Stealing With Style

by Emyl Jenkins

  "You must meet Anna," he said, "my new secretary. Anytime you need me, just tell her to buzz you through. You'll remember that, won't you, Anna," he said, looking up at her. He didn't give Anna a chance to answer. She just stood at his elbow, half a head taller than he, looking stunning.

  "And by the way-" Richie turned his head ever so slightly from side to side as if to check to be sure no one could eavesdrop, but he didn't lower his voice. "There are going to be some great pieces at my Deco sale week after next. It's a hot market and it's getting hotter. You've heard of Alicia?"

  "How could we not?" French said. "She's plastered everywhere. Wasn't she in the last Town and Country? We were. Never seen any of her films . . ."

  "And can't say I want to," his wife said.

  "But we do know the name," French went on. "Think she was at one of Warren and Annette's parties that we went to. Or was it at Michael and Catherine's?"

  "Think she was," Richie said, cagily neglecting to say which party. "A word of advice. Alica's getting into Deco in a serious way. She's posing for the cover of Vanity Fair, and guess how she's doing it?"

  "Not like Demi Moore, I hope." Margaret let out a disapproving groan.

  Richie took his cue from her. "Wasn't that over the top?" he gushed, then laughed. "Not to worry. Alicia's doing a Deco pose. Wearing an authentic thirties outfit. She's even going to have the dogs. Two beautiful borzoi decked out in diamond collars. Just like one of those irresistible Poertzel bronze figurines. The market's going to go wild." Richie licked his lips.

  The Everetts looked at one another and raised their eyebrows. "Thanks for the tip," French said.

  The Everetts, with paddle 50 clearly visible, slipped into their front-row seats.

  The Katzes had given me a limit of twenty thousand dollars-give or take a little. Between my straight twenty-fivehundred-dollar fee, whatever I would bill Sol and Roy Madison for, and now the money Babson and Michael would chip in, I was feeling flush.

  I was tempted by a couple of items in the early lots, until the prices began soaring 20, 25, and even 50 percent over the pre auction estimates. I could find better deals at Saks Fifth Avenue's January sale ... or at the Salvation Army in Leemont.

  Eventually, the curly maple candle stand came round. I won it for $1,350, right in the middle of its presale estimate. I passed on the Sheraton chairs when it became clear that there was plenty of competition for them. Anyway, I had decided the sampler was the better choice. There was a momentary lull as some Currier and Ives prints sold at their low estimates, but then the prices kicked back up. Obviously getting the sampler wasn't going to be as easy as I'd hoped.

  Within five seconds of the opening bid, I could see the competition-Asher Berg and the Everetts. I decided to let them battle it out first. If I jumped in too soon, I'd just drive up the price as one more bidder. Twenty seconds later, the bidding reached fourteen thousand dollars, then stalled.

  The sampler was wonderful and worth every penny it was garnering. The scene depicted a family standing in front of their two-story, early Federal house. Its colors were still vibrant. It was signed and dated and had an ironclad provenance-all factors making it highly desirable. Either the Everetts or Berg-whichever one got it-would add at least 50 percent over the sampler's final price before selling it. If the auction price ended up being fifteen thousand dollars, after Layton's tacked on its 20 percent buyer's premium, and then the 50 percent (or more) dealer markup was added, and taxes were put into the mix, somebody would be paying upward toward twenty-eight or twenty-nine thousand-possibly more-for it. That made the sampler a steal for the Katzes at anything under twenty thousand.

  After a couple of hesitant raises from the Everetts against Berg came the inevitable lull. I raised my paddle against Asher Berg's $16,250 high hid. It was greeted by several turned heads.

  "Sixteen thousand five hundred to the lady. Sixteen five. Sixteen thousand five hundred dollars."

  The auctioneer looked pointedly at Berg. Sam disgustedly turned his paddle upside down and placed it on his lap.

  "Fair warning," the auctioneer announced to the room. "I have $16,500 hid for lot 58, the fine Philadelphia sampler. Are the bids all in?" His eyes quickly swept the room one last time. "Sold. To paddle number ..."

  I held my paddle high.

