“The old heave-ho, Silver?” Jane asked.
“Awa-a-ay,” answered Tim, taking her elbow and pushing her toward the lodge and lunch.
Jane and Tim quickly realized that it would be impossible to fill each other in between bites of lamb ragout and a pear-and-Roquefort salad. It was much easier—and quite entertaining—to watch Martine turn up the charm for Bruce Oh. Since she ran on a fairly high wattage regularly, the effect of adding more power was blinding.
Mr. Kuruma had introduced himself as a collector and a journalist for a new art and antiques journal. He had been careful to describe it as being in that fragile start-up phase where he couldn’t really talk about the details, the investors, or the people behind the scenes. Still, it gave him enough of a cachet that the artists surrounding him at the table treated him as if he were an important restaurant critic, and they were all chefs.
Only Silver seemed removed from the feeding frenzy. The metaphorical feeding frenzy anyway. The poet was taking lunch quite seriously. According to the count Jane was keeping in her head, he had helped himself to four plates of the ragout and three salads. How hungry was this man? Since his caftan contained pockets, Jane was certain he lined them with plastic bags so he could stock up for later. Perhaps, as a poet, he had learned to take advantage of the generous table when it presented itself as a hedge against the lean times. Or perhaps, Jane thought, sizing up his ample frame robed in a brocade tent, he was simply a man with an appetite.
The thought crossed Jane’s mind that Mickey must have built himself quite a tree house if he could entertain both Silver and Martine. That pair plus Mickey would be quite a test of the structural integrity of the tree house floor, not to mention the quality of hemp used to make the rope ladder. Considering hemp quality prompted Jane to wonder if there were Campbell and LaSalle residents who needed extra money for drugs, for publishing ventures, and, glancing at Silver’s once again full plate, she added food to her list, desperately enough to want to profit by pulling the old switcheroo with antiques that came in for repair.
Her use of “cahoots” and “switcheroo” within the same hour—even though it was well within the boundaries of silent notes to self—prompted Jane to consider getting herself a word-a-day calendar to improve her vocabulary, which seemed to be based much too much on old movies and conversations with Tim. She also might ask Nick to tutor her on more updated slang.
Years ago, Jane and Charley had had neighbors, an older couple, whom they liked very much. They noticed, though, when talking over the hedges or carrying in groceries at the same time, that both the man and woman had curiously formal and old-fashioned ways of speaking. After trimming a tree and offering some of the firewood to Charley, Carl suggested that Charley measure the width of the fireplace and have “your frau call my frau.”
Jane and Charley decided that what their neighbors most sounded like were two observers from another planet who had learned to imitate earthlings by reading a how-to manual. Jane now realized that what they had really sounded like were middle-aged people.
Rooted in the slang and casual speak of their youth, they had only an acquaintance with contemporary pop culture because their age allowed them only limited access, classic Catch-22—another reference Jane doubted would make sense to Nick’s generation. Carl and his “frau” probably would have preferred sounding young and hip or at least like Earth-born earthlings, but no one had bothered to tell them how to do it—or pointed out that they didn’t sound “groovy” for that matter. And now Jane and Charley were there—middle-aged, a faraway planet, next stop, Frauville.
“Please?” whispered Silver.
Jane realized he had asked her something. From the pained look on his face, it was clearly something important.
“Sorry. I was lost in space,” said Jane.
“Butter,” said Silver, louder and with a slightly exaggerated articulation, as if Jane might be a bit hard of hearing.
Jane passed the pale slab of what appeared to her to be fine Danish butter. She wanted to ask him how he could possibly be putting away a thickly spread hunk of bread, after everything else he had eaten, but as Jane Wheel, girl detective, she knew that wouldn’t be the way to his heart or to wherever he kept any information that might be helpful in finding out what had happened to the Westman chest, Horace Cutler, Rick Moore, or Claire Oh.
Jane thought maybe she knew the way into his heart.
