“A few weeks ago.”
“Who was he?”
“The fellow who bought it at the auction. Sat right there where you are and had steak and eggs with me—sometimes you need good old American comfort food, if you know what I mean. He wanted to know the ‘pro-ven-ance’ as he put it. Had some fancy name I can’t remember.
“Henri-Pierre Caraignac,” whispered Emma, her mind reeling. Henri-Pierre had had the dragon all along!
“Henry Caraignac,” said Henny with her mouth full. “That’s it. You know him?”
“I met him once. But I didn’t know him. I didn’t know him at all.”
“Too bad. Real nice fella. Easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean. Promised to come back and see me sometime.”
“He won’t.”
“Yeah? Why not? I may not be much to look at, but I know what men like and I got plenty of it—my butcher supplies the best steak houses in town.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Dawson … Henny. Henri-Pierre Caraignac is dead.”
Henny stopped chewing and stared at Emma.
“You’re kidding,” she said after a moment.
“I wish I were. He was murdered last week in San Francisco.”
Henriette Dauber finished chewing in silence, then cut herself another piece of meat and ate that, too. Then she put down her silverware and pushed herself away from the table.
“Jesus,” she said angrily. “What a world we got here. Nice young man like that. It’s a cryin’ shame.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment. There was nothing to say.
“Were you able to help him?” Emma asked finally.
The older woman didn’t answer. She cut herself another small piece of meat and pushed it around the ketchup on her plate. Emma ate a few bites of salad in silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Henny after a moment. “I don’t like to hear about young people dying. Makes me kind of sick. I been off my feed a lot lately, what with this AIDS thing. My stockbroker died from it this past summer, he was only thirty-six. I visited him a few times in the hospital and it was depressing as all shit. But it wasn’t like somebody murdered him intentionally. Did they catch the guy who did it? To Henry Caraignac?”
“No.”
“Figures. It’s enough to make you want to holler.”
“Were you able to give Henri-Pierre the information he wanted?”
“Yeah, sure,” grunted Henny. “Esmond liked paper almost as much as he liked gold. I got a dozen notebooks full of bills of sale, all cataloged. I let the Frenchman go through them and he found the one for this dragon thing right away.”
“May I see it?”
“Sorry,” said Henny, shaking her head. “Frenchie took it with him. I figured he’d bought the dragon, so he should have the bill. I didn’t have no use for it anymore. He said merci and kissed my hand.
“Do you have a copy?”
Henriette Dawson stared at her plate and didn’t answer.
“Please, Henny. It’s very important. It may have had something to do with why he was killed.”
“You figure someone knocked him off for this dragon thing?” asked the old woman, glancing up. “Same guy who stole your grandfather’s, maybe? Some wacko collector or something?”
“I know it sounds unlikely …”
“Hell, collectors are damned strange people. Believe me, I know. Tell you what. I got some records upstairs you’re welcome to check through if you want. Finish your lunch first. I’ll clean up later. I seem to have lost my appetite.”
“I’m done, too.”
“No, you’re not, you’re just being polite. Don’t worry, I’m okay. It’s just the shock of hearing about that nice young man. Go on now and eat. You’re a growing girl.”
Emma cut up what remained on her chop, shoveled it into her mouth and washed everything down with beer.
Henny Dauber waited until Emma was through. Then she rose and led the way back through the dining room and up the hall stairs. At the top was a corridor lined with paintings and prints. Emma followed Henny past bedrooms and marble baths to a closed door with fancy brass hardware. Henny turned the handle and flipped on a light switch. The room was full of filing cabinets and trunks, aside from a simple wooden table and several hardbacked chairs.
“Esmond kept every single bit of paper ever came his way,” said Henny, looking around in disgust. “The old fool was scared to death he’d need to prove to the IRS one day where he bought that fifteen-cent washer in 1956. Fat lot of good it did him. I think he was the only millionaire in America never got audited.”
