Stealing With Style

by Emyl Jenkins

  "Yes. That will be fine," he said, his voice trailing off as he started down the hall.

  I wasted no time finding the Creightons' kitchen phone. I could feel my heart beating as I called Peter and asked if he could meet me for lunch.

  "I'm seeing Ed Pavich this afternoon, but I want to go over everything with you first," I said after giving a much abbreviated version of what I had just learned. "Do you think that if Jane Finn had the key, she might have been who Sarah Rose was telling to get out? I don't like this. What if Jane Finn killed Sarah Rose?"

  "Now Sterling, don't go jumping to conclusions. We'll talk it out," Peter said.

  As soon as I hung up, I started jotting down notes about the Creightons, Sarah Rose Wilkins, and Jane Finn. My mind was racing with questions for Howard Creighton-whether Jane Finn sat for them regularly, when she'd be back again, if they had had their roof repaired lately. But clearly now was not the time. For now I'd have to settle for telling Peter. Later, I'd tell Ed Pavich what I'd learned so far. I wondered if Matt Yardley had learned any more about the Hanesworths' theft?

  Right now, silver and furniture were the furthest things from my mind, or at least appraising the Creightons' china and silver and furniture. But I couldn't let Howard Creighton down. I slipped into the formal rooms of the house and for the first time gave them a quick once-over. Usually I would have the entire room almost memorized, or at least the major pieces, within just a few seconds. Not today.

  I found myself staring into space. It was then I realized how distracted I was.

  I forced myself to look around. The Creightons' home was like the Creightons themselves, tidy but tired. The rooms had a pale haze about them, even with the sun streaming in. The silk damask upholstered chair and sofa were worn at the arms. The patterned wallpapered walls had faded from a vibrant red to a pale burgundy. The house reminded me of so many old houses I had visited. Dreary and drab.

  Still though, there were so many objects, so much furniture-the accumulation of generation added on to generation-that I knew that this job would take several long hours, even days, of detailed, on-site work. Under normal circumstances, right about now I would be figuring out how to best handle the Creightons' appraisal, considering Mrs. Creighton's condition-a complex and extremely delicate situation for me and for them. Today, though, my only thought was how I could get out as quickly as possible.

  Any appraiser knows when it comes to authenticating valuable antiques, a picture really isn't worth a thousand words. But, when all else failed, a photograph could at least be a starting point. Given the present circumstances, there was no doubt that taking some pictures was considerably simpler than looking for hallmarks on silver, signatures on paintings, and accurately measuring and describing piece after piece.

  I passed over my digital camera, took my old-fashioned Minolta out of its case, and started the four-corner routinestanding in one corner and shooting the opposite side of the room-until I had good panoramic shots. Next I took really close close-ups of some of the details of the major pieces, those details that could add, or take away, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars. I'd drop the film off for one-hour photo finishing on the way to lunch and have the pictures ready to look at immediately.

  I opened a few drawers to see what lay in store for another day. Each time I did so, I moaned. Every drawer and cubby hole was crammed full with the sort of treasures that naturally accumulate over the years when no one moves out of a house and discards the family mementos that we wish our families had held on to. There were Christmas cards from the 1890s; gold-rimmed glasses from the 1860s; old campaign buttons for Roosevelt-Theodore, not Franklin Delano; gold fountain pens from the 1920s that would make Richie Daniel's hair stand on end; a set of twelve late-nineteenth-century Tiffany sterling silver nut picks in their original silk-lined case-that was just the three top drawers in the circa 1800 Virginia inlaid Hepplewhite walnut secretary-bookcase in the living room. Even the brasses and beautifully splayed feet were original. The secretary-bookcase alone was worth well over $50,000. The silver nut picks would easily fetch $750-plus at a fancy antiques show. Heaven only knew what I'd find in the dining room.

  I looked around the corner. There was another Virginia treasure-a period walnut hunt board worth twenty or twenty-five thousand if it was worth a penny-and that was just a quick guesstimate. No telling what valuable and historically important silver pieces undoubtedly lay in wait in its drawers. And lay in wait they would, until another day.

  I worked rapidly for a little over an hour. When I realized it was getting close to noon, I slipped into the library. Maybe I could ask Mr. Creighton a few questions before I left.

