Silent Auction

by Jane K. Cleland

  I headed out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  For the first time since the day Frankie died, there were no journalists haunting the entrance to my parking lot. I couldn’t think why they’d deserted their post unless a bigger story had come across their desks or there’d been a break in the case. I turned on the local radio station, which was based at Hitchens University.

  Chief Hunter was answering reporters’ questions in a live broadcast.

  I was just in time to hear Bertie ask in a strident, superior tone, “Do you think Josie Prescott is involved in the murder?”

  How dare she? I thought, outraged and enraged.

  “No,” Chief Hunter replied, his voice calm and resolute. “Ms. Prescott has been helping us understand how certain aspects of the antiques business might figure into Mr. Winterelli’s murder. I’m grateful to her for her cooperation.”

  “How do antiques figure into the murder?” Bertie asked, following up.

  “I don’t know that they do—but as you may be aware, a valuable scrimshaw tooth is missing from the Whitestone collection. We’re looking into the possibility that the tooth was stolen and that the theft is related to the murder.”

  Bedlam erupted as journalists vied to ask the next question. Someone far from the mike called, “Last question.”

  “Was Frankie the thief?” a male reporter asked, his powerful baritone managing to overpower other, less penetrating voices.

  “We have no reason to think so. In closing, let me reiterate how important community assistance is. The photograph of the stolen tooth is posted on our Web site. If anyone knows anything about it,” Chief Hunter said, after stating the police department’s URL, “please call us right away. If you have any information at all about the murder of Mr. Winterelli—even if you’re not sure it’s relevant—call us. We need to talk to you. Thank you.”

  I could picture him staring straight into the camera, his caring expression reassuring viewers that they could trust him with their secrets, that everything would be all right if only they’d call and talk to him. The ability to engender trust was a gift, and Chief Hunter possessed it in spades.

  Heyer’s Modular Furniture’s world headquarters was set on nearly twenty acres of woodlands overlooking a man-made pond. A couple of years earlier, I’d helped the then-CEO, Gerry Fine, decorate his office suite, so I knew the location well. Main Street Antiques sat in a row of high-end shops about a mile before Curt would have reached Heyer’s, taking the most direct routing.

  The shop was owned by a middle-aged woman named CeCe. CeCe had frosted hair, long nails, and a big personality. Today she was wearing a leopard print top, just a hair too tight, and black leather pants.

  “Josie!” she said, beaming, when I walked in. “I was just thinking of you!”

  “You were? Why, what did I do?” I joked.

  “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, you poor thing—Rocky Point Light. I was listening to the police chief’s press conference. He said they were making progress. Do you know what he meant?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have any idea. It was pretty awful, CeCe, that’s all I can say.”

  “I can only imagine. So to what do I owe the honor?”

  “I have a question. It’s going to sound a little off the wall—but by any chance has someone tried to sell you a scrimshaw tooth in the last couple of days?”

  CeCe put her hands on her hips and gave me a tell-me-more look. “The tooth Chief Hunter said was missing?”

  Remembering my father’s long-ago instruction that when in doubt I should stay quiet and look wise, I smiled, aiming to convey that if only I could talk, ooh la la did I have tales to tell, but nothing could or would pry me open.

  “I’m glad to report that no one offered it to me. If they had, I’d have bought it so fast your head would still be spinning!”

  I pulled the Interpol printout out of my bag and handed it to her. “In the unlikely event someone comes in with it.”

  “I got a flyer on this from the police, too,” she said, skimming the printout.

  “Well, there’s no such thing as too much communication, right? I’m just following up for my client.”

  “That would be the Whitestones, you lucky dog.”

  “Sorry, CeCe, I’m not at liberty to say.”

  She waved it away. “I know, I know. Wish I could help.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I know you would if you could.”

  We chatted for another minute; then I drove on to the next store on my list, Harlow’s Antiques, an industrial-looking shop shaped and designed like a ware house or a manufacturing facility, with no charm outside and not much inside.

  Hal Harlow, the owner, waved to me from off to one side. He was busy with a customer, an attractive woman with a broad smile, discussing, apparently, a kidney-shaped desk. I felt a familiar pang of envy. Hal’s shop was huge and ran like a well-oiled machine. The back half was filled with furniture, some run-of-the-mill, used, but a not insignificant proportion fine examples of various periods, styles, and pedigrees.

  “Thanks for bringing it in, Ms. O’Loughlin,” he said, his voice carrying easily in the open space. “What do you know about its history?”

  “Please, call me Terry. I don’t know anything, I’m afraid—other than that I love it,” Terry said. “It was in my mother’s home, but I don’t know where or how she acquired it.”

  The reniform, or kidney-shaped, desk they were discussing was not an uncommon object. Several examples came through my auction house each year. Still, it was a lovely piece—a lady’s writing desk, American made, dating from the early to middle twentieth century. Because it had been so popular, it wasn’t rare, and unless it held some distinction, like having been owned by a celebrity, we’d estimate its value at between three hundred and five hundred dollars at auction. I was curious what Hal would say.

  “I can tell you a little bit about it,” Hal said.

