Stealing With Style

by Emyl Jenkins

  "A little bitterness there?" Ed asked.

  Jane Finn tossed her head to one side, thought about his comment, then answered, "Guess so."

  She stared into the distance. "It was so easy. First a little saucer. A pretty silver fork. A piece of fancy costume jewelry."

  Then, in her more usual, arrogant way, Jane Finn began boasting. "After I started sitting for some better people, richer people, one woman gave me a silver goblet when her mother died. Said she had twenty-five, and she only needed twentyfour. Think about that! Only needed twenty-four silver goblets."

  "When'd you start selling the stuff?" Ed asked.

  "Selling? I never sold anything," Jane Finn said.

  Remembering the Meissen pieces in the Layton catalog that had first tipped me off, I mustered up enough courage to speak. "What about the platter and sauceboat that match the soup tureen?" I tossed my head, motioning toward her dining room. "You're selling those," I butted in.

  Ed threw me a look. This was his show now.

  "Platter? You mean that big plate? I gave them to Dwayne. He's the one who sells the stuff."

  "Just what were you planning to do with the pot ... or the urn ... or whatever the damn thing is ... and the pin? Why were those at Sarah Rose Wilkins's house?" Ed said.

  Jane Finn smiled. "I found that big old pot way up high on a shelf in the back bedroom I used to sleep in during the day at Mr. Hanesworth's. That thing was black as tar. Wasn't even sure it was silver. One day I took it down and polished it up that night. I slipped it out to my car. Know what happened?"

  Jane Finn seemed to have forgotten she was making a confession. It was as if she were talking to a group of old friends, trying to add some spice to her usually dull life of counting away the hours until her clients died. I glanced over at Ed. He stood quietly by, but the muscles in his jaw were rippling like waves in a storm.

  "That very next night," she continued, "I was watching TV and nothing was on. I landed on this show where experts would tell you how much your old stuff is worth. There was this long line of people all standing out in the rain in front of this old castle over in England. They were talking real fast and funny."

  Peter and I nodded.

  "Then they zoomed in on this old man with a big black umbrella and a big piece of silver. It looked just like that one I'd just swiped. I didn't catch how much they said it was worth at first, but everybody was acting all excited. Then they put some writing on the bottom of the screen." She drew an imaginary line in the air. "It was in English money. There was that funny looking L and the number forty thousand." She shook her head in bewilderment. "I figured I had just walked forty thousand dollars out of that big house and no one was ever going to know about it. Hell, I drove around with that thing in my car for weeks while I tried to figure out what to do with it."

  "Why'd you put it in Mrs. Wilkins's apartment?" Ed asked.

  "I didn't want to get caught with it. Or the pin. I saw one like that on that show, too," she said eagerly. "I'd slipped the pin out two or three weeks before and put it in my glove compartment. Lord, I'd forgotten all 'bout it till I seen that one on TV. These things are"-she paused and drew the next word out into three long syllables-"valuable."

  I couldn't stand it any longer.

  "But these things here are valuable, too," I said, "The tureen. The vase. Your ring." I took a chance on the ring.

  "But I'd seen things like them," she said matter-of-factly. "I've never seen anything as old as that old teapot and that pin. Old things ... really old things ... they're special. Like, really ancient."

  "But why hide them in Sarah Rose Wilkins's apartment?" Ed repeated.

  "I told you. I didn't want to get caught with them."

  "Caught? By whom?"

  Jane Finn rolled her eyes.

  "Ever seen Sloggins's first wife? Or his second? All beat up. Black and blue. No way I was gonna let him make mincemeat out of me if I could help it. No way. I'm scared to death of that man. He's mean, just plain mad-dog mean." She looked my way. "He got wind of you that night you came over. He was driving by, checking up on me. When he saw your car out front, he called me from his cell phone in that brand-new big truck of his. Wanted to know who was inside my house."

  She turned back to Ed. "Look, he was making all the money. I figured it was my turn. He'd come over here and get the stuff and act like he was doing a favor to let me keep a few things around." She laughed. "I didn't tell him about that old pot. Or the pin," she added. "Figured this was my chance. And then I ended up getting the key to Mrs. Wilkins's apartment. I took the casserole in. That's when I had the idea. I could leave 'em there and pick 'em up when I came back to sit for the old lady."

