Stealing With Style

by Emyl Jenkins

  He shrugged.

  "Peter," I whispered, "remember that story in the newspaper a while back about the pearl necklace some woman found in the Goodwill Store? Think it was down the road, in Danville. She bought it for sixty-nine cents. Took it home to Colorado or Arizona or Wyoming or somewhere, and it was appraised at fifty thousand dollars. Truth really is stranger than fiction. You know that!"

  Peter rolled his brown eyes.

  "You do, and you know it!"

  If we'd been in private, I would have stamped my foot. "Haven't you ever watched Fact or Fiction on the Sci-Fi channel?" I said. "The stories you think couldn't have happened are the real-life ones. There's a problem here. It just doesn't make sense. First the Paul Storr tea urn worth over fifty grand. Now a wonderful mid-nineteenth-century diamond brooch worth-" I threw my hands in the air. "Seven thousand? Eight? Add it up. Both things mysteriously turn up among Sarah Rose Wilkins's things, and with no explanation? Something's not right."

  "You've seen too many reruns of Murder, She Wrote, Sterling," Peter said calmly, putting his hand on my arm. Had I not been so distracted, his touch might have sent me into orbit. "You know as well as I do that people have all sorts of things hidden away that never surface until they're dead."

  "Not people like Sarah Rose," I declared. "Well," I sighed, calming down, "at least the urn and the pin are both in safe hands now. I'll tell Roy about the pin on Monday morning. Now's not the time."

  Peter gave me a look that suggested otherwise. But I knew that Cassie would have probably scratched my eyes out if I'd tried to start another business conversation. I shook my head. "Let's wait, Peter," I said.

  "Wait till what, Sterling?"

  Till what? I didn't have a clue.

  MOE TAYLOR AND her helpers had carefully orchestrated the evening, and at the stroke of eight we all gathered in the auditorium.

  Moe was appropriately dressed in a violet antebellum satin gown gathered in the back by a pleated and ruffled bustle (the sort preferred by pigeon-breasted women) and matching purple eye shadow. Draped around her shoulders was a heavily embroidered black silk antique shawl and, on her hand, a diamond ring the size of a kumquat, the kind worn by Southern women with old money, or those in the rest of the country with new money.

  No one could miss the garish bauble with the way Moe gestured this way, then that, all the while reminding the guests about the importance of the museum, its place in history, and applauding the great support Leemont had lent to make it possible to purchase the sacred R. E. Lee letter. Amid enthusiastic applause, everyone agreed the event had been a grand success. Soon, Peter wandered off to see someone else.

  Another glass and a half of chardonnay and casual conversation with first one person, then another, helped to put the urn and the brooch out of my thoughts. I almost forgot about Peter. I was having a grand time, but the string-tie guy with slicked-back hair was still lurking around looking at the Civil War displays. He wasn't following me, exactly, but he conveniently managed to keep cropping up wherever I was.

  At the first opportunity I told Moe good-bye and slipped out.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, curled up in the four-poster bed I'd slept in as a child and returned to after my divorce, I reflected on the day. It certainly had held more than its share of surprises. What I missed now was someone to talk it all over with.

  Glancing around the room at what some would have termed "clutter," I thought about the urn and the brooch. Had Sarah Rose Wilkins bought them or inherited them? Either way, where had they come from, and why on earth would she have hidden them away?

  If only things could talk.

  My eyes moved around the room. There was my grandmother's hand mirror on the dressing table I'd had since I was fourteen. On the wall, an antique sampler hung beside a poor attempt at a needlepoint picture my daughter, Lily, had struggled to complete when she was nine. She was much better competing in soccer with her younger brother, Ketch, than she was with a needle.

  I closed my eyes. The shrill ring of the phone broke my reverie and scared me half out of my skin. Who on earth was calling this time of night? I didn't even reach for the light. I grabbed the receiver.

  "Hello?"

  A faint click answered my greeting.

  I turned on the light and flew downstairs to my office to see the number registered on the black box.

  It was blank.

  It took two rings for the caller ID to register.

  I'd picked the phone up on the first ring.