  He described it almost word-for-word as I would have done, and said that he’d be glad to find it a good home, if she was ever interested in selling it, but that all he could offer her was seventy-five dollars. His offer was fair considering the markup he’d need to add to sell it retail. Seventy-five dollars bought him a little wiggle room to negotiate with her if and when she ever returned.

  “That’s all?” Terry exclaimed. “I’m so surprised!”

  “Supply and demand,” Hal said, nodding empathetically. “A lot of them were produced.”

  Terry smiled and took a deep breath. “Well, so it goes,” she said. “I don’t really want to sell it anyway because I love it so much, but I thought if it was worth a fortune, well … you know!”

  “I do indeed,” he said. “Thanks again for bringing it in. I’ll help you get it back into your van.” He smiled at me. “I’ll be with you in a sec, Josie.”

  “Take your time,” I told him.

  By the time Hal got back to me, I had spotted a fabulous collection of chess sets.

  “Hal,” I said as he approached me. “What gems you have here! I’m so jealous, I can’t stand it.”

  “Thanks, Josie. I’m about halfway through appraising them. I may be asking you to put them up for auction.”

  “We’d love it.”

  “So, what brings you to my humble establishment?” he asked.

  “Humble, ha,” I remarked, wanting to be certain that he had no illusions that I thought there was anything humble about his business. I handed him a copy of the Interpol posting. “I’m looking for information about this scrimmed tooth. Has anyone been in trying to sell it during the last few days?”

  He accepted the paper, stared at it for a moment, and said, “Why are you asking?”

  My trouble meter whirred onto high alert, but I kept my voice casual. “I’m following up for a client. It was stolen.”

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Who offered to sell it to you?” I asked, hoping to avoid having to answer. “Lenny Wilton. You know him,
right?”

  Lenny? I repeated silently.

  Lenny? What in God’s name did Lenny have to do with anything? “I do indeed,” I said, not letting my jaw drop. “When was that?”

  “Mid-August. I remember because I thought his timing was bad. If he’d offered it to me at the beginning of the season, I might have been inclined to buy it. As it was, I tried to work out a consignment deal with him. He wasn’t interested. He said he was doing a favor for a friend—the tooth had been in the friend’s family forever, but he was strapped and really needed cash.”

  I nodded. It was a credible explanation, but something was niggling at the corner of my memory.

  “That would have been before your customer bought it, right?” Hal asked.

  “Yes. What did he say about it—any information?”

  “Just that it was a beauty, which I didn’t need him to tell me.”

  I nodded, thanked him, and said, “Let me know about the chess sets.”

  I sat in my car considering the timeline. Assuming the tooth Lenny tried to sell was the same one that the Whitestones bought, and that was now missing, which was by no means a certainty—how, I wondered, did it get from Lenny’s hands into Sam’s? I realized that Sam succeeded in closing the deal with Greg about two weeks after Lenny failed with Hal.

  I continued my trek to the remaining three shops just in case Curt—or Lenny—had stopped in, but they hadn’t. No one had—unless one of the dealers knew the tooth had been stolen and was now covering his or her tracks. I thought about that. All of the shops I’d visited had been in business longer than I’d been in New Hampshire. If any of them dealt in stolen goods, I’d never heard even a whisper about it. I shook my head. My idea had been sound, but like many appraisal approaches, my research led nowhere.

  I drove around the corner, out of sight of the last shop I’d visited, and called Chief Hunter. Cathy told me he wasn’t available and put me through to his voice mail. I shut my eyes to concentrate.

  “I want to tell you something I just learned.” I reported on my conversation with Hal, then added, “If the tooth Lenny tried to sell to Hal is the one Greg bought, it adds credibility that the tooth is, in fact, real. With Lenny’s contacts, it’s completely plausible that he knows someone who owned a rare scrimmed tooth and wanted to sell it privately.”

  I hoped Chief Hunter wouldn’t be too angry with me for acting on my own.

  Cara called as I was driving toward the interstate, ready to return to my office. Lenny Wilton, she said, had returned my phone call.

  I called him back and reached him. “I’m hoping you can answer a few scrimshanding questions,” I said. “Any chance I can stop by? I’m pretty close.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Anytime.”

  I took the interstate north to Greenland, then stuck to back roads the rest of the way. I turned onto the paved road that traversed Lenny’s property—a compound, really—and found him waiting for me on his wraparound deck.

  “Welcome!” he called.

  I’d never been to his studio, but I’d heard about it. Maddie White-stone, who’d been there to look at some of his larger scrimmed pieces, told me that his water wall was the most unusual one she’d ever seen.

  The studio was big, about forty by thirty feet with soaring ceilings and bamboo floors. Storage units, some ten feet high, others more like credenzas, ringed the room. A couch-sized window seat fitted with canvas pillows ran along the outside wall, under a double-high bay window. The view was astonishing—everywhere I looked I saw a panoply of sunlit gold and red, the colors of passion. I’d never seen anything like it.

  “Wow,” I said.

  Lenny nodded. “I know. This time of year, it’s hard to get any work done.”

  “I don’t usually get speechless at a view, but all I can think to say is ‘wow.’”