  So it had been that same truck that I'd seen at Jane Finn's house and then later racing through my neighborhood. I kept silent, trying to understand all that Jane Finn was saying.

  But what I was really doing was silently beating up on myself. Why had I shrunk from the truth earlier and tried to come to Jane Finn's defense? Why had I backed down at my moment to shine? Peter had had to do my job for me; my polite, Southern upbringing had stopped me from driving the nail in Jane Finn's coffin. It was a good thing I had a policeman and preacher to go after the truth and bury the had guy, since I didn't seem capable of doing it myself. Why couldn't I have been as assertive and self-assured as those zealous women prosecutors on TV? Even nice, sweet Della Street on Perry Mason had shown more backbone than I'd been able to muster. And the real irony was that I'd started this whole mess by finding the urn and making such a big deal out of it.

  Damn it, Jane Finn had caused me no end of grief. Her deceit, her crimes had put me through torment, distracted me from other work, almost made a laughingstock out of me with Roy Madison. Thanks to Jane Finn, I could have lost good, paying clients. Handling the stuff she was pilfering off of others, I had come close to sullying my good name. Still, only seconds earlier, I'd gone soft, giving her the benefit of the doubt. I had even tried to help substantiate her story. What had I been thinking? I'd let her turn me into a fool.

  The more I thought about it, the madder I got.

  Remember the time Betsy Anne put the chewing gum in Iris's hair and you took the blame so Betsy Anne wouldn't have to stay after school? Mother asked, an uncharacteristic hint of sympathy in her voice.

  But Betsy Anne didn't mean to do it. She couldn't help it. Iris had spilled Coke all over her new dress, I pleaded silently, giv ing Mother the same answer now, at almost age fifty, that I had given her forty-two years earlier.

  And Jane Finn didn't really mean to take those things, now did she? Same old Sterling. Always taking up for the underdog. It's high time you grow up.

  I didn't know who I was more angry at: myself, who couldn't learn life's lessons and who either didn't know when to keep my mouth shut or else shut up at the wrong time, or Peter, for his sudden change in behavior-a change that greatly alarmed me. I dared a sideways glance to catch a glimpse of him.

  Ed Pavich's voice brought me back to the here and now.

  "Did you hit Mrs. Wilkins?"

  "I told you I didn't have nothing to do with killing that woman," she said. "I didn't touch her."

  "But you were in her apartment."

  "Yeah. I started thinking about it and worried that maybe she'd die in the hospital and then I wouldn't get to sit for her after all. So I went back to get my things. I didn't know she was there. I thought she was still in the hospital. How was I to know? When I heard her in the bedroom I got scared. I was gonna leave, but there she was, coming toward me with her phone in her hand. I left and locked the door. I-" She chewed on her top lip which was still as fresh orangey-pink as it had been when we got there. I wondered if I had on any lipstick at all. "I knew I'd broke something. Knocked into something. I heard the noise, but I left. Next thing I knew, I read her obit."

  Ed Pavich was suddenly on his cell phone, telling headquarters he had a case against Dwayne Sloggins and requesting backup personnel to do the necessary
paperwork.

  Peter was walking around, looking at, but not touching, the objects Jane Finn had collected from others over the years.

  Jane Finn, still sitting on the sofa, actually looked somewhat relieved.

  I was battling it out with myself.

  I was the odd man out.

  Chapter 24

  Dear Antiques Expert: While shopping for Oriental rugs, I've seen some as small as 2 feet x 2 feet. I've always thought of Oriental rugs as being room-sized. Are these smaller rugs new and being made for our smaller spaces?

  Many people envision plush, palatial-sized rugs when they think of Oriental rugs. But for centuries weavers have created small, napless rugs and saddlebags suitable to their traditionally nomadic lifestyle in Turkey, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Eastern countries once part of the Soviet Union. The rugs served as cushions on the camel saddles, and the saddlebags were used as carrying cases. Though called by several different names-Bokhara, Caucasian, Yumut, and Kilim, to cite a few-the general term, Turkestan, also identifies them. Both the rugs and saddlebags are most attractive and their prices often begin in the hundred-dollar range.

