False Premises

by Leslie Caine

  “I’m sorry,” I replied, and meant it.

  Frowning, Dave glanced at his watch. “I should really get to my teleconference call. You remember where everything is, I’m sure. Mind showing yourself around?”

  “Not at all.”

  Dave returned to the kitchen as I pulled out my notes on the original antiques. I was still so nervous about my upcoming meeting with Wong that I needed to talk and kept up a running monologue to my wire as I inspected the one-time prized antiques. In addition to the nearly total loss of this bedroom’s furnishings, I was heartsick about some exquisite pieces downstairs that were gone—the cherry console, the mahogany hutch, the fabulous early-Victorian walnut salon chair. The finish on many of the pieces had been badly charred. Because Dave was guilty of arson, he surely wasn’t getting any insurance money for the damage to his possessions.

  After I’d made all of my calculations and tallies, I sat down with Dave in the kitchen and went over the figures with him. For the damaged pieces, all I could do was give him a reasonable range of the prices that the antiques should still fetch on the open market. I explained that my final tally was going to be cut to one fourth or so if he sold the entire lot to a dealer—his easiest solution, but one that would cost him dearly. He was pondering the decision when the doorbell rang. Dave promptly rose and announced, “That’s got to be Mr. Wong now.”

  Lagging several steps behind him, I said quietly, for the benefit of the wire, “I hope the butterflies in my stomach aren’t making such a racket that they drown out everyone’s words.”

  Dave swept open the door. With his large frame filling the doorway, George gave his usual slight bow of greeting and murmured, “Good afternoon. I’m Mr. Wong.”

  Dave said, “Hey. Okay. George Wong. You’re here.”

  Dave must have been staring at him wide-eyed, because George gave him his placid smile. “Is something wrong. Mr. Holland? You were expecting perhaps a smaller man?”

  He gave a nervous laugh. “I guess so.”

  Even though Dave was six foot two himself, he was intimidated by Wong. I smirked and thought: Try wearing a wire and suckering the behemoth into confessing to a murder. Dave’s phone rang, and he waggled his thumb and said, “I should get that. You won’t need me for a while anyway. Erin, do you mind being in charge?”

  “Not at all.” I wish I were in charge; if things had gone my way, Laura would have seen the error in her ways, turned Evan in to the authorities, and none of this would have happened.

  George shifted his attention to me. “Miss Gilbert. You are an antiques expert, yes?”

  “No, but I do know the basics of what was made when and where.” Trying to embolden my vocal cords, I brayed, “There’s a Chinese wedding chest upstairs that I think you’ll find of particular interest.”

  “Yes?” George said as though utterly disinterested. He gestured for me to lead the way.

  “Dave tells me you’re buying back the furniture Laura commissioned from you.”

  “At a fair price, yes.”

  As we climbed the stairs, it was nerve-racking to have my back turned to him. I kept anticipating the agony of a knife stabbed between my shoulder blades. I rotated enough to keep an eye on him, which meant I had to sidestep somewhat. “This chest that I wanted to show you looks to me like it was made thirty to fifty years ago. Not an antique, obviously, but with excellent craftsmanship.”

  “Yes?” He was feigning sheer boredom.

  My heart pounding, I showed him into the room. He kept his features inscrutable as he walked straight to the chest. “You believe this is a valuable piece, Miss Gilbert? But not an antique?”

  “I’m estimating it was made about fifty years ago, not a hundred. I think it’s probably a reproduction of the craftsmanship from the Qing Dynasty.”

  “You are indeed correct. This particular chest was made forty-three years ago. By my father.” He arched his brow. “How much did you tell Mr. Holland it was worth?”

  “More than six thousand.”

  He snorted. “It could sell for more than ten thousand dollars.”

  “That much?” I didn’t agree, but wasn’t about to argue. “I’m sure Dave will be happy to hear that.”

