Silent Auction

by Jane K. Cleland

  “No way what?”

  “No way this Ms. Morse of yours told you that.”

  “Where do you say you got the tooth?”

  “I’m not telling.”

  “Ms. Morse says you got it from her.”

  “Bull.”

  “She was pretty persuasive,” Chief Hunter said.

  “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re a damn liar.”

  Chief Hunter leaned back, taking his time. “If you won’t tell me, you won’t. Will you at least tell me why you won’t talk about it?”

  “Hell, no. I’m not telling you nothing.”

  “Maybe I misunderstood,” he said, glancing at his notes again. “Maybe she said your contact was Lenny Wilton.”

  “Don’t know him neither.”

  “Sure you do.”

  Sam fixed his eyes on him. “Prove it.”

  I was watching Ashley rat-a-tat-tat the table when Chief Hunter stepped into the observation room. He glanced at her, then jerked his head toward Sam.

  “What do you think?” he asked me.

  “I think he’ll hold his ground. You don’t seem to have any leverage.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at Ashley for a moment. “Once I get that layout of yours, I’ll ask her some questions about it. In the meantime, I want to consult with the ADA. You all right to hang tight for a while?”

  I wanted to see Ty. I wanted to go home. I wanted to check in with Zoë. I was bone weary. More than anything else, though, I was curious.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Fred called to let me know that he’d just e-mailed the layout.

  “Were you able to include a bookmark?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I picked one randomly. It has the same dark line.”

  “Great.”

  “Suzanne was there using a scrimming machine. I’ve never seen one in action before. It was pretty impressive.”

  “Was she making belt buckles?”

  “Yeah—and I gotta tell you, they didn’t look as cheesy as I expected.”

  Given that Fred was an antiques snob, that tepid praise was, in effect, an over-the-moon endorsement.

  “She told me that she’d heard from Curt that you’d ordered a gross,” Fred added.

  I was glad to learn who Curt’s mysterious business associate was—he was using Greg’s scrimming machine—and I nearly rolled my eyes as I recalled his cloak-and-dagger attitude, given that evidently he had forgotten to tell Suzanne, Greg’s employee, that his involvement was supposed to be secret. Hard on the heels of that first reaction was disgust. I was stunned at Curt’s effrontery.

  “Jeez, Fred … what I told him was that I’d let him know if I wanted any, and if so, how many, after I tested them. I explained we only sold fossil ivory, and that the scrimming had to be executed perfectly.”

  “I guess he’s an optimist,” Fred said.

  “Or he knows the material is real.”

  I opened the file Fred had sent. As expected, seeing so many examples on one surface, the highlight lines leapt off the page. I forwarded it to Chief Hunter and settled in to wait.

  Sam’s eyes were closed, and he was very still. In the other room, Ashley’s nerves were showing. Her foot jitterbugged on the floor, and her fingers played an imaginary keyboard on her thighs.

  I closed the slats in the transom and called Ty again, then Zoë. Ty said he was exhausted from the drive and about to take a shower. Zoë said she was exhausted from the stress and about to have something to eat. I told them both I missed them and would be home as soon as I could.

  I had nothing to do. I reached my hand up to rub my shoulders, hoping to ease the tension that had turned my muscles into thin ridges of steel, without noticeable success.

  Time passed.

  Sam shifted his position, his eyes still closed.

  Ashley began pacing.

  Wes texted me, my phone’s vibration catching my attention.

  “Lenny W worth over a mil. In Bos meeting all day—alibi solid.”

  “Do police know?” I texted back.

  “Yup,” Wes replied.

  Interesting, I thought, glancing at Ashley. Suddenly, Ashley threw her head back, her fine blond hair splaying out like a lion’s mane. Her pacing continued, but faster, ever faster, until it took her only seconds to cover the length of the room. She strode back and forth, back and forth, over and over again, like a big cat in a small cage.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Chief Hunter entered the room where Ashley continued her agitated pacing. He looked tired. Ashley’s eyes didn’t leave his face as he got settled at the table and activated the video recorder. She barely blinked.