Emma walked over to the nearest file cabinet. Each drawer was neatly marked with the year and a typed list of contents.
“You’re welcome to poke around,” said Henny. “Esmond got appraisals every few years on his stuff. He was always trying to keep track of how much he was worth, for some reason I never understood. You might find a copy of the bill you’re looking for in one of the appraisals.”
“Are you sure it’s all right?” said Emma.
“Sure,” said Henny. “I ain’t got no secrets. You just make yourself at home. I’m gonna go have me a lie-down for a while if you don’t mind. Haven’t been feeling myself lately. Maybe I’m getting old. Either that or I just need to get laid; I don’t know. I’ll be in that first bedroom at the top of the stairs if you need me.”
“Thank you, Henny.”
The old lady nodded and padded off. Emma began working her way through the cabinets. Half an hour later, in a decades-old file, she found what she was looking for. Attached to an old appraisal was a Xerox copy of the original bill of sale dated thirty years ago for “one fine Spanish gold dragon and chain, circa 1700.”
The buyer was Esmond Dauber. The purchase price was fortyfive thousand dollars—just ten thousand less than it had brought three weeks ago, after more than thirty years of inflation. Gold dragons apparently weren’t the best investments in the world. It was the seller’s name, however, that was the real surprise.
Emma stared at the familiar signature with a mixture of surprise and dismay. She had followed this trail back dozens of years and across thousands of miles, looking for the one common thread, the thing that would unite Henri-Pierre Caraignac, Jacques Passant, and a golden dragon that had waited in the sand off San Marcos for nearly three hundred years. At last she had found it. The name at the bottom of the page, in bold block letters on the line marked “Agent for seller,” was Charlemagne Moussy, Esquire.
“Law offices of Charlemagne Moussy,” said the cheerful nasal voice on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Jean. It’s Emma Passant.”
“Emma! How are you? What are you doing? Are you having a nice vacation? I want to hear all about everything, but my other line is ringing, so I’m going to put you on hold; but don’t worry, I’ll be right back and we can talk. Okay?”
“Fine,” said Emma as telephone music filled the receiver. She rolled over on the bed, happy to be back in her room at the hotel.
Finding that Charlemagne had been involved with the original sale of the dragon was disconcerting, but at least things were finally beginning to make a little sense. As she waited for Jean to come back on the line, Emma took the moment to review mentally the events as she had reconstructed them.
After smuggling the dragon out of San Marcos three decades ago, Jacques Passant had apparently contracted Charlemagne to broker a sale—Emma vaguely remembered that the lawyer had once lived in New York City.
It would have made good sense for her grandfather to go to an attorney, Emma realized. Because of the San Marcan laws regarding recovery of treasure and because it had been smuggled into the United States, the ownership of the dragon—and hence Pépé’s right to sell—was murky. Moreover, her grandfather probably didn’t speak much English then, may have just changed his name to throw Peguero’s agents off his trail, and had a desperately ill young daughter—Emma’s mother—to look after. Jacques Passant would have needed someone to protect his int
erests. Who better than a French-speaking lawyer like Charlemagne Moussy, who obviously had contacts with collectors?
Charlemagne must have arranged an anonymous private sale so the dragon would not have to appear on the open market. It had then remained in Esmond Dauber’s collection until Dauber’s death. When the dragon came up for auction at Sotheby’s three weeks ago, it had been purchased by Henri-Pierre Caraignac.
But why Henri-Pierre?
This was where Emma’s knowledge of the facts broke down and speculation took over. There was still no evidence to take to Poteet. The Frenchman might have bought the dragon simply because he had an interest in seventeenth-century badges of office. Or perhaps he had been bidding for someone else, some woman with gaudy taste in jewelry. Unless, of course, Henri-Pierre’s knowledge as an antique dealer had led him to see something in the dragon that no one else had seen. Had he attempted to track down its original owner because he believed there was a treasure, and that the dragon was the key to finding it?