  "... 61." He smiled as he noted my number in his ledger. I smilingly nodded back when he glanced back up.

  By the time the auction house tagged on the buyer's premium for the candle stand and sampler, I would have spent over twenty thousand dollars of somebody else's money, been paid to do it, and loved every minute of it. The Katzes could wait till another day to buy a nineteenth-century coin silver service.

  I was tempted to stick around and see how things ended up, but I was more anxious to hear from Peter. I told the young fellow at the desk I'd be back tomorrow, turned in my paddle and completed the paperwork, and caught a cab to the hotel.

  The Katzes had paid for the ride, but I could also charge it to Matt Yardley with a clear conscience. Just three lots before the sampler, a Victorian brass chamber stick, not identical but comparable to the $500 one on the Hanesworth's list cited as stolen, was sold. The one tonight had sold for $650. And one of the lots that had far exceeded its estimated selling price was a pair of shell-shaped English Derby serving dishes. The Hanesworths' single dish was appraised at $3,200, a top price, I'd thought. This pair had sold for almost $10,000. Pairs always sell for more than double the price of a single piece. Still, I needed to keep my eye on the market for fine English porcelain. Obviously, prices were going up and it was my business to stay on top of them.

  Giddy with success, I scribbled "Research" next to the I V New York logo on my $6.25 receipt.

  Chapter 14

  Dear Antiques Expert: I recently found an Art Deco figure identical to one I inherited in an antiques shop. The difference was that mine is small, just 10 inches tall, and the one in the store must have been 20 or 24 inches tall. Does this mean that one of them is a fake?

  During the 1930s, wall "niches" became a popular architectural detail. The bronze, or bronze and ivory, Art Deco figurines were perfect for these spots, but since a small figurine could get lost in a large niche or a high-ceilinged room, many manufacturers produced the same figurine in a variety of sizes. So size alone does not denote a real or fake piece. (Incidentally, some figures came with a hollowed-out stand containing a colored electric lightbulb to add a glamorous touch to the niche, but these seldom survived.)

  IN THE MORNING I felt as if I hadn't slept at all. Again, I'd thrashed about all night. Some way to spend my time in New York. Twice during the night I had awakened, having dreams about Barefoot Bagman back in Leemont.

  No one knew much about Bagman-how old he was, where he got his money, if he had any family. He'd just always been a permanent fixture, walking barefooted up and down the streets of Leemont. Rumor had it that Bagman went barefooted because he said Jesus did.

  His real name was Shaw Bagwell. Bagwell became Bagman since he toted a burlap bag around with him. What he carried in the bag was the real mystery. Some people said it was all his worldly goods. Others said it was nothing but empty aluminum cans and glass bottles. But others swore that it is the Confederate gold purported to have been buried somewhere around Leemont during the last days of the great siege.

  In real life Bagman lived in the basement of the old Sandusky mansion on River Street. The Phillipses, a doctor and his wife, who'd bought the Sandusky house some fifteen years ago, inherited Bagman with their purchase-the way someone inherits an outdated refrigerator left behind by the former owners. Apparently Bagman had never bothered them.

  If the Phillips, or anyone else, had ever been in Bagman's hovel, no one knew about it, which made the aura surrounding him all the more legendary. The few who had dared to talk to him said he wasn't stupid, so he couldn't be labeled the town's idiot. I was always told he was "touched," or "tetched," as some folks say.

  Pixilated, Mother
had said. That's a much better, more descriptive word.

  On occasion Bagman went to the Salvation Army to buy somebody's discarded sweater or get a hot meal. Peter had tried to get him to move into better quarters, but Bagman said the furnace kept him warm in the winter and the red-dirt floor cool in the summer.

  In my dreams, like an old peddler out of a nineteenthcentury English novel, Barefoot Bagman was loaded down with valuable silver, antique jewelry, and bronze figures. And in the way things occur in dreams, Bagman was riding an elephant with four huge ivory tusks on his way to his basement room home.

  I looked at the clock. It was 7:15 A.M.