  “Sorry for the delay,” he said. He thanked her again, stated the date and time, then slid the Miranda form toward her. “I’m going to read you your rights and ask that you sign a form indicating that you understand. Okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. She listened, then signed the form without reading it.

  “Take a look at this,” he asked, showing her a printout of the layout Fred had prepared.

  Ashley picked up the display of her work, then looked at Chief Hunter.

  “You’re very talented,” he said.

  “I made this tooth. And this bookmark,” she said, pointing. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Did you scrim or etch the other objects?” Chief Hunter asked.

  She didn’t reply.

  “I think you did … and I think you know why I’m asking you to confirm it.”

  She clamped her jaw tight and didn’t speak.

  He stared at her, keeping the pressure on, his expression severe and unforgiving.

  “Guy Whitestone and the ADA have agreed not to prosecute you for the fraud you are alleged to have perpetrated regarding the counterfeit Myrick tooth,” he said. “That one.” He used his pencil’s eraser to indicate the tooth.

  Ashley licked her lips. Her eyes stayed on the layout. “I didn’t commit fraud.”

  “You scrimmed this tooth. It was sold as a Myrick.” He shrugged. “According to the ADA, that’s fraud.”

  “I scrimmed it as a repro. That’s not fraud.”

  Well done, I thought. He’d just won her admission that she’d scrimmed the tooth.

  “You’re saying Mr. Donovan knowingly marketed a repro as a genuine Myrick?”

  She licked her lips. “I don’t know what he did.”

  “Sure you do. You saw the tooth on display at his gallery.”

  She dragged her eyes from the display Fred had prepared to Chief Hunter’s face.

  “The ADA is willing to work with you,” he said. “If you tell us what happened. All of it. The whole deal. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  She licked her lips again. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Someone did.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” she said.

  “Whose idea was it?”

  She shook her head.

  “On some level, you must have felt proud of yourself,” he said. “Your work was good enough to fool people.”

  “Pride!” she said. “I didn’t feel proud. I felt ashamed. I hated doing it. I hated it.”

  He nodded slowly. “I can see that. You only did it for the money.”

  “Exactly,” she said, her anger melting away. She looked years younger, lost, and vulnerable, like a child who’s lost her parents at the fair. Her eyes filled again, and she looked aside. “I didn’t want to do it. I had no choice. He made me.”

  “Who?”

  She covered her face with her hands and began crying in earnest. She moaned, then moaned again, a sound of hopelessness, all while weeping as if her heart had broken beyond repair.

  Was it Lenny? I asked myself. I texted, “Ask her if it’s Lenny.”

  His phone vibrated on the wooden table. He read my message, then spoke quietly. “Ms. Morse?” he said, then repeated it, his voice a little louder as he tried to penetrate her sorrow. “Was it Mr. Wilton?”
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  She shook her head and continued crying, her shoulders quivering as if she were chilled.

  Chief Hunter sat and watched her, his expression thoughtful.

  Greg said he had no plans or desire to expand his gallery, yet a business without growth was doomed. If a company isn’t growing faster than the rate of inflation, by definition, it’s shrinking.

  Ashley had no business sense.

  Greg did. And if the organizer wasn’t Ashley, Lenny, Curt, or Sam—by pro cess of elimination, it had to be Greg.

  “Ask her if it’s Greg,” I texted the chief.

  He read my message, then said, “Ms. Morse? Please give me the name.”

  She groaned, still weeping. She lowered her hands. Her face was splotched with red. Her cheeks were shiny with wetness. She looked wan.

  “I’m afraid I need to insist,” he said. “The agreement not to prosecute you requires your cooperation.”

  She stared at him but seemed to be seeing through him, past the here and now, into the bleak future.

  “Is it Greg Donovan, Ms. Morse? Is it Mr. Donovan who commissioned the fakes?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  I wondered if Ashley would clam up again as Chief Hunter started pushing for specifics, but she didn’t. The lid was off, and that was that. She tearfully detailed her arrangement with Greg, blaming the ignorant and uncultured public for her lack of commercial success.