  Chapter 5

  Dear Antiques Expert: My husband and I set up a booth in our town's antiques mall after we retired. A woman from out of town asked us to buy out the contents of her mother's home just a few blocks from our shop. But when I went to the house, I realized it was a job for our local auction house. Because the lady had to get back home, she asked me to contact the auctioneer. When I did, he offered me a finder's fee. Is it right for me to accept this?

  Absolutely. The lady needed you to make the contact and the auctioneer appreciated your referral. This is a business transaction. Auction houses happily pay a "finder's fee" to dealers and appraisers who refer clients to them, and the money comes out of the auction company's money rather than the seller's proceeds. A finder's fee is just a token thank you-usually 3-5 percent of the final selling price. But for a large estate or expensive item, that small percentage can be significant.

  I LEFT FOR NEW YORK that Thursday on a trip that was beginning to feel more like business and less like pleasure.

  As soon as I was settled in my hotel room, I called Nigel Rhodes in the English decorative arts department at Layton's, the auction house that would bring the best price for the urn. Nigel was with a client, but he told me to come right over.

  The rich, the famous, the museum elite, and literally everyone aspiring to be someone someday in the rarefied world of antiques was also gathering at Layton's for their last chance to glimpse the array of antiques before the exhibit hall doors closed at 5 P.M. Like clockwork, at 5:01 Layton's moving crew would begin frantically gathering up the objects and organizing them for the upcoming sale.

  Blue-blooded blue hairs would be mingling with blue-haired tattooed hipsters. Filthy rich matrons and academic types alike would be crawling around on their hands and knees to get a better view of some long-dead craftsman's saw marks and woodblocks. Sometimes the only way I could tell the socialites from the museum curators-with just their buttocks in clear view-was by the cell-phone wire running up to their ears. Those were the socialites, talking to their antiques investment advisers the same way entertainment people talked to their personal psychics. But the color of everyone's money was green. It was a real democratic process.

  I wanted to see the things and the people, but my first obligation was to the silver urn. I'd sent it to New York ahead of me; it had taken hours to pack and deliver to FedEx on Tuesday. I arrived at Layton's just as Nigel was escorting his appointment to the front door. Seeing me, he waved us past the front desk and ushered me into his office where the urn was already on display.

  "As always, you're right on, I'd say," Nigel said.

  Nigel was a rather plain, fair-complexioned man with thinning blond hair, and he used his clothes to distinguish himself. This morning he had on a navy blue cashmere blazer and yellow polka-dotted bow tie. Nigel's eyebrows tended to move up and down as he talked, and it was becoming much more pronounced with age, especially when he became excited, as he was now.

  "With the armorial, eighty-five thousand dollars at the least. You say you don't know whose arms those are?"

  I shook my head.

  "No matter. We'll put Rosalind on it. Her specialty, you know. Now. Let's make the estimate-Hmmmm. No. Let's don't."

  Nigel paused to do the math in his head. "Sixty-five to seventy thousand. Yes. There. That's better. Estimate, sixty-five to seventy thousand," he repeated to himself. "That will entice the bidders. Make them think they can get a bargain. They'll fall all over themselves to get in on the bo
ttom floor. But when the lift goes up, it will be too late." He laughed with unabashed glee.

  Like most upper-class Englishmen, Nigel's teeth never showed when he talked. I'd often wondered if the Brits practiced curling their upper lip over their teeth so they can speak that way or if their teeth were just shorter.

  Nigel leaned far across the desk. "Sterling, you have no idea how hard it has been to get in really good pieces of late. When stocks slump, the rich want to buy. Trouble is, collectors don't want to sell. They hold on to what they have like it's their last bottle of wine," he said. "Just last week, I spent a full day out on Long Island trying to convince a family to sell some of the pieces their great-grandfather had bought during the Great De pression. They laughed at me. Makes it rather difficult to do business."

  Nigel inched to the front of his chair. "They said his antiques investments had been better than their stock investments. One of them went so far as to buy another period Georgian side chair instead of a thousand shares of IBM." He straightened up. "So I greatly appreciate your bringing this to me. You can be sure Charlie Buckingham and Erik Freedman will be bidding against one another." His eyebrows danced in anticipation of the auction.