  I leaned over the side of the bed and retrieved one of the auction catalogs Richie had given me and began to flip the pages idly. I stopped at the Art Deco silver. I thought again of the Paul Storr tea urn. From the moment it had surfaced in the brown paper bag hidden in the moth-eaten blanket at the back of Sarah Rose Wilkins's closet, it had nagged at me. Finding the pin inside the oven mitt raised more questions and suspicions. But about whom? Sarah Rose Wilkins? She was certainly above reproach.

  One unexplained valuable piece could be overlooked-and could be a fluke. Two unexplained valuable pieces could notespecially since women wear jewelry. Though the pin was exquisite, it wasn't flashy. If anything, it was understated. Truth be known, I doubted if many people would realize they were looking at valuable diamonds. Because the pin didn't scream "Notice me," I just couldn't believe that Sarah Rose Wilkins, modest though she was, could have resisted wearing it, if in fact it was hers. But now I was sure that the pin hadn't been hers.

  Things just weren't adding up. And what if some other piece also had been hidden in her apartment and gone undiscovered? It, too, could have ended up at the Salvation Army. I wondered if Peter had searched Sarah Rose's other things sent there? I reached for the phone.

  "You can't do that," I scolded myself out loud. "He already thinks you're blowing this thing all out of proportion."

  But like it or not, I was involved. The time had come to do some serious thinking.

  Sarah Rose's family was small and didn't live near Leemont, and no relatives or heirs had gone in or out of her apartment on a regular basis. She had been able bodied and independent until a week before her death. It wasn't all that unusual for an eighty-year-old woman to be hospitalized, released, and then die unexpectedly. Doctors didn't know everything. That was that. The end. The police had resolved the issue of her death to their satisfaction the day Roy and I had gone to Sarah Rose's apartment.

  When the urn had surfaced and there had been no record of her owning such an exceptional piece, I had asked some questions out of curiosity. Now they seemed more significant.

  Okay, so the pin was really Mrs. Hanesworth's, or had been at one time. Was there a possible connection between Sarah Rose Wilkins and the Hanesworths? I thought hard, trying to remember everything I could about Mrs. Wilkins. She had taught school. That ruled out the chance that she might have worked for the Hanesworths, who possibly could have given her valuable pieces in lieu of a paycheck.

  She was not known to be kin to any fine aristocratic, or filthy rich, family. Nor her husband. People in Southern towns like Leemont knew all about one's lineage or, in the case of blue bloods, their pedigree. Or at least people of the Wilkinses' generation did. Nope, the Wilkins weren't kin to the Hanesworths. Inheritance did not seem at all likely.

  The presence of both the pin and the urn was puzzling enough. Since the urn wasn't anywhere on the Hanesworths' appraisal, the idea that the two things might have come to be in Sarah Rose's apartment from two different sources ... that was the kicker. I would have to get in touch with whichever Hanesworth heir had sent their claim in to Babson and Michaels. Maybe they had missed listing a Paul Storr urn.

  What was I thinking? If I was determined to worry myself sick over something, I should have been fretting over Richie Daniel. Now that was a suspicious situation if I had ever seen one.

  It was time to lighten up a little. I laid out a sensible plan that suited no one but me. Breakfast. Saks. Antiques shops. Auction. Dinner.

  There was no reason to rush back to Layton's right away. The morning session would feature nice, but not exceptional, items--pieces ranging from the low hundreds to mid thousands, on up to maybe ten or twenty thousand. After lunch, the merchandise always kicked up a notch. The occasional twentyfive- to seventy-five-thousand-dollar piece was offered. But come the end of the day, the stars came out-the pieces expected to bring one, two, or three hundred thousand dollars and on up. The real humdingers, the ones that everyone-the sellers, the onlookers, the auction house, the media, even the buyers (they figured the prices would go higher next time)hoped would go through the ceiling, maybe even reach the million-dollar mark, were saved for the grand finale. Or the dismal fizzle.

  I'd shop in the morning, go to Layton's in time for the real show.

  FIRST STOP WAS SAKS. I wove my way around the willowy wannabe models handing out pungent perfume samples. An hour later I was back on East Forty-eighth Street, content that my mission was accomplished with Lily's periwinkle silk cardigan and tee, and the cashmere crewneck sweater that I couldn't believe I found in Ketch's size in hand. I wasn't interested in shopping for myself.

