Stealing With Style

by Emyl Jenkins

  What if all three Meissen items, the platter, sauceboat, and Jane Finn's tureen, had come from the same place, but she had found the tureen irresistible and kept it for herself? An appraiser friend of mine had once gotten into trouble by holding back one piece from an estate, thinking no one would notice. I made a note to call Nigel Rhodes first thing in the morning.

  For the rest of the night I did the Columbo thing and frowned and fretted and worried. I had questions but no answers.

  What if, I thought now, the Meissen had been among the items stolen from the Hanesworths? Several fine English and European porcelain pieces of this quality and value had been among the items I'd seen on the appraisal. I had yet to read the two-hundred-page-long appraisal Matt Yardley had given me. When I'd scanned it, I had concentrated on the items that were starred, the missing items. I should have reviewed the entire appraisal, especially since Matt had told me I was on the clock, but dinner with Peter had taken precedence on Sunday night. The Creightons had consumed the morning. The afternoon was spent with Ed and Peter and later, chasing down Jane Finn. My guilt was absolved, but my mind wouldn't rest.

  I thought again about whether the Hanesworths could have had a tea urn that had been overlooked. For the second time I dismissed the idea that anyone could overlook so magnificent a piece as a Paul Storr tea urn.

  But the Meissen? Just a few pieces from an entire set? Now, that was possible.

  I dug out the appraisal from the pile I'd brought back from New York and tossed onto the top of the heap on my desk. The whole desk badly needed straightening up. Not tonight.

  It was only a little past nine, but I decided to go take the Hanesworth's appraisal to bed and tackle it there. Other than read and fret, there was nothing I could do until tomorrow's business hours. Then I'd begin calling around.

  As I turned out the lights downstairs, for the first time I noticed the full moon. It was ghostly white, as only a winter moon can be.

  I remembered:

  ... the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, ... unveil'd her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

  "Aren't you proud of me, Mother," I asked. "Milton, Paradise Lost."

  Never cared as much for Milton as you did, Mother's silent voice in my head reminded me. Too somber and dull most of the time. God was supposed to be his leading man, but Satan's a much more interesting character. Remember what Keats says about Milton? "Life to him would be death to me." Couldn't agree more. Lighten up, Sterling.

  I looked outside again. It truly was a splendiferous moon. Beautifully round and shimmering in the winter night. A halo crowned it. Portending a coming snow, perhaps?

  Lighten up, Sterling. Ah, me. We've lost so much in these modern days. Why couldn't we think in terms of moonlit silver mantles instead of stolen silver urns worth thousands of dollars? I sighed, wishing I'd never heard of Sarah Rose Wilkins, Jane Finn, or Dwayne Sloggins.

  A roaring noise that began in the distance and grew steadily louder brought me around. Strange for dark, tranquil Arbor Hills. At first I thought it was a low-flying prop plane, but not at this time of night. When I heard brakes screeching and saw the glow of headlights on high beam shining across my front yard I instinctively jerked back from the window.

  No doubt about it. It was the same hideous pickup truck that had parked down the street from Jane Finn's house. Only after it sped past did I move. And then it was to turn on the outside floodlight.

  Chapter 21

  Dear Antiques Expert: We have decided to take out a fine arts policy on some of our better pieces. The insurance company said we had to have them appraised. Should the appraisal be for fair market or replacement value? Before I call an appraiser I need to know this.

  The simplest way to understand "fair market value" is to imagine a piece being sold at auction. There it would sell for the amount of money someone would pay for it. Now imagine that same piece in a retail store where its price reflects all the dealer's expenses-from inventory taxes and rent to employee wages-as well as his profit. That would be "replacement value," and it is generally considered to be 25-100 percent higher than fair market value. For your insurance purposes, you definitely want your pieces appraised for "replacement values."

  I LOOKED AT THE CLOCK: 3:18 A.M.

  It was either too late or too early to have a glass of wine. And I wasn't about to get up for good. I turned on the light on my bedside table. A cup of good, hot soothing tea. That would calm my nerves. I blamed my sleeplessness on the wild thought that I was being tracked by some unknown villain.

