The Wrong Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  Roxanne reentered the room through her office, and Scott came in through the front door. Jane was certain during all the good mornings that Roxanne had no idea that Jane had overheard the earlier conversation with Murkel. Scott sat next to Jane and suggested she try one of the muffins with her coffee, something about Michigan blueberries. Roxanne asked them to excuse a moment of morning noise while she hammered a small nail into the wall by the kitchen.

  Scott smiled, watching her rehang the twig-framed bulletin board that displayed the day’s menu. “Better not let Blake catch you,” he said.

  “That’s why I’m doing it this early. He’ll never know.”

  “Roxanne’s the only one who gets away with using regular nails around here,” Scott said, by way of explanation. Geoff and Jake were oblivious to both the hammering and the conversation. They only had eyes for their fritattas and a drawing of a vanity they had placed between them and seemed to be studying and making occasional marks on between bites.

  “Blake doesn’t want anyone tempted by contemporary tools,” she said, sitting on the other side of the table with her cup of coffee.

  “Or with modern glues, brushes, anything,” added Scott. “Amazing we’re allowed to eat with forks.”

  Roxanne smiled. “When he’s not around, I replace some of those square hand-cut nails with big round-headed modern ones so the hanging wire on the boards won’t slide off. I feel sneaky doing it, but those twig frames are fragile. A mirror broke in one of the cabins last week, too, slid right off the authentic nail.”

  “Was it Rick’s?” Jane asked.

  Roxanne looked startled. “Yes, how did you know that?”

  “I was just thinking about seven years’ bad luck,” said Jane.

  “A bit of an understatement, isn’t it? Death being the ultimate bad luck and all,” said Scott.

  “I suppose a picture hanger would be out of the question,” said Jane.

  “Bite your tongue,” said Scott. “Roxanne’s the real fixer around here; she just doesn’t get any of the credit.”

  Roxanne covered her eyes and bent her head. “We at Campbell and LaSalle do not do picture hangers, dear,” she whispered, sounding exactly like Glen LaSalle.

  As if the imitation invoked the man, Glen walked in with Martine and Blake. Roxanne picked up the nails she had taken out of her pocket to illustrate her small chore and stood to greet them and, Jane was sure, inform them that Murkel had found out something about Rick Moore that might make for some C & L unpleasantness. Jane noticed that Roxanne had missed two nails, one new and the old square one she had removed, and Jane quickly picked them up and put them into her bag. It was the least she could do for her since Roxanne had showed enough trust to confide her handyman/woman secret to Jane.

  She could return them later to Roxanne and find a way to learn we-at-Campbell-and-LaSalle information that might be more pertinent to Jane’s investigation. Roxanne had told Jane that she kept the books and ran the business, so she must know about pieces checked in and have access to all the billing records. With Roxanne’s help, Jane could find out exactly what happened to the Westman chest when it was in residence at Campbell and LaSalle.

  Jane put on her best lost-in-artistic-thought face and nodded to Blake, Glen, and Martine, who were serving themselves at the buffet.

  “Good luck on your mission,” said Blake.

  Jane was startled for just a moment. She then remembered her story about Tim’s research assignment and nodded. He flashed her one of his dazzling smiles, and Jane was grateful for her experience with good-looking people. A less prepared woman, she knew, could be totally corrupted by those perfect teeth and warm brown eyes and that tumble of gray-flecked brown hair. Even with her experience and the steel armor woven while sitting through hundreds of commercial casting sessions, Jane felt a bit woozy.

  When she reached the barn, she decided to look around the work areas before climbing up to the library. Like a three-ring circus, it seemed that there were three distinct staging areas. Each area had a full array of tools and brushes hanging from a rack above a workbench. Looking up, Jane saw a curtain–rodlike device, similar to the track that runs around patient areas in hospital emergency rooms to afford patients a modicum of privacy. Apparently, furniture projects were afforded privacy here at Campbell and LaSalle. More than once Tim had referred to it as a kind of clinic for valuable antiques. This workspace expanded the thought.