  Both of the Creightons had drifted off to sleep.

  Across the room, an exasperated young Dick Van Dyke paced back and forth across the TV screen trying to cajole Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie into writing the scene for The Alan Brady Show his way. Martha Creighton, seated at one side of the sofa, a gray shawl tucked around her shoulders, wasn't moving a muscle. Seated in the lounge chair beside her, Howard's portly chest rose and fell in rhythm with his muffled snores.

  When you are old and grey and full of sleep, Mother would say, quoting W. B. Yeats when she, herself, would awaken from a daytime nap that she had drifted into unexpectedly.

  I had never felt the words more poignantly. I gazed at the old gray people complacently dozing in front of the gas logs in this library, once the scene of lively conversation. My eyes moved from one gentle soul to the other while Yeats's words played in my mind, drowning out the canned laughter coming from the TV set:

  How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

  Fighting hack tears, I jotted a quick note to Mr. Creighton telling him I'd left, but would call later. I put it on the kitchen counter where I felt sure he would see it, and slipped out the back way, past the marble water nymph without giving it a second glance.

  Chapter 19

  Dear Antiques Expert: I bought a 1920s decorating book at the library book sale. The author suggested that "beehive" candlesticks be used in the living room on the mantel piece or a side table. What exactly are beehive candlesticks?

  The name "beehive" came from the ring design used to decorate the columns of many brass candlesticks in the 19th century. It resembled the ringed cone shape of a natural beehive. Hundreds of thousands of brass beehive candlesticks were made in those days before electricity. The style never went out of fashion and reproduction beehive candlesticks are still being made.

  OUR LUNCH FOR two turned into a powwow for three. Peter had called Ed Pavich and asked him to join us at the Dixie Cafe, a soup and sandwich place on the edge of where Stuart's Ridge meets Leemont's downtown legal district.

  I'd not met Ed Pavich before, just heard of him trough idle town talk. When he, a Northerner, had married Molly Stone, the daughter of a rich peanut grower from over in the Suffolk area, her daddy had built them one of those new huge, beige and gray stone houses with lots of high-pitched rooflines way out in the county so Molly could have land and horses. Some folks said that Daddy Stone picked the land around Leemont because he didn't want his half-Yankee Pavich grandchildren hanging around him down in Suffolk.

  In Leemont, the Paviches kept to themselves. That meant that they didn't run in any of Leemont's social circles-even though Molly was supposedly worth millions. She preferred sports cars to bridge parties, and most weekends she could be found racing her Porsche Boxster at VIR (shorthand for Virginia International Raceway)-something Leemont's ladies couldn't quite comprehend. The Paviches seldom entertained, but someone who had been in their home spread the word around town that everything in their house was new. Not the Leemont way.

  But what made the situation even more weird to Leemont's unrelenting way of thinking was that Ed, who obviously didn't have to work, hired on with the police department even while their house was be
ing built. Stranger yet, he showed up for work every day. And he'd risen through the ranks to become Leemont's highly respected chief detective. His Godfather-like manner scared away anyone who thought Leemont was just another hick Southern town.

  As a rule I didn't go out of my way to meet any police officer. Cops made me nervous. The only blue lights I ever wanted to see were either in front of Martha Stewart's kitchen towels at Kmart, or hanging on someone else's Christmas tree. From a distance, Ed's storm trooper exterior didn't inspire any reassuring feelings. Ed was packed from his bald head to his big toenail with finely chiseled muscles. If instead of a heavy winter jacket and body-hugging jeans he'd had on combat fatigues, I would have expected his face to be painted in camouflage. He could just as easily have been wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt, or neo-Nazi gear, and looked perfectly natural. Except on Saturday night. That's when I'd heard he went, alone, to Mass at Holy Comforter Catholic Church. Nonetheless, faceto-face, Ed Pavich was sexy as hell. No wonder some sweet eastern Virginia country girl who liked to drive fast sports cars and ride big horses had fallen for him.

  Either Peter had warned Ed about my cop phobia or else Ed Pavich took one look at me and summed up the situation as quickly as I summed up a person's taste. As I made my way to the table where he and Peter were sitting, Ed stood, all compact five feet eight inches of him.