  For God's sake, Sterling, this is Leemont, not Brooklyn, I told myself. Somehow that didn't help. The two places suddenly seemed to have a lot in common. The same choking fear I had felt at Joey's shop that night hit me like a brick.

  I put on my robe and slippers, and padded down to the kitchen. So much for the requisite beauty sleep. Waiting for the water in the teakettle to boil, I distracted myself by digging through the Hanesworth appraisal. Trouble was, the deeper I dug, the wider awake I became. There, listed on the original appraisal, but not cited as missing-there it was.

  Exceptional English silver tea urn, circa 1810, made in London by Paul Storr. Having fine gadrooning at the lip of the top and along the pear-shaped body. The body of the urn hears the unusual occurrence of two (unidentified) armorials and the whole is raised on finely modeled dolphin-motif feet. Retaining its original hot box with full hallmarks that correspond with the marks on the urn and the removable lid. $65,000.

  A fair price, but a little low for replacement value, I mused.

  It had to be the same urn that I had found in Sarah Rose Wilkins's closet. The description of its dolphin motif feet and the presence of not one, but two armorials gave it away. I didn't even need to see the photograph accompanying the appraisal, but I turned to the index anyway. There it was.

  Of course, Sarah Rose didn't own it. Never had. The poor woman had never even seen the thing. It belonged to the Hanesworths, just like the-

  The light in my head came on.

  I tore at the pages of the appraisal like a drunk trying to get into the liquor cabinet. The Meissen tureen had to be there. I skipped over random listings of rugs, lamps, bowls, until I found what I had known I would find-a full set of circa 1880 Onion pattern Meissen china identical in every way to the platter and sauceboat pictured in the Layton's catalog, including the soup tureen that I was beginning to wish I'd never heard about or seen.

  The Hanesworth appraisal valued the Meissen set at thirtysix thousand dollars and listed some 123 pieces including square and round serving dishes, three platters, a mustard pot, a soup tureen, two divided vegetable dishes, a sauceboat with attached underplate, and two sweetmeat dishes among the serving pieces. If someone recounted the pieces, there would be only 120. Maybe one or two less, if items in addition to the sauceboat, platter, and tureen had also been lifted.

  "Matt Yardley, I'm doing you quite a favor," I said aloud.

  A piece or two from a set of china like this Meissen could easily be overlooked, especially if the china had been kept in a pantry and the family hadn't begun to pack things up and move them out of the house yet. It wasn't unusual when a family had an extensive china set, and the Hanesworths probably had several such sets, for the larger pieces to be stored at the back of a shelf. The dinner plates and soup bowls and cups and saucers-the pieces more often used-routinely were kept at the front. You wouldn't use the larger pieces without setting the table with the usual dishes, so it made sense to keep the seldomused, big serving pieces in the hack.

  But it would take time to move those many stacks of plates and cups to be able to get to the pieces at the hack. Something a nighttime sitter had plenty of.

  Jane Finn was an overnight sitter.

  But why would she have put the urn and pin in Sarah Rose Wilkins's apartment?

  Even if she had the opportunity and the key when Howard Creighton sent her over there with the Turkey Tetrazzini casserole, that didn't exp
lain why she hid them there. And why did she steal the things in the first place, anyway? What was she planning to do with them? Why on earth would she hide the urn and pin at Sarah Rose's but keep the tureen at home?

  So much didn't make any sense. I was drawing a blank.

  ". . . when a woman is left too much alone," Mother often said, "sooner or later she begins to think; And no man knows what then she may discover. " Edwin Arlington Robinson.

  I had more discoveries than I knew what to do with. My head was spinning.

  Even more pressing matters began to come at me. Nigel Rhodes would cheerfully kill me when I told him the urn would have to be pulled from the auction. When I told him he'd have to pull the Meissen, too, he would be furious. I sighed.

  Roy Madison at the hank would-

  The thought of Roy Madison stopped my blood cold. I rubbed my fingers hard across my brow.

  Had I ever told him about the pin LaTisha had found? Not that I could remember now, at 4 A.M. The oversight wasn't intentional. I just hadn't. Too much else was happening. Then I remembered. Roy had been out of town when I called to tell him about the pin. Well, it was a good thing that I hadn't.