“Hi, Emma, I’m back,” said the machine-gun nasal voice of Jean Bean in Emma’s ear. “So tell me all about it. Did you have a good time? Did you meet anybody? God, I wish I could go to the Caribbean; I once went to Miami Beach, but I was with Mother and she got stung by a Portuguese man-of-war our first day and we had to spend practically the whole week in our room. Not that I wasn’t concerned, mind you, but I really would have liked to get out just a little and see the sights and have some drinks and maybe meet someone nice—like that’s too much to ask for? But you don’t want to hear about my lousy trip, I want to hear about yours, so tell me all about it.”
“I will later, Jean, I promise. Only right now I have to talk to Charlemagne. Is he there?”
“No, and it’s funny you should be calling for him, because I know he wanted to talk to you. He had some interesting news for you, he said. Isn’t it funny how things happen like that sometime? You’re thinking about somebody and suddenly they call, or don’t call, in my case, at least when it comes to men—synchronicity, I think they call it—that kind of coincidence. Has anything like that ever happened to you?
“All too often,” said Emma. “Maybe you can help me, Jean. Do you know if Charlemagne met with a Frenchman in the past few weeks? Someone who hadn’t been in before—a new client, maybe?”
“I don’t think so,” said Jean. “No, wait a minute, I remember. There was a man with a French accent who called up a few weeks ago. He asked for an appointment to discuss a problem with a mortgage, said he had been referred by an acquaintance—another Frenchman who had done business with Charlemagne some thirty years ago, a man who had raised a granddaughter by himself, and I said, ‘Oh, you must mean Jacques Passant,’ since I knew that your grandfather was Charlemagne’s oldest client, and the man said yes, that was his friend—did he still live in that same delightful area? And I said, ‘Yes, if you mean Potrero Hill,’ though I don’t know if ‘delightful’ is the word I would use, no offense, Emma. Then we scheduled a time and he said thank you, but he never showed up, which I thought was very strange, and so did Charlemagne, because the man had sounded so nice on the telephone, but what can you do? I thought maybe he would call back, but he never did. I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”
“No, Jean,” said Emma, taking a deep breath. “You didn’t do anything wrong. What did the man say his name was?”
“Dubois. Jean Dubois.”
It must have been Henri-Pierre, thought Emma. Dubois is as common a French name as Smith is in English.
But something was terribly wrong in all this. All Henri-Pierre had had was a bill of sale for the dragon listing Charlemagne’s name as the agent for the seller. How then had he known about Jacques Passant? How had he known that he was a Frenchman who had raised a granddaughter alone?
“I really need to speak with Charlemagne, Jean,” said Emma, feeling more confused than ever. “Could you have him call me as soon as he gets in?”
Perhaps the little lawyer would be able to shed some light on all this, Emma hoped. After all, he had been the one who had sold the dragon originally.
“Oh, that’s what I’ve been meaning to tell you,” said Jean brightly. “He’s out of town on business, in New York City.
“New York!”
“Yes, isn’t it wonderful? The Big Apple. Times Square. Broadway. He wanted you to call him there. He’s staying at the Plaza Hotel. Would you like the number?”
18
“Then you are not really certain that this scarred-face man was indeed following you at all,” declared Charlemagne Moussy, smoothing his tiny mustache with a manicured finger and handing his menu to the waiter.
“No,” admitted Emma angrily, surrendering her own menu and waiting to explode until the waiter had departed. “It might be just another coincidence. Like the phony car salesman just happening to show up in San Marcos. Like Henri-Pierre Caraignac just happening to be the person who bought the dragon. Like you just happening to have been involved in this whole thing up to your neck and now just happening to be in New York.”
“Please calm down,” said Charlemagne, glancing around uncomfortably.
The other diners in the Plaza’s Edwardian Room didn’t seem to have noticed Emma’s tirade—or, if they had noticed, didn’t seem to care. It was as if the enormous restaurant with its soaring wooden ceiling, white-jacketed staff, and preposterous prices had been invented specifically for indiscreet admissions and intrigue. A significant number of patrons looked as if they might have pilfered military secrets at some point in their afternoons. Charlemagne had suggested dinner here when Emma had finally reached him on the phone that afternoon. Hearing about sunken treasure and men with scars apparently brought out the gourmet in him.