  George rocked on his heels and crossed his arms. “Mr. Holland will not get one penny for it. I can prove to the authorities that this chest already belongs to me, and I will take it back.” He gave a solemn bow. His classic Oriental mannerisms continued to unnerve me, even though I knew them to be a calculated act; he’d been living in this country considerably longer than I’d been alive. “You should go ahead and open the hidden drawer now, Miss Gilbert.”

  I hesitated, wondering if my familiarity with the drawer’s location would tip my hand to the fact that I’d already surmised his lifelong connection with this chest.

  He chuckled. “Go ahead. There is nothing to harm you. It is simply an empty drawer. You have my word of honor on that.”

  I already knew the drawer was empty, of course, and couldn’t help but wonder how much the “word of honor” from a probable double murderer was really worth. Nevertheless, I knelt and slid open the drawer underneath the unit.

  He chuckled. “Empty, yes? How big would you say that drawer is, Miss Gilbert?”

  “I don’t know. It’s maybe two feet by three feet.”

  “And how deep?”

  “Nine, ten inches.”

  “That is how I came to your country . . . on my back so that my shoulders were flat, my legs curled, my face turned to the side because the drawer was too shallow otherwise. For nearly six days, this small wooden box was my home.”

  “That must have been terrifying for you.”

  “Yes, but it was either endure or die. My father had died the year before, and my mother couldn’t keep his furniture business going. I never saw her or my younger sibling again.”

  I needed to keep him talking, get this dangerous, enigmatic man to trust me. “I’m really sorry, George. That must have been a horrendous ordeal, the likes of which I can’t even begin to imagine.”

  “Yes.”

  “So how did Laura come to own this chest?”

  “She stole it from me. Your friend Laura needed her trophies, it seems.”

  “Trophies?”

  “She collected the very best. Of everything. I kept this chest in the front room of my shop. She saw it there and tried extremely hard to purchase it. I told her its history, why she couldn’t have it. Even so, she paid off some of my own workers to remove it from the premises without my knowledge. Needless to say, they no longer work for me.”

  That was indeed “needless to say,” I thought, but wondered if his former “workers” were still breathing. Had he killed them for their treachery the way he murdered Laura? “You must have suspected Laura the moment it disappeared. Did you confront her right away?”

  “Of course. She protested her innocence and showed me her entire house, but my chest wasn’t here at the time. She had concealed it in the storage unit, I’m quite sure, and she probably brought it back here after I left.”

  “So you knew about her storage unit and where it was?”

  He bared his teeth. “No, Miss Gilbert, I did not know where it was until I heard the news of her death. Had I known where the chest was, I’d have claimed it then, I assure you.”

  “Why would she steal something that obviously meant so much to you? I mean, why would she want something of yours as a trophy?”

  “She was quite angry with me over our fiduciary arrangement.” His expression remained inscrutable. “I had insisted on a fair price for my work, and she felt forced to comply. Admittedly, my fee was much more than she had expected to pay.” He sighed. “And so, she couldn’t sell my chest, for she knew I would only prove it was stolen and would get it back. Instead, she wanted to burn it along with the house, as her vengeance.”

  “She told you that?”

  “She didn’t need to. Laura and I understood each other.”

  “So, you
two did know each other, after all?”

  He chortled softly. “As Robert said the other day, I knew Laura from the old days, when I was with Robert and her parents had hired him to assist their daughter.”

  And yet during our conversation at the restaurant when Henry asked about those “old days” back in Chicago, George had been disconcerted. He wasn’t telling the whole story. “If you two understood each other, why would Laura be willing to risk crossing you like that?”

  “Yes.” He grinned at me. “I was also surprised. To steal something so important from me. My mother sacrificed every cent she possessed to place me in this chest and ship it to America. Several years ago, I paid many times its worth to get it back.”

  He knelt, saying, “I made a modification to the piece after I bought it. I dissolved the glue that keeps the false bottom of the chest in place.” He slowly pulled the piece out from its slot, then turned it over, so that I could see the underside.