  JANE FINN WAS more cooperative than I would have expected; Ed had obviously convinced her that it would be to her advantage once trial time came round. As she dragged jewelry, porcelain, silver, and various textiles out from closets and drawers and underneath her bed-thank God there weren't any Art Deco figurines-Jane Finn told us where each piece had come from. She gave a running narrative about how easy it had been to stuff the small Oriental rug in her overnight bag, why she'd taken a vase she liked rather than a bowl that was probably more valuable, how she had left a cheap, green glass pin behind in place of a fine jade pin that Dwayne had sold for eight hundred dollars to an antiques dealer. And as far as my theory about Jane Finn setting out more fine pieces in her home to try to impress me, that had been nothing but my ego talking. In truth, she was getting the stuff out to pack it up.

  "So how did you and Sloggins get hooked up together?" Ed asked.

  By now Jane Finn had dropped the airs she had put on when I had called on her. She was anything but the "quiet" woman that Howard Creighton had described. She acted the way she looked. Brassy. Braggy.

  "Sloggins? One day he showed up at a house where I was the day sitter. While his men were working, we started talking about old people and how they didn't know what was going on half the time. I had listened in while he was making the deal with the old man at the house. I didn't exactly know Dwayne was scamming him when they started to work, but something didn't seem right.

  "It was a big house, see. Huge. But his guys didn't look real dirty when they said they finished up, and they had sat around a lot when they'd oughta been working. No tar on their hands.

  "I'd had some roof work of my own done a few years back and I saw what hard work it was. I stood over those guys like a hawk-as much as they were charging me. Shoot, I had to work two shifts to pay to get a roof put on that place. So what Sloggins's guys were doing just didn't seem right. No way they could have gotten the work done that fast. Not on that house."

  Ed Pavich broke off her monologue. "So whose idea was it to team up? Yours or Sloggins's?"

  Jane Finn shook her head. "Who knows? It just came to us."

  "That day?"

  "Yeah. I guess so. I said something about the guys goofing off and Dwayne said something about how he bet I saw lots of good stuff in rich people's houses. He told me that he had good stuff in his house out in Dixon Springs. He said he even went to museum parties," she said. "I worked at one of them one time before I started sitting." She stopped, trying to recall the exact order of their conversation. "Then he said something about how he bet I had some nice things myself. He didn't accuse me of anything, but I could see in his eyes he suspected I was taking some stuff home."

  "Takes one to know one," Ed said under his breath.

  But listening to Jane, I was doing some recalling of my own. Dixon Springs. Hadn't I met someone from Dixon Springs just recently? Now who was it?

  For the second time since midnight the light in my head went on. This time it was blinding.

  When Peter had told me about the roofing scam he had said Sloggins was smooth, a real talker.

  "What does Sloggins look like?" I asked of anyone who would listen to me.

  "Not had-looking. Heavyset," Ed answered. "Why?"

  "Hair combed back?"

  "Yeah."

  "A lot of it?"

  "Yeah. You know him?" Ed asked.

  "Good God. I think that's the creep who tried to talk to me at the museum. You were there, Peter. He wanted me to come out and appraise his stuff." Why hadn't I made that connection before?

  I slumped down on the sofa where Jane Finn had been sitting earlier.

  "Huh?" said Jane Finn.

  "Yes. It was before you showed me the pin LaTisha found, Peter." I searched his face for some hint that he remembered the exact moment at the museum. "Remember, I was walking away and you came up. There was this man who said he wanted me to come out and appraise his stuff." My voice dropped off as I thought of what might have happened if I had. "No telling what I would have seen at his house," I said.

  No telling what scam I might innocently have been part of, I was thinking. Something even worse than what was unfolding right now.

  "So that was it," Jane Finn said. This time she was the one putting it all together. "Remember how I told you that when you came out here Dwayne called me from his truck when he saw your car? He asked me who you were, but when I wouldn't tell him he said he already knew who you were. I thought he just meant you were one of them rich snobs. When I told him about bringing your aunt down here he didn't say anything more."