  If I grabbed a pretzel from one of the sidewalk vendors, I would have time to check out the huge Metro Antiques Mall a few blocks up before going on to Layton's. If I couldn't be tempted by Ralph Lauren tweeds at 35 percent off, I could keep focused and walk past row after row of red Bohemian glass decanters, shelf after shelf of cloisonne vases, and rack after rack of silver-topped walking sticks-reminders of the day I was tempted to break one over my ex-husband's head. I was determined to whiz through that microcosm of dead people's lives, pausing only for bronze and ivory figurines.

  I wasn't disappointed. In stall after stall, from the mall's first to its fourth floor, small tabletop bronze sculptures of ladies, gladiators, dogs, angels, and nude and virile Italian boys abounded. But only the occasional booth was manned, making it hard to gather much information. When I heard voices, I headed in that direction.

  "It's not a question of its value," an older woman was saying. "It's a matter of my cash flow."

  I didn't have to see what was going on to know that those were the words of a dealer. That old song and dance, I mused. How many times had I heard those very words spouted by a seasoned dealer trying to get a good deal.

  "I think I'll have a quick sale for it, but," the woman continued, "before I can buy it I have to get in touch with my customer. I'll leave a message on his machine. Look, he's probably out; he usually comes by here on Saturday afternoons."

  That's when a younger-sounding voice chimed in. "I can't wait around all day." It was that high-octane speak that seemed the norm among the twenty-somethings.

  "Look, honey, these are antiques, not Hershey bars. You don't just buy expensive antiques on a whim. If you need money in a hurry, take your ex-boyfriend's ring to the pawnshop. What's your rush, anyway? It's not hot, is it?"

  For a moment I expected everything to go black and white. The exchange was right out of a 1940s film noir. So that's where they got the dialogue: real life.

  I was dying to see what was being peddled. I sauntered along, careful not to draw any attention to myself. Out of the corner of my eye, next to an oversized Gucci handbag, I glimpsed a delicately balanced silhouette of an Art Deco figure. Holding on to the inanimate figure for dear life was an equally angular young woman. I edged to my right to get a better view. It was Anna, Richie's secretary, dressed in the same stunning cashmere coat and the same long gold earrings as yesterday. She'd pulled up her blonde hair beneath a black fedora. She wore little, if any, makeup. She looked like a million bucks.

  The dealer was a seventyish, heavyset redhead wearing oversized red-rimmed glasses that rested low down on the tip of her nose. She had multiple chins. Her hand, crippled with age but adorned with bright red fingernails, was wrapped around the base of the b
ronze statue like a cobra. For a second, I wondered if I was going to witness a tug-of-war. If so, my bet was on the septuagenarian dealer who was wearing enough 18K gold bracelets to choke an airport metal detector.

  I hung hack. One of the great things about antiques shops is the number of natural hiding places they provide. An almost eight-foot-tall English mahogany secretary-bookcase gave me perfect cover. If need be, I could drop to my knees to examine the piece's feet and legs more closely.

  "What's the most you can give me for it?" Anna asked.

  "Seven hundred. Seven twenty-five," the dealer replied.

  "But I paid more for it than that!" Anna's tone turned desperate.

  "Ever buy any stocks, honey?"

  That slowed her down.

  "No, no. Not yet."

  "Is this your first antiques deal?"

  "No. Yes. Well, the first real one."

  "All right. Truth's out. Now listen. First rule, don't play. Second rule, if you're gonna play, have a sure sale before you buy. All right?" The dealer let out a sympathetic groan and heaved her heavy shoulders. "Maybe I can go $850."

  I thought I discerned a sigh of relief as Anna dropped her hold on the figurine.

  "Why'd you buy it?" the dealer asked her.

  This time I heard a sigh for sure.

  "I probably ought not to tell you. I work at Layton's." Anna slowed down, dropping her voice to a confessional pitch. "I see these things come in. They sell for eight, ten thousand dollars. More. I found this one and thought-"

  "Layton's, huh? Thought you looked the type." The dealer made a clinking noise with her tongue against her cheek. "So you thought you could play with the big boys. All right. What happened?"