  "So this is the famous Sterling Glass," he said as he thrust his hand toward mine. (Forget that rule from the Old South that a gentleman never extends his hand unless the lady extends hers first. This is the New South.) "I've been looking forward to meeting you."

  Ed Pavich's deep voice was as gravelly as pebbles mixed with ground-up asphalt. It fit his rough masculine exterior like his snug Levi's. Perfectly. But he had an unmistakable twinkle in his eyes. Involuntarily, I began warming up to him.

  "Peter says you probably hold the key to this whole case. I can't tell you how much we appreciate your help," he said before I had a chance to say anything myself.

  That sealed the deal.

  "I sure do hope I can help," I said.

  God, that was lame, but I couldn't think of anything else to say as I wedged myself around the square table next to the rough brick wall.

  I don't know if it was intentional or a coincidence, but Peter broke the awkward silence as he helped me into my chair. "We've been scheming behind your back, Sterling. Ed and I think it's essential that you get inside Jane Finn's home."

  "To check out the things I'm suspicious of," Ed said. "You know, antiques. Stuff guys don't know about."

  Ed Pavich gave me a wink and a sideways glance. I'd always been a sucker for guys who flirted with their eyes instead of their words. Then he smiled the sexiest smile since Dennis Quaid's in The Big Easy. Quaid played Remy McSwain, a slightly shady detective in that flick. Just a fluky coincidence, I hoped. But I was getting suspicious of everyone.

  "Hey, at least you knew they were antiques. That's better than most," I quipped, hoping I sounded more intelligent this go-round. "So, have you cowboys decided exactly how I'm going to check these things out?"

  "Sterling, first tell Ed how you found the sitters for your mother when she was alive," Peter said.

  I frowned at the question. "References. Word of mouth. Interviews."

  "How did you interview them?" Ed asked, shifting his chair closer to the table. "Where?"

  "Sometimes by phone, sometimes . . ." I nervously shifted as I recalled memories I'd fought hard to erase.

  Just then Lois approached the table, and our conversation stopped. Lois commanded that sort of respect. She was why this little lunchroom had thrived even during those years when Stuart's Ridge was withering away. If she'd ever combed her wiry, short gray hair or bought a new waitress's uniform, you wouldn't know it. And how she could eat the food served up at Dixie's every day and stay under one hundred pounds was beyond me. Nor had Lois ever aged. She was a great-grandmother and though over seventy, she could still tote, with one palm, a tray that weighed as much as a wet whale. But what really kept people flocking back to the cafe week in, week out was the way Lois remembered what you ordered last time and always got your order right today.

  Well, actually, it was Lois plus the food that her husband, Frank, cooked up in the kitchen plus the slightly seedy aura of the place itself that gave the Dixie its staying power. On any given day I'd overhear people talking about when the Girl Scout cookies would be delivered and whose wife was playing around with whose husband-all in the same breath. My lawyer friends told me that more deals were made under Lois's nose than in any judge's chambers.

  "Same thing?" Lois asked me.

  "Think I'll try something different today. How about a bowl, please-not a cup-of Brunswick stew, with a Virginia country ham biscuit on the side."

  "You Southerners," Ed laughed. "It's a Vir-ginia, coun-try ham bis-cuit," he said, slowly enunciating every syllable. "The way you all say it, it's all one word. Virginiacountryhambis- cuit."

  He almost got it right. Except he was still putting the r in Virginia.

  Peter ordered a bowl of chili and corn bread. Ed, after much agonizing, chose a meat-loaf sandwich with stewed tomatoes and home fries.

  "No fried egg today, honey?" Lois asked him.

  On second thought, Ed added a fried egg on the side.

  "About the interviews," Ed said finally, turning to me. "Peter told me about your mother. I'm really sorry, and I hate to ask you to do this, but do you think you could do it again? Have an interview with Jane Finn?"

  I glanced Peter's way. He gave me his sweet, boyish smile. I looked back at Ed. There was nothing sweet about him. Intense. Demanding. Impassioned. But nothing sweet. I looked again at Peter. I'd do just about anything to win his approval, even after all this time.