  The relief carving that George had crafted was breath-taking—six individual scenes from an Asian village. “That’s astounding,” I said honestly. “You did this as a child?”

  He nodded. “I had a small knife with a one-inch blade in my pocket. That was how I passed the time.”

  I continued to stare at the work. Although the craftsmanship was crude and the renditions simplistic, that was part of its stylistic charm. One section depicted some houses by a river, with a boat that resembled a gondola near a bridge. Another showed three women with parasols. A third showed a gnarled, windblown bonsai tree. A fourth, with the most detail, showed a family. Awed, I said, “You carved these intricate scenes in the dark, when you could barely move, and you were just a ten-year-old boy.”

  He said impassively, “It is my home, my village.” He pointed. “My family, there. My grandparents, parents, my sister.” He picked up the board and slid it into place, his carving once again hidden from view.

  “Once you get this back from Dave, are you going to at least keep your carving face-out, so people can admire it?”

  He shook his head. “My father would have been angry at me for defacing his honorable work. A braver child would not have needed such diversions.”

  My eyes filled with tears. I knew more about George Wong than I had several minutes ago, but nothing incriminating, aside from establishing a possible motive for Laura’s murder. This could be my only chance to trick him into making a slip of the tongue. I had to provoke him. “And yet Laura stole this from you, intending to destroy it, along with her household of fakes.”

  He gave me another of his teeth-baring grins. “Laura would not have done so. I would never have allowed her to do so.”

  “So you killed her?”

  He chuckled. “You Americans. You pretend not to know that there are times when killing is necessary. You look the other way, pretend to be horrified.”

  “In other words, Laura Smith needed to die?”

  He held my gaze and said only, “You have too narrow a mind, Miss Gilbert.”

  “Jerry Stone was killed, too. Was he also a necessary death?”

  All traces of his smile vanished. Evenly, he replied, “Unless you are trying to anger me, Miss Gilbert, I advise you to stop asking me these ill-advised questions.”

  “Or else what? You’ll find me a necessary killing as well?”

  His expression remained impassive.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere. This could be the police’s only chance to get a confession from him. I needed to provoke him further. “Robert told us how you broke up a fight once by waving your knife around. Are you armed right now?”

  He held my gaze. “I never travel without my knife, Miss Gilbert.”

  Though I said nothing, an instant later, Linda and Mansfield burst into the room, their weapons drawn, Mansfield saying, “Don’t move. Police.”

  I was surprised and disappointed that they’d burst in prematurely. They must have assumed that George had pulled out his knife during his last statement to me. I felt as though I’d let everyone down. George hadn’t confessed; he’d been too cagey.

  While reading him his rights, Mansfield put handcuffs on George, frisked him, and, to my horror, found only a tiny, well-used pocketknife. At a glance, I knew it was the one-inch blade he’d had since he was a boy. My cheeks were blazing, and I avoided George’s gaze. Linda put her gun back into its holster and said, “We need you to come with us to the station house, Mr. Wong.”

  Just then Dave bolted into the room, his face white when he saw the police. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Stand back,” Mansfield demanded. “We’re bringing this man in for questioning.”

  George, closely followed by Mansfield, brushed past Dave and me. “My lawyer will have to be called.” He looked back at me, shook his head in disgust, and said, “Miss Gilbert, we’ll meet again. Too soon for you, I suspect.”

  His threat chilled me to the bone.

  Linda followed George and Mansfield down the stairs, and Dave and I trailed several steps behind. George and Mansfield went out the still-wide-open front door.

  Linda gave me a thumbs-up to indicate I’d done a good job, but I didn’t agree. “Did you get enough to arrest him?” I asked quietly.

  “To arrest him on suspicion of murder, yes. To convict him, no. But he may talk yet. We’ll see.”

  I wanted to get rid of my wire as soon as possible and started tugging on the tape through the fabric of my blouse. “Let me get this thing off me. It makes my skin itch.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll have another patrol officer up here in a couple of minutes who can collect it. Again, thanks for your help, Erin.”