  At least Roy Madison and his cohorts would be tickled pink. No longer would they have to worry about Hope House getting any infusion of real money from the Wilkins estate, which was back down to its twenty-four-thousand-dollar cash value. Without the extra money from the sale of the urn, Hope House wouldn't be able to buy the old sock factory building. Whatever scheme the bank and the politicians were cooking up could move ahead. On the bright side, maybe I'd be back in the bank's good graces.

  Matt Yardley already knew about finding the Georgian pin on the Hanesworth appraisal. He would be elated to learn about the urn and to know that the insurance company wouldn't have to shell out sixty-five grand for it. I smiled. And no one had even known it was missing. Now, that was a real twist.

  And what about you, Sterling, Mother's weary voice asked. She always did look out for me.

  Me?

  There went my finder's fee and whatever frivolous purchase I would have found to spend the money on. I sighed.

  Good Lord. Was that me? Sighing again, and out loud? I always hated it when Mother sighed, and here I was, doing itsighing with every other breath.

  It was at that point that I stopped looking for more trouble. I looked at the clock on the kitchen stove: 4:27 A.M. I'd always done my best thinking in the middle of the night, but it was time to try to get some sleep.

  I went back upstairs and crawled into bed.

  The same way he had in New York, Barefoot Bagman started trouncing through my dreams. Once again, like a ped dler of the olden days, Bagman was humped over, burdened down by his burlap bag full of goods. But this time silver urns and Deco figures were spilling out of his bag. Scores of exquisite Georgian pearl and diamond pins were pinned to his tattered lapels. Under his arm he carried a Meissen soup tureen. Who could sleep through that dream?

  A little past five, I trudged back downstairs, boiled water for a second cup of tea, and made a breakfast of a half bag of Pepperidge Farm Double Chocolate Milanos. With no one to talk to.

  I went to the window and looked out into the blue-black sky. The moon had long since moved across the horizon, taking its silver mantle with it. Or maybe not.

  As promised by the old wives' tale, the moon's halo really had been filled with infinitesimal liquid crystals. A silvery white robe of snow covered the trees and ground.

  Chapter 22

  Dear Antiques Expert: My decorator has suggested that we try to find a pair of "burr walnut" Queen Anne chairs to use in our living room. What exactly is burr walnut?

  A "burr" is a nubby protrusion along the trunk of a tree where a dormant bud grew in diameter but not length. But inside these burrs, the wood has a rich, densely figured grain. Ever since the 17th century, fine furniture craftsmen have used thin layers of this precious wood as a beautiful veneer on chair backs and drawer fronts. Queen Anne chairs with this highly desirable veneer are considered eye catching and are expensive, especially if they date from the 18th century. You should expect to pay $30,000-50,000 for a fine pair.

  THE SNOW HAD DWINDLED to a few intermittent flurries by the time I called Matt Yardley at 9:02 A.M. The two or three inches of powdery snow were enough to slow Leemont down, but not bring it to a grinding halt, especially since the streets were still mostly clear. What a shame New Yorkers couldn't see snow-laden trees when they looked out their windows, I thought, as I punched in Matt's number.

  "This is a bad-news, good-news call," I warned, before launching into the tale of the tea urn and Meissen china. I explained all that had happened as succinctly as I could and told him to expect two phone calls, one from Roy Madison requesting papers verifying that the urn had really belonged to the Hanesworths and the other from Ed Pavich asking whether or not the Hanesworths had any roofing, or maybe other repair work, done to their home.

  "I thought about calling the Charlottesville office directly instead of bothering you," I said.

  "No problem, really," Matt said. "Sending the bank the information will be routine. But it may take several calls to find out about any repairs at the Hanesworths' house, and you shouldn't be wasting your time doing that. Tell me, Sterling, are all of your appraisals this ... this complicated? Sounds like this one could even be a little risky if you have to, well, confront the people responsible for taking the pieces from the Hanesworths' home."

  I laughed. "I hadn't thought of it that way. But I have wondered what I used to do with my time before all this."