  Jane smiled, picturing Blake in a white medical coat, soft paintbrush hung around his neck like a stethoscope, questioning a chest of drawers. “And how about your middle drawer, dear? Has it been sticking? A little painful opening the top one?” Picturing Blake at all made her feel slightly guilty, and she decided it was time to call Charley. She dialed her husband’s cell phone as she climbed the open stairs to the gallery library that ran around three sides of the barn. At the north end the gallery expanded into a wider loft area with plenty of room for three leather club chairs and a few worktables with green-shaded library lamps. Jane listened to the ringing phone as she took out volumes on Westman and Early American restoration. She wasn’t even sure she knew what to look for.

  “Hi, Charley,” she said at the beep. “I’m in the most stunning little library here at Campbell and LaSalle. You’d love this place. I hope you and Nick are having fun. I haven’t gotten a chance to reorganize the house yet, but my purse is…,” Jane began, then remembered that she hadn’t decluttered her purse either. “Charley, I forgot to ask what your speech was about, so call me when you get a chance, I want to hear all about it. I…” She stopped when she heard the time’s-up click.

  This time she had asked about Charley’s speech but hadn’t left enough time to say I love you. What was it with her and phone messages? She admired those who could concisely get their message across and end the communication gracefully. She always said something like well…um…okay then. At any moment she sounded like she was going to break into la-di-da, la-di-da, like Diane Keaton playing Annie Hall. Or worse yet, she said thank you at the end of the message even if someone had asked her for a favor that she was agreeing to do. Okay then…well…thank you. Why oh why did she feel in control and intelligent when she had a notebook and pen in her hand and become a blithering idiot when faced with a cell phone or a Palm Pilot? Maybe St. Belinda had some insight into that in the chapter titled “Ending the Paper Trail.” Jane would skip ahead and read that one next, if she could remember where she had put the book.

  Mathew Westman, according to the book titled, The People’s Craftsman, was not only famous for his solid, well-made chests and cupboards but also for making decorative items like frames for mirrors and document boxes. He liked to try his hand at inlay as well as carving and was considered a dilettante by other furniture makers of his day. It seemed to Jane that he was a bit too curious and facile with his carving tools to be taken seriously. Even back then, people seemed to insist on specialization, Jane thought. It didn’t seem fair to her. She still recalled the joy and stimulation that working on two vastly different accounts had brought her when she was at the ad agency.

  The large beer company for whom she had produced two highly successful campaigns had insisted that she work for them exclusively and drop a smaller mom-and-pop account she had nursed along for years. When she had tried to explain to both the client and her boss that it kept her fresh to go back and forth, to take two paths, to reach into two different parts of her brain, they had laughed and told her she was being sentimental. The smaller account went to a creative director and account executive with much less experience. When her firm lost the account, no one seemed to miss The Carpet Pros. Jane took it as a personal blow. She could work big better when she worked small at the same time. And she had learned how to do what she did by working on The Carpet Pros’s account. They had watched her grow from the new kid into a professional, and they had each respected their history together.

  Of course Mathew Westman loved to carve frames and smaller objects. It allowed
him to continue to learn. It honed his skills, kept him fresh, and allowed him to experiment. The book didn’t exactly say that, but Jane figured it out.

  The book did state that Westman’s masterpiece, a set of heavily carved drawers with a kind of shelved cupboard on top, now known as the Westman Sunflower Chest, had been made for a wealthy family in Massachusetts and had been handed down through that family until it was donated to a museum in 1987. One other chest had been authenticated as a Westman and was believed to be an earlier version and was privately owned. There was wide speculation that a few other Westman chests survived; however, none had surfaced. The rumors seemed to be based on the belief that a prolific carver such as Mathew Westman would not content himself with only a few models. His early mirrors and other decorative pieces, including a group of ornate shadow boxes, followed in an extensive series, which showed a playful experimentation with design and balance.