  Buckingham, a self-made American millionaire many times over, owned a fleet of houses strung out across the world. Either Town and Country or Architectural Digest did a feature on one of his homes every couple of years and he was always looking for a new silver piece for the next dining-room shot. The urn was the sort of piece Charlie Buckingham loved. Put it between beautiful candelabra made by Matthew Boulton on a mahogany Regency sideboard, and it was a made-in-heaven center spread, maybe even the cover.

  Erik Freedman was the personal buyer for some of Hollywood's biggest stars. No one ever knew who he was buying for. Recently, he'd picked up several major English silver pieces, and he'd told Nigel to be on the lookout for more.

  "Hmmm. Yes. Well. Then there's Sinclair and Sinclair," Nigel added, referring to the famed Manhattan silver gallery owned by British tradesmen whose great-great-great-grandfather and uncles had been purveyors for Queen Victoria's court.

  "The other day the younger Sinclair was asking if any Storr pieces were surfacing. Said their inventory was getting low." Nigel ran his fingers around the gadrooning on the tea urn. "Funny about him," Rhodes said, caressing the body of the urn while he spoke. "That youngster has a sixth sense. He must be able to smell the silver coming out of hiding. Guess it's in his genes."

  Nigel abruptly jerked his head up and turned his attention back to me.

  "Hmmm. Yes. Well," he repeated in his British way. "Now tell me how you came on this. There hasn't been an urn this fine offered at auction on either side of the ocean in more than a decade. Why, we haven't even talked about the U.K. collectors. Hmmm. Yes. Well. Depending on whose armorial that is, Sterling, it's conceivable it could break the hundred-thousanddollar mark." He smiled broadly.

  I looked for Nigel's teeth but still couldn't see them.

  "That would be nice. And it would make a nice finder's fee for you," he said, raising one eyebrow as he spoke. I let the comment pass.

  "So. We'll wait to see what Rosalind finds out about the original owner." Nigel drummed his fingers on his desk. "Are you sure there wasn't anything else? Any more silver," he baited, looking over his half glasses as he filled out the transaction papers.

  I paused, debating whether to mention the brooch. Nigel dropped his eyes, shifted the papers again. "Wouldn't want you taking something else over to my good buddy Pennell Evans."

  Pennell Evans was head of the silver department at Layton's competitor, Rosenberg Galleries.

  Nigel pushed the paperwork across the desk toward me.

  "No other silver," I said, still thinking about the diamond pin.

  Rhodes hesitated for half a moment as if about to speak, then pointed to the agreement. "Just sign there, Sterling, and we're off to the races. This treasure is headed straight to the storeroom for safekeeping. Don't worry, I'll keep my eye on her."

  But my mind was on the brooch that I hadn't told the bank about either. At least not yet. I had thought about mentioning it to Roy when I had called him on Monday. But his secretary said that Roy had been unexpectedly called away and would be out of the office until sometime Wednesday afternoon. On Wednesday, I learned his plane had been delayed because of winter weather in Chicago. His secretary didn't know when he'd get back. I was flying out on the 7:05 Thursday morning flight and wouldn't return to Leemont until the next Monday night. In truth, I was relieved to have extra time to think things over.

  "Yes. Well. Well, that about does it," Nigel was saying as he filed the signed documents away. "Say, do you have a little time? If so, why don't you come with me while I put this beauty in her new home? Have you ever seen our back room?"

  " No."

  "Come along then."

  I followed him.

  It was a glorious sight. From floor to ceiling, in bin after bin, were rare and valuable objects-some from time immemorial, some from more recent times, each a silent reminder of a bygone day. Now they sat, waiting to be taken to a new home. We moved past row after row of china, crystal, ivory and jade, brass, and silver fashioned into every item you could imagine, or so it seemed to me. "Ah. Here we are."

  Nigel placed the urn in the bin between a very simple, very fine circa 1770 Sheffield silver cake basket and an elaborately pierced sterling silver epergne made some twenty years later. Together, the three looked very much at home.

  "I could spend hours in here," I said.

  "Better than a museum."

  "Especially without any DO NOT TOUCH signs. But I know you have better things to do, Nigel. Thank you for the tour."