“I’m getting coffee. Can I bring you back a plate of those cookies from the sideboard?”
He gave her a great big buttery grin and nodded.
Jane arranged six cookies, two of each of the three varieties—peanut butter rounds, chocolate-studded oatmeal cookies, and dipped macaroons—on a pink depression glass plate and brought it to Silver. He looked at her with such bald gratitude that she was taken aback. What must his poetry be like? Lots of food metaphors and themes of emptiness and hunger?
“Working on a new collection?” asked Jane. “Or is that a bad question to ask a poet?”
“Not a bad question, I just have a sad answer,” Silver said, brushing crumbs off the sleeve of his robe. “Block,” he said, pointing first at his head, then at his heart.
Jane wasn’t sure if he meant he had writer’s block or he was telling her something about his arteries. He had, after all, just downed a quarter pound of butter.
“I’ve had great difficulty reentering my artistic space. I am working my way back to the word, so to speak,” he said.
With a fork, not a pen, Jane thought, while she said, “Interesting.”
“Martine is helping me,” Silver said. “Coaching.”
Jane wondered how one went about coaching a poet. Writing seemed like a highly personal endeavor, and writing poetry the most personal of all. How did a life coach figure into his literary work?
“Martine is good at opening up the channels,” said Silver, “helping me redirect my energies.”
“How?” Jane asked, truly curious, but realizing as soon as the question was out of her mouth that it might sound insensitive.
She needn’t have worried. Silver was eager to share his new wisdom. He described his regime of walking and meditating, his clearing away the extraneous in his life, his elimination of the negative, his paring down of worldly goods.
“I only have two caftans, one pair of sandals. I keep one notebook for journaling and a separate one for poems. I have two sharp pencils and two pens. I use the same pen and pencil for poems, and I don’t use them for anything else. They are my sacred instruments, and I keep them for my work.”
Silver stopped talking and ate three cookies in rapid succession. No wonder the guy was hungry. Martine had taken everything away from him. Eating was the only thing he had left. Jane figured Martine would have him on a juice fast within the month. She was going to make him pay for not having an agent who could get her a two-book deal.
Silver picked up the small, hand-lettered card that announced the day’s meals. Jane was appalled that he could even read about food after the amount of it he had just consumed. He looked giddy with delight though as he read aloud the description of dinner.
“An Evening in Provence will be tonight’s theme. We will begin with a silky seafood bisque…,” he read, enraptured with the words that would so soon be realized as a source of satisfaction. Jane stopped listening after the first line.
That was it. That was the missing piece to this puzzle. What was it that Claire Oh had told her about the Westman chest? She’d spotted it in the basement of an estate sale. It was being used for tools or junk by the home owners. No one had even known it was there. No one had bothered to put a price on it.
That’s the part she had not thought to question Claire about. She really had to find Claire Oh; it was time to stop playing games. Silver was droning on about heavy cream and a soupçon of this, just a dash of that. Hell, he probably devoted more heart and soul to the reading of this menu than he did to reading his own work. Unless, of course, he had published a cook
book in iambic pentameter. Not a bad thought, every recipe in sonnet form or something close. Jane’s mind was racing as he spoke, but she hadn’t really heard a thing after the first line.
“A night in Provence.” Provence. Provence. Why hadn’t she thought of it until now?
So what if the carving looked exactly like the work of Mathew Westman? Without piecing together some kind of history, some kind of explanation of how that particular chest had ended up in that particular basement, the chest could not be authenticated, not definitively. Even if an authority such as Glen LaSalle or Blake Campbell had declared the carving to be Westman’s, without a clear time line on the piece, it would be a tough sell to make this the find of a lifetime.
Jane had been so enamored when Claire had showed her the piece that she hadn’t thought to ask about the owners. How had the piece gotten into the basement? Had it been there when the owners moved in? Who had lived in the house before them? Any living family members to question? Was there anyone who could help them trace that piece of furniture?