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “Nice doesn’t even begin to do it justice, Lenny. Wow.”

  He smiled broadly, pleased with my reaction. “Let me show you the rest of the place.”

  A wet bar, complete with mini fridge and micro wave, was off to one side. The bathroom featured a steam room and a double-sized, extra-deep soaking spa tub. A sleeper sofa faced the flat-screen TV, which was mounted over the wood-burning fireplace. Fanned issues of Architectural Digest and Scrimshanding Gazette sat on a rose-wood coffee table. Surrounding the fireplace, ripples of water gently trickled down the black ridged granite into matching troughs. Maddie was right. It was unique. Dozens of scrimmed objects covered worktables that stretched along the perimeter. There were piles of barrettes, three teeth in various stages of completion, and two large pieces of scrimmed bone mounted on exotic wood stands. Scrimming machines were attached to the tables by vises. The feel of the place was busy and productive. The style was contemporary in both design and decor, and I could have happily moved into the space and never left.

  “Wow,” I said again.

  “Thanks. I love it. So … what can I tell you about scrimshaw?”

  “Two questions, one embarrassing to ask, the other not.”

  He tilted his head back. “Okay … I’ll bite. Start with the embarrassing one.”

  “You may be aware that one of Guy Whitestone’s scrimmed teeth is missing. I’m helping the police on certain aspects of the investigation. I just spoke to Hal Harlow.”

  “And?” he said, waiting for me to continue.

  “Do you remember talking to him about a Myrick tooth?”

  “Sure, I remember,” Lenny said. “What about it?”

  “He said you were trying to sell it for a friend. I’m hoping you can tell me a little more about the situation.”

  “I didn’t just go to Harlow’s. I went to half a dozen places. The friend I referred to told me he felt a little awkward about having to sell a family heirloom. I was glad to help him out—but I didn’t do much for him, I’m afraid. He was only interested in cash offers, and I didn’t get any. It just occurred to me—I should have gone to Prescott’s, right?”

  I smiled. “Always. Prescott’s should always be your first stop!” After a moment, I asked, “What did you do then?”

  “I returned the tooth to him with my regrets that I hadn’t been more successful.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “There I’m going to have to not be so helpful, Josie,” Lenny said regretfully. “He swore me to secrecy.”

  I looked at him straight on and saw no hint of guile, nervousness, or anxiety. “That tooth may figure in a murder investigation.”

  “How is a tooth I tried to sell for a friend connected to Frankie’s murder?” Lenny asked, sounding puzzled.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sorry. Until you do—or more specifically, until the police do and ask me about it—I’m keeping my word to my friend.”

  I nodded. “To tell you the truth, I don’t blame you.”

  “It can’t be the same tooth,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “My friend would have told me if it sold.”

  I nodded. His point made sense. “Here’s my nonembarrassing question. How long would it have taken Myrick to scrim a tooth?”

  Lenny smiled. “Believe it or not, that was the subject of a discussion on the scrimshanding forum last spring. Not about Myrick in particular, but with any of the guys who scrimmed on whalers back in the nineteenth century. The consensus was twenty-seven hours.”

  “Really? How did you settle on that? I mean, it’s not an even number or anything.”

  “Call it an educated average. Several scrimshanders timed themselves scrimming a tooth while duplicating, as best they could, seafaring conditions. After they were done, some others of us assessed their methodology. We discounted some timings because they made it too hard on themselves, and we penalized others because they made it too easy. Then we averaged it out. It’s not a scientific study, of course. There were no controls or verifications. But it’s interesting nonetheless. I’m writing an arti
cle about the process we used for Smithsonian.”

  “I’m fascinated, Lenny. Do you know over how many days the twenty-seven hours would have been spread?”

  “A couple of weeks, at least. Given their work shifts, there’s no way anyone would have been able to scrim for more than a couple of hours a day. Most of them probably did it far less often than that. When you think about it, there’s no reason to think they scrimmed more than occasionally—after all, it was a hobby, not their livelihood. In my article, I compare it to knitting. Some knitters do it daily. Some do it feverishly, in bursts, to make Christmas presents, for instance, after procrastinating for months, and some do it rarely, only when the mood strikes.”

  “Your article sounds amazing. I’ll look for it.”

  We talked awhile longer about scrimming and his new holiday barrette designs; then I thanked him again and left.

  Lenny, I thought, walked a fine line with acuity and perfect balance. He was true to his art and simultaneously a clever businessman. It wasn’t easy to accomplish—just ask Ashley. I thought he was right about his friend’s tooth being different from Guy’s, but it was odd that so many previously unknown Myricks seemed to be surfacing at the same time. I also thought he was probably right on the mark about how long it took to scrim a tooth, but before I passed on the information to Mr. Yamamoto, I thought it would be prudent to get a second opinion. I called Ashley again, and this time I got her.

  She almost snapped at me. She sounded beyond irritated, maybe at being interrupted, or maybe because the scrimming gods weren’t cooperating with her work.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you. I have a quick question,” I said. “How long would you guesstimate that it took Myrick or another scrimshander of that period to scrim a tooth?”

  “Why?”