection of Tom sitting in the middle of a sea of crumpled lined yellow legal paper.

  It was an endearing one.

  “Do it anyway. Delete and start from scratch.” He wasn’t listening. He was already intent on the screen again. The tea would get stone-cold.

  “I’m going to run out for a few things.” Something in her tone made him look up.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine, but, unlike you, I’m having trouble concentrating, so I might as well get some shopping done. The kids need summer things. I guess I’m excited about finding a sideboard—and everything else that’s been going on. It’s distracting me from anything that requires more than a small fraction of my brain.”

  “We’ll go out to see the sideboard on Saturday.

  I hate looking at the other one, and if you liked this one so much, I’m sure I will, too.” He reached up an arm and pulled his wife close for a kiss.

  “Don’t forget your tea,” she said as she left the room. “Or the kids.”

  He picked up the mug and took a sip. “Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “I’ll check on the tea and won’t let the kids get cold.”

  Framingham along Route 9 was one big mall—

  mile after mile of stores surrounded by acres of cars. And consumers, weary of winter’s depreda-tions, were out searching for bargains in droves this Thursday night in May. Faith hated malls, even the upscale ones, and preferred to do her shopping in places where she could tell the weather and time of day as she went from establishment to establishment. Then there was the driving—no, she corrected herself, the parking. It wasn’t so much that you had to drive to get to these places; it was that you had to circle end-lessly, waiting for a spot to open up, pathetically tracking shoppers, car keys in hand as they emerged from the mall.

  As soon as she put the keys in the ignition, she’d admitted to herself what she’d known all along. The car had headed for Route 128 south as if it were on automatic pilot. She was going to Framingham. She was going to drive by the dealer’s house. She had fi
gured she’d shop on the way, easing her conscience. But she couldn’t.

  Now that she was here, it was too depressing and she was too tense. Instead, she pulled into a gas station and asked for directions to Stackpole’s street.

  It was dark by now and maybe she’d be able to see in his lighted windows, she reasoned as she drove the short distance to his address. She had a sudden fantasy of seeing her goods spread out on his dining room table, then calling the police to nab him.

  George Stackpole lived on a small side street lined with rows of identical ranch houses. Over the years, various owners had strived to achieve some vestige of individuality—trees, hedges, garages replacing carports, new entryways, an addition here and there. But the houses still managed to look the same. She slowed down, trying to read the numbers on the mailboxes. Several of the streetlights were broken—or had been turned off in a cost-cutting measure. Aleford’s board of selectmen had proposed this recently, and the following week they faced a room packed with angry citizens recommending that the lights on the selectmen’s streets go, but not on theirs. The measure had been shelved.

  Number 47. Stackpole’s was 51. She pulled over and parked. There were other cars on the street, but none in front of his house. A car had been pulled up under the carport. Scattered residents had put their trash out and their recycle bins. All very normal. She began to wonder why she’d come.

  Number 51 was certainly a modest house. Very little had been done to it. The grass needed mow-ing and there were a few straggly arborvitae under the front windows. If he was making a lot of money, it was not obvious from his dwelling place. The car was a Mercedes, though. Only a few years old. It looked totally incongruous next to the house, with its slightly peeling paint and plastic shutters— Roman Holiday, a princess—or prince—mixing with the commoners.

  Faith got out of her car. When she’d left the parsonage, she’d slipped on a dark raincoat over the black slacks and sweater she’d been wearing. It didn’t make her invisible, but it helped. Now she covered her light hair with a navy silk scarf she’d brought along. If she was going to make a habit of stakeouts, she’d have to invest in a proper surveillance outfit. Black jersey. Maybe Eileen Fisher would have something appropriate.