Jane was a rookie, so it was understandable that she hadn’t thought to ask. And as soon as she had dragged Tim up here, they had found Rick Moore dead, which provided a major distraction. But if Claire had brought the chest up here to be worked on, surely everyone would have been trying to trace the history of such an important find. A third Westman chest? This was museum time, major acquisition time. Jane hadn’t wanted to mention the Westman connection to anyone until she found out more about the people here. Why hadn’t they been talking about it to her though?
Horace Cutler’s murder had been reported in the paper. Claire Oh’s name was certainly mentioned. Wouldn’t anyone here remember that she had just picked up the Westman chest? Wouldn’t they be wondering what had really happened?
Jane stood up then realized that Silver was still reading to her, and she sat back down. She couldn’t drag Tim and Oh away from the table to discuss this with them and get their take without arousing a good deal of curiosity. She cleared her throat to interrupt Silver, so she could make a polite exit. He was lingering over the description of the pots du crème, when he was stopped by someone other than Jane.
“May I have your attention, please?”
Officer Murkel had returned to the lodge, this time with several uniformed officers. Apparently whatever warrant Roxanne had advised him he would have to have, he had.
“We are reopening our investigation of Rick Moore’s death here at Campbell and LaSalle. We will need to question everyone here, and we ask that no one leave the property without our okay. We’ll be setting up an office in the gallery. The barn workshop and Mr. Moore’s cabin and truck are strictly off-limits,” said Murkel, ignoring the low muttering that began to grow louder at his last statement.
“May we see you now, Mrs. Wheel?” Murkel asked, phrasing it as a question, intoning it like a statement.
Jane stood up. She tugged the menu out of Silver’s loving grasp and asked if she could use the pen sticking out of the patch pocket of his robe. Without waiting for an answer, she took it and wrote something on the card, and tossed the pen back on the table in front of Silver. By the stricken look on his face, she realized that she had taken his poem-writing pen, defiled his sacred tool. Martine would have her work cut out for her this afternoon. Did she do exorcisms?
On her way out, she slipped the card in front of Tim who was seated to Oh’s left. Let them get started on some of the work, she thought, making sure Tim couldn’t miss her alteration to the menu. The title of the theme dinner no longer read “A Night in Provence.” Jane had amended it to—“A Night in Provenance!!!!!!!”
14
A place for everything and everything in its place might work for some. For the truly clutter-mad, the stuff junkies, simple sayings won’t do. You must strip down to bare essentials. No spares. Do not own one thing more than you need. You do not need more storage; you need to have nothing to store.
—BELINDA ST. GERMAIN, Overstuffed
The word “provenance” describes the source and history of ownership of a piece of art, a piece of furniture, any object of note or value. It is a word tossed around on the Antiques Roadshow almost as much as “patina” and “veneer.” Jane and Tim had long ago decided that if they ever had an imaginary son to keep their imaginary daughter, Patina, company, they would name him Veneer. And even if asked directly, they vowed to keep little Patina and Veneer’s provenance a secret.
Jane berated herself as she followed Murkel to the gallery office set up by the police. Why had she not asked this before? How had Claire been planning to prove that this was a Westman chest? She would have had to have it authenticated by experts—they at Campbell and LaSalle could give it credibility; but before they did, they would need to know as much as possible about the discovery. Yes, valuable pieces had been found at sales and auctions, even thrift stores, far away from their birthplaces and original owners; but generally there was a paper trail, or at least an oral history, that could be discovered, that gave credence to a piece’s authentication.