  The frustrating piece of information about Westman was that he’d kept no catalogue of his work—at least, none had been found. Only a few flyers with sketches from his workshop remained, so there was no way to actually pinpoint numbers of pieces and styles. The author did say that Westman was often quoted about building “good pieces for the people, not just the wealthy,” hence, the smaller items, the mirrors and whatnot shelves that were affordable to many. Interesting distinction, Jane thought, that even then the wealthy couldn’t possibly be “the people,” too.

  Westman’s son, James, showed promise as a carver and builder and was part of Mathew Westman’s shop for at least six years. He grew ill and died while still a young man; and, according to this biographer, Westman, the father, never got over the loss of his son. Some of the pieces he built after that were apparently rejected because his carvings, which had always been incredibly realistic, became more strangely personal.

  One family for whom he had carved a bed refused to keep it because of the faces carved into the bedposts. They described it as a scary sight, the eyes that peered at them in the night, and insisted that it be taken back. The rumor was that Westman had gone to their home and chopped the bed frame into pieces right in front of the whole family, hauled out the wood, and burned it all behind his own house.

  The madness that seemed to overtake him in his grief might not have been good for business in his own day, but currently, any mirror or piece of furniture that had the feverish face of Mathew Westman’s son carved on it was quite desirable. It would not fetch as high a price as a Westman Sunflower Chest, but any picker would be wise to study the carvings of son James’s face and learn to recognize the Westman hand.

  Jane, curled up in one of the leather chairs, felt the warmth of the sun from one of the high windows that surrounded the gallery loft but still shuddered. She had always believed, insisted to others, that every object told a story. Every crocheted pot holder, every tattered first edition, every Bakelite dress clip held a secret. Somehow, actually knowing the secrets of the Westman carvings did not satisfy her the way her own made-up stories did. There was a safety and an anonymous thrill in speculating on the life of an artist, a maker, a former owner of a now collectible piece. There was nothing safe about knowing the truth.

  A piece of paper fluttered out of the pages of the book and sailed first up, then down and under Jane’s chair. She closed the book and set it on the library table and got down on her knees to pick up the paper. Reaching under the chair, she felt the paper on top of something else parked there. Resting her head all the way down on the floor, she peered underneath the chair.

  “Ear to the ground, nose to the grindstone, that’s what I like about you, Nancy Drew,” said Tim, setting a mug of coffee down on the library table after locating a vintage-looking tile that was clearly marked REPRO/SAMPLE to use as a coaster. He had come in quietly, not to surprise Jane, but because the sound of his own footsteps might aggravate the pounding in his head.

  “What size feet do you have, Tim?”

  “Honey, I’m mighty hung over, so if you’re playing some kind of mind game, I don’t…”

  “What size?”

  “Eleven and a half,” Tim said, and flopped into the chair opposite Jane’s.

  She stood, pulling out a pair of well-worn Birkenstock sandals.

  “It was a quick look and all, but I’d say Rick Moore was about your size. I looked at his feet because he had no shoes on and because, when everyone gathered around, it was all I could see.” Jane held up a sandal, then put it next to Tim’s foot. “Pretty close,” she said.

  Tim massaged his temples. “Common shoe size, and who cares anyway? What’s it prove?”

  “They’re Rick’s, all right. These are the Arizona sandals. I have them and so does Charley. The tan lines I saw on Rick’s bare foot match up with the straps on these,” said Jane.

  “Impressive, but I repeat, what’s it prove?”

  “That Rick Moore wasn’t experimenting with solvents or standing too long in the ammonia tent. All those little hand-lettered signs around here? There are at least five downstairs that list the rules, which include number one, leave the windows open at all times and number two, heavy work shoes and socks must be worn in the work areas.

  “Rick Moore was wearing Birkenstock sandals because he wasn’t in the workshop; he was up here reading in the library,” said Jane. “And he got comfy in this chair by taking off his sandals and scooting them underneath.”