  Without asking Dave’s permission, I ducked into the quarter bath, ripped the tape off my skin, which smarted, then splashed water on my face. I looked awful, as though I hadn’t slept in days, which was partly true. I realized that in the excitement I’d left my notepad and purse someplace, so I retraced my steps and collected them.

  I can leave this house now. And never come back.

  I almost broke into a full sprint as I charged out the front door. The police car had arrived, and I thrust the wire I’d been wearing at Linda and thanked her for taking my allegations about George seriously. Standing in the driveway, I watched as the police car drove away, George giving me his evil grin all the while.

  Dave came out onto the front porch. “Is that the bastard who killed Laura?” he asked. “They caught him?”

  “I hope so. It’s not like he confessed, though.” Now, suddenly, I was nervous about being alone with Dave. Sullivan’s paranoia had officially taken root.

  “I guess this means he’s not going to be buying back my furniture. I might have to ask you to appraise the reproductions, too, after all.”

  So much for my never returning to this house, I thought glumly. “Let’s let this go awhile, Dave. We’ll touch base in a couple of days.”

  He nodded, thanked me, and, to my relief, I was finally able to leave. Partway down the mountain I realized that my work wasn’t quite done for the day. I glanced at my watch. I was going to be a few minutes late to meet for the final wrap-up at Henry’s house to get paid. I was looking forward, though, to telling Steve about the events at Dave’s house.

  Suddenly it occurred to me that Steve and I hadn’t discussed yesterday whether or not he needed to come to Henry’s, too. Sullivan went out of his way not to miss meetings involving Henry and Robert, but for all I knew, he could have another appointment elsewhere. In any case, with any luck, Sullivan wouldn’t have to be so careful from here on out; Wong would give a full confession, and all this would be over.

  That realization—that this whole terrible ordeal was finally behind me—didn’t give me the sense of satisfaction and relief that it should have. John and I were through. Sullivan and I habitually fought like cats and dogs. Evan still had Steve’s money and was living high on the hog in Paris or some other exotic locale.

  There was a silver Jaguar in Henry’s driveway—Rober
t’s rental, I was certain—but no van marked “Sullivan Designs.” I felt a touch of disappointment. I was late, so if Sullivan wasn’t here by now, he wasn’t coming at all.

  I rang the doorbell. Robert opened the door and gave me his usual delightful “Come in, come in. I’m afraid it’s probably just going to be the two of us. Henry is upstairs, but says he isn’t feeling well, and that yummy partner of yours called and is tied up with legal negotiations.”

  “ ‘Legal negotiations’?”

  He reseated his glasses. “My fault, I fear. I put the bug in Henry’s ear that he needed to get his lawyer to take a look at the contract that he and George were working up for you to sign, and, next thing you know, Henry’s insisting that the lawyer speak with Mr. Sullivan in advance of our little meeting here. When he called, I told him not to bother coming . . . that by the time he could drive out here, we’d be wrapping things up. I cut you a very generous check.”

  “That’s always nice to hear. Thank you.”

  He studied my features. “You look a bit out of sorts. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Fine, thanks.” He continued to stare into my eyes with obvious skepticism, so I finally admitted, “I just had a run-in with your former associate George Wong.”

  “Oh, dear, dear! What happened?”

  “The police have arrested him. It appears that he killed Laura. They had me wear a wire, so they have our exchange on tape, and he all but confessed.”

  “I am totally . . . flabbergasted, Erin! Why in heaven’s name would George kill Laura?”

  “She had stolen something from him that he treasured . . . that chest his mother had used to smuggle him into this country. Laura was going to destroy it in the fire she intended to set at her house . . . just to be cruel.”

  Robert sank into the nearest chair and rested his elbows on his knees, as though needing a chance to make sense of my words. I took this as an invitation and took a seat myself, in the beige upholstered side chair that was one of my few original selections for the room.