  By her own admission, she’d created the designs for contemporary scrimmed objects such as bookmarks, cufflinks, and belt buckles; she’d scrimmed four fake Myrick teeth; and she’d prepared the metal plate replicating Winslow Homer’s The Herring Net. All told, Greg had paid her fifteen thousand dollars. She insisted that other than the one fake tooth the Whitestones had purchased and the bookmarks stocked by Sea View Gallery, she had no knowledge of where anything else ended up.

  According to Ashley, Greg had promised her that no one would ever know of her involvement. Creating repros was embarrassing, she said, for an artist of her caliber, but it wasn’t illegal. She felt ashamed, but that was all. It was only later, after she learned that he’d been selling the repros as originals, that the magnitude of what she’d done had sunk in. She’d been horrified.

  I kept wanting to look away. Watching her confess was excruciating and depressing, like witnessing the end of hope. As her story unfolded, it became clear that she was a pawn, not a leader. It had been Greg’s idea, and it was he who executed it, apparently without remorse or even a second thought. I wondered how he slept at night.

  When she’d finished, she sat huddled over, rocking a little as if she were nursing a bad stomachache.

  Chief Hunter thanked her, turned off the video recorder, and stepped into the observation room. I listened in as he called Detective Brownley and asked her to escort Ashley to another room, then bring in Greg.

  “Do you think she’s telling the truth?” Chief Hunter asked me.

  “I think so. I think she found herself boxed in, convinced that there was no way out. She might have felt horrified, but since Greg is the keeper of her dreams, she must have decided that she had to do as he asked. If he’d withdrawn his support, she’d have lost everything. It’s a horrible position to be in—dependent and powerless.”

  Detective Brownley appeared and led a deflated Ashley out. Within minutes, she brought a slouching Greg in.

  Greg’s normally buoyant demeanor was gone. He looked irritable and worn-out. His ice blond hair needed combing. His tie was loosened. The corners of his mouth pointed down.

  Chief Hunter thanked me again and left for the interrogation room where Sam still sat.

  He turned on the video camera and cleared his throat, waiting for Sam to look up. Sam looked exhausted. Purple-black smudges had appeared beneath his eyes.

  “Mr. Holt … I’m going to ask you a straight question. I’m hoping you’ll give me a straight answer.”

  Sam’s mouth twisted into an ugly sneer, undeterred by the chief’s newly minted man-to-man approach. He lowered his chin until it nearly touched his chest. His body language and expression shouted, “Drop dead.”

  “Mr. Holt, you never sold Greg Donovan the Myrick tooth, did you?”

  “Ask him. He’ll tell you.”

  “He got you to lie for him.”

  Sam scraped back his chair and stood up. “I’ve been thinking during the time you’ve kept me here waiting on your convenience, thank you very much, that I’ve been a fool to stay. Talk about patsies. I don’t know nothing about nothing illegal, and I’m not telling you nothing about my business. You gonna arrest me, do it. Otherwise, I’m outta here.”

  Sam didn’t look back or hesitate. He left. The chief punched the OFF button on the camera, then followed him out.

  I sat and waited, monitoring the time. Seven minutes after Sam took the bull by the horns, Chief Hunter entered the room where Greg sat, from the look of it, brooding.

  “You know, Chief,” Greg said as Chief Hunter pushed the RECORD button on the video recorder, “I think we’ve reached the point where even a good citizen who wants to help the police might tell you to go take a hike.”

  “I understand that this hasn’t been as speedy a pro cess as any of us would like, but it is a pro cess.”

  Greg sighed heavily and glanced at the camera’s glowing light. “You’ve read me my rights. You’ve told me I’m not under arrest. I’ve said I didn’t want a lawyer. What now?”

  “You’ve been implicated in a scheme to defraud investors and collectors, and I have some questions about it.”

  Greg’s mouth opened, then closed. He sat up straight. “Implicated? By whom?”