  "Be careful now," Matt said, taking me by surprise. "I'll get back to you after I've checked into the issue of repairs."

  He then thanked me so profusely on behalf of the Hanesworths and Babson and Michaels that I was tempted to tell him I'd rather have cash, but thought better of it.

  I put the receiver down and picked up my Magic 8 Ball. "Will anything come of this?" I asked, purposely avoiding specifying "this" in my own mind.

  I shook the ball vigorously and turned it upside down. A white line appeared in the smoky window. I tilted the ball first one way and then the other, closed my eyes tight, leveled the ball in my hand, opened my eyes, and looked down to find my fortune. Ask again later. So much for that.

  As well as that phone call had gone, I dreaded calling Nigel Rhodes. He was going to be livid. But time was crucial. I forced myself to take the plunge.

  To my surprise, Nigel wasn't so much angry with me as resigned. "These withdrawals are happening more and more frequently these days," he said ruefully.

  "Why is that? Surely not all due to thefts, or wild tales like this one."

  "Hard economic times?" he asked rhetorically.

  "Too many appraisal shows on TV?" I said. "Maybe after agreeing to sell something, people have second thoughts."

  Nigel grunted. "Maybe. Who knows. Yes. Well. What's done, is done. About the urn."

  I gathered up all my nerve and forged ahead. "Yes. I'll be in touch with the bank about that paperwork at this end. Before we discuss the urn, about the Meissen pieces."

  "They will be withdrawn, of course. I assume that this, ah, Matt-the insurance man-it's Yardley isn't it? Matt Yardley will be in touch."

  Nigel clearly was only so interested in the Meissen. Obviously, the urn was much more important to him, and to Layton's.

  "I'm sure Matt will take care of all the details. But this is something bigger than just a couple of items in an auction. It's tied into a larger scam on the elderly. Any chance you might tell me who brought you the Meissen pieces? I know the Leemont police will be in touch with you, too, but I'm going to be meeting with them shortly. If you could tell me now ..."

  There was a pause.

  I pushed my luck.

  "I promise to bring you my next big find," I said.

  "This is one of Dana Henchloe's deals. Other than that, I can't tell you a name, Sterling," Nigel said, his voice edgy. "Would it help if you knew
it was an antiques dealer?" he finally said.

  "Yes indeed. From?" I tried not to sound too anxious. There was no way in hell that Dana Henchloe would help me out or even help out Ed and the police if he knew I was involved. And ... Oh my God! If Dana got in tight with Matt Yardley, he'd steal my business.

  "A Southern state."

  Dana's territory for sure. I didn't even try to hide my frustration. "Nigel! The South is three, four, ten times bigger than the U.K., and that doesn't include Arkansas and Texas."

  "It wasn't Arkansas."

  "Texas?"

  For a moment I thought the beep in my phone was coming from Nigel's eyebrows. Then I realized it was my call-waiting. It had to be either Peter or Ed. For once I ignored the beep.

  "No. Yes. Well. All right. South Carolina. Does that help?" he spat.

  "Columbia? Charleston? Spartanburg? Greenville? Um, Myrtle Beach?"

  "No. Some little town."

  "Aiken? Camden ... Cheraw? Bethune?" I asked, grasping at straws. I stifled my urge to tell Nigel that Bethurn .-,.is home of the Chicken Strut. Instead I said, "Did Dana bring the items in himself?"

  "Actually"- Nigel cleared his throat-"if I recall correctly, all communication has been by phone or fax. Dana was just the go-between. You know. Finder's fee."

  "Did you ever meet the person who sent you the Meissen? Ever speak directly to the seller?" After spending the afternoon with Jane Finn, I was beginning to get the gist of this interrogation routine.

  "It's a new world out there, Sterling," Nigel said, sounding more like a defensive American college kid than a middle-aged U.K. antiques expert. "You can't expect business to continue to be conducted in the traditional way. It's the twenty-first century, for God's sake."

  "Point well taken," I conceded, lapsing into English-speak. After all, I routinely transacted business over the phone, the computer, the fax machine. I tried again. "How about the area code? Do you have an area code?"