“What are you doing in New York, Charlemagne?” Emma demanded, not attempting to conceal her frustration. “Why didn’t you tell me about the dragon? Is there anything else you forgot to mention?”
“One question at the same time, please,” said the little lawyer, raising his hand. “You make it sound like I might have had some involvement in this tragedy of events that has befallen us. This hurts me very deeply, Emma. Have not you known me since you were just the tiny little child? Do you not remember that Jacques was my best friend?”
Emma took a sip of her margarita and didn’t answer. She had ordered a drink only because Charlemagne had wanted to start with a martini, but now she was glad she had one.
Emma had never dined with Charlemagne alone before. She had been dragged along to his office by her grandfather and seen him at large social gatherings like weddings and funerals. She hadn’t even known that he drank. What else did she not know about him?
“All right, Emma,” said Charlemagne, stiffening in reaction to her silence. “To answer your questions, I did not tell you about the dragon whistle that I sold on Jacques’s behalf because this happened many years ago, and it never occurred to me that such a transaction had anything to do with the price of fishes. If you had asked me, gladly would I have told you, but you did not, so neither did I.”
“You said in your office,” said Emma, “that Pépé was able to put the down payment on the house because you helped him sell a ‘certain property.’ That certain property was the dragon, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t you tell me about it then?”
“Because I am a lawyer,” replied Charlemagne in a low, irritated hiss. “Because I am discreet. I do not go around telling everybody everything I know about anything that comes up in conversation. I do not hang myself with my big mouth. By my nature and my training I respond precisely to questions. If I went around volunteering information about things that I had not been asked, half of my clients would be in jail or more deeply in debt than they find themselves already.”
“Wonderful, Charlemagne. Marvelous.”
“Disapprove if you must,” declared the lawyer, glancing at his watch. “But in our society people they are not required to incriminate themselves. Nor is
it necessary for them to hire the blabbermouth lawyer to do it for them.”
“All right,” said Emma in disgust. “Have it your way. Just tell me about the dragon now. Tell me everything.”
Charlemagne pursed his lips, straightened his bow tie, and took a sniff of the carnation in his buttonhole.
“There is not a great deal to tell,” he pronounced in a calm voice. “I was a young lawyer just starting out when Jacques came to see me those many years ago. My practice—such as it was—was then in New York because this is where my family had emigrated. But I hated it here. The city that is so glorious when one has money is equally dismal when one is poor, and we had been very poor indeed. As a young lawyer of French origin I sought out the business of my former countrymen by writing a legal-advice column for one of the French-language newspapers that were then being published. It was from seeing this column that Jacques learned of me and came forward with his dragon whistle to sell.”
“So you knew all about it,” said Emma in an accusatory tone.
“I knew nothing about it,” replied Charlemagne indignantly. “Jacques told me that his dragon whistle was the heirloom that had been in his family for generations.”
“And you believed that?”
“It is not the business of lawyers to doubt their own clients. What if he had stolen the dragon whistle? If I had forced Jacques to tell me this, then I would not have been able to help him pursue his interests and sell it, would I? I am an officer of the court. I have a responsibility.”
“But it was okay if you didn’t know.”
“What was I supposed to do, Emma?” erupted Charlemagne. “Cross-question him until he confessed that Jacques Passant was not his real name and that he was in the country illegally?”
“Oh my God,” said Emma. “Do you think he was?”
“Thank goodness that I did not ask,” said Charlemagne with a visible I-told-you-so kind of satisfaction, “so this was not my concern. You see how we lawyers make the strange kind of sense? I knew all I had to know—that your grandfather was my client and that he needed my help, which I was happy to give him. Okay?”
The Girl Who Remembered the Snow Page 24