  “By Ms. Morse. She said you commissioned a counterfeit Homer plate and several phony Myrick teeth.”

  “That’s absurd! I’m the victim here, remember? Sam sold me the fake!”

  “That’s what I’m trying to sort out. Right now all I’ve got is a he said/she said blame game—it’s your word against hers. Can you think of any way to corroborate your side?”

  “And Sam’s not talking, right?”

  “He will.”

  Greg thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Since you’re telling me that she confessed to committing fraud, I’d suggest that you consider your source rather than accuse me of wrongdoing.”

  “Then let’s start with legal activities. Did she create scrims for you to use with a scrimming machine?”

  “Sure. I bought a scrimming machine from Lenny Wilton to use with Ashley Morse designs—and I rent the machine out to other people.” He opened his palms. “So what? Even if some of those re-pros are good enough so that some people might try to market them as antiques—what has that got to do with me?”

  “Did you ever instruct Ashley Morse to hand-scrim teeth in the style of Myrick? Or suggest she do so?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Did you ever instruct Ashley Morse to etch a metal plate in the style of Homer? Or suggest she do so?”

  “No.”

  Chief Hunter nodded, then shrugged. “He said … she said.” He stood up. “I’ll be back.”

  “How much longer do you expect me to sit here as if I were a—,” Greg said, breaking off when Chief Hunter held up a hand.

  “Right now, Mr. Donovan, you’re looking at fraud, grand larceny, and maybe racketeering charges,” Chief Hunter said. He kept his eyes on Greg’s for a three-count, then added, “Felonies, Mr. Donovan. Felonies.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Your call. Do you want a lawyer?”

  Greg stared at him for a long moment, then said, “Yes.”

  “He makes a helluva case,” Chief Hunter said to me as he stared at Greg through the one-way mirror. I stood next to him doing the same. “Maybe he’s telling the truth. I’d love to get a search warrant for his gallery, but there’s no way I could based solely on an alleged co-conspirator’s testimony. I need corroboration of Ms. Morse’s story.”

  I saw his point. Lenny, I thought. I lo
oked up at him. “Sam didn’t deny knowing Lenny. Lenny tried to sell the fake Myrick tooth, or one just like it, to Harlow’s, allegedly for a friend. I asked him who his friend is and he refused to tell me. He said that when the police could link it to Frankie’s murder, he’d tell them. Has anyone done that? Has anyone asked him?”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “Let me check.”

  He went to a wall phone, and I listened as he consulted Detective Brownley. No one, it seemed, had asked.

  “You take Curt Grimes,” he instructed her, “and focus on his business dealings with Greg Donovan. I’ll call Lenny Wilton.” To me, he added, “Follow me.” His demeanor was resolute and urgent as he led the way to his office. “Just like before, I want you here in case I need help with technical questions.”

  He didn’t.

  He told Lenny he was calling on official business, and as such was taping the call, and Lenny said that he was glad to help. I stayed still, mindful of how sounds carry on a speakerphone.

  Lenny repeated what he’d told me: that his friend really wanted privacy and, without one heck of a good reason, he wasn’t going to reveal his name. “Can you connect that tooth or my trying to sell it to the murder?” he asked.

  “We believe the tooth is central to the murder,” Chief Hunter replied, keeping to the literal truth.

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “When you figure it out, let me know.”

  “I’m asking for your help.”

  “Sorry,” Lenny said.

  The call ended cordially.

  Chief Hunter said, “Interesting,” maybe to me, maybe to himself. He called Detective Brownley, asked for an update, then hung up and said to me, “No surprise. Grimes says he works with Donovan—and lots of other people—and doesn’t know anything about fakes.” He shook his head. “Any ideas on another collaborator?”

  I stared out the window, thinking. “Sam,” I said, looking back at him. “He knows where he got the Winslow Homer etching he’s trying to sell to Maddie Whitestone. Maybe he’ll tell you who’s behind it.”

  “Why would he?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  Chief Hunter nodded. “What have you discovered about the etching?”