  "He knew who I was all right," I said.

  Jane Finn shifted her eyes nervously from one of us to the other. "Come to think of it. That's when he said we had to mail some of this stuff out. I'd been expecting that for days. That's the way he is. Pushy. Always in a rush. But"-she threw her hands up in exasperation-"he's the boss man."

  "Boss man? Are there others? Other sitters?" It was Ed who was speaking.

  "What's it worth to you?"

  "What's it worth to you?" Ed shot back. "You're the one who's gonna need the help."

  Jane Finn shrugged. "I don't know their names, other than Tess Elkins. She lives over Norfolk way, but she used to be from here." She shrugged a second time. "Dwayne didn't want his ladies talking too much to one another. Figured we might get some ideas and cut him out, I suppose. Tess told me that one night he just appeared. Started rummaging through her things. Drawers and closets. Like she might be hiding something from him. Made lots of threats to her. I told you," she said impatiently. "He beat up his wives. That's why I hid those things. Don't you see? He's just plain mean."

  "A whole ring," Ed said.

  I remembered running down the list of all those little towns in South Carolina in my conversation with Nigel.

  "Any outside of Virginia?" I asked.

  "Yeah. But I don't know where."

  "Mrs. Finn, after Sloggins came and got the things from you or Tess or whomever, do you know what he did then?"

  "He'd come see what I had, look the stuff over. Then he'd go get the packing stuff and I'd pack it."

  "Do you know who he sent it all to?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "Up to New York, I think. I told you Sloggins goes to swanky museum parties. He'd met some guy at one down in-" She cocked her head. "Where'd all that Civil War stuff start? Was it down in Alabama where he went to that party?"

  "Fort Sumter?" Ed asked.

  "Nah. That don't sound just right. Where's that?"

  "South Carolina."

  "Nah," she repeated. "It was somewhere in Alabama."

  "Montgomery?" I asked. "That's where the first capital of the Confederacy was. Like Danville was the last capital of the Confederacy."

  "Yeah. That's it. Montgomery. He went down there for some big Civil War thing. A show or ... Wh
at do they call it when they dress up in the old uniforms?"

  "Reenactment?"

  "Yeah. That's it. And the museum was having one of them times when people bring things in, like on that TV show I was telling you about."

  "An appraisal day?"

  "Yeah. I think that's where he got the idea about sending it all off. He met some man who knew all about antiques from up there in New York. I know he was always saying I had to pack the stuff really good if it was going to make it safe up to New York. I figure he was afraid he'd get caught if he sold it round here. One time Dwayne said he was thinking about opening up an antiques shop. Said he used to be a dealer. I never believed him, but he sure did seem to know a lot."

  "Mrs. Finn, does Dwayne have a pickup truck? One of those . . ." I didn't have a clue how to describe it.

  "Just got a new one. Big sucker, too."

  So I hadn't been crazy. I had seen somebody ducking in the truck behind me, the same truck that later had roared through Arbor Hills.

  But suspecting Dana Henchloe? The way I was doing now and that I had started doing the moment Jane Finn mentioned some expert from New York at the appraisal day in Montgomery? I had to be careful; my whole professional reputation could he at stake. On the other hand, hadn't Nigel said the Meissen pieces had come in through Dana? Jane Finn interrupted my thoughts.

  "So how did you get on to me?" Jane Finn asked abruptly, looking from Ed to Peter to me. "I figured something was wrong when you came to see me," she said to Ed, "hut I never thought nothing about you," she said to me. "So. Where did I slip up?"

  "It was Mrs. Creighton," I said, bringing myself around enough to speak up, but still remembering the image of Sloggins's big pickup truck, and dwelling on the possible connection with Henchloe, my voice shook a little.

  Jane Finn cast me a look of total disbelief.

  "Mrs. Creighton? She's got Alzheimer's. That old woman don't even know what's going on. How the hell?"

  "You're right," I said, trying to remain calm and collected, despite Finn's hateful look. I wasn't frightened, certainly not with these men around. But the day was taking a heavy toll on me. I was thoroughly exhausted and becoming more miserable with every passing minute.