  "Anytime. Just bring me another piece like that one. And if you need anything at all, call me." Nigel extended his hand in a courtly way that seemed perfectly natural, especially in this rarefied setting.

  We stepped out into the hall and straight into the path of Dana Henchloe, one of my least favorite people in the antiques world. He worked for Layton's as a regional associate. The privileged few who held those highly coveted positions were well connected blue bloods who spent their time traveling from state to state, giving lectures at minor museums and attending gallery galas, to scout out material for their New York auctions. Dana Henchloe was based over in Nashville, which was how I'd come to know him. Every month or so he'd call, asking if I knew of any good estates coming up, or if I'd seen any great steals in Leemont. I'd hinted that if I did know of such, I was perfectly capable of handling the job. But Dana was one of those sneaky sorts who would look you straight in the eye while he so deftly stabbed you in the back that you didn't even feel the wound. Until two weeks later, when you heard about the damage from somebody else.

  Years ago he'd cajoled me into telling him where a fabulous Chippendale mirror was going to be sold once the old and dying owner went to her reward. Which was imminent. Dana wormed his way into her house under false pretenses and worked a deal with the matriarch's companion. The mirror left the premises before her body did.

  The next time we met was at a cocktail party. Fortified by a couple of drinks, I told Dana what I thought of his underhanded ways. Since then there's been no love lost between the two of us.

  "Well, if it isn't Sterling Glass," Dana said in his best countryclub voice. "Haven't seen you for a while," he added condescendingly, insinuating that I hadn't been invited to the same exclusive events he'd been to. "Oh, yes. That reminds me. Nigel, by the way, I've got a few more goodies coming out of that Virginia estate I've been sending to you. Wish they'd let the whole thing go, but it's just coming out piecemeal." He smiled my way.

  I wanted to throw up.

  "Yes. Well. I'm seeing Sterling out right now. We'll talk about it later," Nigel said.

  At least he was a gentleman.

  TIME HAD FLOWN. Before I knew it, I realized I needed to get a cab if I was going to make it to Brooklyn to see Sol Hobstein. He and I had finally made contac
t late Monday. When I mentioned that I was on my way to New York, he persuaded me it would be worth my time, financially and professionally, to see his mysterious molds. I still wasn't exactly sure just what it was that he had.

  Chapter 6

  Dear Antiques Expert: Up in the attic of my 97-year-old father's home we found a box of pink tumblers and salad plates and a green water pitcher wrapped up in old newspaper from the 1950s. Though they are different colors, the pieces appear to be the same pattern. My sister-in-law says these are Depression glass. Do they have any value?

  In ancient times glass was as valuable as gold, but since 19th-century glassmakers learned how to pour molten glass into molds, "pressed glass" has been inexpensive. Your sister-in-law is right; yours is "Depression glass" from the late 1920s or 1930s. In the 1970s and 1980s Depression glass became so popular it was reproduced, which killed the market. Yet some patterns remain valuable. Consult a Depression-glass price guide to identify your specific pattern and gauge its value. The glasses may only be worth a few dollars, but the pitcher might be worth considerably more.

  I'D PLANNED TO catch a cab on Madison Avenue, but when snow flurries began to fall I hiked over to Lexington. With the snow came an early dusk. As if they were synchronized, as the streetlights came on the snowflakes quickened, shimmering like tiny silver sequins. Between the threat of more snow to come and the approaching late-afternoon rush hour, every uptown cab was whizzing toward midtown to catch a fare. I stepped off the curb and waved my arm at the sea of yellow lemmings streaming south. Two drivers spied me at the same time. One cut across the path of the other and pulled up beside me.

  "One Winston Place," I said, adding, "in Brooklyn."

  Around Seventieth Street, Lexington Avenue changed from high-end art and antiques galleries to clothing boutiques, shoe stores, and delis. In the brightly lighted boutique windows, ski bunnies competed with snowbirds. The left-hand side of the street favored Moosejaw alpine parkas. On the right, $250 yellow bikinis splashed with strategically placed hibiscus blossoms beckoned. Flo dental, dental floss, they called those thong bikinis in Brazil. Vermont or Ipanema? And I was on my way to Brooklyn.