If, for example, a bill of sale for a third Westman chest had been found among Mathew Westman’s papers, one could attach a name to the original owner. Say the Smith family had purchased a sunflower-carved chest from Mathew Westman. Research might show that the same Smith family, a few years later, had moved west to Chicago. Over the course of time, descendants scatter throughout the Midwest. Some pieces of furniture scatter with them; some, perhaps, were lost in the great Chicago Fire. Maybe the Smith family fell on hard times and their possessions were sold at auction. On a whim, a Mr. Jones bid on the now-worn and beat-up chest. He paid a few dollars for it, brought it home because he thought it looked interesting and well made, but his wife thought otherwise. It was sturdy, so they decided to put it to use, out of sight. Maybe they threw some paint on it to brighten it up. Perhaps the Westman chest was separated, its top shelf the perfect size to serve as a small side table in a child’s bedroom and the bottom set of drawers, which were too ornate to be fashionable, ended up holding cans of paint and old brushes in the basement. Fifty more years passed. The Joneses’ grandson’s estate sale was held, and Claire Oh spotted the chest, which was so buried in the basement it was a throwaway.
Improbable, but not impossible. Jane was sure that Campbell and LaSalle would have tried to check the provenance of this piece as thoroughly as they would have examined the oxidation patterns on the undersides of the drawers and the marks of the carving tools on the sunflowers.
If Campbell and LaSalle had given their authentication, this piece would have the all-important “provenance.” Somewhat questionable, perhaps—not what every dealer and collector hopes for, a pure line of ownership, a piece passed down through the same family since its creation—but still, a possible scenario that might satisfy a well-heeled collector of Early American furniture.
If Campbell and LaSalle had not found any paper trail or oral history that might give the piece of furniture credibility as a Westman-made chest, it would be far less valuable. It would not necessarily, as Horace Cutler had accused, be a fake, not if it were simply being sold as a fine old Early American chest, carved in the manner of Mathew Westman; only if it was a fine new American chest, carved in the manner of Rick Moore, being passed off as the former.
Jane couldn’t believe she had not quizzed Claire Oh about the owners of the estate. Or asked about what the experts had said about the chest when she brought it in. They must have authenticated it; otherwise she would not have delivered it to Cutler or, at least, not been surprised when he denounced it as a fake.
She was so lost in thought that Jane had to ask Murkel twice to repeat his question. Even then, she felt a bit lost. Was it only yesterday that she and Tim had arrived at Campbell and LaSalle?
“I asked you, Mrs. Wheel, if you were aware of any kind of odor, a chemical smell, when you entered the barn yesterday?” Murkel asked.
Jane tried to remember her first impression of the barn when she e
ntered it. A beautiful workshop, well equipped and laid out. She remembered seeing the cans of paint and varnishes and solvents along one wall, but she couldn’t remember seeing any of them opened. She mentally sent herself back up the stairs to the gallery library. She could not remember any smell. The windows were open, though, so why would she have smelled anything?
“I don’t remember a smell. The windows were all open, though, and there was a breeze, so it might have freshened the air,” she said.
“You remember a breeze?” Murkel asked.
“Yes. Actually I do. When I was in the library, I noticed a book open on one of the tables. It had a bookmark in it, but the breeze had blown a few pages over it, past the marked page. And there was a little table-tent-type card that said something about the fact that Campbell and LaSalle did painstaking research on every piece brought to them for…” Jane stopped. That’s right, further proof that someone knew the truth about the Westman chest before Claire picked it up. They wouldn’t have restored it without getting its story.
“Yes?” asked Murkel.
“I remember the breeze blowing through,” said Jane. “If there was a smell, I didn’t notice it.”
It struck Jane that no one had said why the investigation was being reopened, but considering what she had seen in Rick’s truck, the carving tools, the imitation Westman sunflowers, she thought she might have an idea.
“Was Rick Moore murdered?” she asked.
Murkel smiled without the slightest trace of good humor. “What makes you think so?” he asked.
“I asked the question. I didn’t say I thought anything,” Jane said, beginning to think quite a lot about the sandals back in her cabin and the envelope of papers marked important. How much trouble was she going to be in for taking all of this to study on her own?
Jane was surprised to see Murkel plant his elbows on the desk, rest his chin in his hands, and lean toward her. He looked ready to confide a deep and dark secret, so Jane prepared herself to listen.
The Wrong Stuff Page 14