  "We've already agreed that you have to get into her house to confirm my suspicions. I hardly think she's going to bring the goods to us." Ed flashed a terse smile. "Nobody else would know as much about the things she's got sitting around in her house as you would."

  "I remember a professor once telling us that ten minutes in the lab can save you a day in the library," Peter said. "Even if I could think up some excuse to get into Jane Finn's house, which I can't, I wouldn't know the objects and their values as quickly as you would, Sterling. I'd have to spend days doing research, or end up calling you and trying to tell you what I'd seen. Ed tells me time is of the essence."

  WHICH EXPLAINED HOW I came to be sitting in a floral upholstered overstuffed chair in Jane Finn's 1920s bungalow. There, while peering into pale blue eyes, set off by such thick dark brown eyelashes that they had to be false, all surrounded by a head of enormous, flouncy frosted blonde hair, I chatted on about Aunt Dorothy, my father's sister. The truth was, I hadn't seen her in over a decade.

  I'd told Jane Finn I was considering bringing my aunt to Leemont. I wanted her later years to be more comfortable than if she stayed in the small New Hampshire town with its harsh winters. Jane Finn said she had more business than she could handle, but when I told her that I lived on Bittersweet Trail she had said maybe she could see me after all.

  Thank goodness she hadn't known who I was when I called. I really wasn't as famous as Ed Pavich said. I had cautiously worked our conversation around until she finally agreed that I could meet her in her home that very afternoon around five. Luckily this didn't leave her much time to check up on me, but with my former husband's last name and my current address, I don't think she would have.

  Very quickly I learned that Howard Creighton was right. Jane appeared to be a quiet woman. Sitting on the low-slung sofa across from me, she stared at me without ever changing expressions and speaking only when spoken to. I made nervous small talk about my aunt. But glancing around, I saw that in her eagerness to impress me, Jane Finn had pulled out even more of her pretties-a Rose Medallion tea caddy, a nineteenth-century brass beehive candlestick, a slim, leatherbound copy of Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop. Or else Ed Pavich's sister just hadn't gotten around to "edu
cating" him about those pieces yet. Either way, this display of fine antiques was in stark contrast to the 1960s oversized orange pebbled glass lamps on the 1980s cherry-veneered and particle board end tables flanking the 1970s Mediterranean-style sofa. I wasn't the first person to observe that every man's house is his unwritten autobiography. In Jane Finn's home, the story was a screwed-up life. Or else she was living a lie. In her case, both were probably true. She definitely needed a visit from the Queer Eye gang.

  When I complimented Jane Finn on her pretty pieces-especially the silver vase Ed had noted on his visit-her demeanor changed abruptly. She babbled forth like water gushing over a dam.

  "I really came from good stock," she insisted, and apologized, all in the same breath. "If I hadn't been orphaned first and then widowed so young-just a bride, really-I wouldn't be in this line of work. Not that I mind. I like old people a lot. I really do. We'll all he old ourselves one day. Maybe even really sick. I've known people who were-"

  She was interrupted by the phone ringing. Her eyes darted first to the front door and then back at the black plastic digital clock radio sitting next to a handsome Imari rice bowl.

  "'Scuse me," she muttered. "Hello?" After some time she said, "Yes," then walked out of the room, taking the portable phone with her.

  I wanted to get up and snoop around, but I didn't know how long she would he, and the wall-to-wall carpeting in the house's small rooms would cover the sound of her impending return.

  A good thing I didn't, too, for she was back in no time. Jane crossed in front of me and sat back down and fell silent. It was as if the floodgates had slammed shut as rapidly as they had opened. She sat perfectly still, her hands tightly folded in her lap, her feet flat on the floor. Now that I had been there for a few minutes and adjusted to the weird situation, I couldn't take my eyes off Jane's tiny face, made smaller by her big hair. Her thick beige foundation, which was supposed to take off the years, only added to them by bringing out the lines around her smoker's mouth. But once I got beyond the hair, the false eye lashes, and layers of makeup, it was her lips that really fascinated me, bright orangey pink, outlined in a deep mahogany. If Jane Finn had her way, she would put off the telltale signs of age as long as possible, even if it meant no lunches at the Dixie Cafe for her.