  Tim sighed the sigh of a man too long at the Grey Goose and too soon out of bed. “I suppose you know what book he was reading, too,” he said, stretching.

  “As a matter of fact, he was reading this biography of Mathew Westman,” Jane said, handing Tim the paper that had fallen out of the book.

  Dear Rick, Dear Rick, Dear Rick, Dear Rick, Dear

  Rick, Dear Rick

  Take care of it, take care of it, take care of it

  Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake. Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake,

  Blake, Blake

  If it was a real note, it was long on salutation and close and extremely short on content. It seemed like more of a doodle, a handwriting practice sheet.

  It had been crumpled, then smoothed out. The note, or whatever it was, was unsigned.

  11

  Hanging on to that history textbook from junior year at college? The one that you thought you’d use as a reference, delve into as part of your commitment to lifelong learning? You will never, I repeat, never, read that book again. Toss it.

  —BELINDA ST. GERMAIN, Overstuffed

  Jane’s everyday bag was an oversized leather tote that could hold a normal-sized purse plus a change of clothes—and maybe a lunch. On more than one occasion, it had also held Nick’s soccer cleats and a warm-up jacket and a water bottle. Jane had no trouble slipping the book on Mathew Westman and what she believed were Rick Moore’s Birkenstock sandals, Arizona model, deep into her bag. And in the small, zippered pocket, she placed the note she had found.

  “Take care of it”? What was it? The fake Westman chest swapped with the real Westman? Was it the worry about Horace Cutler screaming his head off at the antiques show? Was Horace Cutler going to be taken care of? Permanently?

  Jane looked at Tim shielding his eyes from the morning light streaming in through the high row of windows that surrounded the gallery loft. She would give him two minutes to recover, then she would need his help. Jane dialed Bruce Oh’s number. No answer. She left a quick please-call-me-immediately message, feeling a little smug that she had actually said what she had meant to say and gotten it in before the beep. Only a beat later she realized she hadn’t left her name, but she was pretty sure Oh would recognize her voice or be able to check caller ID or some new people-finding phone feature that she hadn’t yet heard of. For god’s sake, there was no anonymity left in the world at all; surely Oh could figure out who had called him and from where. Unless Oh didn’t check messages at all because he was out looking for his wife, who might not have returned home last night.

  “She’s here,” said Jane. “I
have got to talk to her.”

  Tim groaned. Hangover or no hangover, she needed him to search Campbell and LaSalle. Dragging her heavy bag and Tim by the hand, she hurried him over to the lodge. No one was at the breakfast table, so she parked Tim in an armchair and rushed into the kitchen.

  Cheryl looked up from a notebook where she was listing ingredients from a large cookbook propped up on the cooking island.

  “Sorry to bother you, but my friend, Tim, needs a remedy quickly. Could I mix something in the blender?”

  Cheryl shrugged and nodded, eyes back on her book. Jane helped herself to tomato juice, Tabasco, and an egg. Nellie’s secret hangover ingredient—for Don and others since she never indulged—was usually unavailable, but this was a gourmet kitchen, stocked and loaded, so Jane took a shot.

  “Any anchovies?” she asked.

  Cheryl was now interested. She opened the cupboard and handed Jane a tin, which Jane quickly opened. She threw one of the salty strips into the blender with the rest of the ingredients and pulsed. She tossed in a few ice cubes and pulsed again. Sniffing the drink, she added a few more shakes of hot sauce, then poured it into a glass.

  “Thanks so much,” Jane said, running water into the blender and replacing the pitcher of tomato juice in the refrigerator.

  “What is that a remedy for?” Cheryl asked.

  “Vodka,” said Jane. “My mom’s recipe. She hates drinkers, but she owns a bar and plays nurse to a lot of customers the morning after. Says it’ll kill or cure. I’ve never tried it myself.”